Outlanders Closing the Cosmic Eye, page 26
Again the eerie giant's laugh. Kane realized the kid was going to have a sore throat when this was over with. If he even still had a throat.
Pine found her voice. "Thand!" she cried. "It's Pine! Please, do not do this!"
Her brother chuckled with someone else's possibly forced mirth. "Do you think I act rashly because you scorn me for the outworlder? It's not that you are not worth it, dear child. But I fear that has little to do with my determination."
"Which is what?" Bug Mama asked. "I'm still waiting to hear that part, Thand."
"To win," Thand said, "and strike the greatest blow in history against our ancient oppressors. I have sent the rest of the fleet scurrying out of the system, as well— they would fall like flies in a furnace before the fleet that approaches. I alone remain. And I have one thing to ask." Silence stretched. Bug Mama played the fingers of one hand on the face of a console. Kane hoped she knew enough about its operation not to do anything like light off the Eye prematurely.
"Shoot," she said.
"I think," Major Mike said from the projection, "that's exactly what he's going to ask for."
Chapter 34
"Excellency," Chaufat reported, "on close in upon the orbital control station. The rebel scum have fled. The way such undisciplined rabble always will. We will take possession of it within mere moments."
Bates could see the image of the station on the view screens as well as his furry aide-de-camp could, although Zuri was getting a data feed through implants Bates lacked. He was not exactly cherry enough to mist his new found allies to do brain surgery on him just yet. Come to think of it, he doubted he would ever get such implants: better to make flunkies wait upon him with data, as in all other things, as the unlamented Uvaluvu had her slaves.
Despite the fact he already knew what was going on, Bates felt a thrill at the alien's words. The word Thrill hardly sufficed. It was like a jolt overdose and a million orgasms all rolled together. It was like having the entire energy output of this colossal battle cruiser switched through his body.
I win!
It was all his.
He leaned forward in the command seat that was his throne, and reached out his hand, as if to grasp the Eye like the scepter to rule the universe.
The screen flared white, dazzling him with brilliance.
KANE HEARD A LOW WHISTLE as white radiance expanded to fill the screen. Maybe it came from one of the Phoenix four, gathered on the Forlorn Hope bridge with the rest. Maybe it came from him.
This particular image was cast via some kind of conventional communication—as conventional as fasten-than-light communication could be—from the second Eye station. Despite the risk, the Hope's skipper had jumped them a full light-day away on the first go, then put several more behind them.
The flare came from the propulsion system of the great enigmatic needle poised in space a light-second or two away from the station as it accelerated instantly to multiples of the velocity of light. And not just one or two, or dozens: thousands.
"And no, my friends," Bug Mama remarked, as somebody made oohing noises over the figures displayed in midair—translation routines in Hope's computers having the capability to transcribe text and numbers into English, as well as speech. "We can't do that, either. Not close."
The view switched. The bi-lobed Eye glared forth in terrible splendor.
In the midst of the strange shifting glare, a spot of blue-white appeared. It was so bright against even the unreal shine of the strange attractor that Kane started to raise a hand to shield his eyes, though his mind knew full well that the starship's view screens were incapable of transmitting dangerous wavelengths or levels of radiation to the viewer.
From his peripheral vision he realized he wasn't the only onlooker to give into that reflex.
The glare grew larger. Not in a standard propagation sphere: instead it flashed like flame through the lobes of gas and states of matter indescribable even by arm physics, already burning with an energy as far beyond matter-antimatter annihilation as hydrogen fusion was beyond a campfire. The butterfly wings glowed with a strange, sparkling light. Began to twist. Change.
Kane screamed.
"EXCELLENCY! The rebels have destroyed the station!" "Nonsense, Chaufat," Bates declared. His voice rang with exultation. "It's still there, can't you see it?"
He stood up and raised his hands in the air. "I've won!" he screamed. "The universe is mine!"
The universe turned inside out, and tore Gilgamesh Bates and the battle fleets of the Grand Council into pieces in a million dimensions at once.
And each was full of agony a million times greater than flesh could feel. Or the strongest spirit bear.
Protracted to infinity.
"WHAT DID WE JUST SEE?" Sean Reichert asked in a still, small voice.
"I'm not telling," Larry Robison said.
'That's affirmative," Grant said.
Pine wept openly. Svarri stood patting her in a soothing, automatic way. He still stared at the screen.
Which showed...nothing.
Not even stars.
"I'll go ahead and ask," Kane said. "Did we just blow up the universe?"
"No," Wix said, and even he sounded shaken. "It must be some local effect. Look at the other screens."
The center screen showed the black blankness of what heartbeats before had been the Eye. Others flanking it showed the space surrounding the Forlorn Hope filled with stars.
"Are the stars as they should be?" Brigid asked. "Might we have been thrown through time?"
"Or to some alternate dimension?" Robison asked.
"The stars are configured as they should be for our location. Which means in time and space, of course," Wix said, checking a display. “As to whether we might have been dislocated to another universe, our instruments are not up to measuring that."
"How about—?" Reichert began.
Bug Mama held up her two visible hands. "Enough, already. Let's not go borrowing trouble. Grok, is Sidra still there?"
She asked the latter question to the small creature with bumpy gray skin that squatted toad-like at her feet. It slowly blinked its huge gelatinous-looking eyes, then nodded. "And—how do I even ask this question? Is everything, what, normal?"
The creature was already nodding. 'That's right. You can read my mind. Silly me."
"Speaking of that," Domi said, "why didn't they read that bastard Servillon's mind, see what he was planning?"
"They only read thoughts by specific intent," Pine said. "Otherwise the thoughts of others would drive them mad."
"You learn to shut the voices out when you're real young," her brother said. "Otherwise it's just too much. Must be the same for them."
Kane watched the Grok. It showed no reaction to the fact the boy was speaking. Evidently it had never evolved external ears, possessing psi. It was deaf to his thoughts. "Also Servillon wore a portable mind shield," Bug Mama said.
"I thought both the Circle and Triangle hated and feared psi," Hays said, "and wouldn't use it?"
"Well, nobody ever stayed alive long in the insurrection business by taking things like that for granted, boy. And anyway, remember we're cranky individualists, even if we do call ourselves coalition. Lots of us dislike the idea of having somebody being able to read our thoughts at will, even somebody on our own side. And as Servillon showed, 'our side' can be pretty nominal sometimes. You know how far from monolithic the Grand Council major races are? We're that times ten."
"Why aren't there stars?" Domi asked, waving a white hand at the central display.
Bug Mama looked to Wix. The chief whitecoat looked unmistakably helpless to Kane despite his alien body language. "As far as I can describe it," the science said, "or even comprehend it, where the Eye black-hole binary was, now remains a hole in the fabric of reality."
"Is it spreading?" Brigid asked.
'No. Our probability-wave detectors, which were how we were able to watch the explosion in what we might vulgarly describe as 'real time,' show a seemingly stable shell of chaos—a boundary layer of probability turbulence, roughly five light-years in diameter. Starlight clearly doesn't penetrate it, as you can see."
"What happens to it?" Hays asked. "Is it sucked in the way a black hole would?"
"I don't believe so. If I may hazard a totally unscientific surmise—,
"We call it a SWAG," Joe Weaver said, "for 'scientific wild-ass guess.'
The purple humanoid nodded. 'My scientific wild-ass guess is that photons that impinge upon the chaos shell simply un-happen. Please don't quote me on that."
"Your secret's safe with us, big guy," Robison said. "Still, to publish the first scientific observations of a phenomenon that has almost without question never been seen in the whole history of our universe--"
He turned away, making chuckling sounds in his throat, which the translator routine didn't try to render.
"Wow," Reichert said, "it's a scientific bliss-out!" "What about the giant damn alien battle fleet?" Grant asked.
"Gone," Wix said. "Every last vessel."
Team Phoenix went crazy: hooting, hollering, high-fiving and embracing one another.
Bug Mama looked to Kane. "They're your people," she said.
He shrugged. "They're happy to be alive." He felt little more than drained. Given what he had been through. Not to mention just witnessed—and felt—and experienced in ways that could only be compared to jump nightmares, but magnified a million times...
"Ding dong, the Bates is dead!" Sean Reichert caroled.
"Which old Bates?" Robison sang.
"The Master Bates!" all four shouted.
Domi shook her head. "Fused."
"I dunno," Kane said. "Now that I know what they're going on about, I kinda second the emotion."
"Yeah," Grant said laconically.
"And so are your enemies, I guess," Kane said to Bug Mama.
"Not hardly, boy," the alien said. "Oh, that's the guts torn out of both the Circle and Triangle factions, which means the best—or worst—the Grand Council had. But none of the players are gone. Well, maybe one or two of the minor allies or so-called independents had their whole fleets thrown into this piss pot. And had things gone on a few more weeks, yeah, basically every interstellar-capable war craft would've been drawn like flies to a fresh turd, given how high the stakes were.
"As it was--" she shook her great brass-colored head "—the Zuri and the Paa are probably down to their garrison forces, and whatever fraction of their fleets were in transit but hadn't arrived yet. But they've easy lost half their fleets, and it was the best half. Same with the vassals and allies.
"The Grand Council is crippled. But that won't last."
"So now what?" Kane said to Bug Mama.
"Well, we go back to Sidra to see what we can do about picking up the pieces," the diminutive alien said, "and keeping the council from doing the same."
"Does this mean you won?" Reichert asked.
"A battle, boy. Not the war." She stood a little bit straighter. "But a big battle. Bigger than any we've won in ten thousand years. The final outcome's parsecs from being decided, but let's just say that now for the first time in our history we've got a fighting chance."
"But what about us?' Brigid asked.
Bug Mama's antennae drooped. "Um," she said. "Well. Sorry, kids. But one thing Bates never provided the council races was enough data to locate your home world in the Orion Arm. Or at least not that our moles and spies and collaborators—bless their spirits, wherever they are now— were able to steal from the big boys."
Kane looked at Brigid. Tears glittered at the edges of her emerald eyes.
"Kane," she said, "we can never go home."
"Yeah," he said past a lump in his throat. Grant stood as immobile as a statue. But Kane thought he saw the big man's lips move, ever so lightly. And though no sound came out, Kane knew he had said "Shizuka."
"Never say never, kiddo," Bug Mama said. "Eternity's a damn long time.
"In the meantime—you boys and girls want a job'? Fighting malevolent alien technology, overwhelming odds—hell, it's right up your alley!"
Epilogue
Kane came awake with a blaster in his hand. A real blaster, too, not his Sin Eater. Fond as he was of the piece, on this world you needed something that spoke with a sterner voice to stay alive.
A small figure, its species concealed by the usual coalition hooded robes, recoiled from the stubby energy weapon. "I said, please come at once, Kane! Bug Mama's asking for you."
He sighed. "All right. Tell her I'm coming."
The wind off the mauve desert buffeted the walls of the tent. Inside it was pleasantly cool: one thing these aliens did right was climate control. And they all think they're roughing it out here in the foothills....
He got up off the field cot that had held his body a foot off the tent floor as he slept and started to get dressed. The aliens didn't have anything that would do that for you; or at least the raggedy-ass coalition fighters didn't.
He was just as glad.
He took his time about it. Not that there was no prospect of emergency: attack was a possibility at any time. But if the bad guys were coming over the wire, Bug Mama would have made sure the messenger told him just that. Whatever else she was, the old insect was a pro.
I still don't know what I expected, he thought, pulling up his pants. He had decided not to bother with the shadow-suit armor in a footlocker near the cot. But it sure wasn't this.
HE AND THE OTHERS had reckoned that they'd wind up in some kind of city while Bug Mama administered the world of Sidra, newly liberated from Grand Council tyranny. But no such thing.
"I'm a freedom fighter, boy," she said as Forlorn Hope approached Sidra orbit, "the real deal. The last thing I want to do is set myself up as a government." She spoke the word as if it were an obscenity, as the translation-software made loud and clear.
"But won't there be anarchy?" Brigid asked. They had held the discussion sitting in the commissary aboard Forlorn Hope as the vessel bashed its way down through the desert world's atmosphere. The acceleration-damping anti-grav permitted only a hint of motion to be felt. Enough to give the passengers a sense they were having an adventure, but not make them seasick or upset any crockery or anything. "You say that as if it's a bad thing," Larry Robison murmured.
The former archivist's fine brow knit as she looked around the table from one Phoenix teammate to another. "But you were soldiers—"
"Smile when you say that," Robison said. He did, though. "Well, three of you served in the United States armed forces. Mr. Weaver was a government employee."
"And who better to know what a crock government is?" Joe Weaver asked with a grin.
She shook her head.
"If you're finished with your comedy routine," Bug Mama said, "the real answer is, not my problem. Sidra has a civil administration—the council has traditionally maintained at least the appearance of autonomy for its member systems. What the hell? They get to rule the arm, nubile the locals bear the brunt of enforcement costs. So there's the usual layers of local government. Which, absent council encouragement, isn't too obtrusive. Yet."
She sipped nectar from a bulb. "They have just about enough power to save some of the peacekeepers from being torn to pieces by angry mobs."
"So that's what your supporters are like?" asked Grant, leaning his elbows on the table sipping. The Far Arm sported a mild stimulant brew, usually imbibed hot, that had the texture and luck of strong coffee but tasted mildly peppery, like some kind of tea, and mostly indescribable. The Terrans all found it anywhere from not bad to very good. As far as Kane was concerned it would never replace fresh coffee. Had it all over the freeze-dried shit from the Cerberus caches, though.
"No," Bug Mama said. "That's what the unwashed masses who never took a stand before are like. I don't say some of the mobs don't contain coalition supporters, or at least sympathizers. Like Pine said, we're not monolithic."
The girl and her brother were absent, most likely locked assay in the compartment they shared. She had taken Thand's death hard, even if she hadn't shown much patience with his delayed-adolescent jock advances while he was alive. "For us," Bug Mama said, "we'll do what we've done before—try to stay clear of local politics. Do what we can to make sure Grand Council tyranny goes away and stays gone. Which at best won't be easy, even now."
"But what about the arm itself?" Brigid asked. "Won't the power vacuum cause civil wars?"
"Implicit in your question is the supposition that the council as formerly constituted maintained some kind of peace and order," she said. "What they were really about was exercising power and collecting spoils. Whether we'll see more strife and devastation with the Grand Council crippled is a very open question. And maybe that's what the Coalition's big job is now—to see if we can establish some kind of new and freer way."
"That ever happened before?" Grant asked.
"Nope," Bug Mama said, and Kane knew she was giving the equivalent of a grin. "But that never stopped us before." "Bet the whole bad-guy battle fleet never all blew up at once before, either," said Domi, who was gnawing on some kind of Arm ration bar. Kane had tried them. They made him homesick: they tasted exactly like pressboard, just like the ones stored back in Redoubt Bravo.
"Not since what I guess we have to start calling the First Eye War," Bug Mama said. "Only this time the effect was localized, instead of taking down civilization throughout the whole damn galaxy."
"But do you know something like this didn't happen back then?" Reichert asked.
"Well, as far as our technicians, ably assisted by the talents of your own Brigid Baptiste, can determine, either through surviving records or modern observation, nothing remotely like the destruction of the Eye binary system has ever happened in our universe, period. But in terms of the relevant, no, we don't know exactly how the big collapse happened, son.
"Nor, in all honesty, do we know the same thing won't happen now. It's what you'd call a whole new bald game."
"Ball game," Hays corrected reflexively.
