Interlude One
Trevor Corcoran leaned back from the Dornaani screen, dismissed yet another prompt asking if he wanted to shift to semi-holographic display, and stared at the block of copy he’d typed. He could have dictated the log entry, of course. Dornaani AI was not just astoundingly accurate at rendering speech as text; it was downright unsettling. It also would have taken Trevor, at most, a third the time he’d spent clacking away at the keyboard the Dornaani had excavated from their almost-forgotten collection of “generationally specific human interface resources.” Which was tactful code for, “backward technologies usable by equally backward hominids from a wide variety of backgrounds and epochs.”
Trevor folded his arms, stared defiantly at the Dornaani commplex. Some tasks should take more time. More thought, more reflection. In that regard, modern human systems actually weren’t any better: for more than a century, speed, convenience, and minimal learning curve had been the desiderata driving computer and software design. It had reached the point that, before the turn of the century, every one of the service branches had added remedial courses to help inductees understand how most devices worked at all. Trevor smirked at the untouched Dornaani work interface: a half-HUD with earphones. No, I will not go gently into that good night.
But even as he celebrated his own, quixotic resolve to resist the rise of the machines, Trevor wasn’t able to completely escape the nagging knowledge that it was the lesser reason he stuck with the keyboard. The greater part was that he was stubborn. Or at least, an unabashed creature of habit. He smiled: Got that trait from Mom.
An unbidden memory of her face and her laugh threatened to burst out of his carefully patrolled emotional vault. He shut them down abruptly, just as he’d soon do to the commplex. She might very well be the last living person from his nuclear family. Reflecting on that made every chore, every duty, every conversation just that much harder. So stay on task. Edit your damn log entry and move on to the next thing.
Poising his hands over the keyboard in readiness to enter corrections, he read:
After leaving the system the Dornaani call Depot (L 1815 5 A, for us), Alnduul kept Olsloov moving with minimal turnaround time between shifts. That rapid pace wasn’t just because we were almost half a year behind Caine and Company (who, according to Alnduul, dubiously dubbed themselves his “Crewe”). That was the carrot, the thing we were running toward. But at Depot, we also started running away from a big stick: the entirety of the Collective. The system’s automated port authority/traffic control computer detected Olsloov’s transponder . . . which should have been five shifts away, back at the edge of CTR space.
Short version: since we were now on damn near everyone’s “most wanted” list, we started riding hard for the border.
At least we made good time. Olsloov has a whopping sixteen light-year shift limit, whereas the ship we’re chasing has just a little over twelve. Both ships have the ability to shift into and out of deep space (i.e. no stellar-size gravity well required for navigation), but Hsontlosh—that’s the bastard we’re trailing—either hasn’t decided to use his, or isn’t aware he’s got one. And lastly, because we were moving ahead of the Collective’s realization that Alnduul was AWOL, we were able to load up on antimatter wherever we stopped. And why not? It’s not as if we’ll ever be going back that way, not unless the powers-that-be in both governments tell us that all is forgiven and we should come home. In re: to which: I’m not holding my breath.
The cumulative effect of our advantages was that, by the time we arrived at system BD+13 778, we’d cut almost fifty days off Hsontlosh’s lead. We were, to use my “Uncle” Richard’s British idiom, feeling rather chuffed. Which is, of course, right when the universe-at-large likes to throw curve balls at you. (Richard would probably call it a “googly.”)
As soon as we re-expressed in that system, Alnduul knew that the nature of our chase had changed. Up until then, we’d been following signals from a tracking fob that he’d given to Caine before everything went to hell in a handbasket. After it was activated, the tracker left a data string in every local commo stream like a trail of bread crumbs.
But there was no bread crumb in BD+13 778; there was a buoy. The kind that a Dornaani ship automatically deploys if it is under attack or detects the imminent likelihood that it might mis-shift. And since there was no debris or sign that any other ship had been present during the eighty-five days since the buoy had been kicked loose from Hsontlosh’s ship, the odds tilted toward a mis-shift.
Richard and I thought it was pretty much a death sentence, but Alnduul disagreed, mostly because we were now just one shift away from 13 Orionis: a system at the very limit of the Ktoran Sphere. He suspected (and he was right) that it would have been wild coincidence for Hsontlosh’s ship to have a catastrophic failure right as he was about to link up with whatever buyer he’d lined up for Caine and his “Crewe.” They’d become extremely valuable political poker ships ever since the Lost Soldiers went missing; too many powers had too much to lose if they ever resurfaced.
Alnduul also pointed to the ship diagnostic that all buoys record when they’re jettisoned. There were no developing maintenance problems, no signs of imminent failure, but the navigation system had been damaged—physically damaged—at almost the same second it was deployed. And there was only one way to physically damage the navigation system without pulling apart bulkheads or hull sections: you had to do some pretty serious violence to the navigator’s console. I suggested that it sounded like everything went sideways during a shootout on the bridge.
Alnduul put on his best professorial demeanor and corrected my choice of words: it was quite likely that everything went sideways because of a shootout on the bridge. Which I had been working up to, but it’s his ship so I just nodded. Which was just as well, because he had even more evidence supporting the distinction he’d made.
Turns out that the buoy also contains a log of any commo events just prior to its deployment. In this case, the only such activity hadn’t come from the ship itself, but from Caine’s tracking fob. Being in the buffer worlds between the Collective and the exile-infested Ktoran Scatters, there was nothing in the system to relay that signal. But, Alnduul added, raising one finger, it also indicated that it’s beacon function was probably not why Caine triggered it; just shortly before the mis-shift, the fob had been used to override a ship’s system.
So yes, it certainly looked as though Caine and Crewe had taken command of the ship. And that certainly appeared to be the cause of the mis-shift. But was there any chance that they had survived?
It took Alnduul and his crew two days of studying whatever quantum-entangled magic they use to detect buoys active in nearby systems. But in the end, that’s just what they found: the faintest hint of a signal. But it was so garbled that its fragmentary data strings couldn’t be trusted. It also didn’t give us a heading any better than “it’s somewhere in this half of the universe.” But one shift would give us signal differentials that, theoretically, would allow us to come up with a reasonably accurate vector along which to plot the course of our subsequent search.
Of course, all that relatively hopeful news came along with a major problem: how to keep replenishing our antimatter stocks. Olsloov has the means to do so. The problem is time, because converting stellar energy into antimatter is not a speedy solution—as every member-state of the Accord knows all too well. Even the Dornaani have had to invest in large, permanent facilities to make that slow process worth the expense and time.
Happily, Dornaani magic does make it faster and easier. After our first shift into the Scatters, I had a ringside seat as they deployed one of their solar collectors. Made of material as thin as spider silk and only a fraction of the mass, it unfolded like the wings of a giant cubist moth. And as it did, Alnduul’s crew kept seeking the buoy signal so they could perform their n-space version of triangulation and show the way ahead.
That was a month and three shifts ago. For a portable, frontier antimatter production system, the Dornaani arrays are nothing short of amazing. But generating enough antimatter to power a shift-drive? It’s still slow: so slow that we’ve had to choose our destinations very carefully. You don’t set up these arrays and get them producing in a few hours. You’re lucky to have them running in a few days. As my Richard put it, when you start making antimatter, you’re “in for a penny, in for a pound.”
So now, it’s mostly wait and watch and finish the most depressing task I’ve ever tackled; deciding which of the Lost Soldiers we’re going to thaw out and drop on the first habitable (and receptive) planet we find. Because almost every day, a new warning light shows up on yet another of their coldcells.
The roster of which and how many are failing is too long to include here (see ref# 12b in the mission log), and yeah, it just feels as though a new light comes on every day. But even if the list isn’t growing quite that fast, the challenge is the same: either we defrost over a hundred of those poor sibs in the next few months, or we’re going to start losing them to malfunctions.
Trevor was reading the last sentence before he realized that he hadn’t made any corrections. Whatever part of his mind he’d hoped would watch for typos had slipped away to study the same mental worry stone he’d been turning over and over for weeks, even in his dreams. It was increasingly likely that the way forward meant charting a course through the most dense clusters in the Scatters. And if most of the green worlds there had already been settled by Ktoran exiles . . . then what?
Trevor sighed, called up the transit projections, scrolled to the bottom of the list: the star beyond which they were almost sure to start losing cold sleepers. It was also the last system they could reach without deploying the solar collectors again. In other words, in every possible way, 55 Tauri was the end of the line. And if things didn’t start looking up, they they’d have to reanimate and consult a few key cold sleepers whose expertise might prove necessary to facilitate fast provisioning.
At least the system looked promising. The fragmentary data string from a pre-Dornaani robotic survey indicated it had multiple refueling opportunities and at least one green world. But if that world was settled . . .
Trevor’s jaw muscles clenched. Please, God or whatever is out there, the Lost Soldiers have already been accused of invading Turkh’saar. Don’t make them live that all over again at 55 Tauri.
* * *
Richard Downing was not surprised at Melissa Sleeman’s reaction to Trevor’s invitation to share her “relevant expertise”: decidedly guarded. But now that she was in the briefing room with them, he realized he’d underestimated the full measure of her wariness. Her posture was that of a cornered animal, and it intensified as she shifted her gaze from Trevor to Richard.
Her eyes became blank, as if venetian blinds were being shuttered just behind her retinas.
“Mr. Downing, did you ask me to meet with you because of the food shortages? Because if you are about to tell me that my husband has to go into—”
“Actually, Melissa,” Trevor interrupted, “I was the one who wanted—needed—you here.”
“So it’s not about the shortages?”
“Not directly,” Downing answered. “We need your scientific expertise on a related matter.”
“So, this isn’t about food rationing?”
“No.” Although that could be coming soon enough. “Right now, we are cautiously optimistic about the next system on our shift plot.”
She frowned. “55 Tauri?” Downing nodded. “Hmm. A little birdie told me that 55 Tauri could end up being our last stop.”
Downing smiled, nodded, and thought, And was that little birdie named Christopher Robin? Fine soldier, but can’t keep a secret from his wife. Of course, there was more virtue in that than not. “Happily, this system has no Ktoran exiles, so Alnduul once again has enough time to produce more antimatter. We will almost certainly generate enough to replace what we’ll use in the shift to 55 Tauri.
“Why ‘almost’ certainly? If we are so safe here, isn’t it up to us how much antimatter we generate?”
“Yes,” Trevor answered, “but every day we spend here, we’re risking that a coldcell will fail completely and one of the Lost Soldiers will die. So as soon as we’ve got enough antimatter to be sure of making at least one shift after 55 Tauri, we’ve got to go there.”
Melissa bit her lip, nodded tightly. “Any more data about it?”
Downing glanced at his data slate. “Alnduul’s team has yet to complete the first week of observation, but the preliminary results are promising. Each of the stars has a world solidly in the habitable zone. However, the stars are also nearing periapsis.
“At the closest approach, the weather—both planetary and stellar—will be unusually turbulent. On the surface of the secondary’s habitable planet, the change in average temperature could be quite marked. That and the probability that its seasonal norms have already been disrupted by the approach of the primary could make it difficult to locate and gather food.”
Trevor tried to add a touch of levity. “So we’ll be arriving during a triple-strength El Niño.”
Melissa raised an eyebrow. “That would be a very mild variation compared to what Mr. Downing’s data suggests.” She frowned. “But you certainly didn’t ask me here to talk about planetary weather or food supplies.”
“You’re right,” admitted Trevor. “Actually, you’re here because of a memo you wrote even before Richard and I joined you at Zeta Tucanae.”
Her frown deepened. “I wrote a lot of memos back then. Mostly updates on what we were learning about the Ktoran coldcells. And the symbiopods.”
“Yes, and in the course of your research, you flagged one Lost Soldier who might be helpful in that regard. Although he wasn’t actually a soldier. He was—”
Sleeman’s eyes opened wide. “Yes. His name was Robert Hampson . . . no, that was an alias. He was a brain specialist, mostly developing new treatment and surgical techniques instead of performing them. His actual name was . . . give me a moment.”
Downing gave her two, then pushed the data slate toward her. “Dr. Edouard Tedders. He was with the last group of Lost Soldiers that the Ktor kidnapped. He was in Mogadishu for two days to assess a brain injury: nephew of a congresswoman. He was being flown to a secure airfield when his helicopter was shot down over the Indian Ocean.”
Sleeman nodded. “I recommended he be reanimated as soon as it was feasible. As both a doctor and a scientist, he was a crucial asset. But given his specialties, he was the only human with us—awake or asleep—who could help me learn more about the Ktor coldcell technology.”
“We agree,” Downing said with a smile. “With your approval, we’ll begin the reanimation process. And I think you’ll find him particularly motivated to unravel the mysteries, and apparent risks, of the symbiopods.”
“Why so?”
“Because he’s in one right now. He should have recovered and finished acclimation at least a few days before we shift to 55 Tauri.”
“And when do we tell him that it’s not just humans on this ship?”
Trevor glanced at Downing, who shrugged. “In due time,” Trevor replied through a long sigh, “in due time.”
* * *
Trevor glanced at the reports Sleeman had placed before her on the table. “A little more light reading on the good doctor?”
“There is nothing ‘light’ about him or his career,” she asserted. “Or his life.”
Trevor nodded. He’d spent less than an hour with Tedder: specifically, the doctor’s first twenty minutes of genuine, memory-forming awareness. “Is he having a hard time adjusting?”
Sleeman shook her head. “Frankly, I’d take some comfort in that. But, comparing his post-revival attitude and interaction scores to those of the Lost Soldiers who were awakened on Turkh’saar, I’d say he’s had the least disorientation or emotional trauma of all.”
Downing nodded slowly. “Is that because of his technological acumen? Less culture shock?”
Trevor almost scoffed at his “uncle’s” understatement. “As the CEO and CTO of a neurosurgical consulting firm called The Cutting Edge, I’d say Dr. Tedders already had one foot in the future.”
Sleeman shrugged. “Well, that’s certainly part of it, but I think it’s also that he’s genuinely excited to be living in the future.”
Trevor stared. “Granted I wasn’t with him long, but he seemed like a pretty genial guy. But what you just said makes him sound, well, a bit like a sociopath. What about family? That’s usually what hits Lost Soldiers the hardest.”
“He didn’t have much.” Sleeman’s voice acquired a hint of melancholy.” He was the only child of older parents. One had already died, the other had just been moved into assisted care.”
Downing looked up. “Why?”
“His father had Alzheimer’s.”
Trevor knew the term but wasn’t sure of the exact definition. “That’s, eh, a form of dementia, isn’t it?”
Melissa nodded. “Edouard—Dr. Tedders married late, also. They wanted to start a family but medical intervention was required. Before it produced any results, she was killed in a car crash. Reading between the lines, I’d say he threw himself into his work until, three months later, he received a call from the classified side of his research career and was off to Somalia.” She shrugged. “I think waking up into a future where he’s already valued may be helping him adjust.”
Downing nodded. “Part fascination, part work therapy, then. Why don’t you bring him in, Doctor Sleeman?”
She returned within the minute with Tedders in tow: a squarely built and quick-eyed man in his fifties. However, he seemed younger; just walking into the room, he exuded a youthful interest in his new surroundings.
Trevor stood, extended his hand. “Dr. Tedders, you may not remember me, but I’m—”
“You called yourself ‘Nephew’; of course I remember.” He smiled at Downing without having any particular reason to do so. “And you were ‘Nuncle.’”
Richard stood, offered his hand as well. “Recognizing us is not a test, Doctor, but if it was, you’d have passed with flying colors. Please, be seated. I hope you’re starting to find your way around our century?”
“Starting,” Tedders allowed, “but there’s a lot of it to get acquainted with. I’ve been driving poor Melissa crazy with all my questions!”
She smiled and shook her head. “No trouble at all. And many of your questions are, well, very refreshing. And evidently whenever I am no longer sufficiently interesting—or alert—Edouard has been ploughing through a bit of history. And a lot of medical journals.”
“Making up for lost time,” Tedders agreed, nodding so vigorously that his shoulders jogged a bit, too. “Besides, it sounds as if you’ve already got some work for me.”
Trevor smiled. Now, that’s real eagerness. Or grief avoidance. Or both. “How much do you know about our situation?”
“Only a little,” Tedders admitted—and then launched into a ten-minute synopsis of where they were from, who they were, why they’d had to flee to their current location, the difficulties of moving swiftly without being detected, and the logistical ramifications of their renegade status. The only thing missing was any reference to the Dornaani as aliens, which had been carefully firewalled from his voracious forays into the databanks.
At the end of his summary, he added a capstone that demonstrated that he already understood exactly why he’d been reanimated. “And that’s why you need to get a better handle on the various coldcell technologies you’re relying upon, and how to predict and cope with the impending failures.”
Trevor saw Downing trying to hide a smile as his nephew nodded and uttered the understatement of the week: “Well, yes, I guess that about sums it up. So, um, where would you start?”
“Well, first I’d want to coordinate with Dr. Sleeman to see if she has pressing needs in any areas. But if I was a completely free agent, I’d go back over reports to look for any indications of post-revival amnesia or what might appear to be mild brain damage.”
Downing was suddenly very interested. “Why?”
“Because if some of those prove to be mistaken diagnoses, they could point to the reason there are so many yellow lights on units that have no evidence of mechanical failure.”
Trevor frowned. “Dr. Franklin suspected it might be the result of software or control failures. So we’d still be getting a warning even though the machinery checked out.”
Tedders nodded. “And that could be one hundred percent correct. But it might also be a warning that the occupant’s memory is in danger of being compromised.”
Downing sat up very straight. “Explain that please, Doctor.”
The doctor spread his hands. “Are you familiar with theta waves?”
Sleeman seemed to be in the act of dredging up old memories. Downing’s blank stare was, Trevor guessed, a match for his own.
“Okay,” said Tedders energetically, “so here’s the short version. Theta waves are, crudely put, how your brain turns experiences into memory. They’re particularly important when you sleep because that’s when your brain takes all the day’s data and, for lack of a better analogy, selectively copies it to your permanent memory.”
“And this relates to coldcell failures . . . how?” Trevor asked.
“Your, uh, Terran coldcells have a separate system for maintaining theta waves. It’s very straightforward and throws very clear warning codes if failure is imminent. But the units made by the, uh—Ktorans? Yes? Well, they’re kind of a puzzle box, but it seems that their theta wave functions are failing at almost three times the rate of our far more basic coldcells.”
“Why?”
“Exactly what I want to find out. But I have a working hypothesis. Given what you’ve told me about the Ktor and why they might have grabbed us Lost Soldiers, I suspect they built in a default kill switch.”
Responding to their horrified looks, Tedders hastened to explicate. “I mean kill the part of the system that maintains the occupant’s theta waves if they lose possession of the coldcell.” He considered. “When you recovered us, did you have to detach the cells from a power plant?”
Sleeman nodded stiffly. “It was inaccessible without major excavation. For which we had neither the tools nor the time.”
The doctor nodded. “Understood. Here’s my guess: the moment you detached the cells from their original power supply, you were also cutting an authorization signal hidden inside that feed.”
Downing had grown slightly pale. “So we started a countdown clock.”
Tedders sighed. “Very possibly so. That would explain why the failure rate is way over the estimated life cycle of the units, which should be way better than ours. And before you ask, I have no idea how long the clocks will run, or if they’re all the same, or what happens when they run out. But since the malfunctions seem to be related to the theta wave maintenance, I think it will have something to do with memories. Anything from compromise or the inability to create new ones, or, well . . . everything is wiped. Clean slate. I suppose even complete shutdown of autonomic functions—heart, liver, you name it—is possible. Once a system has that much access to the control architecture of the brain and nervous system, you can’t rule out anything.”
Tedders looked at the stunned faces surrounding him. “I might be able to learn more about what to expect, and maybe some workarounds, if I could actually look at the units themselves.”
Trevor swallowed. “I think you’ll want to meet our hosts first.”
“You mean this Alnduul fellow I keep hearing about?”
“Yes, that’s the fellow. Come with us. He’s waiting in a different part of the ship.”
Tedders’ answering smile was eager. “Great! I can’t wait to see it all! And meet Alnduul!”
Trevor drew in a deep breath. “Yes, well, I think it might prove a life-changing experience.”