vessels came through. They must have been caught in hyperspace when the Rupture struck.”
The results were devastating. As Izmunuti fell away behind them, and Jijo’s sun grew steadily brighter, Harry’s instruments showed appalling remnants of a shattered armada, some of the hulks still glowing from fiery dismemberment.
“I make out at least two basic ship types,” he diagnosed, peering into the analytical scope. “One of ’em might be Jophur. The other … I can’t tell.”
In fact, it was hard to get a fix on anything, because their own vessel kept heaving and shuddering. Kaa yanked the station back into normal space whenever his fey instincts told him that a new chaos wave was coming, or when a flapping crease in B Level threatened to fold over itself and smash anything caught between.
Crossing this unstable zone of hyperreality — a rather short span by earlier standards — became a treacherous series of mad sprints that got worse, dura by dura. Each flicker seemed to take greater concentration than the last, demanding more from the gasping engines. And yet, there could be no pause for rest. It was essential to reenter hyperspace as soon as possible, for at any moment B Level might detach completely, leaving them stranded, many light months from any refuge. Food and air would give out long before Harry’s small group might traverse such a vast distance of flat metric.
Too bad we Earthlings never pursued our early knack at impulse rocketry, after making contact with the Civilization of Five Galaxies. It seemed the most ridiculous of all wolfling technologies, to make ships capable of brute-force acceleration toward lightspeed. With so many cheap shortcuts available from the Great Library, who needed such a tool kit of outlandishly extravagant tricks?
The answer was apparent.
We do. Anyone who wants to travel around Galaxy Four may need them, from now till the end of time.
At least there were clear signs of progress. Each jump brought them visibly closer to that warm, sturdy sun. Yet, the tense moments passed with aching slowness, as they followed a rubble-strewn trail of devastated star- craft.
“I guess that Jophur battleship must have got word to their headquarters, while it was off chasing Streaker,” Dwer concluded. “Their reinforcements arrived at the worst moment, just in time to be smashed by the Rupture.”
“We should rejoice,” mused Kiwei. “I have no wish to live in a Jophur satrapy.”
“Hmph,” Harry commented. “That assumes all of their fleet was caught in hyperspace during the worst of it. For all we know, a whole squadron may have made it safely. They could be waiting for us at Jijo.”
It was a dismal prospect — to have endured so much, only to face capture at the end by humorless stacks of uncompromising sap-rings.
“Well,” Dwer said, after a few more edgy jumps, when the yellow star was already looking quite sunlike. “We won’t have long to wait now.”
He pressed close to the forwardmost window, as eager to spy Jijo as Rety was to evade the verdict of destiny.
Earth
THE SOLAR SYSTEM WAS LITTERED WITH wreckage from more than two years of seesaw fighting — shattered reminders of stiff wolfling resistance that surely came as a rude shock to invaders expecting easy conquest. Fourthhand tales of that savage struggle had reached Streaker’s crew, even at the remote Fractal World. Apparently, the defense was already the stuff of legends.
Ion clouds and rubble traced the inward path of that fighting retreat … vaporized swathes in the cometary ice belt … still-smoldering craters on Triton and Nereid … and several asteroid-sized clumps of twisted metal, tumbling in orbit beyond Uranus.
It must have been quite a show. Sorry I missed it.
More debris was added recently, when the Great Rupture struck. Ships that tried any kind of FTL maneuvering during the causality storm had been lucky to reach normal space again with more consistency than an ice slurpie. Saturn’s orbit was now a glittering junkyard, soon to become a vast ring around the sun.
Unfortunately, long-range scans showed more than enough big vessels left to finish the job. Scores of great dreadnoughts — several of them titans compared to the enormous Polkjhy — gathered in martial formations along the new battlefront, all too near Earth’s shimmering blue spark.
The first picket boats hailed Streaker well beyond the orbit of Ceres. A bizarre, mixed squadron consisting of corvettes and frigates from the Tandu, Soro, and gorouph navies, joined in uneasy federation. They were alert, despite the havoc that residual chaos waves still played on instruments. When Streaker ignored their challenge and kept plunging rapidly sunward, the nearest ships raced closer to open fire with deadly accuracy.
Blades of razorlike force scythed at the Earthship — only to glance off its transmuted hull. Heat beams were absorbed quietly, with no observable effect, dissipating harmlessly into another level of spacetime.
If these failures fazed the enemy, they did not show it openly. Rushing closer, several lead vessels launched volleys of powerful, intelligent missiles, hurtling toward Streaker at great speed. According to Suessi, this was the worst threat. Direct energy weapons had little effect on the Transcendent’s coating. But physical shock could disrupt anything made of matter, if it came hard and fast enough, in a well-timed sequence of shaped concussions.
As if aware of that danger, Streaker’s sapient outer layer suddenly became active. Tendrils fluttered, like cilia surrounding a bacterium. Swarms of tiny objects flew off their waving tips, darting to meet the incoming barrage. Under extreme magnification, the strange interceptors looked like tiny pockets of writhing protoplasm, jet-black, but disconcertingly alive.
“Reified concepts,” explained the disembodied Niss Machine, sounding awed and unnerved. “Destructive programs, capable of making a machine terminally self-hostile. They don’t even have to enter computers as data, but can do so by physical contact.”
“You’re talking about freestanding memes!” Gillian replied. “I thought they can’t exist here in real space, without a host to carry—”
“Apparently, we’re wrong about that.” The Niss shrugged with its funnel of spinning lines. “Remember, Transcendents are a melding of life orders. They are part meme, themselves.”
She nodded, willing to accept the incredible.
The expanding memic swarm collided with the incoming barrage, but effects and outcomes weren’t evident at first. Tension filled Streaker’s bridge, as the missiles continued on course for several more seconds …
… only to veer abruptly aside, missing the Earthship and spiraling off manically before igniting in flashy torrents of brilliance, lighting up the asteroid belt.
The dolphins exulted, but Gillian quashed any celebratory thoughts as premature. She recalled a warning, from the Transcendent being who had visited her office.
“Do not be deceived by illusions of invulnerability. You have been given advantages. But they are limited.
“It would be wise to recall that you are not gods.
“Not yet, that is.…”
Indeed, Gillian wasn’t counting on a thing. Soon, the enemy would learn not to send mere robots against a ship defended by hordes of predatory ideas. Or else they would attack with overwhelming numbers.
Still, I guess the ends justify the memes, she thought, raising a brief, ironic smile. Tom would have liked the pun — a real groaner.
Right now, in the heat of battle, she missed him with a pang that felt fresh, as if years and kiloparsecs meant nothing, and their parting had been yesterday.
The next line of ships — destroyers — had little more effect. A few of their missiles managed to detonate nearby, but not in a coordinated spread. Streaker’s protective layers dealt with the flux.
When Akeakemai asked for permission to fire back, Gillian refused.
