by C. Gockel
“Volka wouldn’t be late if she still had me,” Bracelet sniffed.
Touching his chest, Jerome said, “Volka’s already here. She, the rest of the team, all through the elderships—Sundancer too, though she’s more a feeling than words—they’re all here seeing what I’m seeing.”
Jerome was connected digitally and through Volka’s and the Skimmers’ telepathy. Telepathy seemed rawer, more intimate, and it was something 6T9 would never be capable of.
TAB interjected brightly, “It’s fascinating! Jerome has explained to me that telepathic communication is dreamlike. Some of what we are seeing telepathically is metaphorical rather than literal. There are glowing strands that stretch between the ships, their captains, and us. The strands are how the elderships perceive quantum waves, and the human minds aren’t distressed by this. Can you imagine, Android General 1, how many AI minds would short circuit with the imprecision of it?”
6T9’s eyebrow quirked. He liked to tease AI with metaphors for exactly that result.
TAB bubbled on, “Also, everything in the telepathic view is hazy around the edges. Jerome has explained to me that this is very much like human dreams. Oh! Corporal Stratos and his spaceship are sharing one of his daydreams with Jerome now. It features an alien orgy with Jerome at the center and—”
6T9’s processors winked offline and back on again. Volka was privy to that daydream. Even if it didn’t feature her, it might be a subtle invitation on Stratos’s part. Sparks played in his vision.
“Enough,” said Jerome, slapping his port.
“What’s truly interesting, Jerome,” TAB continued, so fast that 6T9’s processors had to fire extra quickly to keep up, “is that you simultaneously acknowledge that Stratos is trying to lift your spirits while still being frustrated that he is distracting you from your task, and at the same time you are worried that said distraction could lead to your destruction.”
“TAB,” James said warningly.
“You know what else is distracting me?” Jerome grumbled.
“That was a rhetorical question!” TAB exclaimed. “I always had trouble recognizing those before, but now, being plugged into your mind, Jerome, I recognize the rhetorical nature, and I know that you know that what is distracting you is me!”
Jerome rubbed his eyes.
“… Oh,” said TAB in a small voice.
“TAB,” James ordered, “You will refrain from commenting on anything not directly related to the mission.”
“Yes, sir,” said TAB. “I understand, sir.”
“Some AI just don’t understand humans at all,” Bracelet sniffed. “You really shouldn’t have commented on the haziness of human dreams, TAB. Humans don’t like to be reminded of their inferior visual rendering capabilities.”
TAB flashed red. Rolling his eyes, Jerome put a hand over his neural port and muttered, “Don’t say it.”
Volka’s voice pierced the gloom. “Bracelet, that is enough.” A more realistic avatar of Volka appeared in the mindscape. She sat cross-legged in the nothing. FET12 sat cross-legged beside her, hand in hers. Lieutenant Dixon stood just behind them. In reality, they were sitting on a holomat in one of Sundancer’s aft compartments. FET12 was jacked directly into it, and he was in the mindscape relaying Volka’s words and appearance in near real-time.
“You will only discuss matters relating to the mission going forward, Bracelet,” Volka said. “Lives depend on it.”
The ghostly Volka with the extra shiny Bracelet abruptly disappeared. The wrist of Volka’s new avatar gleamed unnaturally brightly. Sounding perhaps slightly chastened, Bracelet replied from her new position on the more realistic Volka’s wrist, “Yes, Ms. Volka.”
Dixon said, “We are all in position.”
James said, “It’s time.”
Volka’s avatar closed her eyes. “James, Young is requesting his ship release your pod from the bridge. Sixty, I’m having Sundancer do the same for you.”
Sixty nodded. “Switching to pod sensors.” He accessed the external sensors, and James and Jerome disappeared as he let the pod’s vision be his own.
In the holomat, Volka saw what Sixty saw: Sundancer’s floor on the bridge, not the aft compartment she was in. Sundancer’s floor was pearlescent. Normally the colors within its creamy surface glowed, and, if one looked closely, almost appeared to swirl. But now, the hull was bone white, and she wasn’t sure if it was a manifestation of Sundancer’s fear or Volka’s own. With a telepathic nudge from Volka, the floor irised open, and the velvety black of space began to appear. The scene shifted, and she was staring at Sundancer’s keel. Some of Volka’s crew were peering through the still-open iris, barely visible in their envirosuits. If Volka stretched with her telepathic senses, she would recognize each individual, but with Sixty’s eyes, they were nearly indistinguishable. Sixty wasn’t looking at their target, but Volka felt it below her. It was a shadow at the edge of her vision, a just-barely-there scent of something rank and decaying.
As Sixty’s pod moved away, Sundancer shrank, and the seventeen other Skimmers became visible. From two of their keels dropped oblong pods like the one Sixty was piloting—in real life, they were nearly invisible like the suits, but in the holoview, they were visible as highlighted outlines. One pod contained James; the other contained Jerome and TAB. Focusing on Jerome, she felt Jerome’s discomfort and his excitement, tinged only with a little fear. He, 6T9, and James were curled up tightly, nearly in fetal positions. Her gaze flicked upward to Jerome’s Skimmer, Farsong. Farsong was absolutely horrified but doing a good job at hiding his terror from Jerome. “Hang in there, Farsong,” Volka whispered, trying to give the words confidence she didn’t feel.
Dixon’s voice came from behind her. “Is everyone in position?”
They were maintaining ethernet silence. Ethernet signals operated on radio frequencies or were encoded in lightbeams, and could be jammed, overheard, and intercepted by the Dark. Q-comm communication and telepathy could not.
Volka closed her eyes and let her consciousness flow between the Skimmers. “Yes.” She heard Dixon shift nervously on his feet.
Through the open keels of the Skimmers, she saw every ship had Marines almost invisible in their suits, peering through the openings. They carried anti-hovercraft weapons.
She connected to Young’s ship, Nightwing, the oldest of the Skimmers. Nightwing answered her question before it had even fully formed in her mind. “The Dark doesn’t know we are here.”
At that moment, Sixty’s focus turned to their target, hanging below them amongst the stars. Galactican scientists called it a “habitat ring.” It was a giant wheel in the void, not unlike a time gate, but it was much, much larger than a gate, both in width and diameter, and it had spokes radiating from a central core into the wheel. The spokes were thick where they connected to the wheel and thinner near the core. The core was a gaping dark maw now, but according to the scientists, it had once been the site of an artificial sun. Where the spokes intersected with the wheel, daylight would have been constant. Perfect for coaxing the plants the herbivorous People depended on to flourish.
From here, even with the shadow of the Dark, the habitat ring was peaceful … awe inspiring. It no longer rotated, but she could imagine it doing so. Where the core had not been impacted, she could see cracks at regular intervals—perhaps they had been vents for excess heat? She could imagine the rays of the artificial sun escaping the vents, turning the station to a beacon in the void.
“No electromagnetic readings except the expected ones from natural sources,” James said. Volka nodded to herself. They hadn’t expected ether frequencies. The Dark had managed to hide nukes above New Grande and had somehow activated them without the Republic noticing any fluctuations in electromagnetic radiation. That was a mystery they were attempting to solve with this mission.
The pod maneuvered closer to the wheel, and 6T9 said aloud, “Wave disruption sensors detect nothing.” Wave disruption sensors were a new thing. They detected co
ntrol of the quantum wave—telepathic control, in other words, and were developed by the Republic originally to make sure they weren’t being spied on by cats or other creatures controlled by a member of The One. They went haywire aboard the Skimmers, and perhaps for that reason, Fleet still hadn’t picked up on the fact that Volka was telepathic. Her meager abilities were nothing compared to Sundancer’s.
Their mission now was to see if this new wave disruption tech could detect the Dark. If it could, they’d have forewarning of the Dark’s remote weapons.
“No readings here, either,” James said.
Jerome’s voice flitted through the mindscape to her ears, and at the same time, she felt his reply in her heart. “Ditto.”
Volka’s heart fell a little, though that had been expected, too. The Republic’s sensors were less sensitive than her gut and Carl’s whiskers when it came to telepathy. Her ears flicked. “I sense the Dark,” she confessed. “The ships and Carl do, too. Though it isn’t active. It’s like … a storm cloud on the horizon.” Her ears folded as she realized how lame that sounded.
There was a pause that stretched too long. Using the release of hyper-chilled air for propulsion, so as not to create a heat signature, the pods drew closer to the wheel.
“How do you and the ships visualize it?” Sixty asked. His voice was clinical, and that was oddly reassuring.
Volka closed her eyes and pictured what she saw. Threads spun outward in all directions from the wheel—even inanimate objects were made of energy. For the most part, the threads spilled in all directions, almost like light from a star, but within the wheel there were some threads that didn’t spin outward the same way. “Some of the objects within the wheel have threads that fold in on themselves. I’m picturing it …”
She let the picture in her mind spill to the other ships and their captains.
TAB burst out excitedly, “I see what Volka is seeing through Jerome, and he sees it through Farsong! May I project it into the mindscape for all to see?”
“Do so,” said Sixty.
The lifelike holographic image of the world was replaced by the messy, stringy vision of the world in Volka’s mind. Objects were blurry and indistinct, their waves expanding outward and becoming more diffuse as they did so. But in some of the objects, the waves congealed into thick strands instead; they did not flow evenly into the rest of the universe. Volka tried to highlight them in her mind’s eye in red for the others to see.
Quanta, the ship of Dr. Patrick Shore, a civilian scientist, said, “The Dark controls its Infected along those thicker channels. They are less connected to the rest of the universe and to us.”
Bracelet sniffed. “It’s all very imprecise … and … and … metaphorical!”
In his Android General 1 voice, Sixty said, “It doesn’t require light or radiolocation. Volka, if you can maintain your concentration, we can use this view to navigate within the structure. It may help us avoid detection if we forgo light and radio frequencies.”
“With the Skimmers’ help, I can maintain it,” Volka replied. They could help keep her from slipping, if, say, Stratos’s imagination conjured up another alien orgy, and his ship once again thought it was a daydream worth sharing with everyone. Her ear flicked, and the scene flickered.
“Let’s switch back to optical view for now,” James said. “We’ll use this view when we no longer have ambient light.”
The holomat scene flickered back to the view outside of Sundancer, only now they were closer, and the wheel filled the visual displayed by the holomat. The pods were heading for a long, jagged breach in one of the spokes that was too narrow for the Skimmers to enter.
From far away, it had looked like a solid black gash, but now she saw that it seemed to flicker from within. James’s pod descended first, and Jerome went next. Volka felt Farsong urge, “Be alert and as careful as is possible, Jerome!”
And then all three pods were within the spoke, and she was dumbfounded by what she saw.
Outside the wheel, the world had been grim and shadowy. Within the spoke, the walls were dazzlingly bright—or at least seemed so after the dark of space. Scanning his readouts, 6T9 saw that it was really only—
“It’s bright as moonlight!” Volka whispered.
6T9’s lips quirked. It was not a quantitative evaluation; nonetheless, her qualitative analysis was quite correct.
“The spoke’s internal surface is reflective,” James said.
6T9’s Q-comm sparked. It made sense. The existence of the spokes indicated The People did not want to waste their artificial sun’s energy on the vacuum. Likewise, they wouldn’t have wanted to waste it on the spokes’ walls. Still, it was surprising. The only light within the spoke was starlight, caught and concentrated by the material lining the spoke’s interior surface. 6T9 exhaled. “James, if we could collect a sample of the surface, and recreate it, it would help feed billions.”
“That is not within the scope of this mission,” James replied, and, without a segue, added, “I’m still not detecting any quantum wave shifts.”
“None,” Jerome echoed.
“None here,” 6T9 verified.
6T9 gazed down the length of the spoke to the surface of the wheel. It was a field of blue gray that glimmered in the concentrated starlight.
Volka said, “Sixty, the ships say it is ice. I see the Dark within it … it’s everywhere … but in some places it’s denser.”
“Volka,” 6T9 said, “Picture it for Jerome. TAB, overlay what Jerome sees.”
“Imagining is the correct word, not sees,” Bracelet protested.
“I have the processing power, Android General 1,” TAB declared.
The luminous blue gray field became speckled with large splotches of red and fainter spheres of pink. TAB said proudly, “The red is Infection. I’m attempting to use value to give depth perception. The pink is deeper beneath the icy surface.”
Volka said, “The irregular shapes on the surface are shaped like algal blooms … according to Dr. Patrick.”
A variant of blue-green algae was the Dark’s preferred lifeform, and that thought alone was enough to make 6T9’s circuits dim. To have The People, the human race, and all the variety of life replaced by … algae.
James snorted. “Noa always said the stuff was evil. Let’s see how close we can get.” James dipped his pod toward the surface, much too quickly and much too close. If 6T9 had been fully in his body, and his attention not divided between the mindscape and digital readouts piped into his brain, his breath would have caught.
“James, do you have a death wish?” 6T9 muttered.
“According to Noa, yes,” James replied easily enough.
6T9’s processor sparked. James’s wife, Noa, frequently engaged in hyperbole, and yet …
“Is that how he always gets the dangerous assignments?” Volka whispered, and 6T9’s circuits sparked again. With the possible exception of his interfacing with Darmadi, James had taken on extremely dangerous missions in his professional capacity of late. In a personal capacity, he’d also altered 6T9’s programming. That had turned out to have been a very dangerous assignment, too. Why would James have a death wish?
James continued, “At a meter’s distance, I still get no reading,” and 6T9’s Q-comm lit, jerking him back into the present.
Volka said, “It’s not awake. According to the ships, you’d have to do something to disturb it.”
Before James could do something stupid, 6T9 suggested, “Let’s withdraw to a distance of one hundred meters and try stimulating it from afar, shall we?”
TAB chirped, “That sounds like a good idea. May I suggest three hundred meters? Knowing the minimal level of light or heat fluctuation would be beneficial.”
“Agreed,” James said.
6T9 didn’t change course until 3.5 seconds later, when James’s pod pulled away from the Dark-Infected ice.
Once they were at three hundred meters, they began testing the Dark’s response to stimulus. They started wi
th light, the most basic stimulus for most living organisms. They started at very low luminosity and worked their way up. It wasn’t until they hit the frozen algae bloom with light at 10,000 lumens of brightness—the brightness of a yellow sun on a planet within the Goldilocks zone—that Volka exclaimed, “It’s working!”
6T9’s sensors detected infrared—heat—from the icy surface, but the wave disruptors detected nothing. “Keep the light on,” James ordered, sending his pod into a circuit-shorting dive. “I’ll see how close we need to be for the wave disruptors to be effective.” A few seconds later, he declared, “I have a reading at 102.75 meters. I’m detecting water on the surface now.”
“Shut off the lights,” 6T9 ordered.
Jerome did.
For 10.75 minutes, nothing happened. The surface remained water; James declared his wave disruptor active. One-hundredth of a second later, the surface refroze, and James’s wave disruptor reported no activity.
“Well, we know that wave disruptors can detect it,” James said.
6T9’s circuits dimmed. They could detect it, but only if it were activated, and only from a distance of 102.75 meters, just slightly more than a tenth of a kilometer.
Jerome said, “It’s awfully impractical to be sweeping every meter of space with a 10,000-lumen spotlight. Let me try a lightbeam. Maybe a regular pulse will be enough to trigger it.”
Using his lightbeam, Jerome spelled out in Morse Code, “We’re coming for you, Motherfucker.”
TAB said, “Ramirez suggested that Jerome should tell it how he really feels.”
6T9’s eyebrows rose. The Dark had infected humans that should know Morse Code, but nothing seemed to be happen—
“It’s working!” Volka shouted.
“Off the charts wave disruption,” James declared.
“Here, too,” said 6T9 as his own sensor screamed.
“Here, too,” Young echoed, and 6T9’s circuits lit. The Skimmers were three kilometers away from the disturbance.
Steam erupted from the icy surface and turned to snow.