Edward M. Lerner

by A New Order of Things

  EMPs didn’t scare the Snakes. EMPs didn’t scare the fleet. Maybe only sheltered techies panicked about EMPs. And then it hit him. “Pashwah-qith, let K’choi Gwu ka communicate with us.”

  Gwu spoke immediately. “What is this EMP?”

  “A high-intensity burst of broad-spectrum electromagnetic energy, as a side effect of nuclear explosions,” Eva explained. “You get an EMP when highly energetic photons slam into matter and eject a pulse of electrons. And matter/antimatter destruction produces extremely energetic photons.”

  Keffah made no comment. A guard gave Art another shove to speed his trajectory. No one seemed too concerned with how hard he was about to smack a wall—and in seconds or minutes, it could not matter to him, either. “Gwu, is Harmony hardened against EMPs? Are the BEC containers protected?”

  “Why would they be? The Unity has never made nuclear weapons.”

  “Bring them back!” shouted Keffah, just as Art bounced off the wall. Pashwah-qith’s caption read: stunned realization. “Ka, can the antihydrogen be vented safely?”

  “Yes. The containment vessel abuts the main hull. With an emergency hatch open, only electromagnetic containment separates the BECs from space. An asymmetry is introduced into the magnetic field. That creates a magnetic tube and propulsive gradient. The antihydrogen diffuses into the vacuum.”

  Art put out a hand to catch himself on a passing workstation. “Keffah, we have a lot of antimatter to purge.”

  “And a fusion reactor to shut down as well.” Keffah shuddered.

  “Everyone,” Gwu said. “The antimatter purge and reactor shutdown are automated. Once you initiate them, they will complete on their own.

  “Get them started and start running for the bow—now!”

  Mashkith discovered he was shivering. Soon after, as his breath began to condense before his eyes, it hardly surprised him that temperature control had failed. Considering the extent of the damage Renown had sustained, he counted himself fortunate to have cabin pressure. He struggled into a space suit now for its insulation and electric heater.

  The bridge grew ever dimmer, as alarm LEDs transitioned from dire far red to even more ominous quiescence. His last view of the lifeboat’s bridge alarms, before the inter-ship data link stopped working, was a fiery yellow expanse too dazzling to view unfiltered.

  The fusion drive had sputtered to a halt with Renown less than one-tenth light-second ahead of Victorious. Momentum continued to increase their separation at a pathetic rate. The rear attitude jets, before they exhausted their fuel, gave him a tiny bit more velocity.

  Was this far enough away? Too little of Renown’s computing capability had survived to answer that question. Either way, Mashkith thought, my work is done. He hoped to the core of his heart that the clan would survive—even though things had not turned out as he had planned.

  How strange a way to die, he thought. I won’t even know when it happens. And now I’ll never get to see—

  In an instant, Renown transformed. It became a blinding eruption of energy, very briefly the brightest object in the sky—for beings that saw gamma rays.

  News of the explosion could travel no faster than the wave front that struck Victorious. In one-tenth second, the thirty-thousand-kilometer gap was crossed. The torrent of high-energy photons became a cascade of scattered electrons. Computers, generators, controllers, communications links, lighting circuits—anything that was still powered up when the EMP struck, died.

  Roughly a gram of antihydrogen remained to be vented when the EMP killed the containment electronics. The resulting explosion, with a force comparable to the atomic bomb that once leveled Nagasaki, blew the stern off Victorious.

  The remaining two-thirds of the hull were left tumbling violently.

  CHAPTER 44

  Bone-weary, Art plodded along behind a squad of marines across Harmony’s vast landing platform. Imagined survivors still trapped in the wreckage, alone in the deepening cold and darkness, haunted him. As exhausted as he was, Art had ordered—and joined—search party after search party until the marines forced him to stop. It was too dangerous, they insisted, to stay any longer, despite the hundreds who remained unaccounted for. That so many more were almost certainly dead, their vacuum-boiled and bloated corpses blown into space, was too much to absorb.

  He and Eva had barely escaped, saved only because they were already in pressure suits as they fled from the inevitable explosion. Even now, the memories sought to overwhelm him: Clinging desperately to each other and a bent segment of railing. The whistling air pouring through rips in the hull. The eerie absence of sirens, since all alarm circuits had been fried by the EMP. The terrified shrieks, fading with the falling pressure. The bombardment by the bodies of the dead and dying….

  Eva walked beside him, a bit unsteadily; she had refused to leave Harmony until he did. The stars wobbled overhead, or so the starship’s random tumbling made it seem. The world rumbled once more beneath his feet. “Hold on!” he shouted to Eva. Yet another section of the explosion-weakened hull ruptured, spewing gases and random flotsam into space. The magnetic soles of their pressure-suit boots were set to maximum, but as the ground shook, he clasped Eva’s arm in a vise-like grip. I won’t lose you again.

  Deep pits and long, shiny gouges scarred the platform. He shivered every time they encountered a gash, for each was a crash site. UP warships crumpling into or careening off the starship’s bucking deck had added hundreds more to the death toll. The pursuit ships were all EMP-protected, but they had run out of everything except weapons. They had a velocity into deep space of two percent light speed; their only possible source of deuterium/tritium and reaction mass for a return flight was the starship.

  They marched toward the one ship remaining on the platform. The rest of the evacuation fleet had already launched. Fifty-three overcrowded vessels, some Hunter, some refueled human ships, had begun their long journey back to the warmth and light of Sol. No Centaur lifeboats joined them; like the starship itself, the lifeboats were unhardened against EMPs. Fortunately for the Centaurs, their spacesuits were entirely powered down when the disaster struck, and so were unaffected by the EMP.

  So many deaths, and yet dangers still lurked. Arblen Ems refugees had once fled into exile in a cometary belt—and from there staged raids on their enemies. Might they do the same in Sol system? The risk was unacceptable: UP warcraft on the flanks and rear of the flotilla would destroy any ship that wandered from its assigned course.

  At last they reached the waiting UP cruiser. Art and Eva shuffled up the ramp and into the inviting airlock of Actium. A peculiar keening startled Art as the inner door cycled open. He looked wildly about for its source, only to encounter the eagle-tattooed and smiling face of Capt. Aaron O’Malley. An honor guard standing stiffly at attention lined both sides of the corridor.

  The bosun’s whistle cut off abruptly. O’Malley gave a smart salute. “Welcome aboard, Ambassador. Doctor Gutierrez.”

  Art popped off his helmet. “You can’t believe how good it feels to be back.”

  Actium launched moments after O’Malley, Art, and Eva entered the bridge. They watched in silence as what remained of the abandoned starship, still tumbling about three axes, still jetting gases randomly as more and more of the traumatized hull gave way, receded into the distance. Its farms and parks were dying or dead, its emergency fuel cells were exhausted, its stockpiles drained. The shattered, hemorrhaging wreck seemed neither victorious nor harmonious, only sad. You were a fine ship, Art thought. You deserved better.

  He found Eva an empty seat on the bridge, then claimed another for himself. His eyelids drooped. The purposeful sounds of bridge operations washed soothingly over him.

  Someone cleared his throat loudly. Art forced his eyes open.

  “I said, Art,” O’Malley said, “that there’s a cabin waiting for you. Your work is done. Go get some sleep. We’re pretty full this trip, though, so everyone is doubling up.”

  Art turned toward Eva and fo
und her already looking at him. They shared a nuanced glance which said everything that needed to be said. “That won’t be a problem,” Art replied.

  “Now, let’s go home.”

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER 45

  Ariel Colony: the United Planets protectorate inhabited by the Snake residents of Sol system (see related entries, Harmony/Victorious Hijacking and Himalia Incident).

  No matter how aggressive or territorial a civilization, to be self-sustaining most of its members must make something other than war. In historic times, no more than ten percent of any K’vithian clan were ever warriors; fewer than five percent of the clan Arblen Ems survivors of the Himalia Incident were. Few combatants bore any responsibility for setting clan policy toward humans or Centaurs.

  Most K’vithian evacuees were, by human standards, civilians: children, workers and administrators, infirm, and elderly. Although some evacuees might justly have been treated as prisoners of war, all were homeless exiles. Many became refugees long before Harmony first approached Barnard’s Star.

  Thus, in the aftermath of the Himalia Incident, the UP victors confronted a diaspora more than a defeated army. Any policy other than genocide had to address that unexpected reality, and hope in time to inculcate among the K’vithian exiles respect for the rules, and ideally the values, of the United Planets.

  As a first step toward the UP goal of integration, clan Arblen Ems was settled for orientation and rehabilitation on a middling moon of Uranus: Ariel.

  —Internetopedia

  Arblen Ems Firh Glithwah, Foremost, as she always did upon entering her office, took a moment to study the desolate topography outside the well-insulated windows. Her view to one side was into an ancient crater, and to the other side, into a deep ravine. The gorge was but one minor example of the many interconnected valleys extending for hundreds of kilometers across the surface. On this face of the tidally locked moon, Uranus dominated the sky.

  Ariel was half rock, half water and methane ices. Some of the scattered craters, including the one upon whose rim this settlement perched, had been made by large metallic meteors. Deuterium/tritium scooped from the beautiful blue planet that hung tantalizingly overhead satisfied all their energy needs. And therein, despite the abundance of resources, lay the problem—the clan was permitted no ships. That prohibition was what made the “protectorate” a prison.

  The human norm for an office demanded a desk, and so her office had one. She did all her work and kept all records in cyberspace, securely encrypted. Everything on the desk, like the desk itself, was mere decoration. Be truthful, she told herself. Some items were sentimental, like the hand-carved wooden chess set. It was one of the few items salvaged from the Foremost’s cabin before Victorious had been abandoned.

  What would Uncle have said of their situation—besides that chess was simplistic and limiting? She missed his guidance, never more so than when unwanted guests arrived. Yes, she had become, as had her uncle and great-grandfather before her, the Foremost—but however confidently she presented herself, she took her responsibility as proof mostly of the clan’s heavy casualties. Did anyone ever feel ready?

  In minutes, ready or not, she had visitors.

  With no more exertion than the occasional flexing of a boot sole or the feather-light press of fingers against a wall, the man known to everyone on Ariel as Carl Rowland propelled himself through the unusually crowded main corridor of Customs/Security. That effortless grace was the product of extensive practice; he had lived here for many years. None of the gawkers paid him any attention, which was fine with Carl. All eyes were on the woman he escorted, whom he had greeted at the Customs lounge with a bear hug.

  Ten years after the linked destructions of Himalia and Harmony, Corinne Elman remained among the most recognized beings in the solar system. Her 3-V docudrama about battle aboard and escape from the starship was a bestseller in two solar systems—and probably in others from which sales figures had yet to arrive. Had she not assigned ninety-nine percent of her royalties to victims’ families and survivors of Himalia, she would also have been not just wealthy, but fabulously, stinking rich. The only thought passersby gave to him was surely: How does he know her? They would never know the answer: as Helmut Schiller. That name, and the face that went with it, were buried. Who better than the UPIA to convince the world the Frying Dutchman in all his reincarnations had finally died? Who better to give him a new identity?

  On the home/prison world of Arblen Ems, even the rich and famous, even friends of the normally dour deputy of the UP’s viceroy, underwent the full security protocol. Corinne and her luggage were X-rayed, chemically and biologically scanned, and hand-searched. She took it in good spirits. “It’s great to see you.”

  And how unbelievably good it was to see her. They arranged to cross paths every year or so, but never before on Ariel. “Welcome to my world, shipmate. When we’re done here, I’m buying you the finest breakfast on the planet and giving you the grand tour.” Neither commitment was as generous as it might have sounded, especially the breakfast part. Ariel offered two human-safe restaurants and a staff mess hall. “Then we can tend to your interview.”

  He should have known better. Soon after their meal, they were in the terrestrial-conditioned side of the Foremost’s spartan but spacious office. Carl understood clan-speak, of course, but only someone with two independent sets of vocal chords could speak it fluently. Firh Glithwah as a matter of principle conducted business only in clan-speak. Pashwah-qith would handle the translations.

  “Thank you for seeing me, Foremost.”

  “You are welcome, Ms. Elman.”

  “Corinne. I congratulate you on your recent ascension to this position.” They traded courtesies a few times; long, by Snake usage. “You know why I asked to see you.”

  “To share your wealth with those who made it possible?” Pashwah-qith’s closed captioning added, “Sarcasm,” faster than Carl could net, “She’s joking.”

  “Because your uncle was Foremost when the hostilities occurred. Because you can now combine what you might have heard as his closest surviving relative with records possibly only available to someone in your new position.”

  “I see.” Glithwah did the ironic-laughter head circle. “All will now be revealed.”

  Somehow Carl doubted that it would.

  Glithwah had been Foremost for months. Corinne’s answer notwithstanding, the obvious reason for this interview was an upcoming “event”: ten human-standard years since the destruction of Victorious. Humans fixated on anniversaries, which provided this human yet more opportunities to profit from the clan’s misfortune.

  Whatever the impetus, human curiosity was always a danger—the mental leap was too short from analyzing old motives to speculating about new ones. Glithwah strove always to keep the clan’s captors fixed upon rehabilitation, on reinforcing their wishful thinking that acculturation was progressing. It mattered not that she preferred to avoid questions altogether; declining interview requests could itself raise suspicions.

  This reporter had good cause from personal experience to be skeptical. She also had a huge human audience, and apparently the ear of UP security. It all made her dangerous. Could Glithwah mislead as adeptly as had Uncle? “Your questions, Corinne?”

  “When Mashkith surrendered, he did so to K’Choi Gwu ka. Why was that?”

  Because we had just killed thousands of humans. And because the Unity, unlike the UP, never had a death penalty. Surely this was obvious? “A sudden decision at a very desperate time. Reasons lost with Foremost.” Glithwah allowed the repositioning of an excavation rig deep within the crater to distract her for a time. “Absence of data. Very regrettable.”

  “Was surrender to the ka in recognition that the ship was Centaur? Might Mashkith have been making deathbed amends?”

  “Perhaps, Corinne.” Certainly not.

  “Let me preface my next question with an observation.” Corinne interlaced her fingers. “Imagine the lifeboat hija
cking had gone undetected. The lifeboat rendezvoused with Victorious. Victorious set off to Barnard’s Star, fully fueled. My question is: then what?”

  “A very broad question.” And a perilously perceptive one.

  “Not really. Put another way: Could Arblen Ems possibly have prevailed once it arrived home? News of Victorious’ appearance in Sol system returned home at light speed. Your own return would have been at, what, a third that? Long before Pashwah was quarantined, she must have sent word of your arrival in Sol system to the Great Clans. The UP’s trade agent on K’vith would have, too. The other clans had ample time to prepare for your eventual reappearance.”

  Hunters do not fidget—especially not a Foremost. When Glithwah picked up the black queen from the chess set, it was quite intentional. It was a subliminal suggestion to her visitors: Think chess. Trust in predefined constraints. Believe in the polite and predictable taking of turns. Think inside the box. “Plentiful antimatter in our control. Opposition to clan Arblen Ems too dangerous.”