Help me! she cried.
As the Starfish closed in on her refuge, alien weapons poised to erase her from the universe, a voice spoke to her out of the darkness:
“THIS IS THE FINAL GIFT WE BRING.”
Something dark and unfathomable thrust itself into her mind, and time stopped.
2.1.4
“Fifteen minutes.” Thor’s voice rang out in the cockpit
Sol glanced up, then returned to the task at hand, desperately searching for a way out of the fix they were in. At many times her normal clock rate, it seemed as though days had passed since Thor had given them their deadline. In that time, she and Alander had considered all manner of exotic possibilities. The radar ghosts were presumably some sort of seek-and-destroy countermeasure to prevent intruders from wandering freely through the cutter. That they were still functioning despite the centralized failure of the giant vessel wasn’t so far-fetched: the only way to regulate such a structure would be to allow some systems a measure of autonomy. The radar ghosts could be a localized chapter of a global system that staggered on while the cutter died around it. That could take days, perhaps even weeks. While there was still energy in the system—as was evidenced by the veins of molten metal roiling outside Eledone—many of its subsystems could still function.
Sol had no doubt that they were dealing with the bottom of the security chain. She was equally aware that, in order to complete their mission, they would have to find a way to the top of that chain, and that meant not only surviving this challenge but also using it to their advantage. Security wasn’t just about eliminating threats but gathering intelligence, as well. They had come bearing information that could benefit the Starfish; if they could find a way to communicate with the radar ghosts, then they might just be able to take that first step along that security chain. The trick, of course, was staying alive long enough to do that.
“What about neutrinos?” said Alander. “They’re hard to detect; they’d make a good security medium.”
“Good thinking,” said Sol.
Together they trawled through the data from the probe. While neutrino emissions weren’t something it had been programmed to note, its detectors did register a strong flux in the chamber on the other side of the breach. The exact source was hard to pin down, though. It could have been symptomatic of any number of natural processes. Still, it was something.
“Eledone, can you produce neutrinos on demand?” she asked the hole ship.
“I am able to modulate some of my internal processes to facilitate such a request.”
“How long would that take?”
“Approximately two hours.”
Sol shook her head in frustration. Even if they determined that neutrinos lay at the heart of the ghosts’ communication system, and if they decoded the transmissions and worked out how to convey the message they needed to get across, Eledone still couldn’t give them a transmitter until well after the deadline.
Alander obviously shared her frustration. “We might as well just hold hands and think happy thoughts at them for all this research is achieving.”
The levity provoked a pang of annoyance in her, but she didn’t say anything. She couldn’t really blame him. She herself had been fighting a sense of creeping despair for the last half hour. So far the mission had hardly been a success, and they still had such a long way to go.
“Okay, time’s up,” said Thor in a tone like a death knell. “What do we have? Gou Mang, you first.”
“There’s evidence of heavy camouflage in place around the ghosts as well as the things in the background,” said the android without preamble. “We did manage to tease a few details out of the data and came up with a better model of what the ghosts actually look like.” An image appeared in the screen behind Gou Mang. It showed a quicksilver shape oscillating between a lumpy sphere and a vicious, spiked ball. “The ghosts—and there are many of them, not just one jumping rapidly from place to place—appear to oscillate regularly between these two forms. We don’t know why, though. And the oscillations don’t appear to be related to the period of their jumping through unspace. We haven’t been able to determine if they have centralized intelligence, or if they’re just obeying simple flocking behaviors. That’s all.”
Thor looked to Axford. “Frank?”
“As far as the attacks go, we don’t have much data to go on,” he said. “The progress of the nanoagent through the probe does suggest a nanotechnological process, but without an actual sample we’re working blind. We don’t know what processes it uses to replicate, what might block it, or even what methods of attack it employs. Eledone has a number of antinano systems, but none of them helped the probe. It’d be a long shot going up against these things without more info.”
Thor nodded with apparent satisfaction, but Sol could see the disappointment in her eyes. “What about you, Peter? Anything?”
Alander outlined what they’d considered, but in the end was able to offer little more than the others had.
After he’d finished, Thor sighed and offered a précis on her own findings. “Well, the best I could come up with was a way of anchoring the ship outside the breach. Given the lack of any other ideas, I suggest we go with that. At the very least, it’ll give us a little more time to think.”
“You’re sure we can do this safely?” asked Inari.
Thor nodded in reply. “If we can get close enough to one of the walls, Eledone will be able to extend the hull to attach itself to it. The external boundary should be sufficiently malleable to get a grip. If we can do it without using the drives, we probably won’t be detected.”
There was a murmur of consent, but no one spoke. The atmosphere of the ship was grave at best.
“If there are no other suggestions,” said Thor into the quiet, “then I propose we get to work. Time is short, as I’m sure you’re all aware.”
Everyone moved to their stations. Sol felt a terrible sense of futility that she found hard to shake—and if she felt it, then she had little doubt that the others did, too. Even as Eledone reported its successful rearrangement of hull boundary material as a rudder to divert its course slightly, aiming for a section of the vein wall a hundred meters ahead of the breach, she couldn’t help but wonder why they were even bothering. In the long run, they didn’t have a clue what to do. What if they couldn’t work it out? Or worse: what if there was nothing they could do? She didn’t know what was happening outside the cutter, but she wasn’t about to delude herself into believing that the Starfish had magically halted their advance. For all she knew, they had already descended upon Rasmussen and put paid to yet another human colony.
“I have failed in my first attempt to secure us to the intended point of contact,” Eledone reported blandly. “I will try again at the next suitable point.”
The view through the screens spun dizzily as the hole ship tumbled through highly turbulent flows. Even at her highest clock rate, Sol couldn’t tell exactly what was happening, but she hoped and prayed that the alien AI knew what the hell it was doing.
“How much longer to the breach?” asked Gou Mang. Her tone reflected the anxieties of everyone in the cockpit.
“Ninety human meters.” It was Samson who answered her, her eyes never leaving the instruments on the command stalk as the rippling vein wall swept by in a blur.
Up close, the vein looked less like a lumpy, biological construct than a mat of metallic fibers coated in glass. Eledone attempted to obtain a grip a second time, but again failed to find purchase.
“Sixty meters,” Samson announced.
Sol sensed a growing urgency to the superheated currents swirling around them as the hole ship rocked and spiraled like a rubber duck caught in a typhoon.
“Thirty meters,” said Samson after a third failed attempt.
“Perhaps we should have had a backup plan before taking the risk,” said Axford wryly. There was more than just an edge of unease in his voice.
“I’m still wide open to suggestions,” sa
id Thor hotly.
All eyes remained glued to the screens as the hole ship readied itself for a fourth and final grab; everyone knew they wouldn’t get a fifth shot at it. If they missed this time, Eledone would go tumbling into the breach, and into clear view of the radar ghosts.
There was a wild, disorienting moment during which the information from the screens was completely at odds with what her other senses told her—that she was standing completely at rest inside the cockpit, not tumbling in a sudden jolt of changing momentum.
Then, abruptly, all was still.
Everyone looked around in similar confusion, collectively holding their breath in expectation of something else happening.
“We did it?” Inari sounded both surprised and relieved.
The view on the screen rocked for a second, then stabilized.
“I have successfully anchored myself to the vein wall,” announced the hole ship without any hint of satisfaction.
As one, everybody in the cockpit exhaled.
“Five meters from the breach,” said Samson. She laughed, then, in obvious relief.
Sol didn’t want to dwell on how close they’d come to slipping through. “How stable is this location?”
A quick sweep from multiple viewpoints revealed that the edges of the breach weren’t widening in the direction of the hole ship. What caused it was impossible to tell, although Sol assumed it was a side effect of the human/Yuhl attack. Structural destabilization would have led to localized disruptions caused by metal fatigue or material failure. Given that the cutter had stopped rotating, such stresses, she presumed, would be significantly reduced.
The breach itself looked like a giant wound in the vein wall, a jagged tear stretching into the distance. Roiling currents swirled around the edges, producing strange eddies in myriad brilliant colors. From their new position, the vein itself looked vast and convoluted, like the inside of a nightmarish conch shell, stretched and distorted as though made of taffy.
“Seems stable enough to me,” said Inari.
Samson shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out soon enough if it’s not.”
“We’re safe for the moment,” said Thor. “That’s the main thing.”
“But what happens now?” asked Gou Mang.
“Now we send out a reconnaissance mission,” said Axford.
Thor turned on him with a scowl, clearly not impressed by him undermining her authority. “And I suppose you’re volunteering for that, Frank?”
He nodded confidently. “The hole ship can split off a single or even a half ship big enough for me to pilot. Just give me navigation capabilities similar to Eledone, and I’m sure I can surf my way right through those things and out the other side without any problems whatsoever.”
“And what good would that do?” asked Thor.
“Well, at least we’d know we wouldn’t be stuck here until the end of time, Caryl.”
“How would we know that, Frank?” Thor made no attempt to hide her cynicism.
“Because I’d signal you from the far side, of course.”
Thor eyed him steadily for a few moments before shaking her head slowly. “That’s the second time you’ve suggested splitting up from us.”
“What are you saying? That you don’t trust me?”
“Of course we don’t, Frank.”
He snorted a laugh at this. “I can live with your suspicions, as long as you admit that my plan makes sense. Just agree to it and let’s get on with it, can’t we?”
Thor opened her mouth to speak, but Gou Mang got in first.
“It might be too late for that,” she said, pointing at the screen nearest her. “Check out the breach!”
Everyone turned at this to see what Gou Mang was indicating. A white lozenge-shaped object with black stripes had slipped through the breach, effortlessly defying the current. The impression of a zebra fish was strengthened when the thing “faced” them, revealing what looked like an open mouth. As it jerked in surges through the violent eddies, Sol glimpsed a tube through its center, giving it the look of an old aircraft jet engine.
“What the hell is that?” asked Alander.
“I have no idea,” said Gou Mang. “But whatever it is, it seems to be—”
Sol cried out in alarm as, with a surprising surge of speed, the thing lunged, and its central tube opened to engulf them.
* * *
“Jesus Christ!” Alander cried. The hole ship jerked beneath him, throwing him off balance. He went down on one knee, clutching the wall for support as the zebra fish vessel struck and clung to the outside of Eledone like a lamprey.
“What’s it doing?” Samson asked.
“Eledone, report!” Thor’s voice called out sharply through the rising babble. Screens flickered, showing numerous views of the attack.
“I have been struck by an unidentified object,” the hole ship replied calmly.
No fucking kidding, Alander thought. The zebra ship had attached itself to Eledone’s hull with its “mouth.” Whatever it was doing, it was causing tiny tremors to run through the hole ship.
‘Have you been breached?” asked Thor.
“I am resisting an attempted incursion.”
“The same as the one that took out the probe?”
“No. This is—” The hole ship faltered. “I am—it—”
“Eledone?”
“We are—”
“Eledone, respond, for fuck’s sake!”
Alander could well understand the desperation in Thor’s voice. The mission had started off badly and was getting worse in rapid steps.
The hole ship failed to respond to her command, and for a timeless moment there was no sound at all to be heard in the cockpit. Alander stood up and looked around. The tremors had ceased also.
“It’s too quiet,” whispered Axford, staring up at the ceiling as if in expectation of seeing something there.
“Too quiet by far,” Sol concurred.
Then a new voice issued into the cockpit. Loud and harsh, it caused everyone to wince when it spoke.
“Intruders, explain your presence.”
Thor stiffened. “Who’s speaking? Are you the Starfish?”
“The intruders must explain their presence,” the voice repeated, its pitch and timbre such that Alander could feel it through the floor.
Thor hesitated, uncertainty naked on her face.
“What have we got to lose?” Sol asked. “This is what we came here for.”
“We need to speak to whoever’s in charge,” Thor said, her lips pale. “We have information that we think could be of some use to—”
“There is no ‘in charge,’ “ the voice interrupted emotionlessly. “You are inexplicable; how can such a thing be tolerated?”
“We must be tolerated. We have come here to help you. We know where your enemies are hiding.”
“There are no enemies. Your presence is anomalous.”
“The Spinners, the ones who drop the gifts—the ones you’ve been chasing through—”
“There is no chase. You are inexplicable. Can such a thing be—”
“You have to listen to us!” Thor’s voice took on a more desperate tone. “You’re destroying the gifts, and us along with them! If you don’t stop, we’ll all be killed! Our species will become extinct!”
“There is a multitude. The universe does not want for observers.”
“I don’t care about other observers! Right now I only care about us! If you continue this way, you’ll be committing genocide. You must listen to us. We can give you what you seek!”
The voice fell silent for a time, and Alander waited uneasily for a reply. He could sense a terrible gulf in comprehension between Thor and the alien mind interrogating them—so much so that getting across what they’d come to say seemed almost impossible. And yet...
“Why haven’t they destroyed us?” Samson asked softly, as if worried the alien interrogator might hear her. “And how can they be speaking English? It doesn’t make any sense!”
/>
“Actually, if you assume that that,” said Axford, indicating the zebra fish ship on the screens, “is our probe sent back to us, then it actually makes perfect sense.”
Everyone turned to him in confusion, but it was Inari who spoke first.
“The probe? But it was destroyed. We saw it.”
“No, we assumed it had been destroyed because we lost contact with it. But what if it was taken over instead? Analyzed, dissected, rebuilt?”
“My God,” Thor muttered, facing the zebra fish ship on the screen again. “It’s been sent back as a kind of message.”
Axford nodded. “I think that’s a distinct possibility, yes.”
“What kind of message?” asked Gou Mang.
“A warning, perhaps,” said Axford.
“Not necessarily,” said Sol. “It could just be a simple enquiry.”
“Either way,” said Alander, “I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.”
He stared at the zebra fish ship with renewed interest. Now that Axford had raised the possibility, he could indeed see how the black stripes might be evidence of intrusion through the hole ship’s normally smooth and white hull boundary. It now appeared to him as though a malignant, black worm had burrowed into the probe and distorted it out of shape. Like wires wrapped around the branches of a bonsai tree, the black constrained the white, giving it a new form and function.
“The intruders’ presence is anomalous,” the voice returned. Strangely, Alander couldn’t tell whether it was speaking to them or in reply to an unheard query from elsewhere. This was made even more confusing with its next words: “Their origin is ambiguous; your goals are undermined. There is no reason for your presence.”
“I told you,” said Thor. “We came here to offer you information. We came here to speak to you to try to get you to understand what you’ve been—”
“Speak.” The single word boomed throughout the cockpit. Again Alander wasn’t sure exactly what it meant or to whom it was directed. Was the alien mind inviting Thor to speak, or merely saying the word out loud in an attempt to grasp its meaning?
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