The Dark Ascent

by Walter H Hunt

  "M'm'e'e would want to know, 'this outcome' is, se Gyaryu'har to which refers."

  "I don't know." She folded her hands in front of her. Almost mimicking her gesture, M'm'e'e did the same, with both pairs of hands. "Answering that question might be the most important thing that either of us could ever do."

  Chapter 17

  The r'r's'kn lay like a ragged tear across the outer reaches of the solar system. It was inexplicable, almost indescribable: an area of space twelve-twelves of chn*klii wide and tall, connecting this solar system with another one an unimaginable distance away.

  This system, with its two blue stars and no habitable planets, was almost useless in and of itself; in fact, one of the stars flared dangerously and unpredictably on a regular basis, several twelves of vx*tori apart—limbs of its chronosphere stretched across the system, disrupting comm traffic and making jumps dangerous. It might have been one of these flares that had created the r'r's'kn in the first place, disturbing spacetime in some way that First Hive didn't understand.

  First Hive understands what's important, First Drone H'mr thought to himself, as he and Second Drone H'tt stood in the command center of the station that commanded the r'r's'kn. Beyond the rip in space was another solar system, a place that would be an enormous distance from where he watched . . . but for this remarkable thing in front of him.

  For H'mr, H'tt and others sent from First Hive, it was the way back home—and through it was possible the connection with the Ór, the advisor to the Great Queen. Invisible but easily tasted by anyone with enough k'th's's, there was a cable of power that led through the r'r's'kn all the way to where the Ór lay deep in First Hive, by the side of the Great Queen.

  "I brought you here to show you something," H'mr said, gesturing with his mandibles. "The meat-creatures think that they have the ability to resist our k'th's's. G'en's partisans think so, too."

  "That is why she has failed? Why she will . . ."

  "That's right." H'tt could see the fierce joy glistening on H'mr's carapace. "S'le was her admiral, after all. Since he lost his hive-ships to the k'th's's-mad lord of the winged meat-creatures, it will only a be body-length or two further for G'en to die as well."

  "What of her N'nr Deathguard? They are scattered throughout the fleet. They are aboard every ship and at every base. They serve Great Queen G'en and won't abandon her."

  "Oh, you think so?" H'mr exuded amusement. "There are other Deathguard as well. With R'se and R'ta dead, and G'si a prisoner of the egg-sucking zor, N'nr lacks leaders. Given the choice between serving a doomed Great Queen as N'nr, or following another Great Queen as P'cn, you can imagine what they'll decide."

  "'P'cn'?"

  The tentacles beside H'mr's mandibles wriggled. "That's right—P'cn Deathguard. They are everywhere. We are everywhere. It is time for the N'nr to choose . . . along with everyone else."

  H'tt heard the words, but also heard the threat they held. H'mr's k'th's's was superior to his own, and seemed to be ready to digest H'tt if he said the wrong thing—or the right thing in the wrong way.

  "What did you bring me here to see?"

  H'mr turned again to look out through the panoramic viewscreen that showed the rip in space. He gestured, and a portion of the screen rippled and magnified.

  The First Drone said nothing, but both he and H'tt could feel the beginnings of k'th's's from within the r'r's'kn. As they watched, a hive-ship appeared in the rip. It navigated through and out into the system that held the station where the two Drones now stood.

  Once the ship was clear of the r'r's'kn and moving toward the station, another one began to appear; it followed the same flight path. Shortly, a third hive-ship emerged from the rip.

  "They replace the ships lost at—" H'tt began, but H'mr gestured him to silence.

  Several smaller ships filled the rip and emerged on the other side. Once they were clear, one, and then another, and then another hive-ship made its way through the r'r's'kn.

  "Five ships," H'mr said, turning again to face H'tt. "We understand the meat-creatures have gathered their fleet at another system." He named the coordinates. "They have correctly determined that if we capture this system, we will have short-range access to their large naval base with our s'kn'a'a vessels."

  "Can they not do what they did before—destroy their own ships to destroy ours?"

  "They will not. This time, the commander of this fleet will not give them the chance."

  "They still have the woman meat-creature with the sword."

  "You mean the Har—" H'tt began, but never finished the sentence.

  H'mr rounded on H'tt. "Do not repeat that u'shn'n to me," he said angrily. "The Har—" He lowered his voice. "'The Harbinger' is no more than a tale to frighten children. To associate it with this meat-creature is obscene. What's more, one meat-creature with one talisman can kill one Drone at a time, but she lacks the k'th's's to do more." He gestured at the formation of five hive-ships and outriders navigating toward the station. "She could do nothing against this, even if she were . . . the Harbinger."

  "I see."

  "I hope you do. When this fleet is finished with its work, the P'cn Deathguard will deal with the next problem . . . with Great Queen G'en herself."

  News of S'reth's passing came to Jackie when Fair Damsel berthed at Dieron Station Four. The station was not as old as Sol System's Station One, but it was still old by human standards: It had been placed in one of the Lagrangian points of the huge asteroid belt in Dieron System when its sun, Epsilon Indi, less than four parsecs from Sol, had been colonized by sleeper ships in the early twenty-second century.

  Jackie realized it had been more than seven years since she had been home; there might not be another opportunity. After leaving Langley she had left a message for Mya'ar to send to the High Nest: She was going to Dieron for a few days and then would return to Zor'a to take her place. Mya'ar's response had been polite and diplomatic—what else?—but his wings had spoken understanding and perhaps even sympathy.

  Home. It was a strange concept after all these years in His Majesty's Service, in space and on far worlds. Spoken aloud or considered pragmatically, it seemed to be a neutral word, bereft of context and connotation; but her subconscious wrestled with it as she slept, throwing images and memories onto the shore of her waking mind like debris from the deepest part of the sea.

  The present was there waiting for her when she stepped onto the deck of the station: a Signal Corps captain approaching, uniform cap tucked under his arm. Jackie was flanked by Dan McReynolds and Sultan Sabah, scarcely ten meters from the cargo hatch; but she knew immediately that the uniformed officer was out of place on the deck of a civilian orbital port, and looked and felt it. She knew the captain was looking for her.

  "ha Gyaryu'har?" the captain asked, stepping toward her. Jackie noticed the High Nest emblem on his shoulder-patch. "I have a message for you."

  "Let's have it."

  The captain handed her a comp. She took it and touched the blinking indicator with the stylus.

  ha Gyaryu'har:

  It is my duty to convey to you the news that our sage friend, S'reth son of S'tlin, has transcended the Outer Peace. He provided an important sSurch'a prior to embracing the Golden Light of esLi, which profoundly affects the flight the High Nest must undertake.

  The High Lord sends her respects and asks eight thousand pardons for requesting that you complete your Nest-business as soon as is feasible, and return to esYen for consultations.

  If circumstances permit, please examine the epic seLi'e'Yan as a guide.

  esLiHeYar, Byar HeShri

  Jackie handed back the comp and stylus. A chill ran through her as if a sudden cold breeze had passed along the station causeway. "Is there a response, ma'am?" the officer asked.

  "What?" She looked at Dan who looked concerned, and then back at the officer. "No—no response. Send my respects to se Byar and acknowledge my receipt of the message."

  The officer nodded, saluted and turned o
n his heel. He made his way across the deck as quickly as possible.

  "Hell of a hurry," the Sultan said. "What's—" He saw the look on Jackie's face and fell silent as if he regretted having started the sentence.

  "S'reth's dead," she said to Dan. "Byar HeShri told me, essentially, to hurry up and get the hell home."

  "What're you going to do?" Dan asked. "Do you want to bug out?"

  "I waited years to get here," she answered. "I'm going to go for a walk in the woods on North Continent. I'm going to go see my dad and get some advice."

  "Mind if we come along?"

  "Frankly, yes. Will that keep you from coming along?"

  Dan grinned. "I expect not."

  "Then let's get going."

  The shuttle trip to Stanleytown Spaceport was uneventful.

  Jackie was still unaccustomed to traveling civilian, but transporting the gyaryu through customs was eased by her diplomatic credentials: While the officials didn't seem to be bothered by someone representing the High Nest, it was clear they didn't want to delve into it. Once in the terminal, the three made their way to an aircar rental booth; but before Jackie could get started on the transaction, she heard her name being called.

  "None of that," the voice said, and Jackie turned to see a familiar figure making her way across the terminal toward her. A few meters from the booth they embraced, while Dan and the Sultan nervously stood by.

  Jackie brought the other woman to where the two men stood. "Dan, Sultan, this is my cousin Kristen. Kris, this is Dan McReynolds and his ship's chief steward, Drew Sabah."

  "So this is the famous Dan McReynolds," Kristen said, looking him up and down. Kristen shared some of Jackie's facial features but was at least half a dozen years older, and had none of her cousin's military bearing. She looked relaxed and weathered, a strange counterpoint to the pale skin common among spacefarers.

  However, she did have Jackie's piercing gaze. Dan felt it boring into him; he felt like he was being examined from head to toe.

  "Enough of that," Jackie said after a moment. "All right, Kris, out with it. How did you know I was coming?"

  "We're expecting a cargo for the farm," she said. "I was looking at incoming traffic on comp this morning, and I saw the famous Captain McReynolds' ship inbound to Station Four with an indication that he was carrying a zor diplomatic passenger. All on the flight plan. I guessed it might be you."

  "She's your cousin, all right," Dan said.

  "What's that supposed to mean?" Kristen asked.

  "I think it's a compliment," Jackie inteijected, smiling.

  Kristen snorted but let her face relax into a smile. "You're here to see Uncle Don, I'd guess. He's over on First Landing Hill at your mother's grave. I can take you—you all—there, or we can go up to the farm and meet him when he gets back."

  "Do you think he'd rather be alone?"

  "Well, I don't go with him," she said, as they began to walk toward the parking garage. "He still gets up there every other sixday or so, usually when he's here in town to take care of something else." They stepped into sunlight on a long concourse over a main thoroughfare, and Kristen looked off toward the mountains. "Of course, it's always, 'Just since I'm in town, I may stop by,' but we both know he makes up errands so he can visit often."

  "They were married twenty years, Kris."

  "Your mother's been gone fifteen years, Jackie. It's just a plastic plaque in the ground. Leave the dead to the dead."

  "You never could tell Dad that," Jackie answered, as they stepped into the cool shade of the aircar park.

  "Even if I could, it wouldn't change anything. Ah, well. La vie continue, and all that."

  Jackie felt a bit guilty leaving Dan and the Sultan at the mercy of her cousin; but she'd already decided to walk up First Landing Hill alone to the cemetery. In the last few months she'd left enough people like Ch'k'te and John Maisel behind, unburied and scarcely mourned, that the idea of a final resting place now seemed comforting somehow. It was certainly a comfort to her dad. Don Laperriere sat on a bench a few meters from the plastic rectangle that marked her mother's grave. He seemed lost in thought, as if he were considering something her mom had just said; he had always been like that, willing to give any comment, even an offhand one, the dignity of consideration.

  He didn't seem surprised to see her.

  "Come over and sit down," he said, smiling. She did so, and he took her hand in his two weathered ones. "Kris told me she thought you might be coming in."

  Far off in the trees, two dippers, scavenger birds native to Dieron, engaged in a quick and friendly argument and then took off in a flurry of bluish green wings.

  "I suppose everyone on the planet knows. So much for surprise entrances."

  "You've been away a long time."

  "I've been busy, Dad." She pulled her hand from between his and laid it on top. "I'm sorry."

  "Your last comm said you were being transferred to the zor naval service."

  "A lot has happened since then. I'm not even sure where to start."

  Don Laperriere leaned back against the bench, stretching his arms out. "We've got plenty of time," he said, nodding toward the grave. "Best start at the beginning, Jacqueline."

  "I've got two problems, Dad. First, I don't think that I have plenty of time; and second, I'm not sure there's a beginning to the story. I feel like I came on the scene in the middle of the play and I've been trying to get context ever since."

  "So you thought you'd ask your old man to explain it to you."

  "Not exactly . . . Well, I don't really know why. I guess I just wanted to see you and the farm again. Things have gotten too complicated. Maybe there's some perspective I can gain from being here."

  "So, begin in the middle instead. What's with this sword?" He pointed to her side.

  "It's the gyaryu. The zor sword of state. It's mine now."

  "Yours? Didn't it belong to that old man, the one who went into exile with Marais? What's his name—?"

  "Sergei Torrijos. He died about ten days ago, just before I got back with the sword. It had been taken . . ."

  A little at a time, she found herself telling the whole story to her father—not so much in sequence but in layers, beginning with recent events and peeling back like an onion or a rRi-fruit to reveal the structure upon which future events had been laid. He remained mostly silent, listening intently, occasionally interrupting with a question or making an observation.

  It took almost an hour. At several points Jackie heard her voice almost breaking and she was unable to continue for a moment. Each time, her dad waited out the pause with an understanding smile, as if to tell her what he'd said at the beginning: that there was plenty of time.

  "That's quite a story," he said, when she'd run out of narrative. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and picked up a stray bit of grass from the lawn under the bench and toyed with it idly. "Imagine that: my daughter, an admiral, and—what? The High Lord's Champion or something.

  "It sounds like we're in a hell of a lot of trouble."

  "The enemy is more dangerous than any civilian realizes— except maybe the emperor. I think the Admiralty has gotten the message, though. From what I hear about Thon's Well, they're convinced."

  "It sounds like we're in a hell of a lot of trouble," Don Laperriere repeated; except this time it was obvious that he wasn't referring to the Solar Empire, but rather to a place closer to home. "Dieron's been a full member of the Empire since day one, so there's never been much unrest; we're too close to Sol System and to Churchill System to have a naval base. We're wide-open to this invasion, Jacqueline. No getting around it."

  "You might be safer elsewhere."

  "Oh?" He looked from her to the grave and back. "Where did you have in mind?"

  "Zor'a."

  "The zor homeworld."

  "Yes."

  Jackie's father looked at her with his mouth turned up very slightly in a smile, as if he were mildly amused by such a suggestion.

  "I don
't really think that's an option," he said at last. "This is where I belong."

  "You just said—"

  "That Dieron is in terrible danger. I know. But it isn't as if I should be picking up and leaving, not at this stage, anyway." He looked at the grave again. "I belong here, with Grace"—-he nodded toward the ground—"and Kristen on the farm. Why, I've only been offworld once in my life, to see you graduate from the Academy and get your commission.

  "What would I be on Zor'a? A tourist? The zor are fine people, I don't have any quarrel with 'em. Down on South Continent there's an agricomplex run by some zor folk, trying to crossbreed some of their native plants with Dieron's own strains; we visited there six months ago to help them with one of their projects. But afterward we came home. If I read you right, everywhere is in terrible danger, Jacqueline. Dieron, Zor'a, Sol System itself, probably.

  "I wish for all the world that you could just leave it all and come home to the farm, but even if your duty didn't call you away, you'd never be able to stay put. But you won't be running back here to Dieron if we're attacked, will you?

  "If you're the . . . what?—zor champion, or something?— I'd guess that Dieron would be a little bit lower on your priority list than any of a hundred other worlds." He stood up and stepped carefully onto the grass around the grave marker, knelt on one knee and arranged the few flowers laid before it in the deep green grass, then stood upright again.

  "Let's walk a bit," he said, and took his daughter by the hand. The feel of it and the look in her father's eyes were comforting.

  They walked farther up the hill, to the silvery memorial to the first settlers of Dieron. It was a representation of the cold-sleep ship that crash-landed more than two centuries ago, with statues of the Dieron Six standing beside it. The survivors of that original ship—six of two hundred—had eked out a meager existence until two sister ships arrived a few months later, and those six brave men and women had given the colony its name: Sharon Demeter, Shoei Ikegai, John Erickson, Eric Rashid, David Okome and Micaela Natal— names every Dieron schoolchild committed to memory. Their faces were forever frozen in the metal statuary at the top of First Landing Hill, a memorial to the founding of the colony.