Exodus to the Stars

by Andreas Brandhorst

  This time there were not just vibrations—the AKAN HATA shook, all three and a half kilometers of its body. Contact with the dark ship affected the energetic stability of the capture fields, and the strong destabilizing effect extended to the projectors and the other sections of the Exodus ships.

  The belts of the security harnesses held Paronn and the Chronicler in their seats.

  "Structural integrity is at risk," the Chief Engineer said. She still sounded calm.

  "This is our only chance," Paronn replied. "The spacesphere must be within the reaction area."

  The vibrations grew increasingly violent, and Paronn heard the outer hull of the command module beginning to crack. In the projection fields, the HENTECK AVRAM could be seen losing additional segments. The chaos on board must have been unimaginable, and the crew members ...

  Deshan seemed to guess his thoughts. "Dozens are dying over there. If not hundreds."

  Paronn realized that he did not dare wait any longer if he wanted to prevent the AKAN HATA from breaking up.

  "Initiate reaction," he said, and the Chief Engineer passed his order to the Receptors at once.

  That was just what they had been waiting for, and they immediately began to increase the probability of interaction. In the upper part of the sphere, it began to glow once more.

  "The aliens are getting ready to fire again!" Deshan exclaimed in horror.

  Paronn realized that it was a question of seconds. Either his plan would succeed ... or the Enemy's next thermobeam would destroy one of the two Exodus ships. The HENTECK AVRAM was closer to the sphere, but that did not mean the aliens would necessarily fire on it. Perhaps they knew where the com signals had come from. Possibly they would target the Twelfth Hero, who strangely knew their language.

  The Receptors' Abhijn Power was bringing neutrinos and anti-neutrinos together, and the first effects of the annihilation were making themselves apparent, concentrated in the area where the two ship's fields overlapped—and that was precisely where the spacesphere was located. The pale glow of the initial reaction quickly grew to a radiance brighter than the accumulating weapon energy.

  Suddenly, everything was happening very quickly.

  Fracture lines crawled through the already damaged hull of the spacesphere, gray-white like the capture fields. Parts of the outer hull came loose, like pieces of a fruit peel pulled apart by unseen hands. Bolts of energy bored into the interior of the ship, in which a light appeared as bright as a nearby sun ...

  "The fields are polarizing!" Paronn exclaimed.

  The spacesphere exploded.

  Part of it was transformed into energy and became an expanding ball of radiance. Other, smaller portions raced in all directions as cosmic shrapnel. The polarized capture fields repelled the energy but not all the shrapnel splinters. In the command module and in the control room below it, countless red warning lights lit up as holes appeared in the hulls of the various segments. Connecting cables tore away and wires snapped. Paronn's fingers danced frenetically on the controls as he called up data and tried to get an overall picture of what was damaged and how maneuverable the two Exodus ships' still were.

  An hour filled with worries and innumerable problems later, he knew: both ships could make it back to Suen under their own power. But they would have to be thoroughly overhauled, which would delay the start of their actual mission, the flight to the stars, for at least a year.

  Nearly two hundred people had paid for the victory over the spacesphere with their lives.

  They are the first victims, Paronn thought bitterly. And they will not be the last.

  During the return flight to Suen, he again asked himself the question that was more important than any other: did he bring the Enemy here?

  And behind that question whispered another even more unpleasant than the first: was there a threat of more spacespheres arriving even before the Exodus ships carried the children of Lemur to distant worlds?

  33

  Roder Roderich

  "What do you know about ancient Akonian bases of this kind?" Catchpole asked. "Even the slightest hint could help us."

  Sharita Coho, clad in her black, vacuum-resistant battlesuit, joined Catchpole at his side and looked at the Akonians. : The crews of the four crawlers had all gathered here. They had set out for the asteroid belt to search for pieces of wreckage and any survivors of the star ark, as well as the two groups that Sharita and Echkal cer Lethir led. Only Denetree was missing. She had fled during a confrontation with the robots, Solina Tormas had reported, and no one knew where she was or if she was even still alive.

  Roder Roderich, who sat nearby with Yu'lhan and Tru'lhan, pricked up his ears.

  "There weren't any universal construction principles at that time, if that's what you mean," Solina Tormas, the historian, said. "Besides, this base was built in an era that we don't know much about."

  "Artificial intelligences were used to control the security systems," Echkal added, and Roderich was astonished that the Akonian Ma-Techten freely volunteered information. Perhaps he had finally realized that cooperation was vital in a situation like this. "I have a feeling that the local AI no longer functions properly."

  "Something brought us here," Sharita said. "The two energy curtains were supposed to kill us, yet a teleporter took us here."

  "Maybe the AI reconsidered at the last moment," Chet Dada offered.

  "Or it's schizophrenic," Roderich speculated. "One part of it doesn't know what the other's doing. Hey, how do you like that, Yu'lli? An artificial intelligence that's flipped its circuits."

  The Blue sighed with a soft female voice. "My name is not ... "

  "What would you call something like that? A crackbot?"

  In the glow from Catchpole's and Sharita's flashlights, Roderich saw Yu'lhan close both forward eyes. He refrained from further commentary.

  Something moved in the darkness beyond the area illuminated by the two flashlights, and Roderich stood up. One of the two search parties still out was apparently returning. Faint light danced along the steel walls of the fifth corridor out of a total of six that branched off from this central room. A few seconds later, three figures became visible. They were two prospectors from the PALENQUE and an Akonian holding a light. Roderich envied the crewmembers of the two crawlers that had set out later for their better equipment. He would have felt better with a flashlight and a beamer.

  "Nothing," the Akonian said, approaching with his two Terran companions. "The corridor ends in the rock of the asteroid like the other four."

  "Let's hope the sixth group has better luck," Sharita replied. She let the beam of her flashlight play along the walls, which also consisted of rock. "Apparently we're in a peripheral part of the base. It was supposed to be expanded, but at some point the work was stopped."

  Lethir shone his light on the metal door that was apparently the only connection with the interior of the base. The beams of their energy weapons had left burn marks on it, but they had not succeeded in making an opening. Next to the door stood a four-armed giant clad in a red battlesuit, who was examining the wall with a small scanner.

  Roderich heard a growling in the darkness of the sixth corridor and smiled. "Grresko is coming back." More loudly he said, "Smell anything interesting, Kitty?"

  The growling grew louder, then the lion-maned Gurrad appeared, accompanied by Teodoro Franty. Neither was walking—both were running.

  "We have to find a way to get out of here fast!" the tall Franty exclaimed. "It's burning behind us!"

  They reached the large, round room and in the glow of the flashlights the other prospectors could be seen standing up. Several of them approached the entrance to the sixth corridor.

  "I have smelled destruction," Grresko told Roderich, then turned to Sharita. "The corridor leads to another shaft with energy transfer channels, and from there we might have been able to reach other parts of the base, but the way is blocked. By an atom fire."

  Far behind them in the sixth corridor, a
deep red glow appeared in the darkness.

  "An atom fire isn't easy to deal with," Lethir said. "It takes complex operations on an atomic level to extinguish one." "Self-destruction," Sharita said seriously. "The AI has decided to destroy the entire base, and us along with it. Maybe it saw no other choice after the intervention of the unknown factor that brought us here."

  "Schizicide," Roderich commented, but without much humor.

  The red glow in the distance grew brighter.

  "We've got to open the door somehow," Catchpole said.

  "We'll never manage it with our beamers, that's for sure," Franty muttered.

  "Maybe I can help you." Icho Tolot turned away from the door and stamped through the room to the opposite wall. He let his scanner as well his other equipment and weapons disappear into his red battlesuit's back pockets.

  "What do you have in mind?" Sharita asked.

  The Halutian bent his upper body forward and assumed his running posture, setting all four arms on the ground. "You'd better step back a little."

  "I get the idea somebody wants to ram his head through the wall," Roderich said. "Well, the door, anyway."

  Icho Tolot hardened his body's cell structure, then took off running, reaching a speed of 120 kilometers per hour over the forty meters that separated him from the door.

  The impact was an event, and Roderich later regretted that he had not seen everything—he had been much too occupied keeping his eyes tightly shut and holding his ears. Even so, he heard a thundering crash, as loud as a crawler falling ten meters to the floor of a hangar. A violent shaking almost knocked him off balance.

  "Did you see that, Yu'lli? Tru'lli? And some people still say Halutians aren't thick-headed!"

  Icho Tolot had previously determined the thick door's weakest structural point with his scanner and had slammed directly into it. The Halutian's mass and his enormous kinetic energy had pushed the door outwards and half off its hinges, resulting in an opening large enough for Icho Tolot to topple through it and fall.

  Sharita and the others ran towards the door, but a few seconds later Icho Tolot reappeared. He had held himself with one hand at the edge of the shaft just behind the door and pulled himself upright with four arms. "It looks like an antigrav shaft," he rumbled, "but without an energy field."

  "Can anybody here fly?" Roderich asked, looking around.

  "Sometimes you get on my nerves, boy," the otherwise good-humored Catchpole muttered. "Maybe you'll learn to fly when the atom fire is tickling your feet."

  Icho Tolot stood on the narrow ledge behind the half torn away door and looked to the right and left with his infra-red sensitive eyes. "There is no emergency ladder."

  Roderich looked back at the sixth corridor, where darkness was giving way more and more to the red glow. Only a few minutes remained to them, no more.

  "I'll try to send a transporter to you," a voice whispered from the darkness of the shaft.

  Roderich looked up reproachfully at Yu'lhan. "Did you change the voice modulation on your Translator again, Yu'lli? Or have you become a ventriloquist?"

  "My name is not ... " Sharita gestured for the Blues to be quiet and stepped next to Tolot. Lethir tried to follow her but there was no room on the ledge.

  "Who are you?" Sharita asked the darkness.

  "I am Alahandra, a part of her, the little Alahandra, and Jorgaldarhelmemerek is with me," replied the voice from the blackness of the shaft. "I will try to help you. The big Alahandra thinks you are enemies and wants to kill all of you, but life is precious and must be preserved. I ... Jorgaldarhelmemerek's songs enable me to make ... contact. A transporter is on the way to take you away from the fire that big Alahandra started. She has set the castle on fire."

  There was a humming far overhead in the shaft, and an egg-shaped object with several windows in it floated down. Light shone from within, and it paused directly next to the demolished door. A hatch opened up.

  "What if it's a trap?" Echkal asked.

  Roderich looked at the sixth corridor again. The atom fire had reached the entrance to the passageway and its red glow was quickly spreading into the metal. The temperature increased. "Even if it is a trap, it's still safer in there than it is out here," he said, pushed past the Akonian Ma-Techten, and entered the transporter. Yu'lhan and Tru'lhan followed him, then Grresko and the others, until only Icho Tolot and Sharita were standing on the narrow ledge.

  "The transporter's hatchway is too small for one of us, Alahandra," Sharita said, giving the Halutian a quick glance.

  "There is no other ... conveyance in the vicinity," the soft voice replied. "Can the lifeform climb onto the transporter?"

  "It is possible," Icho Tolot said. "But you should strengthen the antigrav field with additional energy. I am very heavy."

  "Antigrav ... ?" The bodiless voice took on a different tone. "Reserve energy is being employed. The automatic stabilizers are functioning as far as I can determine. If I had more time, I could perhaps deactivate the artificial gravity in the base. But there seems to be an autonomous system with its own energy supply involved."

  "I am ... " Again the voice changed. "I am Alahandra, the little Alahandra. I know best what big Alahandra called systems and subsystems because I have seen and heard. I am actual life, like Jorgaldarhelmemerek. Big Alahandra is ... machine life? Perhaps that is why she is hurting. Perhaps that made her sick."

  Roderich reached his hand out to Sharita. "Get on board, Grandma."

  She gave him a sharp look. "Can anybody make sense out of what these different voices are saying?"

  The hatch closed, and outside one of the windows Icho Tolot could be seen climbing onto the transporter. It bobbed under the Halutian's nearly two tons but did not sink.

  The others had sat down in the seats inside the transporter. Only Roderich, Grresko, and Catchpole were still standing.

  "At least two lifeforms seem to be connected somehow to the base's AI," Catchpole said, leaning against the side wall as the transporter rose through the shaft. "I'd guess they were responsible for our transfer when the two energy curtains came towards us."

  "I did that by myself," the voice whispered from the communication system's speakers. "But now Jorgaldarhelmemerek is with me. And he is more than just one."

  "More than two lifeforms?" Catchpole asked.

  "You must leave the ... base," the voice murmured. "The fire within it will burn everything. I will try to take you to the other two."

  Light from the interior of the shaft shone through the windows and Roderich saw that the walls were streaking by more quickly. Concerned, he thought of Icho Tolot crouching overhead on top of the vehicle, but then he realized there was no need to worry about someone like him.

  "To the other two?" Sharita repeated, surprised.

  "Besides yourselves, there are two other lifeforms here," replied the voice from the com speaker. "One of them is dying. It came within range of the weapon. Unfortunately, I could not prevent that."

  "Could you possibly mean ... Denetree?" Solina Tormas asked. "A lifeform like ... me?"

  The voice changed. "That is a different one. If the data transmitted by the sensors is correct, the dying individual has the same physical structure as the lifeform on the transporter." Again a change. "Could we go back now? There are still false melodies in the song of chaos and bent lines that have to be straightened out, but the symphony is almost done." And yet another voice was heard, softer than the others. "No, Jorgal, we are still not done here. Help us. Help Darhel, me, and little Alahandra preserve life."

  "Are the voices referring to a ... second Halutian?" Roderich asked.

  The transporter stopped next to a wide, brightly lit corridor and the hatch opened. The prospectors and Akonians stepped out. Icho Tolot climbed down from the vehicle and Sharita told him what they had learned.

  "Another Halutian?" Tolot asked. "Here? And he's dying?"

  Behind them, the light within the transporter went out and its antigrav field dissolved. Wit
hin a second, it plummeted into the depths, taking six or seven seconds before it smashed into the bottom of the shaft with a muffled, faraway crash.

  "Can you hear us here?" Sharita asked.

  "We no longer require the transporter, and therefore I ... let go of its systems," came the whispering from the corridor. "I am sending you another vehicle. Here, too, I see and hear. I am learning."

  "Are the other two lifeforms nearby?" Solina asked.

  "They are not far, and I am trying to help them as well. I cannot take you directly to them because the fire is spreading at different rates through various areas of the base."

  "Here comes something," said one of the Akonians, pointing ahead.

  A platform floated through the corridor and paused in front of the group.

  "You must leave the base quickly," whispered the voice from hidden speakers as Roderich watched Yu'lhan and Tru'lhan leap onto the platform with astonishing agility. He raised his hand and let Yu'lli pull him up. "Otherwise the fire will consume you."

  When everyone was on board, Icho Tolot sat on the edge of the platform that once had probably served to transport freight or heavy machinery. The platform tipped a little, then righted itself, and floated through the corridor.

  "Take us first to the other lifeforms," Sharita said. "And then ... to one of the teleported spaceships. Which is the closest?"

  "Spaceships?"

  "Vehicles for flying through the space beyond this station," Solina put in.

  "Flying ... " There was a tone of yearning in the voice. "I, too, once flew, a long time ago. Before big Alahandra absorbed me." Again there was one of the strange changes in voice. "The sphere-shaped spaceship is easier to reach than the others. You can escape in that."

  "What about you?" Sharita asked. "What about all of you? Do you have a way of escaping the fire?"

  Except for the humming of the platform flying through the corridors, there was silence.

  "You shouldn't have asked that," Roderich said. "When the atom fire reaches the central computer banks, that'll be it for the schizobot. How could an artificial intelligence leave the circuits it's programmed into? And if the other consciousnesses are combined with it ... "