“Forget it-t!” Kaa squalled. “Harms, keep your promissss!”
Harry nodded. “Okay. Everone who’s going to Jijo, move through the airlock to the corvette. We’ll need a few duras—”
His sentence cut off as another little blue star abruptly flared—this time just to their left, almost adjacent to the boundary—expanding its effulgence a billionfold, filling the cabin with blinding glare.
Lightspeed was no impediment to the causality disruption that followed. Some kind of metric wave hammered the fleshy inner surface of the Path, making it buck and heave like a tortured snake. The perimeter warped into E Space, discoloring horribly as new bulges formed, flailing like agonized pseudopods. Several of these curled around the station, lashing spasmodically.
It seemed a rather personal way to be assailed by a supernova. But Harry had no time to dwell on ironies of scale. “Prepare for transition!” he croaked in a terrified voice.
All at once, the entire Path seemed to shimmer, and Harry knew that the estimates had been wrong.
The rupture is coming.
His passengers had just moments to grab some nearby object before the sidereal universe grabbed Harry’s vessel with a horrid moan, yanking them all back into a realm of atoms.
Sol System
GILLIAN KNEW JUST TWO LIVING PILOTS WHO might stand a chance of maneuvering swiftly through spacial conditions like these.
Keepiru, and Kaa. Both had started out three years ago with Creideiki’s carefully picked crew.
Now, both were gone. Each to where he was needed most.
Each to where he belonged.
Fly true, Keepiru. She cast the wish outward, past myriad random glimmering stars. Wherever Tom and Creideiki decide to go, please guide them through to safe harbors.
As for Kaa, she had felt guilty since pulling him away from Jijo, where Peepoe needed him. According to Sara’s calculations, the route back to Galaxy Four would be perilous, demanding all his skill, as well as a generous helping of his famous luck.
I know you’ll make it, Kaa. May you swim with Peepoe soon, and remain Ifni’s favorite all your life.
Conditions elsewhere weren’t quite as bad as in Galaxy Four. Yet, the remainder of civilized space was raucous and high-strung. The Navigation Institute kept posting detours till it ran out of buoys, then stationed gallant volunteers along every known route, shouting themselves hoarse over subspace frequencies, diverting traffic to a few safe paths. Flotillas set out from countless planets on daring mercy missions, braving maelstroms to rescue lost ships and stranded crews.
It was Galactic Civilization at its best—the reason it would almost certainly survive this chaos, and possibly emerge stronger than ever. After things settled down, that is. In a few thousand years.
Meanwhile, the four remaining galaxies were a mess. While many clans and races dropped their petty squabbles to lend a hand, others took advantage of the disorder to loot, extort, or settle old grudges. Religious schisms spread like poisonous ripples, amplifying ancient animosities.
And where is Streaker heading, right now? Straight for the worst site of fanatical warfare, praying we get there before the fighting’s over. Talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
At least Gillian had no complaints about Streaker’s rate of speed. Right now, she probably had the fastest ship in all of oxygen-breathing civilization.
Not to put down Akeakemai, but without Keepiru or Kaa, this trip would have taken months, following the marked detours. We’d arrive at our destination only to find ashes.
So it’s a good thing we had outside help.
That “help” embraced the Earthship’s bristly cylinder like a second skin—a blanket of shimmering tendrils that reached out to stroke the varied metric textures of the cosmic continuum, sensing and choosing course, speed, and level of subspace in order to make the best possible headway. Undaunted by warning buoys and danger signs, the semisapient coating steered Streaker along routes that flamed and whirled with tempests of unresolved hypergeometry, making snap transitions that would tax Keepiru at his best.
The great Transcendents might hate leaving their comfortable Embrace of Tides, seldom venturing from their black-hole event horizons to meddle in the destiny of lesser races. But their servants certainly knew how to fly. Perhaps this special treatment balanced some of Streaker’s awful luck during the last three years. But after narrowly escaping a supernova explosion, Gillian gave up tallying miracles—good, bad … and simply weird.
Just get us home in time, she thought, whether or not a Transcendent might still be listening.
By the time Streaker passed the triple beacons of Tanith, Gillian knew the impossible was about to happen.
We’re going to see Earth again … though perhaps only from afar.
When golden Sol filled the view screen, they began encountering new warning buoys, laid down by a different bureaucracy.
BEWARE TRAVELERS!
YOU ARE ENTERING A CONFLICT ZONE
DULY REGISTERED UNDER THE RULES OF WAR!
YOU ARE ADVISED: RETURN TO
TANITH AT ONCE!
IF YOU HAVE BUSINESS HERE,
INQUIRE WITH REPRESENTATIVES OF
THE INSTITUTE FOR CIVILIZED WARFARE
ABOUT A SAFE-CONDUCT PASS,
OR ELSE REGISTER AS YET ANOTHER
CO-BELLIGERENT FORCE
EITHER ALIGNED AGAINST THE
TEHRAN DEFENDERS
OR FOR THEM.
THE FOLLOWING RACES/NATIONS/
CLANS/ALLIANCES
HAVE DECLARED VENDETTA-
ENFORCEMENT CAMPAIGNS
AGAINST THE OXY-LINEAGE KNOWN
AS EARTHCLAN …
It went on like that for a while, listing some of the factions who had laid siege to Gillian’s homeworld—a long, intimidating roll call. Apparently, after years of bickering over who should get the privilege of conquering Earth, the Soro, Tandu, Jophur, and others had agreed to join forces and divide the spoils.
On the defending side, a tally of humanity’s allies remained depressingly sparse. The Tymbrimi had remained true, at great cost. And the doughty Thennanin. Material aid—arms, but not fighters—had been smuggled in by p’ort’ls, zuhgs, and Synthians, as well as a faction of the Awaiter Alliance. And a new group, calling itself the Acolytes, had lately sent shiploads of volunteers.
The War Institute message went on to describe a long chain of protests, filed by the Soro and others, complaining about “wolfling tricks” that had stymied several successive attempts to bring their warships within firing range of Earth, resulting in massive casualities and the loss of several dozen major capital vessels, all caused by weapons and tactics not found in the Galactic Library, and therefore suspiciously improper ways for folks to slay their own would-be murderers!
That part made Gillian chuckle proudly … though apparently the Terragens Council was running out of “tricks.” In fact, their forces were now reduced to a fiery ring, marked by Luna’s orbit.
The Institute buoy finished by officially attesting that the rules of war had largely been adhered to as this conflict wound down to its inevitable conclusion.
“Some rules!” sniffed Suessi. In other eras, the War Institute had formalized combat to a relatively harmless sport, pitting professional champions against each other for privilege or honor. But under today’s loose strictures—made almost unenforceable by recent chaos—the battle fleets infesting Earth could do almost anything. Gas its cities. Capture and “adopt” its citizens. Anything except harm the planet’s fragile biosphere. And even that might be overlooked as society unraveled.
There was some good news. Apparently, the so-called Coalition of Moderate Races had finally declared open opposition to the siege, gathering forces to compel a cease-fire. The first units might arrive in a few weeks, if they weren’t held up by traffic snarls.
We’ve heard such promises before, Gillian thought bitterly.
The Niss reported that oddsmakers and
bookies (who hardly paused doing business, despite the Great Rupture) gave Terrans little hope of lasting that long.
“Well, a lot has changed lately,” she told Streaker’s crew as they plunged toward the shell-of-battle surrounding their home star. “Let’s see if we can make a difference.”
Her plans remained flexible, depending on what conditions were like near Earth.
Perhaps it might be possible to break the siege by causing a distraction. After all, her ship was the great prize everyone had been chasing for so long. Word of Streaker’s discoveries in the Shallow Cluster had set off all this frenzy in the first place. Nor would that passion have abated, with the Great Rupture fresh in memory and apocalyptic prophecies crisscrossing civilization, more disruptive than chaos waves. While tumult still rattled every sector and quadrant, each dogmatic alliance would feel more anxious than ever to solve the Progenitors’ Riddle before its rivals.
What if Streaker suddenly appeared before the besieging forces, confronting the attackers, taunting them, and then turning to flee across a turbulent galaxy? Might that draw the battle fleets away, buying Earth much-needed time? With luck, it could reignite strife between the Tandu and other radical factions, winnowing their ranks so the timid “moderates” might at last intervene.
Such a move might seem to conflict with Gillian’s orders from the Terragens Council. Those instructions had been to hide. Above all, not to let Creideiki’s data fall into the wrong hands. Streaker should surrender the information only to qualified impartial agencies, or else when the people of the Five … rather, Four Galaxies, could agree how to share it.
Well, I’ve taken care of that! What agency could be more “qualified and neutral” than the merged community that took over the former Jophur battleship, Polkjhy? A consortium of emissaries from several life orders, picked by the transcendents to represent our entire macroculture to some far-distant realm?
All the Ghost Fleet samples, including Herbie the enigmatic cadaver, were now aboard that transformed starship, racing far beyond reach of even the most dogged zealot. Perhaps some far-distant alien civilization would be suitably impressed, or even be able to answer questions about the enigma.
All that remains from the Shallow Cluster is a set of coordinates. And those are in a safe place.
Heady sensations filled Gillian’s chest. She recognized the source.
Freedom.
Along with Streaker’s remaining crew, she now felt liberated of an awful burden. A weight of importance that used to hang on them all like a shroud, requiring that they slink and hide, like prey. Too valuable to be brave.
But that had changed.
We are soldiers now. That is all
Soldiers of Earthclan.
Hyperspace
EVERYTHING UNRAVELED AFTER THE GREAT RUPTURE. all the wonderful structure—the many-layered textures of spacetime—began coming apart.
Wer’Q’quinn’s experts had warned Harry. Recoil effects would be far worse in Galaxy Four, when all its ancient links to other spirals snapped and most transfer points collapsed. Additionally, all the known levels of hyper-space—A through E—would come more or less unfastened, like skins sloughing off a snake, and largely go their own way.
Not only have I lost any hope of going home, he thought during the wild ride that followed. We may all be stuck forever in some pathetic corner of a single spiral arm. Perhaps even a solar system!
That assumed they even made it safely back to normal space.
Harry’s station shuddered and moaned. All the louvered blinds rattled in their frames, while unnerving cracks began working their way through the thick crystal panes. Just outside, a maze of transfer threads churned like tormented worms, whipping in terminal agony, Spaciogeometric links, robbed of their moorings, now snapped violently, slicing and shredding each other to bits.
This seemed a frightfully bad time to try evading the speed of light with shortcuts that had been routine for aeons. Cheating Einstein had become a perilous felony.
It might have been safer simply to drop to normal space and ride out the aftershocks near some star with a habitable fallow planet. Worst case—if FTL travel became impossible—at least they might have a place to land. But Kaa would have none of that. Almost from the moment they dropped out of E Space, the dolphin took over control, ditching the now useless corvette, and sent Harry’s station careening through a nearby transfer point—a dying maelstrom—desperately scouring for a route to the one place he called home.
Harry had never seen piloting so brilliant—or half so mad. His stubby station was hardly a sport-skimmer, yet Kaa threw the vessel into swooping turns, hopping among the radiant threads like some doped-up gibbon, brachiating through a burning forest, throwing its weight from one flaming vine to the next. Kaa’s tail repeatedly slapped the flotation pad. The dolphin’s eyes were sunken and glazed while floods of information poured through his neural tap. A ratchet of sonar clicks sprayed from the high-domed skull, sometimes merging to form individual words.
Peepoe was one Harry heard often. Having done his duty for Streaker and Earth, Kaa had just one priority—to reach his beloved.
Harry sympathized. I just wish he asked me before taking us on this insane ride!
No one dared break Kaa’s concentration. Even Rety kept silent, nervously stroking her little urrish husband. Kiwei Ha’aoulin crouched, muttering to herself in a Synthian dialect, perhaps wishing she had listened to the inner voice of caution rather than greed.
Only Dwer seemed indifferent to fear. The young hunter braced his back against the control console, and one foot on a nearby window, leaving both hands free to polish his bow while a Gordian knot of cosmic strings unraveled spectacularly outside.
Well, I guess anything can seem anticlimactic, Harry thought. After watching a whole chain of supernovas go off at once—and having the Path seize you like some agonized monster—one might get jaded with something as mundane as a conflagration in hyperspace.
Kaa pealed a yammering cry, sending the station plunging toward a huge thread whose loose end lashed, shuddering and spraying torrents of horrid sparks! Rety shouted. Vertigo roiled Harry’s guts, threatening to void his bowels. He covered his eyes, bracing for impact …
… and swayed when nothing happened.
Not even a vibration. Around him stirred only a low chucker of engines, gently turning over.
Both fearful and curious, Harry lowered his hands.
Stars shone, beyond the pitted glass. Patterns of soft lights. Stable. Permanent.
Well, almost. One patch twinkled oddly, as a wave of warped metric rippled past. Tapering chaos disturbances, still causing the vacuum to shiver. Still, how much better this seemed than that awful pit of sparking serpents!
Behind the station, receding rapidly, lay the transfer point they had just exited, marked by flashing red symbols.
DO NOT ENTER, blazoned one computer-generated icon.
NEXUS TERMINALLY DISRUPTED.
CONDITIONS LETHAL WITHIN.
I can believe that, Harry thought, vowing to embrace Kaa, the first chance he got … and to shoot the pilot if he tried to enter another t-point like that one.
In the opposite direction, growing ever larger, stood the red disk of a giant star.
“Izmunuti?” Harry guessed.
Kaa was still chattering to himself. But Dwer gave an emphatic nod.
“I’d know it anywhere. Though the storms seem to’ve settled since the last time we passed this way.”
Rety reacted badly to this news.
“No!” Her fists clenched toward Harry. “You promised I wouldn’t have to go back! Turn this ship around. Take me back to civilization!”
“I don’t think you grasp the problem,” he replied. “At this rate, we’d be lucky to reach any habitable world. Clearly, the nearest one is—”
The young woman covered her ears. “I won’t listen. I won’t!”
He looked to Dwer, who shrugged. Rety’s aggrieved rejection of r
eality reminded Harry of a race called episiarchs, clients of the mighty Tandu, who could somehow use psi—plus sheer force of ego—to change small portions of the universe around them, transforming nearby conditions more to their liking. Some savants theorized that all it took was a strong enough will, plus a high opinion of yourself. If so, Rety might hurl them megaparsecs from this place, so desperate was she not to see the world of her birth.
Kaa lifted his bottle-nosed head. The pilot’s black eye cleared as he made an announcement. “We c-can’t stay here. Jijo is still over a light-year away. That’ll take at least a dozen jumps through A Space. Or fifffty … if we use Level B.”
Harry recalled predictions made by the Kazzkark Navigation staff—that the rupture would make all hyperlevels much harder to use. In Galaxy Four, they might detach completely and flutter away, leaving behind the glittering blackness of normal space, an Einsteinian cosmos, where cause and effect were ruled strictly by the crawling speed of light.
But that peeling transition would not come instantly. Perhaps the rapid layers could still be used, for a while at least.
“Try B Space,” he suggested. “I have a hunch we may need to drop out quickly and often along the way.”
Kaa tossed his great head.
“Okay. It’s your ship-p. B Space it issss.…”
With that hiss of finality, the pilot turned his attention back through the neural tap, to a realm where his uncanny cetacean knack might be their only hope.
Harry felt the station power up for the first jump.
I’d pray, he thought. If creation itself weren’t already moaning in pain.
Almost from the start, they saw disturbing signs of ruin—debris of numerous space vessels, wrecked as they had tried following exactly the same course, flicker-jumping from Izmunuti toward Jijo.
“Some folks passed this way before us,” Dwer commented.
“And quite recently, by all appearances.” Kiwei’s voice was awed. “It seems that an entire fleet of large vessels came through. They must have been caught in hyperspace when the Rupture struck.”