‘So far, yes,’ Rojas said. ‘We’ll be able to perform more detailed analysis on our approach.’
Another pane started, showing the elongated shape of a distortion tree. All Laura could think of was a streamlined icicle with a bulbous base, its profile a moiré shimmer. Despite the curious shifting surface pattern, it seemed smooth.
‘They’re like crystal rocket ships,’ Ayanna said in a reverential tone.
‘Hold that thought,’ Ibu said. ‘Does anyone know what the Raiel warships looked like?’
Joey gave him a sharp glance. ‘You think this is their old invasion fleet?’
‘Just asking. The Raiel arkships we’ve encountered are some kind of artificial organism.’
‘Their arkships are bigger than these distortion trees,’ Laura said. ‘A lot bigger.’
‘We’ve no records of any Commonwealth starship encountering a Raiel warship,’ Rojas said. ‘Wilson Kime reported that the Endeavour was approached by a ship smaller than an arkship, but with the same layout. It looked like an asteroid which had sprouted domed cities.’ He pointed to the shimmering spire. ‘Nothing like that.’
‘What’s their albedo?’ Ayanna asked.
Rojas grinned. ‘One point two. They’re radiating more light than the local star shines on them. Just like the Skylords.’
‘This can’t be coincidence,’ Joey said. ‘That would be ridiculous. They’re related; they have to be. Same technology, or parents. Whatever. But their origin is shared.’
‘I agree,’ Laura said. ‘The Skylords can manipulate the local continuum to enable them to fly. These are changing the quantum structure around themselves. The basic mechanism has to be the same.’
‘Those are the conclusions of the captain’s review board,’ Rojas said. ‘What we need to find out is how and why.’
Joey attempted a laugh, but his twitching cheek muscles made it difficult. He drooled from the corner of his mouth. ‘Why are they changing the quantum signature? How do we find that out?’
‘Ask them,’ Ibu said. ‘If they’re sentient like the Skylords.’
‘Good luck with that,’ Rojas grunted. ‘Our mission target is to understand the new quantum composition of the continuum inside the Forest. If we can define it, we might be able to derive its purpose.’
‘Quantum measurement is fairly standard,’ Laura said, then caught herself. ‘Assuming our instruments work.’
‘Ayanna, that’s your field,’ Rojas said. ‘I’ll need a list of equipment you want. If there’s anything we’re not carrying, we’ll see if the ship’s fabrication systems can manufacture it. Don’t be too ambitious; the extruders are suffering along with all the other systems.’
Ayanna gave him a sly smile. ‘I’ll try and remember that.’
‘Laura,’ Rojas said, ‘you’re tasked with determining how the disturbance is created. Other than their size, which varies by a few hundred metres, the distortion trees seem uniform, so we’re assuming the ability is integral to their structure.’
‘Got it,’ she said. ‘Do I get to take samples?’
‘If the Forest zone isn’t instantly lethal to us. If the shuttle can manoeuvre and rendezvous. If the trees themselves aren’t sentient, or self aware. If they don’t have defences. If our spacesuits work. If their structure can be sampled. Then, possibly, yes. We’d prefer an in situ analysis, obviously. Commonwealth encounter regulations do still apply. Please remember that, everybody.’
Laura pressed her lips together in bemusement. ‘Okay, then. I’ll draw up my wish list of gadgets.’
Rojas stood up. ‘We launch in four hours. As well as your equipment, you might want to transfer some of your personal packs onto Fourteen. Once the mission’s over, I can’t guarantee we’ll land anywhere close to the Vermillion.’
After Rojas left the excursion-prep facility, Laura turned to Ibu. ‘Was that a guarantee he will land us on the planet?’ she asked, trying to make it light hearted.
The huge gravatonics professor rubbed a shaking hand along his temple. ‘You think we’ll make it all the way to the planet? I wish I had your optimism. I’m going to check that my memory secure store is current.’
‘I’m more confident about Fourteen getting down than I am about Vermillion,’ Laura said. ‘Actually, I’m surprised Cornelius didn’t assign more specialists to our mission. Fourteen can hold – what, sixty people?’
‘If it works,’ Joey said. ‘I think he’s balancing the risk about right. If we make it to the Forest, we might just contribute something that’ll help us find a way out of the Void. If we don’t . . . Well, face it, the likes of us aren’t going to be missed on a pioneering world where the only machines that work belong to the twentieth century.’
‘Twentieth century?’ Ibu challenged. ‘Another raving optimist.’
‘I grew up on a farm,’ Ayanna protested. ‘We worked the land.’ She pulled a face. ‘Well, I helped Dad program the agribots.’
‘I’ll get my list together, then I might just go check on my secure store,’ Laura declared. ‘Not that any of us will ever be getting a re-life clone in the Void. Looks like we’re back to having one mortal life again.’
*
Time was short, and there were a lot of preparations to be made, all of which were more problematic than they should have been, thanks to glitches in the Vermillion’s network and command core. But Laura found a few spare minutes to go back to the suspension bay. Her sarcophagus was still open, the mechanisms inside cold and inert. She’d half expected engineeringbots to be swarming all over it, but nothing disturbed the tranquillity of the long compartment. There was a simple personal locker at the foot of the suspension chamber. Thankfully it opened when her u-shadow gave it the code. It didn’t hold much – one bag of decent clothes, another of sentimental items. That was the one she unzipped.
Inside, there was the hand-made wooden jewel box Andrze had bought her on their honeymoon on Tanyata, its colourful paint faded now after three centuries. The rust-red scarf with aboriginal art print she’d picked up in Kuranda. Her flute with its wondrously mellow sound, made in Venice Beach – and she couldn’t even remember who she’d been with when she acquired that. The phenomenally expensive (and practically black-market) chip of silver crystal from the ma-hon tree in New York’s Central Park. A bag of sentiments, then, a little museum of self more important than any secure store holding memories her brain no longer had room for. Strange how these physical items gave her a more comforting sense of identity than her own augmented, backed-up, reprofiled neurones. She picked up a ridiculously thick, and impractical, six-hundred-year-old Swiss army knife, with something like twenty different tools and blades. A gift from Althea, she recalled, the artist who made a virtue of rejecting all the technological boons which the Commonwealth provided for its citizens.
Althea, who would have sneered at the very concept of a flight to another galaxy – if Laura had ever gained the courage to tell her she was going. Laura grinned at how her old friend would greet the news that they were trapped in the artificial weirdness of the Void. ‘Hubris!’ she’d no doubt shout gleefully. And now the penknife was probably the most functional possession Laura owned. Althea’s smugness would turn supernova at that knowledge.
Laura put the ancient penknife in her shipsuit’s breast pocket. The weight of it was a comfort, something whose simplicity wouldn’t let her down. It belonged in the Void.
*
Shuttle Fourteen had a basic delta planform, with smooth rounded wing-tips giving it a slightly organic appearance – an unusual halfway machine between an old-fashioned aircraft and the flattened ovoid shape of the Commonwealth’s standard regrav capsules. As well as ferrying passengers down to a planet, it was designated a mid-range preliminary exploration vehicle, able to hop around the planets of a solar system, launching detailed observations, delivering researchers and scientific equipment. Examining a space-based artefact was well within its capabilities.
Inside, Laura could easily believe
she’d just stepped back five centuries to the aircraft era. The forward cabin wasn’t quite cramped; there were ten large acceleration couches, in two rows, which seemed to fill a lot of it. Up at the front, the pilot’s couch was solo; overhung by the big curving windscreen. There was a nominal horseshoe console of glossy dark plastic, which usually displayed a few basic craft functions. As with everything in the modern Commonwealth, Shuttle Fourteen was controlled by a cognitive array with the human pilot as a (mainly psychological) safety fallback.
Today Rojas had pulled every emergency manual control out of the console, cluttering it in a bewildering assortment of clunky switches and ergonomic toggles. Flight trajectory graphics slithered about inside the windscreen like holographic fish. Smaller panes that had popped up out of the console glowed with complex system-status symbols.
Laura eyed them suspiciously as she strapped herself into her seat. The colourful 3D glyphs were ominously similar to those she used to see on wall posters at primary school when she dropped her first batch of children off in the morning – and that was three hundred and fifty years ago. Haven’t they come up with anything more advanced since then?
Rojas was sitting comfortably in the pilot’s couch, studying the ever-changing holograms and flicking switches like a twentieth-century astronaut, his voice a low-level murmur saturated with confidence as he talked to the array.
‘Looks like our glorious leader has the right stuff,’ Ibu said quietly as he settled into the couch next to Laura. ‘It makes you feel grand to be alive, doesn’t it, putting your life in his hands?’
She grinned back at him. Ibu had the kind of phlegmatic outlook on life she approved of. He was a good choice for the team. She still hadn’t made her mind up about Joey. If anything, the spasms afflicting his facial muscles had increased. It was pure prejudice on her part, she knew, but it did make him look as if he had some kind of bad neurological problem rather than just some damage from the tank yank, which he kept assuring them was inconsequential. Aside from that, the emotions which did escape from his guarded mind indicated disapproval of the mission. His heart wasn’t in it.
As for Ayanna, she acted like a consummate professional, interested only in the science. The problem with their newfound mental abilities was that everyone could sense the sheer terror leaking from her mind.
‘Two minutes,’ Rojas announced.
Five metres in front of the shuttle’s stubby nose, red warning lights began to flash around the docking bay’s inner doors as they slid shut. Laura made a face and pulled on her padded cap, then used the backup straps to stop herself floating out of the couch, clicking them together in the way she just about remembered from her childhood. Nobody was relying on the couches’ plyplastic cushioning to hold them.
With the straps pressing into her shoulders, she tried to steady her breathing. Apart from the two mandatory emergency training sessions before the colony fleet left Commonwealth space, she hadn’t spent any real time in zero gee for decades. Some people loved it for the freedom of movement. Every time she was weightless, she’d needed her biononics to help suppress the nausea. Andy Granfore had given her some drugs he promised would help, but she didn’t hold out much hope. Besides, she was still so full of tank yank suppressors, her biochemistry would probably register as alien if she was given any decent kind of scan.
‘Fusion chambers active and stable,’ Rojas announced. ‘Onboard systems ninety-four per cent functionality. Umbilical links closing.’
A large purple star flared in one of the console displays. ‘You’re looking good, Fourteen,’ Cornelius Brandt’s voice boomed from the cabin’s speakers.
‘Bollocks to this,’ Laura muttered. It was just a shuttle launch, for crap’s sake. All these reassurances were really starting to crank her tension up.
‘I just wanted to emphasize that your mission is important, but not worth taking any dangerous risks for,’ the starship’s captain continued. ‘Once we’re established on the surface, we’ll be able to turn every resource into finding a way out of the Void, and there are a lot of very smart people in suspension. Any information you can provide will be valuable, even if it is negative.’
‘Copy that, Vermillion,’ Rojas said. ‘And thank you. Fifteen seconds to launch. Umbilical disconnect confirmed. Five greens on clamp release. Regrav units on line. Initiating lift.’
The red docking bay lights turned purple, signalling vacuum, and the outer doors slid back, to reveal a midnight-black universe outside. The shuttle wobbled slightly as it rose from its docking cradle. Rojas eased it out through the airlock.
Despite herself, Laura craned forward for a better view through the windscreen. The weird space she’d only seen on Vermillion’s holograms unveiled for real as Fourteen emerged from the bay. Somehow, Void space managed to appear darker than ordinary space. It was the contrast, Laura reasoned. On the Commonwealth worlds there were always so many stars visible at night, from the faintest wisps of the Milky Way up to the sharp specks of white giants. They were all around and forever. Here there were so few stars visible, probably no more than a couple of thousand. But the nebulas made up for their absence. There must have been hundreds, from the great smears of luminous plasma dust sprawling over lightyears to fainter smudges glowing in the unknown depths.
Gravity fell away over a long moment as they glided clear of the Vermillion. Fourteen began a slow roll, and Laura saw the massive cliff of foam-coated metal slide past as if they were falling parallel to it. It wasn’t an elegant structure, more like heavy-duty industrial modules bolted together and sprayed in the ubiquitous foam, which had bleached and pocked from its long vacuum exposure. Things poked out of the coating on spindly poles: sensors, comlinks, molecular force screen nozzles . . . Bright orange-neon lines glowed in deep fissures that were the seams between modules, the thermal-dump radiators energetically beaming the starship’s excess heat out into the vacuum. Regrav and ingrav propulsion units were clusters of stumpy cylinders as big as the shuttle, made out of dark glass shot through with green scintillations. Vermillion’s rear third was all segmented cargo tubes, like a geometrical intestine. They contained everything you needed to establish a technologically advanced human civilization on a virgin world.
All useless here, Laura thought bleakly.
Rojas applied power to Fourteen’s main regrav drive units, and the shuttle started accelerating away from the Vermillion. Laura’s sense of balance shifted rapidly as the gravity built to one third standard. To her perception, the shuttle was now standing on its tail, putting her flat on her back in the couch while the floor had now become the wall. Rojas was above her, his couch creaking as it absorbed the new weight loading.
‘Are you all right?’ a smooth mental voice asked her.
Laura didn’t need to be told this was the Skylord. The mentality she could sense behind the thought was massive and intimidatingly serene.
‘Er, yes, thank you,’ she replied, instinctively tightening her own thoughts so her emotional leakage was minimal. Judging by the stiff postures all around her, the others were taking part in identical telepathic conversations.
‘You are leaving,’ the Skylord said with a tinge of concern. ‘Is my guidance no longer acceptable? We are so near a world where you will flourish and become fulfilled.’
Rojas held up a hand, stalling anyone else’s reply, and opened up his own telepathic voice. ‘We thank you for your guidance, and anticipate joining our friends on the world you have brought us to very soon.’
‘I am glad for you. But why do you delay?’
‘We wish to explore the nature of this world and everything close to it. It is the way we reach our fulfilment.’
‘I understand. Your current trajectory will take you close to our parturition region.’
‘Do you mean this clump of objects?’ Rojas sent a mental picture of the Forest.
‘Yes.’
‘Is this where Skylords come from?’
‘Not this parturition region. We came f
rom another.’
‘What are the objects in the parturition region? Eggs?’
‘The parturition region creates us.’
‘How?’
‘It does.’
‘Do you object to us going there?’
‘No.’
‘The region is different to the rest of the Void. Why?’
‘It is a parturition region.’
‘Are they important to you?’
‘We come from a parturition region. We do not return. We guide those who have reached fulfilment to the Heart of the Void.’
‘Where is that?’
‘It is at the end of your fulfilment.’ The Skylord’s presence withdrew from the cabin.
Rojas shook his head and sighed. His thoughts were showing a degree of frustration. ‘Thus ends every conversation with the Skylords,’ he concluded. ‘Enigmatic shits.’
‘That’s a fantastic discovery,’ Joey said. ‘The distortion trees birth them or conjure them into existence, or something. This is where they come from. Our mission is half complete and we’ve only been going two minutes.’
‘If you believe it,’ Rojas said. ‘They’re slippery little swines.’ He flicked a switch to open a channel back to Vermillion and began reporting the conversation.
*
Three hours seventeen minutes accelerating at point seven gees, then Shuttle Fourteen flipped over and decelerated at the same rate. Six and a half hours after launching from Vermillion, Rojas performed their final velocity match manoeuvres and the delta-shaped shuttle was left hanging in space, two and a half thousand kilometres out from the Forest.
Laura stared at it through the shuttle’s windscreen – a huge patch of silver speckles that gleamed brightly, blocking off half of space. Her eyes fooled her into thinking each speck was drifting about, while in fact it was just the bizarre patterns of their surfaces that flickered and shimmered. Sensors zoomed in, giving them a decent image of the distortion trees on the edge of the Forest.
‘They don’t have that fog around them that the Skylords do,’ Joey slurred. His facial twitches were growing progressively worse. Now that they were in freefall, drool was slipping out of his open lips to drift round the cabin. Laura didn’t like the way his problems were developing. Shuttle Fourteen had a medical capsule, but it wasn’t as sophisticated as any of the ones on Vermillion. Not, she admitted to herself, that she’d like any medical capsule to run a procedure on her right now. Fourteen’s systems glitches were steadily increasing.