Freya separated herself from Diamond Zek and Kivi, and stepped away to pace
the room. The both waited for her patiently, while she figured out what she
wanted to say. She didn’t want to be mean, but she had to get answers. “Who
are you?”
“My name is Kivi Bristol.”
“What are you?”
“I am a chosen one, having been created by an unknown chooser.”
“Why do you seem familiar, but I also get the feeling that we’ve never met?”
“I am bound by a phenomenon called spontaneous quantum reemergence. I come
into existence at seemingly random points in spacetime, and disappear just
as quickly. Sometimes the people around me are aware of it, and sometimes
not. Sometimes I am aware of it, and sometimes I’m not. It’s unclear whether
there are multiple versions of me running around the timeline, or if I am
one person, being shunted throughout the timeline in a nonlinear order.
Someone once called me the constant variable.”
“I have memories of you being a part of this team for two years,” Freya
argued.
“Do you, though?”
“Well, yeah, because you...”
Kivi smiled. “My ability does sometimes fabricate memories, but most of the
time, it just forces your brain into ignoring the fact that you don’t have
memories. I actually didn’t join the team until shortly before we launched.”
“Are you good, or bad?”
“Good. That’s one thing that’s consistent about me. I’m always good.”
“How do we know?”
“Zek is immune to the psychic intrusion.” She held up the diamond a little.
“But I am not immune to hers. She would know.”
“Give her to me.” Freya took Diamond Zek from Kivi. She didn’t need to hold
her to have a private conversation, but this made it easier to be sure Kivi
wasn’t somehow listening in. Is she telling the truth?
She is, Zek confirmed.
Would you know if she weren’t?
I believe so.
Can we trust her?
Can we trust Khuweka, and Landis? Can you trust me?
I would like to think so.
Then that settles it, Zek decided. We will trust Kivi as much as we have
anyone else on the team. Do not tell the others what we know. We need to be
able to work together, and as far as they are aware, they’ve been learning
to do that with Kivi for the past two years. Revealing the truth would
undermine the mission.
“Well, we wouldn’t want that,” Freya said out loud.
No, we would not.
Freya handed Diamond Zek back to Kivi. “Like I did, people will start to
notice that you’re not capable of communing with Zek without physical
contact. I suggest you speed up the psychic bond as much as possible.”
“Very well,” Kivi said graciously. “Thank you.”
Freya took a moment. “What, do you suppose, you’re here for? What are your
skills?”
Kivi cleared her throat.
“Be honest,” Freya said, growing suspicious again.
“I’m a lawyer.”
“What?”
“I’ve practiced law on multiple planets,” Kivi answered, worried how she
would be received. “I’m not an engineer, or a fighter, or anything else you
would expect to find on a battleship.”
“Have you practiced on an alternate future version of Worlon?”
“If I have, I have no memory of it,” Kivi said. “I doubt it, though. They
sound pretty universally spiteful of humans.”
“Perhaps you argued against them.” Freya really was trying.
“They would have to have gone up against a pretty formidable enemy for it to
lead to nonviolent legal proceedings, rather than some kind of deadly
conflict.”
“True.”
“I may have one trick up my sleeve, though.”
“Oh?” Freya was interested.
“I’m romantically linked to Lincoln Rutherford. I don’t have a way to
contact him from where I sit, but...that’s something?”
“It certainly is,” Freya agreed. “He knows literally everything, which means
he knows where you are right now, which means he could send help if we need
it. You may be our backup.”
“So are we cool?” Kivi asked.
“We’re okay...for now.”
A month and a half later, they were finally approaching their destination.
It was Freya’s job at this point to read off the specifications for the
planet, so everyone knew what they were getting into. A project called
Topdown decades ago sent giant telescopes into the intergalactic voids, so
they could take measurements of the entire galaxy, but there were some
details that were best left to upclose sensors. “It scores a
point-nine-two-one on the Terrestrial Habitability Similarity Index, which
may sound great, but ninety-five percent is the bare minimum that Operation
Starseed will accept when deciding which worlds to plant life on, and which
to ignore. Oxygen saturation is one-point-eight times as it is on Earth. I’m
not sure if that’s why Ochivari are related to dragonflies, or what, but it
certainly tracks. Surface gravity is one-point-four-gee, so we’re all fat
now.”
“Signs of intelligent life?” Khuweka posed.
“None that the ship can detect,” Freya responded.
“Mr. Genovese, have you been able to locate a seed plate, or an interstellar
ship?”
“Working...” Carbrey said.
“Which are we expecting?” Andraste asked.
“Once he hacks into Project Stargate, we’ll know,” Khuweka explained. “Each
plate is responsible for establishing a presence in seven to twenty-eight
star systems. There’s no way to know whether Worlon will get the plate, or a
ship that the plate builds somewhere else. If it’s a secondary ship, it
won’t be here for awhile. Arrival dates are estimates.”
Carbrey nodded his head. “I’m in the system. An automated interstellar probe
is scheduled to arrive here in six years.”
“What do we do until then?” Eliana asked.
“We’re not waiting until it shows up,” Khuweka said. “We’re going to meet it
head on, and destroy it. Then we’ll take it’s job, and start sending
measurements back to Earth ourselves, but they’ll be false.”
“Do we really want to do that?” Diamond Zek asked. “Shouldn’t we just
destroy the probe, and keep away from this planet?”
“We need to stop Operation Starseed from coming here with human DNA samples.
If we don’t falsify the data, the system will eventually send those samples,
whether they come from the nearest seed plate, or the next nearest. This is
prime real estate. If we don’t do something to make it think this world is
worthless, they’ll just keep sending backups. This whole project is destined
to last tens of thousands of years. They’re patient enough to deal with
failures, and fully prepared to correct them. Even if that takes thousands
of years, they’re still well within their deadline.
“Furthermore, seed plates are the things they built on Gatewood, and
dispatched with the gargantuan modular carrier at the start of the project.
They’re powered by microfusion reactors, which are incredibly small, and
only designed for short bursts of momentum, and maneuverability. A plate
only exists to drop down on one orbital or satellite in one solar system.
The branching network probe ships, however, are part of the inventory that
this seed plate will make once it lands, using the raw material that it
finds there. They can be much larger, and thusly support larger reactors.
They can afford to spend power on other things, like long-range sensors, and
a constant data connection with Earth and Gatewood. If we let that thing get
close enough to Worlon to codify its habitability, all will be lost. We have
to intercept it.”
Throughout Khuweka’s explanation, Carbrey kept working on the computer. He
already understood all of this and knew that he needed to plot an intercept
course. According to Freya’s education, finding something in the middle of
interstellar space wasn’t as easy to do as fictional representations made it
seem. On TV, they just pulled up a screen, and barring any invisibility
cloak, every single object within a sufficient range would just be
automatically visible. Still, it wasn’t impossible to find something either.
Like Khuweka said, the probe was constantly sending data back to the stellar
neighborhood, including its own location, relative to nearby celestial
objects. He just needed to access that datastream. “I got it.”
“How far away is it?” Khuweka asked
“Roughly six light years. It’s going at maximum relativistic.”
Khuweka just looked over at Eliana.
“She doesn’t need to,” Freya said.
“No, she doesn’t,” Diamond Zek agreed. “We’ve been working on something.”
Without even touching them, she was able to teleport everyone to the booster
room. They weren’t aware she could do this, but they weren’t shocked either.
Her power was growing every week. She would probably reach a limit at some
point, and never become a god, or anything, but the light year limit was a
thing of the past. “Simulations suggest that I’m up to a parsec,” she
announced proudly. “Freya?”
Freya took Diamond Zek from Andraste’s arms, and took her to the back of the
booster seat. There, she had engineered a special case for her to be locked
in. It connected her to the platform, and kept her secure. Only the eight
people in this room would be capable of removing her from her spot, but
there wouldn’t likely be much reason to do so anymore. The case also
integrated Zek’s consciousness with the ship’s systems, effectively making
her the ship itself. Everything was working. All that needed to happen now
was a consensus that she be allowed to do this, and a test of the new FTL
jump limitation.
They all looked to Khuweka, who looked back at them. “Her superconscious
crystalline carbonaceous substrate, her choice.”
Limerick watched as Freya locked Diamond Zek into her new home. “On my
world, we have these things called wedding rings. They look like that.”
“Hmm,” Freya noted. “The ring here exists to concentrate Zek’s temporal
energy. It does kind of look like a giant wedding ring, though, doesn’t it?”
“Mr. Genovese,” Khuweka said simply, once Zek was fully in place.
Carbrey started tapping on his tablet. “Plotting a lateral course. We’ll
still be six light years from the probe, but a parsec from Worlon.”
The engines started up, made their connection with Diamond Zek, and jumped
away. Carbrey was notably less panicky than he was the last time. He
patiently waited for his tablet to calculate their location. They were
exactly where they wanted to be.
Diamond Zek was quite pleased with herself. “I could have gone farther. I
probably could have gone twice as far.”
“We’ll keep that in mind,” Khuweka told her. “For now, a parsec will
suffice.” She looked at Freya and Carbrey. “The three of you need to work
out how we’re going to do this. I know you already have a plan in mind?”
“Yes.” Freya nodded. “With a precision jump, we can essentially surround the
probe, and match its speed. If all goes well, it should be hovering inside a
quantum Faraday cage, where it can no longer send a signal back to Earth.”
“Well, actually,” Carbrey began to correct, “it will send its signal, but
will do so about five million years in the past. With no quantum receiver on
the other end, it will just...disappear.”
“Very well,” Khuweka said. “If you’re sure this will work, make the
necessary preparations, thank you.”
Freya and Carbrey did make the necessary preparations, while the other six
members of the crew went off to do their own thing. They started building
the quantum Faraday cage when they arrived in the Worlon system, but before
it could be used, they needed to make sure it was completely ready. There
was no room for error here. To that end, they also needed to work out the
calculations. The probe ship was traveling towards Worlon at 0.999999c,
which was the fastest possible without time powers. The Cormanu was fully
capable of reaching this velocity, and in fact would need to already be
there when they made their jump. The probe ship would basically suddenly
appear inside the Cormanu, and once it did, they would be able to disable it
manually, but getting to that point would take a lot of finesse. And
extremely high level math.
Within the day, they felt they were ready, and prepared for any eventuality,
so it was time to just go for it. Zek first made a jump to about 50,000
astronomical units away from the probe, just to make the final jump easier
on her. That was well outside of the probe’s known sensor range for an
object of the Cormanu’s mass. They accelerated themselves to max
relativistic speed. Early vessels needed time to accelerate, and just as
much time to decelerate, but even the humans managed to conceive a
workaround that allowed them to reach target velocities almost instantly
without turning passengers into mush against the back wall.
The two of them chose to stand just outside the cage when it happened, so
they could watch it. They built it a lot larger than they needed to, so
there should be no danger from this distance. When Carbrey had just
activated the final step for the jump, Limerick walked into the shuttle bay,
wanting to see it as well.
“Lim, get over here! It’s dangerous on that side.”
“What?”
Freya ran over to retrieve him. Their calculations were right, but there was
always a chance they were off by a meter or two. The probe could
theoretically end up on the wrong side of the cage. The signal would still
be blocked for long enough to allow them to fix the error, but you wouldn’t
want to be standing there when it happened.
“Jumping away,” Zek announced.
“No!”
Something turned out to be massively wrong with their calculations, or
something. Freya didn’t have time to form a hypothesis. She and Limerick
were being pressed up against the cage. The probe was nowhere to be seen,
and the fence was threatening to buckle under the pressure. They couldn’t
get off, but perhaps that was the only thing keeping them from being sucked
out into the interstellar void. The fence gave way, and sent them hurtling
towards the back. The fence on the other side held for a moment, but it too
would lose hold.
She fell forward, and landed on her face. On the ground. She was on land.
Somehow. In a breathable atmosphere. Limerick was next to her, recovering
from his own tumble. What the hell just happened?
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