Authors: Sean Williams,Shane Dix
Tags: #Science Fiction, #Fiction, #Space Opera
* * *
How?
But now wasn’t the time. She was in one of the courier’s two small sleeping spaces with the door locked, having secured Disisto and Mavalhin in the bridge while Haid slept in the room next door. The ex-mercenary had looked exhausted after the quorum, and even he had admitted to not having had enough rest in the last few days.
Roche smiled.
Ana Vereine
until we are under way. It would be much more difficult, under those circumstances, to attempt to subvert us.>
Roche considered the suggestion. That would mean docking
Daybreak
to the Marauder while undergoing acceleration—a tricky maneuver at the best of times.
she said with some uncertainty.
manage to avoid the Kesh destroyer and the blockade, chances are we’ll have no time to decide what—>
the Box broke in.
she said wearily.
Roche sighed to herself and closed the line. She lay back on the bunk, but realized after a few minutes that she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Instead she went to the bridge and called up a communications display. She was curious after what Haid had said earlier about not detecting any incoming signals from the Box.
As before, there had been no voice transmissions, coded or otherwise, sent to or from the courier during the time of her talk with the Box. The only transmission she couldn’t account for was one intense burst lasting a second or two, not long after their last conversation. It had been sent from the courier to a destination farther in-system.
She didn’t know what that meant. Maybe the Box had downloaded part of itself into the courier, and that smaller part had communicated their conversation to the larger one in a single concise spurt after the fact rather than in multiple transmissions during. That would make sense: after all, the Box itself seemed to be just a smaller chip off the High Human called the Crescend; no doubt the process was repeatable to a smaller degree. But she did doubt that there was room in the courier’s available memory for an AI with the sophistication of the Box. And if the
Ana Vereine
was hiding behind Kukumat as the Box claimed, then the transmission had gone in the wrong direction—although there was the possibility that it could have been sent via a relay.
Tapping at the console, she instructed the communications system to notify her every time any such bursts were received or transmitted by the courier.
The voice in her head came as no surprise; she had half expected her actions to prompt the Box to intervene.
up to something.>
The Box was silent for a moment. Not long, but long enough.
She frowned.
“Is everything all right?”
She started at the unexpected voice
outside
her head. She turned and saw Disisto sitting up in his suit, helmet off but otherwise immobile. Next to him, Mavalhin lolled like a broken-backed doll, unconscious.
“I thought you were asleep,” she said.
“Not me. I’ve spent too much time in the dark just lately.” When she ignored the gibe, he said: “I don’t suppose you’d care to give me
some
sort of mobility? My nose is itchy as hell.”
She sent a command to allow him to move, although restricting those movements to the crash-couch. “How’s that?”
He flexed his arms. “Much better. Thanks.”
“You think I’m being too tough on you, don’t you?”
He shook his head slowly. “Not really,” he said. “The way I see it, I’m lucky to be alive at all. Most of your buddies would have shot me by now.”
Roche smiled, although there was no evidence of humor in his tone or his face.
“I think you exaggerate a little.”
He held her stare evenly. “Maybe,” he said. “But the fact is they don’t take well to uncooperative prisoners.”
In the quiet that followed she said: “You know, you could still help me.”
He sighed heavily. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times: I won’t help you attack the chief—”
“I’m not asking you to do that,” she said. “I’d just like to know what he’s doing here, that’s all. As do you. All I want is your help finding out that information.”
Disisto ran a hand over the stubble dusting his dark face and scalp. “I can’t do that
without
helping you in other ways too.”
“You could mediate,” said Roche. “Rufo and Shak’ni and all their Kesh pals will be intent on blowing us away once we return. Personally, I’d rather talk than fight—and they might listen to you if you try to mediate. Should Rufo give us the information we need—along with Maii and Cane—then we’ll leave him alone. Hell, we might even take him out of the system if he wants us to. I’m sure he doesn’t like being dependent on the Kesh for that.”
“I know he doesn’t,” he said.
“So?” Roche pressed. “Can I count on you not screwing things up until we’ve at least tried to talk?”
Disisto sighed again. “Okay,” he said. “If it means a possible peaceful solution, then I’ll see what I can do.”
“Good. Because you’re coming in the landing party with us, and I didn’t want to have to drag you around like a big sack of rocks.” Roche smiled, relieved to have finally reached some sort of compromise with him. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to try and turn a bunch of outriggers into something resembling a fighting force.”
Disisto leaned back into his seat with a half-smile on his face, but before he could say anything, the alarm Roche had installed in the communications systems sounded through her implants.
She turned back to the console and examined the surge. It seemed no different from the other, except this time it was incoming. A reply from the larger part of the Box, perhaps?
Disisto had said something about Mavalhin, but she wasn’t listening.
She cast an eye across the instruments. There it was: a sharp spike only slowly trailing off. As she watched, it peaked again, higher than before.
Another spike, more powerful, again registered on the courier’s neutrino detectors.
The tone of the Box’s voice was leading Roche in the same direction.
we have?>
Sixty hours?
Roche turned the figure over in her head. Just three days to get the outriggers to Galine Four, across a distance of over five billion kilometers, break in, rescue Maii and Cane, find out what Rufo knew, and get out again. Then get out of the system before the envelope collapsed completely...
“Roche?” said Disisto from behind her; irritably she waved him to silence.
?> she asked the Box.
She ignored the Box’s flippancy and quickly spoke into a mike on the console.
“Auditor Byrne,” she said. “I’m going to need your people ready to move in two hours. I repeat:
two hours
.”
“I hear you.” The auditor’s voice came on instantly. “But why the sudden urgency?”
“I just found out that the collapse of the envelope is being brought forward,” she said. “We now have just three days to do what we have to do and get the hell out of here.”
“
Can
we do it?”
“We can try,” Roche said. “Beyond that, I’m not making any promises...”
PART FOUR:
SEBETTU
INTERLUDE
He woke in a panic: someone was talking to him!
At first he thought it was one of the attendants in the Shadow Place. But the voice was cold and slippery, sharp as a hypodermic needle and as flexible as wire. It slid through his defenses and pierced his brain like a fishhook.
He struggled for a reference point. When he found none—only void—he remembered where he was.
The abomination!
He tried desperately to think. When had he fallen asleep? How had he allowed himself to become so vulnerable?
: HELP
He felt the technician start at the voice issuing from his monitors.
: HELP
: ME
: ABOMINATION
: HERE
He gave up, defeated yet again by spatial coordinates. And anyway the voice had gone, faded into some dark recess like a bad dream. Maybe he
had
dreamt it...
His body jackknifed in shock, its epsense organ flailing from the back of his skull like an electric eel in a thunderstorm; every cell in his body screamed at the insidious touch of that voice. An alarm sounded somewhere, heard and felt secondhand through the technician. What was this? Fear for his well-being? Or fear he might be trying to escape? He couldn’t tell which. Perhaps it was both.
something—I feel
you
! Who are you? Where am I?>
: KILL
: HER
: HELP
mean?>
: ME
The voice ceased. He waited breathlessly, hardly daring to believe that he had rid himself of her so easily.
<
Abomination?
Damn you! Who are
you
to judge me?>
Sharp-tipped tendrils encircled his mind. He relaxed minutely. If this was how attack would come, he was safe.
The tentacles slipped; their tips failed to find purchase. do
that?>
Deep within him, he fashioned a private place in which he could think, a shelter not even she could reach. The Cruel One’s servant had underestimated her threat, and he lacked the skills to warn him. Fear flooded through him. The abomination could not hurt him directly, but she could still do him harm. For him, death’s sting was none the worse for being someone else’s. Indeed, his own might come as something of a relief if she were to break completely free.
Still, there was hope. She was only a child. Without the mind of an adult to direct it, her raw talent was mostly wasted. With luck she would never realize exactly what she was capable of—as long as he kept the thought buried deep, away from her prying mind.
He had no idea what to do next, but he knew he would accomplish little hidden in his private space. He had to come out eventually to do the bidding of the Cruel One’s servant. If he didn’t come out, the abomination would only try all the harder to smash her way in....
He wondered why he should enter into a bargain with someone like her.
There was nowhere to escape
to.
has a working slow-jump drive. We can leave here any time we want.>
So why didn’t she?
The abomination thrust an unwieldy slab of thought at him, and he recoiled automatically.
: NO
He didn’t answer. The technician was examining him more closely now. His odd twitches and utterances were not going unnoticed. He needed to be careful lest someone think he was up to something.
hiding something.>
Of course he was. More things than she would ever know.
were Cane when I first touched you. No one would be able to get through this fog, except maybe him. Or so I thought.>
In his private place, he realized that she too had been fooled by the Shining One’s camouflage. That was something. She wasn’t as perceptive as he had feared.
That wasn’t necessarily so. The Cruel One’s servant had numerous sensors and singleship scouts on the lookout for the two fugitive vessels. It was only a matter of time before one of them turned up.
He reacted with surprise to the certainty in the abomination’s mental voice. Come back? The enigma would be insane to do such a thing!
The abomination’s thoughts slid across each other like shining metal sheets, polished by friction. Her screen was good, but not perfect. Occasional insights slipped through the gaps, and he gathered them up, hoping to learn as much as he could about her. Leverage might come in handy, later.
The question surprised him. The Surin bred for epsense; they were not without experience in the field. Surely she knew that minds like hers should not exist?
He supposed she was too young to understand. Long-term maintenance of epsense ability required either built-in genetic disposition or intense discipline. If she had been made and raised around others like her, or around natural reaves who lacked the proper training—
patronizing.>
Abominations like her were prone to self-destruction. There was no place for them in the galaxy; they never fit in. It wasn’t that they were rejected, more that they could not be accepted. In time, they always disintegrated.
He felt perversely sorry for her; after all, it wasn’t her fault she’d been made this way. But he could not—and
would
not—allow feelings of sympathy to intrude on what he had to do.
There had to be a way.
she said.
whatever you are, then so be it. The chances of us ever reaching agreement are pretty damn slim.>
Nonexistent, he would’ve thought.
For a moment, in his private retreat, he was tempted to accept her challenge. Not that there was any risk of her getting what she wanted that way. No matter how strong she was, he would not fall to a direct assault; his very nature forbade it. He was more like a channel than a vessel; the hole in the fabric of n-space that was his mind could be filled and overflow, but that would not harm him directly. It would simply spill onto those around him, including the one attacking him, and thereby neutralize the threat.
No, he decided, letting his thoughts rise back to the surface. It would be more interesting to give her what she wanted. That would get her off his back, temporarily, and perhaps enable him to see what she made of it into the bargain.
Dialogue was possible even between enemies, especially when the conflict was not diametrically polarized. If they both perceived a common foe, mightn’t it seem sensible to exchange information?
<
If
we do, yes. But you’ll have to convince me of that, first.>
He opened his mind. Not totally, and not all at once. And not, he had to admit, without doubt—for all he had learned was necessarily colored by the minds that had given it to him. But he himself did not add anything. He offered her no deceptions.
He showed her his home. He showed her how he had come to be snatched from it and brought here. He showed her the Cruel One. He showed her the complex web of intrigue and machinations woven around him. He showed her why it was unlikely he would ever be allowed to return to his people.
Then he showed her the dark hole at the heart of the Shining One. He showed her the secret fear breeding in the Cruel One’s servant’s mind. He showed her the difference between what the enigma thought to be true, and what he had garnered from those closer to the heart of the matter.
Mostly what he hoped to show her was her ignorance....
The abomination’s voice was strained.
!>
He assured her that he wasn’t—but she was already gone. She had fled rather than endure the truth.
He barely had time to feel satisfaction when—
Pain!
He struggled to orient himself. Agony tore through every nerve in his body. What had gone wrong?
His mind strained. Wider, wider. Desperate to stop the pain.
: SLEEPING
: DREAMING
damn you! There’s a fleet bearing down on us! We need to know numbers. And we want to know if the other clone warrior’s behind them!>
He looked; it was true. He could see them now rising out of the mist of the Shining One, numerous minds all focused on one place, one challenge.
: MANY
<
How
many?>
: MANY
: COMING
He peered closer, harder, through the light, at another.
: SHINING
: RESONANCE
And there, at the forefront, he saw it. He didn’t know why he was surprised, and perhaps even a little relieved. He knew the Cruel One’s servant would feel very differently. But at least now he would be able to keep an eye on her.
Just as the abomination had said, the enigma had returned...