A NEW ORDER OF THINGS: CONCLUSION by Edward M. Lerner
Major catastrophes leave indelible marks on those they touch, but the form of those marks ... depends.
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Illustrated by John Allemand
Synopsis
For a century and a half, a growing interstellar community has maintained radio contact. A vigorous commerce in intellectual property has accelerated the technical progress of all its members. Travel between the stars seems impossible, but InterstellarNet thrives using an elegant alternative: artificially intelligent surrogates who act as local representatives for distant societies. Quarantine procedures strictly govern the delivery and operational environment of each alien agent, protecting agents and their host networks from subversion by the other.
A radio message shatters this comfortable status quo. The signal comes from a habitat-sized decelerating interstellar vessel, its unannounced trip from Barnard’s Star now ninety-nine percent complete. Citing damage en route and low supplies, the starship Victorious goes to Jupiter rather than Earth. The starship’s crew are whippet-thin, iridescent-scaled, bipedal carnivores who call themselves Hunters. Humans refer to them as K’vithians, after their home world of K’vith, or, informally, as Snakes (because Barnard’s Star lies in the constellation Ophiuchus, the Serpent Holder).
Not only humans are surprised by Victorious’ short-notice arrival. Pashwah , the AI trade agent on Earth for the Hunters, is also taken unawares. So are her internal sub-agents, the representatives of the Great Clans. Pashwah rejects unauthenticated demands from the starship for Great Clan InterstellarNet credits with which to buy supplies, but does transmit to Victorious a translator and human-affairs advisor: a partial copy of herself named Pashwah-qith .
Ambassador Hong-yee Chung heads the United Planets response team, assembled on Callisto. His technical support team includes theoretical physicist Eva Gutierrez , xeno-sociologist Keizo Matsunaga, and Interstellar Commerce Union executive and systems engineer (and long-time claustrophobe) Arthur Walsh .
Most humans have forgotten, or at least forgiven, a half-century-earlier inter-species crisis. Art is not among them. The “Snake Subterfuge” involved a trapdoor hidden in licensed Snake biocomputer technology, potentially compromising most human infrastructure. That crisis ended when Pashwah was convinced that one corporation’s extortion plans must not destroy overall inter-species relations. The biocomputer vulnerability has long been removed.
Antimatter is extremely dangerous stuff. The United Planets antimatter production facility—built to stockpile fuel for a nascent interstellar-drive research project—remains top secret, undisclosed, and hidden on Jupiter’s distant moon Himalia. Unbeknownst to the UP, patient data mining over decades has revealed Himalia base’s secret to both Pashwah and T’bck Fwa, the AI trade agent on Earth for the intelligent species native to Alpha Centauri A.
There is a conspiracy at hand, and it involves T’bck Fwa’s patrons: the Unity. Twenty years earlier, the Unity’s prototype starship, then named Harmony, was boarded and captured on its final approach to Barnard’s Star. Harmony’s rightful crew awoke from suspended animation into K’vithian captivity. Members of the Unity, whom humans call the Centaurs, are herbivorous, green-furred, land octopi.
K’choi Gwu, Harmony’s ka, or leader by consensus, surreptitiously sabotages the shipboard environmental systems. She knows that only a fresh supply of home-world biochemicals can avert eco-collapse. Reconfiguration of human chemical plants to mass-synthesize the exotic materials will surely be expensive. It’s a ruse to justify her feigned reluctant disclosure of a fortune in InterstellarNet credits hidden deep within the suppressed shipboard AI. Gwu’s captors believe they reactivated the lobotomized AI just long enough to retrieve the hidden financial codes, but T’bck Ra successfully hides himself in computers distributed across the starship. An attempted SOS transmission to T’bck Fwa on Earth is interrupted before it is completed.
T’bck Fwa already suspects a human/K’vithian conspiracy. His suspicions grow when he finds biochemicals appropriate for the biosphere of a Unity habitat being delivered to the Jupiter system. The SOS message fragment from the starship seems to confirm all his suspicions.
Firh Mashkith , Foremost of clan Arblen Ems and the starship he has renamed Victorious, has more pressing matters on his mind than a declining ecosystem. Arblen Ems, once a Great Clan, and hence privy to Pashwah’s long-ago discovery of the antimatter program at Himalia, had overreached politically. All other clans had united against them. His people were driven to the fringes of their solar system and hunted to the brink of extinction. Then, twenty years ago, a starship had emerged from the outer darkness. It embodied technology—antimatter and interstellar drive—far beyond the capabilities of any clan. But Arblen Ems had become too weak to protect its prize....
Mashkith’s boldness has changed all that. The interstellar drive, however esoteric in theory, is easy to reproduce. His problem was and remains fuel. The captured starship carried antimatter for a round trip; the antimatter intended for the return flight has instead been used to reach human space. He has already sent a rigged lifeboat back toward Alpha Centauri. The lifeboat radioed a contrived distress call and then self-destructed, to disguise the piracy and make the Unity distrust their own technology. If he can now trick the humans into disclosing how they handle antimatter on very large scales, Arblen Ems alone will have access to the stars.
Art and Eva have both worked in the secret labs on Himalia, so the K’vithian rationale for picking Jupiter as their destination rings false. Still, a demo using a sample of antimatter from the starship’s reserves convinces them that K’vith must already have antimatter technology. The demo, like the large patch on the ship’s side, supports Mashkith’s assertion of an en route accident that destroyed his antimatter-production equipment. Without human-supplied antimatter, Mashkith tells the UP, Victorious is stranded.
Mashkith’s senior officers, Rashk Keffah and Rashk Lothwer, disparage human antimatter technology. After detailed interviewing of UP experts, the K’vithian engineers declare themselves reluctantly convinced: “Primitive” human techniques can safely transfer to Victorious large amounts of antimatter. In practice, they have tricked the UP into disclosing all the clan needs to know to produce and manipulate antimatter on a grand scale.
After a second contrived demo, this time of a lifeboat left pre-positioned in the Kuiper Belt, the UP agrees to swap a load of antimatter for the lifeboat and its interstellar drive. Victorious is refueled from the UP stockpile on Himalia. Chung, Eva, and media star Corinne Elman are among the humans then given a ceremonial orientation cruise when the bartered lifeboat is transferred.
The UP antimatter facility explodes catastrophically, killing thousands, much as Snake engineers had warned. The blast shatters Himalia, cripples the naval fleet guarding the no-longer-secret facility—and destroys the returning lifeboat filled with human scientists and dignitaries.
Art’s friend Helmut Schiller has a shadowed past: As Willem Vanderkellen , he made a major mineral find in the Belt, only to fall afoul of a claim-jumping criminal syndicate. Under his assumed name, Helmut works as a pilot for Corinne. Long years hiding from the mob has honed skills in sensing danger and deceit. He and Art work out how a Snake lifeboat caused the Himalia disaster—and that it was not the lifeboat that their friends boarded. That ship, with Himalia’s top scientists presumably held prisoner, is seen creeping away, far above the ecliptic.
Pashwah-qith has flooded the black market with Centaur credits, using the proceeds to re-supply Victorious. The unexpected surge in Centaur credits flowing into the banking system provides a critical clue how to reconsider past anomalies. Art deduces Victorious must be a hijacked Centaur starship—
But what can the UP do about any of this? The Himalia disaster has destroyed or disabled most human naval resources in the Jovian system. Arblen Ems warships that sortie from Victorious rout the few remaining UP forces. The starship recovers its escaped lifeboat, now free from human pursuit, and rigs for another interstellar voyage. Mashkith is exultant. He now controls the secrets of the starship drive and antimatter production, and prisoners who are expert in both.
Mashkith locks his human captives into the agriculture sector of the starship with the Centaur crew. Corinne and Eva immediately begin conspiring to steal and escape aboard a lifeboat.
As Victorious recedes into the interstellar darkness, Art, Helmut, and UP intelligence agent Carlos Montoya approach the UP Navy with a desperate plan....
CHAPTER 36
Two gees got old quickly, even two scant K’vithian gees. Helmut’s “co-pilot” squirmed in his acceleration couch, tugging a wrinkle out of his shirt even as, sure as cosmic rays and taxes, some new crease formed to press against his sore back. “Are we there yet?”
Helmut tweaked his sensors before answering. “Art, that’s gotten about as old as, ‘You’re sure this is going to work?’ The answer is also the same. No. Ask again, and you can ride in back.”
The display imaging their hastily retrofitted payload bay showed Carlos’ UPIA special-ops team hard at work despite the ship’s acceleration: stripping and reassembling weapons, checking out comm gear, packing ammo, while their officers studied and mapped every surmise and scrap of data ever collected about Victorious. They had launched with little notice from Callisto to fly the suicide mission he and Art had pitched. Anyone who considered two gees troublesome kept that frailty to himself. Helmut guessed his passengers would be far less tolerant of Art’s nervous kvetching than he.
Fifteen minutes passed before Helmut broke the silence. “We’re well past halfway there, if that helps.” Another stretch of quiet. “Okay, I admit it. My nerves are pretty well shot, too. This is far too long to spend feeling like we’re wearing a bull’s-eye.”
Within the main holo into which Art obsessively stared, Victorious was a hot fusion flame amid a vastness of nothing. The last Snake support ships had all easily overtaken the starship and docked days ago. “What are they thinking?”
“They’re delighted to see us. We’re comrades in arms, returned against all odds after a near-death experience at the hands of the evil but inept humans.”
The trick was in sustaining that false belief.
Both Snake losses in the recent combat were self-refueling: scoopers. Skimming a gas giant for fuel was pretty simple in concept; the physics of streamlining meant all scoopships looked much alike. This scoopship had had its fusion reactor detuned, so that it ran at the cooler-than-human-norm Snake level. Cosmetic scorch marks discolored their hull, with intent to simulate battle damage. That assumed they got near enough for a close inspection.
The special magic—and the rescue mission’s only hope—lay in the nuller, by comparison with which Helmut’s long-ago black-market model was so much regolith and duct tape. The UPIA version was customizable; more than merely canceling the ship’s true lidar and radar echoes, it emitted false echoes to mimic another ship. The navy had had plenty of radar images of unstealthed Snake ships to work from, data captured in the epoch before Himalia.
The periodic hails from Victorious continued, and Helmut continued to ignore them. Mashkith was obviously convinced Deep Throat was a Snake ship whose comm capability had been knocked out. Obviously—because no squadron had been launched to take them out. The Snake warships did three gees without difficulty, even though the starship evidently couldn’t.
Helmut ground his teeth all the way to the flip-over point. Now, until they doused their fusion drive on final approach, Victorious could see little but their hot, but not too hot, exhaust.
And if he could get them just a bit closer than that, the special-ops folks in the back would get their opportunity.
Steal a lifeboat. It was a great concept, Eva thought, but somewhat sketchy on details to constitute a plan. Not that she had anything better to offer....
The starship’s acceleration was oppressive, far higher than the Callistan gravity to which she had become accustomed, but at the same time familiarly almost Earthly. A field, or orchard, or vineyard spread all around her, worked by dozens of Centaurs. They might have been unobtrusively observing her, or doing necessary agricultural maintenance, or following some gardening muse. Perhaps they did all three?
None of this is getting me any smarter about Centaur lifeboats.
The only discernable differences between Centaurs were in height and subtle green-on-green fur patterns. She distrusted her ability to tell them apart. “Joe,” she queried. “Which one is their leader?” A bright translucent disk flashed in her mind’s eye, superimposed over one of the toilers in the field, with a pop-up label that read: K’choi Gwu ka. Evidently Centaurs were not very status-conscious. Art would know. Would she ever see him again? The emotion roiling beneath that question threatened to paralyze her, and Eva tamped it down. “Thanks.”
The ground was sodden. Her shoes squelched as she meandered to the Centaur leader. “I appreciate your hospitality, K’Choi Gwu ka.”
“‘Gwu’ is sufficient.” The Centaur straightened from her task, patching the eroded bank of a stream or irrigation channel. “We have little with which to be hospitable.”
“All the more reason to appreciate your generosity.” Could I sound any more stilted? Maybe it didn’t matter, given two translations before Gwu had a chance to assess her words. “Perhaps in time we humans can help.”
“Perhaps.”
Steal a lifeboat. If it could be done, why had the Centaurs not done it? “All these years, you’ve been prisoners aboard your own ship. It must have been terrible.”
A weird wave traveled from the tips of Gwu’s tentacles to her torso, and reflected. “I do not recommend the experience.”
Eva prodded the moist soil with the tip of one muddy shoe. “How did you deal with it?”
“Long ago, I studied humans. Do you know Nietzsche? ‘That which does not kill us makes us stronger.’ A horrible concept with an element of truth.” Her tentacles repeated that strange back-and-forth ripple. “I despair at how strong the crew-kindred has become.” And she shared a little of that experience....
The enormity of the Centaurs’ suffering overcame Eva. Her selfish prying dissolved into sympathy, her sympathy into empathetic horror.
Reliving the past was far harder on Gwu. Abuse and privation were mere hardships to be endured. Worse was the remorse that gnawed at her: for the lives lost in futile resistance, the dreams unfulfilled, the children foregone, and the lost opportunity to make a difference.
Eva found herself enfolded in Gwu’s arms—tentacles had become too impersonal a term—and Gwu in hers. Both were shaking. Captivity, misery, and futility stretched before them all.
It struck Eva she had, in fact, discovered something of vital importance: her resolve. No matter the cost, they—humans and Centaurs alike—must escape while human space remained within their reach.
The bridge of Victorious had returned to normal, a place of confidence and purpose. The feeling was palpable. Mashkith was almost relaxed, for the first time in years. He would completely relax when the straggler caught up to them.
“Recommendation, Foremost. Sortie of inspection.” Lothwer had performed superbly on his recent mission—and he knew it. His suggestions, while polite, had become noticeably more assertive. More ... challenging?
“Review of available data,” Mashkith said.
“Respectfully, Foremost, data inconclusive. Opportunity for expanded knowledge.”
“Review of available data.” Mashkith put a trace of growl into the repeated order.
Lothwer took notice and summarized. The lone ship struggling to overtake them, to the extent it could be sensed, looked visually and on lidar like Audacity. The time and place of its emergence from behind Jupiter was consistent with a strategy of playing dead until it had drifted far from the human fleet. Its exhaust temperature was appropriate for a Hunter vessel. Its engine stuttered and surged, well below its rated capacity. It did not reply to hails.
It was on that last point Lothwer had fixated. “Identification a requirement of doctrine.”
Lecturing him on his own bridge about doctrine? One success does not make a Foremost. His aide needed a reminder of roles; perhaps some among the crew needed a reminder who protected them all. “Loss of Courageous in rescue of your mission,” Mashkith snapped. “Unknown but extensive damage and casualties on Audacity for the same purpose.” Your success was not without a high cost. “Maybe survivors unconscious, with ship on autopilot. Maybe damage to radio gear, as to engines. Your suspicions unwarranted. Existence of small risk at rendezvous at these speeds. My decision: unjustified risk to crew on return from unnecessary sortie. Denial of your recommendation.” He twisted the knife a little. “By doctrine.”
Lothwer had the good sense not to argue further.
As the watch grew long, Audacity drew closer and closer. It was almost upon them, engine stuttering on its final approach, when a painful memory asserted itself: another failing vessel, a crash, a gaping hole in their hull.
His family gone.
Mashkith had just netted out a precautionary collision alarm when the ship shuddered.
The precision missile attack pulverized the metal patch in Victorious’ hull. Deep Throat’s close-in laser defenses were briefly busy zapping wayward shrapnel, and then a round of slow-speed, armor-piercing rockets trailing guide wires disappeared into the breach. In an instant, combat-armored marines were jetting along the cables into the rift. Debris blew past the warriors into space.
More missiles fanned out across the target. One salvo attacked every large—interstellar-capable—antenna ever observed on Victorious. A follow-up barrage targeted most remaining antennae. A few small dishes were left unmolested. They were too close together to jury-rig into a larger antenna. Retracted antennae were no safer than those deployed in plain sight, the patched area struck by the first salvo having provided an unmistakable point of reference.
And, while the Snakes were presumably maximally distracted, ...
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