Exodus, page 32
She gave him a rueful smile. “This is so not how I thought the advanced societies waiting for us would be like.”
“Yeah. I see that.”
“Okay. What else?”
He produced a sly smile. “There’s a world called Binah about eight light-years from here. It has a crystalline core.”
“Interesting, I guess.”
“The crystal is like a giant photonic processor, with so much capacity it can predict the future.”
“No way!”
“Supposedly. There’s an ancient Celestial city there, and in the city is the Temple of Infinite Tomorrows. It calculates all possible futures for you inside a kind of neural reality.”
“Impossible.”
“They say very few people ever come out, because they become obsessed with making their life perfect, so they keep trying out new ones, where they make slightly different choices at key moments to see how they will play out.”
“Bloody hell. What else?”
“Forgotten Goldrops.”
“Which are?”
“Biomined asteroids that have refined all the gold in their ore. It’s just sitting there in pods across the surface, ready for someone to come along and harvest it all. Then there’s the Risitch, who are Celestials living on Glacies, an ice world. If you thought Imperial Celestial society has crazy rituals, these guys take it to a whole other level…”
* * *
—
Midway through the Gate transit voyage, Captain Uzoma called a mission conference in the main lounge. Ellie arrived at the circular compartment next to the bridge, which was probably the tidiest place on board. It helped that it was the one compartment that didn’t have walls and ceiling with life support modules bolted on, electronic panels and screens protruding, and untidy webs of wiring and hoses strewn about like modern-day cursive hieroglyphics. Instead it was clad in neat pearl-gray panels with edges that produced a warm glow, and the only breaks in them were the slots for various food and drink dispensers. A long table had comfy seats for ten people.
Including Ellie and Finn, there were eight people in the lounge, all holding on to the trim fabric straps on what would be the ceiling when they were under acceleration. The chairs were ignored; maintaining a seated position in free fall was like a gym exercise to develop your abs. It was the same as the Diligent, she noted in amusement. People always oriented themselves as they would in gravity—an instinct that humans had followed since the first astronauts orbited Old Earth.
“We have seventeen hours until our egress frame window begins,” Uzoma said once everyone was settled. She was a woman in her fifties, and Ellie thought she’d spent a lot of those years in spaceships; her joints and face had the kind of swelling that came from long periods of free-fall fluid pooling. The black singlet she wore also revealed small black plastic components melded with flesh on her upper arms and rib cage. Medi-symbionts, Finn had told her, providing extra hormones and other biochemicals to compensate for the long-term physiological decay microgee environments inflicted on a human body. All the Enfoe crew had them.
“I want to run through what’s going to happen once we’ve egressed the Terrik Papuan Gate,” Uzoma continued. “If the vector coordinates we have for the wreckage are correct, it’ll take us approximately eighty-two hours to reach it.”
“What happens if someone else tracks our trajectory and sees where we’re going?” Toše asked.
“Statistically unlikely,” Tabia Enfoe, the Lestari’s first officer, said. “But unless they’re already closer to the wreckage, they’ll have to burn hard to get there before us. And don’t forget we can accelerate a lot harder than they’ll be able to. The Lestari doesn’t look like much, but it’s a real beast when it comes to propulsion.”
“Thank you, Tabs,” Uzoma said. “Okay, that’s the first requirement for egress. We’ll be spending it and the flight to the wreckage in high-gee couches, just in case.”
Ellie gave the captain an alarmed glance. “What gee level are you going up to?”
“We won’t know that until the situation arises—if it does. We’re just preparing for every eventuality.”
“I won’t be able to last long at five gees,” Ellie said.
“Noted.”
“And if we get to the wreckage without trouble?” Toše continued stoically.
“Yoru and Basyl EVA your arses over there and make a preliminary assessment. We don’t know much about this object, apart from it’s supposed to be big. Best-case scenario, Basyl identifies the generator; we extract it, and burn straight for the Kelowan ingress Gate.”
“Ha,” Basyl Enfoe chortled. “That’s even more unlikely than someone racing us to the wreckage.”
“How so?” Finn asked.
Ellie watched as the Lestari’s Remnant evaluator gave him a disparaging look. Basyl was in his early eighties, and his medi-symbionts didn’t seem to have much effect suppressing fluid retention in his body. His legs appeared spindly for the torso they had to carry, and age had given him loose jowls and wild white eyebrows that emphasized every expression, making even mild disapproval look like a sneer. She thought he must have been involved in some accident recently, as his head had a crown of scabbed scars that were still healing.
“Trust me, young man,” Basyl said, and sucked down a drink from his flask straw. “If it’s wreckage in this system, it’s from the Aktoru Armada. No Aktoru ship is easy to examine, and even less easy to extract anything from. That’s why Breakerville exists in this Asteria-forsaken system. Don’t go putting any faith in our captain—Asteria bless her—when she talks ‘best-case scenarios,’ because they’re complete bollocks.” He sucked down more liquid. Ellie was pretty sure it wasn’t coffee or tea.
“Thank you, Basyl,” Uzoma said sharply. “We plan for all contingencies, but I am expecting to attach Lestari to the wreckage and burn for Terrik Papuan. We’ll take it down to Breakerville and hire one of their teams to isolate and extricate the generator, along with anything else of value.”
“Okay,” Finn said. “You’re the expert. Captain, if we do have to go to Terrik Papuan, I want to be planetside with the wreckage.”
“And I will be with you,” Toše said. “We need to secure our investment right from the start, so those oafish Flexals understand the situation properly.”
“As you wish,” Uzoma agreed. “Just remember, you get the generator, that was the deal with Gyvoy, but everything else in the wreckage belongs to this crew.”
“Got it,” Finn said.
“What happens if we’re intercepted when we’re flying the wreck to Terrik Papuan?” Ellie asked. “It seems more likely than ships chasing us to the wreck.”
“Oh, I really hope they don’t,” Uzoma said with a weary tone.
“Uh…why?”
“Our defense pods are from a Remnant Era warship. They’re bloody expensive, and replacement ammunition is hard to find. Don’t you worry, my Lestari can take care of itself.”
Ellie could feel her ears getting warm. She was getting fed up with knowing nothing. “Thanks.”
“Okay, then,” the captain said. “Our egress window starts in seventeen hours. Everybody, please run your acceleration couch checks yourself, and don’t leave it to the last minute. Looking at you, Yoru.”
So they do run diagnostics occasionally, Ellie thought. Thank Asteria for that.
* * *
—
Sixteen hours later saw Ellie in the life support module’s shelter. Everybody except the four duty bridge crew were in there with her and Finn. The bridge had its own acceleration couches, of course.
Miteris Enfoe, the pilot of the Lestari’s spaceplane, showed her how to run the couch’s diagnostic. The procedure was more than checking the systems worked; it customized the support to her body. Ellie was impressed with the couches. They resembled sarcophagi without the lid.
“Thanks,” she said as the foam finally settled around her.
“No problem,” he said. “Take my advice: for Asteria’s sake, make sure you go to the toilet right before the window. No telling how long we’ll be in them, and believe me when I say you don’t want to use their facilities unless you truly have to.”
Ellie grinned up at him. “Got it.” She looked over to where Finn was hanging half a meter above his own acceleration couch. “I’m no expert, but I think you’re supposed to lie in it face up.”
He smiled. “I think you might be right. One minute.” His hand closed around a contact bulb on the couch’s control panel, and his face took on that faraway expression she found so fascinating.
Below him, the foam rippled and became perfectly still. He let go of the bulb and turned around, then pulled himself down. The foam distorted as he touched it, then shaped itself as it had done with Ellie. She wasn’t surprised that the process was a lot quicker for Finn.
“So you can control the systems here, too?” she asked quietly.
He glanced around the compartment. “The interface is all human code, but the network core routines are Imperial Celestial, like the units they run in.”
“So can you operate the ZPZ generator?”
“I think that’s the captain’s prerogative. She wouldn’t appreciate anyone messing with the protocols.”
“Riiight. How about the fusion rockets?”
“Same thing goes. We’re not crew, Ellie.”
“Okay. If you think the way they use them now is the most efficient, don’t check the software. It just seems a bit stupid to me, having something as critical as the main engines you can barely operate, and can’t even run diagnostics on. I mean, if there actually is a diagnostic function, shouldn’t the captain know?”
She watched the indecision play across his features, making sure she kept her amusement hidden. There was no way he’d be able to let that go now, she knew. It was kind of reassuring that human motivation was the same no matter what century you were born in; you just had to find the right trigger words.
Finn settled in the couch, not looking at her, and put his hand back over the connection bulb. His eyes closed.
* * *
—
Ellie had been lying on the acceleration couch for an hour and twenty minutes when it happened. There was no warning. The shelter suddenly switched to that bright clarity level she couldn’t quite comprehend. Darkness closed around it, shrinking her universe. Then reality returned in a dazzling strike.
“Egress confirmed,” Uzoma’s voice announced. “Stand by. We’re confirming Gate location.”
“You okay?” Finn asked softly.
Ellie thought about it. I don’t feel psychotic. “Yes. Thanks.”
“You were right,” he told her as the others in the shelter chattered in relief.
“I was?”
“The fusion engines. There are whole layers of operating routines that the Lestari’s interface ignores. They’re functioning at their lowest efficiency rating. I thought they were. Celestial fusion drives usually have a very different exhaust profile.”
“Tell her,” she hissed.
“I will. After we’ve reached the wreckage.”
“Good news,” Uzoma said. “The Gate’s where we expected it to be. Okimi-Sal, begin engine ignition sequence.”
“I might talk it through with Okimi-Sal first,” Finn said.
“Good call.” Ellie smirked.
Acceleration rose smoothly to one gee. Ellie asked the couch manager for a feed from the external sensors. A projector directly above her displayed the starfield. Half of the image was filled with the swirls and billows of the Poseidon Nebula, as if it was the floor of the universe.
“Stars,” Finn said in wonder.
“Yes?”
“Kelowan is inside the nebula, remember? I’ve never seen them naked like this before. They’re amazing.”
“Oh, right. I hadn’t thought of that. I’ve never had any view other than this until the Diligent entered the nebula. Okay, as soon as we rendezvous, we’ll go up to the cupola and you can see them properly.”
Finn smiled. “Date.”
* * *
—
Ellie spent the next forty-one tedious hours, until the flip, on the acceleration couch, sharing the boredom and discomfort with the rest of the crew in the shelter. Everyone was reasonably disciplined for the first day, but after thirty hours lying on form-shaped cushioning, it was too much. They were good, they didn’t stray far from their couches, but there would be quick trips to the washroom, and drinks heated in the microwave. Ellie sat on the edge of her couch rather than lying prone. The crew talked a lot, so she learned far more than she wanted about favorite theories of the Ultimax war that had devastated Terrik Papuan in the Remnant Era. She spent a couple of hours manipulating the hull’s sensor feeds, eventually acquiring a fuzzy image of the distant brown dwarf inside its megastructure cage—though the Lestari’s sensors weren’t good enough to pick out the individual struts of the Wargrid. Terrik Papuan itself was a strange crescent of drab grays and whites, with a sickly green equatorial ocean.
Then there was the flip. Eight minutes of zero gee while the fusion drives were off, and Tabia carefully turned the ship a hundred eighty degrees with their reaction control thrusters until the fusion rockets were pointing toward their rendezvous point. Everyone in the shelter was obediently back in their couches for that. The gee force quickly built back up to a standard gravity.
Ellie waited for a couple of minutes to make sure everything was okay, then went over to the microwave to heat up some hot chocolate. She was still surprised by, and perhaps a little bit envious of, how good all the food in the Kelowan system was.
“There’s another ship on our flight vector,” Uzoma said.
Ellie looked around frantically. Everyone else in the shelter seemed equally dismayed. Then they were all scrambling to get back on the acceleration couches.
When she rolled into the perfectly shaped indentation, the hologram projector above her started to feed the starship’s sensor imagery. Right at the center of the starfield she saw a long, intense line of fusion flame.
“Where is it?” Finn asked.
“Seventeen thousand kilometers out,” Uzoma said. “Closing fast.”
“How come we’ve only just picked it up?” Ellie said. “Even the Diligent could spot that drive exhaust from half a million kilometers.”
“It was blocked from us by our exhaust plume,” Tabia said. “Whoever they are, they’re on an identical course to us, so they’ve been following us from the Gate.”
Ellie glanced over at Finn and gave him an exasperated stare. He responded with a contrite shrug. The microwave pinged, telling Ellie her chocolate was ready. She grimaced.
“No way this is coincidence,” Uzoma said. “Finn, how many enemies have you got?”
“This is not me,” he protested. “Why would anyone want to kill me?”
“What about Anoosha? I heard some bad shit went down there.”
“Well, yeah, but this…? No way. There are cheaper ways of settling a grudge than chartering a starship to shoot at us. Who does that?”
“They want the ZPZ generator,” Ellie said. “Everyone keeps telling me it’s the most valuable piece of salvage a Traveler can ever acquire. Our mission goal was leaked. It has to be. They didn’t know where the wreckage is, so they followed us.”
“They still don’t know,” Finn said.
“Yes they do. As soon as we flipped and started decelerating, they’d be able to determine our rendezvous point, close enough for a scan to reveal the wreckage.” She felt her throat tightening as the implication of that became obvious. “Crap, it also means—”
“They don’t need us anymore,” Uzoma agreed. “Tabia, activate defense pod seven, release a picket swarm. Okimi-Sal, start varying our thrust, distort our trajectory.”
“Say something!” Ellie urged Finn.
“Like what?” he snapped back.
“Launch detected,” Tabia said. “Hostile just released nine projectiles. Ten-gee thrust. Petal formation. They’re going to pincer us.”
Ellie watched in dismay as the brightness of the starship following them leaped upward, expanding into a nine-point star as the missiles raced away from it. The individual exhaust plumes stretched out, mimicking an incandescent flower opening to greet the dawn.
“Combat stations,” Uzoma ordered.
Ellie tried not to gasp as her acceleration couch quickly turned through ninety degrees. Beyond her feet, a narrow section of the shelter wall slid up, revealing a small metallic chamber. The couch shunted straight into it. Restraint straps slithered around her body like eager snakes, pinning her down as the cushioning expanded, closing over her chest. The only part of her left exposed was her face.
“What the hell?” she grunted. There was a heavy clunk behind her, the unmistakable sound of a thick hatch shutting.
“It’s okay, Ellie,” Finn’s voice said. “We’ve been shoved into the lifepods. Do you have them in the Diligent?”
“Not like this.” The Diligent’s lifeboats held a hundred people. Not that there was any point in using them if disaster struck while they were still interstellar. She wasn’t entirely convinced this one would be any use either, especially if the Lestari was hit by the Remnant Era weapons everyone kept idolizing. But, better than nothing, she told herself.
“Counter fire,” Uzoma ordered. “Full picket deployment. Englobe us.”
“Launching,” Tabia confirmed.
“Basyl, arm the neutronium cascade pod. Asteria’s arse, I didn’t want to use it. We’ll never find another.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the Remnant expert purred.
“You can help us,” Ellie growled.
“How?” Finn challenged.
“You two,” Uzoma said irately. “What are you arguing about?”
