Arcturus
Arcturus had his temper tamped down by the time he was halfway back to the bridge. Mostly. Part of him still wanted to hit something. As he stomped down the main corridor, Argo emerged from a side passage and fell into step beside him. The first officer scrutinized his captain from the corner of one eye and snorted, shaking his head. Arcturus thought he detected a hint of mirth in the noise.
“What?” He asked, exasperated.
“I take it you’ve just finished talking with Vorona.” The first officer said with a feigned innocence completely at odds with his darkly glittering eyes.
Arcturus raised one eyebrow in sarcastic surprise. “How can you tell?”
“You’re scraping up the deck plating, for one thing. You look about ready to bite someone, too. I haven’t seen you this worked up since Bemus crashed that tug, fooling around a couple projects ago.” He glanced down at Arcturus’ feet and then back up, waggling the scaly crests over his eyes. “Probably better cool your reactor core before you get back on the bridge.”
Arcturus slowed his step with an effort and heaved a long, calming breath. Argo was right, as he so often was. “Better?”
Giving him a mock critical look up and down, Argo sighed. “It will have to do, I suppose.” His voice grew more somber. “How is she?”
“Vorona says she’ll be fine. She just needs to rest.” Arcturus blew out another long sigh before going on in a hushed tone. “I’m scared for her, Argo.”
The older Torellan nodded, his lips twisting in what looked like equal measures of grim concern and frustration. “I know.”
“She could have died today. A few more Strickenings, and she’ll be worse than dead.”
“She’ll learn.” Argo reassured him. “The Captain’s Log talks about other Shipborn who have managed it, right? And I know of at least two others from my youth.”
“Yes, but I doubt any were as stubborn as her.” Arcturus said. The Captain’s Log was the only place you’d find a record of Shipborn crew members beyond stories, since the Efreet explicitly forbade reproduction outside their control. It still happened, from time to time, and the crew worked together to hide them rather than give them up. It was one of their small rebellions. It shouldn’t be this way! He thought furiously, and then immediately had to tamp that line of thought down before the implant’s buzzing could start back up.
He knew what happened to stubborn Torellans, crew members that couldn’t control their thoughts adequately. The Captain’s Log was full of ample examples of crew burning their brains out, by failing to heed the devices’ warnings. That will be Reel’s fate, if I can’t figure out how to help her, he thought with a shudder as he opened the door to the bridge. She would be reduced to staring and drooling, fit only for the most menial of tasks, all the spark that made her unique snuffed out…death would be a kinder fate.
What little calm he had managed to gather shattered as the door slid open and a wave of noise crashed out over them. It hit him like a physical force, drawing him up short. “What in the black…” Argo muttered beside him. Most of the bridge crew were out of their seats, clustered around Yerry’s console station. They were all talking at once, their voices rising like an out of control pressure gauge as they struggled to make themselves heard. Arcturus gaped down from the door at the chaos filling his bridge. Important posts and consoles lay entirely abandoned, work going undone as his crew pressed Yerry from every side. The harassed chief navigation officer jabbed at her screen with an air of perplexed frustration. Arcturus felt his shock turn to anger. He had trained them better than this, blast it all! Glancing to Argo, he gave the first mate a subtle nod.
Argo took the hint. Stepping forward, he took a huge breath. “Captain on the bridge!” He bellowed out over the noise of the crew.
Instant silence fell. Argo’s voice echoed in the sudden stillness, broken only by the sound of younger crew scampering back to their stations. The older and wiser held where they stood, trying to avoid calling attention to themselves. Arcturus scowled out over them, while Argo glared.
“What is the meaning of all this?” Arcturus asked. He didn’t yell, but put an edge on his words and let them hang in the air like a blade. Shuffling feet answered him, the bridge crew glancing at each other.
Yerry spoke up, her scales flushed with color. “Some of the probes picked up some…well, some strange signals, Captain.”
He frowned. They found strange signals, unexpected signals, all the time. The survey reports never covered everything, after all. Better go see for myself. He clomped down the stairs leading to the main bridge, Argo trailing behind him. The crew members still standing scattered back to their stations ahead of him. Ignoring them, he joined Yerry, who wore a face of profound resignation.
“What did you find?” He asked, leaning in close with one hand on the console for balance. He kept his tone calm and conversational; the others would be able to hear him, and that would help keep them composed in turn.
Yerry shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “I thought it was just…random noise, but the computer flagged them as communication signals, sir.”
He sagged in his shell. “Poachers.” Short of the reactor core blowing them all to bits, it was the worst news he could imagine. Actually, he thought this might be worse as he considered it; if the core blew, he wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences.
The Efreet wouldn’t tolerate any incursions into their space, and removing these intruders might take years. If the interlopers had already harvested a significant measure of the resources in the system, stripping away the easily accessible heavy metals from the asteroid belt, it would come out of his crew’s already slim profits. Plus the cost of getting forces to the system to act as enforcement, plus the lost time…Blast it all, they’d come this far out specifically to avoid this possibility! They’d need to act fast, probably abandon the half-finished platform and retreat through subspace…He winced, thinking of the cost. What a disaster.
He mentally shook himself and straightened, making his voice firm and strong. Mine the asteroid in front of you, Arcturus. “Have you identified which High Race Association it is? Who uses those frequencies?”
She turned in her chair to look at him. “Everyone uses them to some extent, but nobody uses them exclusively.” She gestured back at the screen. “We don’t even have the equipment to broadcast on these frequencies.”
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Arcturus frowned at her. “We don’t?”
“No. I picked them up as part of the broad-spectrum electromagnetic survey, but it’s not something we use for communication. It’s not efficient over long distances.” She shook her head, bewildered. “I checked for neutrinos, lasers, and subspace packets, but…but they’re just not there.”
The muttering from the rest of the crew had been picking back up during their hushed conference. He tuned it out with an effort, staring at her. Argo grimaced, scratching at one sagging, graying cheek. “No subspace? Everyone uses subspace.” The first officer grumbled.
Yerry nodded, a faraway look in her eyes. “Yes.”
An intense chill ran down Arcturus’ shell. What was happening here? A High Race Association that didn’t use subspace? “Can we make sense of any of the signals?”
“No, but some of them appear to be audio transmissions.”
“Can you play one of them out?”
She hesitated at that, and dropped her voice to a whisper, glancing around. “In front of everyone?”
It might have been a good idea to wait, but he’d missed his chance. If he cleared the bridge now, whatever rumors the crew conjured up would be a hundred times as wild as the truth. Then again, maybe it was always too late for secrecy; how did you hide something like this? He met Yerry’s eyes and nodded. “Go ahead.”
She stabbed a finger at her screen without looking, and noise filled the bridge. Necks stretched out, eyes wide in wonder, and the crew listened. The sounds were light and high pitched, and seemed to Arcturus’ ears to hold a rhythm.
“Montagoo?” Argo fumbled the last word around on his tongue, trying to imitate it. “I think I’ve heard of that race.”
A deeper speaker, if speaker it was, answered.
Arcturus found himself whispering. “What are they saying?”
Yerry blinked and looked at him in confusion. He cleared his throat and tried again, louder. She shrugged, shell rising and falling as she glanced at her screen.
“The computer doesn’t know. It’s not a language it recognizes.”
That shouldn’t be possible. The computer could translate every language in this arm of the galaxy, and had tools for breaking codes. “I assume that the subspace packet report for this is ready?” He asked mechanically, his thoughts far away. This was something completely new, something unknown…His implant began to itch.
She looked back at her screen. The voices continued on, the crew listening spellbound.
<...The orchard walls are high and hard to climb, and the place death, considering who thou art, should any of my kinsman find thee here.>
“It should go out in a few minutes, with the routine reports.” She glanced to the side, at the subspace transmission unit. It squatted alongside her post; it was a gray boxy structure half as tall as Arcturus and nearly as wide, covered in blinking lights status displays. It sent out reports in bursts to save power, regular as a clock, and was the only unit onboard the ship powerful enough to punch messages back to Efree.
Arcturus walked up to it and ran a hand across the surface. It was a marvelous piece of equipment. Expensive, too. “But nothing of this has gone out so far?” He pressed.
Yerry nodded. “I hadn’t done the electromagnetic surveys for that area yet. I’ve only just had a chance to process these, but it should go out soon.”
“I see.” Arcturus bowed his head, looking down at the subspace transmission unit. It was their only way of getting a message back to Efreet, throwing bundles of information down into that strange grayness they had traveled through to get here. He hesitated another moment, hand resting lightly on the top of the unit. The itch in the back of his skull had grown to a buzz, and his thoughts were still only half-formed. The green lights blazed up between his fingers, then started to flash as the machine prepared the report. Idly, he supposed that it didn’t matter that he didn’t have time to think this through; the implant only allowed him so much leeway, and it was already rattling his brain like an out of balance engine. A language the computer didn’t know…Thousands of transmissions in a system that should have been silent…He knew what it meant. What it had to mean.
“Sir…?” From the corner of his eye, he saw Yerry start to rise. Without looking back at her, he lifted his hand from the unit and slammed it back down.
The metal cover crumpled underneath his clawed fist, and the flashing green lights went solid red. He felt delicate components within give way, cracking and tearing. Somebody gasped; it might have been Argo. He pulled the destroyed cover free, knocking it loose from its casing. Tossing it aside, he plunged both hands into the guts of the machine. He scraped at the parts with his claws and tore them loose with a savage jerk. They sprayed sparks, and spurted dark liquid that puffed into vapor and vanished as it hit the deck plating.
Well, it wouldn't be transmitting anything now. He dropped a double fistful of ruin to the floor in a clatter and looked about him. The crew had gone still as the stars, staring at him, while the audio echoed through the silent bridge, still droning rhythmically on. The deeper voice spoke again, his tone rising, seeming almost defiant. <…stony limits cannot hold love out, and what love can do, that dares love attempt! Therefore thy kinsmen are no stop to me.>
Yerry looked horrified. “Sir…Captain, what have you done?”
He brushed his hands off. A few bits of shattered circuitry clung to his scales, and blood trickled down his wrist where some errant shard had cut his knuckles open. “I have seized an opportunity.” The buzz in his skull had grown to a painful roar, but there was no turning back now.
Confusion warred with the earlier horror on Yerry’s face. “What opportunity? If you wanted a quick death, the airlock would have been a better choice!” Arcturus realized with distant amusement that she was thinking of the cost of the subspace unit. That alone would have been enough to earn his execution, but it would pale next to what he was about to do.
“I will not die.” He said, drawing himself erect and sweeping his head from left to right, taking in the whole bridge crew. “I will be free. We all will.” Reel will be safe.
Most of them looked nonplussed, but some had begun to put hands to implants, worry tinging their eyes. His own buzzed so hard it seemed like it might break; it made it hard to think, but he had to get the words out. His nascent thoughts solidified as he went on, and as they crystallized the implant’s warning buzz rose in a vicious crescendo, threatening to tear his head apart. Still, he pressed on. “Out there is a High Race. A new High Race. A High Race that nobody else knows about. Someone who has come to high technology alone, without help.”
He gestured out the forward viewport, in what he hoped was the general direction of the third planet. Not that they could see it; from their orbit in the asteroid belt, it would look like just one more star among thousands. “But they don’t have subspace; they haven’t left their planet. So we can offer them things they don’t have,” he altered the sweep of his arm to include the bridge of the ship, the consoles around them. “For things that we want!” He finished with a shout, pointing to his implant.
He felt the Strickening start as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Every muscle in his body locked against itself, and pain ripped down his nerves. Giving voice to the treasonous thought threw his implant into overdrive, slamming him to the cold deck plating in a violent seizure. Even hearing it was enough to trigger the devices, it seemed. Around the room, his crew fell to the ground as they realized the import of what he had said, limbs jerking. Some of them cried out, and that hurt him worse than the seizures. Argo toppled straight over backwards onto his shell, flailing. Arcturus clenched his jaw and tried to ride out the pain as it rose in waves, threatening to drown him. Yerry collapsed out of her chair, landing on top of him with a gasp.
Above them all, the voices from the strange High Race droned on through the bridge speakers, the deeper of the two voices speaking again.
“What makes you so sure…they’ll help us?” Yerry ground out through gritted teeth and uncontrollable tremors. Beyond her, Argo moaned through clenched teeth as he scrabbled at the deck plating.
He wasn’t sure. He wanted to confess to her that he wasn’t sure at all. That all he saw was the glimmer of a possibility. But as the pain drove the last conscious thought from his body, he saw again the line of their debt. He saw his crew dying old and gray as Argo. He saw Reel, killed or driven mad by constant Strickenings. He saw the long years that it would take their distant descendants to buy their freedom.
Descendants so far removed that they might not even remember them.
Any chance was better than that.