Asymmetry

by A. G. Claymore

  “Should be able to come up with something,” Tim answered, hands already moving across his interface. “This seems a little more robust than the home-grown stuff we saw on the last world. Those guys must have started over from scratch at some point.”

  “Tougher to crack?” Rick asked.

  “A little, but I can still just throw billions of responses at the hailing ping until it gives us an acceptable answer… which we now have!” Tim made a few more adjustments with his hands while subvocalizing supplementary commands.

  “That should make us a little more welcome. Thank the gods these guys never developed quantum computing before they collapsed!”

  “Can you get us a map?” Rick pointed out the window. “I’d feel a lot better if I knew what those long streaks of brightness are. The last place just had a star and planets…”

  He leaned forward. “Where are the planets?” he demanded. “I know it’s not compulsory or anything but a star ought to at least have a couple, even if it’s just to avoid getting arrested for vagrancy.”

  “Huh!” Tim said quietly.

  Thorstein and Rick both looked at him but the young man seemed completely absorbed in what he was seeing.

  “Maybe he’s trying to build suspense?” the engineer suggested.

  “Yep,” Rick agreed, “some real showmanship on Tim’s part,” he added as Tim looked up guiltily. “But I preferred season one, where he just blurted stuff out as soon as he saw it. Had a certain kind of charm…”

  “Sorry, guys.” Tim adjusted the holo to show what he was seeing. A series of huge rings circled the local star in the middle of its Goldilocks zone. “They harvested everything here, and probably a few other systems, to build these rings. There are no planets left.”

  “You maniacs,” Rick muttered, a strange smile flitting across his features.

  “This is the exit we need.” Tim added an icon on the far side of the system.

  “A straight course would take us past those rings,” Thorstein said suggestively. “You’d hardly blame a fella for taking a quick look on the way past. We could approach nice and slow, ready to run if we see any trouble approaching…”

  “Screw that!” Rick spoke decisively. “I’m not spending half a day getting across this system when we still have two more ‘crossroads’ to pass through. We go fast. I don’t mind slowing down and poking around at the rings for an hour or so, but then we ramp up our engines and get to the exit as fast as possible.”

  He got up. “I’m going to see if I can get some sleep. Should be a few hours till we get anywhere interesting and you never know when you’ll get the chance.”

  He went into the back, pretending not to notice the admiring look from Tim. Despite his casual words, they were still trapped inside an ancient dead empire, forced to rely on a mode of travel that hadn’t seen preventative maintenance since Humans invented pointy sticks.

  He dropped onto a bunk with a sigh. There was also the small matter of his wife, sitting outside that first system, wondering if he was still alive. By now, she’d be on the verge of ordering the fleet to push on, once they’d finished scouting the way ahead.

  She might know more about us than we do, he admitted. Her ability was more of a long-range thing. It was entirely possible she knew they’d get stuck in this mess only to emerge near the objective and end up doing something manly and heroic.

  Thorstein shook him awake.

  “I wouldn’t say it’s heroic…” Rick mumbled.

  “Neither would I,” Thorstein assured him. “More like borderline narcolepsy. Remember that time you fell asleep on a pile of dead Dactarii?”

  “I’m trying to sleep here!”

  “Did more than try,” Thor told him. “We’re close enough to one of those rings now that we can start making out meter-sized detail just on optic sensors.”

  “Bullshit! You used the jump engine!”

  “Nope. I have no desire to announce our presence with a huge plasma-flare if I can help it. You’ve been asleep long enough for five rounds of hnefatafl. Lost a shitload of credits to Barry’s kid.”

  Rick sat up and stretched. “Anything exciting yet?”

  “Nah. Just the underside of the ring but we’re about to pass the edge. Tim’s ready to slow us down.”

  They went up front and strapped in. Tim remained in the pilot’s chair, partly to keep Thorstein free for any engineering emergencies but also because he was the best pilot out of the three.

  They slowed as they came even with the edge of the ring. A large wall circled both sides of the structure.

  “Probably keeps the atmosphere inside,” Thorstein guessed. “And keeps folks from walking off the edge while checking their messages…”

  “Or it keeps cats from shoving everything off into space,” Tim muttered distractedly.

  They drifted higher and the inside was revealed.

  “Pretty unremarkable mix of residential, commercial and industrial, from the looks of it,” Rick said. “All looks deserted.”

  “Mostly deserted,” Tim amended. “There are folks down there but mostly in the green spaces. See this area…” He highlighted a large swath of jungle. “There’s machinery under that jungle growth. Looks like it used to be a farming zone.”

  The dots appearing on the HUD showed hundreds of life-signs. “We’re tied into the ring’s own sensor system,” Tim told them. “Now that we’re close enough, the transponder code is helping to link us into the local telemetry.”

  “How many on this ring?” Rick asked.

  “Half a Billion.” Tim shook his head. “That’s not a patch on their carrying capacity, though. This thing’s mind-numbingly massive. You could drop ten Billion people onto this thing and they could all live out their lives without seeing one another.”

  “Might make a good colony location,” Rick mused.

  “As long as you take precautions,” Tim warned. “There are… mutants down there.”

  “I’m leaning toward thinking that’s a joke,” Thorstein said.

  “You’d fall over,” Tim told him, “because there’s no joke. Most of the folks down there are living in small populations and a lot of them have fewer than fifty people. The green areas are few and far between and the smaller ones look like city parks that got expanded a bit. Still, they were too small to support a viable population. Recessive mutations run wild in that kind of scenario.”

  “Expanded?” Rick raised an eyebrow. “The world was collapsing and they took the time for landscaping?”

  “If you need arable land,” Tim countered, “and your group is too small to fight for the bigger farming areas, then you use what compostables are available.”

  “Corpses?”

  Tim nodded. “Most of them were still recording daily logs back then. They were hauling bodies out of the buildings and piling them around the edges of the parks.”

  “To grow crops…” Rick muttered.

  “You are what you eat,” Thorstein suggested. “What?” He spread his hands. “Too soon?”

  “So…” Rick turned his gaze from Thorstein. “…Mutants in the cities, possibly hostile groups living out on the fields or jungles but, if we keep to ourselves, we could probably find a quiet place to set up an outpost, if we ever needed to.”

  “There’s enough evidence in the system to indicate a few thousand smuggling communities on this ring alone,” Tim said. “At least they seem like smugglers, given the patterns I’m seeing in the data. Smugglers tend to be allergic to attention from large groups, so we’d probably be left to ourselves.”

  “Are the other rings the same?” Rick wondered.

  “One is,” Tim confirmed, “but the other two have a problem with their inter-links. Could be anything going on over there.”

  “Except for a thriving, ring-wide civilization, I’d guess.” Thorstein yawned. “Otherwise, they’d probably keep their equipment in better repair.”

  He got up from his seat. “My turn to get some sleep,” he announced. “
I’ll check on the engines first and then sack out till we’re ready to take the next wormhole.”

  “Should we swing by the other rings?” Tim asked Rick. “See if Thor’s wrong about them not having ring-wide civs?”

  “Not this time,” Rick answered after pausing to think it over. “If they were that organized, we’d see more ship traffic. Let’s just get out of here. Three quarters pitch.”

  Tim entered their course and activated it. The small ship leapt away, leaving the rings behind in short order.

  From the far edge of one ring, a small, agile-looking ship lifted off and followed them.

  There wasn’t so much traffic in this system that they didn’t notice one ship on their tail. “Should we wake Thor,” Tim asked after a couple of hours.

  “We’re close enough to our exit, I suppose,” Rick judged. He got out of his seat, grabbing meal-bars from a cupboard behind the pilot’s seat and tossing one to Tim.

  He went aft but Thorstein wasn’t in any of the bunks. He chuckled. Rick had worked under Thorstein in the engine compartment from the day they’d taken him off the station at Chaco Benthic. He knew his habits.

  The hatch snapped open and he stepped into the engineering compartment. Sure enough, there was Thor, curled up on the small bank of flash capacitors, soaking up the heat that always radiated from their containment systems.

  “Hey!” he called out. “You break those, how are we supposed to restart our main drive?”

  Thor stretched and sat up, scratching his belly. “You worry too much, kid.” He made a startled grab for the meal bar that Rick tossed him.

  “I seem to remember this ‘kid’ getting yelled at for sleeping in the very same spot…”

  “’Cause it’s my spot!” Thorstein opened the small metal casing and took out the bar.

  “Well, we’re almost at the exit from this system and we’ve also picked up a stray.”

  “I’d be shurprished if we didn’t,” Thorstein mumbled around his food. “Shmugglers see a new ship and their headsh are shuddenly filled with vishions of new exshotic goodsh.” He wiped at crumbs on his chest.

  “I should get you a rock-beetle,” Rick said. “It could eat all the food that falls around the engines, keep this place tidy…”

  “Nothing wrong with my engine room.”

  “Then why does it smell like mold in here?”

  “You keep waking me up with meal bars?”

  They both leaned aft, shuddering.

  “That definitely felt different than the last wormhole,” Thorstein said. “Kid’s coming along nicely, though. I notice he didn’t come back here to ask you if you’re really extra certain you want to do the thing you already said we’re gonna do…”

  “Yeah, he’s taking initiative,” Rick agreed. “I really need to get Viggo off 3428. It’s not fair to him, leaving him safe at home while his best friend is out here having all the fun.”

  “All right, look…” Thorstein climbed off the capacitors. “…I can see where this is going but he needs to shadow someone with a little more influence than old Thor.” He picked a crumb off his belly and popped it into his mouth.

  “Of course he does, Jackass!”

  “Yeah, well…” Thorstein dragged it out, being purposefully awkward for his own amusement. “…I know that, which is why I think you should talk to Odin.”

  Rick eyed him suspiciously. “You been colluding with Tim on this?”

  “You don’t think the kid thought this up on his own, do you?” Thorstein shook his head. “I mean, Tim knows that Odin is out here with us but he’s not old enough to understand what that really means. A guy from the old guard might settle into the lawgiver role easy enough but give him a taste of adventure and it’ll be centuries before he goes back to the quiet life again.”

  He jabbed a finger at Rick’s chest armor. “And you’re part of the reason he’s got the wanderlust again. Folks are gonna start flooding him with requests to take on their little angels for a bit of training.

  “Get him to take Viggs under his wing. You won’t have a better time than now…” He waggled his head. “…When we get back to the fleet, I mean.”

  “I will,” Rick assured him, “but, for now, we better get back up front. These wormholes are fast. Faster than our distortion drives, even.”

  “Yeah,” Thorstein agreed, following him forward, “but you can’t steer a wormhole… probably…”

  They shuddered again, this time leaning forward. Both men dropped into their seats as they spilled out into the next crossroads. A patrol of armed ships sat on their starboard flank and a small station, probably a patrol base, lay a thousand kilometers farther back.

  A stern face appeared in their cockpit holo. “This is Praefect Uridan of the Dominion Security Forces. Identify yourselves!”

  The ship that had followed them slid into place on their port side. Rick grinned, though that didn’t mean he trusted his soon-to-be friend. Still, what he’d foreseen was useful enough. “Jacubus will explain,” he told Uridan.

  A second face appeared, looking slightly bemused, but he forged gamely ahead anyway. “Hello, Uri. They’re with me. My… contract with you extends to them as well.”

  Neither had the elongated chins prevalent on the last world. Aside from slightly larger eyes, they could have passed unremarked on 3428.

  “Jacu,” Uridan’s holographic head nodded in reserved greeting. “Our contract covers your activity. If you start parading a fleet through the hole, I’m going to end up being asked a lot of awkward questions and none of them have answers that will satisfy my superiors.”

  “I understand, Uri,” Jacubus agreed. “Of course, there ought to be an assessment levied when I bring friends along.” He angled his head to the side. “What say you to three thousand?”

  “I say it’s a piss-poor deposit on the main amount. I’d have more favorable words for a number like eighteen.”

  “Eighteen!” Jacubus’ head half disappeared from the back of the projection as he leaned back in exaggerated shock. “It’s one ship, Uri. Let me help you.” He held up a hand, extending an index finger. “One. You’re keeping up with me on this? One ship, not the whole gods-damned great exodus of the ancients!”

  “Seventeen and a half,” Uridan said flatly.

  “Three thousand and one,” Jacubus countered. He leaned forward. “See how annoying it is when the other guy negotiates by ridiculously small concessions? Why don’t you try again?”

  “Fifteen thousand.”

  “That’s better,” Jacubus encouraged the security officer. “It’s a hardship for me but I could go as high as five.”

  “Hold on, you pirate!” Uridan flared. “I came down three and you only went up two!”

  “That’s ’cause I’m a better negotiator!” Jacubus flashed him a winning smile. “Look, we both know this will end up at eight and a half. Let’s save ourselves some trouble, ney?”

  “By end of the business cycle,” Uridan growled. “Now get out of here before you draw too much official attention!”

  Jacubus’ holographic head turned to Rick. “You like tea?”

  “Well enough,” Rick said.

  “Great! Follow me to the fourth planet. I know the perfect place!”

  The head disappeared and Jacubus’ ship moved off toward the inner system.

  Tim laid in a corresponding course. “Here’s something I’ve been toying with,” he muttered. “We just distort over to the exit we need and get the hells out of here.”

  “You can sit there and tell me you’re not even curious?” Rick asked. “Who is that guy and why did he just bribe our way into this system?”

  “Not to gloss over the whole ‘bribe’ aspect,” Thorstein put in. “The place is obviously corrupt, so it’s got that in its favor!”

  “It would be churlish for us to just fly off and leave him sitting in some tea-house after he corrupted that officer on our behalf!” Rick chided.

  Tim sighed. He activated the pursuit cour
se. “I suppose you’re getting cocky, what with the resounding success of our last planetary visit.”

  “I fail to see how that was anything but a success,” Rick said. “We got away from the fleet for a while, stole a ton of data, found this hidden network of planetary systems, got a whole bunch of funny stories to tell when we get back…”

  “If we get back…”

  “What the hell, Thor?” Rick reached out a foot to nudge the engineer sitting in the co-pilot seat. “You were supposed to teach these guys cockeyed optimism!”

  “That wasn’t me,” Thorstein insisted. “Probably thinking of that fella…Gorm?”

  “The one who got eaten his second day on 3428?”

  “He asked us for a tour of the surface!” Tim said defensively. “We tried to warn him but he insisted that mastering our fears was our first important lesson.”

  “Listening when a local tries to warn you about danger must have been lesson number two,” Rick mused then brightened suddenly.

  “There, you see?” he said to Tim. “We got some use out of the poor fool after all!”

  “Begging your pardon, Lord, but, huh?”

  “Listen to locals,” Rick said. “That’s exactly what we’re doing here!”

  “Just so I’m clear on this,” Tim said with elaborate care, “we’re saying that our current course of action isn’t stupid because we’re following a lesson that we just now learned from some idiot who ended his days as a chimera turd?”

  “The Universe is a funny old place, isn’t it?” Rick grinned broadly. “You can always learn something if you’re not careful!”

  “Looks like he’s setting down in that dense urban area,” Tim said. “I’ll try to find a spot near him. Do we pay for parking here?” He glanced at Rick. “Most places we land either belong to you or folks are too scared to ask for money.”

  “We’ll see, I suppose.” Rick waved out at the landing yard. “He’s standing in the spot next to his ship so nobody else takes it. Isn’t that nice of him? Thor, isn’t that nice?”

  “He’s a thoughtful fellah,” Thorstein said dryly.

  “Doesn’t want the new guys getting snapped up by some other smuggler,” Rick said.