“I am sorry,” he says, “but we cannot simply pretend we never saw this. Something like this must never happen again. Somebody has to determine the cause and punish the guilty ones.”
“There is still time for that after we return. Otherwise, there will just be more of these bad decisions.”
Perhaps she is right. Murnaka is smart. And it is true that determining the culprit would be hard. Yet he feels he cannot finish his task unless he has at least done something about this matter. Everyone has to know what happened here.
“I am sorry,” he says, “but I simply can’t do what you say. I... the burden is too heavy. I can’t just go on like this.”
“I understand,” Murnaka says. As a sign of her grief she has pulled all four eyelids slightly upward. “Then it simply has to be done. I am not angry at you, even though I think it is the wrong decision.”
That last sentence encourages him. He turns around and starts looking for a console. In the middle room he finds a control panel. He attaches the recording device and starts the transmission.
They traverse three more rooms. In the fourth they find a resting area. The sleeping beams look so inviting that they almost simultaneously decide they really need a few hours of rest. They share a bit of dried food and wash up. Gronolf stretches along the length of his beam. Letting his limbs hang down feels good.
“Quiet waters,” Murnaka wishes him before falling asleep, following tradition.
“Quiet waters,” he replies.
Archive, Darknight 11, 3350
Gronolf wakes up from a slight noise. He is a warrior, trained to sleep in a way that nothing and nobody can surprise him. He silently reaches for the weapon that hangs directly above the sleeping beam. His eyes are wide open, but it is pitch-dark. The noise comes from ahead and left. Murnaka is sleeping to his right. He can hear her calm and steady breathing.
The sound that woke him is a quiet clacking. It definitely does not come from her. The clacking slowly comes closer, while moving to his left. Gronolf calculates his chances. As soon as he gets up, the light in the room will turn on. It might blind him for a moment, but it should do the same to the intruder. That is, unless it is a machine, which can adapt its sensors faster than his eyes are able to adjust. To him, this seems to be the most realistic scenario. In practical terms, it means he will have to shoot blindly, without knowing exactly what is in front of him, friend or foe. Yet... why would a friend be sneaking around in the dark and deliberately moving in such a way that the motions sensors of the room don’t react? Especially now, with the tension aboard the ship?
Gronolf makes a decision. He uses his sonar to locate the foreign object. At the same time he raises his weapon with a lightning-fast movement and fires at the target he sees with his inner eye. There is a dull crack, but unexpectedly the light does not turn on.
“What’s up?” Murnaka asks softly without moving. This is the perfect behavior for this unpredictable situation, just as one learns during training.
“Possible enemy object destroyed,” Gronolf says. He listens intensively, but the clacking has disappeared. Even his sonar no longer detects a movement.
“Mask on,” he says, because he suddenly hears the typical hissing of air escaping. Somebody has switched the life-support system to pump mode. This does not make much sense to him. The Omniscience must know it cannot hurt them this way. It probably just wants to distract them from something. But from what? From the new intruder behind them! Now Gronolf notices a scurrying movement. The thing is fast, but not fast enough. He whips his weapon around and shoots. No more movement—he must have hit it.
“Retreat in three... two... one,” he whispers. In this room they are at the mercy of their enemy’s plan and can only wait and react. They have to change the situation in order to become active players themselves.
“Go,” he cries. Murnaka obeys at the right moment. Gronolf can see her sprinting to the exit, thanks to his sonar sensor. He follows directly behind her. He uses his touch-arm to close the door behind him.
“Keep going!” he shouts.
They run through the next room. He has to admire Murnaka’s memory. She knows exactly in which direction to go. He smashes the next door shut to block the way for possible pursuers.
“Go on!”
It is fantastic how well they synchronize. He rarely ever saw that happen even with the best recruits. The room they have reached has a chest-high platform in the middle—a perfect defensive position.
“Stop!” he yells.
Murnaka immediately finds a secure place behind the platform. Gronolf drops two blaze balls next to the entrance. The lighting system in the entire sector seems to be out, and his sonar only works optimally when he is moving. The blaze balls will illuminate the entrance for at least one bubble period. Gronolf takes a deep breath. Of course, they should have expected this. He really would like to know, though, what exactly he killed earlier.
“Good reaction,” he praises Murnaka.
“Good training,” she says, and her lack of modesty does not sound arrogant.
Gronolf leans against the rear side of the platform. He pulls a folding mirror from his belt and holds it up behind him with his right touch arm. This way he can see with his rear eye what is approaching from the front. His right eye covers the right side, while Murnaka is responsible for the left side. Gronolf uses an additional mirror to watch the ceiling with his front eye. Exactly over the center of the platform he sees the opening of an air duct.
“Change of tactics,” he whispers, and points upward with his free load-hand. Murnaka signals that she has understood him. Gronolf waits patiently until the blaze balls are almost extinguished, then he jumps on the platform, rips out the grate of the air duct, and pulls himself up. Murnaka quickly does likewise. During training he often had to crawl through such narrow pipes, and it was always a nuisance, but with a real threat below them it suddenly works perfectly.
The life-support ducts follow a certain pattern in each sector. Like veins, the ducts emanate from a central station and supply the rooms of the area below them with air. The sector centers are autonomous, but they have generously sized cross-connections with other sectors. If the technical systems in one of these centers should fail, at least three other centers can supply the relevant sector. This way, a network of air ducts spreads through the entire ship.
Gronolf rapidly crawls ahead. They have to cover a great distance, so he has to preserve his strength. Murnaka seems to be following him without any problem. However, their adversary will soon notice they switched levels. Gronolf’s plan therefore includes occasionally breaking through to a level above or below them. Will this be enough? He doubts it. The Omniscience knows the structure of the ship much better than he does. They can try to remain unpredictable, but if it knows their destination, it can place guards at every entrance. Does it know their destination?
After about one and a half bubble periods they descend into a technical room inside an adjacent sector. The sector appears to be inhabited, but this particular room is empty. They proceed as quietly as possible to avoid detection. Gronolf checks the room for microphones and cameras, but he finds nothing except for the autonomous recording device of the archive. The Omniscience should not have access to it.
“We need to go somewhere else,” he says.
“Why?”
“Just as a diversionary tactic. So that the Omniscience will expect us there. Perhaps the drive system?”
“Why would we want to sabotage the drive?”
A good question. Gronolf can’t think of an answer. Without a drive the ship would be damaged and they would all die. Nobody could want that, so the Omniscience would never believe them. However, there is no other structure in the core of the ship that would make a believable destination.
“You’re right. Too bad, I thought I could trick the Omniscience.”
“Nobody is smarter than the Omniscience,” Murnaka says.
They reach the last sector without a
ny further problems or encounters. Murnaka unrolls her holo-map and points at the structure in the middle and then upward.
“The core of the ship is above us,” she says, “and it consists of the drive, and the thinking modules of the Omniscience are on top of that.” Murnaka moves the longest of her seven fingers back and forth.
Under different circumstances, Gronolf thinks, that could be a very erotic gesture.
“The hub runs directly through the core. It starts at the security chamber.” She taps on a spot which now glows yellow. “Here—this is where we can seal off the Omniscience from the rest of the ship.”
Gronolf is amazed when he sees the structure in its entirety. “The ship is built almost like the body of a Grosnop,” he blurts out.
Now Murnaka probably thinks him stupid. How could he have overlooked this until now?
“With one minor difference,” she says. To his relief, she does not sound at all amused. She uses her long finger to give the map display a slight push, and the entire visualization starts to move. “The living quarters rotate around the core, which—luckily—is not the case with our bodies,” she says.
Gronolf gazes down at his body. Without the rotation there would be no gravity, no up or down. “After we have left the living quarters through the airlock, we have to wait until the hub comes rotating below us.”
“Exactly. There are about ten body lengths of vacuum we have to cross.”
Gronolf points at the mask on his belt. “No problem,” he says. He bends over the map and zooms in on the airlock of the living quarters. The real problem will await them there. The pressure chamber, which has been built into each of the innermost sectors for maintenance purposes, offers the only way into the core. Everything is very well-arranged and there are no alternatives, because the exterior wall of the entire living shell is so thoroughly hardened that it would survive even an explosion of the drive system.
“If the Omniscience wants to stop us, it would be here.” He points at the airlock. If they don’t manage to reach the exit, they stand no chance of fulfilling their mission. “Do we have any information about what to expect?”
“The Omniscience has maintenance robots, that’s all we know.”
“It certainly should be able to modify the robots according to its requirements.”
“Without a doubt,” Murnaka concurs.
“I understand. Then we will proceed the way I teach all recruits. We use the element of surprise and destroy anything that might be dangerous. If I am right, there is nothing in that room we are not allowed to demolish.” Gronolf holds his weapon at the ready, “Please take cover behind me.”
Murnaka looks at him with her front eye but remains silent. Should he say a few farewell words? No, that would be bad luck. He is the best of his plex. He will clear the path to the airlock, that is the only thing that counts. Nobody can stop him. He feels warm at the pit of his stomach.
Gronolf senses that there is more at stake than fulfilling his duty as a warrior. Yet he should not get distracted by it.
“Thank you for your companionship,” Murnaka says.
His stomach rumbles. What is he supposed to reply? Nothing comes to mind. Therefore he simply releases the safety catch of his weapon and starts walking.
The airlock is in the central room of the life-support sector, and they are now in front of it. The many machines in the room generate so much noise on all wavelengths that their sensors will be overloaded. Technically, they will be blind as well. Gronolf positions himself left of the door hinge. In a moment, when the door opens to the left, he will have a good view of the right side of the room. The door panel will protect him from the left side.
As agreed, Murnaka stays behind him. She is even crouching slightly in order not to tower above him.
Gronolf silently counts to three and then pushes against the door. Most of all, he will have to be quick, as that is his advantage. Therefore he does not wait to see an enemy, or even just a movement, but immediately fires his harpoon into the opening. The explosive charge detonates three body lengths ahead and shreds an obstacle, whatever it was.
A metal part comes flying through the door opening, but Gronolf manages to catch it with a load-arm. He drops it right away, as it is red-hot. Then Gronolf takes a strong leap forward in order to use the dust cloud caused by the explosion. It takes him just a moment to load a new explosive charge into the harpoon. While he is still airborne he whips his weapon to the left. He notices three multi-armed, slender shapes. He does not see any details, because smoke and dust fill the room, but they could only be robots. Gronolf fires the weapon a second time. Two of the three robots fall before he even touches the ground.
Then the pain starts. Electrical energy surges through him when he hits the floor. His muscles twitch uncontrollably, while his mind remains strangely lucid. He can watch himself as if from outside as he smashes to the ground. He collapses like a wet sack, and the physical pain is overwhelming, excruciating, like nothing he has experienced with the possible exception of his draght.
Something flies toward him from the other room. He can only see Murnaka’s shadow. She bounces off the walls and the ceiling as if gravity did not exist. Her right foot hits his side and breaks several ribs, but the impulse rolls his body toward the door. Despite the pain, Gronolf manages to reach for the door panel at the right moment, Then one of his legs is outside the electrically charged area and he can lever himself to safety behind the wall, breathing heavily.
But where is Murnaka? He only now notices he has lost his weapon. He rolls around and looks into the large room. He can see movement behind the curtain of dust. Gronolf wants to run inside, but just in time he remembers the trap, the floor. Could he move across the wall and the ceiling, like Murnaka? Maybe, but only when his muscles have recovered from the electric shocks. He absolutely wants to save her, just like she saved him, but as an experienced warrior he knows it is no use.
Now visibility is increasing inside the life-support control room. A door opens in the back. He notices three more robots. They don’t bother with him, as if they know that he no longer poses a threat. They are rolling a large, heavy object out of the room. It is nearly conical. Gronolf has to watch helplessly as the Omniscience kidnaps Murnaka’s body. He angrily hammers his four hands against the floor. Yet the robots are not distracted.
When the door closes behind Murnaka and the robots, Gronolf goes limp. It is his fault that Murnaka sacrificed herself. He started combat just as he was trained to do. Naturally, the Omniscience expected this. It sacrificed a few robots and set a trap for them. He should have anticipated this! But why didn’t Murnaka just leave him lying in there? She should have slammed the door and fled. This whole mission was ill-fated from the beginning, he thinks in frustration.
Suddenly the ship trembles under an enormous blow. Gronolf jumps up, even though his limbs still hurt. What happened? Has the Majestic Draght been attacked by something? He activates the two-way radio receiver. The Omniscience, he learns, simultaneously closed all bulkheads between sectors. Now it is impossible for him to reach the security chamber with the emergency switch. And even the way back will be difficult. Does he even have to rejoin the others? Wouldn’t it just be better to stay here and die of exhaustion?
No! The Omniscience must pay, and Gronolf is ready to give his life to make it happen.
Brightnight 37, 3876
He can’t go on. The memories are so painful that they still torture and weaken him, these many cycles later. Right now, he cannot afford that, because he needs to save the sleepers in their chambers. Gronolf has the archive present the rest of the story in text form. The Omniscience had closed all bulkheads in reaction to an attempted rebellion. Triggered by the images of the dead children, the rebels tried to fight the leadership group. Perhaps the Omniscience had planned this all along, or maybe it was just a useful side effect. The internal strife gave it the authority to depose the leadership and take on sole control. The rules included this option
in case the leadership no longer could fulfill its function for any reason.
From that moment on, there had been no more ‘accidents’—another fact indicating this had all been part of a greater plan. The Omniscience no longer accepted or followed orders, but it performed its duty and brought the Majestic Draght into an orbit around Single Sun. It sent the complete crew, in several waves, down to the surface of the planet, using the existing shuttles. Then, it went silent.
For the crew, survival on Single Sun turned out to be difficult. The Omniscience was not willing to provide resources from the ship. In fact, it did not even reply to any of their requests. At first, the marooned crew hoped this was only a passing phase. As the years passed, it became obvious they were going to receive no help.
The climate of the planet and its activities did not allow for a permanent colony, which had been the original plan. It turned out to be impossible to synchronize the deposit of eggs on the beach between the frequent flares. This became quite clear when Single Sun killed off the entire brood three times during the first year. The Space Scientists had not realized a red dwarf would emit so much deadly radiation. At first they still hoped for help from their home world. Yet this naive belief soon faded. Why should they send a second capital ship after one which was obviously lost, not reacting to signals? The shuttles which were left on the planet did not have powerful antennas.
After the population had been shrinking year after year, the new leadership decided to send a part of the Grosnops back home, using the shuttles that had landed them on the planet—at least as many as there was room for. As the shuttles were designed for short-range flight, they had to assume that many would fail and that the voyage lasting several generations could only be achieved in hibernation.
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