“For a change,” Ganfer echoed.
“You can be replaced by a music disk, Bucket of Bolts!” she growled.
“How old are Knaught Points?”
“Who knows? Spacers have been using and monitoring them since we first discovered how to use them. There's been no change in the last hundred years, but that's no time at all on the cosmic scale.”
“Do you think the others, the people before the Commonwealth, knew how to use them?”
“Maybe.” Lin settled back in her seat. She still watched the computer simulation, but her gaze wasn't focused. “Some people say the First Civ knew how to travel to other dimensions, other universes, even through time.”
“Really?”
“It's all theory, Bain. No matter how impressive their accomplishments might have been, remember this: they couldn't handle all their technology and advances. They destroyed themselves. Whatever happened back then, it was pretty bad. A lot of the colonies that we've rediscovered, the worlds of the Conclave, they remember something horrible, and that's why they won't have anything to do with us.”
“They must have been really bad, evil people,” he half-whispered.
“Either evil, or just incredibly stupid.”
“The Mashrami ship is moving,” Ganfer reported.
“What?” Lin sat forward and slapped a few buttons, bringing up more data screens. “They can hardly hold themselves together, much less move.”
Despite the evidence on the screen, the Mashrami ship was, indeed, changing its course and heading away from them. For a moment, Bain wondered if the Mashrami knew they were there, and were running away. If that were true, it meant the aliens were far more damaged than Sunsinger's sensors detected.
“Where are they going?” Bain said.
“Where do animals go when they're injured? Where do we go when we get hurt?” Lin said, a slow smile stretching her lips.
“They go home.” He felt a little breathless at the idea.
No one knew where the Mashrami home world was. No one knew if the Mashrami even had a home world, or what it could be like. The ship that found the Mashrami home world would do more toward winning the war than five thousand squadrons of ships loaded with the most deadly weapons Human scientists could create.
“Consider.” She turned in the chair to face him, and counted off the points on her fingers. “They haven't detected us yet, despite us coming so close and raking them with sensors for the last hour. They aren't attacking us—maybe they can't attack us. Maybe their sensors are so damaged they can barely navigate. They could be running on automatic pilot, things are so bad in there. This is a good chance to get really close and learn all we can about them. A damaged but functioning Mashrami ship is still a better source of data than a dead ship we re-assembled without a manual.”
“We should tell Captain Gil.”
“I know. But how long will it take for a message burst or a drone to reach him? Suppose he suffered more damage than we did? By the time we find him and then come back here and then try to figure out where the Mashrami went...” She shook her head. Her smile trembled a little. Her face was pale, but her eyes sparkled with the challenge. “This is a chance we don't dare pass up, Bain. We owe it to the Human race.”
She turned back to face the screen with the simulated Mashrami ship. Lin studied it for ten long seconds, then nodded.
“We're going. Put everything you can into a message burst and a probe, and send them both hunting for Gil. We'll try to leave messages and sign posts so they can follow our trail, but we can't wait for them. We're following the Mashrami.”
* * * *
“Approaching a Knaught Point,” Ganfer announced, after twelve hours of following the Mashrami ship.
“It's about time,” Lin muttered. She glanced over at Bain. “Ready?”
“Another minute.” Bain's fingers danced over the controls to store the last few bits of data on the recorder pod they would leave for the Rangers. He thought he understood now how Lin could work so fast without looking at her board. It was second nature which buttons to push, and in what sequence. His fingers knew what to do, without his mind telling him.
Sunsinger had twenty data pods ready for information storage. It was more than Lin or Bain had ever thought they would need, but redundancy was the key to survival in space. Every five hours, Bain had filled a pod with all the new information they had learned about the Mashrami ship, and launched it. Besides leaving a trail the Rangers could follow, it guaranteed that nothing would be lost if the crew of Sunsinger made a mistake and got themselves destroyed.
“I'll go up and prepare for the transition,” Lin said. “You stay down here, and I'll send the angle and speed for you to store and eject. You'll only have about fifteen seconds between the time the Mashrami go through and when we hit the Knaught Point. Ready?”
Bain nodded and forced himself to grin. Fifteen seconds wasn't much time. He knew he could do it in ten, but what if he made a mistake and had to backtrack his keystrokes?
He didn't realize until Lin had floated up to the hatch into the dome that he wouldn't be able to get into the dome during transition. He would miss seeing the Knaught Point approach, and he wouldn't feel the music flowing around the ship. Bain swallowed his disappointment, and concentrated on preparing the probe for instant ejection. He had a job to do. Being a Spacer meant doing things he didn't like, and putting off the fun things until there was time.
Bain watched the readings coming from the Mashrami ship as it approached the Knaught Point only a few kilometers ahead of Sunsinger. Its energy readings interested him the most. Either the Mashrami used up its energy at an alarming rate, or something was drastically wrong with it. The energy gradient had dropped fourteen percent in the last twelve hours. If Sunsinger lost that much of its reserves in such a short time, Bain knew Lin would have shut down all engines and every non-essential shipboard function until she found out what was wrong. Either the Mashrami didn't know or didn't care or they were too frightened by the damage caused by the energy flux to think clearly.
“That's good for us, I suppose,” he muttered.
“What is, Bain?” Ganfer asked.
“It's good the Mashrami are making so many mistakes. If they were careful, they'd be shooting at us.”
“They likely don't have the energy to attack or chase us.”
“Maybe they're ignoring us?” He hadn't thought of that before. “Must be driving them crazy, knowing we're here, following them, and they can't do anything to make us go away. Do you think that's why they're going into the Knaught Point? They're trying to lose us?”
“Possibly.”
“Ganfer, what if they're taking us straight to a bunch of Mashrami ships who can shoot at us?”
“Lin has me watching for that electromagnetic pulse we think is their communication frequency. If that is sent, then we must decide quickly whether to turn around or hide.”
“Oh.” Bain wondered when that order had been given. While he was napping, or washing up in the sanitary? Twelve hours was a long time to try to stay awake and see and hear everything happening around him.
“Five minutes,” Lin said, her voice coming through his collar link. “Ready?”
“Ready.” He reached over and pressed two green buttons, then tapped in the access code that would open the navigational computer into the data files of the probe. Bain grinned when he realized he had done it—and done it right—without looking. He then started punching in the commands that would ready the probe and the ejection tube for launch.
Bain closed his eyes and tried to relax. Faintly, like something heard from far down the hall of a huge, echoing building, he heard a soft chiming sound. It traveled up and down the scale lightly as a tiny bird. Bain smiled and let the music merge with his heartbeats and the sound of his breathing. It wasn't as good as being in the dome where he could see the swirls of light and energy and the pulsing dots of the Knaught Points, but Lin was right—he could hear the music of
space anywhere.
“Thirty seconds!” Lin called.
Bain sat forward, opened his eyes, and held his hands at ready over the controls. He watched the chronometer, the red numbers changing with almost painful slowness.
At fifteen, his eyes flickered over to the screen that read off the coordinates which were Sunsinger's destination for the transition. Bain tapped one purple button. A green light came on for the probe, indicating data transfer. He slapped his hand down on the switch that closed the computer link and launched the probe two seconds later.
“Done,” he whispered, and let himself fall back against his chair. It wasn't as dramatic in free-fall, but he still grinned at the thump of the cushion against his back. Bain reached up and pushed his hair out of his face, and felt a moment of shock when he felt hot sweat beading on his forehead.
“Through!” Lin called.
Bain closed his eyes and gripped the sides of his chair and held his breath. The world turned inside out and upside down and then righted itself. His stomach twisted slightly, but that was all the indication that the ship had successfully made the transition of the Knaught Point.
“Ganfer, what would have happened if we were damaged, but we didn't know it, and we couldn't go through the Knaught Point?”
“We might not be here. Or, we might have emerged at a different Knaught Point from the Mashrami.”
“I heard that, you doubters,” Lin said. A moment later she emerged from the door of the storage closet that hid the ladder into the dome. She grinned at them, and zipped across the bridge to her chair. “Mashrami are forty kilometers away and slowing. Just what I thought.” She tapped the screen that showed the Mashrami ship's energy levels. “They lost energy going through that transition. Down eight percent from their level entering the Knaught Point.”
“Good for us, bad for them,” Bain muttered.
“Exactly. How was it down here during transition?”
“It's all right, I guess. Feels a little weird, not being able to see what's going on.”
“Sorry. Until the Mashrami get to where they're going or they run out of energy or the Rangers catch up, I think you're going to be stuck down here working on the pods.”
“Oh.” Bain shrugged and tried to tell himself he really didn't care. He was crew, he was kin, nothing in the universe could take him away from Sunsinger, so what did it matter if he missed going through a few Knaught Points?
All the same, he felt disappointed.
“This is important, Bain. We're doing something no one in the Fleet or the Rangers or any science probes have been able to do.” Lin reached over and squeezed his shoulder. “You did a good job already. Nine seconds from the time I sent the coordinates to the time you launched the pod.”
“Nine?” He sat up straight and grinned. That was better than he had hoped.
* * * *
Four hours later, the Mashrami led them through another Knaught Point. Bain sent the pod out to find the Rangers in eleven seconds. The Mashrami's energy level dropped by ten percent.
Lin spent two hours studying all the new data coming off the Mashrami ship, and decided it would be safe to get closer. Unless the aliens were playing an elaborate game, and leading Sunsinger into a trap, they were too badly damaged and drained to waste energy on rear sensors or weapons.
Sunsinger increased speed just enough that when the Mashrami approached another Knaught Point, the gap between the two ships had decreased by two kilometers.
Bain managed to get the data pod out in ten seconds this time, and the Mashrami's energy dropped another seven percent.
“If they keep this up, they're going to be down to life support and no engines,” Lin said, after another hour of studying the new figures coming through the sensors.
“Maybe they're so afraid they're crazy?” Bain offered.
“Could be. I know one thing, though.” She turned away from the screen, and rubbed hard at her eyes. “If the two of us don't take a break for food and sleep sometime soon, we're the ones they're going to be labeling crazy.”
“What if the Mashrami are tricking us?” He glanced at the computer simulation, half-expecting to find the Mashrami ship turning around and raising enough energy to fire on them just because Lin had mentioned taking a break.
“Ganfer is watching. He can go without food and rest far longer than we can. It's your turn to cook. I'll stay on watch while you fix lunch—no, supper.” Lin glanced at the chronometer, and shook her head in feigned dismay. “After we eat, we'll take turns on four hour rest breaks. Got it?”
Bain nodded and pushed himself out of his chair to fly over to the galley. There was no use arguing with Lin when she got that flat tone to her voice. She had made up her mind. Rest and food were nothing to joke or argue about with her.
He knew she was right when the first tendril of steam from the hot, spicy stew reached his nose. Bain's stomach twisted and growled. It felt like months since he had eaten breakfast, instead of hours.
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Chapter Twelve
“They're going to use up nearly everything they have, going through this one,” Lin said.
On the screen, the Mashrami ship simulation had turned nearly brown, with white, web-like lines of stress connecting red spots of damage and yellow dots of power leakage.
A Knaught Point was only two hours away. The Mashrami ship headed straight for it. If the aliens knew they were being followed, they didn't make any effort to increase speed or vary their course to lose Sunsinger. Bain knew they probably couldn't afford to use up the energy such maneuvers would require. He almost felt sorry for the aliens.
“This is probably the last Knaught Point,” she continued, after a few moments of silence and no comment from either Ban or Ganfer. “On the other side, we either get some answers, or the Mashrami ship is effectively dead in space.”
“What do we do?” Bain asked.
“Wait until we see what's there, then figure out our next move. It doesn't pay to plan too far ahead.” She nodded at the simulation on the screen. “I think I'll try to get some sleep before we reach the Knaught Point.”
Bain spent the waiting time checking through his records made of the last several days. He read through the multiple screens of scientific data Lin had gleamed through both passive and aggressive sensors, and all the notations she had made of her own interpretation of the facts. Lin hadn't held back on any of her speculations about the cause of the energy wave, and why the Mashrami had reacted as they did. She even put in notations for historical precedent and even zoological parallels.
“Ganfer, do you think Lin would be happy as a scientist if she wasn't a Spacer?” Bain asked, about an hour and ten minutes into his study.
“Do you mean, instead of being a Spacer, or if she wasn't allowed to be a Spacer?” the ship-brain asked.
“Well ... I guess, if she hadn't been born a Spacer, would she have been happy as a scientist?”
“Lin isn't happy caught in one place. She enjoys learning, but she enjoys moving and being free to move, the freedom to see new things and come back to them whenever she wishes. As a scientist, she would have to put in many years of study in one place to prove herself before she would be permitted the roving life.”
“Oh, so you think she wouldn't have been happy.”
“I don't honestly know. So much of what we are is dictated by the things that happen to us, and our reactions to them. If Lin had been born on one planet and grew up there, her parents might not have died, she wouldn't have spent so many years with only me for company, and many other changes would not have occurred to her. Do you understand?”
“Yeah.” He grinned and pressed the button to scroll up to the next section of analysis of the Mashrami's damage in the energy tsunami. “Like Lin says, be happy with where you are, and forget about the ‘might have been,’ because Fi'in knows what is best for us.”
“Exactly.”
At precisely one hour a
nd fifteen minutes, Lin pushed aside the curtain in her cubicle and flew across the bridge to the control station. She looked over the information on the screens, checked to see what had changed, and nodded.
“Everything looks good. Has the power drop been consistent?”
“Pretty consistent.” Bain tapped a few keys, and brought up screens from two hours ago. He highlighted two columns of information, and compared them to the current reading on the power levels in the Mashrami ship. “The drop has been gradually increasing, but no sudden changes.”
“They're going to be nearly dead in the water—dead in space, rather, when we all get out on the other side of the Knaught Point.” Lin raked her fingers through her hair and twisted it into a knot at the base of her neck. “It'll all be over soon, one way or another.” She pushed off the chair, aimed at the door leading up to the dome, then caught the back of the chair with her foot and pulled herself back. “Bain, I just want you to know—if anything happens—I'm glad we found each other. It's been pure joy being your teacher, and I'm proud to be your kin.”
She squeezed his shoulder once, then pushed off and zipped over to the open door. Bain didn't have a chance to react to her words, and he was glad. He didn't have the slightest idea what to say. Bad enough that his throat closed up, and he felt his eyes get hot and wet. He didn't want to say something totally stupid.
“Please, Fi'in, don't let anything go wrong,” Bain whispered. “Please take care of us.”
Sunsinger went through the Knaught Point without a moment of hesitation, without a rumble of engine trouble, without a flicker of any kind of equipment failure. Bain sent off the data pod for the Rangers in nine seconds, and barely noticed. When Sunsinger emerged from the Knaught Point, Bain gripped the front of the console, held his breath and stared at the data scrolling up the screens. He refused to blink, afraid he would miss something.
One screen came to life in the exact middle of the far wall. It was twice as large as the other screens, and was reserved for one specific purpose.
Dead World [Sunsinger Chronicles Book 3] Page 10