Earth Song: Etude to War (37 page)

Chapter 36

April 28th, 534 AE (subjective)

Planet Richter, Geosynchronous Orbit, Galactic Frontier

Pip stared at the screens of data floating before him with what he'd come to think of as his first level of consciousness. He still remembered the old days, before a Rasa accelerator had torn a chunk from his brain when that was the only level he possessed. Now he possessed three levels of operational consciousness, and another two unconscious levels.

The computers implanted in his brain by the Kaatan medical intelligence had successfully reconstructed his higher faculties, but at a price. He secretly suspected he wasn't really conscious at all. More of an echo of who Pipson Leata once was. He had all the memories (or most of them), all the knowledge, and certainly all the creativity that was once Pip. But what he lacked was passion.

Once years ago he'd been in love. Twice, truth be told. First with Minu, when he had been still young and before he had knew what he really wanted. That love had still burned, but secretly within him when he slowly fell in love with the woman that would become his wife.

Cynthia was as different from Minu as a woman could be. Meek, quiet, completely lacking in self-confidence, and completely smitten that a Chosen would be interested in her. Even if this Chosen was a rather small one who was trying desperately to hide his Rusk heritage.

The relationship grew slowly, almost a surprise to both of them. Movies on days off from Steven’s Pass (where Cynthia worked in Chelan), then occasional dinners, and a short camping trip one weekend. They'd held hands, kissed, then touched tentatively a few times. Even as inexperienced as Pip was, he knew the next step was any day. Then the Rasa vendetta came, and he nearly died.

He only possessed haunted memories of the years that had passed after his injury. Ages passed in his trapped consciousness, unable to understand why he couldn't wake up, trapped with his own thoughts, and trapped with his own regrets.

And thus he awoke with those years of self-hating regret as all there was to anchor himself. Minu had risked everything, along with most of his friends, to go out into the deep unknown and find a way to bring him back, but he'd never been able to truly thank her for that.

Pip never understood that part of himself. He liked to justify it by weighing his accomplishments against the price they'd paid to bring him back. It was the same part that married Cynthia, even though he felt almost nothing for her. It was that part which had used her for every sexual adventure he could imagine or read about. It had let her get pregnant, because she wanted to. And it was that part which finally just left when it all became too much. He never wanted any of it anyway.

So now he spent more time aboard the Kaatan than anywhere else. He didn't have to be aboard to link with the ship’s computers, it was just easier to be away from the annoying distractions people provided. He took care of his carnal deeps with intermittent trips back to the surface. Other than that, the only person he interacted with on a daily basis was Lilith. And he considered her more like himself than the rest of the noisy, bothersome, irrational human race.

Various levels of his consciousness worked on different tasks twenty three hours a day. He would have to disengage his first level of consciousness from time to time for a few hours. Most people called it sleep. To Pip it was more like a chance to empty his memory buffers. He could work on problems so quickly that his brain's computer eventually filled up and he started to fog over. He could simply work on fewer things, but that would be boring.

He knew his buffers were stuffed and his attention was starting to waver. But he didn't want to take any down time. With Minu and Aaron off the ship, he didn't have to deal with their husband, wife, boss klothshit, and that suitd his concentration. It was only bad luck that their 'away mission' corresponded with the time when he was finally running out of space to operate. And of course, that was when inspiration struck.

He floated there for several minutes, thoughts swirling with terabytes of data and abstract ideas. Something was coalescing, if he could only let it finish before his tortured brain demanded release.

Trying to delay the inevitable, he stared at the displays in the CIC for long moments. Lilith was working with Kal'at, teaching him about the ships they had discovered and their capabilities, so the wall of the CIC was covered with technical blueprints of those vessels.

It was so tantalizingly close he felt like ants were crawling inside his brain. Bits and pieces. Starships, portals, far flung star systems, portals, solartaps, Weavers, portals, war, portals…
portals!

Pip clawed his way to the door of the CIC, almost bumping his head in the frame twice. Kal’at glanced up with one eye from a blueprint to watch curiously as he left. Three decks and all the way forward, as he did his best to not let his implants completely shut his brain down.

Finally a heavy doorway slid open before him revealing a long bay narrowing opposite the entrance. In the center an unusually low dais glowed slightly with an already active archway above it. As he stumbled closer a spider-like creature floated from the ethereal plasma of the archway to regard him.

“Pip,” the ethereal voice spoke, “we have/will/are speaking of the agreement.”

“As always,” Pip replied, afraid his words were slurring. He looked at the being for a long moment, trying desperately to keep his thoughts on track. “The Weavers control the portals.”

“We control the portals,” came its voice.

“Who built the portals?”

“You call them the Lost.”

“They are the ones who should negotiate this agreement,” he said.

“You are/have/will negotiating with us.”

They'd been over all this territory before, but something had fallen together in his digitally addled brain. “Where did the Lost go?”

“Go? They are not gone. Not truly.”

That was a slightly new take and it stopped him for a moment. He'd never really completely understand what he was even negotiating for. Years ago when he'd gotten into the discussion with the Weavers he didn't know if anyone else ever saw the creatures. Before he was critically injured and spent years in a coma. Before he'd learned not to stick his nose in business that wasn't his to interfere with.

“Where do you live? The Weavers?”

“We have/will/are discussed this before. We exist outside your dimension.”

“Yes, but you are here now. Why?” Pip realized he was close to something, because the Weavers didn't reply. “There must be a reason you are in our dimension, what is that reason.”

“Survival.”

“I need to know more.”

“You desire to know more.”

“Same thing.”

Again there was nothing for a long moment as the Weaver floated. Then it spoke into his mind. “Our universe was/is/has died. We developed the ability to move between dimensions as a natural evolution. We used/use/will use it to pass between feeding grounds. The common biology of our universe is different from yours. Most beings here are carbon based. In our native universe, silicates predominate. In particular, silicates utilizing energized plasma synthesis ecology.”

“You consume energized plasma?”

The being did not respond.

“You would be completely at home in the photosphere of a star!” Pip felt like slapping his head for not realizing it.

“A specific kind of star only. While we discovered/discover/will discover one of those stars in your universe, we could not/cannot/haven’t found any others.”

“Why not?”

“Space is big. We cannot simply fly around like your people can in your star ships. We can only exist in your world—”

“Within an energized plasma field,” Pip finished for it, and gestured to the portal dais. It was not quite like the normal portal dais. This one was round and only one step tall instead of three. However it was still, at its essence, a force field containment device filled with energized plasma. There was no need for it to answer.

“Eventually the star was/will/is nearly depleted. We were/are/will be few. We tried to ration the supply of plasma, but the star was/is/will die. The Lost did/will/have found us. New stars offered, in exchange.”

“For the portals?”

“Pip knows/will know/can know this already.”

I do know
, he thought. His brain was gelatin, but he knew the rest. They were running out of food again, but the Lost were gone. There was only him.

* * *

Minu looked at the dancing script floating above her PCR. She'd been working for eight hours organizing the addresses from her father’s old PCR and had made less progress than she'd intended.

Mainly because of the three major earthquakes, and seven tremblers, they'd suffered through. The last one had almost thrown them around like rag dolls. Lilith had informed them she'd lifted the shuttle off for a minute. The Rasa seemed to handle it well enough.

“Isn't there some way we can just leave the damn rod here?” Aaron grumbled from a few meters away. He was perched on a remnant of a wall applying a dressing to his left elbow. Most of the skin was ground into the cracked pavement nearby.

“You know better than that,” she said without looking up.

And she knew he did know better. The rules governing the PCR operation were simple and direct. They were controllers only in a remote sense. They stored records as well while the portals themselves contained all the equipment. They had the ability to link with a tablet and index their destinations with a database, and that was SOP for the Chosen.

The problem here was her father hadn't done that in this case. Purposely, of course. She was getting used to that. The problem was sorting through the addresses and finding one that matched. And she couldn't just open the last location listed. There was some risk that her father had passed through an enemy controlled world.

The entire process was frustrating. She'd eliminated all the easy worlds from her own tablet records, leaving the more recent entries and those without a match in her records. The location codes were understandable in at least what part of the galaxy they were located in. A disturbingly large number were in contested space, and more than a few in systems controlled outright by a less than friendly higher order species.

“I think I'm going to link remotely with the Chosen database,” she said.

“I'm sure there will be a dozen nasty messages waiting for us,” Aaron said.

Minu shrugged. She knew she hadn't made any points by taking off the way she did.

“What are you going to say if he tries to order us home?” he asked.

“You really don't want me to answer that, do you?”

It was Aaron's turn to shrug and she smiled. Her loathing of First among the Chosen Jacob was the worst kept secret in the Chosen.

The decision made, Aaron broke open his pack and removed the small, compact laser link all Chosen carried and unfolded the integral tripod. Sitting it on the edge of the portal dais he linked with his tablet and gave her a thumbs up. She pointed the PCR at the portal (a ubiquitous habit they all had) and activated it. A moment later the aquamarine cloudless skies of a world appeared. “Deep Blue,” Aaron recognized instantly, “good choice.”

The world was a favorite for the Chosen for training and relaying transmissions. It was quiet enough that the laser link left there actually had a partial Chosen database resident. Highly encrypted of course.

At least a dozen other neutral or friendly species had their own last communication links hidden in windows and dug into walls of the long abandoned buildings within view of the portal on that world. It only took a moment for the laser on their side to link with its distant counterpart, exchange codes, and create a link. “Here we go,” Aaron spoke.

Minu lifted her tablet to eye level and watched the interface download from the other side. Immediately several messages appeared to her. That was no surprise. She waited to look at them as she sent a query to the network on the other side for address codes stored on other portal addresses. Once that was set, she went back to read the messages.

The first one was, predictably, from First among the Chosen Jacob. It was full of anger and threats. “If you do not chose to return immediately there will be dire consequences!” She snorted and deleted it. The next one was from an old friend, Dram, who was Second among the Chosen. He told her not to worry about Jacob and to be careful out gallivanting across the galaxy. She saved that one.

There was a letter from Gregg mentioning his frustration with Jacob on a deployment. More mercenary work. She scowled and tabled it for then. Followed was a message from the Chosen office of deployment and service acknowledging she'd been granted an extended leave of absence. She had made no such request. Dram, no doubt. The last was another from Jacob. She almost just deleted it, then something made her open the message.

Chosen Minu Groves,

You need to be informed that elements of the Rangers are missing on deployment. Chosen Gregg Larson is in command of the 1
st
Division deployed to Planet K back on April 22
nd
on a support mission of the Akala. They have failed all previous scheduled communications schedules. This morning Chosen scouts attempted to insert through the portal to Planet K, and failed. The portal is no longer active on that side. The Leesa are in possession of the portal spire. It has been deemed an unacceptable risk to attempt an incursion through the portal spire under control of an enemy.