by Alex Kings
They lunged at each other. Srak was sure he was about to land another blow, but at the last moment Arka shifted position. It was elegant, almost ballet-like, and ended with Srak caught in his grasp again. Before Srak could react, he felt his feet leave the ground.
Arka flipped him over the console into the computer pillar.
The chrome plating of the pillar gave way easily, and a moment later there was a shattering sound as Srak fell among the crystalline core. Somewhere, amongst the crashing and gunfire, he heard Yilva cry out.
Srak tried to get back up, but the ground beneath his feet was treacherous, torn metal and broken crystal shards shifting and breaking further under his weight. Then there was a sudden fiery pain in his middle-left arm.
One of the broken crystal columns had pierced his middle arm completely. His blood beaded on its surface like water droplets on oil. The ground shifted beneath him and he cried out. He saw Arka turn and pick up the pistol.
Arka didn't turn it on Srak. Instead, he swung round to aim at Hanson, who was still occupied with the Blanks.
“Hanson!” cried Srak.
Hearing him, Hanson caught sight of Arka aiming at him. But there was nothing that gave him cover from both Arka and the Blanks. Caught between razorstorm and volcano, as the Varanid saying had it. A choice of which spike on which to impale yourself …
Which gave Srak an idea. As Arka steadied his aim, Srak quickly grabbed a column – mostly intact, but broken off into a wickedly sharp point – and hurled it like a spear.
The column made an even more effective weapon than he'd hoped. As it pierced Arka's shoulder, it shattered, spraying shards across his face and chest. Arka roared, putting a hand up instinctively to shield himself.
Seeing Arka stumble back, glittering pieces of computer crystal embedded in his armour and exposed skin, Hanson took his chance. He levelled his carbine, and unloaded it into the Varanid.
Srak took hold of the piece of crystal through his arm and pulled it free. He held it in place with his other middle arm, leaving his two upper arms free. Carefully scrambling forward across the computer debris, he took up another crystal spear.
At the same time, Hanson saw two Blanks running forward, trying to outflank him. “Shit!” he hissed, struggling to reload his carbine. There wasn't enough time. He had nowhere else to go.
Shots rang out. One Blank went down, the armour around its neck punctured. The second, as it turned to react to this new threat, went down too. Hanson glanced at the source of the shots: Agatha, leaning out from behind a console, gave him a little wave, then went back to her own problems.
Arka was still reeling the last attack. Srak raised his crystal spear and lunged. At the last moment, Arka saw the attack and swiped the spear aside, shattering it. He headbutted Srak. “Give up!” he snarled. “Even with your friends, you're too weak to –”
His eyes widened. His hands went to his neck, where Srak had stabbed him with the length of computer crystal that was still stuck in his arm.
Arka tried to snarl, but no noise came out.
Srak pulled the crystal out. Arka swatted at him a few times weakly before collapsing.
Srak kicked the body away from him, and stared at it, panting. Gunfire bit into his armour. With a weary gesture his picked up his gun and shot down the Blank who was attacking him.
Silence, all around. The Blanks were all dead. Srak smiled to himself and slumped in the corner. Agatha came running up to him and hugged one of his uninjured arms.
“It's nothing,” he told her, giving a dismissive hand gesture that wasn't entirely convincing.
There was a distant-sounding boom, like a bulkhead being torn away. A couple of seconds later a team of three Tethyans came floating into the operations room in their water bubbles.
“”There's our backup,” said Hanson over the local channel. “Right on schedule.” He switched to an open channel so they could hear him. “I think we're good. Everything's fine.”
“Well, uh,” said Yilva. She pushed at a broken column of computer crystal. It was too big for her to pick up. “Perhaps not so much.”
Chapter 65: Still on Schedule
Pierce sat on a tiny, hard aluminium chair in the passenger compartment, working on his tablet. Beside him, in its bag, the Oracle sat lifeless. Millicent had gone to get some coffee.
Their ship was a small, poky, tacky passenger transport vessel. Of course, that was why Pierce had chosen it to serve as an escape. Alongside frigates and luxury liners, this little tin can didn't make a particularly tempting target.
And as he tried to get his little fleet back together, he saw that that choice had saved his life. None of his best ships had survived. All he had left were the dregs.
“Prepare for jump,” said a speaker in the corner of the room. “Repeated, prepare for jump.”
The ship creaked and whined, Pierce looked out the window as the throat of a wormhole slid past.
The pilot's voice came over his comms: “We've met up with the rest of the fleet, Mr. Pierce.”
“Good,” said Pierce. The view of the window now showed a couple more tiny ships and a lone frigate.
He sighed and leant back in his chair.
His library had gone. And his favourite chair. After all the effort he'd put in place to take them with him, even when he had to leave Earth.
Millicent came back into the cabin carrying two plastic disposable cups filled with tea. Her curls were a little out of place, her blazer off-centre. She looked exhausted. Without speaking, she set the cup of tea down in the seat's cup-holder.
He gave her a short smile. The chain of actions played out almost as if they were back in his office – his real office, in Shanghai – instead of in an uncomfortable passenger cabin.
“We've got a bulkwave message incoming,” said the pilot.
“Put it through,” said Pierce, holding up his tablet.
A panicked, puffy face appeared on the screen. “Mr. Pierce! I heard about the attack! Are you –”
“I'm fine,” Pierce said calmly. “Do you have the connector?”
“Just about.”
“Good. Take it to the backup site. We won't let this little interruption slow us down. We're still on schedule.”
“Yes, sir.”
*
The stealth shuttle was still there.
Its berth was tiny, barely bigger than the shuttle itself. There was just about enough room for Eulen to open the door and get in.
He ran a quick simulation on his suit's processors. The Tethyans would be able to see the stealth shuttle, but the station's bulk blocked their view. The Dauntless was more of a gamble: It might see him, it might not, depending on how far the upgrades went.
Oh well. He'd just have to wait and see.
The control panel was awkward, designed for clumsy human hands, but Eulen had long ago taught himself to use the interfaces of handed species. He activated the stealth systems, then launched.
With an electrical twang, the shuttle dropped through the floor and into space.
Cold, dark wreckage was sprinkled among the stars, weak sunlight glittering off the ragged edges. And up ahead was the only intact ship visible: The Dauntless.
Eulen waited for a few seconds. If they saw him, if they tried to contact him …
He relaxed and checked the timer in his suit. The laser blast should be coming any second now.
*
The door was locked.
Moore thumped on it. “Hey! Open up!”
No response.
She checked the map. The door led to a control centre for the anti-meteoroid lasers. A chilling realisation swept over her. “Vyren, can you open this?”
“I shall try,” Vyren said. His bubble of water floated up to the door and extended a tin ribbon of effector field. The ribbon pushed momentarily at the seam between door and frame, then slid inside.
Moore raised her carbine.
The door clanged and swung open.
One of the
station's staff stood over the controls. When the door opened he nearly jumped out of his skin. When he saw Moore's face, his hands shot up. “I surrender!” he cried. “Don't … don't shoot me.”
Moore glanced at the console he was working on. On the screen, a charge counter flicked up from 95% to 96%.
Vyren floated over. “It's automated,” he reported.
The counter went to 97%
“Shut it off,” Moore said.
The man lowered his hands a little way and gave her a questioning look.
“Believe me,” said Moore, looking down the barrel at him. “If that laser fired, this gun fires. Now shut it off.”
This seemed to get him moving. The man gestured at the console hurriedly. The counter vanished.
“Step back,” Moore said. “Saito, check it's fine.”
Saito moved forward and checked the console. “The laser's been deactivated,” he confirmed. “The capacitors are discharging.”
Moore let out a long breath. As Saito cuffed the man, she asked him, “So tell me, what exactly is going on here?”
*
Eulen's timer hit zero. There was no laser fire from the station.
So much for that plan. It was a long shot, after all.
He turned the shuttle towards the Dauntless and accelerated gently.
Chapter 66: Manual
It was an odd sort of imprisonment. Serafin's ship was her cell: A tiny oasis of light and warmth in immense black void. She slept on a rigid schedule. When she woke, she checked how long she had left. The ship could regenerate food and oxygen as long as it had power, but with inefficiencies it returned a little less each time. At the current rate she had a month at least.
When she went to her console and looked outside, Angel was always there, waiting for her. In her waking hours, she conversed with him, talking more about the Ancients and the Shadowwalkers' archeological outings. He escorted her around the frozen gas giant a dozen times, meeting Shadowwalkers in the black wisps of its upper atmosphere and those millions of klicks distant.
She studied the computational and cognitive architectures of the Ancients, all the ins and outs of how the disparate pieces sought out and talked to one another. At least so far as the Shadowwalkers had learned.
Angel told her about various Ancient artefacts that had been found throughout the galaxy.
“I'd like to see it,” she said, when he mentioned one of the more complex ones.
He took several seconds to respond. “We can not permit you to jump. You may enter alternate co-ordinates and attempt to return to your home.”
“Oh … yes … of course.”
“Are you interested genuinely, and not as a mere attempt to escape?”
“Of course.”
“Then I shall jump,” said Angel. “Shut down your ship's systems when you are ready.”
Serafin powered down the main reactor, but left the capacitors charged. Hopefully, her stealth would be able to block their signature even from the Shadowwalkers.
“Good,” said Angel. He positioned himself at the nose of the Black Cat.
That was stage one complete, anyway. Serafin worked quickly. The expert systems were shut down with the ship in this state. Using the ship's sensor feeds, she put together a composite image of Angel. In wasn't perfect – in this cold there was so little to see. But it was enough.
And there. There was where his monopole storage should be. At least, it was the place that made the most sense. She was aware she was making no more than an educated guess, and a wrong shot would likely kill her, but it was all she had. She manually aligned the laser, focusing a tiny beam, a half-millimetre wide, on the desired spot.
Even the Tethyans hadn't figured out a way to hold their immensely powerful shields up while inflating a wormhole.
The stars ahead rippled and twisted. A wormhole began to grow.
Her hand hovered over the console. She held her breath. Timing was everything. If she fired too soon, the partially-inflated wormhole would collapse and destroy them both. If she fired too late, Angel would have his shields up again.
The wormhole stabilised and began to race towards them.
Serafin fired.
The wormhole raced past them. For a moment she thought something had gone wrong – the laser hadn't fired, or she'd missed, or her target wasn't important.
But as the wormhole deflated behind them, she saw Angel's midnight blue tentacles twitch slightly and shiver. He sent her a message simultaneously: “What have you done?”
She ignored him, and began a manual burn, full acceleration, away. She restarted the reactor. While the Black Cat's expert systems were still booting up, she began an emergency jump calculation, and kept manipulating the comms, changing direction and velocity at random, just in case Angel still had something to hit her with
“I can't permit you to leave,” he said.
“I'm sorry,” she told him.
A tiny silvery thread lanced out from his body. Then it stuttered and vanished. The beam of monopoles missed her by several kilometres.
So, she'd crippled him, but not entirely.
“Jump calculations prepared,” said the Black Cat.
“Jump now!” she ordered it.
The ship stopped accelerating. Its shields dropped. This was the most vulnerable point. If Angel had time to align his monopole cannon …
A wormhole began to inflate.
It raced towards her.
The lights failed. An immense, ear-splitting boom hit her. The room trembled and lurched as the Black Cat tumbled through space.
Chapter 67: Triangulate
The floor of the shuttle was littered with chunks of computer crystal. Every piece that wasn't completely shattered had been loaded on board.
Yilva hugged a largely-intact cylinder her to her chest, staring at the dense refracted images inside it.
“Careful with that,” Srak said. “Those things are sharp.”
Agatha kicked him in his good shoulder. “Oh, leave off! You got stabbed. It's not like that hadn't happened a hundred time before!” She turned to Yilva. “Go on, girl. You keep going. You can fix this?”
“Oh, um. Perhaps!” said Yilva, her ears perking back up. “These are broken, but they aren't burned out! They might still hold some residual information we can use. The problem is that with optical crystalline memory, data is stored across the whole system.” She tapped the crystal she was holding. “But with all of these piece together, maybe I can … uh … triangulate. Make a good educated guess. It will take some work, but it is possible!”
“Good,” said Hanson. “How soon will we have an answer?”
The station had been secured, and its staff were being interrogated (mostly by the Tethyans, who had the capacity for such a thing). But they knew little, and the available intel was thin on the ground – Pierce had done an excellent job of covering his tracks. The computers in the laser control room was specialised and held no clues. The broken crystals on the floor were all they had.
“I do no know,” said Yilva. “This triangulation will take a lot of processing power. It may be days or more.”
“I don't think we have days,” said Hanson. “Pierce is missing, and he still has the Ancient artefact.”
As he spoke, he looked out the window. From behind the station, he saw a curve of rich, deep blue, glowing in the starlight. The Firmament was coming into view.
He turned back to Yilva. “Did you say processing power was your limit?”
*
In his office, Lanik called up a list of all the interrogation transcripts on his tablet. Some were still coming in, being transmitted from the Firmament.
He looked up at Moore who sat opposite him. “Are you sure that's what he said?”
“Absolutely.”
A tiny frown betrayed Lanik's concern. “I hope you're wrong.”
“I do, too,” said Moore.
Lanik did a search of the transcripts: Every mention of “Albascene” and “Eulen
” (including alternate spellings that might be transcribed from mishearing the name).
Twenty results came up immediately.
“Well,” said Moore. “This could be a problem.”
An Albascene ship amongst those that jumped away. An Albascene mentioned repeatedly by the staff. But found nowhere on the station. And – yes – some of the transcripts named him as Eulen.
There had been no jump-outs, so he was somewhere in the system.
“I'll tell the Tethyans,” said Lanik. “They might be able to see something we can't.”
“We can't leave here without him,” Moore said.
Lanik held her gaze for a moment. “Yes we can. And we may have to.”
Chapter 68: Glowing Water
Up this close, the hull of the Firmament was an immense blue wall. It was still perfectly smooth, rich with opalescent depths and haloes in a glowing effector field like a miniature atmosphere.
Hanson eased the shuttle forwards. “Are you sure this is the right location?” he asked Vyren.
“Yes,” said Vyren.
Yilva stood on the bench with her face pressed against the window. “Vyren, you have to show me around,” she murmured.
“You have work to do,” said Vyren.
“Distributed processing. I can look and work at the same time.”
Vyren's pause might have signalled exasperation. “Yes,” he said. “That is true.”
Two metres away. Just before they collided with it, the hull of the battleship formed an indentation, exactly the right size to hold the shuttle.
Hanson let it glide in under its own inertia. As soon as they were fully inside, the indentation closed behind them. All the windows showed the same smooth blue surface a few inches away.
“Welcome aboard,” said a voice over the comms. “It is safe for you to leave your craft. Understand that we do not use artificial gravity.”
There was no floor. The shuttle's doors opened onto a bubble of air a few metres across. Tethyans floated just outside the bubble's skin at eye level. The water itself glowed with soft light. In the distance, he could see variations in intensity and colour. There was no floor, just calm water.