“They’re waiting for us.”
“No they’re not. Don’t panic. These ships are just part of a science mission to examine this thing. Man, it’s impressive. You don’t realize that until you get up close and personal. Even for a species that went through their singularity event this had to take some doing. And I thought the gas halo was formidable. This could well peak it.”
“Gas halo?”
“Long story. We need to get inside. Do you think our onboard systems are up to it?”
“Why shouldn’t they be?”
“The first lattice has a composition that produces electro-repulsive properties. It’s in the files. Get too close to it, and your power goes dead, that and other generally bad things.”
“How close?”
“Under ten kilometers, I think. The Second Chance couldn’t get any probes nearer than that.”
“Ozzie, some of these gaps are over a thousand kilometers wide. The Primes have got their ships through and they’re five times the size of the Charybdis. We’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, but we’re going to have to switch on our active sensors. There’s no way we can do this on visual alone.”
Mark’s fingers drummed nervously on the acceleration couch cushioning. “All right.”
“Is that quantumbuster ready to go?”
“Yeah yeah.”
“Force fields?”
“Get on with it.”
Ozzie enabled the active sensors. The data return quadrupled, amplifying and clarifying the image. “The environment inside is a lot worse than it was before,” he said tightly. “But I’ve got a more accurate fix on the quantum signature, it’s definitely inside the fourth lattice sphere. The Starflyer agent planted it in the ring structure somewhere.”
“Can we just get this over with. Please.”
“No problem, man.” Ozzie fed power into the secondary drive units. The Charybdis accelerated at a smooth one gee toward the outer lattice sphere. He was aiming for a pentagonal interstice that measured six hundred kilometers in diameter. Radar return was fuzzed by the struts, denying them any close resolution; but their bulk was easy enough to track.
The infrared sensors reported long slender jets of superheated plasma appearing in space around them. They were being swept by laser, maser, and standard radar pulses, which the stealth hull was deflecting. “Uh, bad news, man. They’ve seen us, sort of; they’re locking on to our sensor emissions. Ships are accelerating this way. Jeez! Nine gees. Is that big Mountain dude paranoid, or what?”
“Let’s speed things up here.” Mark’s voice had risen in pitch.
“Okay, here we go, five gees.” It built quickly, crushing Ozzie back into the cushioning. The outer lattice sphere was expanding fast in the sensor image. “Oh, shit.”
“What?” Mark barked.
“It’s not waiting for its ships to catch us. Eight wormholes opening. Five hundred kilometers away. Another four; damn, they’re popping up all over the place. Hang on.” Ozzie bumped the acceleration up to ten gees. He could feel his flesh sagging backward. It was getting very hard to breathe. Not a day to be wearing tight pants.
Big ships began to fly out of the wormholes, already accelerating. Missiles leaped away from them, plasma exhausts turning space above the planetsized artifact to a noonday brilliance. Nuclear explosions erupted, stabbing vast tracts of coherent radiation toward the tiny emission point betraying the Charybdis’s existence. Force field warning icons glared red. Ozzie increased their acceleration to twelve gees. His own anguished whimper joined Mark’s.
***
MorningLightMountain had never given the alien mega-structure much consideration. Not that it ignored the strange artifact. It had noticed the structure almost as soon as the barrier withdrew. Ships sent to investigate found a planet-size machine with incomprehensible mass properties. Given its scale, MorningLightMountain concluded it had to be associated with the barrier; in all probability it was the generator or a part of it. According to the Bose memories, that was what the humans considered it to be. It did not understand why they called it the Dark Fortress. Something to do with combining fiction and humor.
The investigation that followed was as methodical as MorningLightMountain could be. Its primary attention was of course directed first toward eliminating its rival immotiles, then the conquest of the Commonwealth. Even so, it kept worrying away at the enigma. New sensors were fabricated and sent out. Ships ventured through the giant webbed carapace and began to map the properties, energy patterns, and geometry of the interior. Over the months this became more difficult as the internal energy secretions grew in strength while becoming more frenzied. Eventually the artifact resembled a caged star.
Data extraction on several Commonwealth worlds revealed the human physicists were equally puzzled by the Dark Fortress. They, too, did not understand its functionality. They also had no idea who constructed it. MorningLightMountain suspected the human SI could build such a thing. The Silfen aliens might also have the ability, but according to the associated mined data they didn’t have the psychology. MorningLightMountain didn’t trust that analysis. The galaxy was full of non-Prime life, all of it was an enemy, all of it was suspect. One day it would find its greatest enemy and eliminate them.
As its investigation progressed, the greatest puzzle came from the errant quantum signature emanating from somewhere deep inside the alien artifact. MorningLightMountain could not understand why it matched its own corona-rupture weapon. Logically it implied the humans on the Second Chance had deployed it against the Dark Fortress. They had the technology, but they appeared to be as bewildered as it was by why the barrier had failed—assuming their records were accurate, and not disinformation.
Such questions were abruptly pushed farther down its priority list when the humans turned the staging post star nova. MorningLightMountain realized it had seriously underestimated human scientific resourcefulness. It was now facing the very extinction event it had begun its expansion campaign to eliminate. Humans would move swiftly after their initial success. They only had one ship, one nova bomb when they attacked the staging post star. It was probably a prototype. If they had more, they would have used them. Right now, their smoothly efficient manufacturing machinery would be producing more ships and bombs. When they had enough to guarantee a successful attack on its home star and all other outposts, they would come.
With its own survival now paramount MorningLightMountain dispatched more ships and equipment through the wormholes already linking it to new, uninhabited star systems where its settlements were establishing themselves. There were over forty now, which would hopefully stretch human resources to locate and destroy them. It also began to install wormhole generators in its largest ships, modifying them for FTL flight. They were nothing like as efficient and fast as the human FTL ships, but they did work. It started to send them through the giant wormhole it had originally built to bridge the gulf between its home system and the Commonwealth, scattering them across interstellar space hundreds of light-years away. Eight had been completed when the immotile group clusters researching the barrier generator detected a wash of sensor radiation. It was coming from a point in space without any physical origin.
MorningLightMountain’s primary thought routines immediately recognized the reason. The advanced human ship had been undetectable. The navy-class humans had arrived to turn the home star nova. Every ship researching the generator launched an attack against the intruder, missiles aiming for the elusive emission point.
It didn’t understand why the human ship had appeared at the generator. Probabilities were examined. If they were here, why had they not simply bombed the star? It would never have known until the moment the star erupted.
Humans were weak, they would avoid a direct confrontation if at all possible. The ship must somehow be attempting to restart the generator. MorningLightMountain feared that as much as it did extinction. With itself cut off from the freedom of the galaxy, it would ultimately die inside the prison of the barrier as the star slowly burned out. This would become its tomb.
MorningLightMountain immediately opened twenty-four wormholes around the intruder, and began to send its most powerful warships through to intercept the humans.
***
“If one of them made it, they should be there by now,” Andria said.
Samantha took yet another glance at the five dead screens standing on Andria’s table. She’d secretly been hoping that the hypergliders might even make it to Aphrodite’s Seat early. It was impossible to accept that all three had failed. Now she didn’t know what to think. Everyone in the cave had listened to the short-wave messages between Paula Myo and Bradley Johansson. She really couldn’t figure out the relevance, but the Investigator was obviously desperate to know about Oscar. Did the information put him in the clear, or condemn him?
Several people in the cave had known Adam. They’d all been shocked by his murder. Samantha found it severely disconcerting; it was hard to accept the Starflyer had got so close to them, that it might still wreck their plans.
“It’s here,” one of the control group said.
Samantha automatically glanced at the five dark screens. Frowned.
“The storm,” Andria said quietly.
Up on the big topographic map projected by the portal, the morning storm was billowing around the lower slopes of Mount Herculaneum. Hammerhead clouds poured out into the Dessault range, riding high-velocity jetstreams. At low altitude the clouds roared around peaks, splitting to churn down valleys and bring a deluge of hard rain; while overhead a smooth-flowing sheet of clear air, kilometers high, fanned out above the mountains, driven by the huge pressure surge from behind.
The picture had gaps. Coverage from the manipulator stations was sporadic; the large array was filling in the omissions as best it could.
“Here we go,” Andria said. “Sequence one, please. Be ready to phase in your sections.”
The Guardians sitting at the tables were abruptly quiet as they studied the data their screens were rolling up. Samantha saw the first echelon of manipulator stations powering up, their gigantic curving blades of energy materializing to rival the rocky peaks they paralleled. Clouds surged in toward their blades, only to be flung on wild curves by the newborn eddies as they began rotating.
“Can we do it?” Samantha asked tersely.
“Sure we can,” Andria said.
Samantha wanted to curse the Starflyer, the useless navy people, Adam for allowing himself to be murdered, the Guardians he’d taken with him, the hyperglider
