Chapter Fourteen
MARCH 2124
SECOND-FIVE, ZHAL PRIME (BD +71 482 A)
Ironically, the shift to LP 60-179 marked the end of the most uneventful period that Riordan had ever spent traveling between the stars.
The transit itself was so subtle that it didn’t even wake him. The star, an unremarkable red dwarf, had no features or planets of interest, just a collection of small, sunbaked planetesimals and a single distant gas giant. The only redeeming aspect of their visit was that it lasted less than a week.
Riordan was happy to learn that the next system, BD +71 482 A, had a few elements of interest, including a marginally habitable moon orbiting a massive, tidally locked planet with a molten core. He had considered remaining awake for the shift, but a slightly larger than average meal of terrestrial foodstuffs—mashed potatoes, brussels sprouts, even a passably prepared brisket—put paid to that idea; postprandial grogginess triumphed over curiosity. Caine collapsed into his couch bunk with a sated sigh several hours before transit.
* * *
Riordan awoke to a steady, insistent moan: the Olsloov’s emergency klaxon. Fighting up through both a cognitive and visual haze, he discovered he was not alone in his compartment. The most unusual of the Dornaani crew, Irzhresht, was there in a posture of readiness. Almost as tall as Caine, she was extremely thin: a byproduct of hundreds of generations of ancestors who had been born in zero gee. Her longer arms and elongated head hovered urgently over Riordan. “May I assist?” she asked.
Riordan pushed through the mental murk. “I’m…I’ll be fine.”
The Dornaani stepped back, the irregular patterns on her cream-colored skin rippling as she moved. It was simply an optical illusion—her long torso was already subtly striped and mottled—but disconcerting nonetheless. Caine rubbed hard at his eyes. “Why the alarm?”
“Difficulties with landing.” Irzhresht handed Riordan one of the flat, shining circlets that the Dornaani themselves wore when working around the ship. “Put this on. It is calibrated for you.”
Riordan placed the silvery hemicircle on the crown of his head. When he removed his hand, the minimalist victor’s laurels self-adjusted, snugging to the contours of his skull. “And what should I do with—?”
“Await instructions. Follow me.” Irzhresht exited the compartment’s already opening iris valve. Only two steps behind, Riordan noticed that her skin was becoming darker and that additional markings were becoming visible. Standing out in high relief against the ghostly slate-and-cream camo pattern was a constellation of circles (or planets? or spheres?) arrayed in a shifting dance of fractal variation. The enigmatic semiology had been orchestrated to invoke a common theme, but Riordan could not discern what that might be.
Irzhresht was hurrying aft along the curved passageway. Riordan glanced sideways as they passed a small orange hatch that led to a cluster of escape pods. “Irzhresht, where are we—?”
Alnduul’s voice interrupted, from inside Caine’s head. “Do not disturb Irzhresht unless it is absolutely necessary. She is coordinating a variety of tasks, even as you move. She is bringing you to the ventral interface bay.”
“Why? And how the hell am I hearing your voice inside my head?”
“The control circlet you are wearing stimulates your mastoid process, thereby inducing sound that emerges in your middle ear. This ensures clarity in chaotic audial environments. You are wanted in the bay to provide assistance. There is a problem with our landing.”
“Landing? We’re at the planet already? I never even felt us shift.”
“I am not surprised. You ate a considerable meal. Also, we arrived within twenty planetary diameters of our destination.”
“You mean the moon with the breathable atmosphere?”
“Yes. As per our standard operating procedure, the local port authority was given control for Olsloov’s final approach. That is the problem.”
Irzhresht turned, gestured that Riordan should proceed through a large bulkhead door. She continued on. Riordan nodded his thanks, but the spindly Dornaani was already stalking out of sight. Shrugging, Caine approached the door, and almost banged his forehead into it. Unlike the others on Olsloov, it had not opened automatically.
Alnduul sounded like he was situated between Caine’s ears. “Tell it to open.”
“Uh…‘open,’” Riordan ordered the door.
“Not with words,” Alnduul corrected. “Visualize what you wish it to do. A gesture may help focus your will.”
Riordan pushed past the implausibility of a machine capable of reading his mind, waved the door aside as he imagined it complying.
The door opened. Not far beyond, Alnduul was strapping himself into a unipiece belt-and-backpack unit. Narrow control arms sprouted from its sides, each one ending in a joystick. “Your unit is to the right of the door. Don it.”
Caine removed the device from its rack, wondered if he had ever heard anyone use the word “don” as a verb before, and fought against becoming mesmerized by the other contents of the bay. Sleek shuttle-sized craft lined the bulkhead walls, each moored in a hexagonal framework that resembled a reconfigurable geodesic grid. Impossibly small aircars fitted with clear canopies were snugged in smaller but similarly angular webworks. A wide variety of what appeared to be storage units were fixed to the deck, but Riordan could not bring himself to think of them as “crates.” Smooth-surfaced orthogonal solids, they looked more like cubist evocations of basic geometric shapes.
“Caine Riordan, greater alacrity, please. Time is short.”
Riordan finished wrestling his way into the strange backpack-belt device, felt the smart straps of the five-point harness cinch tight against his body. Now that he was actually wearing it, the device reminded him of an MMU, or manned maneuver unit. But if this was for propelling oneself in space, then—“Alnduul, if we’re about to go EVA, shouldn’t we put on spacesuits first?”
Alnduul’s extruded mouth seemed to shimmy around its axis; it was like watching a dancing lamprey, head-on. “Your conjecture is reasonable but inaccurate. We will not be operating in vacuum. We are already entering the atmosphere of the moon.” He grasped the hand controls of his unit and floated off the deck. “These are the only means of reaching the planet’s surface.”
Riordan walked behind Alnduul, frowned. “Where’s the thruster, the exhaust? I can’t even feel any heat coming off the unit.”
“That is because there is no exhaust. Hence, no heat.”
Riordan squinted. “Then how does it work?”
“It leverages gravitic forces against themselves.”
Riordan had to tell himself to resume breathing. “Are you saying this is…is some kind of antigravity device?”
Alnduul’s inner eyelids nictated once. “I am.”
Riordan shook his head at Alnduul’s affirmation, at the device that was keeping the Dornaani half a meter above the deck, at any universe in which physics could be so effortlessly and economically violated. “That’s impossible. You can’t—”
“Caine Riordan, I understand your surprise and your skepticism. Unfortunately, we do not have the time to alleviate either. This moon, Zhal Prime Second-Five, is no longer inhabited, so its port authority systems are automated. They are also malfunctioning. They have failed to recognize Olsloov’s authorization codes. Consequently, the port authority auton will not relinquish control of the helm.”
“And if we don’t correct that?”
“The port authority will either land the ship and impound it, or it will divert us into a fatal crash.”
Riordan grabbed the hand controls. “So let me guess. This, uh…this antigravity unit”—I did not just say that—“works the same way as the door: mental instructions.”
“Correct. The control grips and their arms are flexible. Physical feedback can be combined with mental instructions for greater surety and speed of operation. Activate the sensor interface.”
“How?”
“Command it into operation.”
Riordan visualized the interactive holographs he’d seen on Olsloov’s bridge. He felt faint movement near his temples. A wire-thin filament extended from either end of the control circlet. The wires illuminated, lowered a glowing curtain of light in front of his eyes that, when fully descended, became a heads-up display. He discovered that, depending upon how he focused his eyes, he could either read it in great detail, or see straight through it, much like the surface of polarized glass. “Okay,” Riordan exhaled. “I guess you’ll talk me through the rest. What’s our job?”
“To either terminate the port authority’s override of our helm controls or to update its registry database. Both of which require physical access.”
“How do we achieve that before the port authority rams us nose-first into a mountain?”
Alnduul stepped closer to the uncluttered deck space at the center of the bay. “The bridge crew has created a cascade of code errors. Once released into Olsloov’s computer, they will trigger a default to manual control, at least until the port authority auton determines that the error warnings are spurious. Those few seconds are the crew’s only opportunity to land Olsloov atop the most suitable planetary feature in range.”
“So instead of letting the port authority robot crash this ship, your bridge crew is going to crash it themselves?”
Alnduul’s mouth rotated slightly. “Your optimism is inspiring. Once the ship is down, the crew will disable Olsloov’s computer. You and I will then descend and correct the flaw in the port authority’s automation.”
“How long will it take to reinitiate Olsloov’s computer?”
Alnduul’s stare became somber. “I failed to explain adequately. To ensure that Olsloov’s computer cannot be reaccessed by the port authority auton, the crew must render it physically incapable of restarting. Repairs will require several weeks. Perhaps more. I am sorry, Caine Riordan. There is no other way.”
Caine mentally adjusted the probable duration of his stay in the Collective by adding a few months. He suppressed a sigh, nodded at Alnduul. “Then let’s get going.”
Alnduul walked further out onto the expanse of empty deck. “Command the unit to activate, just enough to suspend you.”
Riordan visualized rising slowly, moved the hand controls slightly upward. His feet lifted off the deck, stopped when they were dangling a third of a meter in midair. The only sensation from the antigravity unit was a fast, smooth vibration against his back.
Irzhresht’s voice was now inside his head, also. “Alnduul, we are approaching the drift-butte. You must be away from the hull before Olsloov loses power and we begin banking.”
“Acknowledged,” Alnduul answered. “Open the bay for personnel exit.”
A seam appeared in the center of the deck. It widened swiftly, wind howling steadily louder until the aperture was three meters wide and five long. Riordan looked for doors, hinges, retracting panels: there were none. Okay, more magic tech.
Down below, Riordan saw a lone, strangely flat mountaintop rising into view. “Is that where Olsloov is heading?”
“Yes,” Alnduul answered, walking to the forward edge of the aperture. “We must not be on board when Olsloov attempts to land. My crew’s attempt to terminate the port authority override could easily fail.”
“Wait, if they’re at such high risk, then we can’t just abandon—”
“Caine Riordan.” Alnduul had turned his wide eyes upon Riordan. “Your courage and loyalty is appreciated, but I cannot risk your demise. Not only are you my friend, you are my official responsibility. The Senior Arbiters have ordered me to prevent any and all hazards to your person.” He turned toward the hurricane-howling slot in the deck. “Stand by me. Jump after I do. Do not reascend, even if you have tumbled and are falling. You must dive swiftly until you are clear of the Olsloov. Then follow where I fly.”
“But the wind velocity will—”
Alnduul stepped beyond the leading edge of the aperture, disappeared down and to the rear in a sickening rush. He was either too far behind, or too distant to see, within the space of a single second.
“You must jump, Caine Riordan. Not step. Jump.” Because of the mastoid transducer, Alnduul’s voice was clear over the shrieking wind.
Riordan made himself stop thinking; he leaped forward.
The wind snared his legs, yanked him backward into an abrupt, bone-jarring tumble. The underside of Olsloov’s stern jumped toward his face. He ducked, pushed down hard with the hand controls, his arms extending in a desperate stretch toward the ground.
Olsloov shrieked over and past. Caine straightened into a nose dive toward lake-mottled flatlands. Despite his speed, the wind that pinned the rippling duty suit against him was mild upon his face: the virtual heads-up display was not merely made of light, but some kind of resistive plasma field. Magic layered upon magic.
Time to reorient and find Alnduul. Riordan pushed the up-rushing ground away from him. But too hastily: he snapped into a hover, intestines ramming up against his stomach. He clenched his esophagus against a rush of vomit.
“Be careful,” Alnduul’s voice urged. “The unit’s hazard overrides are suspended. It will obey your commands without regard to your ability to survive them.”
“Isn’t that kind of dangerous?”
“It is, but we must have complete control. We do not know what threats we might face, or how fast they might arise.”
“So I learn on the job or die.”
“Those are the circumstances the crisis has forced upon us. Despite the orders of the Arbiters.”
Riordan started scanning the wide sky for Alnduul. Quick as the desire to locate him arose, a small violet dot appeared on his virtual HUD, pulsing softly.
Hmm…let’s see what else it can do. “Set tracking guidon on Alnduul.” Again, as quick as thought, the dot turned into a small red reticle. “Designate as friend.” The reticle turned aqua.
Well, okay then…“Locate and track Olsloov.” Another, slightly larger reticle appeared at the lower edge of Riordan’s HUD. “Plot and execute rendezvous with Alnduul.” The hum of the grav unit increased, sent him zipping briskly toward a point slightly ahead of the smaller aqua reticle. Caine considered, then added: “Incorporate randomized evasion.” His vector became a stomach-knotting cascade of dips, jumps, veers.
Alnduul’s voice sounded both approving and worried. “You are adapting well to the control circlet, but be selective in your commands. New users can endanger themselves by attempting to manage too much.”
“Just like our systems,” Riordan answered. “So, are you heading for that mountaintop?”
“I am. But it is not a mountaintop.”
Riordan frowned, studied it more closely as his vantage point changed and discovered that the strange, column-shaped peak was not part of a mountain.
It was suspended in midair. Unable to speak, Caine stared in disbelief.
Yet there it was: a floating spike of stone, more than a kilometer long, capped by vegetation and small pools of greenish water that reflected the hazy vermillion sun. “Alnduul, what the hell is—?”
“It is a protected artifact of the prior epoch. I will share more later. Right now, we must accelerate our approach; Olsloov is about to trigger the system failure.”
Riordan demanded greater speed. The gravitic thrust unit complied, but without discontinuing the evasive maneuvers. Now, each dodge and jink pulled painfully at his organs, joints, tendons. “End evasive maneuvers.”
The unit’s vector became as steady and smooth as its sharply diminished hum. Caine tilted over into a steep dive toward the top of the floating butte. For the first time since leaping out of the Olsloov’s belly, he had a moment to think. If the Dornaani have this kind of technology at their disposal, then—
Irzhresht’s voice was not merely calm; she sounded bored. “Engaging failure codes.”
Far below, Olsloov’s orange-glinting delta shape seemed to shake, then skitter sideways into an imminent tumble from which it immediately righted itself.
“Computer disabled,” Irzhresht continued. “Commencing landing sequence.”
Olsloov heeled hard to port, rolling through forty-five degrees. The hull shuddered beneath the high-speed buffeting as its leading edges and lifting surfaces bit hard against the air. It banked sharply toward the stone spike’s largest lake.
Riordan’s intercept vector changed to match Alnduul’s. “How is Olsloov maneuvering without power?”
“It has standard flaps, but drag management is mostly handled by smart-hull recontouring.”
Riordan watched the ship continue to shudder. One significant downdraft could drive it into the stony flanks of the “drift-butte”—
The top margin of Caine’s HUD pulsed a bright orange: the color that Dornaani used to signify danger.
“Identify threat,” Riordan thought at the circlet. It painted a throbbing orange vector that rose up from the ground and pointed at Olsloov like an accusing finger. “Ground emissions detected. Active sensors consistent with targeting array,” the circlet explained.
Damn it. A dirtside defense site. If Olsloov evades, it can’t land. But if it doesn’t evade, it’s a sitting duck. Unless…
Riordan jammed his arms outward, toward the source of the narrowing sensor emanations. “Wave ride to source, no evasion,” he ordered the circlet. “Engage active sensors. Acquire reciprocal lock on point of emanation.”
As Caine’s steep, accelerating dive turned the thready thunder of the wind into a ululating howl, Alnduul’s panicked voice was loud in his head. “Caine Riordan, terminate your active sensors at once! The ground array will detect you and aim along your own emissions—”
“That’s the idea, Alnduul. Is Olsloov still in enemy target lock?”
A pause. “No. Enemy sensors are shifting to you.”
“And if you joined me, there’d be two targets behaving more aggressively than Olsloov.”
“Understood.”
In Riordan’s HUD, the orange targeting beam swiveling around to spear him split in two. The new one roved after the aqua reticle that signified Alnduul. The flanks of the floating butte sped past, several kilometers to Riordan’s left.
“Caine Riordan, if we wait too long—”
“Are the air defenses projectile or beam?”
“At this altitude, projectile. Atmospheric diffusion erodes laser effec—”
Ignoring the rest, Riordan widened his HUD’s focus but kept the display centered on the targeting beam’s origin point. “Activate weapons,” he ordered.
“Onboard lasers ineffective at this range,” the circlet informed him.
“Understood. Activate weapons. Target sensor source. Fire when lock is acquired. Maintain target lock. Scan for energy spike within larger footprint.”
From either shoulder of the backpack, a broken sputter of crackling flashes reached down toward the ground. They died out within three hundred meters. Riordan kept his groundward plunge between his two beams’ vectors, caught a fleeting whiff of ozone: the remains of the air vaporized by his lasers. Caine wrapped his hands more tightly around the handgrips, forced himself to watch the whole HUD at once.
Three kilometers to the right of the targeting sensors, a painfully bright orange glare flashed at him like a malevolent eye opening. “Power spike…” began the command circlet.
“Terminate active sensors!” Riordan yanked the grav unit’s handgrips to the left, felt his organs crush sideways as both the HUD and the circlet’s voice finished telling him what he already knew: the energy spike was consistent with a railgun discharge. “Incoming!” he shouted at Alnduul. The Dornaani was already arcing away in the opposite direction.
Riordan’s own tight turn reached ninety degrees. The tapering base of the floating butte loomed in front of him, less than six kilometers away. He aimed his outstretched arms at it, pulling out of the turn as he called for maximum acceleration…
Two bolts of fire ripped through the air less than a hundred meters behind, double thunder crashes and shock waves tumbling him. “Straighten and resume course,” Riordan ordered both mentally and aloud, even as the grav thrusters whined and rattled in an automated attempt to do just that. The unit lurched, spun, adjusted, shot further away from the ground. Riordan vomited as he soared upward into the shadow of the floating butte.
Down below, two more jets of fire—the atmospheric combustion tracks left behind by railgun’s hypersonic warheads—reached up toward him…and then ended in twin explosions, a kilometer beneath his feet.
Alnduul had moved so that, like Caine, the floating pylon of rock was now between him and the ground battery. “Caine Riordan, are you injured?”
Caine’s guts felt as if they had been spun in a centrifuge. “Don’t know. Don’t think so.” To the unit: “Climb, remaining behind shielding face of floating rock. Move to position two hundred meters above center of the rock and hold relative position.”
As the grav pack carried him to the designated spot, Alnduul’s voice reproved, “That maneuver was foolish, Caine Riordan. Brave, but foolish.”
“Was it?” Riordan grunted, a dull ache persisting in the vicinity of his liver. “You said this, uh, drift-butte was a protected object. Seemed unlikely that your ground batteries would be authorized to conduct fire missions which might strike it.”
“Logical. Yet still, only a guess.”
Riordan rose up beyond the sharply cleaved sides of the floating spike, scanned its top; thorny black bushes and swards of red lichen rolled away toward sky-blue fronds waving in the high-altitude winds. “Sometimes, guesses are all we humans have to act upon,” he muttered.
To his right, Olsloov, half flying and half falling, eked its way over the stony lip of the topland, wobbled down toward the largest of the mirror-green ponds. On his left, Alnduul rose into view, accelerating after his stricken ship. “As your saying has it,” the Dornaani conceded, “there are the quick and the dead. But in the future, I exhort you to temper your devotion to that axiom.”
“How?”
“By obeying another human axiom: ‘make haste slowly.’”
Ironically, that was the moment Alnduul doubled his speed to get ahead of the belly-falling Olsloov.