The Deep Link (The Ascendancy Trilogy Book 1) (3 page)

Still no reply.
Stubborn creature
.

Amharr trembles from head to toe, the muscles in his hind
legs burning with energy. He can barely keep from lunging forward to snap the
creature's neck.

"Reply at once!" he booms.

The creature flinches, and something in its facial
expression changes. Amharr can't interpret it. And the other means of knowing
is out of the question.

The neophyte draws a hasty breath. "I wanted to... we
were..." It whimpers, and rubs its face with shaking hands. "We came
to meet you, to become... friends... to see..."

"Friends?"

The creature's shoulders twitch. Amharr waits for a reply,
but there is none. Apparently that gesture
is
the reply.

"Speak of what you intend to do now."

"You're the first technological... the first
advanced
species we've met," the neophyte says meekly. "You're important to
us, to our future. We had to get to you before
they
did. We needed... I
needed—
I
had to make contact before they found you, and explain—"

"They?"

The creature narrows its eyes. "The TMC."

Amharr waits again, but the neophyte just stares at him.

"Explain," he orders.

The tingle in his nerves is unbearable again. The novelty
of the neophyte's presence is more tantalizing than expected, and given his
current state, almost overwhelming.

"The TMC," the neophyte repeats. "The Trust
Military Corps, the organization that governs most of our colonies, smothers
them,
exploits
them. They're ruthless murderers."

Amharr curls his fingers into fists inside his robe.
"What race are these
TMC
?"

The neophyte stares at him for a moment. "They're
human. We all are."

"A self-preying race," Amharr concludes.

The neophyte's eyes widen. "What? No, that's not—I
didn't mean that we're
all
like that—we're good people! Mostly."
The creature winces.

Amharr's inability to understand its body language
infuriates him. "Speak of what you have come to know about me," he
thunders. "What have you
seen
? Do you even understand what has
happened?"

The neophyte startles and stares at him with bloodshot eyes.

"No," he says dejectedly. "Of course you
don't."

"
Please
. All I want is—"

"Enough." He turns his back on the creature,
exhausted and confused by its responses. "This is pointless."

"No!" It yells. "Wait!" And grasps at
him.

Amharr wheels on it, furious at the offense. The creature
retreats, mouth moving but not speaking.

He should leave immediately, order the creature's removal
from his vessel, and expedite the assessment of its race so he can move on to
other duties. So he can be done with this. But the urge to reconnect with the
creature will not be denied. He must sort out the mess in his mind, make sense
of what has happened—make sense of
it
—before he can even think of moving
on.

He charges for the creature and lifts it off the floor by
its head. He inhales its scent, senses its pulse against his hands. His entire
body quakes. His self-control fails utterly, and he thrusts his tendrils into
the creature's nervous system—relieves himself of the unbearable neural tension
that has been building since their last connection.

Bray doesn't go around affronting aliens on a whim, so when
they eventually eject the
Transiter
with him and Jade aboard, he doesn't
ask questions. Just hightails it out of there, not even wasting time persuading
Jade, who'd rather stay and demand explanations about Taryn's disappearance.
Instead, Bray overrides Jade's controls and flies the
Transiter
back to
Spiron station as if Death itself were at their heels. As far as Bray's
concerned, that idiot girl deserves whatever happens to her.

FTL fugue is always hard on Bray, despite how many times
he's been through it.

It's different for everyone. Depends on how many screws
they've got loose on a good day. And how well they handle disorientation and
temporary identity loss. Not many people do it more than once in a lifetime.
Even with an upgraded synet, it's difficult to cope with the repeated trauma.
But fugue's a necessary evil in space-travel, so Bray doesn't complain. Better
than growing old and senile in some backwater prison.

Though he's sure something gets loose in his head every
time he drops out of FTL. Like bearings rolling around in a rattling box;
repetitive clinks and tings tumbling inside his head, making him rabid.

He eventually stops pounding his head against the wall of
the
Transiter
. He presses his fists into his eyes, his head spinning
from the self-inflicted concussion. A trickle of blood runs down his forehead.
He wipes it away with the back of his hand.

When his vision clears, he looks around for Jade. He finds
him lying on the floor between the chairs, shirt ripped open and stomach
scratched and pinched, checkered with self-inflicted hematomas.

Bray combs his fingers through sweaty hair, and slumps
back into his chair. He connects his nacom to the board computer and pushes the
tip of his boot into Jade's shoulder.

Jade moans, slow to sit up. "So, tell me..." He
licks his cracked lips. "Figured out what you're gonna tell Preston? How
you're gonna justify leaving her behind?"

Bray doesn't answer. He tries to connect to Cynthia, but
the AI remains silent, as it has since their capture. Worse, the
Transiter
didn't record a single byte of data while in the alien ship. After the aliens
released them, it took hours for the ship to come online again, and most of its
systems were fried or malfunctioned severely. No long-range sensors, all the
probes' hardware wiped clean, and even internal diagnostics disabled and
flushed, making any trace of collected data impossible to retrieve. Only
life-support and basic navigation worked. A pretty clear '
get lost and don't
look back
.' Going FTL with nothing but basic computing power has taken its
toll on Bray, and he's in no mood to talk.

"Plug in," he tells Jade tersely. "Might
have to dock this damn thing manually once we hit Spiron."

Jade glares at him, unhappy about the dodge, but slides
into his own chair and connects his nacom to the computer anyway.
"Fuck," he says after a bit. "We're too far out. Gotta go it on
thrust. Take us ten hours, at least."

"Great."

"Hey, at least we got
this far
. Can't say the
same for all of us," he adds quietly.

"Just get on with it."

The
Transiter
crawls along on sputtering plasma
thrusters, steered by three photonic flaps. Seven hours into the mind-numbing
flight, Bray's foot tapping and sigh throttling no longer suffice to vent his
anxiety.

"Several things—" he says curtly. "There
were
several
things we could've done to get something out of this
mission, if that bitch hadn't messed with the goddamn AI."

Jade wipes the fatigue from his face. "Like what? Deploy
the probes into the star's corona?"

"Maybe, I dunno," Bray retorts. "At least
we'd still be out there, having a chance.
All
of us."

Jade snorts. "As if you care."

"I do." Bray leans forward, hunting Jade's gaze.
"I wasn't happy Preston brought in a rogue for such an important mission.
But that doesn't make me homicidal, alright?"

"Whatever."

Bray starts fidgeting again, his thoughts tightening into
knots. Nothing he can do about it now, anyway. Might as well deal with it. He
tries to plot out the imminent debriefing, rehearsing his explanations, but he
still can't figure out a satisfying version. At least none that would make him
look good.

"Entering rendezvous vector," Jade says.
"Prepare for docking."

Bray draws up a visual of Spiron on the inside of his
chair's field, and watches it grow bigger on approach.

Spiron looks like something ripped out of a real station
already long past its prime: a century old, it's made of brittle and decaying
hull plates, rusty along their seams from leaking oxygen. Dented satellite
dishes, unlit docking platforms, and solar webs cast out like storm-shredded
sails, all show the makeshift station's age.

Jade maneuvers the
Transiter
carefully between
treacherous protuberances and ridges, maneuvering toward a dock. Bray's heartbeat
quickens.

The
Transiter
's magnetic clamps attach to the
docking platform's buffers, and the flying egg jerks to a halt. An evac tube
attaches to the hatch with a dull thunk.

Bray and Jade crawl into the tube on all fours and drop
out in the station's decontamination chamber. Powerful sterilizer sprays blow
against them under ultraviolet light. Then the thick door rotates open and
they're greeted by a suited medical team—two men and a medroid. The med team
scans them top to bottom, takes blood and hair samples, and runs numerous
scans. All while Bray and Jade try in vain to talk the med team out of their
paranoia:

"I tell you, their ship was as sterile as a surgery
bay," Jade says to one of the MDs. "And the aliens didn't probe us or
anything. Well... not me at least."

Both MDs look to Bray, who glares at Jade.

When the med team's satisfied with the screening results,
they lead them into the station proper. The entire core team is there to
receive them, Preston at the head of the welcoming committee. The doc wears his
typical frown, trim white beard and hightech glasses underscoring his
carefully cultivated authority. Bray's face prickles as he imagines the
scanners in Preston's glasses sweep over his face. But the others ask their
questions first, talking over each other.

Viktor pats him heavily on the shoulder with motor-oil
stained hands. "Glad to have you back in one piece, man." The
mechanic's baritone carries the scent of stale tobacco.

Franky bites his lip, blushes anxiously, and steps closer.
"Why you guys back so early?"

Other station hands approach too, names and faces he can't
recall, all talking to each other and at him and Jade.

Preston's raspy voice carries over the others. "What
happened out there? Where is Miss Harber?"

"The aliens are hostile," Bray says in a rush,
and tries to slip past them all. Preston stops him, grabs his arm and hauls
Bray past the now agitated crowd. Jade follows in their wake, shoulders caved
in under the barrage of shouted questions. Preston all but shoves Bray into the
station's briefing room, and demands he sit as Bray opens his mouth to protest.

Bray clamps his jaw and grabs a chair. He rubs his sweaty
hands against his knees while Preston coms his AI specialist Amelia and sensor
specialist Denise to retrieve the Transiter's data. Jade pulls up his own
chair, and sits with a sigh. Then Preston lays into Bray.

"Start talking."

Bray takes a deep breath and tells Preston everything: How
Taryn hacked the AI and crashed the
Transiter
into the alien ship, how
all their sensors were fried, how they were separated and locked up for a
couple of hours, then expelled without further explanation. How Taryn stayed,
or was kept, behind. No way of telling. And no chance to bring her back.

"And the probes?" Preston demands.

Bray shakes his head. "Didn't deploy any."

Preston's fist comes down on the briefing table hard
enough to make Bray jump. "What do you mean you didn't deploy any? That
was your
damn mission
, Bray. Fly out, deploy probes, make contact, come
back and report." Bray withers under Preston's glare. "Without the
probe data it's a waste of time and credits. And you lost my xenospecialist!
Do you know how hard it is to find a xeno-linguist who can handle first contact
without TMC tech?"

"Wasn't a need for that," Bray says through
gritted teeth. "They spoke English almost first thing. All your
linguist
did was hack into the damn AI and crash us into—"

"—Were you the mission leader?"

Bray's jaw tightens and he looks away.

"Look at me, Bray. Were you the
fucking
mission
leader?"

"Yes," Bray sulks.

"I sent you two all the way to Tau Ceti to fetch Miss
Harber, so she could keep the aliens good and distracted while you set the
probes on them. It was your job to begin surveillance of their movements, so we
know what we're dealing with.
Her
job was to chat. Explain to me why you
didn't do your job, Bray. Explain to me why I have no probe data."

Bray can't look him in the eye.

Preston takes a chair of his own with a disgusted sigh.
"What do we actually know about them? They here to study us or conquer
us?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know," Preston mocks him. He turns
and thrusts his chin at Jade. "And you?"

Bray interrupts before Jade can answer: "They're
hostile."

"Bullshit," Jade snaps.

"Like hell!"

"Says the man who left a crew member behind!"

"Quiet! Both of you!" Preston roars. "Start
explaining, Bray."

Bray swallows, and tells Preston what he held back the
first time. He tells him about the alien brutes separating them by force, about
their formidable strength and how Taryn warned them to comply, and not fight
back—that last bit with shame in his voice, as much as he can muster. Bray
tells him how he figures Taryn must have provoked the aliens, and gotten
herself killed. That he's in no way to blame for her not following her own
advice.

When he's done, Jade won't look at him.

"You know she's dead?" Preston asks.

Bray blows out a lungful of air. "Look, doc, she
wasn't one of us anyway. Let's worry about our own problems first. We have to change
our location again, stay off the Tick's screens."

Preston snorts. "Always on the move, always jumping
from one garbage heap to another while the Ticks get fatter and the colonists
dumber. I'm done running. We need those aliens. As soon as the
Transiter
's
ready, you're both flying out to find that ship and
fix
this."

"What? No!" Bray's guts wrench painfully.

"Good," Jade says. The intercom chimes before
Bray can chew him out—Franky's voice comes in tentatively, requesting entry.

"Yes," Preston says.

The door shuts behind Franky as he steps into the room.
"We've got movement in the grid."

Preston startles. "Where?"

"Near Forty-Nine Librae. Hacked a TMC survey drone's
transmissions. An old R&D ship is changing trajectory, the
Hawkyns II-E
.
It's been stationary for over two decades. Why would they move it now?"

"Where is it heading?"

"Just shy of Epsilon Ophiuchi. Not coming our way.
It's on an intercept course with another ship coming in from Sigma Serpentis.
No designation in the relayed orders, but by the size of the FTL pattern it
could be a command carrier."

"How far will they be from Xi Scorpii when they
rendezvous?"

Franky stares into thin air for a moment, focused on his
synet displaying calculations in his visual cortex. "Just under nineteen
light-years."

"You think they found the aliens already?" Jade
asks.

Preston shakes his head. "No. They wouldn't send an
R&D ship in. The
Hawkyns
' a lazy, flying lab—a poor choice to face a
potential alien threat. If the TMC had found the aliens, they'd be flying in a
whole damn fleet. This is something else."

"It can't be coincidence," Jade presses.
"Not that close to Xi Scorpii."

"Well, if we had functional probes in the
region..." Preston drawls, peering at Bray for a second. Then he gets up,
and Bray and Jade rise with him. "I'll have Vik and his men fix the
Transiter
stat. We'll load as much additional surveillance tech on as possible. I don't
care what it takes, I want the AI backed-up, and the sensor EQ fully
shielded." He points at Bray. "You fly back out there as soon as it's
done, and do your job right this time."

"But—"

"You do this right or I'll space you myself."

Bray's jaw clenches, but he doesn't argue.

Jade speaks up as Preston turns to go. "What about
Taryn?"

Preston pauses, one foot on the threshold. "If she's
alive," he says over his shoulder, "bring her back."