First Fleet #1-4: The Complete Saga (24 page)

T
he three ships
were far enough from the Grave Worlds that the broken planets were little more than a cluster of bright shards against the night, bits of bronze glow as if someone had shattered an amber glass against the floor of the sky.

Now that the worlds were actually visible in space before him, Tholan ignored them. He didn’t want the planets; he wanted his ships. He wanted to know what had happened to them, and then he wanted to make the Colonizers pay.

It was clear the Fleet was gone. The approaches to the Grave Worlds were empty. There were no pickets. There were no beacons. There was no evidence at all that a major flotilla had passed this way in the recent past.

The
Mustafa Kemal
had an armory of sensory nodes to rival that of any ship in the Second Fleet. It skipped in toward the Grave Worlds slowly with its two attendant vessels, popping in and out of space like a stone skimming across water. After each jump, it froze, dropping all of its own systems to the barest possible hush of EM activity, and listened.

If the Fleet was out there, it was scattered or silent.

Briefly, Tholan considered dividing his tiny force. Any approach to the cluster of planets would cover only a finite sweep of space. Yet he was hesitant to spread his force at all. The
Grenada
had been a single ship, and it was gone. No, they would stick together. They had jumped in well beyond where the Fleet’s light-line terminus had been, but now it was time to move closer.

Tholan fed the coordinates of the
Grenada
’s last known location to the two companion ships. Their processors hummed. Equations spiraled outward in tight webs of probabilities and persuasion. Space tensed, strained and tore. The vessels blinked in and out of existence.

The Grave Worlds were closer, but still tiny motes in the darkness. The
Kemal
’s array of sensors listened, sending out invisible fingers in all directions into the darkness, feeling for light and heat, for the whisper of energy signatures or the telltale radio chatter of System communiqués.

Tholan furrowed his brow, bent over the display.

“Should we send out a coded message on all military channels, sir?” an officer at his elbow asked. “See if there’s anyone listening?”

Tholan motioned him to be silent.

He waited. The quiet on the command deck echoed the silence extending beyond the hull, as though a voice raised at the wrong moment might wash out a muted signal in the darkness outside.

On the screen before him, a single point of green light sprang up, a spark on the emptiness of the display. In an instant, it was mirrored by another, then another and another. The dots spread out – like a hundred tiny embers, as though someone had blown onto the ashes of a dead fire – a brilliant dusting of signals that gradually coalesced into a rough sphere centered on the Grave Worlds.

Tholan snapped his fingers, the sound as sharp as a gunshot on the hushed deck. “There they are.”

The ships of the Fleet were not in formation. They were still too distant to resolve visually, remaining for the moment only points of information on a map. The vessels were thousands of kilometers from where they should have been.

Tholan tried to make sense of their positioning. Only the drop-ships and assault frigates should have been so close to the Grave Worlds, and even those should have been in orbital combat configurations, not drifting – aimless and disordered – as they appeared.

It did not look like his Fleet. It looked like a debris field.

“How many?” Tholan asked, his eyes scanning the information beginning to stream down the side of his display.

“It’s hard to tell, sir,” one of the crew answered. “The signals for most of them are weak, and they’re so close together there’s a lot of overlapping.”

“How many are active?” he asked. The sensors parsed and separated the gathered data, delegating it to the displays of the various officers on the deck with him. “How many have life signs?”

A personnel officer beside him, studying his own display, shook his head. “None. We’re reading energy signatures from none of them. No life signs.”

“It’s a graveyard then,” Tholan said slowly. “They were decimated.”

It didn’t make sense. The Colonizers had nothing that could destroy such a force so thoroughly.

The haze of green spots on Tholan’s display looked more like a minefield than anything else. The dead vessels were so close to the Grave Worlds that they formed fuzzy halo around it, like the buzzing electron cloud of a heavy element. Something had not only devastated the entire Fleet, it had then pulled it into a tight, chaotic cloud around the Colonizer planets.

“Why are they there?” Tholan asked no one and everyone. “Did they drift in? Drawn by gravity?”

The science ensign who pointed out the enigma of the Grave World’s arrangement shook her head. She sat at Tholan’s left, bent over a display with several more colors and unfurling equations than Tholan’s.

“Not enough gravity,” she said, “or time. If the Fleet had simply been compromised, if the ships had gone dead, they would have dispersed through the entire system. Something pulled them or piloted them.”

“The Colonizers,” Tholan said.

They had a weapon, it was clear, capable of incapacitating an entire fleet, and they had pulled the ships into a loose orbit about their own worlds to cannibalize at their leisure. Tholan ground his teeth, imaging the military secrets and technology on those vessels now almost certainly in Colonizer hands.

He turned to the communications officer. “The First Fleet has been compromised. I want you to calculate optimal positioning for the activation of Puppet-Master Protocol.”

The officer nodded and turned to his display. In a few moments a bright orange marker appeared on Tholan’s, near the center of the Grave Worlds and the green haze of dots surrounding them. It was several light-seconds from their current position.

“Can you calculate a jump to those coordinates?”

The Puppet-Master Protocol had never been attempted, but it was in theory a way to deal with this very sort of situation, the almost unimaginable loss to the enemy of an entire fleet of vessels.

Buried in the AI of each System military ship – and several lines of non-military vessels the military had a hand in creating – was a backdoor, a designed vulnerability allowing a command ship with the proper authorization to slave-drive it.

From the
Kemal
, if positioned properly at roughly the geometrical center of the Fleet, Tholan could trigger the Protocol. From there, depending on the state of the ships, he could scuttle the Fleet or order an automatic withdrawal.

Tholan glanced across the command deck to where the jump-set technician sat ensconced in a network of monitors dwarfing those of every other station. He asked again whether he could calculate the jump.

The science officer answered instead. “There’s something wrong.” She chewed on her lower lip, still bent over her own display.

“What?”

“It’s the gravimetrics. I’m using microlensing of the background starfield,” she replied, then shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense, but there’s a lot of gravitational distortion going on within the Fleet.”

“From the planets?”

She shook her head again. Her eyes were bright and wide in the glow from her monitor. Her riddle had grown, and Tholan could read the excitement on her features. “Not from the planets. It seems to be from the Fleet itself, from the individual vessels.”

“She’s right, sir,” the jump-set technician finally spoke up. “I don’t think I could calculate a jump through that. At least, not without a lot more time.”

“How long?”

He shrugged. “Hours, maybe.”

Tholan leaned back in his chair and stroked his chin. First there was the inability to drive a light-line any closer. Now even his jump capability was hamstrung. He couldn’t regain control of the Fleet from a peripheral position, and he couldn’t fight his way to the center without running afoul of whatever Colonizer weapon had disabled the Fleet in the first place.

“Sir,” the communication officer said, interrupting his reverie. “There is at least one ship active.”

“Tell me it’s the
Clerke Maxwell
,” Tholan growled.

“It’s impossible to tell from this distance. But unlike the rest, it appears to be on the surface of the nearest planet.”

“Life signs?”

“Inconclusive. The energy signature is clear though. It’s one of ours, and it’s not dead in the water.”

“If it is on the surface,” Tholan said slowly, “then the Colonizers definitely have it.”

The
Clerke Maxwell
was jump-set equipped. If Colonizers got their hands on a jump-set, the entire equation of power between them and System changed instantaneously. Whatever weapon they had put into effect here could spread practically anywhere. System itself would be in striking distance.

Tholan might not be able to use the Protocol to control the entire Fleet, but he could keep at least one ship from remaining in their control.

“Do we have a line of sight to initiate Protocol for that vessel?” he asked.

“No, sir,” the officer explained. “It’s on the far side of the planet.”

“Then get us in position,” Tholan ordered.

The
Clerke Maxwell
might have answers. Eleanor might be aboard, along with the body they had retrieved from the Fleet. Perhaps Cam Dowager as well. But none of that mattered if it meant keeping the ship out of Colonizer hands. Once they had a line of sight for establishing contact, Tholan would initiate its self-destruct.

He glanced at the science officer working beside him, her lips pursed as she studied her display unconsciously. A strand of blonde hair hung across her face in an arching curve.

He would miss Eleanor.

“
I
t was a ship jumping in
,” Jens whispered to Beka when things calmed down. Rine and Donovan were still arguing with Paul, but they were no longer physically restraining him.

“The alarms we heard earlier,” Jens explained, when her sister met her comment with a blank stare. “Our sensors detected a ship jumping in at the edge of range.”

Beka’s heart skipped a beat. “Rescue?”

“I don’t know,” Jens said, her voice low. “The signature of the energy spike was pretty clear, but we couldn’t get a bearing on location. Being this far beneath the surface is making things difficult.”

Beka’s mind raced. Jump signatures could only mean System ships were approaching. But even if they were here, they would face the same barrier the
Clerk Maxwell
had met: the Fleet itself. And if they were not warned about the danger, they might simply become the next in a long string of casualties.

“This is another reason to get back to the surface,” Beka told her sister. “We can see what the situation is and try to establish contact.”

“They won’t have Synthetics aboard,” Jens pointed out. “Colonizer reinforcements would.”

Beka glanced toward Rine. He was saying something to Paul, driving home whatever point he was making with expansive gesturing.

“Do you trust the Colonizers?” Beka asked. “They’re the reason the Fleet is gone.”

Jens shrugged. “I trust him,” she said, inclining her head toward the doctor. “At this point I’m less interested in assigning blame than I am in pulling any resources that might get us out of this alive.”

Beka nodded slowly and turned her attention back to the rest of the group.

Moments before, the rest of them had listened to the conversation between Paul and Cam, knowing they needed whatever pieces of information might be provided. Cam explained about their encounter on Onaway and the disappearance of the twins. She also explained her own suspicions regarding why the creature sought them out.

Paul shook his head, bewildered.

“I’m coming to find you, Cam,” he finally said. “Stay where you are.”

“Don’t, Paul.” Her voice was hard. “You would never find me. And then we’d both be lost. Stay with the ship in case the girls find their way to it.” Cam’s voice grew louder suddenly, and Beka imagined her face close to the receiver. “I’m running again,” she said. “Call me if you find my daughters.”

Then, there was silence.

It took them a long time to talk Paul down after that brief conversation with Cam. They finally physically restrained him, preventing him from leaving the ship immediately to find her.

It wouldn’t do any good, Jens explained to him. Other than knowing Cam was down there somewhere, the scanners on the ship couldn’t penetrate any deeper into the caverns. They could provide no further information. Paul would only get himself hopelessly lost as well.

Of course that didn’t matter to him. All that mattered was that, somehow, Cam and his daughters were here – now – and not, as he had imagined, hundreds of light-years away and safe.

Finally, Paul spun toward Jens. “Is it true? Did you see them?”

Jens nodded silently.

The room was quiet. Paul stared them all down, as though daring them to again try to stop him leaving the ship. Instead of resuming his argument, though, he walked back to the low table around which they sat and took his place opposite Beka.

“Tell me what it means,” he said.

“What, Paul?”

“Everything! Why did I see her face in the Brick? How can she hear them – hear the Brick – in her mind?”

He slammed his fist on the table between them. “You’re the expert, damn it! You’re supposed to understand. Aggiz might have been able to explain it to me, but he’s dead.” His face was livid. “Maybe the old man would have been able to, but he’s gone too. Give me some answers, Beka!”

Beka kept her voice calm. “I don’t have any, Paul.”

“I might.”

They turned toward Eleanor in surprise. She cleared her throat gently.

“Tholan used to speak of a project,” she began, “that involved a fully-articulate human consciousness in the Brick. Not just a scan. Not just a memory. A sentient mind within the Brick.”

Beka shook her head. “That wouldn’t be possible. It would take up too much space. There wouldn’t be room for memory scans.”

Eleanor nodded. “And if any mind
was
inserted, it would be overwritten by any subsequent scans added to the Brick. Which is why it was abandoned. But if the Brick could not house a fully articulated human mind, the next best thing was to make a human mind more like the Brick – to attempt to
adjust
a human consciousness so it would interface directly with the Brick.”

Paul stared at her. “What do you mean – ‘adjust’?”

Eleanor sat beside Beka, her legs crossed and her hands folded in her lap. Her easy grace had returned. She looked as though she were discussing some minor political maneuvering on an inner-System world instead of a series of classified military experiments.

“Necroeugenics,” she said. “Tweaking the cellular make-up of certain soldiers during the regeneration process. Working to tip the neural make-up toward something that would fall into resonance with the Bricks.”

“‘They re-grew her,” Paul whispered. “At least once when she was in the service. She told me about it. You’re saying Cam was one of these experiments.”

Eleanor shook her head. “I don’t know who the experimental subjects were. I don’t even know if the experiments were ever carried out. But if what she says is true, it appears as though they were and were partially successful in at least one case.”

Donovan stirred from where he had been listening in the shadow of the Brick. “But what does that have to do with the creature?” he asked.

“We already know the creatures the Colonizers planted on the Fleet wiped the Brick,” Beka pointed out.

She was tired of this dialogue; she should be on the command deck, figuring out whether they could raise the ship. She needed to decide whether they were going to contact the Colonizers.

But she went on. “That implies that they communicate in some related manner. When speaking through the Brick didn’t work, maybe it sought out another method. The point is, it’s trying to communicate—”

“The point is,” Paul interrupted heatedly, “Cam and the girls are lost and I need to find them.”

They were interrupted again by the faint klaxons they heard earlier. Beka glanced at Jens, who had her hand to her ear. Jens caught her eye and nodded: they had another signal from their mystery ship.

Beka stood. It was time to make things happen.

“Rine, you and Jens get to the command deck. Jens, I want to know whether we can get the ship in the air.” She turned to the doctor. “And I need you to figure out how far we are from the best place to send a message to the Colonizers.”

Jens and Rine left the science bay together. Beka turned toward Eleanor and Donovan.

“I want you two to stay down here,” she said. “If these creatures are trying to communicate, they may use the Brick.”

Donovan looked doubtful, but Eleanor nodded.

“And keep an eye on those two as well.” She motioned toward the pod in which Davis slept and also toward Paul, who had wandered over to where the Brick sat in darkness.

Beka started out of the science bay, following Rine and Jens toward the command deck, but paused in the doorway and glanced toward Paul. Eleanor and Donovan had withdrawn to the far end of the bay, leaving him with his thoughts.

The Brick reared up before him like a black wall, absolutely featureless. Beka watched him reach out to touch its exposed surface, finding it closer to his face than it appeared. The total emptiness of its surface fooled the eyes.

She tried to imagine what he must be feeling. What if their positions were reversed? What would she have done if she believed Jens was safely back in System, only to suddenly find her here and lost just beyond reach?

Beka sighed and walked toward him, uncertain what to say, yet feeling she must say something.

“Paul,” she began.

“It’s empty now,” he said softly, still facing the Brick. He spun toward her abruptly, his worn face more animated than Beka had seen it before. “I want you to put me into it.”

She stared. “What?”

“She said so herself.” He pointed an accusing finger across the bay at Eleanor. “The military had plans to do just that, but they couldn’t because the Brick didn’t have space.”

Beka nodded cautiously. “To upload a fully sentient, fully articulated mind wouldn’t leave room in the Brick for anything else. And it wouldn’t be stable. There’s no way to protect something that large, inside the Brick. It would be overwritten as soon as more information was added.” She paused. “Or if the creatures blanked it again.”

“But it’s empty now,” Paul said again, looking plaintively at Beka. “Would it work? Could you do it?”

“The Brick normally stores memories,” Beka began, “a compressed slice of information encoding all a soldier’s life and personality. But they’re static; they don’t have active consciousness within the Brick. They’re just an image of the soldier’s mind. What you’re talking about . . .”

She paused. “I would need to run some simulations. Some tests.”

“Would it work, Beka?”

Her mind had already engaged the technical aspects of the problem. She thought furiously, recalling everything she knew about parsing information and funneling it into the condensates of the Brick.

In theory,
in theory
, it was possible, given enough space.

In theory it would even be workable with the standard memory scanners they had on board. Those would simply need to be recalibrated for a deeper scan, peeling back the neural layers one by one in order to translate and rebuild those patterns within the Brick. The process however—

“It would kill you, Paul,” she said flatly.

Paul blinked.

“Even if it didn’t work,” she explained quickly, finding herself falling into Aggiz’s speech patterns as her thoughts raced ahead of her words, “which it might not – the process of extracting and full memory scan (not just a snapshot, not just a slice) but getting the amount of neural traction necessary to rebuild you actively in the Brick – would destroy the original neural pathways.”

Paul was silent.

“You would be brain-dead, Paul,” she finished. “It’s a deep scan. There is no way to pull it back out of the Brick. There wouldn’t be a mind to come back to when this was all done.”

“But it might work?”

Beka nodded slowly. “It might.”

“But what’s the point, Paul?” Beka hadn’t realized Donovan had joined them beside the Brick. He looked at Paul with what Beka imagined was a physician’s concern. “What do you hope to accomplish dead?”

“Communication,” Paul whispered. “I won’t be dead in there. And I may be able to communicate with Cam and the creature. I can find the girls. I can lead them home.”

“You’re making some pretty spectacular leaps there.”

Beka watched them both for a moment, feeling something she couldn’t quite describe. They were both strangers to her when she left the shipyard, but now the three of them had a bond, forged in the hell of passing through the Fleet to this place. She had promised herself she would get them – that she would get her crew – safely to these planets. Now that it had been accomplished, what was her responsibility?

Paul ignored Donovan and turned again to Beka. She found she could not meet his eyes.

“Do it, Beka,” he said. “Now.”

“It’s suicide, Paul,” Donovan pressed.

The surface of the Brick stretched out before them like a black sea. Beka searched for her reflection within it, but saw nothing.

What would she do if Jens were still lost? To what lengths would she go to find her? The old Beka would have given excuses or at the very least asked for more time, more information, more opportunities to run simulations and tests. The old Beka would have stalled, perhaps, or asked her superiors, the senior entanglement experts back in System, how to proceed.

The old Beka was gone.

“Okay, Paul,” she said finally. “Donovan, get the scanner.”