by Damon Alan
Sarah climbed the hill, exhausted and angry. She crested the rolling knoll and looked down the other side. A dirty, blood covered woman stood motionless, looking up at her. Platinum blonde hair, shocking blue eyes, and pale skin.
“You must be Merik,” Sarah said.
“I am,” Merik replied in Galactic Standard.
“You’re smaller than I expected.”
“The same was once said to you, long ago.”
Sarah tossed her rifle to the ground, resigned to joining Franklin in death. “I won’t pretend that I could shoot you before you would turn me into ash.”
“I'm not going to turn you to ash. Strangely, you’re planning on turning all of us to ash with the device at your belt. Do not. Your demon will no longer be released at your call.”
Sarah pulled her remote detonator from her belt. It was lifeless, with no power. She dropped it on the ground.
Merik walked closer and pointed at the rifle Sarah dropped. “If you want to use your weapon on me, I understand. I have wronged you as greatly as one can wrong another. Only now, as I am at my end, do I understand.”
At her end?
Sarah stood motionless, trying to sort out the strange twist in her path. “What the hell is going on here?” She noticed Merik’s eyes didn’t seem to actually look at her, but stared off blankly.
“I'm no longer only Merik. I'm also over two million other adepts.”
“You're a group consciousness?”
“I am them, they are me. They see everything, feel everything. I have gained their values. Values I lacked just hours ago. They have gained my insight. They know you as I now know you, in every detail, every moment of your life.”
Sarah closed her eyes, trying to wrap her mind around what she was hearing. She locked in on the statement of values. “So you're sane now?”
“As sane as a collective of adepts can be, Sarah Dayson.”
Sarah looked at Merik, then back over the hill at her friends. She picked up the rail rifle and thumbed off the safety. “I really want to shoot you.”
“I know. You still can if you must. Nobody will fault you for it.”
“Go to hell. What do I do with this? This isn't any kind of resolution,” Sarah said. She raised the rifle. “Get in front of me and head over the hill. Down toward the stream.”
Merik walked down the hill as Sarah walked behind her. The scout stood up and pointed his machine gun at Merik, ready to open fire.
“There is no need for that, Alman Glandin,” Merik said.
“How does she know my name?” the scout sergeant asked, alarmed.
“Don't ask,” Sarah replied. “Lower the gun. If she wants us dead, nothing will save us now. Doctor, I need to you take a look at our prisoner.”
“Our prisoner? Are you sure about that?” Thea asked, but got to work. She closed and treated Merik's infected wounds. The doctor worked without anesthetic, but Merik didn't seem to feel the pain. Or she didn't care. She sat in the grass smiling as the doctor worked. After taking care of the wounds, Merik pulled a scanner from the medkit and gave the adept a once over.
Thea stood up and rested her hand on Sarah's sleeve. “Captain, can I speak to you? Alone?”
“There is no need to speak alone, Doctor, I already know everything you know.”
Thea looked uncomfortable. “Great,” she said, then turned to Sarah. “She's dying. There is a tumor in her head the size, well, it's half her brain.”
“She gets rational as she's dying?”
“I can't explain that. But the tumor is a cancer of the same organ all the adepts have in their brains. In essence, that organ is dozens of times the size of the same organ in Alarin.”
“Alarin?” Merik asked. The adept started a conversation with Alarin, out loud, which Sarah found unsettling.
Sarah pulled her eyes off Merik, and spoke to Thea. “So what do you recommend?”
“Nothing. If I remove the tumor, she'll die from hemorrhaging. If I don't remove it, she'll die from the tumor creating pressure on her brain.” The doctor appeared to have a thought. “Merik, do you have headaches? Pain?”
“I did, but I removed all of that,” Merik replied.
Thea looked at Sarah and shook her head. “If she has no pain, then let nature take its course.”
Sarah’s humanity dulled her desire for revenge. “How long?”
“Her heartbeat is erratic, and I'm pretty sure she's blind.”
Merik smiled. “My eyes have gone blind, so I changed how I see. Thea Jannis, did you know the universe is God?”
She looks like a child.
“We don't believe in gods,” Sarah replied. Even she detected the uncertainty in her voice.
“You should,” Merik insisted. “I am becoming one with God.”
Sarah laughed uncomfortably, Thea’s eyes widened.
“What does that mean?” Sarah asked. “You’re joining our creator?”
“Yes. And Franklin Gilbert. He still exists, Sarah Dayson. Consciousness is a gift from the universe, not lightly taken away.”
Sarah looked at Merik, astonished. “That's nonsense.”
“It is a selfish gift, for conscious observation is what keeps the body of God whole. Consciousness is the ultimate arbiter of what is reality. Adepts have merely stepped from observation to control, but even that is temporary. What we do always returns to the proper way in the end, or at least balances in the doing.”
“I'm not sure I have the brains to understand that,” Sarah said.
Merik ignored Sarah and continued. “Navin Harmeen is right about the adepts as well. The child of humanity he called us. As our parents, you must help us grow.”
Thea put her pack on the ground behind Merik, offering it as a pillow. She helped Merik lean back.
“All of humanity will become as this, Sarah Dayson. Time is not a river, it is a wall stretching infinitely into the distance from its point of creation. The part you see is the part of the wall you walk along. I see the entire wall.”
“The Hive doesn't destroy us?” Sarah asked.
“Quite the contrary,” Merik countered. “What you call the Hive is a disease in the body of the universe. A disease for which God has created a cure. The Hive mimic consciousness, but that is all. They are an insufficient mimicry for the needs of God.”
Sarah’s interest grew. “How can we defeat them?”
“The adepts will help you,” Merik said matter-of-factly.
“How?” Sarah pressed.
“Sarah Dayson, you will see all of this when it unfolds. I am very short on time, my walk along the wall is ending. Franklin Gilbert is here now, the consciousness you knew as your lover. He is proud of you.”
“What? No no no...” Sarah tried not to let her feelings out, but her dams collapsed and tears flooded forth. She collapsed to her knees in the grass. Thea knelt beside her captain and wrapped her arms around Sarah.
“I’m sorry for what I’ve done to your people. And more importantly, to you.” Merik stared unseeing into the sky. “You, Sarah Dayson, are a pivot around which history swings.”
Sarah felt desperation well up within her.
I didn’t ask for this. “I don’t know what to do,” Sarah said. “’I’ve always lived—”
Merik interrupted her. “You will rise to the needs of the moment, as you have always done.”
Sarah stared at the dying adept, wanting to know more and less at the same time.
Merik’s body relaxed against the ground and Thea’s pack, as if Merik no longer had the energy to bother with supporting it. “My final gift is arriving to offer insufficient amends for the evil I've done. I know the time of my death, doctor, and it's soon.”
“I know,” Thea said.
A familiar gray shape appeared over the trees to the west, downstream. A shuttle, silent and flying without engines or nav lights, settled on the ground near the group. Water fell from it to the ground.
“Alarin is here,” Merik said, weakly.
/> The forward hatch opened. Peter and Alarin stepped out of the shuttle, expressions of disbelief on their faces.
Alarin ran to Merik, and cradled her in his arms.
Tears flowed from Alarin’s face. “You have given us all the greatest gift, Merik. I’m not worthy of laying eyes on you.”
“You are, Alarin. You believed in me above all others and I let you down.”
“You didn't let me down. You lost your way, but today you’ve done more for the people than I ever will.”
Strain crossed Merik’s face as she lifted a hand to caress Alarin. “You're wrong, but that doesn’t matter right now. I loved you with the wrong part of my soul and I’m sorry.”
Alarin placed his hand on hers and held it to his cheek. His tears mingled with the mud that caked her arm. “That's changed. Nothing is hidden. I know exactly what your love is.”
“My gift is that I'm with God before I die. I can tell you that you will know love again. I see it. When your time comes, Alarin, all love is yours. Not just mine, but all love. I will be waiting.”
At 12:32:17 on the 36th of Noder in the year 15327, Doctor Thea Jannis pronounced Merik Sur'batti dead.
Chapter 55 - Captain's Personal Log
39 NODER 15327
AI Lucy82A recording, Captain's personal log, Michael Stennis archive: Galactic Standard Date 19:54:27 Noder 39, 15327
Personal log entry #809, Captain Sarah Dayson, origin Korvand, Pallus Sector.
Current Location: Star System Oasis, enroute to high orbit over Refuge.
It's over. A simple statement, but it covers everything. The fight with Merik is over, this skirmish in a backwater star system in the middle of nowhere is over, and...
[14 second pause, a sound AI estimates 38% probability is crying.]
…my love is over. Merik and Alarin got their goodbye. I have the memory of Gilbert’s hopes told to me on the bridge. I’ve learned that war never has a victor. Never a winner. Only survivors.
I'm not sure what happened down on the surface of Refuge, but this must be what prophets felt like in ancient times. Merik became more than Merik, she touched the origin of who we are. It seems unfair that someone born with such an evil nature would transcend our personal isolation and touch that which creates us.
Corriea and I discussed the issue on the way back to Fandama to rejoin the fleet. He is trying hard to put it all into scientific terms, but can it be?
I have something I’ve never experience before. Belief in more than what I am. Merik said the man I love waits for me. She made no mention of Vonn and Jac, are they out there somewhere? I hope. Does it even matter if it has a scientific basis at this point?
I was there. It was a real experience. I saw Alarin's awe of what Merik became and of... of me. Why me? Why did he treat me with such respect after Merik’s passing?
[a deep sigh]
Merik said she saw the entire wall. She said the adepts will fight, and apparently destroy, the Hive. I just want to live in peace, here on Refuge, in the Oasis system, helping my crew integrate into their new lives. But it sounds like there is more to come.
[68 second pause, broken by a deep and rasping intake of breath]
I still smell Gilbert on my pillow. It hurts so much.
[44 second pause]
Alarin is going to find Eislen and return the young man to his lessons. Away from anyplace where he can rupture bulkheads or smash irreplaceable equipment. I don’t know if Eislen was part of the healing the adepts tell me they’ve experienced, but I hope so. If any of us need healing, it’s that kid.
[14 second pause]
Another crewman is pregnant. Flight Chief Holmwood on the Yascurra. She's been relieved of any difficult flight duties, assigned to low G supply runs for the fleet. Women make so many sacrifices for the future. I've arranged for her to get all the access she wants to the combat simulators. With the G forces reduced, of course. With what Merik said about the Hive, I can't have my sword growing dull.
I saw Peter at dinner tonight. He’s talking to Eris Dantora on the EF2358 nightly. I didn't have to do anything to get those two together after all. Some couples are obvious. Some, like Harmeen and Seto, less so. But even they are starting to hold hands in the officers mess. I wish them all well.
Some are meant to have families. But I… I’m the goatherd. I will keep them safe, as Eislen did for his flocks when we first met the people of this planet. How ironic that inside of twenty thousand light-years that teenager might be the person I have the most in common with.
[sound of cooler opening, sound AI estimates 91% probability is several packets being placed on a hard surface]
I have one more task left to do. I don't need this any more. Not that this means a lot, since this is my last case, but… well, maybe that makes it mean all the more.
[sound of packets being opened individually, followed by a sound AI estimates 73% probability is liquid content of packages being squeezed into lavatory drain]
Gilbert left me something to remember him by. I have boxes of chocolate that are all mine.
End the log, Lucy.
Chapter 56 – Union
27 MAI 15328
It was the first time Sarah ever attended a military memorial out of uniform.
Nobody was in uniform. Because the first thing Sarah did as commander of the Seventh Fleet was forbid military attire inside the regional boundaries of the newly designated New Korvand Archipelago. Shuttle crews were the only exception.
Sarah’s bare feet stood in white sand. Six meters from her sea water lapped gently against the shore. Above her white clouds laced a brilliant green sky. A cool breeze blew in from the lagoon at Sarah’s back.
Missile tube Sixty-Three jutted from a concrete platform erected on the beach. Forever silenced in war, it now spoke for the dead crewmen of the Seventh Fleet. The concrete platform projected out over the water, and even as Sarah spoke to the assembled colonists, she imagined fishing there as her son had fished in a similar lagoon so long ago.
The words she said to her assembled crewmen weren’t nearly as important as the other details of that day.
They had a world to call their own.
They had hope of raising families safe from the marauding reach of the Hive.
For the first time in their lives, they had peace. A peace negotiated with the adepts, and an agreement that these lands and nearby waters now belonged to the colonists.
Behind the crowd steel structures rose skyward. They were first pieces of housing for those lucky enough to be assigned to the ground contingent at New Korvand. A spaceport was being built. Engineers from the Fyurigan were building farms and irrigation systems. Finished products were being delivered from newly built fabrication facilities in space. Unless a future civilian government changed Sarah’s order, there would be no factories on the surface.
It looked like life was going to be good for those who survived the years of trouble.
Sarah finished her speech and the crowd began to disperse.
Thea Jannis walked up beside her. “You’re not alone, you know.”
“I didn’t think I was, Thea. I still have my command crew. I even have you.” Sarah turned toward a pier that jutted out into the lagoon. A large Zeffultian clipper sat moored to the dock. Sarah watched as the crew unloaded foodstuffs and textiles.
Thea watched with her. “They’re here for the asteroid iron we’ve mined. I think most of them still think it’s a gift from the gods.”
Sarah nodded. “That’s exactly what they think. But it doesn’t matter. That ship is the first of many that will make life here good for us, and over the coming years we’ll educate them. Push them back toward a technical civilization.”
“We should push hard,” the doctor said.
Sarah waved her hand dismissively. “Why? It will evolve naturally. We have our lifetime to erase the ignorance these people have suffered for ten thousand years. You and I, we’ll get to watch it happen. How many people can say they were
there at the birth of a civilization?”
“Not many,” Thea said. “Most people don’t even think in such terms.”
“We’ve even got it better than that. Not only will we see the birth of civilization in the Oasis system, we’re witnessing the birth of a new humanity.” Sarah waved at the people still on the beach. “A thousand years from now some of their descendants will be adepts.”
Thea smiled. The smile she wore when she felt she knew more than someone else. Sarah was learning to recognize the doctor’s nuances. “I’m not sure evolution happens quite that fast, Captain.”
“Oh, I’m sure. This place… this moon. There’s something about it that speaks to me, tells me that it will cradle us, give us what we need. But also that it will change us for the better. We’ll be safe here.”
Thea tucked her arm in Sarah’s and they walked down the shore toward the still wild part of the island. It was a long time before the doctor responded. “You sound like Harmeen. Merik has changed you.”
“I’m at peace now. I kept my promise to bring my crew to safety. Turns out I needed changed,” Sarah said.
Thea nodded. “Maybe you did.”
Chapter 57 -Into the Dark
Bn74x00 arrived at Albeus III, the world of origin for the Collective. After decelerating into the system, the scout entered orbit. The system was rich with assorted colonies. Processing stations and factories littered space above Albeus III. Bn74x00 changed course numerous time to avoid megalithic structures producing more nanites. It slipped under a freighter delivering unsuitable human captives and other biological creatures to a rendering plant. There they’d be reduced to components for production of the organic molecules needed for nanite synthesis.
It applied to the sequencing subroutines of the core for an interface, and was granted a time for joining in the near future. Bn74x00’s main processing centers went idle after setting a system clock to wake it for the joining with 00n00x00. Autonomous flight control systems kept it safe from orbital traffic.
* * *
Awareness returned, and the nanite colony of Bn74x00 abandoned its drive core to inhabit an atmospheric transfer vehicle. The vehicle decelerated then descended into the atmosphere of Albeus III. Bn74x00 recalculated it’s priorities, confirming them as it dropped toward the surface. Share the data it had amassed regarding the human Sarah Dayson and the starship Michael Stennis with the Collective. Convince the decision subroutines of the Collective about her unprecedented threat level. Recommend that a mission be organized to follow the humans into intergalactic space.