by Barry Kirwan
Micah witnessed the time Kat saved Chahat-Me’s life and prevented a catastrophe, and the scene on Ossyria Prime where Pierre had given the Ossyrian High Council slender hope of reaching Level Nine status. Finally, there was Micah’s recent wake-up call for Chahat-Me to be prepared to fight once again, which she now accepted. He understood from the transmission that she saw it as a necessary precarious step to overcome their current predicament, despite its attendant risk of species regression to a more hostile state.
But there was more: he saw secret Ossyrian debates – his resident providing a basic translation – that had recurred throughout millennia, over whether to ‘reintegrate’ their original aggressive nature with their now more disciplined minds, to reach natural Level advancement. They had been holding back, out of conservatism and fear of Tla Beth retribution. Micah realised he had forced their hand, and now Chahat-Me embraced it.
The freeflow shut off, and Micah blinked open his eyes. Frowning, he said “Some steps forward can’t be retraced,” thinking again of the human predicament, but then he smiled, and placed a hand on Chahat-Me’s shoulder, leaning on her for support. “You’ve just added a bit of yang to a lot of yin. Better that way.”
His back pain eased off, his nannites having finished some local re-engineering, and he straightened. Gabriel was two decks away prepping the Hohash craft. He turned to Petra. “Which Q’Roth ship should we head for?”
Petra studied the console displays. “The Crucible is closest. The Marauder is still far out, though… oh crap!” She raised her wristcom to her mouth. “Gabriel, a Raptor has just left the Marauder, headed for Esperia.” She glanced nervously at Micah, then listened again. “I just intercepted a broad spectrum message from someone named Tarish onboard the Marauder. It’s set to self-destruct. Louise is aboard a Raptor loaded with Nova bombs, and...”
She turned to Micah, her eyes pleading. “Kat!” she said, gripping his shoulders. “My mother must be on the Marauder, she was with Louise.”
Micah weighed the risks: if Louise destroyed Esperia, they were all doomed anyway, and if the Marauder was on self-destruct then going there would only add to the casualty list, even if they could get there in time to help, which was doubtful. He ignored Petra’s pleading eyes and put his hand at the back of her neck, pulling her face into his shoulder as he spoke into his wristcom. “Gabriel, go, stop Louise’s Raptor any way you can.”
Petra’s fingers dug into his flesh. He held her tighter. He whispered, trying to soothe her. “Kat’s a survivor, Petra.”
A klaxon sounded, and Petra pushed off. “Life support’s failing. The pyramid is dying.”
Chahat-Me confirmed it. “Time to leave. You come with us. Attack Crucible.”
Petra drew in a long breath. “You’re damned right, godmother. Whoever they are on that ship, we’re going to fucking tear them apart.”
The Ossyrian leader’s quicksilver eyes drew back, narrowing, a snake-like yellow tinge backlighting them. Micah was suddenly very glad the Ossyrians were on his side.
* * *
Gabriel stood legs splayed aboard the small saucer-shaped Hohash craft, and activated the gravitic brace that would secure him in place against any radical manoeuvres. Relaxing his vision, he accessed the neural interface developed by Virginia when she was just fourteen years old. He felt a sudden pang, wondering how she fared down on the planet – he didn’t believe in intuition, but he also couldn’t ignore a deep foreboding chewing away at his insides.
The Hohash on the craft sprang to life. In the few times back on Esperia when he had ‘connected’ with one during flight training, it had felt impersonal, like using a passive tool. This time there was a rapport, a synergy, and he realised they were a team – and more – he sensed the Hohash had its own ideas.
The saucers were slow but could execute micro-jumps, and Gabriel’s mind reached out, piggy-backing the Hohash sensors. At first it was too much information, and he was reminded how sophisticated these ancient, enigmatic artifacts were. Focusing on the region around Esperia, his Hohash-enhanced perception clarified. It wasn’t that he saw the Crucible, the Spiker, the Marauder and the lone Raptor heading for Esperia, rather he simply knew where and what they were, in their relative positions, like knowing where your limbs are in the dark, and what they were capable of.
Louise’s Raptor fired five of the infamous Sclarese Nova bombs. Even one of them would make light work of Esperia. He initiated the first jump to halve the distance between him and the missiles. A moment later as he returned to normal space-time, two of the bombs ignited simultaneously, which he felt through the interface-Hohash medium as heat rather than the blinding light he knew they would create, effervescent suns snuffing out within seconds. His ship lurched sideways but the brace held him in place. The Hohash remained stationary and flashed a lattice of silver threads across its mirror-like face. Gabriel had no idea what it represented.
Gabriel’s genned mind could truly multi-task, and he calculated and executed the next jump while simultaneously trying to understand what the Hohash was showing him. He didn’t get it until it showed a picture of the creatures laying the gossamer trails. Executing the jump, he perceived three remaining missiles snaking their way to Esperia. At least they had slowed down – presumably trying to avoid the threads – they were Level Nine missiles, after all. Louise’s ship doubled back, making steady progress toward the Crucible.
The image on the Hohash of the creatures laying down the threads mesmerised him. Like every Genner, Gabriel had studied Earth’s entire catalogue of life-forms, including marine varieties, and he was reminded of a ray as he watched a group of five blue-and-green spotted creatures swimming through space. Their wings were lined with semi-organic tech whose edges fizzed and glimmered with a rainbow sheen. The leader was smaller, and each of the others, in a tight square formation, exuded a thin white thread, spindling it between them before letting it stretch and drag behind. He had no idea whether this was good or bad news. Maybe it would impede the Crucible; but that made no difference if even a single bomb got through.
Gabriel jumped his ship, calculating that he could only reach one of the bombs in time, and even then it was not clear how he could stop it. When he came out of the jump, space as shown on the Hohash didn’t look normal: no pinprick stars or sprawling distant nebulas. Instead he saw fuzzy blobs of washed-out grey against a background of bulbous pockets of sepia and black. Further behind, shadows waxed and waned… Gabriel wondered: dark matter? Dark energy? Am I witnessing subspace? Genners had speculated that the Hohash could transit through subspace. But why was the Hohash showing him these images, when it had never shown anyone before?
Just as he was about to jump, the Hohash plucked his mind like a guitar string, commanding him to watch. It flicked to a normal space view superimposed on what he was now convinced was subspace. The third bomb exploded: hotter and closer, casting a normally unseen web of orange ‘feelers’ out into space, trying to make contact before they fizzled into oblivion. One of them encountered a trail of white threads from the rays, and raced along its length until it found the Shrell quintet. Gabriel winced as the five rays glowed red, blazing before effervescing into a shower of sparks. They were gone.
The Marauder, far behind him, engulfed by its own self-destruct system boosted by a Nova bomb, exploded in a flash of white. Two small craft fled from it, one caught in the explosion’s wake that he felt like a burn on his skin. He prayed Kat was on the other one, for Petra’s sake. He suddenly thought of their kiss. She’d cared for him – in that way – all those years, and never once said anything… But there was no time.
Two bombs left. He had to make a choice. Only one way to stop it. Jump right in front of it so it would detonate, taking him and the Hohash craft in the explosion. So be it. He thanked Ramires for preparing his instincts all these years, preventing him from hesitating when it most mattered. For the first time in a long while he thought of the father he’d never known, and had a Steader-like desire t
o make him proud. He shook it away. Picking one of the bombs, he calculated the required jump, which had to be absurdly precise, taking into account a dozen parameters shifting every millisecond. This time it required his full attention.
With the remainder of his mental capacity, Gabriel considered his existence, about to be lost. Images of Virginia, Petra, Sandy and Ramires flickered through his mind’s eye. But he found himself again thinking about the father he had never known, and realised why.
Sister Esma had killed his real father, and now he too would die, but without achieving the revenge for which he had prepared and trained all his life. It was a failure, and even his last act might prove futile if the other bomb got through, as was likely. Yet he had to try, for all the people down on the planet, and – he couldn’t ignore it – for the father he’d never known. Many Genners didn’t believe in an afterlife, but for the first time he wondered if there was one, in which case he might finally get to meet the legendary Sentinel.
As soon as the calcs were done, he didn’t waste a second, and executed the final jump. But even as he did so, he felt what could only be described as a mental jab from the Hohash, nudging one of the jump parameters by an almost infinitesimal amount. He glared at the mirror. What have you just done? Gabriel held his breath.
* * *
Genaspa flapped her broad wings together so hard they slapped, sending a frisson through her body. Four teams had already been taken by the Nova bomb’s leakage into subspace. She thought-commanded: “Nasjana, all of you, stop the poisoning immediately! Retreat from the planet, return to the system perimeter.”
But five teams were already too close to Esperia, too enmeshed in their own webs. If one more bomb ignited… she had known the males would be lost, but not the females – all of who would be pregnant now… Curse these missiles, this interaction had never been seen before, never predicted. She watched the small craft sliding across hidden space toward one of the bombs. Very well, she decided, and headed for the other, the one closest to Esperia.
Nasjana thought-directed her: “First, what you do today –”
“Listen clear, Nasjana. Qorall holds the entire thirteenth and sixteenth Shrell flocks captive in the Syntaran sector. Tell Hellera they must be freed.”
Genaspa used Nasjana’s shocked pause to concentrate, drawing up close behind the missile, zooming in with her senses to see Esperia’s landscape take on detail, a scab-like mark on the Southern continent indicating a town; no, two, side by side. She thought-directed to all remaining Shrell: “Nasjana is First now. Tell true, tell all Shrell of today.”
With a painful effort she thrust ahead so she could glide, and then emerged into normal space. It felt heavy, thick, impure, cluttered. But Genaspa knew it was transitory. Wrapping her wings around the missile casing, she enveloped it, her flesh impervious to its temperature, though she could not survive long in this embrace with the bomb’s intense radiation. She exhaled a glistening cocoon, drawn from her own intestines, which billowed around her and the missile. Genaspa slowed its progress, but it had too much momentum for her to stop it in time. Far below, using her long-vision, buildings became visible, small human figures in between, running around; as if anything they could do would ever matter in the larger scheme of things.
Continuing to exhale, folding her life force around the missile, she dragged it into subspace. It was then that she felt something watching her. Impossible, we cannot be seen here. Her body shook, still continuing the outbreath, her life force failing, her body crumpling as the sheath solidified around the bomb. But the sense-presence, the basis of thought-directed communication across subspace, was irrefutable. Just before she and the bomb passed straight through the planet’s crust, she saw the spiders standing atop a ridge, watching her.
So, Hellera, this is what you lock down, this is what you protect.
It was her last thought.
* * *
Nasjana and two other teams found the missile sailing onwards, a turquoise sheath covering it, all that remained of their First. Nasjana collected her flock and informed them their mission was over, that it was time to go home. She instructed two teams to tow the missile back, so as to preserve Genaspa’s remains all the way to their domain, and because Shrell did not leave dangerous weapons floating in sub-space.
Nasjana had learned something on this mission: that a First does not tell all. She pondered the news of captive Shrell being held by Qorall, and Hellera’s involvement in the poisoning of this sector of space. Such elevated species would never normally listen to Shrell, let alone entertain demands.
As the remaining, worn-out teams found their rhythm under her lead, leaving the Esperian system behind, Nasjana considered that in their entire history, measuring millions of years, Shrell had never coveted anything from normal space-time, least of all a weapon. But this missile – still functional – might be useful somewhere in the near future. Nasjana had lived by two maxims all her life, as had her forebears and peers: Tell true; Tell all. Now she added a new one, by which she vowed they would make a stand, no longer idly serving the whims of their masters: Tell hard.
* * *
When Gabriel emerged from the jump the craft was darkened, violet-lit. It was exactly where he had been a moment before and yet felt completely different. He took a step back, his shoulders nudging the small ship’s hull. The lozenge-shaped Nova Stormer filled the length of the Hohash craft. It hung a metre off the floor, its surface difficult to focus on, like morphing shades of grey – some kind of stealth camouflage. He blinked several times but could not resolve it. It was within arm’s reach, except he wasn’t sure where its surface was exactly, as if there was a translucent shell around it. He realised it was making a bass humming noise, just within his enhanced range of hearing. The pitch rose an octave; his instincts told him that wasn’t good.
But what unnerved him were the yellow ellipses with black diamonds inside – like eyes – that kept opening on its casing for a few seconds then disappearing, only to appear somewhere else on its shell. Sensors. Tearing his sight from the missile’s mesmerising body, he glanced towards the blunt end, a mosaic of palm-size triangular mirrors resembling Ossyrian schematics he’d seen, ion thrusters for fine manoeuvring.
Gabriel glanced at the Hohash mirror – it was vibrating – no, it was shaking. Its mirror face swirled with purples and mauves, bathing the entire ship in eerie light. He wondered if the intelligent missile realised it had been captured. The Hohash was making a supreme effort to hold the missile there, probably confusing its sensor array, and the missile’s intelligent defence systems were fighting back. The two devices were locked in a titanic, invisible struggle.
Gabriel decided to put them all out of their misery, unholstered his pulse pistol and aimed at the bullet-nosed front end. But a pain stabbed behind his eyes, and the gun fell from loosened fingers. The Hohash: he hadn’t disconnected from the neural interface, and clearly it wanted him to do something else. Looking up, he saw blueprints flash across the Hohash mirror’s face.
“Are you serious?” he said, even as he memorised the translated instructions. One line struck him – the gamma radiation output and dosage bands for one of these missiles once launched – well beyond human tolerance levels. At that point, he knew he was dead already – or would be within an hour. He thought about Virginia in that moment, wishing he could hold her one final time. But the missile’s pitch kicked up a note, pulsing with a deep throb, and he let the thought go.
Gabriel considered what his father would have done, and went to find one of the external encounter suits, donning it to increase the amount of time he could work, and then approached the missile’s nose. A cracking noise made him turn around. With alarm, he saw a hairline fracture on the Hohash mirror’s surface. He placed a gloved hand on the artifact’s outer rim. “I’ll work as fast as I can.”
The missile’s shell near his hands glistened, and then a hole opened up, the size of a man’s head. The hole’s edges crackled, spitting s
parks, as if the missile’s defences were trying to close it, and several eyes opened up on the casing, remaining open just beyond the hole’s perimeter. He reached inside with his right hand and touched the metal casing, but it felt like mud. He pushed through, until his shoulder brushed the fizzing edges of the shield, making him flinch.
Another splinter cracked on the Hohash, even as the missile’s pitch rose again, pulsing faster. But he found the device he was looking for, a studded metallic ball he needed to rotate in a series of precise movements. His hand was getting hot, even inside the suit’s protective glove. He tried to distract himself from the pain, using Genner concentration techniques, but he knew his body and brain were being irradiated, and it would soon affect his cognitive functioning. Curiously, it made him smile. Well, Micah, soon I might get to feel what it’s like to be a Steader. His smile froze. A whirlpool of emotions washed through his mind. He had always stayed away from Steaders, kept a distance, even from his parents. Too late now, and no time to indulge in remorse, or to change who he had been all his life.
The heat became too intense, and Gabriel, beginning to smell his own flesh burn, pulled his right arm out. Extracting his hand from the confines of the suit, ugly blisters laced his bloated fingers, and brown fluid oozed from his knuckles. The suit was constraining him too much. He climbed out of it, and thrust his left arm deep inside the body of the missile, searching by feel for the initiator, his head an inch from the energy field, tingling his scalp with static. At last he felt a sucking then a ‘plop’, and the ball released. He kept his thumb pressed down on a stud. He tugged the ball through the mud-like body and it came out clean. Gabriel was surprised to find it was like a baseball, shifting grey and white hatching all over its surface, certainly the most beautiful explosive device he’d ever seen.