“They know where the
Soberano
’s headed and what she’s going
to do when she gets there,” I said as the black silhouette grew rapidly in
size. “And they know we’re going to stop her.”
I knew it was useless, but I
raised our shield to let them know we saw them coming. If they wanted to
destroy us, they’d have to fire on us, which would leave tell tale weapon
emissions. A simple collision wouldn’t be enough.
When Marie saw me raise our
shield, she could scarcely believe her eyes. “You don’t seriously think the
Matarons are going to attack us!”
An attack would give the TCs hard
evidence of their involvement, something I knew the Matarons wouldn’t risk, not
this close to the
Soberano
committing
genocide in humanity’s name. “They just want to scare us.”
The Mataron ship came in fast, passing
so close I thought it was going to ram us. Its black armored hull brushed our
shield giving us an up close and personal look at the overlapping scales of
their metamorphic armor, the round bulges of their weapons and the sensor and
shield ridges that ran the length of their ship. Static electricity from our
shield tickled their hull so weakly its armor didn’t even activate. A radiation
alarm sounded as the
Lining
detected
a weak stream of charged particles slice through our shield for a fraction of a
second, causing no damage. A moment later, the black hulled ship vanished.
Marie studied the sensor display
with growing confusion. “It must have bubbled,” she yelled over the radiation alarm.
Suddenly main power failed, immersing
the flight deck in an impenetrable, silent blackness. We floated off our
acceleration couches in zero gravity, aware that even the sound of air from the
life support system was gone. We were adrift, completely dead in space.
“I don’t hear any decompression,”
Marie’s voice sounded out of the darkness. “They didn’t hole us.”
“It was too weak to be a weapon.”
Whatever it was, they’d fired inside our shield so we’d scatter any residual
traces, making detection impossible. It was clever, even for snakeheads!
“If we stay like this, we’re as
good as dead,” she said, always thinking like a spacer.
With our engines silenced, it was
only a matter of time before the planet pulled us back down. I was about to
push towards the hatch at the rear of the flight deck, to feel my way blindly
to engineering, when the lights blinked back on and we tumbled down onto our
acceleration couches. A moment later, the wrap around screen and our consoles
came back to life.
“My apologies, Captain,” Izin’s
voice sounded through the intercom. “The Mataron ship scanned our processing
core. They detected the ghost numbers you recorded and uploaded the SI. I
didn’t have time to block it, so I killed the power before it could take hold.”
“Is it gone?”
“Yes. It needs time and power to
take root. That’s its weakness.”
“Can you stop them doing that to
us again?”
“Now that I know what it is and
how they use it, I can build a defense.”
“Make it a priority,” I said,
glad Izin was watching over the ship.
“The autonav is ready,” Izin
said.
“All right, let’s get out of here!”
Marie retracted sensors while I
passed control to the autonav. It accepted what it would normally regard as a prohibited
course and bubbled, rendering us safe for now. Not even the Matarons could
intercept us while we were superluminal, although now they knew we’d cracked
their little secret.
“Izin, did the Matarons take
anything else?”
“No, Captain,” Izin replied, “But
they may wonder how we recorded the ghost data so accurately.” That was Izin’s
way of telling me he was wondering the same thing and knew I was holding
something back.
“Some humans have eidetic
memories,” I said.
“One in a billion humans,
Captain. Do you have an eidetic memory?”
“No, it was a memory trick. I’ll
teach it to you someday.”
“Thank you, Captain, but my
species achieved perfect memory several million years before
Homo sapiens
evolved. However, if the
Matarons believe you have such a memory, you retain evidence of their
involvement in your head. Clearly, no human intellect could have devised such a
complex theorem, so if the Matarons are to succeed, they will have to kill
you.”
For once, stupidity was an undeniable
defense. If Izin was right about the complexity of the Mataron synthetic
intelligence, the Tau Cetins would know humans couldn’t have designed it.
“Cheery thought, Izin. I’ll keep
it in mind.” And keep my gun close.
“Because I solved their theorem,”
Izin added, “the Matarons will also have to kill me, if they are aware of my
presence on this ship.”
“Assume they know you’re aboard,
Izin. Take any precautions necessary to protect yourself.”
“I always do, Captain.”
His reply was so mild, so unassuming,
I almost felt sorry for any snakehead who tried to kill my deadly little tamph
engineer. The Matarons might be a xenophobic, aggressive, militaristic race,
but they were amateurs compared to Izin’s people who’d almost conquered a third
of the galaxy more than two thousand years ago.
I switched off the intercom,
feeling Marie’s eyes upon me.
“So why exactly do the Matarons
want to kill you?”
Chapter Six
: Vintari System
Restricted System – Sanctuary Class
Vintari System
Outer Cygnus Region
7 planets, Vintari II inhabited
946 light years from Sol
280 Million Indigenous (Non-human) inhabitants
The
Silver Lining
unbubbled outside the Vintari System in the
heliopause, that narrow expanse where a star’s plasma wind meets the
interstellar medium. It was as clear a natural boundary as the coastline of a
continent, and had defined the limits of stellar sovereignty since the dawn of
interstellar travel. All that lay within the heliopause belonged to the system
and its Bronze Age inhabitants, protected by the Access Treaty and closed to
mankind.
Moments after our bubble dropped, we
extended sensors and began scanning for the
Soberano
,
hoping Vargis had found a way to stop his ship from crossing into restricted Vintari
space.
“There’s only one energy source
in the entire system,” Jase announced as the
Lining’s
sensors identified a neutrino hot spot far inside the
hydrogen wall dividing interstellar and interplanetary space. “She’s crossing
the orbit of the sixth planet, accelerating hard.”
The curved view screen flashed to
life, revealing Vintari as a distant point of yellow light and the
Soberano
as a very dim blue dot. Jase
zoomed the optics towards the blue pinpoint, resolving it into a tightly packed
cluster of glowing engines organized into four rows of four.
“That’s the
Soberano
’s engine configuration all right,” I said.
“Why didn’t they bubble all the
way to the planet?” Marie wondered.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t ask
them. At that distance it would have taken over thirty hours to bounce a signal
off the
Soberano
– time we didn’t
have. Instead, I had the autonav extrapolate her course, confirming she was
heading for Vintari II.
“Skipper,” Jase said. “I’m
picking up a transmission, audio only.”
“Put it through.”
Vargis’ voice burst from the comm
system with an emotional fervor he’d shown no sign of on Icetop or Deadwood. He
must have transmitted the message at least fifteen hours ago for it to be
reaching us now. “
. . . the day of the
Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar,
and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the
works that are done on it will be exposed!”
“What the hell’s he talking
about?” Jase asked.
There was a moment’s pause, then Vargis
spoke again.
“Immediately after the
tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give
its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens
will be shaken!”
The intercom sounded as Izin,
who’d been listening in from engineering, cut in. “He’s quoting from a
pre-Unity religious text known as the Christian Bible.”
“How can you tell?” I asked.
“I read it once, years ago.”
I’d skipped ancient monotheism
altogether. “What does it mean?”
“I’m not sure, Captain. I find ancient
human religious texts to be rather cryptic. He’s quoting from the Books of
Peter and Matthew.”
I realized the Matarons were
using our ancient belief systems against us as Vargis’ began chanting another
passage:
“And the great dragon was thrown
down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of
the whole world – he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown
down with him!”
“That was from Revelations,
twelve nine,” Izin added.
“They’re doomsday quotes!” Marie said.
“He sounds like an end-of-the-universe
religious nut,” Jase said.
“That’s exactly what he’s
supposed to sound like,” I said, motioning for Jase to kill the signal. “Vargis
is a lot of things, but he’s no zealot. That’s the Mataron SI talking, mimicking
his voice.”
“But there’s no one out here to
hear it, except us,” Marie said doubtfully.
“Not yet there isn’t, but those
signals will be drifting for centuries. Anyone who wants to hear them just has to
fly out ahead of the signal and wait for it to reach them. It’s a confession to
the future.”
The autonav’s intercept course
indicated we had to bubble in towards the sixth planet followed by a twenty
hour stern chase. By the time we caught the
Soberano
,
we’d be hurtling along at a small fraction of the speed of light, so fast that we’d
have virtually no helm control and little time to board the super transport before
we reached Vintari II.
“Pull sensors,” I said, “We’ll
micro-bubble in behind her.”
“You can’t go in there,” Marie said.
“It’s Access Treaty restricted.”
“I can’t let the
Soberano
reach that planet, so unless you’ve
got a better idea . . .?” She opened her mouth to protest, then fell silent.
“We could bubble ahead of them,”
Jase suggested. “Fire a drone down her throat as she passes.”
“She’s too big,” I said. “Our drones
would be pinpricks, and head-on we couldn’t hit her critical systems.”
“What about that fancy new
burster Izin’s installed?” Marie asked.
“How about it, Izin?” I asked.
He’d been working with his hull crawlers night and day for weeks to get the new
cannon installed.
“The
Soberano
’s relative velocity is too high,” Izin replied. “She would
be in range for only a fraction of a second. That’s insufficient time to target
and fire our new weapon. There is an alternative solution if you are determined
to stop her.”
“I’m listening.”
“We could bubble ahead of the
Soberano
and place the
Silver Lining
directly in her path.”
“Let her hit us?” Jase said incredulously.
“That’s insane!”
If I thought it would work, I
might have tried it. We could have taken to the lifeboat and hoped for a pick
up, but I knew it would have been for nothing. “Nice try Izin, but the Mataron
SI would see us and raise the
Soberano
’s
shield. We’d bounce off her like a bug hitting an elephant.”
“Are you sure we need to do
this?” Marie asked. “By the time the
Soberano
gets to the planet, she’ll be going so fast she won’t be in weapons range long
enough to do much damage.”
“The
Soberano
isn’t going to bombard the planet,” I said, throwing the
autonav extrapolation up onto the screen. “She’s going to crash into it.” The
screen showed the super transport’s course leading directly into Vintari II.
“Why go to all this trouble just
to destroy the
Soberano
?” Marie said,
puzzled.
“The
Soberano
is the weapon,” I said, “a kinetic weapon to destroy the entire
planet.”
“It’s a dinosaur killer!” Jase
said, shocked.
The
Soberano
was smaller than the comet that hit Earth sixty five
million years ago, but her velocity would be more than thirty times greater,
making the impact far more destructive.
“Izin,” I said, “how bad will it
be?”
Silence filled the flight deck as
he did the math. “If Vintari II has a structure similar to Earth’s, the
Soberano
will crack the planet’s crust
and eject enough debris into the atmosphere to cause a global winter that will
last for decades, collapsing the planet’s ecosystem. The impact will generate a
shockwave that will pass through Vintari II’s interior, rupturing the crust on
the far side of the planet and triggering super earthquakes and mega tsunamis
that will roll across the surface for days. Complex life will not survive.”
Shock appeared on Marie’s face. “The
Matarons are going to murder two hundred and eighty million people, just to get
back at us!”
“It’ll look like fanatical humans
did it,” I said. “The Forum will have no choice but to lock us away for a very
long time.”
“They’ll throw away the key!”
Jase said soberly.
“That’s why we have to board the
Soberano
and get the Codex.” I still had
the SI fragment in bionetic storage, but the Mataron’s would claim I stole it.
What I needed was irrefutable proof we’d been framed, and only the Codex could
provide that.
We retracted sensors and blink-bubbled
a fifth of the way around the edge of the Vintari System. When we could see
again, we found the
Soberano’s
faint engine
bloom now obscured the star’s distant yellow point, confirming we were
perfectly aligned astern of the giant Consortium super transport.
We blink-bubbled again, this time
in towards the
Soberano
, becoming the
second human ship in two days to enter a restricted system, violating the
Access Treaty and putting at risk everything I’d sworn to protect.
* * * *
Two hours after the stern chase began, I
found Izin in engineering studying our fragment of the Mataron synthetic
intelligence that now controlled the
Soberano
.
“It’s a pity I don’t have more of
it to analyze,” Izin said. “It’s a fascinating logical construct.”
“But can you destroy it?”
“Unlikely, assuming it has full
control of the
Soberano
.”
“Can it fire her weapons?”
“I expect so,” Izin said, “which
is why we must approach from behind her engines, to prevent her bringing those
weapons to bear.”
“Let’s hope she doesn’t have
drones.” Energy weapons required line of sight, but one drone could fly around
and hit us while we were hiding astern.
“The
Soberano
’s weapons are not our problem, Captain. Catching her is.
By the time we get alongside, it will be too late to save the planet, the Codex
or even ourselves.
“Are all tamphs as optimistic as
you?”
“Both ships will be travelling too
fast to avoid the planet.”
“Then we blow her up.”
“Detonating her energy core will
simply break her superstructure into several smaller pieces which would result
in multiple strikes on the planet, multiplying the damage.”
“Can we push her off course?”
“Our engines aren’t powerful
enough,” Izin said, pulling an image of Vintari II up onto one of his displays.
It was a brownish, arid world, with fewer but deeper oceans than Earth. Great
rivers flowed from snow covered mountain ranges, through vast dry plains to
dark blue seas. The rivers formed strips of fertility, bordered by irrigated
fields and pockmarked with burgeoning stone and mud brick cities.
“Could we bounce her off the
atmosphere or use the planet’s gravity to slingshot around Vintari II?”
“Our linear momentum will be too
great. We’ll have no effective maneuvering ability and no time to avoid a
collision.”
“You want to think about that
some more?”
“I’ve considered every possibility.
No human ship is designed to maneuver at that flat space velocity.”
“There’s two hundred and eighty million
people down there who are going to be dead in twenty four hours if we don’t
think of something.”
“Yes Captain, I know.”
If the Local Powers hadn’t
enforced interstellar law for eons before the rise of
Homo sapiens
on Earth, mankind might never have made it this far. I
was damn sure the tiny bronze age
riverine
civilization of Vintari II would get no less from us.
“Put that oversized brain of
yours to work, Izin. Find a way to miss that planet.”
“I have considered every logical
alternative.” Izin’s voice was its usual synthesized calmness, but I sensed his
helplessness.
“Then find an illogical
alternative!”
“Illogical thinking?”
“Yes!”
Izin’s bulbous eyes blinked
slowly. “I will try to think more like you, Captain.”
“That’s the spirit!” I patted Izin’s
shoulder encouragingly. “You’ve got eighteen hours.”
* * * *
The glow of the
Soberano’s
engines had been growing steadily on the flight deck’s
wrap around view screen for hours, giving me time to think. Finally, I made a
decision and caught Marie’s eye, nodding for her to meet me in the corridor
while Jase remained dutifully focused on the ship’s systems and sensors.
Once outside the flight deck’s airtight
hatch, I whispered, “There’s something I want you to do.”
Marie gave me a seductive look.
“Really Sirius? At a time like this?” She shrugged helplessly. “Well, if you
insist.”