Exodus, page 91
“Majesty, I must protest at the order to cease acceleration. Clearly the human arkship has been carrying a stolen Celestial warship.”
“Yes, squadron commander, that was our conclusion as well. Although ‘warship’ might be stretching the definition somewhat. It’s a small drop ship, heading for a planet that is mostly gas. Does that not strike you as odd?”
“It is a hostile act, Majesty. We should pursue it.”
“I am advised by my Fleet Intelligence officers that this fleet—my fleet, to which I welcome your squadron as a valuable addition—is currently in a perfect position to observe exactly what is going on. So that is what we will do.”
“Humans with any kind of weapons-carrying ship might be able to damage the Archimedes Engine, and we are nearing the time when Dolod will perform its momentum transfer. I request permission to pursue and destroy the enemy vessel.”
“Your enthusiasm is commendable, squadron commander. Could you inform me exactly what intelligence you have that tells you the humans will damage an Archimedes Engine station? Assuming there are humans in the drop ship? Because I certainly haven’t seen positive confirmation of that, nor any weapon.”
The commander looked slightly uneasy. “We were assuming a worst-case scenario. Perhaps a capture mission would be more appropriate?”
“Undoubtably so. Do you wish to capture the drop ship or the Diligent?”
The squadron commander’s expression had now changed to one of indecision. “Both would allow us certainty, Majesty.”
“I’m glad we agree on something. Acquiring information is of paramount concern for the Crown Dominion. And in this instance, we seem to be lacking almost any intelligence on what is happening. To hold and observe, I am told, would still enable us to rendezvous with the wider fleet on schedule, whereas a capture mission could impede that timeline. And if it ultimately proves to be nothing, and we have delayed for no cause…”
The commander seemed to grasp the implications almost instantly. But then, no one wanted to be on the wrong side of one of Carolien’s tantrums.
“As you say, Majesty,” Radwarno-Werkas said, “observation does seem our best course of action.”
“Assuredly. This, therefore, is what is now going to happen.” Thyra held a hand up, forefinger raised, and the princesses immediately stopped their cavorting. As one they turned to the camera, their faces sharing the same icy resolution as their mother. “As we are currently seven light minutes from Kelowan, I will message my friend the empress that there is—shall we say—an incident under way here. I will likewise inform her that I am taking personal command of all real-time strategic decisions, for we cannot afford a delay if the situation is indeed a threat and requires us to react swiftly.”
“Yes, Majesty.”
Thyra cut the lnc.
—
Message origin Clavissa: Did you recieve that whole scene? This behavior is so odd for Helena-Thyra. She’s gathering opinions that are bound to be different, and arguing them out in favor of a stop-and-watch policy. I don’t understand this at all. A queen doesn’t present arguments, she gives orders. I know Helena-Thyra doesn’t give a crap what the other queens say or think, especially the empress. Why is she hesitating?
Message origin Neusch: I’ve no idea. Maybe she does care about what the other queens will say? It’s like she’s shifting the blame to her own intelligence teams in case anything goes wrong. As of now she can claim her inaction is justified because her archon wanted more information.
Message origin Clavissa: That only applies if Helena-Thyra genuinely wants more information.
Message origin Neusch: Perhaps she does.
Message origin Clavissa: If that’s right, then she is definitely acting out of character.
Message origin Neusch: That’s why we’re all doing this, isn’t it? Because we don’t understand this new strategy she’s playing.
Message origin Clavissa: Yes. I miss my father, he’d know how to interpret this. Now we have to wait two years for his analysis.
Message origin Neusch: I miss mine, too.
Message origin Clavissa: I apologize. That was insensitive of me.
Message origin Neusch: No offense taken. I’m glad we are where we are. I have an important job, and I feel useful. My father would approve.
Message origin Clavissa: How is your mission progressing?
Message origin Neusch: Well, thank you. I have chartered the Ilumn, a human ship. We should reach Uixic in another three days.
Message origin Clavissa: Please be careful.
Message origin Neusch: And you. A human ship flying to Dolod is a strange event.
Message origin Clavissa: But hardly dangerous. They’re only humans.
Message origin Neusch: Keep me updated.
Message origin Clavissa: I will.
* * *
—
It was the longest Finn had ever endured high-gee acceleration. He had been lying flat on his back on the acceleration couch for the whole flight to Dolod, yet he felt physically exhausted. Once they’d arrived, he’d used a twelve-minute burn at five gees to position the drop ship into orbit three thousand kilometers above the top of the newly heated atmosphere.
Not that he was an expert, but the dense storm bands seemed almost sluggish as the multitude of independent streams swirled and clashed against one another, creating short-lived typhoon battlefronts that rippled with colossal lightning discharges. Through his connection with the drop ship’s network, he started transmitting a simple transponder signal down into the troposphere. To his mind, the neural command was akin to shouting into a dark, silent cave. Before long, an answer came back—quiet calls from the depths that resolved as pulsing red stars. The drop ship’s network swiftly computed a trajectory down to one of the Archimedes Engines that was in the equatorial zone where the winds were at their mildest—though that was a relative term.
Take us down, he told the network via a flurry of impulses. The fusion rockets fired again, acceleration building back to five gees, pushing them down toward the atmosphere as well as reducing the drop ship’s speed until it was below orbital velocity.
When the rockets eventually cut out, Finn felt as if he was in free fall for a few minutes, then the planet’s gravity gripped and started to pull the drop ship down.
“Thirty minutes,” he told the others.
“Have you got a lnc to the station? Can you connect?” Gyvoy asked.
“Sort of. It knows we’re coming.” He didn’t say anything to them, but his thoughts had been drifting for the whole flight, adding to the difficulty of controlling the drop ship. The grief of losing his parents in such a brutal fashion had overtaken his mind—that and the shock, making even the most simple everyday actions difficult. Hours would pass without him even noticing.
“Okay, man, I don’t want to ride your ass over this, but I don’t think ‘sort of’ is really going to cut it.”
“No, you’re right. That was just the preliminary contact. I’m starting to request the full landing sequence now.” Which was a joke. The station had done nothing but acknowledge that the drop ship existed. So now as the atmosphere began to build up around the fuselage, making it shiver its way downward, he had to try to establish a true connection, like the one he’d mastered back at the Kingsnest factory. Yet even with the stakes this high, his thoughts drifted to the images of people on Gondiar who’d been YouBusted being dumped in the back of a van like inconvenient bundles of trash. That was how Celestials treated humans: as trash. As worthless, backward animals, just cattle that could clothe themselves. The anger at the injustice, the deliberate cruelty, threatened to burst into a scream of rage that would never stop.
“Finn, how goes it?”
Gyvoy’s voice had an edge to it now. Finn forced himself to pay attention to the here and now. His mind had slipped away from the connection, and the drop ship was now juddering heavily as they plummeted deeper and deeper into the atmosphere.
“Almost got it,” he replied in a voice that had the kind of sincerity councilor candidates used while they were out campaigning for votes.
He really did start to concentrate now, expanding his consciousness to bring more of the network into his mind. Acceptance allowed the drop ship to materialize at the end of his body’s nerves, becoming a physical entity that he could control. The fusion rockets came on, firing at low power to give their descent some badly needed stability. One part of him was now keenly aware of the pressure mounting outside—six standard atmospheres and rising fast. They were still more than a hundred kilometers above the station, with the winds shoving them sideways.
As he adjusted the course, he tried to build upon the narrow lnc the drop ship had with the station. The station CI was there; he could sense it, like some memory that was playing infuriatingly coy no matter what recall technique he used. Then just like before in the compound on Kajval, he recognized a routine—one for the fusion generators that powered the station systems—and after that moment of clarity, the other formations started to resolve and seep into his mind.
Dolod’s gravity, two and a half times standard, was pulling him down into the acceleration couch, and his control of the drop ship was becoming a strain. The winds pummeling against them were fierce, and the pressure amplified every surge. Never-ending clouds broke around them, making the visual sensors useless. Instead of lightly directing the multiple course correction maneuvers, he was having to shove them with his full strength, and his muscles were starting to tremble under the psychosomatic effort.
In complete contrast, he found he was accommodating himself within the station CI’s routines as if diving cleanly into an ocean. He could perceive the drop ship approaching, then switch back again to observe the station via the drop ship sensors. Its shape was familiar from when the Ovar flew alongside the ones under construction in the factory assembly line, but now the silhouette was complete—and covered in strange dark gray smears of tacky hydrocarbon that had started to sprout microbial threads as they were warmed by Kelowan’s sunlight, wrapping the station in an external layer of fur, like russet-colored hoar frost.
Finn held them steady as they descended. It was only a few kilometers below them now—a vast dark oval in the unstable clouds of volatile chemicals that roiled through the anarchic expanding atmosphere. Then the tough microbes began to sizzle as the fusion exhaust reached the upper surface and the smeared hydrocarbons evaporated, unveiling the dull-silver hull for the first time in thousands of years. Inside Finn’s mind, the drop ship network and station CI attuned to each other, and he no longer had to exert his shaking muscles to control the rendezvous.
A pair of broad rectangular doors along the spine of the station slowly hinged up to embrace the dazzling plasma needles sinking toward it. Secondary vents opened, deflecting the exhaust sideways out of the hangar. The drop ship settled lightly, then kept on lowering itself as the undercarriage absorbed the load of its doubled weight.
“We’re down,” Finn gasped. “Asteria’s arse, we made it!”
The big doors closed above them. Finn wasn’t sure if he imagined the silence that claimed the hangar, or if the network was emphasizing it. The glowing pad below the drop ship dimmed rapidly as inlaid heat channels dissipated the incredible temperature of the fusion flames that had played across it only moments before.
“What now?” Gyvoy asked. “Can you connect to the Engine CI from here?”
“No. I’ve got to find a contact bulb to get a direct connection.”
“Okay, then, let’s go.”
“You know there’s no guarantee I can do this—not even now.”
“I have faith in you, man. We’re gonna change history, you and me. Well, mainly you. And if it doesn’t work out…it’s been a hell of a ride, hasn’t it?”
Only the pressure on his lungs stopped Finn from laughing. “It certainly has.”
They made their way down to the deployment airlock: a big circular chamber close to the base of the drop ship. Finn’s suit muscles made walking easy enough, but he was very aware of the effect two and a half gravities was having on his internal organs; they just wanted to push themselves down into his pelvis. He couldn’t stop trying to clench his abs, and he was laboring to draw a breath. The suit increased the oxygen content inside his helmet, which made it easier for his struggling lungs, but it didn’t feel right somehow.
A big hatchway peeled open in the deployment airlock and rolled a ramp down to the floor of the station’s huge hangar.
“External atmosphere toxic,” the suit manager told him. “Do not remove helmet.”
“Right; thanks.”
“My man,” Gyvoy exclaimed, his tone gloating. “You did it, Finn. We actually made it!”
“I go first,” a Dave said.
Finn watched him march down the ramp; the Silicate didn’t seem affected by the heavy gravity. A flock of small sensor drones zipped out of a silo behind his shoulder and spread out across the hangar. Finn could have told him there was no danger. The station CI had allowed them in, and it didn’t consider them a threat.
“Clear.”
Finn walked carefully down the ramp, very aware of the massive pressure the hangar’s overhead doors were holding back.
“Where are we going?” Gyvoy asked.
A question Finn asked of the CI, and simply knew the answer. “This way.” He started off across the floor, deliberately not hurrying. Any fall now would inflict internal injuries the suit’s medical packages weren’t exactly equipped to deal with.
A door in the hangar wall opened for them. There was a long corridor beyond, with scalloped walls, giving the impression they were inside some kind of fossil. Lights came on: lengthy strips folded into the creases that curved around them. Then there was an elevator that took a long time to descend, taking them right into the heart of the station. The chambers it took them to had the same kind of crenations as those above, but on a much larger scale, protruding out to such an extent it was almost like walking through a petrified maze. Dave sent the flock of sensor drones fanning out in every direction.
“There’s nothing here,” Bensath said. “Everywhere is empty.”
“It’s the opposite, actually,” Finn told him. “These aren’t compartments, not like you get in a human ship. We’re actually walking through the inside of the Engine’s components.”
“No shit?”
“Oh, yeah.”
He brought them to a circular space over a hundred meters across. Floor and ceiling were identical, like two giant flowers whose thick, bulbous petals merged around the rim. The center had a rounded cone four meters high. Finn stood at the base.
“Do we give you a boost up or something?” Gyvoy asked after a moment.
“No.” His connection with the CI veered into territory he and Otylia used to play with decades ago to make subtle alterations to livestone in the palace gardens. Not that the station material was livestone, of course, but…
The side of the cone flowed into narrow steps. Finn walked up them, even more conscious of his balance. Right at the peak of the cone was a translucent contact bulb, sized for a Celestial hand—one even bigger than that of an Imperial Celestial.
“Atmosphere composition?” he asked the suit manager.
“Oxygen nitrogen, standard pressure. Safe for exposure.”
He ordered his gauntlet to open.
“Finn,” Gyvoy said. “Just want to say, whatever happens, you’re the best, man. You really are.”
Finn smiled inside his helmet. “Thanks. And don’t worry, I’ve got this.” He put his hand down on top of the bulb, which started to glow with a delicate teal radiance.
The connection. Once more that small bundle of thoughts that was Finn in his entirety was afloat inside the colossus that was the Engine’s CI architecture. Back in the factory, the enormity of the routines had made them splendid yet cold, but here the glow that infused them was balmy and somehow welcoming. It contrasted badly with the misery and anger that he contained.
Celestials, or their ancestors, or proto-Elohim had built this astonishing machine that emulated a god. The power to move worlds, to gather them close around the warmth of a star where they would thrive with life. It was magnificent. But in the age that had passed since this Engine began its voyage, the Crown Dominion had been born. Home to the Imperial Celestials who had killed his parents, who were bringing pain and suffering to humans on a scale unknown since the last days of Old Earth.
Stop thinking of that. Focus on the mission, he told himself angrily.
The routines that controlled the Engine wound their way into his mind—an embrace that presented him with the use of that same godlike power that had been crafted eons ago. He found the Engine’s mass perception encompassed the entire Kelowan system. Planets, moons, asteroids all circled around him, their parameters and gravity fields revealed in explicit detail. He could see precisely how to use them to move Dolod. There was a beautiful simplicity to the method by which the iron exotic could be brought into orbit around Kelowan’s star. The Engine’s forces had to be applied just so, as had been dictated by those who had dispatched it here so long ago. Yet he could comprehend that a different, yet equally simple, application would send it out of the system altogether, as Gyvoy and his murky backers intended.
To what purpose?
Finn didn’t quite know where that question came from, himself or the Engine, because the answer was also unclear to him. Worse than that, it was challenged by the demons of doubt and wrath raging inside his skull. He’d come here to throw Dolod out into the void or even into the star, to deny the Celestials this strange planet’s iron. In turn, that would help Anoosha’s humans. A worthy goal. A blow for humankind.
