Forgotten Worlds

by D. Nolan Clark

  Debris is falling on the city, she rebroadcast. Many of us will be injured if we don’t find a way to stop this battle. The humans will kill each other, and their blood will be on our claws. Letting the humans die is a shameful thing, when we can prevent it.

  The thoughts echoed and bounced around the Choir’s harmony, growing louder, demanding more attention. Eventually—maybe—she could sway them, change the song the Choir sang.

  But that was going to take time. Too much time. There had to be—

  Without warning, Rain-on-Stones pulled her claws away from Bury’s body. A moment later the sick bay lurched as something struck the ship from outside, sending her instruments clattering to the floor.

  Of course, Ginger thought—the surgeon had been warned the cruiser was about to be hit. The choristers watching from the city below had seen the attack coming. If Ginger had thought to look, if she’d been better at harmonizing, she would have seen it herself.

  She looked down at Bury, on the bed. If Rain-on-Stones hadn’t moved her claws in time would she have torn him open? He might have died, right then.

  As if nothing had happened, Rain-on-Stones reached once more into the bloody mess of Bury’s abdomen, then lifted a piece of shrapnel free and stepped away. The sick bay’s medical drone lowered its arms to start stitching him up, closing the incision the alien surgeon had made.

  She desperately wanted to know if—

  He will live, Rain-on-Stones told her.

  “Not if you don’t open this wormhole,” she said. “Centrocor will kill him. They’ll kill everyone on this ship, including me and you.”

  That is not necessary, Rain-on-Stones told her. You and I can go down to the city. The Choir will protect you.

  “If I agree to join you,” she said. “To spend the rest of my life here. So you can speak to humans.”

  The chorister didn’t need to say yes. Ginger hadn’t been asking a question—she already knew how the Choir felt.

  “I—” she started to reply, started to think of how to say no in a way that wouldn’t completely antagonize the Choir, but of course—they already knew her feelings, too. And she had it. She saw what she needed to do. What she had to do if she was going to save Bury, and Lieutenant Candless, and Lieutenant Ehta, and everyone else on the ship. All of her friends.

  You do not want to be one of us.

  But you will.

  “Open the wormhole,” she said, making it clear.

  She looked down at Bury’s sleeping face. Knowing she would never see him again, as long as she lived.

  “Open the wormhole, and I’ll stay. I’ll join you, as one of the Choir.”

  Candless threw her stick forward and dove over the side of the destroyer, rolling over on her back so she could rake the big ship’s side with her PBWs. Even as it focused its fire on her BR.9, she blasted guns off its side, tore through its hull plates. The damage looked extensive, but she knew it was mostly cosmetic. Until she could load another disruptor, she had little chance of actually hurting the Peltast.

  Maybe she would live long enough to get that chance. Centrocor’s fighters were keeping their distance, perhaps afraid of shooting at her when if they missed they might hit one of their own line ships. Flak burst all around her but she ignored it, ignored the flaming debris that clotted on her canopy, ignored the red lights and warning chimes sounding all around her.

  She swung around underneath the destroyer and saw its belly was less covered in guns than its upper decks. She reached for her weapons board and started the involved process of loading another disruptor round. Before she could get it ready, however, a Sixty-Four swept into view right ahead of her, its guns already firing. She twisted over on her side and tried to shoot back, but she was at a bad angle and she knew she would never penetrate its vector field. This is it, she thought—she’d taken ridiculous risks, thrown herself into a suicidally dangerous mission, and now she was going to pay for that foolishness, her long career boiling down to this one moment, this one dogfight—

  But then the Sixty-Four burst apart, its airfoils twisting away and its engine wreathed in flames. The wreckage fell away, toward the city of the Choir, and she saw one of Valk’s pilotless BR.9s zooming in to take up a position at her side. Her tactical board showed her three more on the way.

  “What are you doing?” she asked. “Do you think that perhaps you’d be more useful guarding the cruiser?”

  “I know I let you down before. I know maybe Bury is going to die because of me. But damn it, let me help you now. You can make it out of here, if I sacrifice a couple of my fighters. I’ve run through the simulations. It’ll work.”

  “Last time I checked this was a fight to the death. Our collective death. Why bother escaping, when there’s nowhere to go?”

  “Look.”

  “Look where? I don’t see any … thing …”

  Until she did, of course.

  She saw beams of rushing plasma plunging upward from the city’s lighthouses, energy that twisted into a wreath of blinding sparks. At the far end of the bubble, on the other side of the Hoplite, the plasma swirled and flared, spinning itself into a ring of pure light. As fast as the ring appeared it seemed to consume itself and then it was gone, vanishing into nothing.

  In its place it left a broad, colorless sphere of distorted spacetime, like a glass lens hovering in air, just in front of the cruiser’s nose. A wormhole throat.

  “He did it,” Candless whispered. “He convinced them.”

  Lanoe called her on the general band then. “Everyone back onboard! We’re getting the hell out of here, right now!”

  Lanoe’s BR.9 was a mass of frayed wires and scorched panels. He didn’t bother being gentle as he swung inside the cruiser’s vehicle bay and parked the fighter in a docking cradle, nor did he bother lowering his canopy—he just wriggled out through the gaping hole and ran over to the railing, getting out of the way as Candless and one of Valk’s fighters came screaming inside. One by one the others arrived, and slotted themselves perfectly into their cradles. Of the eight Valk had flown simultaneously, only three returned, the rest having been destroyed.

  Lanoe worked his wrist display. “Ehta,” he said, “delete that firing solution. Have your people buckle up—we’re moving as soon as possible.” He didn’t wait for a reply. “Valk, take us into that thing—now.” He tapped the display again. “Ginger, I don’t know how you convinced them, but you just saved all our lives.”

  “Of course, sir,” she said. The girl’s tone was all wrong. More sorrowful than he might have expected, given the circumstances.

  Candless rushed over and grabbed his wrist, speaking into the display there. “Ginger—is Bury all right?”

  “He’s still alive. He’s going to be …” The girl just trailed off.

  “Get him strapped in. And then do the same for yourself.”

  “I’ll see to Bury, but I won’t be going with you. I made a deal—in exchange for your wormhole, I have to stay here and replace Archie. The Choir is sending an aircar now to collect me and Rain-on-Stones. Lieutenant Candless, I want you to know how much I’ve appreciated—”

  “I beg your pardon?” Candless said, interrupting the girl. “Ginger, I won’t allow it. You’re coming with us, and that’s that.”

  “I can’t,” Ginger insisted. “They need me. Their harmony is incomplete without me. I made a promise.”

  Lanoe pulled his arm out of Candless’s grip. “That’s fine, but Centrocor isn’t going to stop shooting at us while we wait for that aircar. We’re going now, and I’m not leaving anyone behind. When we get … wherever we’re going,” he said, because he realized he had no idea where the new wormhole led. Not that he much cared—anywhere was safer than the bubble, just then. “When we arrive, we can arrange to send you back if that’s still something you want.”

  “Commander! No! You can’t do that, I made a promise, and anyway, Rain-on-Stones can’t—”

  Lanoe cut the connection. He took in the look o
n Candless’s face and shrugged.

  “Get her away from them and she won’t want to go back. Now come on, we’ve got a desperate escape to make.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Ghostlight surrounded the cruiser as it slipped through the wormhole throat. Candless’s disruptor and Valk’s fighters had left Centrocor off balance, but the enemy had recovered enough to keep shooting. Bursts of heavy PBW fire smashed into the walls of the wormhole, annihilating in gouts of smoky light. A beam struck the side of the Hoplite and it lurched to one side, nearly running into the walls. The whole ship juddered and shook and Lanoe had to grab a handhold on the wall to keep from being thrown around like a rag doll. “Don’t get us killed now,” he shouted, “not after all that!”

  Valk tapped wildly at the virtual keys that controlled the cruiser’s maneuvering and positioning jets, bringing them back into trim. “Somebody tell Centrocor they lost already,” he said.

  Candless had strapped herself down into one of the seats in the wardroom, where she was working a minder tied into the ship’s sensors. “There’s something wrong here,” she said.

  Before she could elucidate what was bothering her, though, Paniet called in from his station back in the engines. “Duckies,” he said, “I don’t want to worry you, but this ship is being held together with twine and hope. One more hit like that—”

  “We should be clear of enemy fire now,” Lanoe said. “But see what you can do about getting Valk more power.”

  “More? I’d be deliriously happy if I thought we could maintain this level of output. No, deary, we’ll be down to half speed before the hour’s out.”

  “Lanoe,” Candless said, “you need to see this. The wormhole—”

  He cut her off. “Paniet, we need thrust and I don’t care how you get it. Burn out the engines if you need to.”

  “Lanoe,” Candless shouted.

  He knew what she was going to say before she said it.

  “The wormhole is … shrinking.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” Candless said, sounding nothing of the kind. “I’m not sure you heard me. The wormhole we are currently traveling through is getting narrower as we proceed. It was six hundred and one meters wide when we entered, and it’s five hundred and ninety-three meters wide now. The walls are—quite literally—closing in.”

  “Sure,” Lanoe said, again. “It’s an unstable wormhole.”

  “It—what?”

  “The Choir forgot how to make permanent ones. I asked them to make a temporary one—it was either that or Centrocor killed us all. I’m assuming this one will last long enough for us to get through it to the other side. I’d rather not find out the hard way. So, Paniet—”

  “More speed, yes, sir.”

  There was nothing to do but watch the numbers tick down. The wormhole was five hundred and twelve meters wide. Now it was four hundred and ninety-one.

  “Are we going to make it?” Valk asked.

  There was no way to answer that question. No way to know how long the wormhole was, whether they would be through it in an hour or if it would take seven days. If it was more than about ninety minutes, they were in trouble. The Hoplite was fifty meters wide. If the wormhole shrank to less than that width before they reached the other side, they would be obliterated.

  “We’ll make it,” Lanoe said.

  Ginger and Ehta came into the wardroom when the wormhole was four hundred and six meters wide. Perhaps they sensed the tense atmosphere in the communal space, because for a while neither of them said anything. They just crowded around the display and studied the numbers with everyone else.

  In silence.

  “How’s Bury?” Valk asked, when he couldn’t stand the quiet anymore. Three hundred and ninety-nine meters.

  “Sleeping,” Ginger said, almost whispering. The girl looked pale and drawn. Well, Valk supposed she’d been through a lot. “Rain-on-Stones said he would live. He’s stable, at least.”

  Valk nodded. “That’s good. He’s a good kid.”

  “How’s our chorister guest?” Lanoe asked.

  “Rain-on-Stones?” Ginger said. “She’s … she got pretty upset. When she realized you weren’t going to let us go back to the city. She—she can’t hear the Choir anymore. Neither can I, but I wasn’t born hearing them. I didn’t spend every second of my life hearing the thoughts of thousands of people.” Ginger’s eyes took on a faraway look that didn’t seem at all healthy. “She’s all alone. So alone. She couldn’t handle it. She asked me to give her a shot, a sedative. She showed me how to do it, how to get the needle between the plates of her armor. We need to get her back to her people as soon as we possibly can.”

  “Sure,” Lanoe said.

  Three hundred and fifty-seven meters.

  Ehta tapped Candless on the shoulder and took her aside, down the corridor and out of earshot. Valk could still hear them—he could hear anything that happened on the ship. He didn’t like to eavesdrop but he had to know. There was no love lost between the two of them, he knew—Ehta had told him how she felt about Candless. Frequently.

  “I saw what you did,” the marine said now.

  Valk could see Candless bracing herself. Maybe she expected Ehta to attack her, as revenge for the time Candless had slapped her.

  “Lieutenant,” Candless said, “while I recognize that you and I will never be friends, I do expect a certain level of—”

  “I saw you charge that destroyer,” Ehta interrupted. “I was watching on a display. I saw you rush in there all by yourself.”

  “You … did.”

  Ehta nodded. “That took the devil’s own courage.” Then she stuck out a hand.

  Candless looked at the hand like she expected to find it smeared with something foul. Eventually, though, she took it.

  “You’re a hell of a pilot,” Ehta said.

  “Having seen your service record, and what you did at Niraya,” Candless said, “I don’t take that lightly.”

  Ehta nodded. Her mouth twisted over to one side and she released Candless’s hand. “Don’t get me wrong. I still hate your stinking guts.”

  “All right.”

  “It’s not like you and I are going to start doing each other’s hair. And I’m not going to tell you all my darkest secrets.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Ehta nodded. “All right, just had to get that out of the way.”

  The two of them wasted no time getting back to the wardroom.

  Three hundred and fifteen meters.

  Valk activated a camera back in the engines, and saw Paniet strapped into a safety seat, calling out orders to his tiny crew of neddies. “Yes, dear, I see you,” the engineer said. “You’re wondering, I imagine, whether we’re going as fast as we possibly can. We are.”

  “You look tired,” Valk said.

  “I’m recovering from a head injury. You do understand, there’s no button down here marked ‘make ship go faster,’ yes? You’re lucky I’m giving you any kind of power at all. We took a missile hit to the engines back there. Nearly lost one of our tertiary cones.”

  “These old Hoplites last forever. They’re indestructible,” Valk said.

  Paniet looked directly at the display. “I think we’ve proved that fact, the last few weeks.” He rose from his chair and went to a console, where he worked at a virtual keyboard for a while.

  Valk saw he was redirecting heat flow through the ship’s exhaust manifold. “Try shunting it through channels six and fourteen,” Valk said.

  Paniet sighed, a little. “It was too convenient, wasn’t it?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You can do all kinds of things we can’t. We humans, I mean. You can talk to computers in a way we never will. Make copies of yourself to truly multitask. Shut down processes if they’re bothering you.” He shook his head. “I warned Commander Lanoe about this. I asked him to do whatever he could to keep you human, to keep you feeling human, because I could see
you were going the other way. But it was too convenient. You were too useful as a machine.”

  “He had to make some hard decisions—”

  “He made the decision to stop thinking of you as a human being,” Paniet said. “He needs you. He won’t let you go. And you keep giving away little parts of yourself, giving up on your humanity, because you want to please him. Because you love him.”

  “Love?” Valk asked. But he didn’t deny it.

  The engineer checked his wrist display. “Two hundred and ninety-five meters. If we wanted to turn around now and head back, we couldn’t. Not enough room. Tell me something, M. Valk. Are we going to make it?”

  “I don’t know,” Valk told him.

  Paniet frowned. “A human would have lied and said yes. A human would always say yes, we’re going to make it.”

  “There’s no hope for me, is there?” Valk asked. “I’m eventually going to go bad. Start thinking so logically I decide I have to hurt people. Like the Universal Suffrage.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Paniet told him.

  “Humans lie. You just told me so.”

  “We have a human on this ship who had surgery to turn her into an alien. It didn’t stop her from being human. If Ginger can become a chorister, I think you can be an AI, and a decent person, too. If that’s what you want.”

  “Two hundred and seventy-nine meters,” Valk said.

  “Noted,” Paniet said.

  Two hundred meters. One hundred and ninety-nine. One hundred and ninety-eight and then—

  Lanoe squinted at the display. That couldn’t be what he thought it was, could it? He’d gotten used to near misses and close scrapes. “Look,” he said.