Destroyer of Worlds (3 page)

Up to a light-year distance, the fusion exhausts of small fleets showed that some clans had gotten away. Much of the ruin here came from their preparations: raiding for provisions for themselves and destroying what they could not steal lest rival clans pursue.

How had clan Rilchuk fared? That remained to be determined.

At maximum acceleration, Thssthfok's shuttle was three days' travel from Pakhome.
New Hope
was similarly distant, in another direction, hidden. Only scattered rock-and-ice balls registered on the shuttle's instruments; a beam weapon from any of them would arrive without warning. He could do nothing about that, so, while he waited, he redirected his main telescope back to Pakhome.

If protectors could, Thssthfok would have cried.

Only charred ruins or still-roiling columns of ash and soot marked where great cities had stood. The great dam on the river Lobok had been destroyed; most things that had not washed out to sea were now embedded in a sheet of ice. Nothing remained of the onetime great island of Rabal but a volcanic stump, lurid on the ocean floor. Thssthfok could not tell from this distance what had set off such a cataclysmic eruption, but his mind seethed with theories.

The ancient, sprawling Library complex near the center of the south-polar desert looked unmolested, at least at this resolution. In their need to escape, what all Pak sought was better weaponry, and weapons technology was knowledge no family ever deposited to the Library. The onrushing radiation would leave none to use the knowledge long accumulated there.

After millions of years and countless cycles, the great repository had become irrelevant.

 

THE LIBRARY
. . .

For many breederless protectors, the Library was life itself. For as long as they could convince themselves they served the good of all Pak, they retained their appetites and managed to outlive their descendants.

For others, the Librarians were abominations, crimes against nature, and the Library a depressing place.

Thssthfok remembered visiting the Library before
New Hope
set out, poring over ancient records of Pakhome's climate. Every archway was inscribed with the symbol of the Library: the stylized double helix that represented life and cycles. The upward spiral spoke to the promise of better times, of past collapses mitigated with the Library's knowledge. The downward spiral represented the inevitable next collapse for which they must always prepare.

His work had gone slowly. Most information existed only as written text stamped into nearly indestructible metal pages, survivability taking precedence over ease of use. It was said that neither absence of electricity nor obsolescence of format could devalue the data—never that the archaic representations made work for Library staff, painstakingly transcribing from old languages to newer.

Thssthfok had worked quickly, eager to get away, vowing that if misfortune ever befell his bloodline, he would have the decency to fade away.

 

THE LIBRARY WAS ONE
of the few Pak institutions to extend beyond narrow family interests. All would pass.

Some already had.

New Hope
had approached the home system just in time to witness the destruction of the final space elevator. The structure was too thin to discern even at maximum magnification, but there was no mistaking the
slow-motion destruction as half of the long cable crashed to the ground, or the scattering of the blockading fleet as the counterbalance end of the cable writhed free. With their mutual enemies all but stranded on the planet, the fleets of the space-based civilizations immediately turned on one another.

The island of Rilchuk, inconveniently remote from newly frozen lands, blessed with a paucity of natural resources, remained, for the moment, largely unmolested. Messages encrypted in family codes were answered with pleas for rescue. It wasn't too late.

Just all but impossible.

Three years of endless war gaming gave consistent results.
New Hope
alone could not evacuate Rilchuk. Even to approach Pakhome would be folly: A single starship could not defend itself against those who would be eager to seize it. But in addition to their ship, irreplaceable, the crew had one asset to trade. . . .

 

RADAR SIGNALED THE APPROACH
of another shuttle and Thssthfok turned off his telescope display. The other craft was expected: Rilchuk was not the only clan bereft of options.

The ships exchanged authentication codes and rendezvoused. Thssthfok waited for his visitor to board. Despite connected air locks, the stranger wore a pressure suit. What appeared to be a medical scanner dangled from his utility belt.

The device could easily be a disguised weapon, but Thssthfok did not ask to examine it. Only unconsciousness or death could keep Thssthfok from protecting the secret he was here to trade, and a failsafe would blow the ship's fusion reactor at the first anomaly in his vital signs. Given the stakes, his visitor would expect no lesser precaution.

Warily, the stranger removed his helmet and sniffed the cabin. “Qweklothk,” he introduced himself.

No clan name. Perhaps no snowball differed from another.
Rilchuk
emanated a heady bouquet, changing with the seasons, spiced with salt tang from the sea.
Rilchuk
was a place, a home, a proper clan name. Comet dweller would suffice, Thssthfok decided.

Qweklothk exuded not the faintest aura of kinship, and Thssthfok's skin crawled at the first new scent in years. He had not expected to find family here in the cometary belt, of course, but smell is a primitive sense,
directly wired to the hindbrain. His mind and instincts warred. “Qweklothk,” he repeated.

It was a label only, without meaning, the very concept jarring.
Thssthfok
was no arbitrary set of symbols but who he was: the dominant pheromones of his grandparents, represented in sound.

He, surely, was as alien to his visitor. “Thssthfok of Rilchuk.”

“Show me,” Qweklothk said.

The shuttle's small cargo bay held a cold-sleep pod. Thssthfok had been chosen for this meeting for what he did not know and could not reveal: the secrets of cold-sleep pods.

Qweklothk expected nothing different. Asking no questions, he slowly circled the pod. The scanner, now in his hand, hummed. He compared the readings from his instrument to the display on the pod control panel. He brushed rime from the dome to peer inside. A still figure lay within; with patience, the slow rise and fall of the chest was visible.

Qweklothk took a probe from a pouch of his pressure suit. Without asking—they would not be here unless Thssthfok was willing—Qweklothk retracted the dome to remove a tissue sample. The scanner chirped its approval.

New Hope
had carried no breeders on its long voyage. The breeder in the pod had been captured in a supply raid on an outer-system colony. Its family was as good as dead, anyway.

The pod slowed metabolism, and with it pheromone release, to almost nothing. So, although this breeder was as foreign as Qweklothk, the gaping pod did not add to the stench—

Until Thssthfok woke her. Successful revival was central to the demonstration.

Thssthfok and Qweklothk smelled as alien to her. The breeder's screech trailed off into the silence of abject terror. She quivered in the pod, her eyes flicking between two unknown protectors. To the extent a breeder could think, she knew she lived at their whim.

Qweklothk poked and prodded her, gauging her reflexes. He scanned her where she lay. He lifted her from the pod and set her on her feet, running more scans as she stood shaking.

“Acceptable,” Qweklothk said. That concluded their business, and he turned to leave. Almost as an afterthought, he snapped the breeder's neck.

Comet dwellers had resources to build starships and flee the oncoming radiation, but that would only prolong their extinction. Even at near light
speed and measured in ship's time, the flight to safety in the outer galactic reaches would be an epic endeavor. Without cold sleep, most of all for the children and breeders, the comet dwellers could not possibly survive the trek.

Living quarters on a ramscoop were limited and austere. In less perilous times, it had been thought cold sleep would allow clan Rilchuk's migration to a new home—a world distant enough that rivals without cold sleep would not follow. How ironic, Thssthfok thought, to have found such a world only to abandon it. And that one hundred light-years once seemed a great distance.

Now cold-sleep technology might save his bloodline in another way.

Many comet dwellers would die rescuing breeders from Rilchuk, in exchange for cold-sleep technology.

 

THE ARMADA DESCENDED ON PILLARS
of fusion fire. Airplanes and spaceships rose to intercept. Beam weapons, missiles, and railguns lashed out from every vessel. Plummeting like stones or bursting like fireworks, mortally injured craft disappeared from the sky. The evacuation fleet fought its way ever closer to the island of Rilchuk. At the appointed time, encrypted in clan codes, ships radioed the prearranged radio call signs.

From the developed end of the island, protectors unleashed their weapons to cover the landing of their rescuers. On the opposite, primitive end of the island, children and breeders cowered from the noise and chaos.

After massive losses to both sides, the enemy ships broke off their attack. The surviving evacuation ships, still broadcasting family recognition codes, vectored toward landing zones at the island's unpopulated waist. At the last moment, the oncoming ships swerved—

Incinerating with fusion flames the Rilchuk protectors on the ground. The comet dwellers could hardly rely on Rilchuk protectors to stand by passively while strangers captured their breeders.

Thssthfok would have done the same. Protectors were always—except, possibly, to themselves—expendable.

Through comm relays and by remote sensing, from the comparative safety of far-off
New Hope
, Thssthfok watched the comet dwellers round up, gas, and load children and breeders.

The comet dwellers now held Rilchuk breeders as hostages. Clan Rilchuk had been granted an ample supply of comet-dweller breeders as its own
hostages. One clan needed cold-sleep pods and expertise. The other clan needed additional ships. Apart, they would surely die. Together, they might survive.

Thssthfok wondered how long the alliance could last.

 

THE RILCHUK/COMET-DWELLER FLEET RECEDED
into the void. Thssthfok's final glimpse of Pakhome, before he lost it in the sternward glare, was of the southern hemisphere. At this distance, the Library complex was no longer visible. The stamped metal pages of the Library would survive the catastrophe soon to kill everyone left on the planet.

Thssthfok redirected
New Hope
's telescope forward. Toward the galactic arm, and beyond.

Toward, if the fleet had one, its future.

 

Sigmund Ausfaller always knew he would die horribly. Oddly enough, he had been optimistic. He had died horribly—twice. So far.

Modern medicine being all but miraculous, he was, all in all, pleased with how things had turned out.

That worried him.

Familial chaos surrounded Sigmund. Like a third lease on life, domestic bliss had taken him by surprise. He took a moment to bask in the commotion.

Hermes was tall for his age and skinny as a rail, with masses of dark curly hair. He had boundless energy, an impish grin, and creative excuses for the mischief in which he invariably found—and, as often, put—himself. The god of everything that involved skill and speed and dexterity had proven an apt namesake.

How old was Sigmund's son? Eight, as years were reckoned here on New Terra. And on old Terra, on Earth? Nobody on New Terra, not even Sigmund, remembered how long an Earth year might be. For that one vanished detail, at least, he had a decent approximation. He remembered that pregnancy took nine months on Earth, out of twelve. Here, where they didn't count in months, pregnancy lasted five-sixths of a year. That made New Terra's year about ninety percent of the ill-defined norm, and Hermes scarcely seven years standard.

And what, rather than gathering his things for school, was Hermes doing? Teasing his little sister, of course.

Athena was another perpetual-motion machine. She had a sweet face, a delicate frame, and an aura of fine blond hair. Barely four New Terra years old, she already showed signs of her mother's athletic grace. Athena was precocious; time would tell whether she achieved the wisdom to befit her divine namesake. As for her brother's teasing, Athena appealed, with eyes
round and innocent, with theatrically quivering lower lip, for maternal intervention.

Scarily precocious.

Penelope, harried and overworked, funny and smart, struggled to set everyone on their way for the day. Penny was beautiful, with rosy cheeks and twinkling blue eyes. Waves of ash-blond hair flowed past her shoulders. She was as tall as Sigmund and much fitter. She was Sigmund's wife, best friend, and anchor.

Without hesitation, Sigmund would die or kill to protect any of them.

“What's the ETA on breakfast?” Penny asked. Tone of voice asked why he didn't just synth their meals.

Because Sigmund preferred to cook. Cooking centered him. “Two minutes.” He flipped the Denver omelet, and that was the most anyone on this world knew about Denver. He started toast and poured juice. “Everyone sit.” He and Penny together got a few bites into the kids before they rushed off to school.

Penny stayed long enough to fret about the latest crisis pending in her lab and to gently chide Sigmund about his jumpsuit programming. She didn't touch her fork until he set the nanofabric to a pattern and texture befitting his august stature. She patted his arm. “That wasn't so hard, was it?”

Before New Terra and Penelope, Sigmund had worn only black. No bother, no ostentation. But that was in other lives, on other worlds. He failed to see the logic of encoding social cues into programmable clothing. If anyone could project anything onto their clothes . . .