by Mark Wandrey
“I copied the data from records in the database. Using known destinations, I extrapolated the changes needed for a unique jump.”
It made sense to Minu, as much as this could make sense to her limited knowledge.
“According to the instructions of the tactical drive, the Weavers are the biggest safety feature. They would not allow themselves to become harmed.”
“That is comforting.”
“Somewhat. The problem is they are a lot harder to kill than we are. The Weavers are quite happy in the core of a neutron star, while we are not.”
Minu swallowed and looked at the hellish event horizon of the Portal. “Now what?”
“We jump.”
Minu was about to ask how when the ship came alive. Lilith gestured with her hands and gently the Kaatan moved forward on its impulse drive, the pointed nose pushing toward the event horizon.
Oh shit, Minu thought as it drew closer. Her daughter’s free hand moved again and the PA system came alive. “All hands, prepare for tactical jump.”
In the other CIC and the various staterooms where the Rasa soldiers waited, everyone braced themselves for the unknown. Lilith took a deep breath and closed her eyes, her grip on Minu's hand bony but strong.
The tip of the Kaatan touched the unspeakable wrongness, and the universe blinked.
* * *
“Oh no!” Minu gasped, her breath rasping in and mind spinning uncontrollably.
“Mother!” Lilith cried out, and the two women clutched at each other.
“It's okay, I'm here,” Minu somehow managed to say through lips that didn't seem to want to respond to her whims.
“It was like nothing, there was absolutely nothing!”
Minu nodded and stroked her daughters copper hair. “We just ceased to exist. I know, I felt it too.” She spoke to the open air, knowing the ship would record her words and send them throughout the ship based on what she said. “All hands, report in.”
Aaron reported in first, quite a bit less shaken than his wife and daughter. Minu wasn't sure what that meant. In quick order the entire crew was accounted for. Pip was last, though not because of any problem from the jump. He'd been busily examining their stellar coordinates.
“We are exactly where we are supposed to be,” he reported. “Excellent job, Lilith.”
“My thanks,” she managed, though to Minu she still looked more ashen faced than normal. “Quite a few more of those are ahead if we are to save time in route to Dervish.”
“How could the Kaatan be so effective using these drives?” Minu wondered. “They are so hard on the crew!”
“The Kaatan’s combat intelligences were computers, not hybrids like me. They would not be affected as I have been.”
Minu nodded shook her head to clear the cobwebs. It had been a singularly disconcerting experience.
* * *
In the main CIC, Pip sat back from the simulated navigation console and sighed. Everyone seemed somewhat affected in different ways by the transition through the jump, except himself. As the ship entered the event horizon, the moment had seemed to stretch on forever. His cybernetic implants ceased to function and for a timeless moment he was once again a prisoner inside his own brain.
Only it didn't feel like a moment to him. It felt like a year. Or maybe a thousand years. Then just as he began to scream at the desolation of his mind, reality returned with a jolt and his implants came alive again. To everyone else, Pip looked unaffected. But in his soul he felt utter horror.
After completing the navigation fix to verify their position he called up the course Lilith had set. Eleven more uses of the tactical drive lay between them and Dervish. And that was with Lilith being conservative as she slowly became more confident in the drive’s reliability. If she went by the book she could just make a dizzying fourteen jumps back to back and have them there in less than an hour. Pip shivered at the thought, a cold sweat running down his back.
Minu floated into the CIC, a smile on her face as she drifted to her command chair. “Lilith was a little concerned about the tactical drive, but the concern turned out to be unfounded. Based on the success of the first jump she's recalculating the course with additional jumps.”
“How soon?” Pip asked, not looking away from the screen full of unimportant data before him.
“Two hours. After that—”
“Can we talk?”
She looked over at him, still staring at the screen. Something in his voice caught her off guard. “Sure, go ahead.”
“In private.”
“Oh, okay.”
A minute later they were in the empty galley, sitting on opposite sides of the bare table. “What's wrong?”
“What makes you think anything is wrong?”
“I've known you a long time, Pip. We trudged through the Trials together. Attended our first classes to become Chosen. Our stars were pinned on at the same ritual. We taught each other about sex… mostly. And then we bled in the same dirt together.”
“Some bled more than others,” he said darkly, staring at the table.
“No-one is more aware of that than me. Which is why all your closest friends broke the rules and risked our lives to rescue you. So from someone who knows you better than anyone, what the fuck is wrong.”
Pip sighed and looked up at her, and that was when she saw the fear in those eyes.
“When we went through the jump, it wasn't an easy thing for me.”
“Wow,” Minu said after he'd finished his account. Was some of that what Lilith had instinctively feared? But her daughter said nothing about a similar phenomenon to what Pip described. “What can we do about this?”
“I have no idea. All I can think of is to go into hibernation. Maybe if she can do them in quick order, I can just be knocked out for the whole thing and then awakened afterwards.”
“That's going to mean keeping you out when we arrive at Dervish. If there are any hostile ships there, we might need you. Can't you stay awake for the last—”
“No!” he barked, then looked down in embarrassment at his outbreak. “I cannot go through that again. After all the years trapped in my mangled brain.” A tear ran down his cheek and he wiped it away, looking at the moisture in amazement. “I guess I'm a little shaken.”
“Considering the description of what you went through, it's understandable. But how exactly are we to avoid spending several years finishing the trip if we can't use the tactical drive?”
He sighed and stared at the ceiling for a long moment before responding. “The only thing I can do is disconnect my implants.”
“That'll make you—”
“Messed up, I know. Using anesthesia is a lot more uncontrolled, trust me, and the effects will linger. It'll take quite a dosage to put me under. Lilith says we'll be making a jump every few hours. I won't have time to recover between jumps.”
“Maybe the drugs the ship has are better?” she suggested.
“We have the same stuff on Bellatrix now. Chemically identical, thanks to the codex.”
His green eyes met her own and she saw the fear there. “You're in charge, Minu, so the decision is yours. Put me under for the whole trip until we reach Dervish, or have me shut half my brain off during each jump.”
“I can't order you to do either of those.”
“Maybe not, but I know you, and you’re going to use that drive to get us where we're going. It is who you are, and why you succeed. You make the hard decisions. Sometimes it hurts you more than you will tell anyone, but you still make the decision. So if I am to be of use upon arrival, it leaves you with only one option.”
Minu took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, shaking her head and staring at the table. She reached out and tapped an order into the clear surface, a steaming cup of tea appearing after a moment.
It bought her time to think. From her early days as a Chosen she had detested 'no win' situations more than anything else. In her heart she simply didn't believe there was such a thing as a no win
situation.
“Damn it, there's always another way.” she said and sipped the tea. Every time it got a little better. The computer was becoming almost psychic in detecting what the orderer wanted.
“There is, but that costs us months in space.”
“Pip, I hate it when you're right.”
“That's what my ex-wife says.”
Minu nodded and put the tea down. “I'm asking you to deactivate your implants so we can haul ass to Dervish.” Pip gave a little smiled and nodded in return. “I'm really sorry,” she said quietly.
“It can't be any worse than it was with the damn things on.”
Chapter 30
April 18th, 534 AE (subjective)
Deep Space, Galactic Frontier
With the same gut-wrenching dislocation, Minu felt reality return. Everyone in the CIC shuddered and shook their heads to clear the cobwebs. Even the Rasa, who seemed less susceptible to the brain twisting effects of non-being, were visibly shaken after a grueling six tactical drive jumps in a row.
As soon as she had her wits about her, Minu released the harness on her chair and moved over to where Pip floated in a reclined position.
He slowly turned his head and looked at her, the expression on his face half slack and a little drool in one corner of his mouth. Her heart jerked at the look of confusion mixed with recognition on his face.
“Lilith, have the medical intelligence reinitialize his implants.”
“Under way,” her daughter confirmed over the intercom.
Pip gave a little jerk, his eyes blinking rapidly and his face going blank. A second later he opened his eyes wide and looked around in surprise. “Are we there?”
“Yeah,” she told him and gently touched his cheek, casually wiping the drool away with her thumb. “You okay?”
“Sure,” he said with a little laugh that rang hollow.
“How bad?”
“Better than if the implants had been turned on. The bots fixed my brain better than it was before, but without the implants I just can't concentrate enough to put a coherent thought together. It’s not like being trapped in my brain for years, more like the worst mead bender you can imagine.”
“Doesn't sound too bad!” Aaron joked. But the look on Pip's face said it all.
“Thank you for enduring it,” Minu told him.
“So let's see Dervish,” Pip said and the walls of the CIC became like a huge bubble with the crew floating in deep space.
A hush fell over the room as everyone took in the spectacle. The Kaatan floated in space that glowed slightly from energized plasma. Millions of kilometers away, cataclysmic forces dueled. A trio of stars danced around each other. A monstrous B class blue-white star was orbited by an orange K class and red M class. Both smaller stars were in irregular orbits, and they were cannibalizing their much larger sibling.
Lilith brought it alive for them on a section of the wall, speeding up the orbits in a simulation of the intricate dance. Even without the assistance the crew could see the movement. The two smaller stars were orbiting at fantastic speeds.
“A vista of fantastic beauty,” Kal'at spoke in his hissing voice.
“Fantastic and deadly,” Pip agreed. The streamers of star stuff flashed around the stars in magnificent stellar prominences, often arcing away into space hundreds of thousands of kilometers away.
“Where is our destination?”
A section of the animated display flashed and began to zoom in. Amidst the most intense area of protospheric flow between the K and the O was resolved into a space station.
Despite the apparent tiny size of the station, it quickly became obvious they were viewing a truly immense structure. A cluster of massive cylinders surrounding a wheel, mounted perpendicularly. Trailing from each cylinder were long antennae showing hundreds of delicate filigrees along their lengths. The station was slowly spinning and the trailing antenna cut swaths through the solar prominences and swirling clouds of plasma. Everywhere they passed, empty space was left in its wake.
“The cables are harvesting the plasma from the stars much as I did with the ship during our first encounter,” Lilith told them. “This is what your scientists have dubbed a 'solar tap'.”
“Most of the power of the Concordia comes from these?” Minu asked.
“Most solar taps are not designed like this one. The common type are in a low orbit of a star trailing the tap down into the photosphere. This is a rather unique design intended for special purposes.”
“And what is that?”
“It is made to power combat ships. This station's capacity is many thousand times more than an average solar tap.”
“How long has it been here?” Aaron asked.
“According to records it was placed here by the People just before the end of the war. About a million years ago.”
Silence stretched for an unknown time as they all digested that bit of information. Only Lilith and Pip ever seemed at home discussing such long periods of time when it related to engineering works, even ones as fantastic as this one.
“There is no other place in the galaxy as perfect for the harvesting of specific types of plasma used in powering Concordian technology. It was planned by the People to power a massive offensive of warships like this Kaatan, and others.”
“What happened?” Minu wondered, “Why didn't they use it?”
Lilith paused for a moment before replying. “I do not know.”
“How long can this exist?” Pip asked. “If this is a perfect situation, these stars can't remain in perfect sync forever, right?”
“Correct. This symbiotic existence will only last an intermediate amount of time. My sensors indicate that time is coming to an end.”
Aaron laughed. “Not much time? For the Concordia that means what, another million years?”
“The M class has already began to reach instability from gorging itself on the O-class protosphere. In less than a hundred years it will destabilize and will collapse.”
“Supernova?” Kal'at gasped.
“No, it isn't a lack of fuel like in a supernova, this is too much super-heated plasma. The star doesn't have the density to contain its bloated body. It will be torn apart by the other two stars with a forty percent probability of perturbing the orbit of the K class enough for it to break orbit away from the O. The remains of the M will likely flash, furthering the destruction of the trinary and leaving only a brown dwarf remnant spinning around the remaining but diminished O class star.”
“Bet that will be quite a show,” Minu said aloud. “And the station?”
“It has the ability to move about between the stars, but it exists in the variable Lagrange points. When the trinary system finally destabilizes, the station will be destroyed.”
The CIC remained in silence as everyone watched the spectacle of the three dancing stars played out in digital simulation and relayed image.
Minu marveled that such a thing could exist, and at the same time that the Lost could find in this awesome destruction, a source of unequaled power. And somehow, her father had once been here to see this.
“How do we get to the station through that?” she asked her daughter.
“It appears to be a matter of timing,” Pip said. “The solar prominences follow a somewhat predictable oscillation pattern. Given another few hours to observe, I will be able to predict a window.”
“Somewhat predictable?” Aaron asked skeptically. “What if you're wrong?”
“There is some danger to the ship,” Lilith said, “however, since the Kaatan class is designed with field refueling in solar photospheres in mind, we should be safe from all but a direct impact.”
Minu glanced at Pip who was running some figures through a transparent simulated computer. It wasn't that Minu didn't trust her daughter, the young woman just had infinite faith in her somewhat untested abilities and that of her ship.
“Okay,” Minu said, “let us know when you have enough data.”
Chapter 31
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April 22nd, 534 AE
Planet K, Contested Territory, Galactic Frontier
Gregg ran through with his personal platoon, low and moving quickly to the side to clear the Portal for the men who were close on his heels. Planet K was just like he remembered, hot and wet. The Portal they were using was on the extreme eastern edge of the major industrial complex, the vast swamps that surrounded the city only kilometers away. The sprawling building the Portal was located in looked sound, and that was good. Outside lightening rumbled in the distance, threatening to begin one of the common downpours.
The commander of the Rangers and his platoon sergeant led him over to the side where a pair of non-human standard combat transports were grounded. A bevy of the little hedgehog looking Akala were clustered around a holographic battle projection of the city, all chattering animatedly. Gregg couldn't tell if they were excited, or pissed. Who could when it came to the Akala? They only seemed to have the two emotions, and were capable of switching between the two with blinding speed.
Behind Gregg the first of the Ranger combat transports began coming through the Portal one at a time. These would have the scout elements and a scattering of special weapons/shield teams, just in case their landing was opposed. The heavy equipment and materials to sustain the coming siege would come later, once a secure perimeter was established.
“We have eagerly awaited your arrival,” the Akala commander said without formality as Gregg approached, as was their way.
He gave a bow as he would to an equal and removed a tablet to sync with the battlefield network the Akala had already established. The situation looked much like it had when he'd met the little beings two weeks earlier to discuss the deployment.
“Humanity is happy to provide service to the Akala.”
The little beings all beamed at each other and nodded excitedly.
“As the terms of our contract stipulate, we will conduct the main assault against the Portal Spire to allow your forces to dislodge the Leesa defenders from their firebases around this industrial complex.”