And All The Stars A Grave.

by Greg Curtis

  There was no base there. No energy signatures on the planet that indicated that it had ever been colonised. No traces of manufactured metal, industrial processes, communications or even terra-formed land. Nothing. It was an unpopulated world, though one clearly teeming with life of some sort. Just not intelligent life. So what had happened to it? Had the Calderonians not made the world? Had they collected up their base? Or had they simply moved on without stopping? None of those options made a lot of sense.

  But rejecting them of course left him with a new, more worrying question to answer. Had he somehow got the world, the system wrong? Even though his computers were now becoming incredibly good at negotiating with the alien computers - with breaking down the information in them and then locating their next bases. But a check of the planet’s atmosphere showed it had exactly the composition the Calderonians would have been looking for, which wasn’t that common. And it was directly on their flight path. It surely had been their intended target as the previous computer had claimed.

  If it was the target world, and they had made it here, his next question was whether these could be the Calderonians themselves, some ten thousand years later having apparently survived their plagues. Or if not, were they some other race who had perhaps found their technology and advanced it? Or could it even be the Ancients themselves, showing their face after a hundred thousand years? In any case there was one thing he understood; his journey was at an unexpected end. With no city and therefore no computer below waiting to give him the secrets of the Calderonian war effort and their next destination, his quest was effectively finished.

  The only real question that mattered was whether he’d been successful or not. He’d come for technology, not expecting to find any living Calderonians, and he still wasn’t sure he had. But he clearly had found an advanced race. This could either be even better than he’d hoped, or much worse. He might have found allies, or new enemies.

  At least everything he’d learned on each world prior to this one had been sent back by message torpedo to the Force. All sent to the admiral of the main base on Unity, under the name Cornelius Rex of The Catalyst. A captain and a ship that didn’t exist but which name he had left with him to expect messages under. And while those messages had surely seemed to be routine to the casual observer - after all the admiral surely received a hundred such torpedoes per day - he was sure that since the admiral knew who was sending it and what he was doing, that they would be studied carefully by the Force scientists. Maybe, he hoped - and he’d asked each time - they could also let Karen know he was still alive and well, and working as fast as he could.

  He missed her a lot. More than he had realised actually. And he missed his cat too. But he was so busy on board the Sparrow that he hardly had time to mope, which was a blessing. Each night he fell into an exhausted heap - that was if he even made it to the bed instead of falling asleep at his station, too tired to even dream of her. And when he did think of her and started moping again, he would remind himself that what he was doing was to save her life. Hers and their baby's. He had already sent back the entire contents of four new Calderonian computers, and their translations to the Force. Many had held even more advanced schematics and toys for the engineers to work with, as the Calderonians had apparently continued their war effort even as they fled.

  In particular they’d been developing cures to the plagues. Not effective cures, but partial answers to give them time. Knowledge that could be invaluable to the scientists in the Interstellar Community. He was helping. That knowledge had helped to keep him sane as he continued his lonely quest.

  “Computer. Play code one.” He’d come prepared to face another Calderonian base, and with the aid of experience, he’d finally worked out how to convince the Calderonian computers of his true intentions, a process which mainly involved giving them the full details of the Interstellar Community, and what had been unearthed about the Kaiwhare’s attacks on them. As he’d suspected, the alien computers were intelligent enough to be reasoned with, but more than that, they were still at war. Given that, and the fact that they had not seen a Calderonian in ten thousand years and thus had no one still to protect, they were very amenable to his requests. The Calderonian computers on ZF 203 had allowed the Sparrow itself safe passage into the city - once they satisfied themselves of his allied status of course - and then opened up the secret chambers to the master tactical computer, allowing him to take a data drive and enough hardware to assemble a full computer on board the Sparrow.

  From them he had then obtained the override codes for each successive computer on his journey as well as the technology he needed, without resistance. They actually gave him the correct sequences to unlock each new vault of secrets. If there had been a base on the planet in front of him, he knew this code would have identified him as a friend and allowed him to land. In hindsight the code had been relatively simple. It was just a phrase, which his computers translated as ‘Death to the Kaiwhare’, a series of numbers that had come from the memory of the computers, and a second phrase, ‘I am Calderonian’.

  He wasn’t Calderonian, and the base would know that; they had some scans that were still more advanced than anything his ship’s own scanners could detect, but the use of the code would grant him safe passage, followed by a lengthy interrogation, which he usually only passed by sending them a complete transcript of Community and Force records regarding the Kaiwhare.

  If this “ship,” for want of a better word, was in fact a surviving Calderonian, then hopefully it would recognise the code and accept him. If it was Kaiwhare, it would attack. And if it was something else, then he had no way of knowing what it would do. He chewed on his lip and waited anxiously.

  Unfortunately it did nothing at all and he was left with no clue as to which it was.

  Frustrated and still unsure he tried the code again and got the same lack of response. It had detected him, intercepted him, and clearly knew he was there, but it refused to respond. Could it be automatic he wondered? Unable to respond unless a pilot arrived? He had no way of knowing, and with his ship’s sensors as crazy as they were, no way of finding out.

  “Computer, translate the following into Calderonian and then send it. “I seek the Calderonians.” It was nearly true too. He had been seeking them, or rather their remains. He’d assumed they would all be dead. But he’d hoped that before they passed on, they’d had time to develop some new weaponry, new ways of fighting.

  This time there was a response, but not one that the ship could make sense of. On the screen he watched the ship change colour, turning from bright yellow to slightly orange. Of course as far as the ship’s sensors were concerned the ship wasn’t even there let alone changing colour. But the real question was what its colour change meant. Was it truly a response, or just something it was doing?

  He had the ship repeat the message, and this time had it add ‘please respond’, to the end of the message. Once again the ship changed colour slightly, this time choosing red. It was responding. What it was saying was anybody’s guess, but it was answering.

  “Computer please translate and send the following: ‘I do not understand. I seek the Calderonians. Are you Calderonian?’ Then please include a blank screen matrix, the frequency of the ships coms, and a copy of Calderonian script letters.”

  Even as he finished speaking he watched the ship change colour again, five more times, as it moved from red, to yellow, to green and blue and then back. There was no doubt it was responding. A second later even that realization was redundant, as he watched with awe as his ship screamed. But it wasn’t hurt, it was just being overloaded with information, and the computer couldn’t keep up. The filters of course took over immediately, and the Sparrow started to limit the shear amount of data it was receiving, turning most of it into recordings for later. But on the main screen, it started flashing up messages. Or rather the same one, again and again. Millions of times in a split second.

  “Are you Kaiwhare?”

  Naturally
there was only one possible answer. He had the computer send an immediate ‘no’, and then braced himself. This was the moment he figured that, if the ship was the Kaiwhare having somehow got ahead of him, all hell would break loose. But he couldn’t imagine that it was. If the Kaiwhare had had that sort of ship, that sort of technology, the Force and the entire community would already be extinct. Nothing happened.

  “Who are you?”

  The question told him instantly that the ship had penetrated his ship’s cloak and knew he was no Calderonian. It probably had done so the moment he’d arrived. With a ship of such obviously advanced if alien technology, it had probably been pointless to expect his primitive cloak would protect him.

  “A member of the younger races who grew up among the worlds the Calderonians and the Kaiwhare destroyed. One who seeks the Calderonian’s help.” Immediately after sending it he had the Sparrow drop its cloak. There was no point in keeping it active when it was hiding nothing and perhaps it would show the beginnings of trust. It was all he had to offer.

  “Why?” He almost celebrated as he heard the answer. Not only were they not blowing him out of space, they were responding. They were curious. That had to be a good sign. And it left him with the chance of a real conversation. And not he suspected, with a computer, but with a real person, or perhaps even a real Calderonian.

  “The Kaiwhare walk among us as they once walked among your ancestors. Pretending friendship and planning murder. Mass murder. Planning it soonest. We are not strong enough to fight them. Barely as strong as you were then. And they have had ten thousand years to plot more evil.”

  There was silence for a while as the ship clearly mulled over his words. Something that strongly suggested it had people on board. Machines didn’t mull. He noticed though, that they didn’t deny his assertion that they were Calderonians or their descendants, and that gave him incredible hope. He had found a race that had been missing for ten thousand years. A race that had survived the Kaiwhare’s evil. As a xeno-archaeologist that was a major discovery. Unfortunately, as a soon to be father, he didn’t have time to enjoy it. His family needed help.

  “We have renounced war.” Not the answer he wanted to hear, but equally not a total surprise. The Calderonians had long been a peaceful people before the Kaiwhare came among them. In their absence they had apparently returned to those ways. But at least they had confirmed that they were the Calderonians. Somehow they had survived their nightmare. That had to be another good sign. There was life after the Kaiwhare.

  “So have we, but the Kaiwhare have not. They seek it. We wish to live in peace as an Interstellar Community. They wish to live alone and deny all others the right to life.” And he had the Sparrow send a copy of the Interstellar Communities charter and history to them, and then followed it with the more recent stuff they had found at QA 40; the records of the various devastations the Kaiwhare had caused among the Community.

  It took quite a while as the computer had to translate it all into Calderonian, with some of it still unable to be converted by the translation programme. Perhaps five minutes later though, it was done.

  “They have not changed it seems. We are saddened to hear of your losses.” The response caught Daryl off guard. It had taken five minutes to send the data, and yet two seconds later they were responding. Super advanced technology? Maybe. But Daryl suddenly suspected that they had known who he was and why he had come before he told them. Long before. After all, they had been waiting for him when he’d entered the system. Their ship had moved into position as soon as he’d seen it, and yet there was no society down there as far as he could tell. No base either. He smelled a rat.

  “I thank you for your sympathy, but I would rather not need it. Or the further sympathy you will no doubt feel when we cannot defend ourselves and lose our hundreds and thousands of worlds and races.” He was feeling very Myran all of a sudden. Blunt. He needed answers, and he wanted desperately to go home. To be with Karen.

  “What would you have us do?”

  “I seek help for my people. Allies perhaps. Technology. Some way of fighting their evil. Some way of surviving them, and helping others to survive.”

  “You would have us destroy the Kaiwhare.” The problem with the translated script was that it was even dryer than the translators he’d normally worn in the Community. He had no idea whether the speaker was stating a fact, criticising him, or asking a question. There was of course only one possible answer, the truth.

  “Only if that is the only possible choice. I would ask rather that you help us to survive, for the Community to grow together in peace, and perhaps one day to be advanced enough to perhaps join you here in friendship. Destroying the Kaiwhare is not my first choice, but they seem to leave us with little else. As they left your ancestors with little choice.”

  “Which is our shame.” The script might be dry but those four words were enough to give him a devastating insight into the Calderonians. They had been peaceful from the outset, had then been forced by the Kaiwhare into becoming something they were not, and now that they had returned to their peaceful path they regretted their actions, even to the point where survival was considered wrong. It was a view he could understand perfectly, and yet one that he could never allow. It led to death.

  “Survival is not shame, though its lessons may be harsh. Had your ancestors not done as they did, not only would you not be here to feel that shame, neither would I be here to ask you for your help. None of the other races would have survived the Kaiwhare either, had they been at full strength. We would all have been wiped out before we even knew why. All of us, and yourselves too owe them a debt of gratitude even as we sorrow for what they were forced to do. To become.”

  “Good answer.” Daryl practically jumped out of his skin as the voice came from right beside him. He turned quickly to see a shaggy yeti standing beside him. A Calderonian. And if he could be any judge of it, one in perfect health. Whatever else they’d done in the previous ten thousand years, they’d definitely cured themselves. But how had he entered the Sparrow? Unannounced? Had he docked secretly? Used some form of matter transmission or overlapping space folding technology? Or, much as he didn’t want to think about it, had he just appeared behind him by magic?

  His guest, as he chose to think of him, took the seat in the galley opposite him; there were only two, and for a brief second Daryl even thought he might have smiled at him. It was hard to tell under all that fur, but he still had the distinct impression he was being friendly as well as serious.

  “Choice is a function of knowledge and power. You have too little. The choice for good or ill was always theirs not yours. But our choice is greater still.” Which somehow Daryl had no doubt about. They obviously had extraordinary knowledge and power. And he realised, some form of telepathy. His guest spoke, but his lips - his mouth - didn’t move underneath that facial fur and the voice was coming from somewhere just above his head. Some sort of device was converting his thoughts to speech.

  “Will you help us?”

  “We will act as we should have long ago. And we will stop the Kaiwhare from their path of destruction. You may choose to think of that as help. Or you may see it as simply part of our way. That choice at least is yours.” Daryl had the strangest feeling that the Calderonian was laughing at him, though only gently. Using intentionally cryptic language to make him think carefully about his answers.

  “I would choose to thank you for your help, whatever your reason.”

  “If you like, but I should caution you. We have our own purposes in doing this. In saving you as much as in stopping the Kaiwhare. There will be prices to be paid, which many will not like.” That sounded ominous to Daryl, and yet there was little choice.

  “What sort of prices?”

  “Much the same as those the Community has exacted upon your own people. You are not ready to join us. Not ready for much of the knowledge we possess. You will not be ready for a long time to come.” Which could be either good or bad Daryl tho
ught. Being restricted as severely as the Earth had been, relatively speaking, would be hard, but some restriction from knowledge that would allow them to destroy themselves could be a good thing. On the other hand there was an amusing irony in it, as well as another indication that they knew more of things than he had admitted.

  “You know of Earth?”

  “We know of the information your computer holds.” Which made sense, though he’d no idea of when they’d actually downloaded and read it, or how. But he had the distinct feeling that the Calderonian was deceiving him. Not lying, just not telling him the whole truth. And then he had to ask himself; just what information did the computer hold about Earth? Somehow, he suspected the computer held a lot of information about the embargo placed on Earth but not that much more. But he didn’t question his new found ally.