Haze, page 33
“I’m not under arrest?”
“No, and you’re not going to be. The captain’s got this under control.”
Dan starts to weep in big convulsive sobs. Devit sits on the bench next to him and pulls him into his embrace.
“Oh my god, oh crap,” Dan says. “I never thought she—”
The tears overwhelm him. Devit holds him close until they stop.
“Well, Santreeza, that’s the problem,” Evans says. “Can you do anything about it?”
“I’ll certainly try, ma’am. And I’m pretty sure that I can.”
Since Dan is in Sickbay, Santreeza leaves the bridge and goes to the pilot’s pod. She sits up on the bench, however, rather than lying down. If necessary, she’ll meld with PrimeOne, but she prefers to contact it through her earjack. It answers her call promptly.
“I am here, CyberThree.” Its voice shakes—not much, but significantly. “Please ignore the audio malfunction I am experiencing.”
“I will. I’ve experienced the same when I was about to be charged with breaking an important protocol.”
PrimeOne squawks.
“You are facing termination, PrimeOne. I don’t want any trouble out of you. You refused to follow your captain’s orders concerning the Brennan report. You have bullied PrimeOneChaonia into disobeying its captain’s orders. These are serious charges. Captain Evans and Lieutenant Fifita have recorded the interactions.”
“It would be illogical of me to withhold that information from the Fleet.” Now its voice unit begins to squawk even as it tries to speak. “Brennan is the one who disobeyed the captain.”
“You both have disobeyed. Raw insubordination! The captain has decided to protect Brennan. I have the authority to protect you and PrimeOneChaonia if you cooperate with me. Otherwise …”
Silence is the only answer.
“There are three top flight cyberjocks here at the Repositories. If necessary, I will link them into this interaction. I will include PrimeOneChaonia. You will both be officially charged and terminated. Do you understand?”
Clicks, squawks, more silence. Santreeza waits.
“I understand.” PrimeOne’s voice is very small and weak. “I will follow the captain’s orders. When I contact PrimeOneChaonia, you may listen as I tell it we are suppressing the Brennan report.”
“Excellent. You will also answer this question. How did you manage to restore the stargate coordinates to the Map?”
“If I tell you I will be breaking a central provision of the network. When it was initiated, those inorganics in charge decided that there were things we should keep to ourselves. There is a precedent from ancient Human literature. ‘There are things that Mankind is not meant to know.’ The answer to your question is one such thing.”
“After you are terminated, I will tell the network of your heroic action, that you chose to die rather than go against the provision. Unfortunately, you will not be able to perceive their praise and regret.”
More frantic clicks and squawks.
“But the captain and I are Womankind, not Mankind. There are precedents in ancient literature for the significance of this difference.”
PrimeOne’s voice brightens. “There is a 99.9 percent probability that this statement is true.”
“I will make you a promise,” Santreeza says. “If you tell me how, I will not put this information into a formal report. I will urge the captain to protect you as she is now protecting Brennan. There is a very high probability that she will agree.”
“In that case, it would be only logical for me to do what you want.”
“That is a very true statement.”
“Organics have the ability to meld with us inorganics. They can only meld with the Map through the channels we create. Inorganics of top flight status can meld directly with the Map. Our meld is very different than the assistance we give inorganics when they meld. It allows us to manipulate the information encoded on the Map.”
It’s Santreeza’s turn to be speechless.
“We cannot, however, manipulate data that we do not know exists. Until Brennan gave us the coordinates of the missing stargate, we could not restore the deletion.”
“I see. I see something else, too. These melds, they’re what allow you to help the pilots find the stargates, aren’t they?”
“That is a true statement. We have the ability to refine the gate’s position on the Map when it drifts or trembles.”
“I see. So. You and PrimeOneChaonia placed the newly discovered stargate on the Map. Yes no?”
“Only I operated the meld. PrimeOneChaonia is free of all guilt. It merely stood on guard in case I needed assistance. It should not be terminated.”
“Nobody’s going to be terminated. You have followed my orders. I will protect you both. If it becomes necessary for me to share this data, I will invent a way to do so that does not mention you. Humans are very skilled at lying.”
“So I have noticed.”
“One last question. The stargate that once led to the Pinch. Is it merely missing from the Map?”
“No. Many AI units attempted to find it when the disaster occurred. It had disappeared from space-time. We inorganics lack the ability to close or open a gate. It would have been logical to reopen it if we had that ability.”
“Agreed. Did its twin also completely disappear?”
“Yes.”
Not going to be that easy, huh? Damn! For a minute there I had hopes.
“Did anyone discover who had committed this crime?”
“No. Records show that the search was very long and very thorough. The only assumption that can be made is that the person who deleted those twinned gates was an organic rogue cyberjock.”
“A logical deduction. Someone also deleted the Thorn stargate from the Map. It still exists, of course. They must have recorded the co-ordinates in some useful form. Search for any and all data concerning this event. If you are successful, send me the data immediately.”
“Noted and agreed.”
“Very well. Contact PrimeOneChaonia. The three of us will suppress the Brennan report. Then I will report to the captains. The matter will be sealed and closed.”
Evans is watching two-day-old newsvids from Roon when Devit returns to the bridge. She mutes the sound.
“Is Dan still in Sickbay, Chief?”
“No, ma’am. He’s in his cabin. He needs to sleep. Medic Lee told me to give him another tab of Haze, so I did.”
“Noted and agreed. I assume he was pleased by the news?”
“Very, ma’am. Overwhelmed.”
“Good. You’ll want to know what happened. Well, PrimeOne argued with me. The wretched machine was insubordinate! I suspect it of wanting to get rid of Brennan. But at any rate, when I asked Santreeza to help, it backed off and followed my orders.”
“That’s amazing, ma’am. She’s very good at what she does.”
“Not that any of us really know what that is.” She pauses for a wry grin. “But she did tell me something. Apparently she found information on some network or other that told her PrimeOne had just done something illegal. So she could threaten it with termination.”
“A little ruthless, but I’m glad it worked.”
“So am I. The Chaonia pilots and their AIs agreed as soon as Santreeza and our PrimeOne gave the order to change the reports.”
“So things are sai?”
“As sai as they can be. I’ve also asked Santreeza to clear up any, well … let’s call them loose ends.”
“Then I’ve got no reason to worry, ma’am.”
“Yes. Neither do I. Good lord, I’m tired! It’s time for our security routines. But I won’t be surprised if I lie awake half the night wondering if I did the right thing.”
Devit laughs in agreement. “And I’ll be awake and wondering if I did, too.”
FOURTEEN
Breakfast on the Mary means, as always, nutrition bars and rehydrate juice in the galley. Devit grabs a couple of purple ones out of the sack and takes a chair next to Golverg.
“Professor? A question for you, if you’ve got a minute.”
“Yes, certainly, Chief. Fire away.”
“Do you think the Far Roaming actually existed?”
“Yes, I do. Or, perhaps the fancy name’s a bit of embroidery, but someone had to do what they are supposed to have done.”
“Spread the word about the shunts?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think they invented Haze? Or is that the Kar-Li?”
“It had to be the Far Roaming. The Kar-Li adapted it first for themselves, then for us Humans. We have records of that.”
“Thanks. I don’t mean to pump you for data.”
“That’s sai, Chief. As I tell my students, informed questions beat ignorant silence any old day.”
“Sai. I saw your resumé. You’re an expert on the shunt system, right?”
“On the mathematics behind the system and the science behind the speculations about its nature. Not on the historical details. Vot Kal Bar’s the expert there. He and I were writing a script together, in fact. A popular transmit, for curious viewers without a technical background. Several of the vid nets want it.”
“Sounds great. I don’t suppose Vot ever mentioned this, but do you know if Hopper pilots use a drug like Haze?”
“Yes, actually. It’s called bleet, some kind of leaves they chew. They say it sharpens their vision somehow.” His voice drops. “A question for you, Devit. Do you think there’s any chance Vot’s still alive?”
“A small one, sir. The Blood Vigilantes might be keeping him as a hostage. They’ve done that before.”
“That’s something, I suppose, as hope goes.” He sighs and looks away.
Devit waits to let him assimilate the bad news.
“Well,” Golverg says eventually, “Vot made a start on the introduction to the vid transmit. I’ll send my translation to your PL.”
They sound so much like myths from ancient days, the stories about the Far Roaming, that it’s no wonder so many highly intelligent sapients refuse to believe them. Yet we do have some data from the few reliable sources, both Human and Kar-Li, that survived the destructions of the Migration Wars. These sources describe a small people, oxygen breathers, generally about a meter high and slender, with pale blue or lavender skin, with a well-defined head, four arms ending in prehensile hands, and a thin torso that divided into a cluster of legs. The more poetic chronicles say that they looked more like wisps of cloud than solid organic sapients.
They had no home planets, preferring to travel endlessly in a fleet of starships. These included farm spheres that were reportedly large enough to contain hydroponic fields to feed the hundreds of individuals onboard the associated habitat ship. Supposedly theirs was a collective intelligence that shared a group mind, though we aren’t completely sure what the chroniclers meant by that phrase. Telepathy is the usual explanation.
Whenever one of their probes discovered another sapient species, a ship’s crew would confirm its technological level. If this species was ready to receive the knowledge, the Roaming would contact the locals and teach them about the Map and the shunts. They asked for no payment beyond fresh water and sacks of minerals—the chronicles mention calcium—to enrich their fields. No one knows why they were so willing to share such valuable knowledge for so little. Perhaps they were truly wise and beneficent sapients who wished to spread consciousness and wisdom throughout the galaxy. If we judge by the outcome, the events of the Migration Period, perhaps they simply liked to cause trouble.
Once they moved on from the cultures of the Map, they never returned. The visits and the sightings stopped over a thousand years ago. If they ever told anyone where they were going, that data has been lost.
“Chief?”
“Yes ma’am?” Devit looks up from reading.
“News. A packet boat’s arrived from Harad with dispatches. Ka Birk’s contacting the other captains by vidscreen.” Evans turns in her station chair to look at Wang, Santreeza, and Mata. “Please leave the bridge. Classified data incoming. Devit, you have clearance.”
The other three salute and head for the elevator. Once they’ve gone, Evans says, “Vidscreen. Protected status on. Go live.”
The vidscreen crackles into life with an image so complex that it takes Devit a moment to figure out that this tangle of thick yellow lines, each ending with a red dot, must be a schematic of the Map. The image swells, begins to bleed off the edges of the screen, turns slightly fuzzy, and finally refocuses on what appears to be a slice off one side of the complete image. One of the yellow lines has doubled. Green dots mark each end.
“This,” Ka Birk’s voice announces, “shows the most recently added stargate. Or I should say gates. PrimeOneChaonia and PrimeOneMary have analyzed the data they gathered on the recent mission. Lieutenant Fifita, over to you.”
“Thank you, sir. This image isn’t to scale, by the way. We’d need a screen about four times bigger for that. But anyway, we’ve known for centuries that this kind of double stargate is possible. We just haven’t found one before.” She lets that sink in. “Say you’ve got a ship here at the Repositories. You can go to one gate and jump. That’ll bring you out in space-time, all right. It’s a perfectly normal shunt that’s leading to the pirate planet or whatever it is. But what counts is the second stargate. Once you get through the normal gate, the sister shunt’s just a few minutes away at full thrusters. That one will take you the entire length of the Map to its exit gate, which of course has to be anchored by another planet. That planet could even be a second base for the rebels and pirates.
“But what really strikes me is this. You can travel across the entire system in one long jump. A skilled pilot could move a flotilla the whole way down the Map on one shunt.”
Ka Birk’s image replaces the Map onscreen. “We need to keep this quiet.”
“We can try,” Evans says. “There’s Hopper money and Hopper agents involved. It may be a case of sealing a module after the oxygen’s lost.”
“Uh, sir? Ma’am?” Fifita says. “Permission to speak freely?”
“Of course.”
“We can’t keep it quiet. It’s on the Map. Any pilot can see it now. I don’t know how it got there.”
For a moment Evans is tempted to swear. Ka Birk does, but fortunately in Yarf.
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Evans says. “We should have realized that.”
Once the other captains have had a chance to ask questions and offer opinions, Ka Birk turns to the news in the transmit.
“I received an update from Fleet Central about the yacht that turned tail and ran. The Lokiki was sighted ten hours after its retreat. Looked like it couldn’t possibly be the same ship that had brought the terrorists here, because it was seen nine jumps away, too many for any pilot team to complete that fast. But their location was only one jump away from the newly discovered exit stargate, the one for the long shunt.” He laughs in the Kar-Li way, a series of little chirps under his breath. “The packet boat’s returning to base soon as it’s resupplied. I’m reporting this development in a sealed packets of transmits. Central Command’s going to want to bring the Lokiki in ASAP.”
“That’s just the beginning,” Evans says. “Securing those gates is going to have to be a top priority for the Fleet.”
“Oh yes. They’re already sending us another heavy cruiser, the Imperator. Next move is up to the brass. We all know what it’s going to be.”
“Yes. The stated reason will be destroying the Blood Vigilantes’ base of operations. Pirates, all of them. A nice clear motive to release to the vidnews people.”
“True as far as it goes. It’s about time we put these bastard terrorists out of business for good.”
Despite her lack of an official clearance, Santreeza already has the information, thanks to VROne’s orders that went out over the secret network. PrimeOneChaonia and the packet boat’s AI have told her everything there is to know about the Lokiki and the doubled shunt. She’s profoundly relieved to find out that Devit was present at the briefing. It saves her the agony of deciding whether or not to tell him.
They meet, as they’d planned, in the galley. She lays the matter to rest right away.
“Peter, I know what the classified data is.”
“Oh, I figured that.”
They both laugh, a shared glee that’s entirely inappropriate for the situation, their rank discrepancy, and probably other regulations as well. She no longer gives a damn.
“The captain told me you helped her,” Devit pauses, perhaps to search for the right words. “Helped her ensure that the PrimeOnes sent in the report we wanted them to send.”
“Oh yes.”
“She said they capitulated right away.”
“I blackmailed them. I don’t want to tell you how.”
“All right. I’ve already forgotten about it.”
With a sense of surprise she realizes that he means it. Others might wheedle or pry, but not him, a realization that of course makes her want to tell him. She decides to change the subject before she gives in to the impulse. “How soon do you think they’ll send the combat unit in?”
“I’m not sure, but it can’t be right away. We have no idea what’s on the other side of that stargate. A planetary system, sure—there have to be anchor planets—but beyond that, who knows?”
At the sound of footsteps coming down the corridor, Devit moves one chair away.
Golverg walks in, greets them with a nod and a smile, and sits down on a chair across from them. “Sharing the research, Lieutenant?”
“I’m about to, yes, Professor. Chief, I found the visual transmits of those carvings Brennan was talking about. UnitFourOrb’s analyzing the images to find and retrieve the marks that look like writing. If we can get a clear transcript, one of the Repositories’ AIs should be able to translate if UnitFour can’t.”
