Tachyon Web

by Christopher Pike

  Eric peered through the shuttle window toward the remains of the Kaulikan vessel, a faintly glowing red smudge against the black of space. He shuddered at the memory of the screens in the flagship war room switching suddenly to the imploding ball of energy. The cry of anguish bursting from those present had almost sent him into a swoon. He might have given up right then and there had he not known that things could get much worse. With the exception of Rak, the Councillors had immediately shouted for retaliation. It had been Eric’s task, fighting his radically tarnished credibility, to convince them that they would lose a hundred ships as quickly as they had lost the first one if they so much as fired a single missile. Rak had listened to him. Speaking to the frantic control center without the aid of a PA, he had managed to restore a semblance of calm. Then the good news, if it could be called that, came through. The target had been one of the fleet’s ten fully automated factory vessels. No one had been killed.

  The Patrol had made their point. They weren’t bluffing. Again Rak had sent a message requesting a meeting. This time it was accepted. The Patrol was obviously willing to sit down and negotiate as long as the other party was convinced that the gun being held to their heads was loaded. The reply also contained a stipulation. The Patrol wanted – not ‘wanted to see’ or ‘wanted to talk to’ just ‘wanted’ – the captain of Excalibur. The individual sending the reply had been General Griffin.

  Hearing the fearsome name, Eric had barely had the presence of mind to scribble out the sequence of notes to give to Vani that would hopefully find their way to Strem, should he be unable to talk to him again. Before leaving, he had made sure she would be allowed to remain in the Councillors’ room while Rak and he were with Griffin. He had not known until then that Kaulikans could cry. She had not believed he would return. She was a smart girl.

  “Do you know this General Griffin?” Rak asked, sitting beside him in the ten-seater shuttle, looking remarkably calm.

  “I know of him. He is occasionally interviewed on our news network. He is a cunning man. He has always impressed me as someone who was capable of doing anything to reach a set objective.”

  “Is he a truthful man?”

  “He won’t have any need to lie to you,” he answered with a trace of sarcasm.

  Rak was regarding him curiously. “You are blaming yourself for the destruction of the factory?”

  “I gave you bad advice.”

  “That has yet to be seen. One thing you have tried to do was give us something we desperately need. For that alone, I owe you a great thanks.” Rak’s eyes strayed to the nova.

  Since the time they had jumped outside the web it had begun to fade slightly, the shells of plasma cooling toward the lower end of the spectrum.

  The two of them were of separate origins, together in the middle of nowhere, and yet, for a moment, they shared the same thought. Rak spoke it aloud. “Soon it will burn less than it has in billions of years. Our grandchildren will have trouble finding it in the sky. I wish, if we are to be given this chance that you bring, that it could have been a year ago, or even a day before the nova. Then, at least, those left behind on Kashi could have known that we would be safe.”

  “The nova was what allowed me and my friends to sneak past The Patrol’s security screen, what we call The Tachyon Web.” Eric glanced toward the growing silver cluster of battle cruisers looming in the midnight like icy needles waiting to impale them. “When I think about it, I see that the web must have been built because of your people, to keep a stray trader from finding and helping your world.” Concern had driven him into his predicament, but also bitterness, and it was the latter that he tasted in his mouth. “I’m sorry I was late.”

  Even with his words going through the translator, Rak was sensitive to his tone. “Third Councillor Maga told you we are a peaceful people and this is true. But it was not always so. I have the sense that our race is much older than yours. We spent many of our early years, too many, fighting amongst ourselves. Sometimes I have thought that our sun, watching from its place in the sky, grew tired of our foolishness, of the many chances we did not take, and decided enough was enough. And then when we started to live as we should, when the light of our sun began to change and deepen our shadows, it was too late.” He took Eric’s hand and pressed it between his. Like Vani’s, his touch was warm and soft. “Son, you can help us without hating them.”

  Eric shook his head. “They saw the nova coming. They did nothing.”

  “Had we come together as a people sooner, we would have had time to develop ships as strong and fast as your Patrol’s. What we have suffered as a people, it was our own doing.”

  “I can’t see how that makes them any less guilty.”

  Rak let go of his hand. “We will be there soon. Is there anything you wish to tell me now, anything that I could do for you?”

  “Yes. Whatever is decided, when the time comes for you to return to the flagship, ask to speak into that room where we left Vani. Make sure that I am by your side.”

  Eric saw no one during his first hour aboard the battle cruiser. Immediately upon being taken inside, the shuttle opened on both sides, and Rak and he were ordered by a young indifferent male voice to exit in opposite directions. At that point he tried to call Strem and Sammy, using his implant. He had spoken to them via the communicator just before leaving the flagship and had wanted to see them again, but Griffin was not one to be kept waiting.

  Eric had told them of the vaporized factory ship, and Strem had sounded uncharacteristically upset at the news. Or maybe it had been the fact that Griffin had specifically demanded to see his best friend. Neither Strem nor Sammy had been able to offer any advice. And now, Eric was not surprised to find that his implant signal was being jammed.

  The young indifferent male voice spoke again. “Remove all equipment from your person.” That was just the beginning. He was directed to a decontamination chamber where he had to strip naked and sit for ages in a chemical-smelling steam under a glaring purification beam that swelled his sinuses and made his entire body itch. If they were trying to cut him down to size before they stepped on him, they were doing an excellent job. It annoyed him even more that they were undoubtedly doing the same or worse to Rak.

  The voice finally permitted him to leave the chamber. He was blow-dried in an adjoining room and he found a bland green shirt and pair of pants waiting on a hanger. Once dressed, two expressionless ensigns appeared, smartly attired in the standard black and orange-lined Patrol uniforms; the fleet emblem, a single descending white triangle dotted in the center with an orange star, was pinned to their left breasts. Neither had their pistols drawn but Eric received the distinct impression that they would whip them out if he so much as coughed. They marched him into a small elevator and then down a narrow hall. The air was clean but lifeless, and he longed for the fragrances of Vani’s garden.

  They came to a stop outside a closed metal door. A button was pushed. A gruff voice responded. “Send him in and then get the Kaulikan.”

  The door opened and Eric stepped forward into a personnel quarters that was sliced in half by a floor-to-ceiling black grill, a bed on one side, a desk fitted with a holographic globe on the other. The trimmings were sparse: a couple of plants, a shelf packed with old-fashioned paper books, a family portrait hanging on one wall. But there was a decoration of note – a large intricate wooden model of a sixteenth century naval vessel rested atop a cabinet. Eric knew his history; it was a representative of the Spanish Armada that bad weather and a swifter English Navy had crushed. He was surprised that Griffin would have a loser in his own room.

  “Have a seat,” General Griffin said without looking at him. The Commander was shorter than he appeared on news programs, stockier, his heavy face hard and lined, sitting atop thick shoulders with nary an inch of neck showing. His thinning hair was cut short, silver bristles, and he was a far from handsome man. Most would have quietly thought him ugly. Yet he reminded Eric of Rak. Each had an innate aura of author
ity about him. Eric sat down and waited.

  Griffin was sitting behind the desk, studying the personnel file of Eric T. Tirel as if the actual article were not present. His blunt fingers and flat black eyes sped through the early years, finally halting on what must have been a relevant note. Then Griffin looked at him, his expression impassive, impossible to read. “You applied to the academy and were rejected,” he said.

  Eric kept his voice even. “Yes, sir.”

  So much for his personal history. Griffin turned off the globe. He wasn’t going to tell him why he had been rejected.

  “Have you zeroed out Excalibur’s computers?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Have you melted down its graviton drive?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Have you sabotaged its hyper drive?”

  “No, sir.”

  Griffin leaned forward, his uniform stiff and tight, clasping his stubby hands atop the desktop. He was not a young man, Eric thought, but he looked like he had the strength to throttle a teenage traitor. “You are saying in effect that the Kaulikans are in possession of a fully operational starship?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Griffin took a breath, narrowed his gaze. “Why are you here, Tirel? We expected Strem Hark or Sammy Balan. Checking backwards, we have determined that it was originally their idea to penetrate the web.”

  “None of my friends wanted to give Excalibur to the Kaulikans. It was entirely my idea.”

  “Did they try to stop you?”

  “Yes. But I was holding a gun.” He added, “I gave the Kaulikans the ship not because I was rejected by the academy, but because I wanted to help them.” Griffin was not impressed. Eric felt anger on top of his fear. “Don’t you want to help them, sir?”

  A light blinked beside the globe. “Yes?” Griffin said.

  “We have the First Councillor, sir,” an ensign outside the door said.

  Griffin stood, “Send him in.”

  Eric also stood. “I guess I’ll wait outside.”

  “You’ll stay,” Griffin said, straightening his uniform.

  Rak strode into the room, the door closing behind him. He presented his palm to the General and then to himself in the traditional Kaulikan greeting. To Eric’s surprise Griffin imitated the gesture perfectly, something that should have required practice. Then the General stepped forward and offered his hand. Rak shook it firmly, and it was true – the two were from different primordial seas, but they had something in common that went deeper than appearance or manner. They were both powerful individuals. Nevertheless, the comparison did not improve Eric's appreciation of Griffin. There were no two ways about it – the man was responsible for genocide.

  Griffin activated a translator and offered Rak a chair. Eric took his seat without waiting for permission.

  “This is a secure room,” Griffin began. “This conversation is not being overheard by anyone else aboard this ship, or by anyone in any of the other ships under my command. This conversation is not being taped. All that is said in this room, can stay in this room.” He paused. “First Councillor, I take it none of your people were killed or injured in the destruction of your automated ship?”

  “Nobody was physically hurt.”

  “Is it now clear to you that your fleet could not successfully engage in a battle with our fleet?”

  “It was clear to me before you destroyed our factory.”

  “We did not act without provocation. You are refusing to return property that does not belong to you.”

  “Excalibur does not belong to The Patrol,” Eric interrupted.

  “Excalibur is bound by laws that The Patrol has been designated to enforce,” Griffin responded, showing no obvious annoyance at being contradicted, showing no real emotion at all.

  “We have laws, too,” Rak said. “You violate many of them with your attack and your threats.”

  “I have no choice. We do not want to harm your people,” Griffin said. “If you will return Excalibur immediately, we will allow your fleet to continue unobstructed.”

  “Whether you intended to or not, you have already harmed my people in ways that cannot be measured by bodily damage alone.”

  “You demoralized them,” Eric said bitterly.

  Griffin ignored him. “First Councillor, ours is a democratic society. Our people, on all our worlds, are allowed to elect their leaders. These leaders create the laws we are to live by and in turn choose people such as myself to make sure these laws are never broken. To follow the will of my people I must obey the orders of my superiors. And they have stated, within the last couple of hours, that under no conditions is your fleet to be allowed access to Excalibur. If you do not comply with our request and return Excalibur, I have been given authority to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent you from taking advantage of our technological developments.”

  Eric fumed. “Our people would never do this to the Kaulikans. The men who gave you that order are out of touch with the masses of The Union.”

  “I speak for my people,” Rak said quietly. “They know that with Excalibur the stars are within reach. They have recently lost everything. They have suffered terribly. But now, though the destruction of the factory has struck fear into their hearts, they have hope. General Griffin, I cannot give you back the ship.”

  The lines had been drawn. They were sharp. Neither side would step over to the other side. Not unless they were pushed. Griffin turned on his desktop holographic globe. In the center of the black crystal gleamed the Kaulikan flagship. His face turned grim. “Then you leave me with no choice.”

  “I have no choice.”

  “Your people would rather die?”

  “Than give up this chance? Yes.”

  “What will you do to them?” Eric whispered.

  Griffin was blunt. “The flagship will be destroyed.”

  “No!” Eric breathed. “There are hundreds of thousands of people aboard it!”

  The General pushed a button on his desk. “This is Griffin. Has target been programmed into matrix disrupters?”

  “Programmed. Status yellow and waiting, General.”

  “Go to status red. Define target’s matrix within our fields.”

  Eric's fear and anger skipped a cold beat as a painful sense of unreality tightened his chest, clotting his heart’s blood. He had been so caught up in the tragic size of the confrontation and the years he might have to spend on Mercury working sixteen hours a day under nauseous conditions that his mind had played a trick on him and he had momentarily forgotten the impact the situation could have on his friends. Sammy…Strem…Vani…they were all on the flagship! And this creature of a man was going to turn them into rarified plasma.

  And it would be all Eric Tirel’s fault.

  “Disruption is defined.”

  “Prepare to disrupt.” Griffin looked at Rak. “Place Excalibur outside the flagship. Now.”

  Rak was studying Griffin with an intentness that was somehow disconnected from the crisis, as if there were no hundreds of thousands to worry about, no deadly armada surrounding all that was important to him; there was only Griffin’s face, something in it that fascinated the First Councillor. Rak did not answer.

  “Awaiting final command, General?”

  “Countdown disrupt matrix, thirty seconds.”

  “Thirty...Twenty-nine…Twenty-eight…”

  Eric looked back and forth, from one to the other, his head grinding on his neck, his muscles tightening into hard lumps. This could not happen, he told himself, he could not let it happen.

  “You understand what we are going to do?” Griffin asked.

  Rak was hardly listening. “I understand.”

  “You’ll gain nothing,” Griffin said.

  Rak nodded slightly, holding the General's eyes; or rather being held by them. “We will both lose.”

  “Twenty…Nineteen…Eighteen…”

  Eric exploded. He leapt to his feet, his chair toppIing over at his back, terror and rage
combining in a fearsome possession. He reached across the desk, grabbing Griffin by the collar, feeling the weight of the General in his trembling hands as he tried to pull the man from his seat.

  “You animal!” he cursed. “You sit here and tell us of your orders and you give your orders and all those people out there are going to die and you’re going to die, too, ’cause I’m going to rip out your filthy fat throat!”

  Griffin glanced at him with mild distaste. “Sit down, Tirel, and shut up.”

  “I’ll kill you,” Eric swore, nevertheless feeling his supposed death grip loosening. Rak touched his side.

  “Son,” he said gently.

  “But my friends,” Eric moaned, letting go of the General, his eyes watering. As hot as it had burned, as quickly it burned out, and as his wrath died, he was left feeling cold and weak. He no longer cared about what had happened to Kashi, or what would happen to the rest of the Kaulikans. He just wanted his friends to live. He turned to Rak, pleading. “Give him the ship. Please?”

  Rak stood and put his arm around him, placing his lips near his ear and whispering words that it was remarkable the translator was able to catch, words Eric did not understand. “He does not want it.”

  “Nine...Eight…”

  The pressure was smothering. Eric could hardly speak. “What does he want?”

  “To know what is best.”

  “Five...Four…”

  Rak turned to Griffin. “You knew me, before I walked in. You do not need to play this game.”

  “Hold fire,” Griffin said into the microphone beside the globe. “Return to status yellow. Await my command.”

  “Status yellow and waiting.”

  Griffin erased the flagship in the globe and stood from his place behind the desk. He was deep in thought, the lines in his face now set with weariness rather than cruelty. Or had his expression really changed? Eric no longer knew what he was seeing because he no longer knew what he was looking for. He collapsed in his chair, limp with exhaustion while Griffin stepped to the model of the Spanish warship, placing his back to them, touching the main sail, a yellow mast that could have been sewn by hand. A full minute went by in silence.