Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus (163 page)

“We live in dangerous times,” Noah said. “I want you to do it. And then erase the armored core from your own data banks.”

“Are you sure?”

“We want them to trust us, don’t we? I need to be vulnerable to them.”

“And the rest of their data?”

“Keep it, for now. Let’s prioritize this, and try it in increments. If I open the armored core, and the Aopoddae fully trust us, maybe I can download it back to you, unencrypted.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“I always try to be optimistic,” Noah said, with a wry smile.

The organic interface snaked out of Thinker’s body. Just before it connected to Noah’s skull, he closed his eyes. He felt the powerful inflow of raw data, filling the cells and synapses of his brain. The process took more than a minute, and during that time, he saw only images of blackness. No color or light at all. It occurred to Noah that he might reach out into Timeweb and perhaps escape the terror he was feeling, the stygian darkness. But that could interrupt the flow and damage the information. So he remained focused and motionless, a cup to be filled.

“It is finished,” Thinker finally announced. “And irretrievably erased from my own data systems.”

Opening his eyes, Noah didn’t feel any different.

In the past, he had been able to stretch his mind across the cosmos, taking fantastic journeys through space. Now he tried to do the opposite, and probed inward, looking for the armored core and the key that would open its door.

But nothing happened.

Chapter Sixty-Six

There is one certainty to military combat:

Wars, and the battles that comprise them, never go entirely as planned.

—General Nirella del Velli

Later in the day Noah paced nervously inside the shuttle, refusing to take a seat beside Tesh. She had just brought him a message from Doge Anton.

“He didn’t say what he wants?” The podman passed a gray-skinned hand over the reddish lump of skin on top of his head, as if he actually had hair there to smooth out. As usual, he felt weaker away from the cocoon, but he kept pacing anyway, trying not to reach out and grab anything for balance. For the most part he was successful in this regard, so perhaps it was a learning experience.

Tesh pursed her lips. She sat near Thinker, who had bent his own flat body to fit onto one of the benches—something he did on occasion to test his working parts, or to act like a biological person. “No,” she said, “but I suspect it’s important. He is the Doge, after all, and we’re about to head off into battle.”

“He’s probably wondering where I fit in. I sent him a message yesterday, telling him I should remain here at the starcloud. My interests—and talents—are more akin to those of the Tulyans and their web restoration work, instead of open warfare. The cocoon is almost entirely composed of unarmed caretaker podships. They’re useless in combat. I had to turn tail and run from battle.” Grimacing, Noah added, “I hated doing that. I wanted to fight, wanted to blow the HibAdus out of space. But I didn’t have any way to do it.”

“Maybe Anton has some way of arming the cocoon,” she said. “I heard him and Nirella speculating about that, wondering if it could be turned into a battle station.”

“That would just make it a bigger target.”

“Perhaps you’re right.”

* * * * *

As Noah stepped off the shuttle onto the flagship, he was greeted by Subi Danvar. “Right this way, Master,” he said. “Anton is waiting for you in his private office.” Looking at Thinker and Tesh, he added, “He wants to see Noah alone.”

Following the rotund adjutant through the main corridor of the vessel, Noah was struck by how much larger the ship was now, with many more rooms and side corridors than before. Even though he had psychically guided the cocoon to make changes to the space station—and the massed Aopoddae had cooperated with him—he still didn’t understand how they did it.

But he thought he understood
why
. Though their motives were not as easy to figure out as those of other races, Noah thought the podships were acting to protect and enhance the integrity of the galaxy. It had nothing to do with politics or personalities, and everything to do with galactic ecology. He believed now that he had been born with the destiny to be one of the leaders of this cause, and that destiny had guided him along a path that led him to this very place. Whether destiny translated into connecting him with a higher sentient power, he was not certain, and he thought he might never determine that answer. As far as he knew, destiny just existed … it was an element to the cosmos that kept things going. It could not be ignored, or eluded.

And if Anton wanted to turn EcoStation into a battle station, Noah could try to help in the effort. He wasn’t afraid of combat himself, and wanted to do everything possible to advance the Liberator cause. But the podships had their own collective mind, and might not cooperate.

“Right through there, sir,” Subi said, pointing to an open doorway.

Noah continued on his own, with his mind racing, wondering. Maybe the Liberator commanders wanted the cocoon podships back as individual craft, to arm them separately and send them into battle.

Yes, that could be it
, he thought.
They think I’ve been dithering, getting in the way of the war effort.
But his instincts told him that he needed to do everything possible to protect the integrity of the cocoon, and that it should never revert to its former parts.

“Noah!” Anton said. The young doge bounded across his office and gave him a hearty handshake. Then he stood back and assessed Noah’s gray skin, streaked in black. “I’ve heard about your metamorphosis, of course, and VR images have been brought to me, but seeing you in person is quite different.”

“VR images?”

“Yes. Thinker said you wouldn’t mind.” Anton held onto Noah’s rough-skinned right hand, then released it.

“No, I suppose I don’t. He does work for you and for me. Look, I think I know what this is about, why you called me here.” Noah took a seat across from the desk, while Anton slipped into his own chair.

“You know, eh?” To Noah’s surprise, the mustachioed merchant prince looked amused, not nearly as tense as he might be before the upcoming military adventure.

“You’re wondering where I fit in, and how I can contribute to the war effort.”

“Oh, you’ve already contributed far beyond the call of duty, Uncle Noah.”

“You don’t think I’ve been wasting my time in the cocoon?”

Anton laughed. “In this galaxy, with all the strange events that are occurring? Are you kidding? I say, if you can figure the Aopoddae out, it will help all of us. Maybe you’re in there generating a super weapon, for all I know.”

“If I were doing that, Thinker would have told you.”

“Ah, but you are on a different plane from the rest of us, Noah. You can accomplish things no one else can imagine. I’m sure you could conceal things from the robot.”

“Not from his organic probe, though. It’s his form of the truthing touch. No, I don’t have a super weapon in the cocoon. I wish I did, but I don’t.”

“Well, wishes do come true. Keep wishing, and maybe it will happen. We could sure use more firepower. But that is not why I asked you to come here.”

Anton fiddled with a pen, spinning it around on the desktop. Then he continued. “I’m intrigued by the way you got from Yaree to the Tulyan Starcloud.” He snapped his fingers. “Even with all of the web damage, you made the journey just like that. But how?”

“Some of the podships in my cocoon are among the oldest in the galaxy, and they know alternate routes, shortcuts across space.”

“I’m aware of the alternate routes Diminian found, and which his pilot showed to us—dropping travel time to a matter of minutes, going around damaged web sections. But you accomplished something even faster, didn’t you? Noah, you just visualized the starcloud, right? And the cocoon went there immediately?”

“That’s about right.”

“Can you show the rest of the fleet how to do that? Speed is always an asset in warfare, and I want every advantage we can get.”

“I don’t know exactly how it works, but I’m sure the podships do—the cocoon. My connection with the Aopoddae seems to be a work in progress, but I could give it a try.” He didn’t mention the unopened, armored core of data in his brain, knew Thinker would reveal its existence anyway, if he hadn’t done so already.

“All right. Let’s run some preliminary tests. You get in the cocoon and see if you can get it to lead the others. Think of guerrilla warfare, on a scale never before seen. Ideally, I’d like to have my whole fleet appear out of nowhere, attack the HibAdus, and then disappear. We could then keep hitting them from different angles, and vanishing before they could mount an attack. No matter how big their entire force is, we could whittle it down, hopefully faster than they can reproduce lab-pods.”

“Sounds good to me.”

The two of them worked out more details. Then Noah rose to his feet and bowed to his nephew.

“Please,” Anton said, coming around the desk and shaking Noah’s hand again. “Only do that when someone is looking. Here, we are family. More than that, we are friends.”

“In what seems like a prior lifetime, I had a similar arrangement with my adjutant, Subi. He was not allowed to insult me in front of others. Only in private.”

“We shall do that, too,” Anton said, as he accompanied Noah to the door. “Private insults, only.”

“You’re in a surprisingly chipper mood,” Noah said.

“Because I think we’re going to win.” The young doge paused, and grinned. “In fact, I
visualized
it.”

* * * * *

The next morning the combined fleet was ready to go into battle, with the exception of one final detail.

Noah and Thinker strode into what had once been the Grand Ballroom of Lorenzo’s Pleasure Palace, a chamber that Noah had transformed into an auditorium for his future School of Galactic Ecology.

“I might as well try it from here as anywhere else,” Noah said, as they walked up the steps to the central platform. “Let’s see what sort of a magic show we can put on.”

“Very well,” Thinker said. “I shall be your audience.” He went back down the stairs and bent his metal body, so that he could sit in one of the front-row seats.

“You and the whole fleet. All right, here goes.”

Kneeling on the floor, Noah pressed the palms of both hands against the podship flesh that covered everything, like a blanket of gray, black-streaked snow.

He and Doge Anton had agreed on galactic destinations, so Noah visualized Yaree, where they had won their battle against the HibAdus. It seemed like a safe destination now, where the Liberators had joint defensive operations with the Yareens. Hours ago, Anton had dispatched courier ships there (and to Canopa and Siriki) to notify them of last-minute war maneuvers that could take place in their vicinities.

Feeling a link to Timeweb, Noah saw far across space to the Yareen star system and its central planet, framed against the faint green filigree of the cosmic web. Simultaneously, he expanded his far-reaching eye, so that he also saw where he was now, just outside the Tulyan Starcloud with the Liberator fleet. And, just as he was expanding outward, so too did he delve deep into his own psyche and to the linkage he shared with the cocoon.

Show them the way
, Noah thought, wondering if the secret of nearly instantaneous travel lay inside the armored core of data that Thinker had passed on to him.
We lead, and they will follow
.

A burst of green light filled his consciousness, and he felt the slightest sensation of movement. Looking again, Noah saw that EcoStation was now in a geostationary orbit over the blue-green planet Yaree, and thousands of armed podships were with him.

Then he noticed that it was not the entire Liberator fleet, but still a significant portion of it, around forty-five thousand ships. Less than half of the total.
Webdancer
was with him, and other familiar podships. The older ones, mostly, including Diminian. Many of the younger Aopoddae had not made the journey, and seemed confused back where they had been left. But a large number of older podships remained behind with them as well.

Noah made the effort again. This time, he visualized returning to the rest of the fleet, and in a matter of moments he made the leap across space. Then, assessing the results, he saw that all of the ships that had gone to Yaree had returned with him.

Next, he visualized Siriki, and after that, Canopa. With each gigantic leap across space, a handful of the younger podships figured out how to do it, and joined the pack. The majority of them, however, were having difficulty learning the method, and some of the older Aopoddae didn’t even seem to make the effort. A number of the younger ships got lost for awhile, and had to find their way back to the original jump-off point. A handful were still out there in space, and had not been accounted for.…

Finally, retrieving the rest of the fleet and bringing it back to the Tulyan Starcloud, Anton and Noah had another meeting in the Doge’s flagship office.

“Mixed results,” Noah said. “With time, we might make it work, but I know what you’re thinking. We don’t have time.”

Anton scowled. “We can do the guerrilla attacks with forty percent of the fleet, but my generals—who were initially supportive—are now saying that we should hit the HibAdus with everything we’ve got, the whole fleet. Our best Tulyan scouts say it will take two hours to get to the Kandor Sector the conventional way, due to rough podways and no good shortcuts of any kind.”

“To me, it still makes sense to hit them with guerrilla attacks. Even forty percent is still a lot of ships, a lot of firepower.”

“My generals say otherwise. If we don’t reduce the number of enemy ships fast enough, they’re afraid the HibAdus can dramatically increase the manufacture of lab-pods in response, and overwhelm us. We have the intelligence reports, and we’re going back to Plan A, what we’ve been building up for all along. I just had a wild idea that something else might work.”

“It was worth trying. All right, think of it this way. The exercises were not wasted. If we get in a jam, we can still evacuate much of the fleet.”