Fleet of Worlds Read online

  He spoke. “I am the navigator of starship Long Pass. I have a story to tell.

  “My name is Diego MacMillan.”

  35

  Nike plunged into the murmuring throng that filled a randomly selected outdoor mall. Vesta struggled to keep pace. Sunlight panels shone from arcologies all around. Jets of water shot high into the air from a fountain not otherwise visible through the crowd, the spray cool on Nike’s hide. Herd scent embraced him.

  “Excellency,” Vesta wheezed. “Please wait.”

  Poor Vesta could not understand the fleeting nature of this moment. Soon, there would be no more opportunity to mingle with the crowd, at least not for Nike.

  Voices warbled and chanted, crooned and trilled. The main topic of conversation, today as ever since the recent announcement, was the prospective unity government. The harmonies: acceptance, trust, concurrence. The every-day-fewer discordances: doubt, anxiety, resignation.

  Experimentalism obsolescent. Exhilaration and fatalism. Consensus emergent. “Excellency,” Vesta huffed. “This new government will happen. These harmonies cannot be denied. Accord is crystallizing.” His voice quavered with the undertunes that, with no answer expected, asked, “Why?”

  “Do not worry.” Nike’s undertunes rang with confidence. “This partnership cannot last. We do not live at the end to history.”

  For I am making history.

  The Colonist rebels must have grown complacent sharing Preserver with Citizens. Trusted guards from Clandestine Directorate were in place aboard Preserver, in the guise of technicians. All the robots were refueled, fittingly the same robots that first took over the ramscoop built by Sol’s wild humans.

  Vesta finally caught up. He lowered his voices questioningly. “I do not understand.”

  “Patience, my friend.” Nike swerved to brush flanks. “All will be well.”

  The picture grew ever sharper in Nike’s mind’s eye. All four Colonists would be taken prisoner aboard Preserver. Explorer, docked alongside Preserver, was harmless even if the prisoners never revealed the stepping-disc codes needed to reclaim it. Noisy but ultimately impotent furor among the Colonist rulers on Arcadia. Let the Colonists protest about the secret of Long Pass so long denied them—the deeper truths that might bring that unrest to a boil remained hidden.

  Soon Eos would be proven wrong. Soon Eos would be proven unfit and unworthy to lead the Experimentalists. And soon a new party Consensus must turn to the one who had stopped a crisis here in the heart of the Fleet.

  And, if public disappointment raged loud enough? Might the time be ripe even for a new Hindmost?

  Very soon now . . .

  36

  “I am the navigator of the starship Long Pass. I have a story to tell. My name is Diego MacMillan.”

  Omar, Sven, Eric, and Kirsten hugged the walls of Explorer’s relax room. The holo recording shimmered at the center of the room, projected from a copy downloaded into Kirsten’s pocket computer. The message Diego had so elaborately safeguarded could be meant only for Colonist eyes and ears.

  “I speak human to human, ancestor to descendant. Despite everything that has gone wrong, I retain hope humans will find this message. I had to hide the key in plain sight, trusting my ability to make the clues meaningful only to humans.

  “And yet . . .” Diego scowled. “I cannot depend on that. If our descendants are viewing this, I know how you must yearn for the location of your home, the planet Earth. To leave you that information would risk revealing it to the Citizens and leading these murderers to Earth itself. That I will not do.”

  Eric pounded the wall. Sven and Omar exchanged looks of frustration. Kirsten cursed. No matter that she respected Diego’s reasoning: The road could not end here. It must not. She couldn’t bear that.

  Diego’s scowl quickly passed. “On our way to settle a new home—New Terra, we agreed to name it—we encountered something amazing. Something awe-inspiring. We found a world traveling between stars. My observations suggested a steady acceleration for years. Reasoning that intelligence must be moving the Ice World, we signaled it by comm laser.

  “Earth is a peaceful place, at least in my day. We believed that peace and prosperity arise naturally with advanced technology. We never considered that the knowledge to move worlds might come without wisdom. None of us, that is, except Jaime.”

  A lovely blonde woman appeared, a holo within a holo. “This is Jaime, my wife,” Diego continued, his voice become ineffably sad. “You’ll hear more about Jaime, and why she does not take part in this journal. She is the ship’s doctor. Barbara is our captain, Sayeed our engineer.

  “When we found the Ice World, Jaime dared to wonder: ‘What if the aliens aren’t friendly?’ And because she worried, and because I love her, I took the one precaution I could. I prepared a computer virus that would obliterate all astronomical and astrogational data.”

  Kirsten slumped further. The way Diego had hidden this journal was brilliant—in ways, a kindred spirit. She could not imagine recovering a secret he had intentionally expunged from the ramscoop’s records.

  “We knew how long our signal would take to reach the Ice World. We even threw a party when the planet continued on its extrapolated course long enough to receive our message. Our physics makes no allowance for faster-than-light communication or travel. We expected a long wait for a response.

  “How naïve we were!

  “Within hours of our celebration, a ship arrived, a whale of a ship, large enough to swallow us. Faster-than-light drive, obviously. Much faster. And so began our slavery to the Concordance.” Diego smiled wickedly. “But not before I released the virus.”

  Whale was clear enough from context: something big. “Slavery?” Omar asked. “Anyone know that word?”

  “Human beings defined and used as property,” Jeeves said. The notion didn’t bother him.

  The definition and its accompanying shock of recognition further blackened Kirsten’s mood. She and all of her kind—too manipulated even to realize the depths to which they had sunk.

  Wistfully, Diego admired the image of his wife. “We had shown we could track the Ice World, whose course pointed toward their home. Toward Hearth. We were attacked lest we reveal Hearth’s location distantly orbiting a red-giant star. And so we were taken to the Fleet of Worlds, the secret place, the place from which, they tell me, we may never leave.

  “There our nightmare became far worse.

  “Long Pass carried more than ten thousand passengers, mostly frozen embryos. Our masters say their Concordance took pity, that they could not let so many perish. A few Citizens admit—but only to us, the few forever trapped on board—that they intend to turn our helpless passengers into a slave race. I believe they’re at least being honest.” Tears glimmered in his eyes (and Kirsten felt stinging in her own). “Two of those little ones are Jaime’s and mine.

  “The Citizens removed our onboard hibernation tanks to the world they call Nature Preserve Three. They lied to those they awakened about a derelict found adrift. Even so, most people had their doubts. When Citizens encouraged them to start their planned colony, the women resisted immediate implantation with embryos.

  “Long Pass also carried embryos of mammals, cows and sheep and such, we meant to introduce on New Terra. Of course we had artificial placentas for those animal embryos. The Citizens were determined to have their colony. They experimented with implanting human embryos into artificial animal placentas. They ‘refused to accept our voluntary extinction.’ ”

  Kirsten squeezed Eric’s hand. He had trembled since the reference to NP3.

  “There were spontaneous abortions, horrific birth defects, and developmental problems.” Remembered tragedies brought Diego to an eye-blinking halt. “To our masters, those were ‘experiments.’ To us . . . each was someone’s child. Several women agreed to be surrogate mothers to stop the ‘experiments.’

  “Following a few successful pregnancies, our masters demanded that all women be surrogates. None
would. The Citizens brainwiped a few. The rest submitted. Citizens saw nothing wrong with men alone rearing the babies, if it came to that. My guess is that Citizen females aren’t sentient. The few men who rebelled—ran amok—were reunited with the four crew still imprisoned on this ship. Us. It’s from them that I know the NP3 part of this sad history.

  “Then one day, Jaime and Barbara were taken.” Diego trembled with loss and rage. “Someone decided their uteruses offered more value than their minds. I know they couldn’t be allowed to talk about the attack on Long Pass to the uninformed adults on NP3. They must have been brainwiped before joining the colony.”

  Diego got his voice under control. “And the men still aboard this ship? We counsel our masters how to structure a human society. We try through our advice to alleviate a bit of the suffering. We’re trying to reduce forced pregnancies, especially by brain wiping. All the men insist that the mother’s active role in child rearing is critical. Two centuries of gender equality is a small sacrifice to save women’s minds.

  “We do what else we can. Sometimes that’s in the vocabulary and concepts we try to retain in the sanitized English taught to the children. Sometimes it’s undoing the effects of Citizen mistakes.” He smiled, almost despite himself. “Citizens are hardly beyond error. They wear no clothing, so they considered Colonist clothing a waste of resources. They learned quickly enough that nudity does not go with their disapproval of birth control and their hopes of controlling the bloodlines.”

  The smile faded. “I fear they suspect our indirect interference. We’ve been told of a new colony, this one on NP4, started with only children under Citizens’ supervision.

  “All that remains for me is hope for the children. If you viewing this recording are like me, are human, know this: You descend from an accomplished people. We settled our whole solar system. We planted colonies, peacefully, on the worlds of other suns.” Diego swallowed hard. “I wish I could give you the way home. Earth is a beautiful world.”

  “And if you viewing this recording are Citizens, I wish you go straight to hell.”

  37

  Beneath the watchful eyes of Zeus, Nike decided: It is time.

  He reached Nessus in his cabin aboard Preserver, the moment too auspicious to mind the nearly ten-second round-trip delay. “Nessus, the Directorate will soon release an urgent communiqué. I wanted you to hear about it first from me.

  “It announces the seizure by renegade Colonists of a Fleet facility in orbit around NP5. Our self-sacrificing crew, aboard to monitor eco-forming progress, were taken hostage, but a few”—he kept speaking over Nessus’ protest, finally arriving after a few seconds at light speed—“a few hostages escaped. They radioed a report to authorities and will attempt to reassert control. Clandestine Directorate has surrounded the facility with ships, so that those responsible cannot escape.”

  “Nike.” Nessus waited to be sure it was his turn to talk. “Nike, we agreed to the small Colonist presence aboard. The technicians are not hostages—although I suppose neither are they merely technicians. How can you call the Colonist presence a seizure?”

  “How can you not understand?” Nike demanded. “Promises we made to the Colonists we made under duress. We owe them nothing. Our paramount duty is recovery of Explorer, or at least its removal from Colonist control.”

  The comm channel fell silent for much longer than light-speed delay could explain. Pawing the deck, Nessus finally asked, “And when the Colonial government protests?”

  “Who will believe them when Long Pass no longer exists?” With a graceful wave of the neck, Nike dismissed the certain response before it could arrive. “We have learned by now everything that that primitive spacecraft has to tell. It is only a memento, and we have surely seen that keeping it is an unnecessary risk.”

  Nessus shuffled in his cabin, too confined to pace. “And the four Colonists? I consider them friends.”

  “I am not cruel,” Nike said. The questions began to irritate him. A budding relationship did not excuse the implied criticism. “They will be taken to the NP3 compound.” If they survive the takeover, Nike admitted to himself.

  With a shiver, Nessus got his feelings under control. “I understand, Nike. I would not want to get in the way inadvertently. Can you tell me exactly what will happen when?”

  Relieved by the change in attitude, Nike did.

  NESSUS STEPPED TO one of Preserver’s empty cargo holds. There he circled and circled, amid the clop-clop-clopping echoes of his hooves. Music skirled and resonated as Nessus muttered to himself. It sounded like a small herd in here.

  Were the Colonists a threat to the Fleet or merely an embarrassment to the government? Or were they—and he—puppets in some play he did not understand?

  He could say nothing—but silence would betray his friends. He could warn them—but of what, exactly, and how much? Would he be betraying Nike?

  Nessus set aside the troubling question he had no time now to confront: Could he love one so deceitful and manipulative?

  Nessus tugged at his mane. So many questions! All he knew for certain was that Nike had lied to him. As he had lied, on many an occasion, to his crew.

  The assault was imminent. This impotent agonizing would soon become a decision. A decision with likely outcomes Nessus did not believe he could live with.

  He stepped back to his cabin. The surveillance system showed no Colonists aboard Preserver. On Explorer, then. He called Kirsten’s communicator. Nothing.

  Finally, she answered, looking wary. “Yes, Nessus?”

  Why wary, he wondered. Could she possibly know? “I need to speak with you four. Where are you?”

  “We’re busy right now,” Kirsten said. “Can this wait?”

  Nessus straightened, wondering if the body language would make any difference to Colonists, especially skeptical ones. His conscience demanded he try. He had to convince them. “Go to a secure channel.” Her image dissolved to kaleidoscopic writhing, then reformed. “Kirsten, we’ve been betrayed. If you return to Preserver, you will be arrested soon. Explorer is completely boxed in by other ships, so you cannot escape that way.

  “If we act immediately, I think I can sneak you back to NP4 aboard Aegis.”

  “ERIC, COME ON,” Kirsten shouted. “What are you doing, anyway?”

  “Almost done,” Eric said, his face scrunched in concentration, his fingers flying over a bridge console. “I don’t have time to explain.” Eric rapped the console. “Done.”

  They ran to Explorer’s relax room and stepped through to the dayroom aboard Long Pass.

  Sven and Omar had stepped ahead to Long Pass to admit Nessus through its airlock. The stepping disc aboard the ramscoop remained secured with codes they were loath to share with any Citizen. Nessus, looking more unkempt than usual, opened his communicator. “Colonist translation mode, on. You know Nike. Now watch and listen.”

  Kirsten steadied herself against a wall. “Nessus, how can we trust you? You’ve lied to us before. You’ve withheld information from us. Maybe the trap is aboard Aegis.”

  Nessus plucked at his mane. “You are wise to doubt me. You are wise to doubt any of us. If this is a ruse, I am as much a dupe as you. You have been restoring this ship. Can it receive vid broadcasts?”

  “I’ll go to the bridge,” Eric said. “What should I look for?”

  “News from Hearth. I would hope an interstellar receiver can receive leakage from local transmissions.”

  Eric left. Minutes later, full-textured warbling burst from the intercom. Nessus’ communicator translated.

  Hostage crisis. Government crisis. Disgrace of the not-quite-formed unity government. The nearly converged Consensus, dissolved and condemned. Swelling clamor for Nike and his Permanent Emergency faction.

  Did she trust Nessus’ translator?

  Eric shared her doubts. “I’m switching to an independent translation.”

  “Resources under the authority of Clandestine Directorate expect to recapture the facility
soon,” boomed Jeeves. And in lower tones, “I was taught to translate over the years.”

  “We must hurry,” Nessus insisted. “This broadcast is real. The assault will be real. You will be attacked by robots such as attacked Long Pass long ago.”

  The translated broadcast cut off. “Nessus is right, at least about that,” Eric said. “Hull cameras show a dozen Citizens and many more robots converging on the gangway. I’ve put an override on the exterior airlock controls. That won’t keep them out for long.”

  “Hurry, please,” Nessus pleaded. “Step through to Aegis, if it is not already too late. When the security forces realize I am with you, they will take over Aegis or block it in as well.”

  Sven’s eyes darted like a trapped animal’s. Remembering the old video of robots cutting their way in? “Nike’s message to Nessus spoke of removing this ship. Is Long Pass repaired enough to fly out?”

  Omar grunted. “Preserver’s hull is sealed. I can’t find any trace of cargo doors. Nike must mean to remove Long Pass in tiny pieces. Or maybe they’ll drop Preserver into a star with this ship still inside.”

  Kirsten’s mind raced, desperately seeking an escape. But even if they were doomed, their report must get out. “Eric! Can we transmit, too? If so, send the Diego MacMillan recording to Hearth and NP4.”

  “Diego MacMillan?” Nessus’ heads pivoted in confusion. “Who is that?”

  “Will do, Kirsten,” Eric replied. “But I need you on the bridge.”

  She uploaded a copy of Diego’s message to Nessus’ pocket computer—he should know they would no longer be taken for fools—and ran for the bridge.

  Holos floated all around Eric, some status, some system specs, and a few apparently real-time video. In the largest holo, robots approached the gangway. “What can I do?” she asked.