Surrender and give over your treasures. In return, our mighty alliance will safeguard Earth. The dolphin crew will be interned, of course. But only for a thousand years of frozen sleep. Then, at expiration time, they will be released into a new, reshaped Civilization of Five Galaxies.
Again, our only answer comes as insolent silence.
We prepare weaponry.
“The Earthship’s dynamics are inferior-degraded,” explains a tactical crew stack. “It still carries excess mass — hull-contamination acquired from multiple exposures to the sooty red giant star.”
Polkjhy, too, passed through that polluting fog. But Earthlings can only afford lesser starship models, while our fine vessel is of a superior order, field-tuned to shed unwelcome atoms.
{Indeed?}
{Then how were the Zang able to board us?}
HUSH, MY RINGS!
I send coercive electric bursts down tendrils of control, reminding our second cognition ring to mind its own business.
• • •
Degraded or not, the preyship darts nimbly and appears well piloted. Our first warning shot misses by too wide a mark, and is not taken seriously.
Meanwhile, tactician stacks have been debating as to why the Earthship exists at all.
One faction insists the onslaught we saw — by planet-scale disintegrator rays, converging on a tiny ship — must have been a ruse! A garish light show, meant to make it seem the Earthlings were doomed, and persuade other assailants to back off while it accelerated away! Indeed, this astounding suggestion is now the majority opinion among Polkjhy’s tacticians — although it makes our missile attack seem foolish in retrospect.
{Behind us, the great habitat still shudders from those impacts, and other wounds that were self-inflicted.}
This explanation seems evident from the fact that the dolphin-crewed ship endures. Yet, a minority suggests caution. We may have witnessed something real. Something true. An event worthy of alarm.
Our second warning shot lashes forth and is more accurate. It passes but half a ship length from the quarry’s nose.
“THERE IS A WORRISOME DIFFERENCE.”
Thus announces a stack whose duty it is to monitor enemy conditions.
“THE TARGET RESONATES STRANGELY. ITS HYPERVELOCITY PROFILE IS NOT THE SAME AS IT WAS BEFORE, NEAR THE RED GIANT STAR. AND THERE ARE UNUSUAL REFLECTIONS OFF THE HULL.”
At our captain-leader’s behest, deep scans are made, confirming that the preyship is the same model and type. Engine emanations are identical. Psi detectors sift for faint leakage through its shields, and sniff a telltale Earthling spoor.
Then, at high magnification, we/I view the hull at last—
My rings, how it shines!
No longer sooty and black as space, it gleams now with a slick perfection that one only sees on vessels newly minted from their yards.
More perfect, for when starlight reflects off the curved surface, each warped image seems brighter than the original!
What can this mean?
Our senior priest-stack fumes.
“AFTER ALL WE HAVE BEEN THROUGH, AND ALL THAT WE HAVE SEEN, ONLY A COMPOSITE FOOL WOULD NOT HAVE EXPECTED FURTHER TRICKS/EXPLOITS/MIRACLES.
“ONLY A MISBEGOTTEN/MISJOINED STACK WOULD NOT HAVE CALLED FOR HELP.”
Our captain-leader shivers, settling cautiously onto the command dais. Streams of worried smoke trickle from its wavering topknot.
Finally, gathering rigidity among its constituent rings, the august commander-stack orders a targeted strike, at one-tenth potency, meant to disable the Earthship’s power of flight.
Humming a finely tuned battle song, Polkjhy lashes out, transmitting rays of formidable force, aimed toward severing three of the quarry’s probability flanges. Fierce energies cross the narrowing gap between our vessels to accurately strike home—
DO NOT ASK QUESTIONS, MY RINGS. JUST DO AS I SAY.
Move gently, innocuously toward the door.
That’s it. Tread quietly, without undue sound. Flash no color-shadows. Vent no anxious steam.
Now, while the rest of the crew is distracted by drama/tragedy, let us make silent departure, like the humble traeki you/we/I once were.
Responding to our passkey scent, the armored hatchway rolls aside, opening a way out of the control chamber. With rearward-facing eyebuds, we/I watch crowds of our fellow Jophur mill in a fog of fear/distress toxins.
The worst fumes rise from a puddle of burning wax and grease — the flaming remains of our former captain- leader.
The priest stacks had very little choice, of course. When our weapon-beam failed … when its energies vanished, absorbed somehow by the Earthship’s glistening new skin … a change in administration-command was certain.
As inevitable as the spreading of space metric in an expanding universe.
Of course the chase is not over. Our position is favorable. The Earthship cannot evade us and we are capable of maintaining contact wherever it goes. Meanwhile, Polkjhy has a capacious onboard branch of the Galactic Library. In its wise memory, we shall plumb and doubtless find this trick they used — and the drawback that will help us neutralize it.
Alas, My rings, that will do little good for this mongrel stack of ill-matched parts.
While Polkjhy proceeds on nimble autopilot — shadowing the Earthship as we both plunge toward the transfer point — the realignment of executive power commences among crew-stacks who proved poor judgment by remaining excessively loyal to our former commander. Demotion and reassignment will suffice for some. Replacement of the Master Torus will do for others.
But as for poor Ewasx — you/we were the inspired invention of the old captain-leader. At best, our rings will be salvaged as replacements for soldiers wounded in combat against the Zang. At worst, they will be mulched.
Now am I grateful for the feral skills you learned as a sooner/savage/traeki. Your movements are admirably stealthy, My rings. Clearly, you know better than a Jophur how to hide.
As the hatch rolls smoothly back to place, let us quickly move in search of some quiet, sheltered place where we may contemplate the wax … pondering the dilemma of survival.
Alvin’s Journal
YOU’LL GET USED TO THIS SORT OF THING AFTER a while.”
Those words, spoken by Gillian Baskin, still seem to echo down my hollow spines as I write down a few hasty impressions of our final moments near the Fractal World.
I had better hurry. Already I can feel the pressure on my hoonish nerves increase as the Streaker swoops and plunges along the threadlike “domain boundaries” that curl inside a transfer point. Soon, this awful kind of motion
