First Fleet #1-4: The Complete Saga (19 page)

“To speak—searching a method of communication—having found resonance in these minds.” A rising wave of steam hid the face completely. The rest of its body was still invisible in the fog.

Cam waited. The girls stood on either side of her, their hands on her shoulders as though supporting her.

“You are a multiplicity,” it said. “I resonate with them—have sought them in the past—speak to them through you—you will not perhaps die—as do the others—but you will not understand without them.”

It was speaking of her and the twins, but what did it mean about dying?

“It’s ETI,” Cam said to herself softly. “It’s ET-fucking-I right here in our backyard. How did we miss it on the surveys?”

Cam’s mind scanned back through her first contact training from her military days. Every recruit sent out on any deep space assignment had been forced to endure it, a hodgepodge of anthropological, evolutionary and linguistic nonsense that a bunch of academics in System who had no idea what they were talking about had put together. How could they have any idea what they were talking about? No one had a clue what ETI would look like when or if it was encountered.

“It needs us,” Perry said softly.

Cam focused again on what the creature had said. “You found us because you could communicate with us?”

“You are Cam Dowager—you are—you are not alone,” the voice in her mind repeated.

“You’re right.” Cam gritted her teeth and rose. “I am Cam-goddamn-Dowager. And these are my daughters. What do you want with us?”

“I must speak with others—with the many—of the vestiges shattered.” Cam felt a shade in her mind at these words and realized she was experiencing an emotion in the mind of the creature.

Was that fear? Could the creature feel fear?

“Why us?” Cam shouted.

“You can speak—we can speak.”

Cam’s head spun as fleeting images and scraps of knowledge flowed into her mind. She knew this must have to do with her own neurological quirk, her ability to hear voices through proximity with the Brick. Was it possible this creature used the same type of resonance or entanglement as the Brick did to communicate?

“They are stones—I am alone,” came the response. It had heard her thoughts, though Cam did not understand what it meant.

“We must go now” The voice was insistent, pressing on her mind. “You must speak.”

The creature remained where it was, wreathed in the smoke from the rock-burners. Cam began to back away slowly, pulling the girls with her.

“We must go,” it said again. “You must speak.”

“We’re not going anywhere.”

“We must make a path,” the voice bellowed silently, “a hole in the universe.”

Cam’s grip on the girls tightened as the fringes of the world buckled. Something blue and twisting raced across her vision, shattering the landscape beyond like lightning.

The margins of perception caved in completely, replaced by absolute darkness. For a moment all four of them were suspended in blackness, the suddenly revealed creature a writhing mass of color and light that made Cam’s gut twist.

In another instant there was stone and cool light.

“I—you—have arrived,” the voice said. “Now the death begins.”

R
ine raced
into Jens’s room at a terrified run. Jens had been pacing the far end of the chamber, counting the trips she was able to make between the featureless stone walls before she became winded. She was stronger. There were still sharp twinges in her sides when she stood, but she could walk unaided.

From the look on Rine’s face, she knew that she would not get any additional time to heal.

“We’re leaving,” he said breathlessly, confirming her suspicions. Glaucon, as always, was right behind the doctor, his placid expression a contrast to Rine’s mix of fear and confusion.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Jens said. “Not until you tell me exactly what’s happening.”

Now that she was standing again, it was easier to adopt the demeanor she used with unruly cadets and junior officers in her wings.

Rine stared at her. “I’m breaking you out. Don’t you understand? I’m going to release you and the other prisoners.”

“This might be a Colonizer ruse, for all I know,” she said slowly. “If I’m going to follow you anywhere, you owe me some answers. You said yourself that our attack failed and the Fleet was destroyed. You won. We’re your prisoners. What are you terrified of, and why would you release us?”

“He’s terrified of
how
they won,” Glaucon said softly. Rine did not even spare him a glance this time.

“You don’t have a choice! There’s no one left in charge up there,” Rine stabbed a finger toward the surface. “They’re killing each other, and in time they’ll come down here and kill you too.”

“I do have a choice,” she answered. “I can wait here.”

“You’ll die!” His eyes were wild.

She took his shoulders firmly. “Who is killing whom? Explain it to me.”

He stared at her for a minute as though he could not comprehend what she was asking. She watched him gathering all of his scattered thoughts behind his wide and watery eyes.

Something was clearly happening in the corridors beyond. She had heard noises and shouts even stranger and louder than before. They were going on and off for hours now. Occasionally a scream would filter down through the chalky stones of the chamber.

“Collateral infection,” he said. “We’re . . . We’ve . . .”

He paused for breath and tried again. “In sieges, long ago, an army would throw corpses over the walls to infect those within with plague.” He licked his lips. “It’s what has happened here. We were under siege, you see. And we found bodies in the Crèche. Down there.”

He pointed to the stones beneath their feet.

“What bodies?” Jens asked.

Rine’s eyes, if possible, got even wider. “
We don’t know
. Whoever—whatever made these chambers. I didn’t know this when I arrived. I didn’t realize it. They brought me here to treat miners who had gone deep into those caverns. The stones, the passages, the chasms—they play tricks on the mind, on the eyes. Miners would come back up to the surface claiming they had descended on a different world or that they had seen people who were supposed to be on the other planets. Some wouldn’t come back at all.”

“It is difficult for the human mind to remain unaffected in these caverns,” Glaucon said.

“You’re not human,” Jens said. “Rine called you a mechanoid earlier.”

Glaucon nodded. “I am what you would call a Synthetic.”

She turned back to Rine. “I’ll process that later. Right now, I want to know exactly what you’re talking about. These caverns poison minds. How? Through radiation? What do you mean, collateral infection?”

“I didn’t know about the bodies until much later,” Rine went on. “But they found . . . they found
remains
in the central chamber in the deep caverns, in the Crèche. And then, when you attacked, they seeded your res-pods. They sent them back to the Fleet. It took time, but we knew that even if we defeated your ground assault, you would simply return to your ships and attack again. So we poisoned your ships.”

Jens let her arms drop. “You found
alien bodies
and used our technology as a weapon to revive them?”

Rine nodded. “We knew . . . that is, I didn’t, but those who made the decisions . . . They knew what the caverns—what the
architecture
—did to the human mind. It was like a disease. Only the indentured miners went into the deep caverns, miners and—” Rine glanced toward Glaucon, “and mechanoids. No one else was sent if we could help it. The majority of the settlements are just below the surface.”

Jens glanced at walls of the chamber around them. “How far down are we?”

“Not far.” Rine giggled suddenly. “Not too far. Far enough, I suppose, though now no place is safe. And we need to go deeper if we want to escape.”

“So what happened to the Fleet . . .?”

“Bodies. Dead bodies.” Rine had grown quiet and spoke with a fevered, hollow tone now. “We didn’t know what they would do, but they were effective. They’re awake now on those ships.”

He shuddered. “We sent a few spies up as well, in stolen suits. To check on them, make sure they were taking root in your res-pods. No one came back. The bodies woke up, and now the ships are falling.”

Jens took his shoulders again and shook them. “Speak clearly. What exactly happened to the ships?”

“We don’t know,” Rine said. “The things, the bodies, tear at the minds—the ships are adrift. We strewed space with corpses, and now our corpses are coming home.”

“What’s happening on the surface?” she asked.

“The infection . . . Those that were involved in the operation went first. Their minds are twisted. From going down in the depths to retrieve the bodies. Maybe just by being near them. But it spread. The command structure has dissolved. People are killing each other . . . And the ships—the Fleet—is falling.”

Jens looked to Glaucon for more explanation.

“We don’t have any confirmed landings,” the Synthetic said calmly. “Things are confused on the surface. The only individuals communicating clearly are those like myself, but we are scattered throughout the settlement.”

“Okay,” Jens said. She limped past Rine toward the door. “I’ll come with you. Better than staying here, I guess. But where do we go?” She paused in the doorway. “You said going deeper led to madness.”

“So does the surface, now that the ships are falling,” Rine moaned.

At the doorway Glaucon passed her a plasma rifle. “We helped ourselves to some pieces in the armory. Neither the doctor or me know how to use them.”

She checked the charge and the safety and grinned. Whatever was waiting for them, she felt marginally better with a weapon in hand.

“Stay behind me,” she said. The corridor curved away in either direction. “Which way to the other prisoners?”

“
W
ho was Gordan
?” Beka asked wearily, “and why should I care about his knot?”

She was alone on the command deck with Donovan. They couldn’t remember who was supposed to be sleeping and who was supposed to be on duty. Donovan had brought her a meal not long ago, she vaguely recalled, so she must have been on duty then, but she could not remember what it had been or whether she had eaten it. There was a raw, red underlining to every thought that dulled both meaning and intent.

“Gordian,” Donovan said. “A Gordian knot. There was this general back in System. And he had conquered a city, or wanted to conquer it.” Donovan’s voice shook. It sounded as raw as Beka’s thoughts felt in her own mind. “But there was a prophecy or a story or something that the ruler would be the one who untangled this knot. So he cut it in half. He sliced through it.”

The shapes representing the wreckage of the Fleet hung suspended on the holographic monitor before them. Beka had watched its shifting pattern for so long, with an intensity approaching that of Aggiz before the Brick, that she saw the swimming forms whenever she closed her eyes.

She massaged her temples. Either the pain was fading or they were growing so accustomed to it that their nerves no longer bothered carrying the signals back and forth. Now all she felt was a dull weariness in everything she did.

“What does this have to do with anything, Donovan?”

He stabbed a trembling finger at the cluster of shapes hanging between them. “That’s your knot.”

Beka raised her eyebrows. “You mean give up? We’re on the verge of understanding something, Donovan. It’s not just about getting to whatever aid might be on the planets below. It’s about the pattern to the motion of the Fleet.”

She reached forward to revolve the three-dimensional display and saw her own arm tremble like Donovan’s. “Aggiz thinks we can communicate if we figure out how the creatures on those ships are using the Brick.”

“Beka, these are the things that
deleted
the minds of fifteen thousand people off the Brick just to send a message.” Donovan sounded annoyed now.

“They might not have known,” Beka whispered.

“It doesn’t matter if they did or didn’t. The point is . . .” He trailed off and waved his arm expansively. “The point is that we’re trapped. We don’t have the luxury of time anymore. We can’t keep dancing here at the margins. I can synthesize pain treatments to last us a few more days, and that’s it. Then we’re finished as soon as one of them gets close to us again, and there’s no other planet we can reach now that the light-line is gone. Can you guarantee Aggiz will have learned to communicate with them by then?”

Beka shook her head slowly. “But they’ve already made contact with someone.”

Donovan snorted. “The face. The face that Paul claims belongs to his wife. We have no idea what that means. And frankly . . .” He trailed off again as though trying to gather his thoughts. “Frankly none of us is very credible right now.”

“You think he’s seeing things,” she said, “that he’s seeing what he wants to see in that pattern. But I saw a face too.”

“Things like this are normal in high-stress situations, Beka. Hell, I’ve caught myself having extended conversations with the comatose Synthetics, even when I’m in the process of . . .” Donovan caught himself before saying
cutting them open
and hoped Beka was too distracted to notice. “I’m just saying that we don’t have much time.”

“There’s a pattern in here,” Beka insisted.

“You sound like Aggiz.”

“Aggiz was right!” Beka leaned back in her chair. The ships kept sliding past each other on her display like slivers of glass against a mirror. “The universe is built of patterns and numbers. It’s only a matter of working hard enough to see them.”

Donovan shook his head. “Your universe, maybe. Not theirs.”

They sat in silence. The ship drifted. Somewhere on a deck above, the remaining Synthetics slept. Davis hovered between life and death. Paul dreamed of Cam’s face suspended in darkness.

When understanding came, it came suddenly—a coiled spring releasing in Beka’s mind.

She gasped. “You’re right.”

Donovan glanced up at the sudden intensity of her tone.

“We have to cut straight through. Look at them.” She pointed and he stared at the display. “They’re not a flock. They’re not a fleet. They’re each moving in complete isolation, each hemmed in by the walls of a house of mirrors.”

She stood, leaning forward into the display until the ghostly ships almost brushed her nose and cheeks.

“I was looking for a path through, assuming they were a collective or hive mind. I kept looking for a way to insert ourselves into their dance.” She pushed her hand through the middle of the display, feeling the faint hum of condensed light play along her arm. “There’s no way into their game though, because there isn’t one. They’re each moving in isolation. They’re each alone.”

Across the display, her hand found Donovan’s. He took it and held tightly.

“Now it’s my turn to tell you I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter.” She grinned wanly. “You don’t have to understand. I’m driving. But it’s going to be rough ride. How much pain treatment can you synthesize?”

“To use all at once?”

She nodded.

“Enough to kill us, maybe.”

“We’ll need it all.” She paused, still holding his hand, staring at the display of ships drifting between them. “There’s no other way but straight through.”