Fleet of Worlds Read online

  “First things first.” Tellingly, Eric did not attribute the expression to Nessus. “We’ve got sensors to distribute.” One by one he dispatched tiny flying sensors to stepping discs throughout the huge GP4 hull. The robots, if anyone was aboard to notice them, resembled flutterwings midway through their nymph stage. For secrecy and power conservation, the robots would report only sporadically, in highly compressed low-power bursts. “All right. Now, let’s look around.”

  Kirsten led them through the ship. Sven alternately muttered and rubbed his hands, declining attempts to draw him out. Eric clutched the motion detector, checking it ever more frequently as they neared the airlock. “Still nothing,” he said. “Of course, Long Pass could be filled with or surrounded by sensors like those we distributed. A motion detector wouldn’t see mobile devices that small.”

  Kirsten thrust her hands into her trouser pockets. “Clearly nothing was watching me during my last visit. If I had been spotted then, someone would have changed the storeroom’s stepping-disc address. We wouldn’t have gotten aboard at all, or we would have materialized inside a locked room with a receive-only disc, or been greeted by guards, or . . .” Her voice faltered. This expedition could have gone badly in so many ways.

  And still might.

  Eric laid the motion detector on the deck, facing the open airlock and catwalk. “If anyone approaches, we’ll know. If the remote sensors spot anyone aboard the main ship, we’ll know. After I reprogram the storeroom stepping disc to require authentication, we’ll be safe from surprise callers.”

  They followed that quick walkthrough with a systematic survey along each corridor and stairwell, and into every room. Long Pass was mostly machinery; there wasn’t that much in habitable volume. Kirsten videotaped everything, narrating as she went. Data crunching would turn those recordings into a detailed 3-D map, complete down to the last closet, cabinet, drawer and cubbyhole. It would be too easy to overlook something vital without such an aid.

  All the while, their teleported sensors found nothing to report. The big ship that enclosed Long Pass was unoccupied. They decided it was safe to explore separately. Eric began in the engine room. Sven began a more detailed examination of cabins and the mostly empty holds. Kirsten headed forward.

  A savory aroma followed her onto the bridge. She tried to ignore the smell. Sven had mentioned planning to reconstitute one of the ancient packaged meals found in what she considered the relax room, but whose door was labeled “Dayroom.” She would bring the sample to Explorer for testing when she traded places with Omar. However inviting the food here smelled, it might have turned poisonous. And its edibility would further prove whose ship this surely had once been.

  Stomach growling, Kirsten inspected the instruments and controls. Their operation should be obvious, she thought. The keyboards had the familiar, inexplicable QWERTY layout. Cryptic icons shimmered in the holo display once she flipped a console’s plainly labeled POWER toggle.

  That was as far as she had gotten.

  One does not randomly push buttons on a starship bridge. The almost familiarity of the controls stymied and frustrated her. Somewhere here were controls for navigation, shipboard status, external sensors—functions Explorer provided, functions any starship must implement. Functions she should recognize.

  Drawers beneath the console ledges offered only dried-out pens, brittle papers covered in doodles and handwritten poetry, and the powdery remains of (she guessed) ancient snacks. What if the whole ship were like this? What if everything useful had been removed for study elsewhere?

  “Eric,” she called. The intercom controls, at least, like those of the synthesizer, were obvious and intuitive. “Have you figured anything out?”

  “Mostly that this won’t be easy,” Eric answered. “We’re hundreds of years distant from the people who built this ship. We’re generations removed, Kirsten.”

  “Have you found any manuals?” she persisted. “Sorry. No.”

  “Thanks anyway.” She released the intercom button. “I need help,” she admitted to herself.

  One of the many enigmatic icons, a cartoon-ish head with somber expression and handlebar mustache, flashed twice. In a comically unctuous voice, the animation said, “You may call me Jeeves. How may I be of service?”

  SVEN AND ERIC had come running. When they talked over each other, Jeeves got confused or didn’t respond. They learned patience. They laughed a lot. Hours passed while they played with the Jeeves program. At some point Eric stepped aside to cook several meals from their packs. They took turns napping, and had to be briefed when they woke.

  After so long a search, so much had finally been revealed—everything, it seemed, except the one important thing: the location of Earth. Numbly, Kirsten tried to absorb it all.

  From the captain’s log: Long Pass’s discovery of and message to the Ice World, proven unambiguously by its ice-covered continental outlines to be NP5 en route to the Fleet.

  From the video archives of shipboard safety systems: the takeover of Long Pass by robots clearly of Citizen design. Robots like those in the hold of the very ship that currently enclosed Long Pass. They had all seen such robots before, toiling alongside Colonists in fields and forests.

  From an entertainment collection, musical recordings both familiar and wondrously fresh. How it must have amused Nessus to claim credit for Ride of the Valkyries!

  From the ship’s manifest: a listing of what, and who, had once been aboard, most notably the embryo banks and hibernation tanks that had given rise to a colony of laborers.

  And the crew whose misfortune it had been to signal icebound NP5? Of their fate, Jeeves could offer no clue.

  Gradually their questions ran slower. When Kirsten checked her watch, twenty-seven standard hours had passed. That long? Only that long?

  Kirsten chewed without tasting something Sven had put in her hand. Part of her was overwhelmed. Part of her marveled at having come so far. Nodding belated thanks for the sandwich, she found herself remembering the football match from which she had so abruptly taken Sven. Girls running and screaming, embracing a game universally discouraged by Citizens.

  Even Citizens didn’t always get their way.

  Kirsten went aft to the engine room, where Eric knelt staring in concentration into an open wiring closet. His new look, a long ponytail with no trace of Citizen-style coiffure, still made her pause, but she liked it. She gave him a long, hard kiss.

  “I’m not complaining,” Eric said, “but what was that about?”

  She smiled. “It’s about taking joy in making progress.”

  * * *

  OMAR SNIFFED APPRECIATIVELY as the dayroom synthesizer filled a foamed plastic bulb for him. Coffee. She doubted he had tasted a normal beverage since the synthed food here on Long Pass checked out.

  Normal? That was, despite her efforts to retrain herself, backward thinking. What this ship dispensed defined the standard. Black bitter stimulant. Bulbs for use in free fall, with a flat bottom because sometimes you had gravity.

  “I’ve asked Eric this already.” Omar paused to squeeze a sip from his coffee bulb. The nonchalance seemed feigned. “When do you feel we’ll be ready to report back to Sabrina?” It went unstated that reporting back meant traveling back.

  Omar had not mentioned Sven. There was no need. A few shifts earlier, every garment, doodle, or dust bunny aboard had fascinated the archivist. Now, with Jeeves’ assistance, Sven had several hundred terabytes of databases to explore. He could not wait to analyze it on familiar computers running familiar applications.

  First the casual pose. Then the ever so carefully worded neutrality of the question. Omar wanted to return.

  Regardless, Omar raised a fair question. What did she think? Were they ready? “We don’t know yet where we, where humans come from. We only have names: Earth, Sol system, human space.”

  “We may never know,” Omar said. “If the coordinates aren’t lost, I would think Sven and the archivist’s lab present our best chanc
e at recovery. He’s copied everything accessible.

  “Soon enough, Explorer will be declared missing—maybe by whoever tried to destroy it, maybe because we’re no longer communicating—but by someone.” Sad eyes added, “My wife and children will think me dead.” He shrugged off the hand she had sympathetically laid over his. “I know. I can’t contact my loved ones even after we’re back in Arcadia. But the sooner we report in . . .”

  And her family, and Eric’s.

  It would be so easy to answer: I can mine the data anywhere. Easy, but was it true? Her gut spasmed. “I don’t think we’re ready, Omar. I’m working as fast as I can.”

  Her own hot bulb of coffee in hand, Kirsten headed for the bridge and more conversation with Jeeves.

  “THAT DATA HAS been corrupted,” Jeeves said. He always sounded apologetic, although he had spoken the same sentence scores of times. Any of a Citizen’s devices, or any Colonist, would have become exasperated.

  Kirsten rubbed her eyes. She was exhausted. How else could she approach this problem? She had asked in countless paraphrases about the location of Earth, Earth’s sun, human settlements, human-settled solar systems, and any near-neighbors of Earth’s sun. “I’d like to see this ship’s course data.”

  “That data has been corrupted.”

  “Show me the stars used for navigational reference.”

  “That data has been corrupted.”

  Sven occupied the other crash couch on the bridge. An intricate, many-colored graphic, relating various recovered data files, she thought, floated over his console. He glowered—at her, Kirsten suspected—but said nothing.

  “Show me the external sensor data for the five years before robots boarded this ship.”

  “That data has—”

  “Kirsten!” Sven snapped. “All location data is gone. You have to accept it.”

  “Why is this one category of data gone?” she asked. “Did Citizens destroy it?”

  “That data has been corrupted,” Jeeves intoned.

  “I don’t begin to have your skills with computers,” Sven said. “Maybe, given enough time, you can recover something. But think: Citizens have held this ship for generations. If the data were here, wouldn’t they have gotten it somehow?” His expression softened. “Don’t you hope the data is inaccessible?”

  She shivered. If primitive chemical rockets made the Gw’oth a potential threat, how would the Concordance have reacted to her starfaring ancestors? How react, that was, beyond their unprovoked seizure of Long Pass? All too easily she imagined the preemptive destruction of human civilization. Trillions of people, in Kirsten’s imagination, on human worlds spread across the sky, until the Citizens came. And after?

  More than ever, she wanted to find Earth. She wanted to know the fate of her people.

  “Jeeves,” she tried again. “I would like to see data about astronomical observations made during the flight.”

  “That data has been corrupted.”

  Sven stood, shaking his head. “I’m getting coffee. What can I get you?”

  “Coffee,” she repeated mechanically. As Sven was leaving, she managed not to ask Jeeves about astronomical objects not examined during the flight. How tired was she? Even if that data weren’t corrupted, the set of unexamined objects must encompass most of the universe.

  And yet . . .

  There was something else to try. She was sure of it. Something she knew. Something she had done before. Something about comparing two mutually exclusive sets.

  By the time Sven returned with her coffee, Kirsten was pondering the fact that Jeeves deemed several terabytes of memory neither inaccessible nor accessible.

  29

  The nondescript stony lump that Julian had dubbed Forward Station waxed slowly in the radar display. In the forward view port, with photomultipliers set to maximum, evidence of habitation emerged: airlock hatches, strings of emergency lights, antenna dishes, the faint impressions of past ship landings. Nessus cautiously lowered Aegis, pressing another dent into the primordial surface.

  Julian Forward netted in from an underground laboratory. “Welcome back, Nessus.”

  “Thank you, Julian. Are we alone?”

  Forward’s nostrils flared. “Nessus, I told you we would be alone, just as I’ve promised not to tell anyone about you.”

  Dismounting his padded bench, Nessus stretched necks and legs. “This must be a short visit, Julian. I would like to get directly to your progress report.”

  “Come in, and we’ll get started,” Forward said.

  “This will go faster if I stay aboard.” Had Nessus not worked closely with Colonists, he might not have recognized that rigid pose. Forward was offended—and strong enough to snap Nessus like a twig. Nessus hoped the Jinxian never learned how his research grant got canceled.

  Colonists. Nessus did not want to think of them now. “Julian, your status?”

  Forward never needed much encouragement to discuss his work. As always, the nuances surpassed Nessus’ understanding, so he made noncommittal answers whenever a response seemed expected. He recorded everything for the experts on Hearth.

  Still, the broad outlines were plain enough. More experiments: some successful, as many not. Imploding a stasis field was hard. So was maintaining symmetry as the field collapsed. Even harder was ascertaining what occurred, or failed to occur, within. Time stood still inside, within nanoseconds of the stasis field’s activation. Thereafter, nothing but the mass within could be measured from outside.

  “I’d make faster progress with proper equipment.” Forward crossed his arms across his chest.

  Ah. Nessus finally understood Julian’s attitude. Freighters seldom called at Forward Station, deep within the Oort Cloud. A supply ship had recently come and gone—without the bulky, custom-built gravity meters Julian had ordered. They, together with more mundane cargo items, had been displaced, at Nessus’ intervention, to make room for the merchandise from Miguel. “I apologize, Julian, but I need those packages. Are they ready for loading?”

  Station cameras followed Forward down a dimly lit corridor into a cavernous storage space. He gestured at stacks of crates. Shimmering holograms showed the seals remained intact. “What’s in these? Rocks?”

  “They don’t concern the project, Julian.”

  “They do when they delay critical instrumentation that I—”

  “Julian, please.” Unseen behind his avatar, Nessus plucked at his mane, resisting the urge to remind Julian who worked for whom. He dare not demotivate his native expert, especially just as it became necessary to leave the human unsupervised. “A time-sensitive matter has arisen. I leave immediately, and those crates must go with me.”

  Julian leaned against a crate, eyes narrowed in calculation. “When will you be back?”

  A few months, at least, considering merely the round-trip transit time—assuming he came back. Nessus was not about to provide even that slight hint to the location of the Fleet. “To be determined, but we can keep in touch by hyperwave radio.” And via repeater buoys ejected along the way to disguise Aegis’s path.

  Nessus also answered as best he could the unasked question: Would the project continue? “Funds already provided should last for a while. Your priority remains the prototyping of a neutronium generator.”

  “And do you expect to return before the money runs out?”

  “To be determined,” Nessus repeated. “I’ll release other funds, if necessary. Can we load while we talk?”

  “Do you expect to return?” As he spoke, Forward casually set the first crate into a transfer booth. Nessus got the impression Julian would be happiest if the funds and knowledge transfer continued without the oversight.

  The box was practically weightless here, but microgravity had no effect on inertial mass. What Forward shifted effortlessly, Nessus struggled to lift off a stepping disc. Box by box, deflecting queries as he labored, Nessus moved the cargo by floater into Aegis’ main hold. The overflow filled the relax room and several corrid
ors.

  Would he return? Nessus honestly did not know. If he did, he would bring a proper neutronium generator. There would be no further need for Forward’s services.

  Clandestine Directorate’s latest message raised more questions than it answered. Explorer was missing, its crew unaccounted for. Nessus was recalled immediately, by implication to scout ahead of the Fleet.

  Nessus launched as soon as he had secured the shipment. The sooner Aegis reached the Fleet, the sooner Nike would tell him the nature of the emergency.

  And the sooner he might know what had happened to three friends.

  30

  Explorer’s relax room, its exercise equipment and furniture temporarily crammed into cabins, barely and uncomfortably accommodated the gathering. Considerations more basic than comfort had determined the meeting location. They dared not be overheard. If heard, they must be behind an impregnable hull.

  Sweat trickled down Kirsten’s forehead as the ventilators ran full out trying to cool the overcrowded room. Elsewhere heaters ran, as the frigid ocean depths sucked the warmth from a starship submerged beneath NP4’s cold sea.

  Sabrina Gomez-Vanderhoff stood in the doorway. “Let’s begin,” the governor said. “I don’t see it getting any comfier in here.”

  No one had met everyone, so they circled the room doing quick introductions. Sabrina. The three crew. Sven. Aaron Tremonti-Lewis: minister of public safety. Lacey Chung-Philips, short and brunette, in the drab garb of widowhood: the economics minister. Lacey peered about the relax room, craning to see into the corridor, as though aboard a spaceship for the first time.

  With a nod, Sabrina signaled Sven to begin. He projected a hologram. A spherical spaceship, backed by a storm-wracked rim of NP5, now glowed in the center of the room. “Eric, Kirsten, Omar, and I recently spent several days aboard this vessel. You probably associate ships like this with grain transport. Not in this instance.” The picture changed into a panoramic view of Long Pass. “This is inside.”