The Greatship (21 page)

The Scypha built spaceships much as they built themselves:  Mechanical embryos were generated, each containing the guiding principles used by every ship in their enormous fleet.  But the growth of each vessel was a nonlinear, wildly unpredictable business.  A hundred identical embryos could be instructed to form slow freighters of a specific size, yet no two vessels ended up with identical schematics.  To the human engineer, that system was no system, and the results were both astonishing and terrifying.  Aasleen would be the first to admit that Scypha machinery was adaptive, tough and reasonably efficient.  If necessary, their vessels could heal most damage with the resources on hand, and should one of their freighters need to update its shape and job, the transformation took remarkably little time.  But no pair of freighters could reliably exchange components.  Hull shapes and engine designs were full of quirks and one-of-a-kind features.  And mistakes were inevitable—catastrophic failures in design waiting for that ripe wrong moment to arrive—and that was a grim possibility that Aasleen could never, ever accept.

On the other hand, human ships were standardized and tenaciously, even dangerously reliable.

Rococo had no expertise as an engineer or pilot.  Yet he had been able to learn enough about human-built shuttles to steal one of them, and without much trouble, he crippled the three sister shuttles remaining behind in the Peregrine’s dock.

“How long for repairs,” Hazz had asked.

“Twenty-three hours,” was Aasleen’s best guess.  “That’s for bringing all three ships back on line and refueling them, and that’s assuming our colleague didn’t sabotage their AI managers, too.  Because if that’s the case, it’s going to take time to discover where and how, and then it could be three days, or four, until we can launch even one shuttle.”

A captain’s poise obscured what had to be a terrible rage.  Hazz nodded and said nothing, considering the situation.

It was the chief diplomat who couldn’t contain her emotions.  “Your brother,” she said, the two words sounding like the most terrible curse.  “Where is he going?  What in hell is he planning?”  A young-faced woman named Krill, she appeared to be little more than a child, yet she was older than anyone else present.  Thousands of careful years had been invested in a career that looked ready to shatter.  “If we can’t catch your brother soon, then we’ll have to tell the Scypha and let them corral him for us.”

“If they can manage that,” Aasleen said.

Krill grimaced and looked at their captain.

Hazz understood the situation clearly.  But he thought it best to let Aasleen explain.

“Your subordinate,” she began, staring at the diplomat’s smoke-colored eyes.  “You’re your diplomat just took our best shuttle.  It is exactly the same as these other three, except it has a secondary hull that can be reconfigured.  I designed that hull, under direct orders from you, madam.  We were planning for contingencies, and you suggested that we have at least one shuttle that could look rather like a Scypha ship.  ‘Just in case,’ you said.  Madam.  ‘In case our hosts aren’t as friendly or forthcoming as they should be.  It would help if we could move among them, unseen.’”

The blood drained from the young face.  Then a sorry old voice dribbled out.  “Now I really don’t want to tell the Scypha.”

“Are there choices?” Aasleen asked.

“None,” Hazz said.  Then with a crisp voice, he instructed the ranking diplomat, “Confess everything we know, and everything we can reasonably guess.  No secrets here.  Do you understand me?  But make certain our man wears the majority of the blame.”

* * *

For twenty-three hours, Aasleen went about her business, overseeing repairs and managing one delicious fifteen-minute nap.  She also listened to every rumor and examined the official updates for anything that might prove enlightening, and several times, she caught glimpses of the resident Scyphas.  For nearly a year now, an alien delegation had been living onboard the Olympus Peregrine.  They were high-ranking members of a government council that seemed to wield considerable power.  For reasons of civility or simple functionality, they had grown bodies not unlike the human form—bipeds with single heads and single mouths, a pair of hemispherical eyes made from calcite crystals.  They usually kept to their own little portion of the ship, which made it unnerving to see them drifting through the dock, one by one, glassy eyes staring at the broken shuttles and the AIs that were repairing them, and in particular, studying the chief engineer who was trying to do her job while ignoring all the damned rumors and briefings and official declarations that kept finding their way to her.

In the end, it was determined that Rococo hadn’t damaged the AI managers.  But that didn’t particularly matter.  With a full day’s jump on ships that were no faster than his, he had already won every likely race.

Other answers were needed.  Aasleen was working on contingencies when Hazz called her to his quarters.  By then the rumors were running in the same direction, but she ignored them.  Aasleen entered the captain’s meeting room with three different plans ready to offer.  Even when she saw the entire Scypha delegation drifting around the central table, she refused to accept the obvious explanation.  Through a nexus, she fed her captain the latest update of the repairs.  Then she told him and Krill, “I think we can see through his camouflage.  And if we find him, we’ll use our own com-laser to cripple his shuttle, neat and easy.”

Hazz thanked her on a private nexus.  But the latest stories proved generally correct.  Speaking for humanity and the aliens, Krill said, “Everyone is outraged by what your brother has done,” she told Aasleen.  “We are outraged and appalled.  Stealing the shuttle is a minor evil.  The Scypha believe, and now we concur, that Rococo has been in secret contact with one or more of the nonScypha lineages.  For what purpose, we do not yet know.  But he has acted against every order that I have given and every code that our captain has set down as law.  And since he is ours—a body that belongs to our great lineage—we must send one of our own into the hunt.  Because, as our hosts make plain, that is what justice demands.”

Aasleen glanced at the bright-eyed aliens, then at Hazz.

Her captain spoke.  “I’ve considered every crew member for this assignment.  We’ve had a few volunteers drift forward, which has been gratifying, but there isn’t much doubt about who is the best qualified.  Is there, Aasleen?”

Shaking her head, she admitted, “No, there probably isn’t.”

Then she mentioned the most obvious difficulty.  “But that leaves the problem of finding a suitable ship for me, since we don’t seem to have any craft that can actually catch him.”

A new voice emerged, a little too loud, utterly precise.  “A fully-loaded deuterium freighter is soon to pass.  Within a thousand kilometers of this place, it will pass.”  The speaker was a smallish biped with a yellowish-green skin.  Regardless of their body form, the Scypha retained a photosynthetic surface.  It was a tradition and a consequence of their complex genetics:  Under the proper circumstances, any one of these creatures could collapse into a trillion cells, and from those anonymous pieces, an entire jungle of plant-like organisms would spring forth.

“The freighter is changing its nature now,” the Scypha promised.  “The ion-drive is being replaced by three fusion engines, and its body is creating a small but comfortable cabin for its guest.  For you.”

“Am I the pilot?” she asked.

“No,” Hazz replied, fully expecting that question.

Then the human diplomat pointed a stiff finger at Aasleen.  “You’ll go where you need to go, particularly if your brother manages to reach places where our good hosts cannot intrude.”

Chaos was the implication.

“But about my brother,” Aasleen began.  Then she hesitated, wondering if she should risk offering her thoughts.

“A creature of your blood,” said the ranking Scypha.

“Except I don’t know my blood particularly well,” Aasleen said.  And just to be certain that everyone understood, she quickly explained the histories of their unshared lives.

“But he is of your immediate line,” the creature insisted.  Then the alien mouth attempted a smile, and it said to her and to every human, “You know him exceptionally well, or you know nothing at all.”

 * * *

Aasleen made herself ready for the mission, packing a few belongings in a field kit while studying grim orders in detail.  As soon as she was ready, she would ride one of the newly repaired shuttles out to an empty point in space where it would rendezvous with the promised freighter/hunter ship.  The last word was that Rococo had vanished completely.  But now the Scypha were actively searching for him, using tricks that Aasleen had surrendered willingly, and there was no way that he could remain hidden much longer.

Only an idiot would believe he could escape this sort of attention.

But Rococo was not an idiot, which led her mind to travel in new, equally painful courses.

Obviously, the charmer had more tricks waiting.

“And I’ll have to be ready for them,” she muttered to herself, leaving her quarters with her kit in tow.

A single Scypha was drifting in the wide hallway outside her door.  It was wearing a loose-fitting gown and gecko shoes and the same yellow-green flesh that all of them cherished.  But it was definitely not the delegate that had spoken at the meeting.  Its voice was identical, but the body had more height and many more ribs, and the arms had extra joints for no sensible reason.

That familiar voice said, “Listen to me.”

Aasleen touched the floor with her own shoes, killing her momentum.

“About us, what you know is not enough.”

She couldn’t agree more.  “I’m a tool-bearing tool.  Most my friends are machines.  Even human beings are usually too complicated for me.”

But that wasn’t apparently the creature’s point.  Its face was twisted around a squarish skull and the lidless calcite eyes absorbed every photon, giving it the nearly perfect vision that the Earth surrendered when the trilobites went extinct.  After a long, thoughtful silence, it asked Aasleen, “Which is more problematic, the shape of the body or the shape of the mind?”

She hesitated.

“If I look like no one else, how can one trillion minds think the same ways as any single mind does?”

And then that very peculiar creature turned its back on her, and on gecko toes, practically ran away.

The engines were firing again, this time killing some portion of their terrific momentum.  Aasleen was strapped into her crash chair, a thousand invisible hands pressing down.  On her orders, the bioglass walls had been left as transparent as gin, and when she wasn’t studying the Scypha and their long history, she gazed out at the graceless, doomed ship.  Its fuel tanks were black cylinders mostly drained of their precious deuterium, and strung between them was a maze of pipes and pumps constructed from diamond and other soft materials.  Three reaction chambers were woven from a low-grade hyperfiber, each chamber barely restraining the tiny sun burning inside.  The newly constructed heat shield was vast and insubstantial—a stubborn cloud of carbon soot braced with nanowhiskers.  Staring beyond the engines, Aasleen searched for Chaos, but the world was still hiding beyond the plasma plumes.  Only between the black fuel tanks could she make out the blackness of empty space.  Periodically the Scypha sun would peek in at her, filling the cabin with a blinding light, and sometimes she would see its sister star and the lone silver speck beside it—the giant jovian world maintaining a loyal distance.  And the Ice Ring was always visible somewhere, appearing as smoky bands of glowing greenish haze.  Millions of tiny worlds were moving, rich with life, linked to each other by com-lasers and trade lanes, by leaked air and lost water, by culture and eternal genetics.  For tens of thousands of years, the Scypha had ruled a gigantic realm.  Yet they never built any kind of starship or sent even one asteroid drifting off into the interstellar wilderness.  And there was absolutely no evidence that they ever, even on the tiniest scale, attempted to colonize the jovian’s empty moons.

At least two ships were on a rendezvous course with Aasleen.  One of the human shuttles had been given permission to slowly approach Chaos, while a swift Scypha drone was charging straight toward her, nothing onboard but Rococo’s left-behind satchel.

If she had the satchel in her hands now, she could crack its seals and study its contents, and more important, that conundrum would give her the excuse to do something other than other people’s nonsense and conjecture.

But there were no excuses.  With one nexus, Aasleen reached deep into her data vault, picking random studies and learned papers, teaching herself a little more about the Scyphas and their home world.  Yet experts were far from perfect.  Even the exobiologists agreed on little but their own ignorance.  And despite weeks of reading and contemplation, Aasleen was still barely a novice who could follow maybe half of any text, asking little questions when they occurred to her—clumsy questions answered easily by the vault’s AI, or countered with a simple, “That is not known,” response.

She was misreading an account about Scypha politics when Hazz appeared to her mind’s eye.

“It’s almost certain now,” the message began.  “The ship that grabbed up Rococo has been traced back to the Iron Ring.  That’s where it first appeared.  It was pretending to be a drone bringing up a load of refined metals.  It didn’t change its shape or programming until he had crash-landed on the asteroid.  A few hours ago that new ship touched down on Chaos.  On the eastern shore of the central ocean, we’re sure.  Our telescopes saw it smack into the atmosphere, and our hosts are reporting the same observation.”  He paused for a moment.  “But I don’t need to remind you that our esteemed colleague might not have been onboard.”

Inside a hyperfiber lifesuit, the human body could drop almost anywhere and recover.  Its descent would look like a meteorite, and since thousands of little impacts occurred every minute, there was no way to be certain about Rococo’s destination.

“But at least you can pick up a trail there,” Hazz continued.  “Follow him as best you can.  Our hosts have assured us that all of the local lineages will be helpful.  Or at least, they will not get in your way.”

She sighed, barely relieved.

“And maybe there’s some more luck coming,” Hazz said.  “As it happens, the dominant local lineage is an ally to the Scypha.  At least as much of an ally as you’re going to find…”

The man’s face said more than any words.  Hazz looked worried, suspicious and only grudgingly hopeful.  It was an expression that an alien probably couldn’t read—even if the encryptions and other seals were broken.

“The Dun,” he said.

A thousand entries in her data vault began to glow with a soft pink light.

“They’re closely related to the Scypha lineage.  At least that’s what our biologists claim.”

Hazz paused once again, pretending to gather his thoughts.  But he knew exactly what he wanted to say.  Quietly, with genuine warmth, he told Aasleen, “I am sorry.  If I could have found a better candidate, you would have stayed here with me.  This isn’t your profession, and these are awful circumstances, and I won’t remind you again about the time factors involved.”

Successful or otherwise, their mission had to end in just a few weeks.  Otherwise it would be difficult for their starship, even with healthy engines and full tanks of metallic hydrogen, to catch up to the Great Ship.

Hazz shook his head angrily.  “It does seem obvious.  For whatever reason, Rococo is trying to ruin everything.”

Aasleen nodded.

Hazz pushed a hand through his kinky hair.  “This isn’t your normal work, but this isn’t a job for diplomats.  Or biologists.  Or anyone else who happens to be under my command.”

In reflex, Aasleen reached along her nexus, taking another quick inventory of the traveling kit lying beneath her crash chair.

“None of this is fair,” said Hazz.  “But Rococo has entered a place where he isn’t allowed, and you’re the best hope we have to solve this ugly conundrum.”

The kit was filled with exactly the types of devices that a talented engineer would want in reach, including a powerful plasma torch that could chisel through hyperfiber, or if necessary, boil the brains of one lucky man.

“Good hunting,” the captain said to his assassin.

Then he vanished, and Aasleen purged the message while leaving the Dun files highlighted.  And again, she began skimming random texts, reading those parts that seemed most important, asking questions when they occurred to her, and swallowing every urge to scream or sob, or worse of all, just give up the fight and fall back to sleep.