First Fleet #1-4: The Complete Saga (17 page)

T
here was not
much to do in the empty chamber in which Jens Grale slowly recovered.

She flexed each muscle and limb gingerly between her frequent and enforced walks up and down the length of the room. She stared at the stones above and around her. She would have perhaps gone mad, there in the flickering shadows and among the whispering voices, were it not for Rine and Glaucon.

They came often and were—Jens finally had to admit—a reassuring presence. The doctor, with his clean-shaven orderly nearly always in attendance, had never pressured her to divulge secrets, nor had he ever threatened her with the possibility of interrogation or the promise of release. He did his job, coaxed her to walk, complained occasionally and insulted Glaucon often, but Jens came to have a grudging respect for him.

Through all his crusty bravado though, Jens sensed that he was frightened.

She had to work to keep her own fear in check. The walls of the chamber seemed at times to grow as thin as paper, and she thought she saw shapes moving beyond. The stones gave off a grey radiance that grew and dimmed fitfully, without regularity, cut off from any reasonable cycle of night and day. She knew that this world had no star, so there was not even the semblance of a diurnal cycle on the surface either.

Jens saw no one other than the doctor and his assistant. The voices came and went in the darkness or the grey light, but no one else ever entered her chamber. She had lost track of days or weeks. The only thing she had to measure time against was her returning strength. She had gotten to the point where she could walk unaided, when one of Rine’s sudden appearances startled her from a shallow and troubled sleep.

“Jens.” His eyes were wide. He looked more frightened than usual. “Are you awake?”

Usually he made jokes or began with rambling stories from his past. But today he seemed dazed and distracted, as though he had seen something he was still trying to process.

“What is it?” she asked. “What’s happened?”

“You were right, it seems.” He tried to smile. Glaucon entered behind him. “We Colonizers are savages. Barbarians. Imbeciles, certainly.”

Jens rose from the cot and stared at them both. “What are you talking about?”

“The truth.” Rine waved Glaucon back and lowered himself beside her on the cot.

“I was summoned here as a medic, you understand. I treat patients. I don’t make policy.” He coughed. “I certainly don’t make strategy. But I tend to . . . poke my nose around, occasionally. I’m the curious sort.”

He shrugged. Something of his florid nature was returning, albeit slowly. He spread his hands expansively before him. “Your attacking Fleet was decimated, no? After speaking with you and some of the other patients, I became curious as to how exactly our counterattack was carried out. We had the element of surprise, certainly, more resistance than you were expecting. But that could not be the whole story, not enough to hold off hundreds of ships. I could not get a straight answer from any of my compatriots here as to how this feat was accomplished.”

Rine’s eyes narrowed, and he leaned forward. “So I looked. I—if you will pardon the nomenclature—
snooped
.”

He leaned back on the cot.

“Do you know why I came to the mining colonies?” he asked suddenly.

Jens was taken aback by the sudden change in subject. “I asked you about this before,” she said. “When you talked about New London. I assumed you were lying and you had been here all along. That you were part of the original settlement. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“There was no original settlement,” Rine said, leaning forward again. He held up a finger. “Secrets, see? I have asked you to reveal none, but I am sharing one with you right now.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t,” Rine clucked his tongue, and Glaucon grinned. “Because you are certain that the Colonizers are dinosaurs. Fossils, I believe you put it. With no way to travel through space except by crawling at relativistic speeds. But this was not an original settlement,” he said again. “We came here. Some of us quite recently.”

Jens shook her head. “That’s not possible. The nearest Colonizer world is too far away for you to reach it in less than a decade, relative time.”

“We found what you now call a
light-line network,
my survivor,” Rine said slowly. “The Sinks, as we call them. They brought us here, but they won’t let us leave.”

He went on. “You would have never noticed them. You move too fast, skimming over and under the skin of space. But they were there, not far from the worlds we arrived at. You had all missed them, but they were there for anyone slow enough to look, anyone crawling through space. It’s a one-way trip, from our original worlds to these mining colonies via the Sinks. But they let us bring in an immense amount of weapons and firepower when we realized you were attacking.”

“What do you mean, you
found
a light-line network?” Something cold was trying to climb up Jens’s throat.

“Found it,” he said again. “As in, stumbled upon it. As in, ships slipped into the Sinks and found themselves here. Messages—information—can go both ways, but once you travel to these planets, you’re here to stay.”

“It was an artificial network,” Glaucon put in softly. “Someone built it.”

“Likely the same things that built this place,” Rine gestured to the stones above, which were a sickly pale at the moment.

Suddenly Jens realized what had transpired- she had been given information about the Colonizers that she would not ever be allowed to leave with. They must have decided there was no use keeping her alive any longer, so they did not think it a liability to tell her these secrets.

“You’re going to kill me,” Jens said slowly.

Rine and Glaucon stared at her for several seconds. Then Rine laughed slowly, a deep, hollow tone.

“We’re all going to die, my dear survivor,” he said. “That is just exactly the point. Things are falling apart up there.” He pointed to the chamber doorway. “They have been falling apart since I arrived, though it took me some time to realize it. And it took me even longer to realize why.”

“He found the bodies,” Glaucon said.

Rine shot him a look of annoyance. “I found
evidence
of bodies. I found . . .”

He trailed off and sucked his lips. Voices were growing outside the corridor again. Rine rose. “You’re safe here for the time being, and even if you weren’t—there’s nowhere to escape to. But I needed to tell someone.”

Jens grabbed his arm. “But you haven’t told me anything.”

“Glaucon and I will be back as soon as we can,” Rine said, disengaging himself and leading Jens back to the cot. “You need to rest. We’re getting you out of here. All of you. We’re going to . . .” He trailed off. “Tell her where we are going Glaucon.”

“To the Crèche, sir,” Glaucon said.

“That’s right,” Rine nodded and turned back to Jens. “It was supposed to be a tomb. A crypt. But they turned it into. . .”

He trailed off a second time, pausing and looking upward as though he could see through the stones to the surface. “It won’t be safe up there for much longer. We’ll need to go deeper. And you need to see what they did. What happened to your ships.” He shook his head. “You deserve to know, before you die.”

Before she could respond, they were both gone and the voices were echoing all around her. She wanted to run after them but did not yet have the strength to follow.

C
am was uneasy
. And because she was uneasy, because she was worried she had begun seeing a form moving against the backdrop of an empty world at sunset, she did something she had told herself she would never do: She integrated Station’s audio processing units into their habitation’s systems.

“Station?” she said, when it was complete. The twins were once again in bed. “Can you see me?”

“I have access to the full range of the habitation’s scanning units, Cam,” it answered. Cam had corrected her earlier alterations to its programming so that it once again recognized her as herself. She had also discovered the message Paul had left before he was taken, which had filled her with a fresh wave of guilt at her deception and betrayal.

“Good,” she said. “That means you should be able to pipe into the sensor arrays outside as well.”

“That is correct, Cam.”

She had scanned the sensor data herself already, but there was only so many ways a human could parse the influx of information.

“Is there anything out there, Station?” she asked.

“I do not understand the question.”

Cam paced in front of the wide windows. She was being unreasonable, and she understood that. But something was happening. Something was itching at the back of her mind, under her skin. The girls had awakened last night screaming about something outside the windows. She had activated all of the exterior floods but had seen nothing. It took her hours to get them calmed down and back to sleep.

And now she was looking for reassurance from a machine.

“Are there any life forms out there, Station?”

“Scanning, Cam.” There was a pause. “I can pick up residual heat signatures along the farthest sensor arrays, but these correlate with the inhabitants of the neighboring habitations.”

“Nothing else?”

“No, Cam.”

She stopped pacing and dropped into one of the two seats at a low table in the habitation’s front room. This was where she and Paul used to talk late into the night after the twins had gone to bed. She wondered where he was right now.

She and the twins were tired. Maybe Agnes and Perry were still picking up something from the Brick. There could not be anything moving around out there on the surface of their world. The atmosphere was still far too tenuous.

“Cam.”

What was it that Paul used to say about the night? That it was only the absence of colors that let you truly see shape and texture. He used to say that about the rocks, but he used to say it about her body as well, whispering to her in the pale starlight that filtered through the skylight above their bed.

“Cam. There is something moving outside.”

She stood and reached for the rail-pistol she had placed on the table beside her. The floodlights outside the habitation showed only naked stone.

“Where?”

Station was silent.

“Where, Station?”

“I’m sorry, Cam. There was momentarily motion on several of the sensor arrays simultaneously. This is indicative of a systematic malfunction, not an actual moving body. I am running the requisite diagnostics.”

“A sensor ghost?” she demanded.

“It appears that way, Cam. I am sorry to have startled you.”

Cam massaged the sides of her brow with her long index fingers.

“But you don’t sense anything now?” she asked.

“I do not believe so.”

“What do you mean?”

The voice was silent for several seconds. “I am still receiving anomalous readings from a single array of sensors.”

“Nearby?” Her grip tightened on the handle of the pistol. Outside the windows, beyond the range of the floods, the black was sweeping and uninterrupted. Anything could be moving out there and would never be seen.

Agnes mumbled something in her sleep in the next room.

“No, Cam.” Station’s voice was even and maddeningly calm. “It was to the south, at the perimeter of my range, near the rock-burners.”

“Show me on a map.”

There were other, heavier weapons in the habitation, broken up and stowed in pieces in various storage lockers throughout the rooms.

Enough.

Cam was not about to sit around jumping at shadows and sensor ghosts.

Come light, she told herself, she would go hunting.

P
aul sat
on a low bunk in one corner of the barracks he shared with Donovan aboard the
Clerke Maxwell
. There should have been dozens of other soldiers bunked here, waiting perhaps to climb into the heavy suits racked in the assault bays nearby and launch into space.

But now, there was no one. Even Donovan was gone, either on duty in the control room or bent over the sleeping form of Davis.

Or perhaps developing new pain treatments.

Paul shivered with pain. He gripped the tiny pen-needle and vial in his hand. His arms and legs burned.

The ships were passing more often. The cramping in his extremities had only just worn off before the most recent alarm had brought him to his feet once again.

Paul had chosen this corner of the barracks because it held a window that seemed to look out into the darkness. Even though it was simply a projected view, it didn’t matter to Paul. It was something, at least. The view, however, held no horizons and Paul felt adrift, ungrounded. There was no change in light, no play of shadows. There was no up or down.

This was not a way to live.

He shifted on the bunk and felt fresh waves of pain.

He had been preparing a transmission for Cam and the girls, something that told them where he was and what he had been doing, in case this ship was ever recovered.

Not that there was much chance of that, he admitted to himself. They were on a dead-end voyage toward a planet that offered only the slimmest chance of survival. It was, after all, the origin of whatever had destroyed this fleet.

Out the window, he saw a shape in the darkness. It was grey and round, rearing up suddenly against the background stars as the ship rolled on an evasive maneuver. Huge cracks scarred its surface, visible even from this distance, as though the planet—for it was, certainly, a planet—was more fractured than whole, held together by only its own tenuous gravity.

The Grave Worlds. Or one of them, at least.

They were close.

The ship rolled again, taking the pale skull of a world out of view.

The intercom crackled. It was too early for Beka to be calling him for his shift at the controls. Maybe she was giving the all clear that they had passed out of range again and could administer—if they wanted—the weak antidote that Donovan had fashioned for them. It was simply a powerful painkiller, and it made Paul sick. Sometimes it was better to just fall back into a shallow sleep and wait for the pain to pass.

They were never going to get out of this. They were locked in some kind of circle. They were in a maze, the walls of which were ever shifting. Paul could see it in his mind: all muted grays and fog.

But the voice on the intercom was not Beka’s. It was one that Paul did not recognize, though he realized after a moment that it must belong to the one person on board he had never heard speak- the small, dark man who always looked frightened and had not stirred from his place beside the Brick as far as Paul had seen.

“Beka? Are you there? Anyone? This is Aggiz.”

Beka must have responded directly from the command deck, though Aggiz obviously did not understand the intercom mechanism enough to switch from an all-ship channel.

“I can see it now, Beka. You need to come down. There is someone in the Brick. A face. A face in the Brick.”

Another pause as Beka assumedly responded.

“All right,” Aggiz answered and clicked off.

The communication channel lapsed again into silence. Paul considered for a moment. Beka could not leave the command deck until her shift was up, but whatever she had told Aggiz had apparently satisfied him.

Paul wondered if he should he go to the command deck and relieve her so she could see what Aggiz needed? Paul had an image of him in the cavernous science bay: dusky skin and deep eyes in a dingy lab coat, like a wilted leaf in the sterile metallic whiteness of the bay.

But Beka likely had contacted Donovan, whose sleep cycle—as indicated by his empty bunk—had not yet begun.

Paul waited indecisively for a moment. He hated not knowing what to do or where he was needed, and lately that was how he felt pretty much all the time. That was one of the things that had been wonderful about Cam: she knew what he needed to be doing each moment, and she told him. Here, in this almost completely empty ship, he never knew where to plug in, where to be, what to say.

He sat up. He would not be able to get back to sleep. He would go to the science bay. That way, if Beka was not able to come, he could offer to help or listen or see whatever it was Aggiz needed.

He left his bunk and made his way through the corridors of the ship. The ship kept the lights dimmed when the corridors were empty. Now, it was that way almost all the time with the rest of the crew—those strange mannequins—incapacitated. Lights clicked on as he passed and then dimmed again behind him. He ran in an island of light, like a pulse along a darkened wire.

When he arrived at the science bay—only having to stop and ask the ship directions twice—he found Beka already there standing beside Aggiz. They were both staring up at the Brick, as though the face Aggiz mentioned was visible within.

Perhaps it was, as much as Paul understood these things. The whole system seemed like magic to him. The side of the Brick, cleared of most of the wires and fiber optic cables that normally shrouded it, was as black and soft to the eye as velvet. Paul saw no hint of texture or color. It was so black that it was hard to tell where the actual surface started, like looking into a night sky devoid of stars.

Beka glanced over at him as he entered. The dark circles below her eyes made them look almost as hollow as Aggiz’s.

“I heard his message over the intercom,” Paul explained, wondering if they would want him to leave. “I wasn’t sure where you were or if anyone would be able to come.”

“You could have used the intercom yourself,” she pointed out.

He shrugged, embarrassed to admit that it had not occurred to him.

“Donovan’s covering for me,” she added. When he said nothing further, she sighed and motioned him over. “Aggiz thinks he’s found something in the Brick.”

“I thought it was empty,” Paul said.

“So did I,” she answered.

They both looked at the small man. He seemed even thinner and narrower than he had before. It was more than a lack of sleep or food, though he sat at the center of a field of debris of uneaten or partially eaten meals. His eyes were pale and fevered.

“It’s
them
,” he said. “But not all of them. One of them. There’s one in the Brick. It’s trying to use it, use the Brick.” His speech came fast and staccato.

Paul heard the caution in Beka’s tone. “Where, Aggiz?”

“Here.” He swiveled one of the monitors. “We thought it was thermal noise. You did. But look now. It’s regular.”

Paul saw nothing, but Beka’s brow furrowed.

“I don’t see it, Aggiz,” she said.

“Subtle. But it’s clear during . . .” Aggiz trailed off.

“When we get close to one of those ships?” she asked.

He nodded, somehow furtively.

“Aggiz, we’re not . . . We don’t . . .” Beka sighed. “We’re not at our best when those things get close. We can’t think straight.”

“No.” A shifting of Aggiz’s arms drew Paul’s attention, and he noticed long, angry furrows along their length. “It is hard. There is noise. In here.” He jabbed a finger at his temple. “But there too. It gets clearer.”

“You think the creatures on those ships are using the Brick to communicate?” Paul asked. “With us? Or with each other?”

Aggiz’s eyes flicked in his direction for an instant.

“It was loud. Before. There were voices. Including hers—my . . .” Aggiz blinked rapidly. “But now it’s quiet. And it can speak. Yes.”

Paul couldn’t tell if that last was an answer to his question.

Beka reached around Aggiz and pulled Paul away until they were out of earshot of at the other end of the bay.

“He’s gotten worse,” she said.

“Is he right?”

“I can’t see anything,” she said, shaking her head angrily, sending her mass of brown hair back and forth across her shoulders. “And he’s obviously not . . .
resisting
when we pass close to one of the ships. I don’t know what he’s seeing.”

“What should we do?”

“Donovan wants to sedate him and take him to one of the medical bays. Keep him sedated and force feed him.”

“Do you think we should?”

She glared at him as though angry with the questions. “I don’t know, Paul. At this point I’m not sure that I see the point. We’re stretched thin enough already. In a few more days, Aggiz might be the healthiest of any of us.”

“We’re trapped, aren’t we?” he said.

“We’re not getting through fast enough. I can’t figure the pattern to their movements. It’s not random. Yet it’s not organized. We’re stuck in some kind of
dance
. Every time we try to break through, we have to swing back in.”

“Not random. Like Aggiz’s monitors.”

“Maybe.”

Aggiz’s voice rang through the bay, harsh and exultant. “There!”

They hurried back to his side.

He was sitting straight and speaking commands tersely to the computer. “Scan back. There. There. Enhance that signal. Recompress. Magnify.”

“What is it, Aggiz?” Beka asked.

“There! Someone is answering. It is there. You cannot see it. But it is. And now someone is answering!” Aggiz was nearly breathless. “There. Crisp signal. You recognize.”

Beka gasped. Paul still saw nothing more than dancing numbers and colors.

“Human,” Beka whispered. “Aggiz, how is that possible? How are there human memories in the Brick again? From where?”

“Two minds,” Aggiz rattled. “I know those patterns. Neurologically immature. The Brick is calling, and two human children are answering.”

Beka seated herself beside him and fired up another series of monitors. She pulled out an interface panel and began punching in commands. Paul sat and watched them work in silence for several minutes.

“I don’t understand,” Beka kept muttering.

“What is it?” Paul finally broke in.

“There are
two
human minds in here,” she said. “I don’t understand where they came from. It’s almost as though someone uploaded memories back into the Brick from somewhere else . . . though they don’t have the normal coding. Memory scans bring in a host of time and identity stamps. These are just . . . naked.”

“Imprinted,” Aggiz said.

“How could a mind get into the Brick without a scan?” Paul asked.

“They’re nearly identical though, Aggiz,” Beka said, ignoring his question. “A mirror? An echo?”

“I recognize patterns like this,” Aggiz said again. “Neurologically. Twins.”

Paul’s heart skipped a beat.

“You can tell that from the signal?” he asked.

Aggiz nodded shortly. He seemed more alive, as though the flare-up of activity within the Brick had brought him back to a sharp focus of cogency. “I can tell much, can judge much, from the structure of memories. The structure of mind. In the Brick.”

“And it’s clearer,” Beka explained. “Usually the Brick is loaded with tens of thousands of individual personalities and memories. These are . . .
louder
, crisper, because there’s the space for it. Of course it’s not like that at all,” she added. “These are analogies.”

“Like voices in an empty room,” Aggiz offered.

Paul felt his gut clench. He thought, wildly, of his daughter’s dreams, the dreams they used to tell him about of seeing people outside the walls of the habitation.

“What are they doing, Aggiz?” Beka was staring at her display. “They’re interacting with something. They’re not static. They’re doing . . .”

“The signal you cannot see. The creature. The things outside. They are interacting with it. Here.” Aggiz muttered a command and a single spangled and shifting display took over each of the monitors. “There is one image here, one memory, coming through especially strong.”

“How is this possible?” Paul asked again.

“Like he said, voices in an empty room,” Beka muttered. “We couldn’t extract memories when they were so tightly compressed. But these condensates are huge. They’re using the entire space of the Brick to resonate. The memories are clear.”

“I can display,” Aggiz whispered. “I can make them visible.”

The colorful static on the monitors cleared, to be replaced by a face.

Paul gasped.

It was Cam.