Captain Sebastian Manet had been surprised at the course the hijacked starship had taken. "They're heading for Aldebaran," he'd said as soon as Simon's stretcher was maneuvered through the Xianti's airlock tunnel.
Simon's personal AS scrolled data on the star. "A red giant? Are there any planets there?"
"The astronomers have never found any," Manet said. "However, we don't know for sure. There have never been any missions to Aldebaran. Nobody's pure science budget ever ran to that."
"Interesting. So we could well have an alien civilization living closer to us than we ever knew: right inside our sphere of influence, in fact."
The captain's front of disapproval faded slightly. "Is that what all this is about?"
"Yes. Now how long before we can depart?"
"I wanted to talk to you about that."
"There is no discussion over this matter."
"It will take a hundred and four days to reach Aldebaran from here. We will barely have enough fuel to return."
"But we do have the capacity?"
"Just. Assuming nothing goes wrong. There's also the crew to consider. They did not anticipate an extra two hundred days' flight time plus however long we remain in the Aldebaran system itself."
"Rubbish. I know you space-types. They will relish the opportunity of performing first contact."
"Then what about the ground forces on Thallspring? When will we return for them?"
"Captain, you will either give the order to go FTL or tell me you will not."
Sebastian Manet gave the obscured figure on the stretcher a hateful glance. "Very well. We can go FTL in another eight minutes."
They had barely spoken in the hundred days that followed. Simon had spent a lot of the time asleep, as the treatments ate into his reserves of strength. In his waking hours he reviewed every scrap of data they'd acquired on the Arnoon alien, hoping for some insight. Each day he checked the tracking data. Koribu remained a resolute twenty-six minutes and thirteen seconds ahead of them. He began to make his own plans for exodus. Manet, along with his crew, could not be trusted with what needed to be done, and they couldn't be allowed to interfere. Simon's personal AS reviewed and confirmed all the command codes, ensuring he retained ultimate authority over the starship.
Ten days before the exodus Simon ordered the doctors to end his treatments. The interval would allow him to build his strength up again.
On the day itself he remained in sickbay; the doctors and medical staff had been dismissed. He lay on the bed, content that the pain had reduced over the last three months. He would have the physical resources to carry this out. His DNI and optronic membrane linked him with every vital sensor outside the starship, their data formatted by his personal AS into a comprehensive wraparound display, putting his perception point at the front of the starship. At the moment it was surrounded by a formless gray haze, with an ebony knot far ahead of them. Indigo ranging data scrolled across it.
Simon kept switching his attention between it and the other knot, the one following them forty minutes behind. He knew the SK9 had somehow got himself up to orbit and into a starship. There was only one reason he'd do that.
"Shouldn't be long now," Captain Manet announced. "We're detecting the photosphere."
Beyond the knot representing the Koribu, a faint drizzle of black was creeping through the nothingness, as if space were coming to an end outside the compression wormhole. Then the knot began to waver, expanding as it lost density. It vanished.
"They left that late," Manet said. "Only forty million kilometers out."
"We need to be close to them," Simon said.
"Yes, I know. But I'm going to shift our inclination. If they're really hostile they'll mine the exodus zone."
Simon spent the next twenty-five minutes watching the black barrier of the star's photosphere coming toward them, wondering what Newton and his friends were doing out there in real space. With five minutes to go until their own exodus, Manet armed the Norvelle's missiles in preparation. The ship's AS primed the fusion drive under the bridge crew's supervision. Then the black wall was unnervingly close, and beginning to pick up speed. It fractured radially, with red streaks fizzling through. Then the huge starship was sailing high above a glaring carmine smog that seemed to stretch out forever in all directions.
Columns of indigo digits streamed around Simon, mutating wildly as they went. There was no mass point within five hundred kilometers. No sensor radiation fell across them. Infrared energy began to soak the fuselage. The big secondary chemical rocket engines around the cargo section flared brightly, initiating a slow thermal roll. Large rectangular radar antennae began to deploy.
Simon used his command capability to launch a salvo of missiles. Pressure doors throughout the Norvelle closed and locked, isolating the crew.
"What are you doing?" Sebastian Manet demanded.
"That's perfectly obvious, Captain. The Norvelle is my ship, and I am carrying out my mission." He canceled the link and shut down all internal communications channels.
On the bridge, Sebastian Manet stared on helplessly as his DNI was denied access to the starship's network. The console displays darkened. Two of the bridge officers hammered on the pressure door with their fists. Nobody heard them.
"Sweet Fate, they've fired their missiles," Lawrence said.
"Not at us," Denise assured him.
"What then? Oh!"
"Scatter pattern. I think they're going to try to strike the other ship at exodus."
Lawrence opened the link to One. "Will you now accept that your knowledge shouldn't be given to this starship?"
"The starship's actions support your contention so far. Our knowledge will be withheld pending resolution of this event."
"Thank you." He turned to Denise. "Can we intercept those missiles?"
"No. We're too far away."
"Shit. Get Prime to scan for the exodus. Use our main communication dish to broadcast a warning."
Indigo targeting graphics locked on to a section of space eighteen thousand kilometers away as the Norvelle's radar detected an object under acceleration. Simon's visual focus leaped across the distance. A long, incandescent spark burned hard above the mellow radiance of the photosphere. It was moving fast, descending.
"Fusion flame," the starship's AS reported. "Spectral pattern identical to our own. Radar substantiates vehicle size. It is the Koribu."
"Where are they going?" Simon asked.
Several plot lines curved out of the dazzling plume. The Norvelle's long-range radar began to sweep along them. It swiftly found the destination.
"A solid structure, type unknown," the AS said. "Twenty kilometers across, circular, very regular."
"Take us down to it," Simon ordered.
On the Clichane's bridge, Simon Roderick sat behind the captain as they approached exodus. Console panes counted down the last few seconds. Camera images turned a garish carmine. A small cheer went round the bridge officers. Simon's DNI relayed the radar data directly to him. No large, solid objects within five hundred kilometers. Several small points registered. Extraneous radar pulses were illuminating their fuselage. The AS confirmed their signature as the long-range type carried by both the Koribu and the Norvelle. It began plotting their locations.
"Receiving communications," the captain said. "Somebody's shouting." The AS showed a very powerful transmission beamed straight at them.
"Your exodus point is mined. Launch defense salvo."
"Is that the Norvelle?" Simon asked.
"There is no identification code," the AS told him.
Simon's personal AS checked the radar image again. The small points were now moving under heavy acceleration, tearing straight toward them. Clichane's AS immediately fired a countersalvo. The missiles slid out of their launch cradles around the cargo section. Solid rocket motors ignited, accelerating them at over sixty gravities. Sensors were degraded by the ion wind and radiation rising from the photosphere. The missiles' onboard programs tried t
o compensate. But the attacking missiles were also using countermeasures and em pulses. The defenders responded with their own volley of electronic treachery.
The Clichane's AS acknowledged that the defense salvo wouldn't be able to achieve precision elimination strikes. Attacking missiles would breach the defenses. It ordered separation, and the swarm blossomed as each missile discharged its multiple warheads. They were still inside safe-distance limit, but the attacking missiles were closing. The AS had no choice.
A huge corona of nuclear fire erupted around the Clichane as the barrage of defending warheads detonated. The spherical plasma shock waves clashed and merged, forming a hellish shield of seething raw energy. Secondary explosions ripped long ebony twisters through the rampaging ions, short-lived hypervelocity spikes that tried to assail the star-ship.
At the center of the fusion inferno the Clichane was buffeted by radiation. Its external sensors were blinded as hard X-rays burned up their circuitry. Em pulses induced huge power surges along electrical cables and metal structures. Temperature escalated, blackening the thermal protection foam before the surface began to ablate, shedding scabby charcoal flakes. The residual foam bubbled like molten tar. A hurricane of elementary particles washed across the besieged fuselage. In the bridge and throughout the life support wheels radiation monitors began a shrill whistle of alarm. Emergency pressure valves began venting deuterium gas from tanks around the fusion drive section as the liquid started to boil from the electromagnetic energy input. Thermal radiator panels ruptured, jetting their sticky, steaming fluid into the hurricane of neutrons swirling round the giant starship.
Simon clung to one of the consoles as the bridge shook. Loud, harsh, metallic creaking sounds reverberated through the life support wheel structure as the lights flickered. The radiation alarm kept up its insistent whistle. Schematics had turned completely red. The AS was battling to compensate for massive systems failure, rerouting power and data, isolating leaking tanks and fractured pipes. Backup thermal reservoirs were used to absorb the heat seeping through the fuselage structure. Over half of the secondary rockets were disabled. The AS fired the remaining engines in short bursts, attempting to counter the twisting impulses from the larger vents.
The whistle alarm slowly faded. One of the officers was throwing up. Simon had to force himself to let go of the console. His heartbeat was racing badly.
"We weren't hit," the captain said incredulously.
"How do you know?" Simon asked. There was no external sensor data available at all.
"We're still alive."
The officers had begun talking urgently to the AS; fingers skidded over the console keyboards as they tried to pull useful information from the degraded network. Reserve sensors deployed from their sheaths. The AS located the two radar sources again. They were both under acceleration.
"How long before we can get after them?" Simon asked.
"I should have an answer for you in about a week," the captain said.
* * *
The Koribu's telescope immediately blanked out as the nuclear warheads exploded around the Clichane. Filter programs compensated as the fury slowly diminished. They saw the starship wreathed in coiling gas plumes. They were alive with scintillations from the radiation blitz, entombing the giant ship in a nebula of shooting stars. Venting had imparted a slow tumble. Lawrence didn't like to think how much liquid would have to be evacuated to move something so massive. Then they saw a flare of rocket motors around the cargo section as the AS attempted to stabilize their attitude.
Lawrence realized he'd been holding his breath for a long time. "They're alive, then," he said.
"Unless the Norvelle fires at them again," Denise said. "With the state they're in, I doubt they'll be able to defend themselves."
"Can you defend yourself against that kind of attack?" Lawrence asked One.
"No," One replied. "There is no reason for us to be armed. We have nothing other than knowledge. And that we give..."
"Yeah, you live to share," Lawrence said. "What happens when other species do threaten you?"
"We incorporate the knowledge of the threat"
"That's it?" Denise asked. "That's all you do, remember being destroyed?"
"We exist to acquire and distribute knowledge. We hatch in every sector of the galaxy and examine what surrounds us. Once that has been accomplished and the sun cools again, our existence there ends. Another sun will eventually replace it. The overall processing of knowledge will continue no matter how many individuals of our species are exterminated. Very few other species have sufficient munitions to destroy every one of us. By now our eggs have probably reached other galaxies."
"Are you saying you don't care if you're destroyed?"
"Care is an emotion I do not possess. You know it because it is bound with your sense of individuality. We are not a hive mind, but we are aware of ourselves as a civilization that could well prove to be eternal. All events we encounter contribute to what we are and what we will become. All individuality ends eventually. We birthed ourselves in acknowledgment of that."
"But the person in command of the second starship could threaten to destroy you if he realizes how vulnerable you are."
"If threatened I will provide the knowledge required. The threat will end."
"You said you'd withhold it," Lawrence said.
"In the assumption that would provide a balance for your species. You claimed the third starship would deliver our knowledge to your entire race. That is no longer possible."
"We're going to have to go to Earth," Denise said. "Carry the knowledge ourselves and get there ahead of the Norvelle. Damn Roderick to hell. I didn't want this."
Lawrence held up a finger. "One, will you help repair the starship that has just been damaged?"
"Yes. A patternform can be provided that will modify itself to perform the operation."
"So if we disable the Norvelle, the balance will be restored. They can both be repaired simultaneously. There would be no monopoly when they return to Earth."
"Will you make us a weapon that can disable the Norvelle?" Denise asked quickly.
"No," One said. "You may have knowledge that can be used to build a weapon."
"How long would it take to build?"
"First you would have to learn how to apply patternform systems. Then you must integrate the knowledge for the weapon to be extruded."
"Yes. How long?'
"You have some familiarity with patternform systems. This would be to your advantage. I estimate you would require as little as three weeks."
Frustration made Denise want to hit something. Anything. The Koribu and the Norvelle were equally matched. If they launched a strike, the Norvelle would retaliate. They needed something else, a weapon that would give them an advantage.
"But you already have a weapon we can use," Lawrence said quietly.
The first thing the Norvelle's sensors confirmed was the alien structure's complete lack of rotation in any direction. Somehow it held its attitude stable against the gusts of thick solar wind that blew constantly from the turbulent photosphere. Its shape gradually resolved during their approach: circular, divided into twenty scalloplike sections that curved down toward the surface of the star. Their edges were rounded and very smooth, tapering down to a few tens of meters thick. Its bulk was concentrated in the middle, with a small aperture at the very center.
Simon thought it might be a docking port of some kind, although he wasn't convinced. Even for an alien design it was a very strange habitat.
The apex of each scallop sprouted three slender ridges that shone a livid scarlet, radiating heat away out toward the stars, leaving the rest of the upper surface considerably cooler. The AS postulated that this was how the structure generated its power, exploiting the thermal difference. To do so, the ridges could well be a type of thermal superconductor. An interesting technology, Simon thought, but hardly on a level with nanonic systems.
The Koribu's fusion burn ended, rendezvousi
ng it with the alien structure. It hung inside the umbra, three kilometers from the surface. Simon waited, half expecting to see an engineering shuttle fly over into the aperture.
"What are you doing?" he muttered to himself.
Norvelle's long-range radar continued to scan around. The AS detected another eleven similarly sized alien objects within 150,000 kilometers. If they were some alien version of habitats, it gave him a seriously large population base to deal with. There must be millions of similar structures in orbit around the red giant.
"Have we intercepted any interstructure communications yet?" he asked the starship's AS.
"Not in the electromagnetic spectrum. They could be using lasers, or masers. In order to intercept them we would have to insert ourselves into the beam."
"Never mind." He continued to study the structure. When they were two thousand kilometers away, Norvelle extended its magnetometer booms. The alien structure was the core of a vast magnetic field. Around the center it was as dense as a tokamak containment field. Vast, invisible flux wings extended for hundreds of kilometers below the star-facing surface. Simon altered the calibration of the main radar and refocused the telescope. The AS combined the data from each, presenting it as a false-color thematic image.
Solar wind was being scooped up by the magnetic field and pulled inward. He could see tenuous eddies of the stuff forming as it streamed up toward the hidden center of the structure's star-facing surface.
He knew it couldn't be a habitat. A machine of some kind, then. One that consumed solar wind particles. What sort of machine did that? He knew the aliens had nanonic systems. They must be converting the solar wind into artifacts of some kind. The production capacity represented by the millions of structures was awesome. Although that would be severely limited by the minuscule quantity of mass that the magnetic field scooped up. If you had that kind of ability, why use it like this?