by Simon Kewin
*
Towed by a single EVA pod, the crossing from the Higher Than The Sun to Isiur took ten minutes. They had emerged quietly from Grey Space and immediately commenced their carefully designed attack upon the Draconians. The enemy fleet, in turn, was in battle-formation and had met them with full force. Isiur was there as Metarion had said it would be. The encounter had matched their projections to within ninety-eight percent. Three minutes into the engagement, with the Higher Than The Sun momentarily matching Isiur’s vector, they had slipped into space to walk across to the Armageddon machine.
Mackenzie found it strangely disconcerting being outside in intergalactic space. There were only a few distant points of light - whole galaxies - instead of the familiar blaze of stars and nebulae and clusters. It reminded him most of all of his end-of-the-universe nightmares, of how he imagined that absolute void to be. He was well used to space-walking, but out here he found himself feeling the beginnings of alarm and disorientation, as if this was his first ever EVA. It wasn’t just that his companions were a Draconian, a Xin and a combat avatar, nor just the nature of their mission. The void so far away from the galaxy felt genuinely hostile.
The battle raged all around them. The ship kept him up to date with everything that happened. Apart from the occasional, distant flowering of light that meant one ship or another had been destroyed, there was actually nothing to be seen. And of course nothing to be heard. Ships were dark, their beam weapons, mines and other ordnance equally invisible. Like all space-battles, this was a complex, three-dimensional dance of traps and feints and sudden, brutal assaults, played out over huge distances.
Isiur, too, was invisible. It gave off no light itself and there was no flotilla now to illuminate it. By switching to infra-red he could get a faint image of it, half-emerging from the blackness as a shifting, indistinct ghost. It grew more and more massive with each second, its scale hard to grasp as they neared it. Part-planetoid and part-ship, it was larger then most spacecraft but smaller than most natural bodies. It all contributed to his growing disorientation. He pushed the unfamiliar alarm aside and concentrated on what they had to do.
The Draconian steered them towards the ugly, rocky mass of Isiur’s mid-section. Mackenzie was next to the creature, his powered-suit attached to the adjacent anchor-point on the pod. Next to him, Metarion held on nonchalantly with one of her hands. Behind them, connected by a longer tether, weaponry trained constantly on the Draconian, rode the combat avatar.
They slowed as they approached the ship’s hull. Mackenzie activated lights. There was a hatchway there, a dull metal circle embedded into the surface of the rock. It seemed far too small to enter, but as they neared it became clear it was actually very large, easily big enough for several Draconians to fit through.
Finally they stopped. There was a sequence of symbols etched onto the door: runes similar to those on the Draconian’s carapace.
The Draconian touched a spiked limb to a long sequence of the symbols, apparently entering a code. The door jerked, then folded inwards with a clumsy, uneven movement. Lights came on inside, revealing a room about the same size and shape as the Draconian’s cell back on the Higher Than The Sun. The alien disconnected itself expertly from the pod and pulled itself inside. Mackenzie let Metarion go in next, then the avatar, and finally he unhooked himself and entered Isiur. The exterior hatchway closed and, after a few moments, a similar door on an adjacent wall opened.
His suit’s sensors told him there was no breathable atmosphere despite the airlock. He had no intention of removing his suit and losing the protection it afforded him in any case. The Draconian, meanwhile, seemed as unconcerned as Metarion was by the lack of a life-supporting environment. But then, it had just completed a space-walk without any sort of artificial aid.
They left the airlock in the same order and stepped into a corridor that curved away in both directions, its floor clearly on the inside of the exterior wall of the ship. The corridor was big, perhaps ten metres square, but roughly cut into the rock. A thick sheaf of ducts, pipes and cables was strung along the ceiling, looking as if it had been placed there temporarily. Every few metres, a harsh, green, unshielded light gave out a bright illumination.
Mackenzie and the avatar were watching the Draconian carefully to see what it would do next. In his powered suit, he was a better match for the alien. In a fight he might survive for a couple of minutes. The combat avatar, meanwhile, was nearly as tall and massive as the Draconian, and certainly better armed. Beam weapons of various sorts were integrated into its limbs and torso. But he had seen Draconians fighting and he had no illusions. The alien, injured as it apparently was, could still kill both of them if it came to it.
The Draconian, however, ignored them both. It said something to Metarion with a brief, rasping thrum, then turned and moved with great rapidity away up the curving corridor.
The combat avatar did not have translation capabilities; its design was geared solely towards fighting.
‘What did it say?’ Mackenzie asked Metarion.
‘It was just a word of acknowledgement. It was saying it would continue with the plans,’ replied the Xin.
‘And what are these plans?’
The ancient looked up at him with her wide, honest eyes. There were great depths there, but a warm light seemed to shine out.
‘It has gone to Isiur’s control room to commence the countdown of the device, in case detonation is needed. It expects us to go to the event-horizon floor at the heart of the ship and assist it, completing certain procedures manually. Isiur’s construction was not fully completed.’
‘And why would it expect us to do that?’
‘It believes that we, the Xin, wish to see the universe come to an end, that we have been helping them for this purpose. It believes that I have deceived you into helping me.’
The combat avatar monitored its surroundings constantly, assessing all possible threats. It turned now from the disappearing figure of the Draconian to train all its weaponry on the Xin. Its gaze was neutral, completely blank. Facial expression was also not a standard part of combat avatar design.
Mackenzie kept his voice level.
‘Why would it think this?’
‘Because we have been helping them. We have shared a considerable amount of theoretical knowledge with them. We became aware of their efforts to construct this device, and decided to give them our assistance.’
The Xin’s honesty was disconcerting. She had said that she needed his technological knowledge to complete their task. So why would she now say this, knowing what his reaction must be? She had clearly lied to them, had at least not told them everything. Had he been completely misled all along?
‘Why?’
‘You know the answer to that Mackenzie. So we understand how the device operates so that we can do what we have come here to do. You have trusted me this far. Are you going to lose faith in me now?’
His hand shifted slightly onto his own beam-weapon.
‘Exactly what are you trying to achieve here? Why didn’t you just tell us all this long ago so we could have stopped them building the device? Why should I have faith in you when you haven’t been honest with me?’
‘Mackenzie, I am trying to save the universe. I am sorry for not being completely open with you.’
Her eyes seemed wider than ever as he looked at her. He could detect no hint of deceit there, but he probably wouldn’t really be able to. He considered his alternatives. If they ignored the Xin, would he and the avatar be able to disarm or destroy Isiur before it was detonated? Would Metarion try and stop them?
‘Time is short Mackenzie. In all likelihood Galen Jones will have assumed command of your fleet by now. There is some danger that she will engage and at least damage Isiur. Our opportunity would then be lost. There are few subsequent balance-points in the timeline that we can employ. This may be our last opportunity.’
He thought about everything that had happened since the Xin had arrived, of the
things she had said and the things she knew. He thought about the Draconian, about the attitudes of the delegates from the Million Star Council. He thought about their long drawn-out dance with Isiur and, before that, the chaos of the Draconian wars and the people, the worlds, he had lost.
‘You don’t intend to just disarm or destroy Isiur do you?’
‘No.’
‘Tell me why, Metarion.’
‘Let us proceed to the event-horizon floor. Time is short. I will explain what I can as we go and then it will be up to you to do as you wish. I assure you I can not act without your help.’
He nodded. What he really needed was to know what the hell was going on.
Metarion led them into a tunnel leading in a gentle curve away from the hull, into the heart of the ship. It was as roughly hewn out as the other passageway, with yet more cables and ducts slung out loosely along it. High-pressure vapour leaked from joints in some of the pipes, although his suit could detect no danger. There was a bright light up ahead, around the curve of the passageway. He walked beside the Xin, the combat avatar following at a tactically calculated distance behind them, weaponry trained on the Ancient. The Xin talked as they walked.
‘Some time ago - around one hundred, thousand years - we discovered something odd out in intergalactic space. It was a microscopic particle of matter that exhibited a number of strange properties. It intrigued us greatly. Its mass was huge, its structure unfathomable. It was utterly unique to our knowledge and we could not explain how it could have been formed.
‘We eventually concluded it was a fragment of the primordial universe from the Big Bang. This was the only explanation. For some reason, it did not expand along with the rest of matter when the universe was first formed. We had long thought such an anomaly could not exist and we still cannot explain how or why it does. But it does. We calculate that it constitutes a tenth of one percent of the entire mass of the universe.’
‘That ... maybe explains some things my ship spotted.’
‘Yes, I carry the particle with me. It is lodged inside my brain. It is the Xin’s most precious possession, one of very few. No doubt your sensors picked up some anomalous mass and gravity readings.’
‘Yeah. But how can you possibly carry this thing with you?’
‘No time to explain now Mackenzie. No time and I wouldn’t if there was. It is important you do not understand any of the physics involved here. That no-one does. It is dangerous knowledge, as we have seen.’
‘But you understand it, the Draconians now understand it.’
‘The Xin will, of course, eliminate all detailed records of this technology and of how it works. We have been careful. Only seven of us understood the key theoretical element in it, and six of those have now killed themselves. The only six of our people to have died in a million years, Mackenzie. With the death of the seventh and the destruction of this fleet, this ship, the universe will be safe. The Draconians have not shared any of their knowledge with anyone else. It was part of their appeal.’
‘OK, so a ... particle of almost infinite density. But why this machine? Why are we involved? The Draconians?’
The light up ahead was getting brighter now. They seemed to be getting somewhere.
‘Our calculations are quite clear. The failure of the particle to expand along with the rest of space/time at the point of the Big Bang means the mass of the universe is too concentrated. Its energy-level is too low. In time - around 300 billion years - the particle’s existence will cause the universe to stop expanding and start collapsing back in on itself. It will be the focus of that process. It means that all of creation is ultimately doomed. There will be a Big Crunch, then another Bang. Another universe will be formed of which this fragment might be considered the seed.’
‘But, perhaps the particle is supposed to exist. I mean, perhaps this is how universes are supposed to function.’
‘Perhaps. The cosmological debate raged for a long time among us. But we could discern no hand at work in this, no reason or sense to it. We may of course be wrong. But we eventually decided to attempt to preserve this universe, to forestall its destruction. We are not gods. We are only people; we don’t want to die either.’
‘But ... the Draconian weapon, this technology you have shaped and encouraged into existence. How can the universe ever be safe now if such things are possible?’
‘An interesting point. We do not feel we are unduly endangering creation. We did not really create this technology. This device has always been there in potentia as it were; it is an ineluctable part of the way the physical laws of this universe operate, whatever the Xin do. The fact has long intrigued us. There are those who consider this a reserve plan; a second means by which the universe can be brought to an end so that a new one may be created, like a living entity growing old after having reproduced.’
‘You don’t believe that?’
‘I am not convinced. I, like most of the Xin, am not persuaded there is anyone or anything outside creation that could have laid such plans, or engineered it from, as it were, a previous universe. Nor do I think metaphors of living organisms are particularly useful here.’
‘But in the future ... maybe, a million years into the future ... someone else could rediscover this science, create a new Armageddon machine?’
‘Yes. We believe that if this is to happen, it will happen anyway and our ... use of the Draconians will not be the cause.
‘But who is to say that some other race - maybe in a galaxy on the other side of the universe - isn’t right now detonating such a device?’
‘Indeed. We have no knowledge of that nor power over it. We can only do what we can. If it is any consolation, we calculate the universe will eventually expand to a point where the physics of the Armageddon machine will no longer function.’
‘How long until that happens?’
‘Around 50 billion years. This is not, I understand, a complete comfort.’
Mackenzie sighed, no longer sure of what he should be doing and what his priorities were.
‘But this machine. All these plans. This has all been about ... destroying this single particle?’
Metarion stopped then.
‘Destroying it, Mackenzie? Yes.’ She pointed forwards. Up ahead the passageway ended, opening out into a large chamber, from which the light was coming. It glowed a bright, fiery red.
‘This chamber is the event-horizon floor. It fills most of Isiur and is the reason the ship is the shape it is. Its dimensions have been very finely calculated to allow the forces to be generated that are needed to have any effect on the particle. We must get it close to the centre, and then complete the triggering process.’
‘And you need me to do the triggering?’
‘And before that to get us into the chamber. An energy-gate covers the end of this tunnel. Its controlling mechanism is embedded in the wall nearby. This ship is very basic; I cannot control it directly like yours. But if you can access the system, I can provide codes.’
‘No, Metarion. Let me think. You’re saying we must detonate Isiur now? That doesn’t make sense.’
‘Our calculations are quite clear. When this device is triggered it will generate enough force to affect the particle. Which, in turn, will expand outwards as it should have done when the universe was formed.’
‘So, what, the cascading implosion of space/time will be even more cataclysmic than we feared? Or are we starting a new Big Bang here?’
‘The physics are complicated. In essence, the presence of the particle will disrupt the nascent implosion and throttle it, stop it cascading. At the same time the pressures exerted will cause the particle to explode. There is no risk from Isiur if we do this correctly. The only effect will be on the fabric of the universe which will receive further outwards impetus, ultimately preventing it from recollapsing. The explosion will be relatively inconsequential - a Small Bang if you like. Relative to the sum of energy-matter in the universe, that is. Subjectively it will actually be ..
. quite large.’
‘The effects on our universe will be cataclysmic.’
‘No. Disruption to inhabited space will be minimal. There will be a shock-wave in space-time but most matter, being a part of that space-time, will not be in danger. There will merely be a relativistic effect as the bubble expands, pushing the stars and planets out slightly more quickly. They are wood floating on the water. They will ride the waves.’
‘I don’t think I believe you. I don’t think I trust you.’
‘I understand. Your exact reaction to all this was one of the unknown variables in this equation. We come to the crux of the matter now, Mackenzie.’ She stepped closer to him, took one of his suited hands in hers. He was struck with how small she really was. His armoured gauntlet felt very clumsy holding her delicate fingers. ‘You must decide what to do, what you believe. We chose you because we thought you would help us now, but we will not coerce you.’
‘You ... chose me?’
‘We identified a whole cluster of balance-points in the time-line. We determined which of these gave us the best chance for meeting our aims. Then we laid a number of plans to achieve what we needed to do. You were identified some time ago as the focus for one very promising plan. And so it has turned out to be.’
‘There are contingency arrangements?’
‘No. This is the optimum balance-point and the most likely plan to succeed. Our hopes are on you.’
‘But ... you want me to take this chance of preventing the end of the universe in 300 billion years time. In all likelihood we won’t even exist by then. There won’t even be dust left from our civilisations. We don’t have the sort of perspective that you do. I’d happily take another 200 billion years and worry about the end of the cosmos then.’
‘It would be too late. We have calculated all this out most carefully. We do not, of course, know who or what will be alive all that time hence. But whoever it is will surely not want their universe to end. They would not understand why we did not take this opportunity to give the universe immortality. You can understand such arguments I am sure.’
‘On a philosophical level, yes, of course. But it doesn’t really mean much to me. To any of us. We are not like you.’
‘But perhaps one day you will be. Perhaps doing this is a part of that process.’
‘I’m not sure the Million Star Council would be very impressed by these arguments.’
‘In time, they may be.’
He said nothing; tried to think, to come to a clear, rational decision. He was usually good at doing that. In the chaos of battle he had an easy ability to see larger patterns and decide what should be done. Now all he felt was confusion. These matters were all too big, too complex.
‘There is another thing you should consider, Metarion continued, still holding his hand in hers, still looking openly into his eyes. ‘This ship may be considered an ultimate machine. One of the final, limiting products of technology. It is a device capable of destroying the entire universe. Perhaps it suggests you have reached one boundary of science, that further progression must be in other directions. This is something you can, perhaps, learn from Isiur.’
He pulled his hand away from her, turned away, walked a few paces off. The eyes of the combat-avatar remained locked on the Xin. He turned back.
‘I don’t know, Metarion. You should have prepared us for all this. You should have prepared me.’
‘You trusted us when you were a boy, Mackenzie. Those messages you flashed into the night sky.’
‘You saw them?’
‘Of course. We received them all. You could, perhaps, consider this to be our reply.’
He looked at her for a long time. Steam hissed from a broken duct. He became aware of a deep, powerful, subsonic rumble through his feet, through the rock and metal of Isiur.
‘But why me? Why was I chosen?’
‘You control this fleet so you have the means of getting us here. You have the necessary knowledge of Draconian technology. You do not - forgive me - have the intellect to infer any of the dangerous theory from what you see here. And you are, we are well aware, well-disposed towards the Xin. We judged you were likely to trust us. Many people, understandably, would not.’
‘And you have told me the entire truth of the matter now?’
‘Yes. I promise you that.’
He almost whispered.
‘OK. What must I do?’
She still spoke gently, evenly.
‘Inside the event-horizon chamber is a small, central platform, reached by narrow, metal bridges that lead out from these passageways. The detonation controls are on the platform. We will be able to activate them with your knowledge and my assistance. I must stay part-way along one of the bridges, at a precise point, for the physical effect on the particle to work correctly.
‘Once we trigger the mechanism you will have around ten minutes before detonation. This will give you time to leave Isiur and take your fleet into Grey Space. You will be insulated from the effects on space/time in that universe. I suggest you send out your avatar now to ensure the exit route is clear and to contact the Higher Than The Sun so that it is positioned and ready to pick you up.’
He hesitated for a moment more, then nodded at the hulking combat-avatar standing quietly a few metres off.
‘Have the fleet ready to jump as soon as I’m back on board. Don’t say anything to anyone. Especially not to the delegates. Override any counter-orders given to you.’
The avatar’s face remained expressionless. It turned and strode quickly away back up the passage.
‘OK,’ said Mackenzie, ‘Let’s go.’
It was surprisingly insignificant in the end. It came down to an inconsequential dial on a simple, grey control box. The future of the universe, of all its inhabitants, there in his hand. It seemed ridiculous. He just needed to turn the claw-shaped wheel clockwise through a complete circle and the mechanism would begin working. Isiur would implode. Or explode. Or, if Metarion was to be believed, both, in a finely calculated sequence.
He stood on a mesh platform suspended at the centre of the event-horizon chamber by twelve metal bridges, each stretching out from a passageway in the rock-face. The chamber was huge, seemed larger than the ship itself did from the outside, although he knew that was just optical illusion. It was lit by constellations of red and white lights covering its walls in apparently random arrangements.
The platform would have been large enough for a single Draconian to stand on. Various gauges and screens and other items of machinery were bolted crudely around it. There were sharp edges and apparently incomplete mechanisms everywhere. Above his head, just out of reach, hung a shiny black sphere, about the same size as his helmet. Feeding into this, all the ducts and cables from the twelve passageways, along with a bewildering array of smaller wires from the various pieces of control equipment on the platform. The event-horizon core.
He was finally ready. Somewhere else on Isiur, the Draconian had been completing its operations. He could imagine its excitement at the completion of its plans; as it awaited the destruction of the universe. He looked over at the Ancient now. She waited patiently for him to complete the detonation sequence.
‘I am ready,’ he said.
‘Very well. Let us proceed.’
‘The Draconian. Will it wait to see how the battle goes?’
‘No. It knows they can not win in the end. It is ready to die.’
‘You are the seventh Xin aren’t you?’
‘I am.’
‘So now you will die too.’
‘I will.’
He twisted the dial.
‘I am sorry for that, Metarion.’
‘As am I. But there is no alternative. Hurry back to your ship, Mackenzie. And think upon everything I have said.’