Lights in the Deep (16 page)

Gee was of little concern. Each ship had been originally built to house no crew. We had no flesh-and-blood bodies to suffer the ravages of extreme delta-vee. Our minds and personalities—our souls—had been recorded into the control computers of each ship just prior to the shipyards being hit and humanity’s capacity for self defense obliterated. Thousands of years evaporated as I recalled the battle fleet that had vainly fought to protect Earth. Then, as now, Wanda was on my flank, the others spread out a few hundred kilometers apart, trying to maximize distance without causing too much spread in the antiproton discharge.

We fired in unison, our beams spreading and converging to form a single, massive column of antiprotons moving at near light-speed towards our intended targets, still interplanetary distances away. We didn’t wait for results. We pulsed into a new formation which would cover a new firing arc, paused for the generators to reach green, then fired again. And again. And again. Over hours.

Tens of thousands of Swarmers perished.

But their fleet—their ever-dispersing and multiplying fleet—was hundreds of thousands in number, and growing larger with the passage of time.

The similarity to The Battle of Sol was undeniable. The Swarmers used no special maneuvers, no grand strategy. They came in such great numbers that even a hundred of us—our guns blazing together at once—could have only dispatched a fraction of them at any one time.

The mood on the Link grew grim.

We’d all seen this before. Seen it, and knew the end results.

But one thing seemed peculiar. Where was the sun-killer?

I Linked this question to the others, who sent the equivalent of shrugs.

That had been something we’d seen at Sol, and not realized what was happening until it had been too late. Not a large device, the sun-killer was a bit like a bastardized superluminal reactor, only with extra shielding and inverted coils. How it penetrated so deeply into a star’s mantle or generated the chain reaction necessary to cause a yellow dwarf to blow apart remained a mystery, but we’d seen the device plunge into the heart of Sol, and none of us could ever forget the results. So where was the sun-killer this time?

We saw only Swarmer fighters and carriers, nothing more.

Carlos, Wanda, the others, they were frantic on the Link, relaying tactical suggestions and working far too hard to conceal the terror underlying each communication.

It occurred to me that this might not be the first time the Swarmers had done this. Having constructed their trap, what was the use in destroying it if they still had more bugs to zap? I imagined previous collections of us—the many of us who had escaped Sol after our world was obliterated by our exploding sun—finding this planet in our wanderings; a planet populated with humans. When enough of us arrived, the Swarmers attacked, destroyed, recovered the wreckage, then returned to their lairs in the Oort, like trap door spiders, ready for the next set of prey.

It was a clever ploy. Far more clever than any of us had suspected might be possible on the part of these aliens.

I sent my hypothesis via Link, only to find the con-nection…muddied. Not blocked per se, just clouded. I could no longer coherently talk to any of the others. Nobody could hear me, which meant none of us could hear each other.

The massive gaps we’d first created in the Swarmer battle line, gradually filled. Without the Link to keep us organized, our firing discipline began to falter; we could not mass our attacks into truly effective strikes. On its own, a single antiproton weapon could only clear a corridor a handful of kilometers in diameter. And our envelope of free maneuvering space was being squeezed inward, from hundreds of thousands of kilometers in diameter, to a hundred thousand kilometers, then ninety thousand, then eighty thousand….

Carlos was the first one to go. Precision particle beam strike from somewhere in the crowding Swarmer fleet. One instant Carlos’s ship was there; the next, a ball of light and gas.

We were now firing randomly in all directions, taking divots out of the Swarmer cloud without having any real impact.

Bana went up. Then Charlie. And then Ormond.

It was like skeet shooting. The Swarmers were having sport at our expense.

And all I could think about was the clouding of the Link.

I chanced a switch to ordinary radio. It too was jammed. In desperation, I tried a message laser. The beam lanced out towards where I knew Wanda should be.

“Wanda,” I broadcast to my flank-mate. “Resume parallel course with me. We’re going to get the hell out of here.”

“How?” she replied, her thoughts muted by the ordinariness of the laser signal.

“Just keep the laser communication open and follow me. Maximum pulse.”

We broke and ran, delta-vee ferocious, pulsing at the limit of our structural integrity. I felt my ship complaining around me, the internal sensors going from blue to green to yellow to orange. I indicated to Wanda a somewhat diffuse sector in the enemy fleet and lasered for her to get her antiproton gun ready.

It took agonizing moments for both of our weapons to reach capacity, then we fired in unison, clearing a path through the Swarmer cloud approximately twenty kilometers wide. We pulsed like crazy, seeing the escape window begin to close almost as quickly as it had opened. I lasered to Wanda to drop behind me as I waited for my gun charge, then fired it again, re-opening the path.

A particle beam lashed me but it was a glancing blow. Systems across my ship went red.

“Rordy,” Wanda said through the laser, “we’re not going to make it.”

“We have to make it,” I lasered back. “We’re all that’s left. Someone has to get out of here. Get to the transluminal boundary. Go find and tell the others who are left.”

“We can’t abandon Eden,” she said.

“Eden will be fine,” I told her.

Then I sent across my trap door spider hypothesis, and she understood.

“As long as they think some of us are still out there,” I lasered, “they won’t destroy Eden. Not yet. Not when they know there are people around who will come.”

Another particle beam bit me. Then another. These were smaller, from the littlest ships in the Swarmer line. I opened up with my antiproton weapon and re-cleared the corridor a final time. Most of me was red—which meant dead—and I wondered how much bigger I might make the hole if I simply dropped the antimatter containment separators entirely when I hit the demarcation point of the Swarmer line—giving Wanda a great big hole.

“No!” Wanda lasered, it was almost a scream.

“It’s the only way,” I said to her.

“Rordy—”

I triggered the antimatter containment separators, and a huge, very-bright flash burned across my few remaining optical sensors. Not from the inside, but the outside.
What?

All my systems shut off.

• • •

I opened my eyes.

The sky was deepening to evening, and a small wave of water tumbled across my bare legs as I lay on the sand.

“Hello,” said a woman’s voice.

I turned my head, only to see Wanda’s Edenite body.

Memory loop. Must be. I closed my eyes and tried to shut it off, when the woman’s voice said, “Rordy, it’s me.”

I opened my eyes again, and slowly sat up.

“What…happened?”

“I activated my transluminal reactor,” she said.

“Ships that go transluminal that close to a star,
don’t come back
,” I said.

“We almost didn’t,” she said. “You were torn to shreds, and I wasn’t going to last much longer either. I figured if we had to go out, why not go out with a bang.”

“Die on our feet?” I said.

“Something like that,” Wanda said. She smiled.

“So how did we end up back here?”

“I still had the coordinates for Eden orbit in my transluminal calculator. When I dumped everything I had into the jump, it fried the system, but the transluminal rebound took what was left of both of us and deposited us at one of Eden’s lagrange points. Your ship was pretty messed up. I had to grapple yours to mine, then I soft-landed us both in a crater on one of Eden’s several asteroid moons.”

“The Swarmers will detect the Link and come looking for us,” I said.

“No they won’t. I ordered a one-way core dump into our Edenite bodies. We’re stuck here now, but we’re both in one piece. I hope you don’t mind.”

“No problem,” I said. “It’s better than the alternative.”

Many minutes passed, and I waited as the gentle waves lapped quietly against me. Eventually the night sky with all of its stars came into full view. A faint arm of the Milky Way slowly rose over the horizon.

“What do we do now that we’re stuck here?” I asked.

“Rordy, I think you were right. About the Swarmers not destroying Eden as long as they believe there are some of us left in the galaxy to snare. There’s still a chance we can set humanity free some day. Still a chance we can start over, hopefully in a place that’s safe.”

“It’ll take a long time,” I said. “The Edenites can’t even build or launch bottle rockets, much less orbital boosters. We’d have to find a way to communicate without the Link, and industrialize without tipping our hand.”

“Well,” Wanda said, “you were pretty fired up about wanting to get the Edenites out of the stone age. This is your chance.”

I said nothing.

Wanda remained quiet for a time, both of us watching as the side-on disc of the galaxy drifted slowly overhead.

“You were going to say something,” I said quietly.

“What?” she said.

“I was about to blast a path for you through the Swarmer fleet, and you said my name. But I cut you off before you could finish.”

“It was nothing important,” she said.

I didn’t believe her, but I didn’t want to push it. So I beckoned for her to sit with me.

She sat next to me with her chin on her knees. We’d barely known each other before the Earth was destroyed, and had only the briefest of periods to get acquainted before we’d been recorded into our separate ships and sent into battle. Maybe this was an opportunity for us, too long denied?

“Well,” I said, “if we have to be exiled somewhere, this place isn’t too bad.”

“I know,” Wanda said.

“Teaching these people the basics of math, chemistry, physics, engineering—”

“It would be fun to have something to work on,” Wanda said quickly. “Together.”

“Yes it would,” I said. And meant it.

I turned to stare at her dark shape, the faint light of our galaxy shining on the water. There wasn’t really a whole lot to say, so I searched until I found her hand. I squeezed it tightly. She squeezed back: a sensation that suddenly filled me with more true
feeling
than I’d had in a long, long time.

And together, we began to make our plan.

▼ ▲ ▼ ▲ ▼

To date, this is still the fastest sale I’ve ever made. Approximately 72 minutes from submission to acceptance. And editor Edmund Schubert played such a large part in the story’s evolution—from accepted draft to final publication—that he practically deserves a co-authorship in the byline.

“Exiles of Eden” has been called a “post-human” story, because it deals with a theoretically far-flung future in which humans are all but extinct. I like to think of it as a survival story; something I’ve made myself a reputation for doing. When an overwhelming alien menace obliterates civilization, to what lengths will a few lone survivors go to protect the seemingly last trace of humanity in the known galaxy?

When this story appeared in the electronic pages of
Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine
Show
, it was the fraternal twin of another story, “Guard Dog.” which I’d collaborated with Mike Resnick on. Both stories can trace their roots to a story I originally wrote in 2000 which never saw print. And thank goodness, too. That particular story is part of my proverbial “first million words” of practice, and was as clunky as a garbage can. But it did have some seeds for future fiction. Seeds which I eventually plucked out, planted, watered generously, and saw bear fruit.

“Exiles of Eden” also helped to establish me with another quality editor and another quality short science fiction market, beyond the pages of
Analog
magazine. I really should put some more work into Edmund’s hands. Provided I can pass muster with Scott M. Roberts and Eric James Stone first. Those two tend to have pretty high standards. Which is good. The higher the bar, the more satisfying the accomplishment.

Writer Dad: Mike Resnick

I spent a long time laboring anonymously—without pub-lication—before I broke into the field with my first story sale: a win in the prestigious L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers and Illustrators of the Future Contest. If my ego in my late teens was big enough to make me think that I could be a professional science fiction man, that same ego had been pummeled and punished enough (by the time I was in my mid-thirties) for me to be grateful for any and every scrap of professional success or assistance I could lay my hands on.

Which is why I was both floored and delighted to receive the unexpected tutelage of a man named Mike Resnick.

Who is Mike?

Mike Resnick’s been nominated for more science fiction and fantasy awards than practically any other living science fiction writer. He’s also
won
more awards than a dozen bestsellers combined. He’s published tens of novels and hundreds of pieces of short fiction. He’s one of the genre’s premier historians. And he’s got a terrific sense of humor.

Basically, Mike’s the kind of writer other writers enjoy being around. Because he’s not only good at what he does, he’s quite amiable too. And he tells amazing stories that seem to span the entire existence of written science fiction, from its origins all the way up to the present—as if Mike’s been there for it all.

Which, in a way, he has.

Like Shelby Foote from Ken Burns’s classic
Civil War.

So what could a man like Mike possibly want to do with me?

When I first met Mike I had precisely two story sales under my belt: my Writers of the Future Finalist that won, and my Writers of the Future Finalist that did not win; but was purchased for the pages of
Analog
by Stan Schmidt.