Logos (Link Book Three), page 5
“Do you recognize anyone?” Luke asked.
Scout nodded. “That’s Baker.”
The man disappeared behind a stone wall, where a single robot remained on guard. Luke doubted the Hiphol had ever had their defences breached, and he’d use that to his advantage.
He grabbed his gun and started for the exit.
SIX
A week or so in, and Henry Abimbola hadn’t determined who’d built the giant ring of conductive element Oniri. It was massive, with a diameter of over a hundred kilometers. He’d run the math, determining one could replicate somewhere in the vicinity of twelve hundred Link Controllers with the volume of stone used to construct the ring. Each world used four such devices to power the Link, meaning they had enough Oniri to give three hundred new planets the ability to access the wormhole network.
Even if Henry understood how to dismantle the ring, he doubted it would be wise. The sheer energy it radiated implied that every Link connection was part of this alien device. The whole of the network likely relied on the huge circle surrounding his dropship. He floated in the center, within the glowing sphere. The orb had symbols on it, markings of a familiar nature. Each image mirrored one of Ambassador Cunningham’s elusive tattoos.
Henry climbed down, suddenly wishing he’d copied the patterns before coming. Kelleg had had the same design on his wrinkled skin when they visited Yezon. Was it a coincidence he’d given Henry the coordinates of the Oniri mining station?
He stared at the ring as it slowly rotated above him, recalling Kelleg’s dire warning. You cannot win a battle with them. Find a way to close the Link and return to the Sun Colonies.
Henry couldn’t shut it off, even if he knew how. The Sun Colonies would expand drastically, using lanes between Caelum, Ethos, and what remained of Pathos. With easy access for starships through the wormholes and instant transportation using the Link Controller stones, nothing could prevent humanity from reaching their potential.
He’d spent countless nights awake as a young student, contemplating the future. He’d read the trajectory humanity had taken, and realized somebody needed to adjust their path, or they’d ultimately be lost. As a disciple of history, it became apparent that the colonies were on the precipice of a war within their own borders.
The only sure way to ensure their survival was constant growth and the challenge of building distant colonies. He’d studied the Excursion mission until his vision blurred, and the fact that no one knew what had ultimately occurred on Ethos was unsettling. When Ambassador Cunningham revealed his plan, Henry had no choice but to put all his energy and resources into the project.
You cannot win a battle with them. Kelleg and the Locus seemed so afraid. Just how dreadful were the Hiphol? Was Henry making an error in judgment, or should he stick to his plan and keep the Link operating?
“Sir, I’ve found something of note,” Primum said through his earpiece. The Locus clone was suited up and preparing for an excursion to the largest planetoid in the region.
Henry let his gaze drift off the symbols, clipped on his helmet, and joined Primum in the dropship’s cargo bay, near the airlock. “What is it?”
Primum’s alien eyes reflected the HUD’s light, making him appear even more inhuman. “I’ve noticed a slight variance in the gravitational pull around this particular asteroid.”
Henry looked at his Slab, which displayed every hunk of rock in the vicinity. “Why didn’t we notice earlier?”
“The alteration occurred when you landed a probe on the Oniri Band.”
He read the results, unsure what to make of them. “Change of plans.” He rushed into the airlock. “You stay here in case I run into any issues. I’ll investigate.”
“If you’re certain, sir.”
“I am.” Henry closed the seal and watched Primum through the glass as it cycled. When it opened, Henry floated off the deck and held firmly, moving into the two-person Explorer vessel attached to the dropship’s underside. He snapped the lid closed and waited as the cabin pressurized. He left the spacesuit on, not willing to risk a failure in the old pod.
He flew out of the orb centering the Band, and hundreds of rocky asteroids filled his view beyond the edge of the Oniri. Heading to the cluster, he easily maneuvered around the nearly static planetoids.
Henry had been away for too long. Even contacting Ethos would take weeks with a wormhole. What if the Hiphol were already coming? He hadn’t been able to mine the substance as intended. Henry had gone with the expectation that he might find the means to disconnect the Link. If they cut off the flow of the wormholes from Ivoth, or any other Hiphol-occupied worlds, they’d be safe. Traveling between solar systems for thousands or, in some cases, millions of light years would take an eternity. While Henry couldn’t be certain the Hiphol didn’t have the capability to fly beyond the speed of light, he doubted they did, since they relied on the Link to journey between Ethos and Ivoth.
But the revelation of the Oniri Band made him question everything. Who had built it? The Locus had modified the technology, then the Hiphol did the same, forcing the Locus out. If the Hiphol could take ownership of the device, why couldn’t Henry Abimbola?
He identified the proper asteroid and noticed the falling pebbles, like they were magnetically attracted. The misshapen rock was ten times the size of his dropship, and two hundred times larger than the Explorer. He landed on its craggy surface.
The bleak blue star offered little ambiance, so Henry activated the lights on his suit before exiting the Explorer. The gravitational pull had increased twofold since their initial scans, and Henry struggled to make sense of how that was possible. Only mass and distance could change that, and from what he could tell, nothing about the asteroid had been modified in the last day.
It was dark brown, with speckled ore samples gleaming on the rocky hills. Henry used a pick, retrieving a sample of the silver substance, and stowed it in a container.
The metal covered the ground as he approached a cavern. Henry peered up, viewing a celestial body the size of one of Ethos’ domes floating overhead. He imagined it crash-landing on top of his ship, stranding him, but it continued to slowly drift by.
He dipped into the cave and his lights shone brighter, illuminating the walls. “I’ll be damned.” He came face to face with another transporter, identical to the version they’d discovered underwater on Pathos. Because of it, he’d instantly traveled a great distance to Yezon with Calvin and Primum, meeting the Locus.
When he approached it, the symbols flickered on. With this, he had the ability to jump to any of the connected worlds. Henry could explore them for years, recording his findings before returning to the Sun Colonies—if they still existed.
While he viewed the markings, he thought about his parents, and whether Luke Dalton had found them yet. Or if they’d blame him for building the wormhole generator that had eventually stranded them on Ethos.
Even a brilliant man like Henry was allowed to make the occasional mistake. He recognized the icon for Ethos and smiled to himself. “Primum, bring the dropship.”
“Yes, sir.” The Locus clone paused, then spoke again. “What did you find?”
“A faster way to the colony.” He’d expected to gain some big revelation while on this mission, and maybe he had in the end. While Henry couldn’t operate the Oniri Band, he was certain someone close to him could.
____________
The sun had barely risen, and already thousands of colonists were on the job. After a few days of learning their roles, the crews stopped stepping over one another, making it easier to complete their many daily tasks.
Sanya Levine stood by the landing field, where twenty fighters were parked in the shade offered by Passage. The new colony ship blocked the light bathing the rest of the colony off the horizon. “Jane!” Sanya called.
Jane hadn’t seen the recently promoted captain in a while, given the pressure of their training regimen. Cal had visited her last night, but he’d been so exhausted, they’d only talked for a few minutes before he’d crashed to his pillow. She wasn’t much better off.
The power wasn’t returned to a hundred percent, but Will had the primary functions operating. The bathrooms worked, they had fresh water, and the crops hadn’t suffered from the electrical problem. With their basic needs met, the colonists were far livelier this morning.
“How’s it going… Captain Levine?”
“It has a nice ring to it, right?” Sanya asked. “Until you realize that a promotion is ten times the work for the same rations.”
Jane understood what she meant. “Will we be ready?” She didn’t need to explain further.
“No. But the squadrons have greatly improved, and Cal’s leadership helps. We’re beating in orders, so the pilots don’t have to think. Instead, they’re learning habits that they can do effortlessly. It’s no wonder Calvin Brooks had so much success during the Solar War. These guys are later to the game, but they’re picking it up quickly.”
Jane squinted at Sanya.
“What?”
“You sound… different.”
Sanya rolled her eyes. “I know, it’s lame, isn’t it? I preferred just overseeing Jas, Cloe, and the rest of our Excursion Two crew.”
“I miss that,” Jane admitted. “We had a whole world to explore before we knew the Hiphol were coming for us.”
“Once we started, I’m not sure we could have prevented it.”
“What do you mean?” Jane leaned on the fighter’s landing gear, then noticed a grease mark on her uniform.
“The moment we used the Link, the Hiphol were notified. Henry has to find a way to stop them. It’d be great if he could turn the Link off while their fleet was in the wormhole?”
“Is that possible?”
Sanya shrugged. “How the hell should I know?”
Jane imagined being inside a wormhole, only to have it falter. If that occurred, what happened to the occupants within? Would they be spit out in some distant system, or face obliteration, their particles torn apart? She shuddered thinking about it. “No one’s spotted a wormhole yet, so that bodes well.”
“We’re constantly on the lookout,” Sanya said.
The Hiphol needed to use the Link to travel to Ethos, meaning they’d have ample notice of an invasion. So far, there was no indication this had occurred, which gave them hope the Hiphol might ignore Ethos entirely.
Soldiers emerged from Passage, yawning and cracking jokes, until they noticed Sanya in the shadows. They all went silent.
“Running late?” Sanya moved closer to the fifty or so soldiers. “You know what we do when we’re late?”
“We run!” they chorused.
“What are you waiting for?” Sanya yelled, then turned to Jane. “This is my favorite part.”
“See you later,” Jane told her, and headed to the domes. Instead of checking on Linus as she’d intended, she walked to the power supply station and found William at the central console, which held Command. He had a screwdriver in his teeth, and music pumped from an Automaton’s speaker. “Will!” she called, but he didn’t hear her over the noise.
She tapped his shoulder, making him nearly fall from his seat.
“Music off!” he shouted, and silence filled the room.
“I thought we were on bare bones, so no streaming,” she said.
“I made an exception for myself. It’s the one benefit to working solo.” Will brushed his hair aside. “What can I do for you?”
“Has anyone visited the site we discovered in Command?” Jane asked.
Will blinked like he was lost, and it took a moment for him to clue in. “Right… that. Not yet. We’ve been rather busy.”
“Can you give me the coordinates?” She offered her Slab.
He accepted and used Command, finding the location. “What are you going to do?”
“I thought I might ask Calvin to fly me there this week to investigate.”
“It’s three kilometers underground,” Will reminded her.
“Then it’ll be a scouting mission.”
“Gotcha. You want some alone time with the illustrious admiral. How’s the training coming along?”
“Sanya says it’s better.”
“Good.” William closed a panel on the side of Command. “I love these old computers, but it won’t last unless we get the rest of the breakers printed and replaced in the next day.”
“That bad?”
“I’m afraid so. Fred’s design was intended for a thousand, with enhancements as they grew in size. Adding forty thousand and expecting it to work was shortsighted.”
“At least we have the colony ships,” she said.
William gazed at her, then at Command. “That’s it! You’re a genius!” He ran for the door.
Jane chased him to the exit. “What did I do?”
“I can use a colony ship to give backup power, if Cunningham is willing to sacrifice one of the vessels. With that, we should be able to turn off the station and use the Automatons to replace the breakers in less than a day.” Will jogged to the Diplomat’s dome, and Jane left him to it, not wanting to have another conversation with the ambassador.
The dog, D’Artagnan, wandered over and sat by her feet. She set a hand on his head, scratching him behind the ear. He leaned in at the contact. When she walked, he followed, heeling perfectly.
As the sun rose higher, the air warmed, and the colonists sweated while they labored in the streets. She pictured it as it might eventually be, with drones in the sky and fountains in the courtyard. Now it was a hodgepodge of old and new, a blending of Linus’ era with their own. She appreciated the connection to an era she’d obsessively studied in her youth, and hoped it wasn’t completely erased as the colony expanded.
Thrusters roared loudly when a fighter lifted off the ground behind her, and she gazed up as the ship raced higher, quickly vanishing into the clouds.
“Who was that?” she asked Jas when she noticed the soldier nearby.
“That was the admiral’s fighter.”
“Is there a problem?”
Jas showed her his tablet. “The drones discovered an anomaly a few thousand kilometers away. We think it’s a wormhole.”
Her heart sank. The Hiphol were coming.
SEVEN
The opening to the wormhole sat five hundred meters straight ahead of them on Excursion’s bridge. Calvin had seen enough of the Link to last him a lifetime, but there was no hiding from what came next.
“This doesn’t change a thing,” Minister Black said. “We always knew the Hiphol would use the Link.”
Ambassador Cunningham remained in the middle of the bridge, hands buried in his robe’s long sleeves. He hadn’t spoken since they arrived on scene.
“Sanya mentioned closing the Link while they’re in the wormhole,” Jane told them.
“If I could shut it down, I’d have done it.” Black occupied the pilot’s position, a place he was once familiar with. Linus Vanderbilt, Fred Wallace, and their corresponding assistant robots, Atticus and Socrates, were on board too, observing the wormhole.
“Is there an ETA?” Cal asked Atticus.
“Best hypothesis is over two months,” the robot said.
Who was coming? Did they send more Cadres or were the Hiphol themselves going to make an appearance?
“Have you had any further discussions with Cadre Chief Rallin?” Cunningham asked Black.
Cal noted how Black lingered in the back with Fred and Linus. The original heads of the Excursion mission reunited again, out of time and space. They were at ease with one another, seeming to relay private messages without words.
Ambassador Cunningham was by himself, while Jane sat near Cal’s captain’s chair, hands neatly folded on her lap like she didn’t feel comfortable. Cal couldn’t blame her, since they’d confirmed an enemy was on the way.
“What if it’s from Yezon?” Fred asked. “The Locus might have gotten braver.”
“I doubt that,” Cal said. “They want nothing to do with the Hiphol or us. Kelleg made it abundantly clear the Locus wouldn’t involve themselves in our war.”
Black jabbed a finger toward the viewscreen. “I have half a mind to send a few squadrons to Ivoth. Hit them at home when their defenses are low.”
Cal blanched at the idea. “I don’t think it’s…”
“Nonsense,” Cunningham interjected. “We require all the ships we can muster.”
“Where the hell is Henry?” Black muttered. “Rallin will help us, but he needs to see that the Locus aren’t all dead.”
“You can bring Secundo or Tertius,” the ambassador ordered.
“They won’t buy it. The newer clones haven’t remembered how to speak their own language. Only Primum can be convincing enough,” Black said. “Henry never should have rushed off on his side mission, not when we have so much to do on Ethos.”
“We’re receiving word from the surface.” Fred used the console and relayed the message to the speakers. “Someone’s arrived at the underground Link control room in the southern hemisphere. He claims to be Dr. Abimbola. Should we send a ship to retrieve him?” the soldier asked.
“What is Henry doing?” Black whispered.
Cal hovered a finger over the comms. “Sir, I think we should grab Henry.”
“Very well.” Ambassador Cunningham continued to stare at the wormhole. “Watching the blasted thing won’t do us any good.”
Calvin touched the icon. “Ethos, this is Admiral Brooks. Delay that shuttle. We’re making the pickup.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve ordered six fighters to remain posted. The moment someone shows, we’ll instantly be notified,” Calvin said, then turned the massive colony ship around. He set his course for Ethos, which was a small dot on the viewscreen. Beyond, the systems star glimmered brightly, and Cal dimmed the display while they sped forward.
An hour later, Cal guided Excursion to the surface, landing outside the Link Controller. The black spire rose high, seeming to suck the light from the area. Henry stood by it with Primum at his side. They both wore armored suits, their helmets at their feet while they waited.
