Paying the Price (Book 5 of The Empire of Bones Saga)

by Terry Mixon

  The combined logs were there and he pulled them in. For good measure, he snagged every file the man had. He could sort them out later.

  He was sure the other him had done the same, but he verified he had the files from all of the versions of himself.

  The last Carl had died seventeen days ago. That meant they’d arrived over a span of almost seven months. He wondered if someone else was going to show up before he died.

  “There are six other versions of you, counting the one in the chair,” Talbot said. “I found a few of myself and another Doctor Leonard. The marines outside are represented, mostly. Oddly, there are a few people here that died before we found this station.”

  Talbot leaned against the wall and looked at Carl. “I have to tell you, this is spooky. What the devil is going on?”

  “Parallel universes,” Doctor Leonard said. “I found a number of files with theories in my other’s implants. And it’s obviously true. We are in fact incontrovertible proof.”

  “My other me thought he was close to a breakthrough,” Carl said. “I’ll try to finish my life’s work, if you know what I mean.”

  Talbot shook his head. “That’s dark, man. Really dark. I’ll cycle the men in to get files off their implants. Just in case there’s something useful. Then we’ll search the station while you work. We have enough air and food for a few weeks. Let’s hope it doesn’t take that long.”

  * * * * *

  Jared felt like banging his head onto the console. They had complete records of how Doctor Leonard had triggered the station into absorbing himself and the others, but now it wasn’t working.

  They’d placed a unit on the surface of the station to do exactly what Doctor Leonard did, but it just sat there. The station wasn’t interested.

  He wondered if it had to be a person. Damned if he was going to risk someone else to test the theory. They didn’t even know if the others were still alive.

  The lift doors slid open and Elise walked onto the flag bridge. She stopped beside his seat.

  “What’s the word?”

  “Not good. We think we know how they got inside, but the method isn’t working without a person. And I’m not asking anyone else to risk their lives. I’m going to fire a missile.”

  “Won’t that put them in grave danger?”

  “No worse than leaving them inside. Marcus, target the station opposite the entry point. Fire one missile and count on the radiation hashing it.”

  “At this range, that shouldn’t be an issue.”

  He nodded. “Good plan. Fire when ready.”

  The missile wouldn’t reach full speed, but it would be impressive enough. It lanced out of the tubes and slammed into the station.

  Jared eyed the debris and quickly decided most of it was from the missile.

  “The shot was ineffective, Admiral. Telemetry indicates it struck the station, but did not penetrate. The cutter we had standing by says they can’t see any damage at all. Not even a scratch.”

  He rubbed his face. “How is that possible? Even collapsed matter should dent. Right?”

  “I’m afraid my grasp of the material is weak. Obviously, it’s even stronger than we’d expected, or there’s another force stabilizing the station. In either case, I don’t believe further missiles would be very effective.”

  “No, I think you’re right. Have the crew stand down. We’ll just have to hope they find a way out for themselves.”

  * * * * *

  Persephone made it all the way out to the twelve-hour mark without finding anything exciting. Only a single stripped gas giant core. Angela supposed the science types found that exciting, but it really didn’t do anything for her.

  They stayed long enough to get some scanner readings. The radiation was lower this far out, so they were able to send in probes that lasted almost an hour. The scientists would have to make do with that.

  The technician had to take a study break while working on the hammer. It was so different from what the woman normally worked with, she needed to draw it all out and make a plan. With the grav drive set to negate its weight, it was easy to move it around.

  She called Angela and Kelsey back to the work area just after Persephone started back in. She looked tired.

  “The mechanism isn’t exactly set up for direct communication,” she told them, “but I have a plan. The only thing I don’t know is if Mister Owlet will even notice it. I’m not sure how the system is set up on his end. As he’s the authenticator, he might not have a means of receiving an incoming signal.

  “And if he does, he might not recognize the message. I settled on an old communication protocol called the Morse code. It utilizes sets of dots, dashes, and pauses to make letters and words. It’s not commonly known anymore, though. He might not have the means to understand it.”

  Kelsey nodded. “He’ll recognize some of it. I know that he’s seen some Old Earth vids where people have used it. And, if this doesn’t work, well, we’re not really suffering. It’s just a test. What are you planning to send?”

  The woman gestured toward her tablet. “I wrote out a short message. Basically, an explanation of why we called. We’ll know it worked if he sends a response of any kind. Comprehension isn’t really required.

  “I’ll mimic dots and dashes by single validation codes and closely sent trios. I’ve programed my tablet to do the hard work. All I need to do is press the button. I can resend it at intervals to allow him to try and decipher it.”

  “Do it,” Kelsey said.

  * * * * *

  Carl was flagging. He’d been up all day and it was now the middle of the night. The marines had gone into a rotation to allow some of them to sleep. The compartment was too small for them to fit into. They could pressurize the compartment, but that would waste air. Better to stay in the suits. They might need every breath before this was all over.

  He’d reviewed everything the other versions of him had discovered and recorded. The station certainly seemed as though it were trying to communicate with them. Small mobile devices occasionally ventured near the trapped men.

  A marine from one of the earlier groups had fired at one of the mobile units, but the water spoiled his aim. Thankfully, he hadn’t tried a plasma weapon. In water, that would boil them all. There’d been no hostile response to a real provocation like that, so Carl assumed that the computer wasn’t interested in killing them.

  The station had to have a computer. That much was certain. It had used those machines to lure the men to where they could salvage equipment useful in creating an airlock.

  Carl was at a loss as to how they would communicate with an alien computer. Not only was there a language barrier, they didn’t even know what it looked like.

  Hell, if the computer wanted to help them, why didn’t it open an exit? By now it had to realize the stakes.

  He almost jumped out of the chair when his implants told him that he was receiving validation signals. His fogged mind didn’t understand what that meant for a few seconds.

  Someone was using the hammer command validation system to send authentication signals to him with the entangled photons. And they were getting through!

  There was a pattern to them, too. Single signals, groups of three, and longer pauses. There was a meaning in there. His thoughts immediately went to Morse code.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t understand Morse code and had nothing on it in his implant memory.

  He smiled. He knew enough though.

  * * * * *

  Kelsey smiled when the tablet showed signals coming back. “He heard us! It really does have a long range. We’re halfway across the system! And there was no time lag. This is FTL. He’s done it!”

  “The response isn’t making sense,” the technician said. “He must not understand the code. He’s just repeating a couple of letters. S then O then S. Then it repeats.”

  That was a bucket of cold water to Kelsey’s face. “That’s a distress signal. Only used in dire circumstances. He’s in trouble.
”

  She opened a channel to the bridge. “Jack, something’s wrong back at Invincible. Flank speed.”

  “Aye, ma’am. Flank speed to the ring station. That gives us an ETA of about five hours. If I might ask, how the hell do you know that?”

  Kelsey looked over at Angela and the technician. “Three really smart people figured out a way to make it happen. I’m on my way up.”

  Chapter Ten

  Talbot listened to Carl explain the sudden communication with more hope than he’d expected. Everyone else had died, including three other versions him, and that made him think of this place as a death trap. Maybe not.

  Doctor Leonard grasped what Carl was saying immediately. “You never mentioned this quantum validation equipment. God, boy. It takes my breath away. How could you fail to grasp the implications?”

  The graduate student shrugged. “I saw them, Doctor. I just didn’t want to mention them until I did some testing. Flip points have a top range, so I’m certain this does, too.

  “It’s Princess Kelsey and Persephone. They’re still five hours away at maximum acceleration. So, at the very least, we know this will work inside a solar system. And it is FTL. Obviously. They’ve sent the alphabet in order, so I can communicate with them now.”

  The older man nodded energetically. “And it isn’t deterred by the radiation, so it’s not interacting with the environment between the sender and receiver. Also as theory predicted. Carl, this is the most significant scientific breakthrough since the Fall. Perhaps even before it, if the ability to communicate can cross stellar boundaries.”

  Carl didn’t look impressed. “It won’t do us any good if we can’t get out of here.”

  “That’s another point,” Leonard said. “It might be reaching across a universal barrier. That’s even more significant. My boy, you’ve wildly exceeded my highest hopes for you. When we get home, I’ll be submitting something to the Lucien committee on your behalf.”

  The younger man blinked. “That’s insane. I don’t even have my doctorate yet. I’ve only barely started learning.”

  “I know! The next few decades will be brilliant! Hell, the next few centuries.”

  Talbot cleared his throat. “This is all very exciting, but I’m going to side with Carl on this. If we can’t get out of here, it doesn’t make a difference to us. Did any of the other Carls try this?”

  Leonard shook his head. “There was no mention of it. Let me scan them again.”

  The scientist pulled out the scanner and took a good look at Carl. Talbot mentally tagged him Carl Prime.

  “Is it the unit behind your lungs? Excellent. We’ll see if they have similar equipment.”

  He scanned the corpses and shook his head. “None of them have it. You’re unique, even among your doubles, my boy.”

  “Well, that possibly explains why they didn’t get out of here,” Talbot said. “None of the boys have found anything that looks like an exit, and none of the scanning we’ve done inside has opened anything. The little machines are watching us, but haven’t tried to interact.

  “We have to get the admiral to trigger an opening on the surface while we’re waiting inside at the right spot. That has to be it.”

  “Major,” one of the marines outside said over the com, “you’d better come out here.”

  He excused himself from the scientific discussion and cycled out through the airlock.

  “What is it?”

  He saw it before the man spoke. The light that one of the Carls had rigged to draw people here was blinking in a series of single flashes and sets of three.

  The alien computer had sensed the quantum signals and was attempting to communicate.

  * * * * *

  Carl watched the light blink in the same style code that Kelsey had used. How was that even possible? No one could detect the quantum effects. Well, obviously the aliens could. Somehow. He’d have to dig more deeply into that, if he made it out of here.

  At least it meant there was a possible way out of here. If they could convince the computer to release them, they might live after all.

  “The first thing we need to do is find a way to talk on our end,” he said. “It can detect the quantum signals, but I can only directly communicate with the hammer. I don’t want to muddy those waters unless I have to.”

  Doctor Leonard nodded. “Quite right. Perhaps a light of our own?”

  “We need to do this at a faster speed than figuring out how to say ‘Hello World’ or some such. I’m going to try something a bit more involved. Give me a few minutes, please.”

  He stepped back over to the light and thought about the problem. The thing could obviously sense the area around the light. Otherwise, how would it know which power circuit to mess with to communicate? So, it could probably see him right now. Or whatever passed for sight for these people.

  He blinked. That might be it. “Seeing” meant different things to different species. Old Terran bats used sound to know their surroundings. So did a number of sea dwellers. The aliens might also use that to communicate.

  The computer could’ve been attempting to communicate all this time, but in their suits, they’d never know. Especially if the sound was outside the normal range of human hearing.

  He activated the scanners in his suit. They weren’t as good as a hand-held unit, but they were adequate for this task. They were also simple to integrate with his implant processors.

  Computers were fast. Faster than a human. If they could establish a communication protocol, the computers could work it out faster than he could.

  The area around him was alive with subsonic noise. Hell, even noise in the normal human hearing range. Only, they hadn’t been listening for it.

  He had his suit send out a subsonic pulse in Morse code. It was immediately repeated from somewhere near him.

  The computer was listening.

  He experimented with making the tones faster. The top speed of communication was impressive. It sounded like an electronic wail to him.

  Next, the computer needed a large sample of language to make guesses with. They had no common point of reference, so hopefully the computer could make progress on its own. Visual cues would help.

  He had a lot of video in his implant memory. He liked watching some of the same old Terran vids that Kelsey did. Perhaps if he could find a way to link that video with the Morse code, it would be a start.

  Actually, a nature documentary might be better. He liked hiking, though he rarely had time these days. Or a suitable location. If the computer could match key words and images, perhaps his implant computers could help translate.

  He didn’t have any of those, but maybe he could get some.

  Carl sent a message through the quantum link, asking if they could send some nature documentaries through the link at high speed. He knew enough about video and audio encoding to get it all back together on this end.

  All they had to do was link the computer on their end into the quantum unit and tell it to send some to him.

  That would allow him to communicate with them in a more reasonable manner, too. Once they had a mutually agreeable set of communication protocols, he could send and receive video and audio through his implants.

  Setting that up took a few minutes. Once the data started flowing in, he began assembling it. It only took a few seconds. He’d built a lot of data throughput into the unit for future growth.

  Once the first was complete, he instructed his implants to keep exchanging data until the two units could understand one another.

  The process was unreal. He played the vids through his suit projector on the bulkhead at a fast pace. The implants translated the audio track into Morse. The high-speed squeals of Morse from the computer made him go faster, and then even faster.

  Then he became a bystander as his implants and the computer traded increasingly complex series of code that were more complex than Morse. It included a large amount of data. They were creating a shared language, he thought.


  Which was crazy. His implants weren’t that advanced.

  That’s when he realized it wasn’t just his implants. It was also communicating with someone through his quantum validation unit at an incredible rate. A ton of data was flowing in both directions.

  It was using the already established link between the quantum unit and the computer on the other end to speed the process. His implants were acting as a go-between. He only hoped the others didn’t freak out and cut them off.

  He initiated a communications request and slipped it into the torrent of data flowing between him and the computer.

  * * * * *

  Kelsey was still trying to grasp what was happening when her implants pinged with an incoming communication request. It was Carl Owlet.

  He must’ve figured out some way to use the quantum validation unit to communicate directly. That was excellent. She accepted the request.

  “Carl? Are you alright?”

  “Kelsey? Thank God we got ahold of someone. We’re okay, but trapped inside the station. Things are really odd in here. I think we really did find aliens. Just not live ones.”

  That was pretty clear, she thought. “We’re sending the movies you requested and I allowed Persephone to respond to the other information requests because it was you. What’s happening?”

  “The computer here—at least I think it’s a computer—sensed the quantum communication and we’re trying to teach it enough to interact with us. My implants are requesting data to find common ground with it. We’re hoping that we can get enough clarity to tell it we need to leave. Where are you?”

  “Halfway across the system. Congratulations on creating the first FTL communications system, by the way. This is huge.”

  “It’s been a big week for me. Talbot, Doctor Leonard, and a dozen marines are here with me. And we found incontrovertible proof that there are parallel universes.”