Paying the Price (Book 5 of The Empire of Bones Saga) (12 page)

Talbot cleared his throat. “This is all very exciting, but I’m going to side with Carl on this. If we can’t get out of here, it doesn’t make a difference to us. Did any of the other Carls try this?”

Leonard shook his head. “There was no mention of it. Let me scan them again.”

The scientist pulled out the scanner and took a good look at Carl. Talbot mentally tagged him Carl Prime.

“Is it the unit behind your lungs? Excellent. We’ll see if they have similar equipment.”

He scanned the corpses and shook his head. “None of them have it. You’re unique, even among your doubles, my boy.”

“Well, that possibly explains why they didn’t get out of here,” Talbot said. “None of the boys have found anything that looks like an exit, and none of the scanning we’ve done inside has opened anything. The little machines are watching us, but haven’t tried to interact.

“We have to get the admiral to trigger an opening on the surface while we’re waiting inside at the right spot. That has to be it.”

“Major,” one of the marines outside said over the com, “you’d better come out here.”

He excused himself from the scientific discussion and cycled out through the airlock.

“What is it?”

He saw it before the man spoke. The light that one of the Carls had rigged to draw people here was blinking in a series of single flashes and sets of three.

The alien computer had sensed the quantum signals and was attempting to communicate.

* * * * *

Carl watched the light blink in the same style code that Kelsey had used. How was that even possible? No one could detect the quantum effects. Well, obviously the aliens could. Somehow. He’d have to dig more deeply into that, if he made it out of here.

At least it meant there was a possible way out of here. If they could convince the computer to release them, they might live after all.

“The first thing we need to do is find a way to talk on our end,” he said. “It can detect the quantum signals, but I can only directly communicate with the hammer. I don’t want to muddy those waters unless I have to.”

Doctor Leonard nodded. “Quite right. Perhaps a light of our own?”

“We need to do this at a faster speed than figuring out how to say ‘Hello World’ or some such. I’m going to try something a bit more involved. Give me a few minutes, please.”

He stepped back over to the light and thought about the problem. The thing could obviously sense the area around the light. Otherwise, how would it know which power circuit to mess with to communicate? So, it could probably see him right now. Or whatever passed for sight for these people.

He blinked. That might be it. “Seeing” meant different things to different species. Old Terran bats used sound to know their surroundings. So did a number of sea dwellers. The aliens might also use that to communicate.

The computer could’ve been attempting to communicate all this time, but in their suits, they’d never know. Especially if the sound was outside the normal range of human hearing.

He activated the scanners in his suit. They weren’t as good as a hand-held unit, but they were adequate for this task. They were also simple to integrate with his implant processors.

Computers were fast. Faster than a human. If they could establish a communication protocol, the computers could work it out faster than he could.

The area around him was alive with subsonic noise. Hell, even noise in the normal human hearing range. Only, they hadn’t been listening for it.

He had his suit send out a subsonic pulse in Morse code. It was immediately repeated from somewhere near him.

The computer was listening.

He experimented with making the tones faster. The top speed of communication was impressive. It sounded like an electronic wail to him.

Next, the computer needed a large sample of language to make guesses with. They had no common point of reference, so hopefully the computer could make progress on its own. Visual cues would help.

He had a lot of video in his implant memory. He liked watching some of the same old Terran vids that Kelsey did. Perhaps if he could find a way to link that video with the Morse code, it would be a start.

Actually, a nature documentary might be better. He liked hiking, though he rarely had time these days. Or a suitable location. If the computer could match key words and images, perhaps his implant computers could help translate.

He didn’t have any of those, but maybe he could get some.

Carl sent a message through the quantum link, asking if they could send some nature documentaries through the link at high speed. He knew enough about video and audio encoding to get it all back together on this end.

All they had to do was link the computer on their end into the quantum unit and tell it to send some to him.

That would allow him to communicate with them in a more reasonable manner, too. Once they had a mutually agreeable set of communication protocols, he could send and receive video and audio through his implants.

Setting that up took a few minutes. Once the data started flowing in, he began assembling it. It only took a few seconds. He’d built a lot of data throughput into the unit for future growth.

Once the first was complete, he instructed his implants to keep exchanging data until the two units could understand one another.

The process was unreal. He played the vids through his suit projector on the bulkhead at a fast pace. The implants translated the audio track into Morse. The high-speed squeals of Morse from the computer made him go faster, and then even faster.

Then he became a bystander as his implants and the computer traded increasingly complex series of code that were more complex than Morse. It included a large amount of data. They were creating a shared language, he thought.

Which was crazy. His implants weren’t
that
advanced.

That’s when he realized it wasn’t just his implants. It was also communicating with someone through his quantum validation unit at an incredible rate. A ton of data was flowing in both directions.

It was using the already established link between the quantum unit and the computer on the other end to speed the process. His implants were acting as a go-between. He only hoped the others didn’t freak out and cut them off.

He initiated a communications request and slipped it into the torrent of data flowing between him and the computer.

* * * * *

Kelsey was still trying to grasp what was happening when her implants pinged with an incoming communication request. It was Carl Owlet.

He must’ve figured out some way to use the quantum validation unit to communicate directly. That was excellent. She accepted the request.

“Carl? Are you alright?”

“Kelsey? Thank God we got ahold of someone. We’re okay, but trapped inside the station. Things are really odd in here. I think we really did find aliens. Just not live ones.”

That was pretty clear, she thought. “We’re sending the movies you requested and I allowed
Persephone
to respond to the other information requests because it was you. What’s happening?”

“The computer here—at least I think it’s a computer—sensed the quantum communication and we’re trying to teach it enough to interact with us. My implants are requesting data to find common ground with it. We’re hoping that we can get enough clarity to tell it we need to leave. Where are you?”

“Halfway across the system. Congratulations on creating the first FTL communications system, by the way. This is huge.”

“It’s been a big week for me. Talbot, Doctor Leonard, and a dozen marines are here with me. And we found incontrovertible proof that there are parallel universes.”

Hearing her lover was trapped worried her, but she was already doing what she had to do to get him free.

“We’ll be back in the area in a bit more than four hours. Parallel universes? You’re sure?”

“Pretty sure. We found bodies here. There are several versions of me. With my exact implant serial numbers. They left messages for me. It’s kind of creepy.”

“You can drop the qualifiers. That’s creepy.”

A second request for communication came in, but this one was odd. It had no implant code at all. She wasn’t sure who was calling.

“I’m getting a request to talk to someone,” she told Carl. “Is it someone on your end?”

“Not that I know of. Everything is going through my implants. I’m not getting a ping from anyone.”

She mentally shrugged. “Let’s see who it is.”

Kelsey accepted the request. She added the person to the already existing conversation. “Hello? Who is this?”

“Hello. I am the person you are communicating with.”

That rocked her back on her heels. The voice sounded almost natural in her mental ear. No trace of odd accents. “You’re the computer in the station around the black hole?”

“My queries of those terms indicate that I am almost certainly what you mean by that, though computer is an unfamiliar concept. I am a living being.”

Kelsey put her diplomatic hat on. “Greetings, then. I am Princess Kelsey Bandar of the Terran Empire. My associate in your station is Carl Owlet. May I ask whom I am addressing?”

“My name does not translate well. You may call me the last. It is an accurate term, as I am the last of my people in this universe.”

She filed that away. There would be time to figure out what it meant soon enough.

“That’s an odd name for those of my people. Perhaps I can call you Omega?”

“Yes, that name seems accurate.”

“Very well,” she said. “Omega it is. You’re aware some of our people are inside you. We mean you no harm. In fact, they are trying to get back out.”

“I am aware of their predicament. I sorrow at the deaths of those that came before them. I was unable to communicate with them. I deeply regret that I cannot assist you in exiting this station.”

Carl cut in. “This is Carl Owlet. May I ask why you can’t help us?”

The alien sounded apologetic. “The flaw lies in my current state. Those that came before you did not come from the same reality as you. You are aware of this?”

“We are.”

“The reason for this lies in the nature of this station. It exists in many realities. More than I can count. All circling this cursed black hole. Something about the extreme gravity and bending of space and time have made the interiors of all the stations become one.

“When you came inside my hull, you stepped outside your reality. Here, all are equally real. I cannot sense which one to open a portal to. Here on the inside, it is one. Outside, there are many. When you entered, you activated the portal from only that reality. I cannot replicate it in the other direction. I cannot tell which is which.”

Kelsey had a hard time getting her mind around that. “Why did your builders make you that way?”

The other being laughed without humor. “Such was never their intention. Our sun was growing less stable. We built this station to create a gateway out of our doomed solar system.

“They created a path to another reality for our people to flee. One with a stable sun and no people to fight them for a place to live. It took many, many years and hundreds of expeditions, but they finally found a suitable home and our people fled this doomed place.

“Centuries later, the sun did explode. It may be that the use of the technology in this station accelerated the process. I am unsure. It happened in many realities, all at once. Somehow, that cataclysm is responsible for my current state.”

That story could’ve ended a lot worse, she thought. “I’m glad they made it. Why didn’t they come back for you?”

“I am an unbreakable part of this station. To remove me would kill me. This is the sacrifice I made for my people. I do not regret it.

“In any case, the linking of all those stations into one has made it strong. It survived the explosion undamaged. In fact, I am unsure anything can damage it any longer. I would help you escape, if I could. And, perhaps, with your strange communication units, we can find a solution.”

She hoped so. If not, her friends would be trapped forever.

Chapter Eleven

“That’s an incredible story,” Jared said. “If we didn’t have people inside to see it for themselves, I’m not sure I’d believe it. But it still doesn’t help us get them back.”

He sat in his office with Kelsey. Six hours had passed and many of the ships were back. The last of them would return in the next few hours and he had some decisions to make.

“You’ve spoken with this thing,” he said. “Do you believe its story?”

She nodded. “I do. It hasn’t asked us for anything. If it had some kind of ulterior motive, it would actually have to communicate it. It doesn’t want to leave the station. Omega says it’s happy to remain there alone.

“And it has been very forthcoming in how we might be able to get them back to our reality. If our end of the quantum validation unit is near the surface of the station, but not in range to be pulled in, it thinks that it might be able to sense which reality to open the hull to.”

“That sounds a bit chancy, but I’m not sure how we could increase the odds. Do you believe the story about multiple realities?”

“Carl showed me images of the other Carls. That’s pretty damned convincing.”

“That’s just insane. Other universes. Meaning we could maybe use it to find one where the Old Empire never fell. Though, I’m not sure that’s the best idea.”

“Thankfully, you don’t have to make that decision,” she said. “All we need to do is get our people back. And
Persephone
will have to be part of that.”

He felt himself frowning. “Why? I’d rather not expose you to this unknown danger.”

“We already have the communication flowing. There’s a lot of data coming our way and I’m loath to stop it. We’re taking everything Omega sends us and isolating it. And, in a case of better late than never, I locked down the sensitive files to make sure we didn’t give away the Crown Jewels.”

“We’ll have to hope it doesn’t misuse any data it already has. I’ll want copies of what you have, just in case something goes wrong.”