“Can’t sleep,” the Mathius-entity replied.
“What? You’re destroying us because you’re bored?” Lylia asked. Her voice was a shade of quiet-angry. She looked near tears. Something had been secretly burning inside of her and was nearing the surface. It was the same hidden rage that Neutrino had detected earlier, and he suspected Lylia had lost more in the attack than she let on. He knew she hated streaming, but he hadn’t considered that this mission might have been difficult for Lylia in other ways when he begged her to come with him. Maybe it had been a mistake to insist that it be her, but it was too late to do anything about it now. Neutrino just hoped she could keep her anger contained; such emotions could cause problems in a situation like this. He looked back at the Mathius-entity to see if there was any indication that it was annoyed, but there was nothing.
“No. Hard to speak. Boy not good to speak. Can’t sleep, too noise. You disturb space.”
“It’s too noisy? How do we disturb space?” Neutrino asked.
“You not understand. Not intelligent.” Neutrino sensed a shift, the Sun-entity was about to give up.
“Probably not,” he said hastily, “But we want to understand. Please explain it some more.” The Mathius-entity hesitated so Neutrino added a final, “Please.”
“We sleep, space must empty. You come, orange line ruin sleep. Babies not grow.”
“Orange line? You mean the Slipstream? It’s disturbing your sleep?”
“Too noise. We not sleep, babies not grow. Look.” Mathius pointed behind Neutrino at the Sun-entity outside which was now spreading apart to reveal several hundred rapidly moving smaller entities at its core.
“Okay, so, you need quiet, empty space to sleep, like hibernating? And you need to hibernate for your babies to grow. We’re bothering you by expanding the Slipstream into your space.”
“Yes.” The Sun-entity closed in protectively around its offspring once more.
“But… Why did you come after us like this? Why not just try to tell us that?”
“We try. You not hear. We destroy orange line maker. You send more.”
“The expansion ships, they’re unmanned,” said Darwyth, “Central probably decided it was more cost efficient to just send out a new ship, rather than expend the time and resources to investigate.”
“Figures,” Lylia scoffed. Neutrino watched her standing there, eyes tense, arms folded.
“We try talk to others,” the Mathius-entity continued, “They not hear. Try break us, we break them.”
“I think it’s talking about the Protector,” Darwyth said.
“Too bad they didn’t have a telepath on board,” Neutrino sighed, “I’m sorry about all of this, I’m sorry we didn’t hear you. We didn’t know what we were doing to your…” What do I call them? Your entities? Your people? “…babies.”
“You not intelligent. You travel too far, not ready.”
“I will be sure to relay that message to my superiors,” Neutrino replied. He felt somewhat relieved being able to communicate, knowing that the Sun-entity was not just some mechanism of destruction, but a sentient collection of beings. He hoped that meant that some kind of agreement could be reached. “We will leave your space alone. Show us where your borders lie and we will promise not to cross into your territory again, if you will let us be.”
The Mathius-entity considered a moment, and then it walked over to Lylia’s monitor, still with the orb attached to its head like some kind of enormous perfectly round horn. It began pulling up charts and clicking through them. It seemed to know exactly how to work the computer, although Neutrino guessed that neither the Sun-entity nor Mathius had any real experience.
“There,” the Mathius-entity finished typing and pointed at the screen.
“That’s almost as big as our entire system. It would take years to plot a course around it,” said Lylia.
“How long do you sleep?” Neutrino asked. The Mathius-entity paused.
“Three hundred twenty-four Central Standard years,” It said finally.
“Apparently we’ll have plenty of time,” Neutrino chuckled. Lylia rolled her eyes, still boiling inside. Neutrino turned back to the Mathius-entity, “Are we agreed then? We’ll stay out and you let us be?”
“It was desired, is hard to destroy. It take much energy, many lives. But now, cannot.”
“Why not?” What could possibly have happened in the last two minutes to ruin everything?
“You not trust. You come destroy.”
“No, we wouldn’t. It would be crazy to challenge you, you would easily beat us.”
“Crazy, yes. But you come, not smart. You come now.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Myno,” Lylia interrupted, “I think I know. There’s a ship just entering our sensor range. I’ve never seen this configuration before though. Are they ours?”
“That’s the new battle design,” Darwyth answered, looking over her shoulder at the monitor.
“How do you know?” Neutrino went over to see what was on the screen, but it didn’t make much sense to him. He could tell that there was a ship approaching, rather rapidly from the looks of it, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of the numbers displayed beneath it.
“I helped design it of course,” Darwyth said matter-of-factly. “I thought they were still a few years from completion.”
“Apparently they were encouraged to speed things up just as we were,” said Lylia. “At the speed they’re travelling, they should be within weapons range in about three and a half hours.”
“Well, they’re going to ruin everything,” Neutrino sighed. “Can’t we contact them and tell them to stop?”
“They’re still too far out for communication, we’d have to get closer,” said Lylia.
“Even if we could talk to them,” Darwyth added, “I doubt it will be easy to convince a battleship captain to disobey orders.” Neutrino considered for a moment. It very well might be impossible to stop the ship, but what choice was there?
If I don’t stop them, we’re all screwed.
Neutrino turned to the Mathius-entity. “I don’t know what’s going on, but we can work this out. Please, will you wait while we go speak to our people?” Neutrino tried to sound confident. He hoped the orb wasn’t able to read his mind too. The Mathius-entity stood quiet for a moment and Neutrino felt everything slipping through his fingers. It was so infuriating. They had almost come to an agreement and here it was all about to collapse.
“Please,” Neutrino continued, “You said you wanted a peace, you said it was difficult to destroy. Please, give us a chance to work this out.”
“You have until planet cover sun before we work it out,” it finally said. The three of them looked out of the window and saw in the distance the edge of a small yellow sun, the view of which was slowly being obstructed by an orbiting planet.
“I’d say about forty-five minutes at most,” Darwyth guessed.
“Then we’d better get going,” said Neutrino, jumping into the Pilot’s seat. He hooked himself in while Lylia set the navigation. “We’ll be back soon.”
The Mathius-entity said nothing, but the orb suddenly detached from its host and moved quietly away, back from where it had come. Once again himself, Mathius blinked and took a deep breath.
“You’d best have a seat, my boy,” said Darwyth. Mathius wandered silently back to his place and buckled himself in. Fizz jumped on his chest and nuzzled his chin. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. It strange, but not bad,” Mathius sighed. Closing his eyes, he leaned his head back as if to sleep, acting as though none of this concerned him. Neutrino wondered if this experience had changed Mathius, or if he was merely taking it all in. Whatever the situation was, Neutrino didn’t have time to ponder it now. He had less than an hour to convince a battleship captain to abort a priority mission, all on the word of a fourth time cadet.
31. Streamship Captain
Captain Thrail was a man whose actions were governed by over t
wenty years of duty and honor. He ran his newest ship, the Wrath, the same way he wore his dark brown uniform; with everything neat and pressed into straight lines. He was a model captain for the fleet’s newest battleship, which made it that much more difficult to get him to disobey a direct order.
“Captain, please, you must listen to me,” Neutrino pleaded with the semi-transparent image of Thrail’s head and upper torso on the glass directly in front of him. Even see through the captain was imposing, well into middle age he still looked like he could run circles around Neutrino. He was solid, athletic and clean shaven: everything a battleship captain should be. And Neutrino was just…Neutrino.
“We have been given direct orders to engage the Sun-entity; I cannot and will not veer from this mission without confirmation from Central.”
“Captain, I told you, there is no time for that.” Neutrino was getting extremely frustrated. How much longer do I have to argue?
“You have a streamship, use it!”
“I can’t! Even with a streamship there’s no way I could reach Venthall and come back before the deadline expires.”
“Let it,” Lylia said, startling Neutrino.
“What?” Neutrino asked.
“I said let it, let it expire,” Lylia’s eyes were ablaze with fury, any attempt at control slowly ebbing away. Neutrino had no idea what was going on with her, but he had to find out, now, before she ruined everything.
“Captain Thrail, I’m going to need a moment,” Neutrino said frantically removing all the electrodes from his hands so he could get out of his seat.
Though not happy about it, Captain Thrail shrugged his agreement. Whether they talked or not, he remained steadfastly on course for the Sun-entity.
“Make it quick,” he barked.
“Darwyth, cut transmission. But keep an eye on them.” The screen had barely blinked out before Neutrino, free of his Pilot’s seat, was moving in to question Lylia. All this work and she wanted to throw it away? Not if he could help it.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.
“What do you think you’re doing?!” she yelled back at him. “You want to make peace with that monster? Are you insane? This could be our best chance of destroying it!”
“This has just been a horrible misunderstanding, Lylia. Something that we started by moving into their territory without so much as a ‘How do you do?’”
“Oh, so this is our fault?” Lylia said, incredulous.
“If Central had bothered to send a ship out to explore the area first, or if they had even sent one to find out why the expansion ships had been destroyed we might have avoided all of this!”
“Does that give it the right to destroy us? To blink people off the street, right before your eyes?” Long tears began to slowly stream down Lylia’s face leaving dark trails.
“I thought you said you didn’t see anything?” Neutrino asked, recalling what she had told Darwyth back in his lab.
“I saw it all,” she said, barely a whisper. Neutrino crouched down in front of her and put his right hand on her knee.
“What happened?” he asked gently. She sniffled and wiped her cheeks angrily before finally speaking.
“I was heading to the Port with Cyrion, like we always did. He wanted to stop for a danu melon for his lunch, but we were late so I told him I would meet him there. I was just opening the Port door when I saw Cyrion come running towards me. He was yelling at me to go, and then he disappeared. Gone. Just like everyone else that was still on the street.” The memory that had been torturing her finally let loose, Lylia broke down and cried in earnest. Not able to think of anything else to do, Neutrino pulled her into a tight embrace, and let her soak his uniform with her tears.
“Who was Cyrion?” Neutrino asked after a moment, but she didn’t answer. “Lylia, who was Cyrion?”
“He was just a friend. My best friend, but just a friend,” Lylia looked up at him, apparently understanding what Neutrino was concerned about. If Cyrion had been her Kumrarii, it meant she might be alone forever, assuming the same Tellasian constrictions applied to her.
“We have to destroy them, Myno,” she quietly implored, her sorrow mixed with wrath. “We have to destroy them for what they did.”
“We can’t, Lylia. Don’t you think at least part of me wants to? After what happened to you, and to Creet? And to the people in my class that disappeared? I might not have liked most of them, but that doesn’t mean I’m okay with what happened to them,” Neutrino said, surprised by how much anger was buried inside himself as well. “But we’re no match for them, even with all the new weapons that they have piled into that battleship out there. You saw how it moved right through the hull; do you actually think we have weapons that can destroy it? Do you really want to take that risk? What about all of the other people that will lose if we’re wrong?”
“They deserve to die,” Lylia said through clenched teeth, trying to choke down the sobs that were threatening to take her over.
“Maybe, but not at our hands. We have to be smart about this. If we challenge them…” Neutrino started, but Darwyth interrupted.
“Captain Thrail is trying to reestablish communication. I think he’s getting a little impatient.” Neutrino sighed and regarded Lylia with sad eyes. She fairly shook from anger, sadness, and the effort it took to try and appear strong. With uncertain hands, Neutrino reached out to hold Lylia’s face, much the same way she had done in the lake. He gently tilted her chin until she was forced to meet his gaze.
“I know you’re angry and hurting, that’s not going to change even if we did destroy the Sun-entity. You know that don’t you? We have a chance for peace, we should take it. Are you with me?” Still angry and tense, Lylia looked like she was going to argue more. Gently wiping the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs, Neutrino repeated more quietly, “Are you with me?” She glared, then lowered her eyes and stiffly nodded.
Neutrino pulled her into his arms and held her the way he had wanted to when they first streamed together. “It’s going to be okay,” he whispered. “I don’t know how yet, but it will be. We’ll stop this, and no one else will have to lose like you and Creet did.” He felt her nod again, and then he regrettably let her go. She swiveled her chair to face her monitor. Turning to face the view screen again, Neutrino took a deep breath and cleared his throat.
“Okay, Darwyth, bring the captain back up. Although I have no clue what I’m going to say to him,” Neutrino sighed.
“I think I have an idea,” Darwyth said as Captain Thrail’s angry face returned to the screen.
“I’m sorry for the delay Captain Thrail. I know you want confirmation from Central, but there is no way you’re going to get it. We have less than…” Neutrino looked at Darwyth.
“About fifteen minutes.”
“Less than fifteen minutes to respond before they attack. I doubt they have the patience to wait while we go all the way back to Central, do you?” Neutrino was also concerned of what might transpire between the Captain and the Sun-entity if he left them alone.
Captain Thrail let out a low grunt in frustration. “I’m sorry, Neutrino, but an order is an order, and I can’t disobey based solely on the word of some Slipstream Messenger that was just a cadet two days ago!”
“Captain,” Darwyth interrupted, “Let’s calm down and consider for a moment. Now, you realize that Neutrino isn’t really just a Slipstream Messenger anymore.”
“What?” Neutrino tossed a confused look at Darwyth.
“Well, he’s in command of the Kalyaliss, and that would raise him to the rank of streamship captain,” Darwyth raised his eyebrows ever so slightly at Neutrino.
“That’s right,” Neutrino said, catching on, “Which would make me the same rank as you, Captain Thrail.”
“As the first one to engage the enemy, Captain Neutrino would take lead of the mission,” Darwyth added, emphasizing the word “captain” for effect. Captain Thrail squinted and frowned at the two of them.
“I know it seems a little odd,” said Darwyth, “But Captain Neutrino has been negotiating with the Sun-entity so far, and he’s very nearly come to an arrangement with it. Please Captain Thrail, let’s not allow complications with formalities stand in our way of peace. Think of the cost.”
Thrail still looked critical, but he seemed slightly less irritated. He silently considered their proposal, and for a moment, Neutrino thought he would agree.
“I can’t,” Thrail shook his head. “You have no official rank kid. And I have to follow my orders. The entire system is depending on us to defend them. I can’t give up our best chance to defeat this monster on the promises of a fourth season cadet.”
“Captain…” Neutrino implored, but Thrail’s image disappeared. He had cut transmission. Neutrino just stared at the empty space, flabbergasted. Now what?
“They’re increasing speed,” Lylia said, having seemingly pulled herself together. Then she gave an exasperated sigh, “And so is the Sun-entity. They’re moving to intercept. Given their rate of acceleration, I would guess they’ll be within weapons range in twenty minutes.”
How did it all come to this? They were so close, and now it was over. He had failed.
Of course I failed. Why should a seasoned captain listen to a loser like me?
No.
NO.
Neutrino couldn’t let it end like this. He had jumped off a planet into the Slipstream. He had saved a colony from starvation and he was the only one who could navigate this broken road. He was a guardian of a Nilfrit and the captain of the first ever streamship.
He was not a failure. And he would not let this chance for peace be destroyed.
Decision made, Neutrino jumped back into the pilot’s seat and reengaged the controls. He turned the ship towards the Slipstream and prepared for reentry.
“What are you doing?” Lylia asked.
“Something useful,” Neutrino said. “Something I’m good at.” He streamed a few clicks down the Slipstream towards where the Sun-entity was fast approaching and exited once more. Then he turned back in the direction of the Wrath.
Slipstream Messenger (Neutrino Book 1) Page 18