Requiem (69 page)

'With the
sentinel,' said Therin, stepping forward into the broken circle of
scientists and counsellors, her arms crossed, eyes sweeping over
the faces of the other Yurrick. 'We've been analysing the signals
that pass between the sentinels and Icarus. We believe that we can
simulate a distress signal.'

'And...?'

'And we also
have a sleeping sentinel sitting in our lab. A sentinel that can be
recalled by Icarus once the distress signal is activated from
inside it.' Therin brought up an image on the central holo-display.
'This is the inside of the sentinel we have in the lab. There isn't
much space in there but since we removed the rig for the
anti-matter cannon we've freed up enough of it. We should be able
to fit four, maybe five crew inside. If we can get Icarus to take
the bait then we may just be able to hide the infiltration crew
inside it and then get inside Icarus through the repair dock on its
underside.'

'What makes you
think their presence won't be detected?' asked Tialus.

'We can't be
completely sure. But we do think that the heat signatures of those
on board will be well hidden by the solar panels and the nanotech
on the sentinel's shell.'

'And assuming
this is successful, then what?' said the researcher. 'What do we do
once we're inside?'

'We find the
central intelligence and do whatever it takes to destroy it.'

'How? And with
what? A nuke? You could barely fit the payload inside the sentinel
let alone an escort team. And a nuke probably wouldn't even phase
Icarus, not with its ability to repair itself.'

'We take
Seline,' said Sear.

'The human?
Why? Does she know something we don't?'

'She's the only
one who has communicated with Icarus. The sentinel that's sitting
in our lab is there because of her,' said Sear.

'You're
proposing we send the girl in there based on some pet theory of
yours? Your evidence is tenuous at best. The sentinel could have
dropped dead for any number of reasons.'

'We've explored
these reasons and found nothing. There is some kind of connection
between this machine and Seline. We need to realise that and we
need to take advantage of it. I've spoken to the software
engineers, the virus will
not
stop Icarus. The virus is a
bug on a windshield and letting off a bomb inside Icarus is just a
slightly bigger bug.'

'We have to
destroy the gate,' said one of the counsellors. '
That's
our
only chance.'

'And let Icarus
destroy the rest of the galaxy while we hide away in a dark
corner?'

'We hide until
we find a solution which is better than dying without even giving
ourselves a chance.' The counsellor looked at Therin and Sear. 'I
say we launch something at the Atlas Gate and try to destroy
it.'

'We've already
gone over this and we don't know what the consequences will be. The
energy released from the explosion could potentially destroy the
entire system. Even if we threw the damn thing into our star it
could still release that energy and wipe everything out.'

'The risk now
is surely worth the potential of saving our planet.'

'Is it?' said
Sear. 'We're at least one hundred light years away from the nearest
Atlas Gate. The fastest we're capable of travelling, at least with
current technology, is only a third the speed of light so whatever
solution we found would take over three hundred years
minimum
before it could be enacted. It's just not plausible.
And given Icarus's ability to manipulate the Atlas Gates, who's to
say that it couldn't create a wormhole without the gates anyway?
The only solution we have is sitting on the other side of that
door.'

'She's not a
solution! She's a liability with dumb luck on her side.'

'Better dumb
luck than no luck.'

The counsellor
stared at Therin, then at Sear.

'You speak of
hope, counsellor,' said Sear. He pointed to the door, past the
door, to where Seline was waiting. 'Well, the only hope I have
resides with her.'

The counsellor
slammed his hand into the table. 'She may have fooled y-'

'We don't have
time to sit here arguing!' Tialus's voice cut through the
counsellor's, leaving it dead and fidgeting at his feet. She looked
across at Sear. 'Do it,' she said. 'Take whatever and whoever you
need.'

Seline was
sitting on the floor, her knees raised, her foot tapping at the
floor. Belameir was at the nearby vending machine, kicking at it to
get the treat to fall from its shelf into the receptacle.

'You'd think
they would've perfected vending machine technology by now,' he
muttered. He was about to kick it again when Sear and Therin
emerged from the lab.

Seline stood up
from the floor, crossing her arms over her stomach. She caught a
glimpse of some faces inside the room. They were all staring
directly at her. The door sealed shut. 'What happened? What're we
doing?' she asked.

Therin was
looking at Sear. 'I'm going with you.'

'Are you sure?'
he asked.

'Of course I'm
sure.'

'What's going
on?' Seline asked.

Belameir
appeared next to Seline, chewing on a bar of sugar rice.

Sear turned to
Seline, 'We're going to stop Icarus and you're coming with us.'

Seline was
sitting alone in the changing room, her elbows rested on her knees.
She stared at her feet, planted on the tiles, so clean she could
almost see her reflection. There was an itch on her shoulder that
she couldn't reach beneath the plates of the armoured space-suit.
Even after all the training drills aboard the cruiser the suit
still felt uncomfortably tight. The thin plates of carbon fibre
were rigid against her body. She looked at the gloves and helmet on
the floor to her left. She took a deep breath and sighed.

There was a
knock at the door. She looked up. 'Come in.'

Sear poked his
head through. 'Are you ready?' he asked

'Ready?' Seline
ran her fingers over her head. She almost laughed to herself.
'Yeah, sure.'

Sear stepped in
and closed the door behind him. He was dressed the same as Seline.
The dark suit of carbon fibre plates minus the gloves and helmet.
The thick soles of his boots squeaked against the tiled floor as he
approached Seline. He knelt down in front of her, placing a hand on
her arm.

Seline looked
at the frosted texture of his skin. At the patterns, like hurried
brush strokes painted in transient shades of green.

'Are you sure I
should be doing this?' Seline asked.

'None of us
would be doing this if I wasn't sure.'

'I mean, I
don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing.' She waved her
hand and let it drop. 'It's not like I knew what was even happening
when I stopped that sentinel.'

'Then we're all
in the same boat. If you were in that room with me you would've
seen how desperate things are. We've considered the options and, to
me and to Therin and even Tialus, this is the only one that offers
any hope.'

'Tialus
actually agreed to this?'

'She's the only
thing stopping us from being court-martialed right now.'

'That still
doesn't say much for our chances though does it?'

The darkness in
Sear's eyes was diminishing. 'It doesn't. But what other choice do
we have?'

Seline looked
at the floor. 'I'm afraid,' she said, her voice was shaking. She
tried to swallow it down.

'I'd be worried
if you weren't,' said Sear. 'Every one of us is afraid,
Seline.'

'Even you?'

He wrapped his
hand around hers.

She looked up.
The darkness in Sear's eyes was gone. It was there, as plain as
ever, a fear she never thought she'd see. Yellow irises with black
fissures running through their centres. They were shaking. They
were uncertain.

For a second,
she felt weightless. Like she could drift away at any moment if the
breeze caught her right. She reached out and grabbed on to Sear to
anchor herself to the ground. She kept her words to herself, afraid
of how they might sound, how they
would
sound if she said
them out loud.

'I know you're
afraid of what you might find in there,' said Sear, 'but that's
precisely why we need you with us.'

'I know,' she
said. She pulled him into her and pressed her lips to his to let
the taste drown the fear in both of them, if just for a moment.

Therin was
already suited up and talking to another Yurrick who Seline had
never seen before. He was short next to Therin. His skin was almost
as dark as the sentinel's. He had the same wide-set eyes and
slender build as most of the other Yurrick she'd seen.

Sear and Seline
walked down from the gangway to the lab's work floor. Sear
introduced Seline to the stranger named Carex – one of the
researchers Therin and Athene had been working with. Shortly after,
Mercer entered and then Athene who was discussing something with
Belameir.

'Alright,' said
Mercer to Therin and Sear. 'You guys going to clue us in or just
keep the battle plan to yourselves?'

'The plan is to
use your big mouth to swallow Icarus whole.'

'Ha. Ha. So...
what are our predictions for Icarus's movement once it's through
the gate? Do you think it'll go straight for the sun?'

'How fucking
hungry can this thing be that it needs to eat another star this
soon?' said Belameir.

'Who said
anything about being hungry?' said Athene. 'It may just be doing
this for the sake of it, to watch the chaos of the ants beneath its
heel.'

'Maybe it wants
to mate with you,' Mercer said to Belameir.

'Possibly.
Probably. I'll take one for the team if I have to.'

'You joke at a
time like this?' said Carex.

'What else do
you want us to do?'

'How about take
this seriously.'

'I'll die
before I do that,' said Belameir.

Carex looked
over Belameir. 'Since you aren't embarking on this mission, should
you even be here?'

'He's fine,'
said Sear. 'Now, as you were saying?'

Carex gathered
himself. 'We know that Icarus travels within the centre of the
swarm of sentinels but when it moves to take a planet or star it
separates. Most of the swarm will move to surround whatever
celestial object it is after but from what we've seen, Icarus has a
big enough army that it will be more than capable of taking us out
while it prepares itself to harvest the sun. Our plan is to wait
until the Atlas Gate is almost open before activating the distress
signal. As soon as Icarus picks up the signal it should hail the
sentinel back to be repaired.'

'Assuming all
goes well and we get inside Icarus, what then?' asked Seline.

'We have to
find the central processor – the brain,' said Sear.

'So where is
it? How do we get there?'

'This thing is
a perfect sphere. And with a mind as powerful as it is, it's going
to want to give it the best protection it can. It would probably
have it kept as far away as possible from any external threat-'

'In the
centre.'

'Yes. That
would be my guess.'

'The only
problem is, well, it's not the
only
problem, but we don't
know what kind of internal defences Icarus has. It could be that it
relies solely on the sentinels as its means of defence or that it
has another army waiting inside. We have no way of knowing.'

'There're no
windows in this thing,' said Therin, gesturing towards the
sentinel, 'which means Icarus won't be able to get a visual on us
but on the other hand we aren't going to be able to see what's
going on around us. We're not going to be able to tell when it's
safe enough to disembark. We'll just have to use our discretion
when we think we've gone as far as we can with it.'

'Once we're
inside,' said Carex, 'we're going to have to make it up as we go
along. All we have is a crude scanner that will show where we are
in proximity to Icarus. Since we don't have any real idea of what
the internal layout is, it's just going to serve as a simplified
locator to measure our progress.'

'So we have no
idea what we're going to encounter – at all?' asked Seline.

'Icarus is
huge, seven hundred and fifty-two kilometres across to be exact.
The only thing I could actually say with some confidence is that,
in terms of its shear size and the mechanics of maintaining the
structural integrity of a space vessel, there are likely structural
supports running all through the inside of Icarus. These will most
likely be in the form of beams or possibly walls.'

'Walls?'

Carex held his
hands up, cupping them so the palms were facing each other like in
a ball. 'The walls would probably be like layers. First you would
have the outside of Icarus then deeper down you would have another
layer, then another beneath that and so on but then again, given
the technology involved here, I wouldn't be surprised if it's
something I haven't even considered – maybe some kind of energy or
magnetic repulsion keeps that thing together. There's a point where
speculations can cause more harm than good.'

'I think I'd
rather have something than nothing, even if it turns out to be
wrong,' said Seline.

'Taking a
plasma and oxyfuel cutter would be a good idea but you can barely
fit four let alone five people in that sentinel so we can't exactly
prepare ourselves for every possibility, just the more likely ones.
And speaking of possibilities...' Carex opened a window on the
holo-display.

'What's
that?'

'It's a copy of
the virus. I want you all to upload it into your optics just in
case.'

'In case
what?'

'In case any of
us end up needing it.'

'But it's
useless isn't it? A bug on a windshield.'