Sunborn (2 page)

    In time, it came to another star-cloud, a place where suns were being born, one after another. Compelled by the memory of
*
Bravelight
*
, Deeaab felt drawn to the cloud, seeking new friends. But when it felt death lurking here, too, Deeaab withdrew.

    But Deeaab did not leave that region of space. Instead, it stayed nearby, waiting...hoping that understanding might come, and a course of action be made clear.

    Deeaab pondered, and prayed.

Chapter 1

Waystation

    The company sped across the light-years for what felt like an eternity, enclosed only by a faintly glimmering force-field bubble. Behind them they had left an ocean world; ahead was the unknown. Inside the star-spanner transport, John Bandicut felt a distinct sense of time and space passing by as a physical stream—stretching ahead of them, flowing around and behind them. He watched as the stars outside the bubble streaked past against the backdrop of space.
    Ik, the Hraachee’an, was the first to notice the gradual appearance of a ghostly, rose-colored nebula ahead. Soon after Ik pointed that out to the others, Bandicut observed the star field crinkling, as though someone were rippling the fabric of space like clear cellophane. A moment later a shock wave rocked the star-spanner bubble. “What—”
rasp rasp
 “—was that?” cried Li-Jared, several of the Karellian’s words dropping out in translation.

    Whatever had hit them blazed golden around them, and for a moment they all seemed to turn transparent and luminous. Bandicut could scarcely breathe.

   
*Entering new flight regime. Approaching interstellar waystation.*

    Bandicut blinked at the words of the translator-stones embedded in his wrists. Interstellar waystation?

    “Something’s changing ahead,” said Ik.

    Bandicut pressed his face to the front of the bubble. “I think I see it—some kind of shadow ahead, between us and the nebula.”

    “Hrah. It looks like a channel of some kind.”

    Antares pressed close behind Bandicut, her breath warm on his cheek. “How could there be such a thing in space?”

    No one had an answer, but what had looked to Bandicut like a patch of shadow grew larger quickly, then abruptly wrapped around the bubble like a tunnel. Suddenly they were flying like a high-speed train through a not-quite-solid tube, which began to glow with a pale blue light.

    They felt a series of soft jolts, as though the star-spanner bubble were decelerating in discrete increments. With no further warning, it glided into a platform that reminded Bandicut of a subway station on Earth. The bubble softened and vanished with a twinkle. Bandicut and the others looked at each other. “I guess we’re invited to get out,” Bandicut said. His two robots went first, clambering out onto the surface and pronouncing it solid and apparently safe. Together with his companions, Bandicut followed them onto the platform. It was a strange and wonderful sensation to feel something solid beneath his feet again. /What do you think, Charlie? I mean Charlene?/ he asked silently, speaking to the quarx—presently female—in his head.

/// I think we’re about to meet someone. ///

   
/Oh?/ He turned. A new robot was floating toward them. Or perhaps a holo-image of a robot. It was tall and vaguely humanoid. A silver band encircled its head where eyes might have been. Small clusters of sparkling jewels floated independently along the band—apparently the robot’s eyes, moving to focus on all the members of the company at once. “My name is Jeaves,” it said in a deep voice that sounded both human and familiar. They had heard that voice during their passage in the star-spanner. “Welcome to the Cloudminder Interstellar Waystation. I have been asked to serve as your host, though I am a visitor here myself. The station is largely uninhabited at this time.”

    “Hrah,” said Ik. “Where are—?”

    “I’ll explain everything once we’re inside, and do my best to make you comfortable here,” Jeaves continued. “Including servicing your robots, if you like.”

    “Yes, we—”

    “I have many questions for you, as I’m sure you do for me. But before we can enter the station proper, I must ask you all to stand by just a little longer. I believe you are familiar with the normalization procedure?”

    “Of course,” rumbled Ik. The others muttered agreement. On Shipworld, the vast structure outside the galaxy where the four had met, each had gone through normalization—a mysterious application of alien technology that adjusted their physiologies for local food, air, and so on. It had happened again when they’d gone to the ocean world.

   
/// John, I get the feeling

   
this isn’t going to be just a pit stop...///

   
Bandicut missed the rest of the quarx’s words. He suddenly felt light-headed, and was enveloped in a cottony glow. He started to call out to his companions. But the glow blurred not just his vision but his thoughts and his balance. He felt himself falling, his thoughts leaking out into the light...

*

JEAVES PROCEDURAL DIARY: 384.14.8.7

Preliminary debriefing of the newly arrived company is complete. I performed the procedure during a light trance-state induced during normalization, with the assistance of the translator-stones each member of the company carries.

   
Summary:

   
The company includes representatives of four organic species, each from a different homeworld (John Bandicut, Human of Earth; Ik, Hraachee’an; Li-Jared, Karellian; and Antares, empathic Thespi Third-female). In addition, there are two robots of Earth manufacture—Napoleon and Copernicus—enhanced to the point of sentience (but not by their original makers). They seem to share a personal bond with John Bandicut. Finally, there is one noncorporeal symbiote—Charlie (or Charlene) the quarx—resident in John Bandicut’s mind.

   
The group came together on Shipworld, and by all accounts, distinguished themselves during the crisis brought on by the boojum incursion. (Report on boojum crisis available in Shipworld archives.) Due to urgent need, they were dispatched immediately afterward to assist with a situation on the ocean world known as Astar-Neri, in the Sagittarian arm—where they prevented a deep-sea entity known locally as the Maw of the Abyss from destroying an undersea civilization. Their discovery of the true nature of the Maw—a damaged, near-sentient stargate—is recorded separately in a detailed report.

   
The success of this just-completed mission owed largely to their exceptional teamwork and negotiating skills. The broad spectrum of their intelligences, empathy, courage, and problem-solving abilities make this company a formidable agent of change. Compared with other operatives who might be called into service in the Starmaker crisis, this company in my judgment offers by far the best hope for success. Plus, of course, they are here now, and available. With the instability in the Starmaker Nebula growing at an alarming rate, time appears to be critical.

   
All members of the group emoted a desire for extended rest and relaxation—hardly unreasonable, given their recent service. I can certainly allow them a day to rest and adjust to their new surroundings, which I have attempted to shape for their comfort. However, given the urgency of the situation, I have little choice: I must move quickly to persuade this group to join us in the Starmaker mission. The consequences of failure could redound far beyond the nebula...

Chapter 2

Mission Unwelcome

   
The robot’s holographic image floated like a ghostly silver mannequin above the dull red cavern floor. “I trust you have enjoyed your respite, however brief,” he said to the assembled company. “A day and a night isn’t much. But now we must speak of a matter that cannot wait. A matter of great urgency.”

    Bandicut groaned. The quarx had been right. This
wasn’t
just a pit stop at the waystation. Li-Jared answered first, though. “A new
job
?” he snapped, his electric-blue eyes sparking with anger. Vaguely simian in form, the Karellian paced energetically over what looked like the floor of a water-carved sandstone ravine in the middle of a desert. Somewhere beneath all that rock was the deck of the space station. “Has it occurred to you,” Li-Jared drawled, “that we might not
want
 a new job?”

   
We certainly do not, Bandicut thought. Not anytime soon, and certainly not dropped on us the way the last one was. They had just spent a pleasant evening in idyllic surroundings, eaten good food, and even been fitted with new clothes while their old ones were cleaned and mended. They had slept in comfort, and awakened to stroll through several carefully maintained environments, each in a different section of the station. Had all of that been a softening-up for this moment? He felt an echoing feeling from Antares, who stood at his side.

    “Hrah,” agreed Ik. The tall, bony Hraachee’an stroked his sculpted, blue-white head with long fingers and turned both ways to note the reactions of his companions. “After what we have been through, we thought we had earned some time to relax and...” Ik paused, raising his hands, at a loss for words.

    See to our own needs? Bandicut thought, completing Ik’s sentence. Yes. They had just saved a world. And had done plenty more before that.

    “I understand,” said Jeaves. The holo of the robot’s cylindrical body extended its arms toward them in an apparent gesture of conciliation. The sparkling eyes in the band around its head came together to become just two eyes. They softened. “But the need is urgent. You are the only ones in a position to—”

    John Bandicut shook his head. “We’ve heard
that
 bef—” he started to say. But he was interrupted by a sudden shudder that passed through the ground, shaking them all. “What the—?”

    “Please wait while this passes,” Jeaves said sharply as the shaking continued. “This will likely be the equivalent of a mild seismic quake on a planetary surface. It should end soon.”

    “Uhhll, seismic quake?” said Antares, her voice tinged with uncertainty. “I don’t understand.”

    Bandicut gripped her arm to steady her. “It means the ground shaking—maybe pretty hard.” Right now, it was starting to feel as if a freight train were passing by. “Jeaves, what’s causing this?” He looked up. Overhead, an enormous clear dome protected them from the vacuum of interstellar space. It reminded him of domes on Shipworld, a pretty solid place; but they were not on Shipworld. As the ground continued to quake, he wondered about the strength of this dome.

    Li-Jared swung his gaze from left to right. “What the hell is—”
bwang
 “—going on, Jeaves?” he echoed, with a froglike twanging sound that seemed to emerge from deep in his throat.

   
Over the rumbling, Jeaves said, “It’s a hypergravity shock wave. It’s part of the problem I was telling you about. We’ve been getting them intermittently for some time, but they’re growing in frequency and severity.”

   
“When’s it going to stop?” Bandicut yelled, waving a hand uselessly against the dust now rising from the ground.

    “Soon, I hope,” Jeaves answered, raising his own voice to a shout. “It’s a disturbance in spacetime, propagating through n-dimensional space. Once it passes, I’ll show you where it came from.”

    Li-Jared was scowling, which on a Karellian face looked something like a leer. “This doesn’t have something to do with the Maw of the Abyss, does it? We thought we’d gotten away from the Maw!”

    “Not that we know of—” Jeaves began. His words cut off when the station shuddered harder, and the ground heaved violently, knocking all four of the company into the dust. The ground bucked in waves. Bandicut cursed, sliding on his elbows and knees, trying to protect Antares, who had fallen half under him. Jeaves shouted something he couldn’t hear. But he
did
hear the cracking of stone walls. Then he heard Jeaves’s words, amplified:
“...into the shelter! Get into the shelter!”

    Bandicut could barely lift his head. Shelter? What shelter? Then he saw a row of blazing marker lights leading down into a deep cut in the ground...

   
“Quickly!”
Jeaves shouted, and Li-Jared yelled, “This way, Ik!” and hauled on the Hraachee’an. Bandicut did likewise with Antares; they couldn’t stand up to run, but together they crawled toward the opening, falling through after Ik and Li-Jared, and nearly on top of them.

    A light came on as a door slid shut. They untangled themselves enough to realize that they were still bouncing up and down, but less violently and on a padded surface. They were apparently in a sealed emergency shelter not much larger than the star-spanner bubble. Jeaves reappeared in their midst—a smaller projection—and asked, “Are you all right? Is anyone injured?” When no one seemed hurt, he continued, “You can ride out the shock wave here. This is the worst we have experienced—and I must tell you, it alarms me.”

    “My robots!” Bandicut called. “Are they all right?” The last time he had seen Napoleon and Copernicus, they’d been heading off to another sector of the station for servicing.

    Jeaves flickered. “We’re experiencing broken communication to that area. But the service bays are well protected.”

   
/// They’re being seen to by the shadow-people.

   
I’m sure they’re in excellent hands, ///