He found himself on his feet and trudging across the sand dunes, up one slope and down the next, one foot in front of the other. The lack of demonstrators to harass him persisted, even as he entered the city. Who knew what they might be glued to at home, staring into space as their Oculenses treated them to fabricated sights.
He soon found himself outside Ochrim’s door, and he rang the bell. Moments later, the front door slid aside to reveal the Ixan.
“Captain,” he said.
“Not anymore. Not of the Vesta, anyway.”
“I know. It’s on the narrownet.”
“Figures.”
“What can I help you with?” the alien asked, his expression as neutral as ever.
“Feel like harboring a strong candidate for commitment to a mental facility?”
Ochrim raised three clawed fingers to his chin, as though considering Husher’s request. “Given your new status, you no longer have power over me. You can’t pressure me to share the results of my research with you. In fact, you can’t require me to do anything at all.”
“Is that a no, then?”
“It’s an accurate characterization of the market value of my yes.” The Ixan stepped aside, and Husher hesitated for only a moment before crossing the threshold and making his way to the living room, where he deposited himself into Ochrim’s favorite chair. “Do you have any beer?”
That elicited a rare chuckle from Ochrim, and Husher heard the fridge open, followed by the clink of two bottles being taken out.
The first swallow was the best thing Husher had ever tasted. “I think things are looking up,” he said. “How’s the multiverse doing?”
“Didn’t I just remark—”
“You said I can’t require you to share your research. But I can still ask.”
Ochrim settled onto the couch across the room, peering at Husher with his lamp-like eyes. He’d yet to sip from his beer. “I’ve made progress,” he said at last. “Even so, I have to question whether it’s worthwhile to discuss my discoveries any further, or whether I should continue pursuing my research at all. As we both know, scientific research and I have a fraught past, and it’s tempting to join you in your current position—that is, relinquishing control of the future, whether voluntarily or not.”
Husher grasped his beer bottle with both hands and sat forward in the armchair, staring at the threadbare rug Ochrim kept around for some reason. The residence could be set to whatever temperature the alien preferred, at minimal cost, and the rug certainly wasn’t serving any aesthetic purpose.
Husher sat in that position for some time, not speaking. His mind flitted from thought to thought, seemingly at random. It wasn’t until he raised his head and met Ochrim’s eyes that he realized he’d been piecing some things together.
“Did you know I lost my daughter?”
After a pause, Ochrim inclined his head. “I had heard. I’m sorry.”
“Sure.” Husher cleared his throat. “Did you know I’m being treated for PTSD from the night I lost her?”
“I did not. Were you…?”
“There? Yeah. My cab was pulling up to the curb as the house was getting bombed.”
Ochrim had nothing to say to that.
“I’m not bringing this up to shock you. But I…I think I just realized something. Losing my daughter made me even more determined to make sure the galaxy’s ready for the coming war, because I had almost nothing left, after it happened. Sera divorced me, and all I had was the mission I’d assigned myself with shortly after Keyes died.”
“And so, you think we—”
“I’m not finished. Losing Iris made me more determined to make sure we’re ready, but it made me more anxious, too. More afraid, of losing the little I had left. It made me want to protect everything, absolutely everything, from anything that could possibly hurt it. My ship, my crew, the civilians living on my ship, the galaxy…everything.”
“Do you believe that’s what brought you to this point?”
Husher nodded, though he hadn’t realized that until Ochrim had just said it. “I do. I tried to hold on to everything, and I ended up with nothing.”
“The Fins made a study of PTSD.”
Husher raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”
“Yes. Like so many things, PTSD is something that’s common to every sapient species we’ve encountered. It’s probably common among nonsapient species, too. In fact, my bet would be that every species experiences some form of it. Now, why do you suppose that is?”
Slowly, Husher shook his head, though an inexplicable knot of excitement had made its home in his stomach as he listened to the Ixan.
“I’ll tell you what the Fins concluded. They came to believe that PTSD is an ongoing mechanism—a subroutine, if you will—evolved to alert an organism that it has experienced a threat it can’t properly account for. That raises stress levels, because the subroutine is sounding the alarm that the threatening event that caused the initial trauma could easily happen again, and if it does, the organism has no plan for contending with it. You’ve experienced those elevated stress levels, obviously.”
Husher nodded, rapt, and Ochrim continued: “The way to deal with those perpetually elevated stress levels—the way to alleviate the PTSD, even to cure it—is to provide the subroutine with a proper account of the threatening event, and to provision it with a plan for dealing with a similar situation, should it occur in the future. You were the victim of a terrorist attack, and the question you’re likely asking yourself now is, how can you come up with a rational account for another intelligent being murdering your three-year-old daughter. Correct?”
“Yes.”
“Well, here it is: evil exists in this world. Maybe you knew that already, maybe you truly accepted it, or maybe you subscribe to the more modern notion that there’s no such thing as evil. That everyone is basically good. Well, that’s nonsense, as your traumatic experience demonstrates. The beings who killed your daughter committed an evil act, because they are, in fact, evil. But even supposing you’ve accepted the existence of evil in the universe, that isn’t enough. Because in order to provide a true accounting of what happened to you, Husher, you also need to recognize that every living being is capable of the level of evil that was required to murder your daughter. In fact, they’re capable of even more evil than that. Much, much more. And that includes you. You, too, are capable of that much evil.”
Slowly, Husher shook his head, but still said nothing. His breathing came slow and steady, though the air rushed through his nostrils, and his chest heaved and fell.
“I heard your conversation with my brother, when he suggested that you’re both alike. The thing is, he’s right. You are both killers, you are both motivated in part by vengeance, and you have both taken it upon yourselves to decide when a being should live and when they should die. If you want to arrive at a proper account of your daughter’s death, if you want to overcome your PTSD, you have to realize that Teth was right. You are just like him. Recognizing that would make you more effective, because it would allow you to strip away your naivety, and it would let you act with the knowledge of just how horrible you’re capable of being. Then, and only then, would you be capable of making a truly moral choice: to act rightly, with full awareness of just how possible it is for you to do otherwise.”
Ochrim chucked softly. “The peculiar thing about your situation is that in a sense, Teth represents exactly the situation your PTSD has been trying to warn you about, again and again, for seventeen years. Someone has come once more to take from you what you hold most dear. The question is whether you’re able to figure yourself out in time to stop him, or indeed whether it might be far too late for you to do so.”
Trembling with emotion for the first time that Husher could remember in…well, ever, he rose to his feet.
“I think you just made a pretty good case for why we should try to do something about this mess.”
Ochrim rose, too. “Then we will try.”
Ch
apter 42
Innumerable
“How was speaking with your brother?” Husher asked as Ochrim knelt to lever up the removable floor tile and open the hidden panel into his lab.
The Ixan paused, crouching on the floor and peering up at Husher thoughtfully. “It wasn’t an experience I would have predicted having.” Flipping up the tile, he activated the moving panel. “Teth brought you up quite a lot. He kept trying to use you to pressure the diplomats into giving him what he wanted.”
Husher narrowed his eyes. “What did he say?”
“He kept mentioning how he knows you’re pushing for an increased Fleet presence in this region of the galaxy, and how that makes him skeptical of the negotiators’ actual commitment to an armistice. In my view, it had the effect of pushing the diplomats to offer more systems to Teth than they otherwise would have.”
Ochrim rose from the floor, and he looked like he was about to lower himself onto the ladder when he seemed to notice the expression on Husher’s face. “Something I just told you bothers you.”
“Did Chancey tell Teth that I’m pushing for a greater Fleet presence?”
“I didn’t hear him say it.”
“And were you there from the beginning of the transmission?”
“Yes.”
Shaking his head, Husher spoke slowly: “Only two people on this ship know that I was pushing for more warships to come out here. My Coms officer and Mayor Chancey.”
“This makes you suspicious of Chancey.”
“I guess it could just as easily have been Ensign Fry. But she hasn’t been working against me ever since this whole thing started. Chancey has.”
“There’s another possibility: the mayor may have let it slip to someone else that you advocated for a greater presence—someone who’s the actual traitor, or who unknowingly passed it on to the traitor.”
“Yeah. That’s possible, too.” Husher had already assumed that Teth would have superior intel, but the idea that it might have come from someone aboard his ship as opposed to an AI’s projections…it made him wonder what other sorts of treachery might be at play on the Vesta.
It also made him fear for the battle group they’d left back in Concord.
“Do you really think Teth can be trusted to abide by anything he agreed to during those negotiations, let alone an armistice?” he asked.
“No,” Ochrim said. “But you’re the one who brought us to Concord to negotiate.”
“I was following orders. I made very clear that I thought negotiating with Teth was worse than pointless.”
Ochrim seemed to be studying his face intently. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re thinking?”
“I’m thinking I want to turn this ship around and get back to our battle group.”
“Success in turning the Vesta around is unlikely, as I believe we both know. As for getting back to your battle group…well, follow me.” With that, Ochrim began descending the ladder toward his lab.
The knot of excitement in the pit of his stomach made a return as Husher lowered himself to follow.
When he reached the chamber below, he found Ochrim already leaning against the table. As Husher looked around the lab, nothing jumped out at him that looked like an obvious solution to their problem. “You conducted the experiment, then?”
“I did.”
Husher realized that Ochrim was wearing a wider smile than he’d ever seen from him—which, coming from an Ixan, was a bit unsettling. But his anticipation of what Ochrim might have found overrode that. “And? How did it go?”
“I have no idea.” The smile broadened.
“What do you mean, you have no idea, Ochrim? Why are we down here, then?”
“I fitted a compact drone with a generator governed by an electromagnetic field restrictor so that it would produce a self-contained wormhole, spherical in form.”
“Okay. So what happened?”
“Again, I have no idea. All I can tell you is that the drone vanished from view and didn’t return. I didn’t have time to set up the experiment before we left Saffron, and so we were under warp drive at the time, meaning that wherever the drone ended up, it was still traveling at warp velocities. If, indeed, it ended up anywhere. But even supposing it did go somewhere meaningful to us, and supposing I’d had time to program it to return to realspace at the exact coordinates the Vesta would occupy, I didn’t have the resources to collect the drone from space. I wouldn’t have wanted to, anyway, since that could draw unwanted attention to my research, which is now officially illegal.”
Husher was shaking his head. “How does this help us, Ochrim?”
“Because I have a theory about where it ended up, which I consider fairly likely.”
Husher sighed. He hated science. “What’s your theory?”
“I think it went to another brane inside our universe. And I also believe that brane is a decoherence-free subspace, the attainment of which I consider the ultimate goal of my research. The applications of harnessing such a space are innumerable—within ten years, I could envision—”
“What are the applications right now?” Husher yelled.
The scientist blinked. “You said you wanted to rejoin your battle group.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I have two theories about the subspace’s spatial relationship to the brane we occupy. If one of them proves true, it should allow you to reach the Concord System in just a third of the time it takes to reach it under warp drive.”
“What if the other holds true?”
“Three times as long. It’s also possible that you won’t end up anywhere, or that the subspace’s physics won’t support the integrity of biological structures. That is, you’ll disintegrate.” Ochrim cleared his throat. “Our dilemma, of course, is that we do not enjoy an overabundance of time.”
Husher nodded, pursing his lips as it dawned on him exactly what attempting this would require—namely, nosediving into the abyss and hoping for the best.
But Teth and the other strange warships had to be going somewhere when they disappeared. At last, Husher said, “We’ll also need a craft to carry me there.”
“Indeed. It will need to be quite small, since it turns out spherical wormholes require quite a lot of energy to generate. Frankly, I have no idea how Teth can create one large enough to encompass his destroyer, if indeed that is how he’s managing to vanish.”
“Would a Condor be small enough? We still have a few, kicking around Hangar Bay Theta. No one goes down there, so we can do all the work we need right there in the hangar bay. And no one’s going to miss a rusted old fighter that’s been obsolete for a decade and a half.”
“That will be perfect,” Ochrim said. “I’ve already begun work on a spherical wormhole generator for a craft large enough to hold a being, and with some modifications, it should accommodate a fighter the size of a Condor. Let us get to work.”
Chapter 43
Staring Back in Shock
As Husher worked on the Condor he’d identified as closest to spaceworthy among those stored in Hangar Bay Theta, Ochrim set about modifying the wormhole generator he’d already been working on.
Repairs on the Condor took almost twenty-three hours, during which they both worked without sleep. Ochrim finished the generator seven hours in, which surprised Husher, until he considered that Ochrim had invented the wormhole generator he was replicating at a smaller scale. With the generator finished, the scientist began work on a warp drive modeled after the Vesta’s, but small enough for the Condor. Even assuming Ochrim’s subspace compressed distance the way he thought it might, Husher would still need to fly under warp in order to travel to Concord and back in time.
Since the Vesta was already inside a warp bubble, it wouldn’t be possible to generate another one inside the hangar bay—you couldn’t generate a negative energy field inside a field that already had negative energy—but Husher would have to produce one the instant he left the supercarrier’s, otherwise his Condor would be torn apart.
The fighter would also need to be able to attain the velocities necessary to enter warp—in order to return to the Vesta once he was finished in Concord, for example. That would require steady acceleration over a much longer distance than the Vesta required, since the Condor’s engines weren’t nearly as powerful. That said, the fighter still had the ability to use what was known as Ocharium boost, whereby it used the rare element to propel itself against ambient axions and achieve speeds that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible. That would help, though it made the use of the Condor also illegal. Of course, Husher and Ochrim were well past letting that bother them.
At the end of the day, they retired to Ochrim’s living room with a couple of beers. Husher awoke the next morning to find that Ochrim had laid his partially finished beer on the carpet before stretching out on the couch, while Husher was still in a sitting position in Ochrim’s favorite chair, his miraculously unspilled drink nestled between his legs.
“So, how will I know when it’s time to transition back to this brane?” Husher asked three hours into their second day of work. “How can I figure out what realspace coordinates correspond to a given subspace location?”
Ochrim’s head jerked up from installing a rivet to fasten a distortion rod onto the Condor’s hull. He reminded Husher of a squirrel who’d just overheard a potential predator. “Oh. Right! I’ll need to include a universal positioning system that assumes a three-to-one realspace-to-subspace relationship in all directions. Thanks for reminding me.”
“Uh, yeah, my pleasure,” Husher said, sarcasm drenching his voice. Ochrim didn’t seem to notice.
Fifteen hours later, the Condor was finally ready—either to transport him to subspace or to kill him in a really specific way.
Either way, at least I’ll be a pioneer. For some reason, what he was about to do reminded him of the time he’d been the first to survive an emergency orbital insertion using a Darkstream reentry suit—the same model that had killed the only other person to attempt it. How do I get myself into these situations?
Ixan Legacy Box Set Page 18