Jade Star (Tanager Book 1) Page 4

  I stepped through the hatch cautiously, seeing the big wrench lying on the floor. That was my blood and a bit of hair attached to a chunk of scalp... I put a hand to the back of my head. I’d been so wrapped up in the pain from the nose and fear of that voice, I hadn’t considered where I’d been hit. I pulled my hand back in front of my face sticky with old blood. No red, fresh blood. But I wasn’t going to probe and make it start hurting more. My head was throbbing the same as it had been.

  The office looked empty. A nice desk faced the door, with a monitor screen on one side, and a small display of personal items on the other. I picked one of these up. I’d known what I was looking for as soon as he’d said the name, although he’d offered to show me a picture. Not that you could tell until you cut them open, but the exterior shape was usually like this, a lumpy nodule. This was a big one, the size of a child’s head.

  I put the geode back down and walked behind the desk and sat down in Greff’s chair. His workstation needed a password, but that didn’t take me long to get past. I didn’t want into his files, after all, so the limited all-station access was sufficient. I could do a little hacking, but not on a system where I didn’t know the programming or codes. At least not with this little time. And I was rusty, other than a few times breaking into rebellious teenager’s comps, I hadn’t done this since...

  I didn’t want to remember that far back. I sat there in the empty office, hearing only the racing of my own heart, and knowing I was watched. Scrolling through the chatrooms I’d accessed in the quarantine berth, I confirmed my fears. I put my head down on my arms on the desk. The tears had dried on my cheeks, and my head ached terribly. It wasn’t as bad as it was, and I was thirsty again. I needed to go talk to Greff.

  Picking the rock back up, I carried it in my two hands back out into the corridor. I held it in front of me, cradling it against my chest, and wondered if they would try to stop me again. Or if it had been Greff, via some unseen shortcut, who had struck me down to begin with, having set up my movements.

  I couldn’t trust any of them, not Dayne, nor Greff, or the sorrowful voice. I stopped in front of his hatch, with its clear alumiglass window showing me an empty entry. He’d been in there last time, just out of sight around the corner.

  “I’m coming in.” I spoke to the door, to the air around me. “I have what you wanted.”

  There was no answer, but the hatch slid open, and I stepped inside.

  “Do you want a cup of caff?” He asked. He’d been standing by the wall again, but he didn’t grab me this time.

  “No, thanks.” I held the stone out to him. “I will carry your message.”

  Chapter 6: End of Humanity

  He stopped in mid-motion, his hands partly outstretched. Then he shivered. I watched with interest. I’d never seen a person ripple like that before. We stood there for a long time, staring at one another, while an ache developed in my arms from holding the damn rock. It wasn’t heavy - geodes are hollow and this one felt thin-shelled - but you try holding even the lightest object at arm’s length for a time.

  “How did you know?” He finally asked. His hands came up and took the rock from me. “Don’t I... look human?”

  “There are no humans in this room.” I told him firmly. “I don’t think there’s a human left on this station. I’m not sure about the planet, but I fear for it.”

  He opened his mouth, then closed it, looking me up and down.

  “As for how I could tell, you served me caff when the replicators can spit out coffee that’s molecularly identical to the finest Earth Kona, not that I ever drunk it at the source, and the caff was...” I’d had trouble drinking it with a straight face, but a few decades earlier when I’d first come to the stars, we hadn’t had the best equipment. Nothing like Termine had, anyway. “You can’t taste. So what I need to know is, what’s the message?”

  “It’s in this.” He clasped the geode at both ends and twisted. It slid apart, as beautiful a cutting job as I’d ever seen, a puzzle box full of amethyst crystals. And a black cube.

  “A data chip.” I took it, and he put the geode back together.

  “You said you aren’t human.” He didn’t respond to my statement.

  “I’m guessin’ I’m not anymore. You’ve been tryin’, or at least you and the others if that’s how it is...”

  “It’s just me, now.” He spoke very quietly.

  I looked at the cube in my hand, trying to guess what was on it. “You’ve been tryin’ to turn me into you since I got here.”

  “You know?”

  “I guessed. Why else knock me on the head if it weren’t to get at my brain?” I put a hand up to the back of my head, delicately touching the place where they’d trepanned me. Or him. Didn’t matter, really. It was sunken, but healing fast.

  “You’re... we couldn’t...” He sat down heavily on the floor. We hadn’t left his entryway. “You’re human.” Greff looked up at me, his eyes sad. “I’m not.”

  “We’re both people.” I sat crosslegged on the floor facing him. Having a young body did have its perks. “Human species, some kind. But still people. That being said...”

  I looked him in the eyes. He looked human, and sad, and yet I knew that something wasn’t right. “When I first got here, I lurked in some chat rooms. Wanted to get a feel for this place. There wasn’t a lot of activity, but it was what you’d expect. Silly discussions over vidstars and speculation about what shows they liked would do next.”

  He kept looking at me, silent. I kept talking. “I looked again, just now. The last discussions ended twelve hours ago. Not sure how long a station day is, but I know most of ‘em don’t move far off the Earth days. That means they are all dead, a half-day gone.”

  My voice broke on the last word, and my traitorous throat spasmed. I turned my head so I wasn’t looking at him and worked my muscles, swallowing hard. It hurt so bad.

  “Not dead.” The voice was soft as a lover’s caress, and I could feel a touch of warmth on my cheek. The energy of the voice was radiating hot, which was why I’d initially thought he had a fever. “Just joined. All that live are joined in one unity.”

  “Livin’ in one accord?” I croaked like a frog, my throat still tight with emotion. “Did they have a choice?”

  “A choice?” The echo when the voice and Greff spoke at once made every hair on my body stand on end.

  “You infected them with a nanoswarm, you didn’t ask. The programming screwed up, and you hadn’t asked.” I pounded the carpeted floor with my fist, feeling frustrated beyond belief. “You took their freedoms, their lives, and threw it all away so you could live forever.”

  “I am not one.” Dayne stepped through the open hatch now. I could see the blood spatter on his clothing. It had been him, then.

  “We are not one.” They all spoke together, and the voice resonated outside in the corridor. “We are all in the swarm, as you call it.”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Bein’ human is not following by rote. What happens when you argue?”

  “We do not war with one another.” The voice was implacable. “War is a thing only of independent polities, and we are one.”

  I stood up, clenching the data cube. “I’ll take your message, then. Give me a ship, and my scooter with its cargo. Tell me where you want me to go.”

  Dayne and Greff stood shoulder to shoulder, smiling. “We are glad.”

  “And stop doing that, you’re making my head ache. One speaker,” I pointed at Dayne. “Well? I want a ship now.”

  “You are not in need of food or drink?” He asked politely. He was the only one speaking, now.

  “I am not.” Which was a lie, I was, but I wouldn’t stay a minute longer on Termine than I had to. “I’m bettin’ you have a ship ready to go. Soon as you figured out you couldn’t... absorb me.” Brainjack me. They had done their best to get in. I felt violated, knowing they’d touched my brain. My little friends had done something to me, but that had been ok. It hadn�
��t felt like mental rape.

  “We cannot leave, you see.” Dayne stepped into the corridor and I followed him. “Travel through foldspace would separate us, and we are unsure what effect that would have on the one.”

  “I see.” I tried to keep my voice neutral. I didn’t believe him. I was sure that a part of the swarm would be on the ship, waiting for me. Waiting to be carried to another place, where there were humans.

  We didn’t speak again until we reached the vast docks. He led me to a viewing platform, and pointed down into the shadowy area. Below us, worklights trained on her and throwing harsh shadows, stood as sweet a ship as I’d ever seen. From the shape, she could manage space and atmosphere.

  “A scout ship,” was all Dayne said.

  “I want one of the Marine exosuits.” I told him quietly.

  He looked at me, his eyes wide. “You cannot hurt us...”

  “The voice told me those who could pass as human were precious.” He jerked a little at my sardonic jab. “But I mean you no harm. I just want one, I like them. And a girl likes to change her clothes from time to time.”

  He looked confused. “I don’t understand, but you may take whatever you want before you depart.”

  I spent an hour loading bits and pieces into the ship’s hold. She’d never carry cargo, unless it was very small, like the scooter which was limpeted on her belly, or the stones which Dayne showed me in small crates in her hold. I picked one up and held it for a minute, clenching my fist around it, then opening my fingers slowly.

  It glowed, feeding back out the energy I’d given it in the form of heat as light. The sparkles of light ran through part of the spectrum, from yellows to greens to blues... I’d never seen one uncut before, but cut they were truly spectacular. Even this was entrancing. I slowly put it back and dogged the crate seals.

  “Have you everything you want?” Dayne stood on the ramp. He had left me alone while I loaded, only walking the exosuit into the cargo bay so I didn’t have to climb into it. It was rather eerie to see it moving by itself, helmet and chest panels flopped open.

  “How come you don’t go yourself?” I asked. They’d given me one answer, but I couldn’t trust it.

  He looked down and rubbed the back of his neck. I wondered if that was his gesture, or that of one of the others in the collective being. “We are... uncertain. To leave and enter foldspace would mean loss of contact. Should that happen...”

  “You might war?” I remembered what I’d been told before. “If any of you has freedom, you might fight for it.”

  His face was impassive. I couldn’t trick an emotional reaction out of something that was forgetting what it was to be human, to be a person rather than a collective thing.

  “Where am I going?” I asked knowing he wouldn’t answer, might not be able to answer, my first question.

  “It doesn’t matter. Once the cube is in the hands of the Terran Republic, they will know what to do.” He turned away. “I wish you a safe journey.”

  I hit the button to close the hatch with a lot of control. It wouldn’t do to give my own emotions away. I could see him still standing on the gritty floor of the bay, the harsh lighting throwing his shadow across the floor in a long dark slash.

  Chapter 7: Dancing with Death

  I was alone again, on a ship with foldspacecapability. I took a deep breath. And almost certainly there was a stowaway. I headed for the little bridge.

  I can’t do the math in my head. But I can get a computer to do it. I set the data chip on the edge of the workstation and logged in. It had been reset for me, open to my control and I bent over it, fingers flying, looking for trojans.

  I knew the story of the trojan horse, had taught it to my young’uns in years past. I wondered if the people of Termine had bothered with old Earth stories. It was possible not, many of the colonies had done their best to shake the dust of Terran rule from their feet even if it meant purging everything. You couldn’t do that under ordinary circumstances, but the bottleneck of colony ships meant that what went along was under tight control, and not always wise control.

  The communicator beeped, and I tapped it on to see Dayne’s face as I had first seen it, in the control booth at his desk. “You are cleared for departure.” He told me curtly, his face a blank slate.

  I curled my lips in what might have looked like a smile. “I won’t let the door hit me on the ass.”

  The ship was responsive and her grav control excellent. If I hadn’t been looking at the monitors, I wouldn’t have known we were moving. The ripple of watery atmosphere passed over her bow and my screen, then I could see the stars again. I accelerated for them. All I had to do to fly the ship was press buttons. The computer would take me to the grav well’s edge and then fold, if I set it up. But that wasn’t where I was going. For the moment, I was buying time and reading the maps of the system.

  Termine orbited high above the planet, which was pulled up on one of my screens, looking much like any other human-habitable world, blue-green swirled with white clouds. I couldn’t see signs of human life from this magnification, and I had no intention of looking any closer than I was at this moment.

  I didn’t want to see the lights of cities, towns, pinpricks of warmth that meant homes and families. Not when I was thinking about killing them all. I was a shepherdess of rocks, in that life before. It seemed so long ago, as I sat in the comfortable chair high above a blighted world. I’d learned how to herd the chunks of ore we needed into better orbits, and I knew I had the tools at my fingertips to turn them into death-dealing spearheads of flame that could pierce the very mantle of the planet below.

  All it would take was some time and reaction fuel on my part.

  That, and loss of what soul remained to me. I was no longer human. But...

  “They’re people.” I whispered aloud, my voice sounding odd from the swelling in my nose. It was subsiding, the pain.

  The internal pain was not. I had two choices, and I didn’t care for either. I checked my course, and changed it. Now, I had to wait. No point in fretting over choices unless they would give me one, and I wasn’t sure how a stowaway would react to the lack of momentum.

  This part was tedious. I coasted in space, knowing that I didn’t have unlimited resources, and thinking. The one aspect of this I was grateful for was the lack of my family. Caring for only myself made it simpler. Knowing they didn’t expect me home safely was, in the end, what made up my mind. It had been days of silence when I finally sat down in the bridge chair and pulled up the computer to choose foldspace coordinates.

  I wanted to go somewhere isolated, and as far from human-habitable worlds as possible. A gas giant tagged by explorers as a remote fueling depot fit my criteria, and I plugged the coordinates into the program and tapped through the screens confirming my choice. Then I leaned back in the chair and stared at the viewscreen. I’d set it to look at the sun of this world, which I had looked up. They’d named it Finis, in keeping with their theme and rather unoriginal scheme. What would happen, I wondered in a fit of bitter humor, when the frontiers moved beyond this place?

  Assuming there would be explorers left to go, and not amorphous singular creatures inhabiting each system where once there had been millions or billions of unique individuals. The sun was receding, now, as my fast little ship accelerated for the fold limit, beyond the gravitic pull of Finis. I’d been drifting nearer that limit over the last few days, so it wouldn’t take long.

  If I had a stowaway - and I was beginning to doubt that - they had kept their peace. There was a ripple in the viewscreen, and my stomach turned over. I clutched the arms of the chair, feeling the restraint system snap into place while I felt my skin crawl. We had entered foldspace, and stepped outside of known reality.

  The viewscreen had dimmed to a dull gray glow, as there was nothing outside to see, or that was what I’d been told. I was not inclined to open a hatch and take a look. Freeing myself from the restraints, I walked toward the tiny galley, where I would hav
e a cup of very good coffee, and wait.

  I sat at the tiny table, which folded back into the wall when not wanted, and cradled the hot cup between my palms. My body might not have the aches and pains I had become so accustomed to, but my mind still bore the marks of too many years, too much knowledge. This would not end here.

  It was not my role to kill them all. But it might be my role to make them kill everyone else. I could not, would not risk it. In the long hours while I waited, I knew what I must do. I had become a vector, and all I could do was warn humanity of what waited for them in the place they called the end of the world.

  The human race will, given the chance, press the button marked ‘end of the world’ out of sheer bull-headedness and curiosity. I’d lost a son that way, once, long ago. I couldn’t stop that. But for all their flaws, humans are still a beautiful, curious species who had a long way to go before everything collapsed and the universe would be born again.

  I got up, finally, stiff and sore from sitting unmoving for so long, and began my journey to death, alone among the stars. I could never again see a human being face-to-face, lest I pass on the infection. I wondered just how long my external youth would last, because surely there was no innocence left in me. Only determination that humanity would not die at my hands.

  I’d embraced death once before, it wearing the mantle of my man’s face, and it was sweet. Now, I danced with death and all the masks had been torn away. What was left was madness, and dark. Behind me there were the ruins of a station and planet. Ahead of me there was nothing. Nothing at all.

  I had a message, and it took me an interminable time to decide how I could safely deliver it. Any code, I feared, could carry my stowaway with it. Then, I didn’t know what I know now, so it took me ages to decide on the only thing that would be safe for humanity. I had to get near a survey buoy, and blip a plan text message in. Stripped of any extraneous code… I spent hours writing and rewriting the program, opening and testing it at random to make sure there wasn’t any addition when I’d gotten the text where I was happy with it.