by Brett Patton
Inside the hangar, absolutely nothing had changed. The blasted and broken Powerloader still slumped against one wall, with only a coating of dust and corrosion marking the passage of time. The shuttle still sat open, ready for Matt and his father to run to its safety. But now the interior was dark, the batteries long since exhausted.
“Are you all right?” Jahl asked.
Matt nodded, biting his lip.
Jahl went to help Dr. Roth bring the lab’s power core back online. The steel-cage elevator juddered and groaned as the lighting came on and dim screens showed start-up routines.
The four men entered the elevator and descended in silence. At the bottom of the shaft, blue-tinged work-lights glowed, flickering from years of disuse. Long, precisely machined corridors led off from a domed central space. Along the sides of some of the hallways, carvings showed scenes of heroic people lounging against lush landscapes.
As a kid, Matt had never even wondered about the art. Now it fit. He imagined violet- and yellow-eyed HuMax thronging through these broad corridors, looking longingly at their artwork. They had no forests, no seas, no verdant vistas. Was it possible they hadn’t chosen to live on the most challenging planets in the Expansion? Had they attacked humanity, in part, as revenge?
Matt led the others down a broad corridor toward his father’s lab. Dark rooms gaped off either side. Some were massive and echoing. Work lights cast long shadows in one gigantic space, which had markings like a football field etched in the stone floor. Dark stains hinted that the final game played here hadn’t been football.
At his dad’s outer lab, Matt stopped and held on to the doorframe for support. He could almost see his father standing there, just like that last day. The only difference was that the screens displayed only a single message, SYSTEM OFFLINE, rather than the diagrams from so long ago.
“Good,” Jahl said, pushing past him. “It’s a standard Union Datasystems machine. If the data is there, I’ll get it.”
Jahl sat at the console and muttered into the mike, swiping at the gestural interface.
SYSTEM NOT FOUND, the screen replied. Dr. Roth and Yve exchanged glances.
“No problem,” Jahl said, pairing his slate with the system. It displayed a long trail of diagnostic data. “Give me a bit.”
Matt made himself walk farther into the room. Beyond the outer lab was a small office with a cubicle maze he used to use for hide-and-seek, and the closed door to his father’s inner lab.
Matt went to look into the office cubicles. Dusty desks and dim displays stared back at him. On a table in the center of the space were metallic cylinders and crystal spheres, all physically tagged with their recovery location. HuMax technology. Matt picked up a lightweight sphere. It glowed briefly, and a voice spoke in his head: Welcome, new user. Please speak registration number.
“What the hell?” Matt exclaimed, dropping the sphere. It fell and hit the table with a metallic ping.
“Direct mental link,” Yve said, making Matt jump. “One of the things the HuMax were way ahead of us on, even with Dr. Roth’s interface suits.”
“My interface suits are superior in many ways,” Dr. Roth said from the other room.
“Their technology was still more advanced than ours,” Yve shot back at Dr. Roth.
“As point examples, perhaps,” Dr. Roth replied.
“If the HuMax were so advanced, why not use the technology for the Union?” Matt asked, struggling to keep his voice even. With that tech, maybe his father would have survived. Maybe Rayder wouldn’t even be a threat!
Yve frowned. “It has as many bad applications as good. In fact, it’s widely speculated that tech like this was used to keep the HuMax under control.”
“Control by whom?” Matt probed.
“HuMax were closely tracked,” Yve replied. “There was a point in time when anyone could bear a HuMax child, once the genetic modifications were well-known and easily applied. Many did. And many were grown in factories.”
“The natural result of allowing any mother to pick her child’s enhancements. Of course they would choose every one,” added Dr. Roth.
Yve nodded. “Or allowing any corporation to grow their superworker, someone to send out to do the tough terraforming work on marginal worlds.”
And none of this is in the histories, Matt thought. How much were they really hiding?
More important, why hadn’t his father told the Union about the location of the HuMax final world? What did he fear from that revelation?
“We’re screwed,” Jahl called, from the outer lab. “Maybe.”
Matt and Yve went back outside the cubicles, where Jahl was poring over code. Jahl turned to face the three other men.
“Whoever wiped this did an overachieving job—1,024 scrubs at the molecular level. There’s nothing left.”
“So why’s it a maybe?” Yve asked.
“Because we’re smarter these days.” Jahl paused, as if waiting for someone to complete his sentence. When nobody did, he continued, “We have nanolevel reconstruc-tors. They may be able to rebuild the data structures.”
“So get started!” Yve yelped.
“Already started. But they have to scrub through the bit-rot several trillions of times. Sit back; we’ll be here for a few hours.”
Matt wandered back into the cubicles, back to the door of the sealed lab. This was where his father had hidden through many long days and nights. He put his hand on the door screen, but it just squawked and displayed: NO ADMITTANCE AUTHORIZED. INPUT ALTERNATE ENTRY CODE.
Just like when he was a kid. His father had watched him try to get entry to the lab, punching in every possible combination of numbers on the keypad on the screen.
“Not yet,” his dad had told him, before slipping into the lab without him.
But one day, he’d said something strange, something in that passionate voice he got when he was thinking about Matt’s mother. “The lab’s my heart now, and the key to my heart is a purple flower, a barren red rock, and a hanging hospital gown.”
Matt stared at the keypad. Was that some kind of code? The keys had only numbers on them, not letters.
Numbers. Like on the photos.
The purple flower was 42. The barren red rock, that had to be 6,342. And a hospital gown, there were a lot of photos with those in them, but there was only one that was hanging alone: 941.
With shaking fingers, Matt keyed in 426342941.
The lab door popped open, dust motes filtering down in the harsh work light.
Matt slipped inside, his heart thundering. His father had hidden some things for only him to find.
The interior of the secure lab was solid stainless steel. Dim purplish lights glowed down from the ceiling. Also projecting from the ceiling were fire-foam sprayers and carbon-rimmed apertures that looked uncomfortably like the business end of a flamethrower.
For sterilization? Matt wondered.
In the middle of the secure lab, on an examination table, hulked a dried black mass. Thickly wrinkled, veined, and cracked with age, it looked more plant than animal. Matt leaned in to inspect it. Coarse, shriveled leaves grew from a thick central stalk, together with rock-hard pods the size of his fist. Matt pulled at one of the leaves, expecting it to crumble into dust, but the plant was more leathery than brittle, mummified by its long entombment in the lab.
“HuMax technology, maybe,” Jahl said behind him.
Matt jumped and whirled. “Fuck! You scared the crap out of me.”
“Sorry,” Jahl said, sliding onto a stool in front of a long, stainless-steel workbench. He poked at the lab tools in front of him, then bent over a screen and turned it on.
“What are you doing?” Matt asked, feeling profoundly uncomfortable. This was his dad’s space. Only he was supposed to be in here.
“Then you shoulda closed the door,” Jahl told him. “And, yes, I know you really, really, really don’t like when I read your mind.”
The screen flashed to life, displaying: SYSTEM OFFLINE. R
ESOURCES 100% UTILIZED.
“Sorry. I had to check,” Jahl said. “But it looks like the lab system and the exterior system are one and the same. It’s running the same reconstruction software.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means if the rebuild doesn’t work, we really are screwed. We’ll know in an hour and ten.” He got up off the stool and went back to the outer lab, closing the door behind him with a solid thunk.
Matt poked through the sample drawers and storage cabinets, but the rest of the HuMax artifacts didn’t look much different from the ones outside. Matt carefully avoided the direct-mental-interface globes, and he was glad he hadn’t picked up the cylinders when he saw they were tagged TOOL/WEAPON.
One of the lab benches had been set up as a desk. A photo of Matt’s father’s graduating class at Aurora University sat on one side of the desk, next to a smaller image of Matt, and another frame with his mom’s photo in it. Matt picked up his dad’s photo and looked at it. The man was impossibly young. No older than Matt was at this moment. What had he been like when he was Matt’s age?
Matt had to squeeze back tears.
Can I avenge my father? Can I take on an entire race to do it?
On the other side of the desk, a dusty figure lay. Matt started. His old PowerSuit Plus toy. It was cool, because you could use a little slate to control it, walk it across the ground, and make it pick things up. It was one of the reasons he’d saved and saved for the Imp when he was growing up on the Rock.
Matt picked it up and turned it over in his hands. His dad must have brought it in here. Had he picked it up absentmindedly on his way into the lab one of his final days?
Matt opened the cargo compartment of the PowerSuit Plus. He’d left something in there, a scrap of plastic. He pulled it out and unfolded it.
There was writing on the plastic. But not his. His father’s neat, precise block lettering. It read:
One perfect blue sky, a thousand sparrows, the beach at sunset with a silhouetted sailboat. The first city on Earth, rays through leaves against Eridani sky, bees in a hive; textile weavers on Hyva, a raptor against a full moon, the end of the first road on Prospect. Wine bottles and green grapes against a hillside vineyard, a 1952 Ford, Gantry 99; wild parrots in Brazil, heavy water mining on Jupiteroid world, pills in a green case. Your mother in a pink gown, my lab late at night, sleeping in the chair, our picnic on Prospect.
Matt’s Perfect Record flashed each image and its number as he read it. Each complete and unmistakable, each as clear as the day he saw them on his dad’s slate.
But the numbers themselves were meaningless. Galactic coordinates were three numbers, standardized by their distance from Earth with the axis of the Milky Way galaxy as an arbitrary north. They’d have long decimals after . . .
Wait.
2848865833233.908296865, 2947956624464.03808585, 385-6863685235. 3075080672, if he followed the periods and commas.
Could that be it? The location of the HuMax final world?
On the back of the paper, a single scrawled number: 10,956.
The image of the city behind Rayder. The one Matt had seen during that infamous broadcast.
That was it. Matt wanted to scream with glee. His father had found the final world, and he’d hidden his backup here, with clues only Matt could decipher.
I know where Rayder is.
Matt ran out of the lab, clutching the scrap of plastic. He had to tell everyone. He had found the location.
Except . . . why hadn’t his dad told the Union? Why had he gone to all the trouble to hide the information?
But did it matter? He could take the fight to Rayder!
In the outer lab, Jahl sat tensely over his console, while Dr. Roth looked over his shoulder. Yve was nowhere to be seen.
“What about the Displacement Drive ship records?” Dr. Roth asked Jahl. “Those would be stored locally on the ship.”
Jahl shook his head. “The ship Dr. Stanford used, the Titan, was lost in an engagement with the Aliancia over a decade ago.”
“Then we are at an end,” Dr. Roth said, his face emotionless.
Peal looked up at Matt. “We’re still screwed,” he said. “I can’t recover the data. It’s too far gone.”
Matt grinned, nearly brimming over with elation. “Maybe not.” He waved the slip of plastic at them. Dr. Roth took it and squinted at the words.
“I don’t understand,” Dr. Roth said.
Matt explained his father’s old memory games and the numbering scheme they’d used. Roth nodded, rapt.
“Of course. A cipher only you can decode. Brilliant.”
Matt nodded.
“So?” Jahl asked. “What are the coordinates? Where’s Rayder?”
Matt grinned. “Maybe it’s best I tell Colonel Cruz and Congressperson Tomita personally, when we return to Mecha Base.”
Thinking, Because then maybe I can lead the team. Maybe I can meet Rayder face-to-face.
In a Demon.
The trip back to Mecha Base was uneventful, so Matt slept in the storage room. He half expected to wake to Dr. Roth bending over him, with NPP screens in the background showing the coordinates he held in his head.
But when he woke, it was to the thud and thunder of a bombardment.
Matt flew down to the bridge. Captain Ivers swore over the pilots, while Yve and Dr. Roth watched the 360-degree screens with wide eyes.
They were back at Mecha Base. On one side, the hulking gray asteroid covered their point of view. On the other side, though, the maelstrom was dotted with ships. The lead asteroid was instantly recognizable, even without reading its tag: the heavily armored UUS Atlas. The ship Rayder had captured.
Behind the Atlas were three other Displacement Drive ships. These were more typical asteroid ships, mainly rock. They sparked as bits of rock and dust scoured their surface.
Nearer Mecha Base, battleships from the Atlas grappled with an army of Hellions. The flash of Fireflies and Seekers lit the red-orange dust with a hellish radiance.
Mecha Base was under attack.
Rayder had found them.
17
ASSAULT
Matt stared openmouthed at the battle outside, damning himself for not expecting it. Rayder had captured the Atlas, its crew, and the Mecha Corps. He must have scoured the brains of the men and women he held hostage. Of course he’d discover where Mecha Base was—and of course he’d make it his first target.
White-hot explosions painted the bridge of the Helios in ghostly light as the battle raged. For the moment, nobody moved, shocked at the enormity of the offensive.
Outside, hundreds of Rayder’s battleships advanced on scores of Flight Pack–equipped Hellions. The battleships came fast, in complex, dancing patterns, screaming past the Hellions and firing on them from both sides. The Hellions thrashed and convulsed in the concentrated fire. A handful of battleships accelerated toward Mecha Base, with Hellions in close pursuit. The Hellions fired Seekers at Rayder’s battleships, taking out one, two, three at once. But more pressed on.
Another battleship threw on even more acceleration and impacted the giant steel doors of the Hellion dock, warping one out of place. Air gusted out from the dock, crystallizing quickly in the cold of space.
Three Hellions outside the dock turned to fire on the crashed battleship. Behind them, another battleship decelerated fast and fired on the Hellions, sending them scattering. One caught itself deftly on the edge of Mecha Base’s armor and reached down to swing its companion out of the line of fire.
The way they moved looked familiar. Matt saw the tags on the Helios’ NPP: MAJOR G. SOTO and CADET MICHELLE KIND.
My team, he thought. They’re being attacked.
“Holy hell,” Captain Ivers said, breaking the silence. Matt realized it had been only moments since they Displaced in.
Rayder’s battleships advanced toward Mecha Base, their complex formations confusing and overcoming the Hellion’s maneuverability. More numerous and better-arm
ed, they were winning the fight to board Mecha Base.
But it wasn’t all going Rayder’s way. As Matt watched, a house-sized mass of the maelstrom hit one of the unarmored Displacement Drive ships. Dust flew away from all sides of the ship, and a huge gust of boulder-sized rocks and smaller flakes of stone exploded out of the impact crater. The asteroid ship actually slipped sideways under the force of the impact, and the enemy bridge went dark.
Rayder had only one armored ship! That means he’s vulnerable! If we can get to him, if we can use the Demons—
“Send me in!” Matt cried.
“Excuse me?” Captain Ivers asked.
“Sir, I mean, permission to deploy, sir. If I can take a Demon, I can go after Rayder—”
Matt was cut short by public comms from Mecha Base. “Helios, withdraw immediately. Repeat: recommend immediate withdrawal. Mecha Base is under heavy fire.”
“No shit,” Ivers said sardonically. “Tell me our weapons are at least functional, pilot.”
“Heavy matter coming online, sir,” one of the pilots said.
“Sir!” Matt said. “Please!”
“You want to go after that bastard?” Ivers grinned at Matt.
“Sir, yes, sir!”
“Sir, I recommend we withdraw,” Yve said, darting forward. “Cadet Lowell has critical information we can’t lose!”
Matt groaned. Yve was right. But . . . his father must have had his reasons for not telling the Union.
Matt shot over to Jahl. “Your entangled computing can record, right?”
Jahl nodded.
“Then remember this.” Matt rapped out the numbers. “If I don’t come back, use your own judgment who you tell it to.”
Jahl opened his mouth to speak, but Yve cut him off.
“Sir, I still don’t think we can let Cadet Lowell fight. What if there are other codes that only he can solve? We should withdraw now!”