Victory (27 page)

“Sickbay. We need that information that Krull has. Unconscious or not, I’m going to get it out of her.”

Chapter Sixty

Sickbay, ISS Victory

Interstellar Space, 2.3 Lightyears From Sirius

Sickbay was still crowded and busy, possibly more so now that the wounded from the
Warrior
’s crew had begun trickling up from the fighter deck and the shuttle and cargo bay. Though, fortunately, the
Warrior
’s medical staff had also transferred over, so at least there was care, if not space, for the patients.

On one of the beds he saw Ensign Prince, half his head wrapped in a bandage, tinged with blood. He must have had a mishap either during the evacuation or the flight over to the
Victory
. He recognized a few more injured crewmen from his old crew, and the conscious ones gave him small salutes as they were able. He was still
their
hero. Their symbol of survival. And it showed in their eyes. Just seeing him seemed to give their eyes life.

In the private examination room Krull lay unconscious on her bed, and to his credit the doc was still there, taking life-sign readings. “I’ve got nearly a hundred of your people out there, Captain. One of them already died for lack of immediate care. This alien had sure better be worth it.”

“She is. She and all twenty-two thousand of her Children.”

The doctor nodded. “Yeah, I found them. In her abdomen, lining her bones, her ribs, embedded in fatty tissues all along her arms and legs. Not terribly large, but definitely embryos. Highly developed embryos—I’ve never seen anything like them. I can’t even fathom how they get out.”

“Most of them never do,” said Granger. He wondered what it would be like to live the Interior Life, never knowing mobility, choice, independence.

But immediately the Children corrected him.
We do have choice. One does not need the Exterior Life to make choices.

He realized he’d been thinking ... forcefully, for lack of a better word, and exposing himself to the Children through the Ligature. He wondered how sensitive it was. Was there some threshold below which they had no chance of hearing his thoughts? And how far did it extend? Could the Swarm, dozens of lightyears away, hear him? So many questions.

Questions that could wait.

“Wake her, Doc.”

The doctor protested. “But Captain, that could be dangerous. Coma is a natural mechanism for the body to repair itself. Presumably for these people as well. You can’t just wake someone up and expect them to be ok.”

“Do it anyway. I need to talk to her.”

Reluctantly, the doctor pressed a meta-syringe up to Krull’s neck. “What if it kills her, Tim?” said Proctor.

“It’s a chance we’ll have to take. We need what she knows.”

“Can’t you just talk to the Children?”

He shook his head. “No, it’s not quite the same. When she’s unconscious, they are more disorganized. Like thousands of discordant voices. When she’s awake, they were more like a choir. She gives them focus and order. They don’t always agree on everything, just like most children, but not having her there makes it difficult to communicate.”

Krull stirred. Granger heard her in his mind. He reached out to her through the Ligature. “Krull, I’m here. I need to know what you know.”

She opened her eyes. “And why should I trust you?” Her voice was weak, barely above a whisper. “Your people have demonstrated their inability to be trusted,” she said, weakly. “It’s not just the Russians. You might think you’re special, that you’re different, but you’re all the same. You all lust for power and control.”

“No,” said Granger. “It’s not true. All I want is to save my people.”

“It’s what all of you say. It’s what your president says. It’s what Malakhov says. It’s what every tyrant says.”

Granger looked up at Proctor. Strange, wasn’t it, that she mentioned the Russian president. “Do you know Malakhov?”

She slowly nodded. Her face had turned from a light cream-blue to a more greenish shade. From her mind it was clear that she felt terrible. Her chorus of Children hadn’t calmed, and in fact, seemed to be getting more discordant and agitated. “I was the one to make the deal with him. Over ten of your years ago. It was under Valarisi control, of course, but I still remember it.”

“The Khorsky incident,” he muttered, to which she nodded. “And? What did he want?”

“He claimed he wanted to join us, of course. But we knew better. He wanted only to destroy us, but to do so on his terms, as part of some grand plan for Russian hegemony. He told us he had new, terrifying weapons that we could use to subjugate humanity quickly, without the need for a long, protracted war. We agreed, and helped him set up the production facilities over Penumbra Three. Construction took nearly a decade.”

“And what did he want in return?”

“To survive, of course. He sold out humanity for his own survival. We agreed to leave his people—the Russians—alone, in exchange for the rest of humanity. That, and ... he wanted his own personal freedom.”

Freedom? “Explain.”

“I didn’t understand at the time, since I was thrall to the Valarisi. I had no conception of even what he was asking for, or why he would ask for it, but of course it makes sense to me now. You see, Captain, he wanted to join the Swarm, but without being ... made a friend. Most of his top commanders and generals and politicians were made friends. But not Malakhov. He stayed outside the family. His mind, and his alone, was silent to us.”

Granger and Proctor exchanged significant looks. So, out of all the Russian political and military structure, Malakhov stayed truly independent. The Russians were under Swarm influence at a tactical level, but not a strategic level. Malakhov was still in control.

“But he was wrong,” she continued, coughing, then wincing. “We knew exactly what he was doing. You see, when we absorbed the Adanasi—the Russians—when we brought them into the family, we absorbed all their knowledge, their expertise, their skills. The Adanasi—and your people are no exception Granger—are experts at deception. At double dealings. At artifice and subterfuge and lies. And in the moment that the Valarisi absorbed the Adanasi, we understood them, and came up with our own subterfuge. We recognized what Malakhov was aiming to do, so we turned the tables on him.”

“And what was that?” Granger asked urgently. She looked terrible, and worried that she’d pass out again soon.

“Malakhov planned the destruction of the Valarisi, using the new weapons he gave us. The singularities come in pairs. What comes in one side, goes out the other. We deployed the weapons on the carriers, but the other sides were all kept above Penumbra Three, near the production facility. Malakov claimed they needed to be there to maintain their stability, but we saw through that lie. His real goal was to collect all that matter, all that debris, enough mass to form a small moon. And then he would hurl it down to the surface.”

“The surface?”

“Of the planet. Over which the production facility orbited.”

“Why? What’s on the planet?”

“Captain, it’s obvious. When the Adanasi were absorbed, the Valarisi gained their penchant for subterfuge. And one of the first lessons of politics is that you keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”

“Are you saying...?”

“That Penumbra Three is the Valarisi’s homeworld?” She coughed again. Blood tinged her lips. “Of course, that knowledge was kept from me, even for all the time I served the Valarisi. But isn’t the answer obvious?”

“And Malakhov was going to bombard the surface of Penumbra Three with all the debris sucked up by the singularities that he’s been collecting for the past four months?”

Proctor nodded. “It’s a pretty effective way to eradicate the Swarm matter. It can most likely seep into the crust of whatever planet it’s on, so you’d have to be thorough. A moon-sized mass hitting the planet would not only destroy all life, it would heat up and liquify the crust down to the mantle. There would be no way any Swarm matter would survive.”

“Yes,” said Krull. Her voice was faint. “But the Valarisi won’t let that happen. In fact, the pieces are already in place. All that mass, instead of striking Penumbra Three and destroying it, will all be intercepted by another singularity. One outside of Malakhov’s control.”

Granger felt his blood run cold. “And where is that singularity’s pair?”

“Over Earth, of course.”

Chapter Sixty-One

Sickbay, ISS Victory

Interstellar Space, 2.3 Lightyears From Sirius

“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” asked Granger.

“We didn’t know if we could trust you. And that hesitation on our part was vindicated,” she said, wincing in pain. “But you
are
different, Granger. Maybe
you
can actually do something about it.”

She brought her hands to her head and closed her eyes, almost seeming to pass out for a moment. The doctor scanned her head again. “She’s hemorrhaging. I can’t stop this brain bleed.”

“And you won’t, Doctor,” she managed to say. “My body long ago lost the ability to heal itself. Such is the price of dependance on the gifts of the Valarisi.”

Proctor edged closer. “What do you mean?”

“With the touch of the Valarisi comes control, but also healing. It has been in my blood for a very long time, healing me, unnaturally extending my life, such that my body has lost all natural ability to heal itself. Over time, one becomes entirely dependent on it.”

“How long have you been under their influence?” Granger edged closer. Krull looked pale. He worried she was on her last leg. Judging from the frantic chorus of the Children
,
they were worried about it too. Terrified, was a more appropriate word.

“I was one of the first. At the very beginning. As I spend more time outside their influence, my memory is coming back. Slowly. But I was there. Over ten thousand years ago when the Valarisi first exerted their dominance over us.”

Ten thousand years ago?

“I thought you said you were seven hundred and fifty?”

A weak smile. “I told you, we’ve learned much from the Adanasi. I lied. I did not trust you. I did not know you.” She coughed again. “It was the very first cycle of the Valarisi. I was a young matriarch, sent by our Bonded Council of Seven to settle a new planet. We had been there a few years, building a small city and taming the environment. But we did not know that the Valarisi’s cycle was soon to begin anew. One hundred and fifty of your years. Like clockwork, as you say. And we were in the wrong place, at the wrong time.”

“Where were you?”

“Penumbra Three. The very first cycle. For us, at least. But the Skiohra were the first race to fall.”

Penumbra Three.
It was right there in our grasp, and the Russians scared us off. Unbelievable.

She continued. “We were aware of the Valarisi. They were kind, but enigmatic. As a liquid-based life form it was nearly impossible to communicate with them. But we knew they were there. We knew they were intelligent. But then came the quickening. The moment when the Valarisi were truly born. When the
others
came, we were powerless to stop them.”

“Others? What others?”

“You know them as the Swarm, Captain.”

“The Valarisi?”

“No. The
others
control the Valarisi.”

Granger was confused. “Are you saying that the Swarm and the Valarisi are two separate races? Two different things?”

“Of course. The Valarisi are a beautiful, harmonious culture. Luminous beings of liquid and light. The Swarm corrupted them. Absorbed them. Just like they did to us. To the Dolmasi. To the Findiri and the Quiassi. And finally, the Adanasi. Seven peoples. One family.”

“Then who
are
the Swarm?” Granger nearly shouted.

“We do not know. They are
other
. They came from beyond. We do not understand it. They are meta-space beings, Captain Granger. Beyond that, I know nothing, only that, through the Valarisi, they were able to dominate me. Control my thoughts and make me do ... unthinkable things.”

A sick feeling came over Granger. He could tell from the look on Proctor’s face that she felt the same. It seemed their enemy was even more deadly, more powerful, and more pervasive and untouchable than they’d ever dreamed.

There really was only one hope. They had to hide. Get enough of humanity out of the reach of the Swarm so that they could return and fight another day, many years in the future.

“When is the cycle over?”

“Granger—” Krull descended into a coughing fit, not calming down for half a minute. “I thought you understood that. The cycles are over. The Russians interrupted the cycle, and it is no more. The Swarm is here to stay.”

She closed her eyes, and fell into unconsciousness. Through the Ligature, he could feel her slip away. The doctor sprang into action, pressing a meta-syringe into her, scanning her chest. “Her heart has stopped.”

And from the chorus of Children, terror. Their mother was dead, and soon, they would be too. He supposed that, normally, when a Skiohra mother died, her body would usually release some calming agent to the Children, to ease their passage too. But Krull’s normal body functions were corrupted from the millennia of dependance on Swarm matter.
 

And so they cried out in terror, until, one by one, by the dozens and hundreds, they too fell silent.

Chapter Sixty-Two

Executive Command Center, Russian Singularity Production Facility

High Orbit, Penumbra Three

Isaacson ran back down the corridor. His only thought was to escape from the scene of the crime. What were the chances someone saw what he did?

And did it matter? He passed through the atrium where the elevator doors hung open to receive him, but after a brief moment of indecision, decided against it. Instead, he aimed for the observatory, thinking to use the comm system to call down to ... someone. His security detail? Maybe they could escort him to his ship without being detained.

No, that was stupid. He needed to act like it was an accident. And the only way for that to be believable was to report it. Quickly. He raced through the doors to the observatory, and scanned the walls for a commlink. The walls were bare, except for the doors that led into the medical station, the lab containing the singularity equipment, and what he supposed were other labs and support rooms.