Edward M. Lerner (17 page)

In private, his friends admitted to believing the clan’s stubborn defiance was futile. They swore that everyone they knew felt the same. The clan’s dwindling resources and untenable position—in life as in b’tok, these were two faces of the same losing circumstances—rendered certain the clan’s eventual doom. Almost, they shook Mashkith’s faith—

Until the warship under his command detected a vast, decelerating object onrushing from regions that gave new meaning to the word “remote.”

Within the vast, labyrinthine hollowness that was the artifact, the thudding of combat boots echoed and reechoed. Mashkith continued his search—for what, exactly, he could not say—while his crew performed more purposeful tasks.

They looted.

There had been no response to hails or the fusion-drive-blazing approach of
Defiant
or even its landing. There had been no reaction to the security team’s trek across the vast expanse of the landing platform. No one and nothing seemed to care when a squad of armed crew cycled through the central-axis airlock and descended inside by elevator.

Now we know why our presence is ignored, Mashkith thought. This is a derelict.

Merely the hollowed-out asteroid represented mineral wealth far beyond the clan’s dwindling resources. To that abundance was added a profusion of ship’s stores and unknown, but surely wondrous, technologies.

Ceiling lights blazed brightly enough to darken his helmet visor. The atmosphere was welcomingly warm and oxygen-rich. The large bio-preserve at the heart of the ship, while overgrown and long untended, clearly thrived. Vast energies continued to decelerate the ship. In the engine room, huge machines, some recognizable but many not, throbbed with power.

Mashkith could not shake the feeling he was in the presence of a sleeping giant. What, he wondered, might awaken it? What will it do if aroused?

Such fanciful notions served no one; he ignored them to focus on more useful things. When
Defiant
had approached the huge ship, it was, apart from its speed and the direction of its emergence, unremarkable. In another location, it could have been mistaken for a Hunter habitat. Its fusion drive ran hotter than Hunter norm, but not by enough to seem significant. The simplest explanation was that they had found the experimental vessel of another clan—fair prey.

The fall from Great Clan status had meant, among many things, isolation from InterstellarNet. Aliens and their possible breakthroughs were far from his thinking. Not until the landing party encountered unfamiliar and abnormally placed airlock controls did Mashkith begin to wonder. The dazzling lights that greeted the boarders made plain in an instant that this was no Hunter vessel.

And still I avoid the main issue
.

Louder than the eerie reverberations of bootsteps, louder than his gnawing doubts, was his anger. Louder than the thumping of his heavy combat boots, two words reverberated: Immediate return. The surrounding communiqué offered little explanation and no leeway. None was required, as its author was the Foremost.

Wealth beyond the dreams of avarice surrounded Mashkith, but his orders were to abandon it. He was to destroy this enormous vessel if he could do so without excessive risk to his own ship. If Arblen Ems could not have these riches, than no one else should.

“Lothwer,” he radioed. “Status of your efforts?”

“Loading of metals ahead of schedule,” his lieutenant answered from elsewhere within the derelict. “Completion by middle of next shift.” A netted image showed a line of crew, stretched along a curved corridor for as far as Lothwer’s helmet camera could see. They stood at arm’s length, swinging ingots and metal rods ceaselessly from gloved hand to gloved hand. A second window opened, offering a view from a hull camera on
Defiant
. Here, another team relayed pilfered stocks from starship airlock to the airlock of his ship.

Defiant
‘s cargo holds now stored appreciably more metal than had gone into the ship’s construction. Despite many unknowns, one thing seemed certain: This wondrous artifact had originated
far
away, someplace where metal was much more common. How different Hunter vessels like
Defiant
would be, Mashkith thought, if they could be built mainly from metals rather than ceramic.

“Excellent,” Mashkith said, feigning enthusiasm he could not feel. To buy time for a bit more exploration, he was using the most skilled and valiant crew in the fleet as manual laborers. Or worse: Laborers, at least, had intelligent purpose to guide them. We steal crumbs from an unknowably vast feast. We pilfer, unguided by wisdom, like the lowliest insects.

And yet, what choice did he have?

For its seemingly inevitable last stand, the clan had retreated to proto-comets whose orbits inclined steeply to the plane of the ecliptic. The lowliest cadet could recite the tactical reasons. They were less likely to be spotted there, and more likely to detect any ships headed towards them. Any assailant would be disadvantaged by the energy cost of changing orbital planes. The serendipitous result of this place of exile was that
Defiant
, out on patrol, was the first to detect the unexpected fusion flame, and the first to reach what could only be a starship.

But we are too few and too ill-equipped to hold it
.

Anathema though Arblen Ems had become, there were always some in the inner solar system willing—surreptitiously—to take its money. Reports had come to the Foremost from such spies: The Great Clans had also taken note of the artifact’s emergence.

Any of the flotillas now racing outward from the lit worlds could retake the treasure. The advantages given Arblen Ems by spatial position and the fierce rivalries among the converging forces were fleeting. Even if there were no other conclusive result, the amassing of so much firepower would surely achieve the final elimination of Arblen Ems.

Immediate return. The order’s context was a general recall of all clan vessels. The long-feared last stand was upon them, triggered by universal lust for the unexpected interstellar visitor. Even the brief delay while
Defiant
‘s crew loaded scarce metals skirted disobedience.

Mashkith continued his hunt, unsure as ever of his goal. His stalling seemed such a disproportionately petty act of rebelliousness. Questing ever deeper into the ship, he could not help but think: Grandfather dared too much. The Foremost who replaced him dares too little.

And what do I dare?

Aboard
Defiant
, the holds were rapidly filling up. Little time remained here to discover the secrets that still taunted him. Engine room and bridge, dormitories and farms, landing platform and docking bay, brimming cargo holds and endless corridors … what else did he think to explore?

His mind, Mashkith suddenly realized, still refused to grasp the sheer scale of this small world. Whatever hidden thing tugged at his subconscious, it was foolishness to imagine he would just happen upon it. No, some great mystery tantalized him
wherever
he looked. The elusive answer was somehow all around him.

Ah. Heat and light and air all around him maintained habitability for someone. All his crew’s searching had found no one aboard the ship. From where could this someone come?

Having formulated
that
question, Mashkith finally knew where to look.

The lifeboats nestled, logically enough, in scattered niches on the periphery of the ship. Mashkith stood in a lifeboat now. Tendrils of cold vapor coiled above rows of tanks, their inset windows—and the crew that must slumber inside—obscured by layers of frost.

And in that frigid mist hung the ultimate question that only he could see: What would
I
dare? Soon enough, he thought, all will know the answer.

Despite an unfamiliar layout and alien markings, the starship’s airlock controls had been obvious. The unsuspecting sleepers before him would find the airlocks on
Defiant
no less intuitive. It could hardly have been otherwise. Lives depended on how quickly, despite emergency and loss of lighting, such controls could be activated.

Each cryogenic tank bore an array of buttons that was equally unfamiliar to him. Standing before a random tank, Mashkith took only a moment to select a button. This equipment, too, would have an emergency release. Its placement would be prominent.

He hoped not to lose any of these new prisoners finding the
right
button.

Talon held just above the largest key, Mashkith paused. “Alertness mandatory,” he reminded. Armed crewmen from
Defiant
encircled the tank. One by one, firmly grasping their weapons, they netted their readiness.

Mashkith pressed the button….

The abruptly awakened prisoners received a stark choice. They could help Arblen Ems to escape into interstellar space where none could follow, or they could die with the clan defending its prize. Either way, the herd would be sharing the clan’s fate.

To the fearful masses awaiting assault in the clan’s last, failing bases, Mashkith offered, if not salvation, at a minimum years of reprieve. His terms: that he be made Foremost.

Fleeing in anything capable of flight, the clan—the able and the infirm, the children and the adult and the elderly—raced the oncoming navies. Many of the ships completed the trip to the newly named
Victorious
; most of those docked successfully. They receded into the outer darkness where their enemies dare not follow, a gaping puncture in the starship’s hull all that remained of an inexpertly piloted cargo vessel.

Most of Mashkith’s family, including his wife, children, and grandfather, perished aboard that freighter.

Lothwer cleared his throat. “Your move, sir.” He sounded a bit cocky. He likely had noticed Mashkith’s attention wander.

A strong position in b’tok only grew stronger. It manifested itself in the emergence of new opportunities. At the outset of their journey, Mashkith had vowed their trip would end in glory. By three K’vithian years into the long voyage, he knew what a strong position his boldness had seized. He knew he would succeed. And how.

It was all coming to pass as he had foreseen.

Clan members were healthier and stronger than at any time in his memory. Their ships were repaired and modernized with the best of prisoner and human technologies. They held the secret of interstellar travel—the mechanism, if not the physics, was easy to duplicate. Soon they would know how to safely produce and wield antimatter. A new generation of Arblen Ems had come of age during the voyage, steeped in the mythos-in-the-making of a clan made great again.

Mashkith returned his full attention to the present. Lothwer had advanced his second rook in an aggressive attack, in emulation of game seven in the 2084 Grandmasters Tournament on Mars. He had apparently not accessed the post-tournament analyses.

Mashkith moved a knight, away from the usually crucial center of the board but prepositioning it for a now-unstoppable forking attack on queen and king six moves hence. “Mate in seventeen, Lieutenant.”

Lothwer frowned, unaccustomed to thinking that far ahead. Let him remember his fallibility the next time he thought to wager with a crewmate.

The clan was prepared. The humans had grown complacent with the proximity of
Victorious
to their most precious asset. Arblen Ems would never be better positioned for their next move. “Time,” he told his hopefully chastened underling, “for increased attention on the antimatter deal.”

Supernovae and black holes are best studied by gamma-ray observation, and space-based sensors around Sol system maintained a constant vigil for gamma-ray events. T’bck Fwa subscribed to and forwarded home the human astronomers’ raw data. His purchases were far more cost-effective for the Unity than replicating the instrumentation.

Since the earliest hints of a covert antimatter program on Himalia, anything unusual with even a remote association with the Jovian system sooner or later gained his attention. When instruments on three platforms suggested tiny gamma-ray spikes not far off a line-of-sight to Jupiter, that was sufficient to make T’bck Fwa look further. Judging from the open literature, he was the first to examine this particular anomaly.

The instruments were well separated: One orbited Earth, the second orbited Mars, and the third was staked to the surface of an asteroid. Each had recorded a transient gamma-ray anomaly at similar frequencies. If they had all observed the same event, triangulation gave it a position near Jupiter. Each observatory carried an atomic clock with its readout measurements time stamped. Adjusting the time stamps on the anomalous readings for the respective travel times from the triangulated location gave T’bck Fwa a highly precise match.

It
was
one event—an unannounced hydrogen/antihydrogen annihilation incident near Jupiter.

At the end of a long chain of inferences, he came to a final one. No refueling agreement had been announced, but the humans and K’vithians were already, and with great secrecy, experimenting with an interface between their respective antimatter-containment technologies.

How long did he have before the stolen starship and its presumed captive crew were whisked away?

The farms were ailing, exuding the faint but unmistakable scents of illhealth. Traces of erosion had appeared where sickly root systems surrendered topsoil to the irrigation flows. Hives buzzed manically and creeper burrows writhed in civil war, their tiny denizens confused by out-of-balance biochemical markers. Only the newly recharged hydroponics tanks showed signs of recovery.

Each spotted and sere leaf, each fallen bug tore at K’Choi Gwu’s hearts. As though reading her mind, Swee entwined a tentacle with one of hers. Gwu took that to mean: You did what was necessary. Whatever that might have been.

She gave a quick squeeze of thanks. Had anyone ever borne the burden of ka for so long?

They worked slowly through a bluefruit arbor, their pruning and gathering of rotting fruit mainly for show. Her real objective was a remote tertiary processing node that metered out irrigation water in this secluded region of the orchard. As Swee stumbled ostentatiously over an exposed root, tentacles flailing for the benefit of any undiscovered surveillance cameras, she flipped open the cover over a maintenance jack. In an eye blink, she swapped the tiny memory chip for an empty one. The new chip went into a music player in her utility pouch; the cover flopped closed.