Original Work The Unseen

Chapter Fourteen<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />



“Is there any update from Pelican?”



“Negative, Admiral,” the communications officersaid. She was a short dark woman, one ofthe few mustangs in the Federation Navy – and probably wishing that the Admiralwould take himself off the bridge. Issuingorders directly to a member of a Captain’s crew was a serious breach of commandetiquette, although it would be a rare officer who would dare object on thosegrounds. “There’s so much interferencethat it may blot out any radio signals from the away team.”



Admiral Louis Vaclav snorted as he resumed pacing aroundthe bridge. Admiral Sun – named for one of the Federation Navy’s first militaryheroes – and her consorts were orbiting the WhiteStar’s location at fifteen light minutes from the conjoined ships. He’d chosen to risk moving in closer when itbecame clear that the disruptions and discharges in local space didn't seem tobe moving any further than two light minutes from the ships, but it wasn't addingto their knowledge of what was going on. White Star was almostinvisible behind the energy storm and there was no sign of Pelican at all.



His private channel back to Federation Navy HQ on Lunahad confirmed his worst fears. Thefriends and relatives of the missing civilians had started to ask questions, nodoubt after putting their heads together and realising that none of them had heard anything for overtwo weeks. White Star had carried the latest tachyon pulse transmitterdeveloped by Earth’s engineers; they should have received compressed video evenif two-way transmissions were still impossible, at least without draining theship’s power reserves down to a dangerously low level. People were asking questions and many of themwere important people, the kind ofrich and well-connected bastards who would have friends in Congress, Parliamentor other national governments. Together,they could put a great deal of pressure on the Federation Navy and demandanswers. And they really wouldn't likethose answers.



They can't even betold that it is a matter of planetary security, he thought sourly as hestudied the live feed from one of the drones. White Star was still flexingalarmingly in a manner that suggested the ship was about to rip itselfapart. The half-seen alien craft seemedjust as trapped, although it was difficult to tell. All of the sensor readings varied soalarmingly that the science staff had concluded that the effect surrounding thetwo craft was ****ing up their work. Twoof them had had to go to bed with headaches.



He looked up sharply as a new alarm sounded within thebridge. “Report,” Captain Belinda Crichtonordered. She was young for her rank, buthad good friends within the British Government – and she was very competent,even if Admiral Sun was her firstcommand. “What do we have?”



“There are two quantum gates opening up, distance two lightminutes from our location,” the sensor officer reported. Quantum gates produced tachyon bursts thatcould be detected at quite some distance, allowing them to detect any newcomersbefore they came into sensor range. “Theexact gate patterning is unknown.”



Louis blinked in surprise as the gates closed, aftertheir generators had presumably entered normal space. The Cats had designed the basic quantum gategenerators, but there were thousands of known variants on the technology,ranging from Earth’s advanced designs to the ramshackle units put together bycountless pirate organisations. Something unknown suggested pirates, but why would pirates be out here,so far from civilised shipping lanes?



“Launch probes,” Captain Crichton ordered. “Admiral, I suggest bringing the squadron tocombat stations.”



Louis nodded and keyed his console. “All ships, this is the Admiral,” hesaid. “Set condition one throughout thefleet; I say again, set condition one throughout the fleet.”



Alarms howled as AdmiralSun’s crew ran to battle stations. Louis forced himself to sit back and watch as the drones raced towardsthe newcomers, wondering just what they were going to find. After the Earth-Hegemony War, few powerswould be sanguine about taking on a squadron of human-built cruisers, but manyof the Galactic powers had more superdreadnaughts than the Federation Navy hadstarships. They could take out his squadron if they were willing to absorb thelosses his ships would inflict in return, even assuming that they hadn't improvedtheir technology since the war. If that had happened, the whole situationwould become dangerously unpredictable.



“Picking up seventeen ships,” the sensor officerreported. “They’re driving in towards uson approach vector.”



Which can become anattack vector at any moment, Louis thought. It wasn't entirely an aggressive posture, but it was a warning not to take the newcomers lightly. “Do we have any ID yet?”



“Negative, no IFF transmissions at all,” the sensorofficer said. Louis felt more than heardCaptain Crichton’s snort. “Nine of themappear to be battlecruisers, heavily modified from a Type-55 baselinehull. The remainder are unfamiliar, butjudging by mass and drive readings probably something along heavy cruiserlines. They are launching drones oftheir own.”



“Prepare ECM pulses to jam their transmissions,” Captain Crichtonordered, sharply. Earth’s technologicalsecrets were to be preserved as long as possible, although many Federation Navyanalysts suspected that the Galactics were already closing the gap. They weren’t exactly stupid, after all, and they had seen Earth’s weapons inaction. “Communications, prepare to hailthem.”



“Aye, Captain,” the communications officer said. “A standard greeting?”



Captain Crichton and Louis exchanged glances. No pirate organisation in the entire galaxywould have so much firepower, which meant that the newcomers were probably fromone of the Galactic powers. But any ofEarth’s few friends would have signalled ahead...they might not be friendly,but it was possible they weren't hostile either. Earth didn't need more enemies.



“They should pick up and understand a standard greeting,”Louis said, finally. Whoever thenewcomers were, they weren't related to the aliens who had collided with the White Star. Their technology was based on Associationdesigns, which suggested – if nothing else – that they weren't any moreadvanced than the human race. But what ifthey had some advanced technology of their own? “Let’s see what they have to say.”



“I’m transmitting a standard greeting now,” thecommunications officer said. There wereten standard Galactic languages and twelve more variants designed for interstellarcommunications, along with literally millions of native languages, but anyonewho was part of the Association would know the standard languages. And a standard greeting should be understoodby anyone. “No response.”



“Unknown ships are altering course and speed,” the sensorofficer injected. “They’re drawing up information relative to the White Star.”



Louis frowned, studying the display. It looked almost as if they intended to attack the White Star, but they shouldn't have been in weapons range unlessthey went a great deal closer to the conjoined ships. Maybe they intended to fire torpedoes andrely on them travelling on a ballistic course to the target. It might work, if only because the White Star was a stationary target.



“Repeat the standard greeting,” he ordered, tightly. There were over a thousand humans on the White Star. He couldn't allow the ship to be simplydestroyed. “And prepare to put thesquadron between them and the White Star.”



“Aye, Admiral,” the communications officer said. There was a long chilling pause. “I’m picking up a response, text-typeonly. They don’t want to show us theirfaces.”



“Read it out,” Louis ordered. “Who are they?”



The communications officer hesitated. “We...shimmer...among...the...harmony,” shesaid, slowly. “This...disturbs...the...harmony.”



“Lieutenant,”Captain Crichton snapped.



“Captain, that’s the message,” the communications officerinsisted. “They repeat it, three times;they don’t say anything else after that.”



Louis hesitated, thinking hard. During his time in ONI, he’d heard storiesabout a race that called itself the Shimmering Harmony. Very little was known about them; they werereclusive to a degree that surprised many of their galactic neighbours. They were members of the Association, butthey rarely took part in debates or offered their forces to back up what fewresolutions could be put forward by the Association Commune. And yet one of their rare votes had helpedwin time for humanity to win the Earth-Hegemony War.



He tapped his console, accessing the files stored on allthe known galactic races. There wasalmost nothing on the Shimmering Harmony; no one, not even the Cats, knew whatthey looked like, or why their homeworld was almost sealed off behind waves ofdisturbance in quantum space. They hadnever sent a fleet outside their space before, not in all the thousands ofyears they’d known about the Association. They just wanted to be left alone and the Galactics, surprisingly, hadcomplied. The Shimmering Harmony wasnothing more than a complete mystery.



“Give me an open channel,” he said, picking up hisheadphones. “Unknown ships, this isAdmiral Vaclav, CO 9^th Cruiser Squadron. There are humans on the White Star. I cannot allowyou to destroy her until we have established what happened to them and pulledthem off the ship, if possible.”



There was no response from the Shimmering Harmony. “I have authorisation to use deadly force to protectthe White Star if necessary,” headded. The Federation Navy wouldn't thankhim for firing on ships belonging to a largely neutral alien race, but he couldn'tallow them to destroy the White Star. “If you open fire, we will be forced to openfire in response.”



“Picking up a second message,” the communications officersaid. “It’s still nothing more thanplain text.”



“Read it,” Louis ordered, sharply.



“This...rift...threatens...the...harmony,” thecommunications officer read out. “You...must...not...allow...it...to...remain...open...or...all...will...be...threatened.”



“Or all will be threatened,” Louis repeated. “What does that mean?”



“They may feel that the rift between alternate universesis likely to spread and cause considerable damage to our continuum,” the sensorofficer said. He’d been listening to thedebate onboard Admiral Sun betweenthe scientists who hadn't been allowed to board the White Star with the rest of the away team. They’d planned for the scientists to goonboard after they’d pulled out the human survivors, but they’d lost contactwith both Pelican and the away teamjust after the team had boarded the WhiteStar. “If the ships are jamming therift open, it is possible that destroying the conjoined ships will allow therift to close.”



“Slaughtering our people along with it,” Louissnapped. He knew how to fight battlesagainst Hegemony starships, but something that threatened the universeitself? No one could think on such ascale. And yet he had to try. Assuming that the Shimmering Harmony wasright, they had no choice, but to assume the worst. When Earth had been bombarded towards the endof the war, the orbital defences and facilities had been deemed expendable bythe defenders, who had been trying to stop the missiles from hitting Earth’ssurface. They’d caught some of themissiles, but enough had made it down to murder millions of human beings. The entire away team – and the passengers –had to be rated as expendable if the alternative was losing everything...



...And yet that would definitely destroy his career. So would firing on their ships, whatever theprovocation.



“The discharges from quantum space into normal space hadbeen growing stronger,” the sensor officer said, quietly. “It is quite possible that we wouldn't beable to slip a shuttle or even a gunboat back to Pelican, even now. Whathappens if the effect starts spreading outside the limits we have seen so far?”



“They might not be able to destroy the ships if thedistortion gets any worse,” Louis said, grimly. Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea...and all the people backon Earth who would second-guess his decisions until his career was at anend. Admiral Sampson would understand,but the politicians would want his scalp. Maybe he’d be lucky and allowed to resign with honour intact. “Is there any way you can predict the spreadof the energy discharges?”



“There doesn't seem to be a detectable pattern,” thesensor officer admitted. “The relayprobes we left in quantum space seem to indicate that they pop up out ofnowhere and then surge into our universe, as if they’re opening gates of theirown. Logically, this effect shouldfollow rules of its own, but we haven’t managed to isolate and deduce them. One of the scientists was talking aboutrandom fluctuations in vacuum energy surrounding the conjoined ships...”



Louis held up a hand. “So there won’t be anything practicalfrom the scientists,” he said, ruefully. Maybe Earth’s scientists were overrated after all. How the Galactics would laugh, if they everheard about the situation. “Open achannel back to the Shimmering Harmony.”



He sat down at his chair as the channel opened. “Shimmering Harmony, we are prepared to allowyou to open fire on the conjoined ships in seven standard hours from now,” hesaid. It was a risk, but Captain Atwellknew that he would have to recall the away team and get away from the conjoinedships before then. “If you decide tofire on the ships earlier, we will have to intervene to prevent you fromkilling our people.”



The reply was almost instantaneous. “Your...people...are...already...dead,” thecommunications officer read out. “You...cannot...revert...them. You...can...only...kill...them.”



“Revert them?” Louis asked. “Revert them from what?”



“We don’t know what’s been happening on that ship,” theCaptain said, softly.



“But if they are already dead,” the communicationsofficer said, carefully, “how can we kill them?”



Louis saw what she meant and frowned. You couldn't kill someone who was alreadydead. The Galactics had introduced Earthto whole new levels of medical technology, but outright resurrection was impossible. Logically, the Shimmering Harmony had made a translationerror, yet the whole idea of galactic standard languages was to prevent translation errors.



His lips twitched in a moment of bitter humour. And nowthat everyone knows when they’re being insulted, they can fight more wars thanever before.



“Ask them what they mean,” Captain Crichtonsuggested. “Maybe they’ll be willing toelaborate.”



Louis nodded and asked the question. Again, the Shimmering Harmony answered atonce. “Your...people...have...been...touched...by...the...unseen,”they said. “They...are...dead. But...they...are...changed. You...must...kill...them...or...lose...everything.”



“We can't kill our own people,” Louis protested. He didn't want to give up on the away team,let alone the passengers on the WhiteStar. But if the Shimmering Harmonywere right, he had no choice. And whatshould he do if they decided to open fire anyway and dare the human ships tostop them? “Seven hours. Give us seven hours and after that you canopen fire at will.”



A human would have realised that he was pleading. He had no way of knowing what the ShimmeringHarmony would make of it. Anotherhumanoid race might have spotted the signs, but no one knew if the ShimmeringHarmony were even humanoid. There wereplenty of races out among the stars who were completely inhuman.



“Very...well,” the Shimmering Harmony replied,finally. “We...will...wait. Unless...the...rift...expands...further. Then...we...will...act...even...against...you.”



“If that happens, we will join you,” Louis said. Maybe assisting the Shimmering Harmony toclose the rift, even at the cost of everyone onboard the White Star, would help to cement diplomatic relations betweenhumanity and the mysterious alien race. The Shimmering Harmony were clearly much more than they seemed, andEarth needed powerful allies. It wouldn'tsave his career, of course, but it would allow him a chance to salvagesomething from the debacle. “We willwait.”



“They just cut the communications channel,” thecommunications officer said. “I’m notpicking up anything from their ships,not even chatter between the different ships...I’d love to take a look at theircommunications room.”



“Maybe they just use lasers to communicate,” the sensorofficer suggested. Lasers wereundetectable unless someone actually crossed the path of the laser beam, astatistically improbable event. “All oftheir mysterious technology might be technology we know and understand, butdressed up to make it look supremely advanced.”



Louis ignored the discussion, studying the star chartsprovided by the Cats when they had first encountered Earth. The Shimmering Harmony came from a world overten thousand light years away, nearly a year of travel from Earth – at leastusing standard drives. If they’d managedto dispatch an entire fleet from their homeworld to the Unseen Reaches, theyhad to have some means of travelling far faster than the rest of the Galactics. But how was that even possible?



“And if they have an advanced drive system, they mighthave advanced weapons as well,” Captain Crichton said, when he outlined hisreasoning to her. “But what if they havea base far closer to the Unseen Reaches?”



“We wouldn't know about it if they did,” Louis said,thoughtfully. Hiding something in interstellarspace was easy – and anything concealed in quantum space would almost certainlynever been found, unless the hider had a stroke of very bad luck. “But that leaves us with another problem.”



He looked up at her. “If they have a drive system that leaves the rest of the Galactics inthe dust, don’t you think that that’s a secret they will want to conceal? They might open fire on us without warning.”



Tapping his console, he started to issue orders. “Farragutcan head to the edge of sensor range and prepare to jump out for Earth ifthe **** hits the fan,” he said. “And we’llreport what has happened to Earth directly...at least that will give AdmiralSampson an excuse to classify everything relating to the White Star for the moment. And then...”



He settled back in his chair, looking up at the image ofthe conjoined ships – and the Shimmering Harmony fleet, taking up a positionseven light seconds from his squadron. They would be able to open fire with conventional weapons before hisships realised that they were under attack, let alone an unknownsuperweapon. God alone knew what aGalactic race, with thousands of years on humanity, might have developed andkept to themselves.



“And now we wait,” he added. “And pray.”

 

<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><font size="3">Chapter Fifteen<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com
Buzz had studied the plans of the White Star extensively and accessed countless VR simulationsproduced by the starship’s designers. Mostof them had struck him as deliberately being designed to spark civil unrest,for even a steerage berth on the WhiteStar was more expensive than the average human civilian could afford. But there hadbeen a particularly entertaining tour of the bridge, entertaining becausethe bridge had been crafted to look spectacular rather than being designed for functionality.

“I say,” Gino said, into the silence. “Doesn’t it look like that Star Trek shows bridge? You know; the one with the bald captain and omnipotentgit?”

“Yeah,” Jimmy agreed. “He might even have won if he’dopened fire more than once or twice in a season.”

Buzz shook his head. It was hard to be sure if Gino was right; the ghostly glow seemed tocast shapes he recalled from the VR tours of the ship into something unfamiliar,almost alien. The VR simulations hadn't includedstrange pillars dominating the bridge, as if they were holding up the ceiling,nor had they shown the weird growth near to the Captain’s chair. But even with the glow, it was clear that thedesign was grossly impractical. Militaryships had small functional bridges, with every console modular so they could bereplaced quickly if necessary. White Star’s designers had clearly neveranticipated having to make repairs on the fly.

He took a doubtful look at the glowing deck and then,very carefully, put his weight on it. There was a faint sensation of sinking, rather like the swamps they’dcrawled through during Marine training, but it seemed to be capable of holdinghim, rather than simply dropping him through to the lower decks – or whereverJoe Buckley had ended up. He checked hissuit’s sensors again, but there was no trace of him. The only transmission he could pick up,outside of the Marine team, was a single repeating pulse coming from right infront of him.

“Stay there,” he ordered. It was probably useless to test each part of the deck separately, notwhen it could become completely intangible in a split-second, but he didn't darerun forward and around the arch that hid the command chair from view. He felt as though he was walking on ice as heinched forward, touching the reassuringly solid wooden arch as he peered downtowards the command chair. What sort ofidiot designer put wood in a starship? It was a sign of remarkable wealth, but it wasn't even necessary. There was something – or someone – sitting inthe command chair, wrapped in a gelatinous goo. “My God.”

“Boss?” Jimmyasked. “What is it?”

“I’m not sure,” Buzz admitted. He inched around the arch and peered into themass. It reminded him of a hibernationchamber, or perhaps the jelly that made up the interior of one of the armouredcombat suits, but it appeared to be completely unsupported by anythingelse. And inside...there was a humanform, frozen within the material. Hepumped his suit’s light up to full power, noting with some concern how thelight flickered and started to fade, and shone it into the mass. The face staring back at him was instantlyrecognisable as Captain Smith, commander of the White Star. “I think I’vejust found the commander.”

He hesitated. “Gino,stay with Nan and keep as far from the glow as possible,” he ordered. “Jimmy, break out your medical sensors andget over here – carefully.”

Buzz straightened up and studied the growth next to thecommand chair. As near as he could makeout, it had simply grown up through thedeck and linked into the liquid holding Captain Smith in suspension. But that was impossible...he bent down andran his fingers along the metal plating under the carpeted deck. Thegrowth seemed to have interpenetrated with the decking, perhaps when the twoships had first collided. And yet theyseemed to exist in the same universe...

The glow, herealised, grimly. It’s the effect that keeps the normal laws of nature from asserting themselves. Remove the glow and the White Star will diein a massive explosion.

“Dear God,” Jimmy said, as he saw the Captain. “What the hell happened to him?”

“That’s what I need you to find out,” Buzz said, as he straightenedup and started towards the helm console. The designers had definitely followed Gene Roddenberry’s designs alright,even to the point of creating a viewscreen that showed a picture of space infront of the starship, a viewscreen that was now dark and silent along with therest of the ship. Carefully, Buzz kneltdown and started to open the access port under the helmsman’s seat. There should be a direct link to one of theblack boxes there. A moment later, theglow seemed to grow stronger and he cursed, jumping backwards. The entire helm console seemed to go translucentbefore returning to normal. “Damn it!”

“Try the rear control panels,” Gino advised, from wherehe was standing outside the bridge. “Thereshould be another black box in there.”

“****,” Jimmy said, sharply. “The Captain’s alive in there!”

Buzz looked back at the mass holding Captain Smith. “Are you sure?”

“He’s got a heartbeat and brain activity,” Jimmy said,slowly. “But he’s also got a wholeseries of near-nanotech sized threads leading into his brain, coming from” – hewaved a hand helplessly at the growth beside the Captain’s chair – “thatthing. I can't even tell what they’redoing in there, but I don’t think it’s anything good.”

“Reminds me of direct brain access nanotech,” Gino said,when Jimmy uploaded the visuals from his suit onto the datanet. Buzz winced. The technology existed to literally read a person’s mind, but it wasbanned on Earth, not least because a single power surge at the wrong time couldtrigger a cerebral haemorrhage that would kill the subject instantly. He’d heard rumours that such technology had beenused to interrogate prisoners from the Hegemony during the war, yet there hadnever been any proof one way or the other. It would certainly have been in direct defiance of the Articles ofWar. “But I don’t think that this technologyis designed to be retractable.”

“No,” Jimmy agreed. “I’m picking up electric pulses snapping through the suspension liquidand entering his brain. I think he’s linkeddirectly into...whatever this thing is. Giveme a few minutes and I’ll see if I can track the pulses down, find out wherethey’re coming from...”

Nan sounded appalled from where she was standing. “Surely you can just cut him free?”

“I don’t think we dare,” Jimmy said, flatly. “The threads are woven into his brain. If we cut him free, there’s a good chancethat the shock will kill him outright. Isuppose that the right medical nanites might be able to break the threads down,but even that runs the risks of tearing his brain apart.”

“And if we did cuthim free, or killed him, we’d probably provoke some kind of reaction from thealiens,” Buzz said. “What’s to stop themsending more Shambles up here to kill us?”

Leaving the question hanging in the air, he walked up tothe rear of the bridge and opened one of the consoles, looking inside for theblack box. By Association law, allstarships had to carry an onboard flight recorder, at least if they wanted tocarry civilians. White Star carried no less than ten of them, but three of the blackboxes were probably inaccessible and the others were scattered throughout theship. If something went badly wrong, theship would have to be vaporised to prevent rescue teams from recovering one ofthe black boxes and accessing the records of the ship’s final moments.

It wasn't black, much to his private disappointment. The recorder was a small box painted bright orange,marked with warning signs in English, Russian Chinese and all of the Galacticstandard languages. In theory, no onecould access a black box without the correct encryption keys, but they had beenhacked before – and they’d been given the codes anyway, back before they’d leftEarth. He put the black box in one ofhis suit’s compartments and looked back down at Jimmy, who had left the Captainin stasis and walked along the deck, following the growth as it merged with theWhite Star.

“Curious,” he said, finally. “Call me insane if you like, boss, but Ithink the growth has merged into the WhiteStar’s computers and helm control systems. The Captain may have been drafted into serving as his ship’s brain.”

Buzz looked down at him. “What does that mean for us?”

“We know that the alternate...universe we seem to be flickeringthrough has different physical laws,” Jimmy said. “Our tech doesn't seem to work there verywell. I’d bet half my next paycheck thattheir tech doesn't work very well in our universe either. There’s no direct proof, but logicallyanything evolved to work over there won’t work so well over here.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” Buzz agreed. “Nan?”

“I don’t have enough data to speculate,” Nan said,primly. “The aliens presumably entered quantumspace...”

She stopped. “Shit!”

“Professor?” Buzzasked. Gino lifted his rifle, apparentlyconvinced that the Shambles had reappeared and were heading right forthem. But there was no sign of anything hostile,apart from the ever-present glow. “Whathappened?”

“I just remembered something that Professor Poway used tosay,” Nan said. “He was one of the firsthumans to study quantum space; the government even paid for him to travel toCentre and study at the feet of the greats who had been the first to opengateways into quantum space. The Cats wereimmortal; they could tell him what it was like to take their first tentativesteps into quantum space. What if Einsteinhad lived long enough to move with the times?”

She coughed. “Hetold me that they used to ask each of their students a riddle,” she continued,after a moment. “They asked them whatlay beyond quantum space.”

“I don’t understand,” Buzz said, puzzled. “What doeslie beyond quantum space?”

“These aliens, perhaps,” Nan said, grimly. “I wonder...all those years ago, did the Catshave an encounter with these aliens too?”

“But the Cats share knowledge with everyone,” Ginopointed out, “including their enemies.”

Buzz nodded. TheHegemony wouldn't have been so big a threat if the Galactics hadn't upliftedthem to spacefaring status, while humanity would still be stuck on one planetif one particular rogue Cat hadn't made humanity a gift of interstellar technology. Like reporters and congressmen, the Cats hada tendency to talk about everything – and never seemed to worry about thelong-term effects of what they admitted to the universe.

“They don’t tell us everything,” Nan said. “No one knows how they made themselves immortal,for example, and there is quite a bit in the Association’s early history thatseems to have been sanitized. My firstboyfriend” – she coughed, a little embarrassed – “once told me that there wasso much history written by the Cats that they could bury anything under amountain of ********. The truth is thatwe don’t really know what happened when the Association was created – and nordo any of the other Galactics.”

Jimmy frowned. “Ithink we can assume that whatever they’re doing to the White Star is intended to allow it to operate in both universeswithout problems,” he said. “They’vebeen growing conduits throughout the bridge using their own technology, whichappears to be almost completely organic. The Captain has been converted into a living link between the technicaland organic halves of the ship’s new control system.”

“But why?” Nanasked. “Why would they bother?”

“Perhaps they want to take the White Star home for study,” Jimmy suggested, after a longmoment. “Or perhaps they want to separatethe two ships carefully.”

“Perhaps,” Buzz agreed. “I think it’s time we took a look at the black box.”

Jimmy stood up. “Whatabout the Captain?”

“Leave him for the moment,” Buzz ordered. “If we can figure out a way to free him, wewill come back and do so.”

Jamming the bridge hatch open, they left the compartmentand walked back down to the security office. The body was still where they’d left it, disturbingly alone. Buzz slowly shook his head, wondering justwhat had happened to the rest of the passengers and crew. If the aliens had been prepared to turn the ship’scommander into a computer processor – or an organic version of a computerprocessor – what might they have done with the rest of the humans onboard theship?

Gino sat down at the desk and started to work on theblack box. “These things were designedto store records even if they lost everything, including the trickle chargekeeping them operational,” he said. “No technologyknown to any of the Galactics can actually rewrite the records; the best anywould-be hacker could do would be to create another record on top of the firstrecord, which would be instantly recognisable when the black box was accessed.”

He pulled a cable out of his suit and attacked it to theblack box. “They drained everything,” hesaid, thoughtfully. “The memory shouldbe fine, but I’ve never seen anything likethis before.”

Buzz remembered the few brief moments he’d been stuckinside a powerless suit and shivered. Two weeks of watching their technology fail around them would have beennightmarish for the passengers, assuming that any of them survived theencounter with the alien ship. But ifNancy had survived, surely there had been others...

“Got it,” Gino said, finally. “Let’s see what we can see.”

“Try and compile the data into a single whole,” Jimmysaid. “This isn't the Luna Academy. Not all of us have the patience to study eachinformation stream separately and try to deduce what happened to the ship.”

Buzz snorted. Thewould-be Federation Naval personnel were tested constantly, some of them givena stream of records from a black box and told to work out what had happened tothe ship in its last moments. It wasnever a very easy exercise until the cadets worked out which streams wereimportant and which were incidental, of no consequence to the overall whole.

“Here,” Gino said. “This is the last record from just before the encounter.”

Buzz found himself looking into the bridge as the White Star tried to avoid the energy stormburning through quantum space. The stormdid seem to be following the White Star deliberately, ignoring thedestroyer in favour of much larger prey. Combined with what they’d seen the aliens do to Captain Smith, it wasimpossible to believe that the aliens were friendly, or simplymisunderstood. They’d set out to capturethe White Star and would probablyhave succeeded in kidnapping or destroying the ship if she hadn't tried to jumpback into normal space, somehow merging with the alien ship hidden within the energystorm. The one image of the alien shipthat was remotely useable suggested a colossal sphere, but little else.

The bridge turned translucent, the crew started to scream...andthen the recording cut out.

“That’s the end of the visual record,” Gino said. “The onboard recorder must have failed atthat point.” He poked around inside the black box’s records for a longmoment. “Some of the other sensorslasted longer. Take a look.”

Buzz had never enjoyed studying data streams, but thisone was alarming – and bizarre. White Star had suffered a number ofinternal and external hull breaches, yet none of the compartments reported anyform of explosive decompression. Thecomputers had started by recording all of the reports faithfully, but as they’dbecome more and more extreme they’d started to dismiss some of the reports assensor malfunctions. How could the shipexplosively decompress and yet maintain its atmosphere?

“They must have picked up...weak spots between the twoships, places where they merged into one,” Gino speculated. “That’s interesting...Nan, Professor, what doyou make of this?”

Nan studied the data stream carefully. “The quantum drive remained online until theblack box failed,” she said. “That shouldn'tbe possible. If you ran the drive flatout you’d either drain your power or burn out the safety compensators – or burnout the drive itself.”

“A great deal of what we've seen down here shouldn’t be possible,”Buzz pointed out, dryly. “Tell mesomething; what would happen, theoretically, if you did keep the quantum drive online?”

Nan considered it for a long moment. “Well, technically the quantum drive isn't adrive at all, not in the sense that a drive field provides propulsion for astarship moving through normal space,” she said. “All it reallydoes is open up gateways between normal space and quantum space. You still need a drive field to actually get anywhere.”

She shook her head. “The problem is that you require vast amounts of power to open a gatewayand keep it open,” she continued. “Evena fixed gate cannot remain open for more than a few minutes; the power demandskyrockets sharply. In theory, you could keep a gateway open indefinitely,but eventually you’d need infinitive power and that is well beyond our science.

“But if you could...youmight end up with a permanent gateway into quantum space,” she concluded. “But why would anyone want that?”

“To prevent two ships from interpenetrating, perhaps,”Buzz said. “I wonder if...”

“Hold everything,” Gino said. “Take a look at this.”

His suit projected a holographic image in front of them,the interior of the White Star...andsomething else. The alien ship wasmassive, thoroughly alien. It wasdifficult to guess at what it’s exterior looked like, but the interior was aseries of winding passageways that seemed to blur into the White Star’s interior at random points. The alien ship might almost have been aliving thing, rather than a constructed starship.

“I think the internal sensors got at least one good lookat the alien ship,” Gino said. “Just howbig is that thing?”

 

Chapter Sixteen<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />



Joe Buckley lay on one of the tables, barely recognisable. His face was bulging, as if something wasmoving under his skin, while his legs had shifted into strange fleshy massesthat made Zach want to be sick. TheMarine looked up at him helplessly, unable even to speak as his body underwenta slow transformation into something other. Zach glanced at where his penis should have been and saw a swellingpouch of flesh that seemed to be growing like a cancer cell. Joe was clearly in pain; the aliens, orwhoever was controlling the transformation, were unwilling or unable to provideanaesthetic.



“My God,” Zach breathed. The stench rising from Joe’s body was enough to make him want to besick. Behind him, Nancy stumbledbackwards, swallowing hard. “Can youeven hear me in there?”



He’d though that Joe was paralysed, but the Marinemanaged to blink at him. Zach reacheddown towards his forehead, only to be stopped by a desperate stare fromJoe. There were spores growing on hisbody, slowly bursting into a hellish form of life that was using Joe’s body forfuel. He looked back at the Marine’slegs and realised something he hadn't wanted to know. The Marine was slowly turning into aShamble.



Zach drew his pistol and stared around the room, lookingfor the aliens. But there was nothing,apart from the sensation of being watched. The aliens seemed to have created a biological chamber of horrors andthen abandoned it to do its job without interfering further, leaving it toconvert humans into shambling monstrosities. He glanced from side to side, wondering which of the passengers had beenconverted into Shambles and killed by the Marines. There was no way to know. The change was happening right in front ofhis eyes; slowly, the spores on Joe’s skin burst into eerie yellow flesh andmerged into their fellows, creating the biological armour the Shambles used toprotect themselves from human fire. Itsuggested some form of biological counterpart to nanotechnology, perhapssomething that could move so rapidly that it could easily fix any damage beforeit became life-threatening.



He looked up at Joe’s face, just in time to see the waveof converted flesh covering his mouth. The entire body was seething now with movement as creatures under theskin carried out the final stages of the transformation, shifting into thebiological material that gave the Shambles their deadly abilities. Zach hesitated, pointing his gun at JoeBuckley’s head; he couldn't kill a fellow human, not in cold blood. But Joe blinked urgently, an unspokenpleading clear in his eyes. He knew whatwas coming and he would sooner die than he used against his fellowMarines. And he would be used by the aliens if the transformation completed...



Zach pulled the trigger. He’d been uncertain if the chemical weapon would even work on the alien ship, but the gunjerked in his hand as a bullet passed right through Joe Buckley’s head and intothe table below. Red blood flowed fromhis brain, spooling into the table which absorbed it patiently, followed by asighing noise as the entire body slid into yellow gunk. Zach yelped and jumped backwards as itspilled onto the fleshy deck, only to drain away into the alien material. The entire ship was a living thing, hereminded himself. They were literallytrapped in the belly of an alien beast.



“Come on,” he said, to Nancy. The aliens would know what had happened totheir Shamble and would be sending reinforcements. Why didn't they come in person? He glanced around, trying to see where thealiens were...unless the aliens were the ship? Could they have bonded themselves into their ships so thoroughly thatthere was no difference between them and the creatures they’d designed to betheir servants? And yet...



...All around the chamber of horrors, metallic technologyseemed to be blurred into living flesh. It was impossible to be sure, but the alien flesh seemed to be in pain,as if their entire existence was one of suffering. A flicker of light danced at the corner ofhis eye as he looked up at one of the alien pillars, wincing at the shape of technologyforced into the living flesh. It looked irritated, as if it was suffering fromsome skin disease, but the aliens didn't seem to care. After what they’d done to Joe Buckley – and presumablythe rest of the passengers and crew on the WhiteStar – Zach was no longer prepared to assume the best about them. They were either indifferent to pain andsuffering, or they gloried in it. Neither attitude boded well for a peaceful First Contact.



Nancy caught his arm as they reached a darkenedpassageway leading further into the alien ship. “I can hear something,” she said. “Can’t you hear anything?”



Zach hesitated. Now she came to mention it, there wasa faint sound in the distance. It wasn'tsomething he could place, yet it was oddly familiar – and almost drowned out bythe beating heartbeat of the alien craft. “I wish we had a map of this place,” he muttered, as they started offdown the corridor. “If they can controltheir own flesh so extensively, they can probably redesign their own ship atwill.”



The glow seemed to fade away as they walked down thecorridor, leaving them walking in semi-darkness. Faint lights seemed to flicker in and out of existenceon the fleshy bulkheads, providing just enough illumination to keep them goingfor several meters, right up until the moment they blinked out entirely,leaving them in total darkness. Therewasn’t even enough light to make their way back to the chamber of horrors. Anythingcould be waiting for them in the darkness and they’d never see it coming.



“My multitool doesn't work,” Nancy complained. “How are we supposed to see?”



Zach shrugged. “Idon’t know,” he said. “I think...”



Two red lights appeared in the distance, from thedirection of the chamber of horrors. They were bright enough for Zach to see an unfamiliar form below them,something roughly humanoid but very inhuman. The creature shuffled forward and broke Zach’s trance. Whatever it was, it was coming right afterthem...



“Run,” he snapped, and pulled Nancy along the passageway,banging into the fleshy walls as they ran. The creature seemed to slide after them, it’s bright red eyes shiningout in the darkness, but it seemed to be keeping its distance. Or perhaps it just couldn't move very fastcompared to two panic-stricken humans. “Don’tlet it catch up with us...”



Webbing appeared out of nowhere, trying to trap them andhold them in place. Zach tore throughit, remembering the pistol he was carrying. He hefted it and took a shot at the Shamble, hoping that it woulddie...or at least stagger back. But theShamble didn't even seem to notice. It kept loping after them, knowing that theywould tire while it never would...until the moment the translucent glow flaredup around them and they crashed through a series of alien bulkheads, beforefalling to the floor. The entire shiphad shifted around them.



Zach cursed as he hit the ground, thanking God that hehadn’t landed on his legs or they would surely have been broken by the force ofthe impact. It stunned him enough tokeep him down long enough for the Shamble to catch up with them, except therewas no sign of it. The Shamble hadn't followedthem through the dimensional warp...on impulse, he tested the tools he’drecovered from the suit and discovered that they still didn't work. It wasn't entirely a surprise.



Nancy was lying on the ground, one leg at a very badangle. Zach pulled himself to his feetand ran over to her, realising that she was trying desperately not to scream inpain. Her left leg was clearly broken,snapped in at least two places, and there was a nasty scar along her face. Looking around him, Zach realised that they’dfallen into another alien chamber, almost a vast fleshy cave set within thealien ship. There was no sign ofanything human, or even the warped creatures the aliens used to guard theirship. Presumably, they’d made Shamblesand then used them to gather up the remaining humans on the White Star. That would explain the struggles they’d foundevidence for, back before the mission had gone to the dogs.



“I’m going to need you to be brave,” Zach said. He wished that Jimmy, or someone else withmedical training, was there, because he knew almost nothing about fixingbones. Nancy needed a proper doctor withproper equipment, not someone whose experience was limited to breaking his ownwrist as a teenager. And yet there wasno one else there to help. “Grit yourteeth while I try to bind the bones.”



He pulled off his shirt and tore it into strips, beforeusing them to bind her leg where he thought the breaks were located. It was partly guesswork, he had to admit; hesuspected that any real doctor wouldhave done a better job, even without proper equipment. But there had been no choice. Nancy certainly couldn't walk on her own,which meant he would have to carry her, or leave her where she was. He dismissed that thought almost atonce. There was no way he was going to leave anyone behind in the alien ship.



“I’ll be back in a second,” he promised, and ran overtowards the passageways leading deeper into the alien ship. One of them was glowing with translucentlight, suggesting that it was a point where the alien ship and the White Star intersected; the others wereeither slightly illuminated with the glow from the fleshy bulkheads or completelydark and silent. He’d have to gamble, hetold himself, and walked back to where Nancy was lying. “I’m going to have to try to pick you up.”



Nancy giggled, already entering shock. “Aren't you a bit old to pick me up?”



Zach smiled, despite himself, and carefully hefted Nancyup into his arms. She weighed more thanhe had expected, but he didn't dare try to put her in a fireman’s carry withone of her legs broken. God alone knewhow the firemen did it back on Earth. Inhindsight, the training program for First Contact specialists had been absurdlylimited. He’d have to make sure that theprogram was improved, he thought dryly, and then laughed at himself. Maybehe too was going into shock.



“Come on,” he said, and walked up to the corridor. The glow was gone. Zach cursed and stumbled forwards anyway,trying to see in the semi-darkness. Thecorridor opened up suddenly, revealing a walkway high over another alien chamber,forcing him to step backwards before he walked right off the edge and fellfifty meters to the floor. They’d bothwind up dead if they fell so far. “I...”



He put Nancy down on the fleshy mass and stared down intothe chamber. A giant pool lay below him,filled with a strange yellowish liquid...and people. Shambles were carrying humans from lowerpassageways and dumping them into the pool, allowing the liquid to washthem...but why? Somehow, he doubted thatthey were giving the humans a bath. Hepeered down at them, trying to determine if the humans were alive, but it wasimpossible to tell. They weren't showingany signs of responding to their treatment at all, not even screaming as theyrealised that they were about to be drowned in poison.



Nancy coughed from behind him. “What...what are they doing down there?”



Zach remembered what his trainers had told him, time andtime again, and pushed all of his preconceptions to one side. It looked as if the aliens were slowlybreaking down the human bodies and harvesting them, judging from the organicpipes leading down into the pool. One ofthem was pulling up blood, judging from the colour; the others seemed to beconcentrating on something else. Butwhat did the aliens want? He couldn't imagineany reason for harvesting human bodies, unless the aliens ate humans...but whywould they do that? Unless...



The aliens used biological technology, he remindedhimself. It stood to reason that their technologywould require fuel, and that fuel would probably take the form of plants andanimals. Humans needed to eat; was ittoo far a jump to deduce that the alien technology also needed to eat? And wouldn'thuman flesh provide it with the right nutrients? There werealien races that thought nothing of cannibalism, or even of eating other intelligent races; there was noreason why this alien race, no matterhow alien, couldn't eat human flesh.



And yet something told him that that wasn't quite theanswer.



“I think they’re breaking the humans down for something,”he said, grimly. There were people whowould have tried to shelter Nancy from the truth, but he judged that she wasmature enough to understand. Besides, ifthey got separated, it might be Nancy who got back to the Marines. “They’re all dead or hopelessly trapped.”



Nancy looked up at him, for once looking like a scaredlittle girl. “What about my father?”



Zach cursed his own insensitivity. Of courseshe hadn't been on the ship alone; she had come with her father andstepmother. And he hadn't even given itany thought! “I don’t know,” headmitted. He looked along the ledge tosee if there was any way to get down to the chamber, but there was nothing. It might have been designed for the aliens themselves,or maybe for one of their Shambles. Either one could probably drop down the walls without suffering brokenbones at the end of it.



“I don't know,” he admitted. Judging from what had happened to JoeBuckley, her father might have become one of the Shambles...or he might havebeen converted into fuel for the alien starship. Assuming, of course, he was right about thefuel. Maybe the aliens simply wanted rawmaterial to turn into more complex creatures than the Shambles. “I think we’d better try and find a way outof here.”



The thought tormented him as he picked Nancy up andstaggered with her towards the end of the corridor, looking into the nextseries of passageways in the hope that one of them would reveal a path back tothe White Star. Nancy had probably been orphaned overnight,he realised, and then she'd had to fend for herself on a starship conjoined withan alien ship. The mission had failed,completely. They had to get back to thesquadron and recommend that the WhiteStar be destroyed – and pray to God that that was the last contact betweenhumanity and the unseen aliens.



“Their technology seems primarily biological, but theyclearly use some mechanical tech in their equipment,” he said as they moved,hoping that it would distract the girl from the pain in her leg. “I think they must be using the Shambles tointeract with our universe; they may not be able to travel into our universe ormaybe they simply can't work there. Wecreate nanoprobes to use inside our own bodies; why can't the alienscreate...glove puppets to allow them to work in our universe?”



But the Shambles didn't seem to be intelligent, hereminded himself. They’d been focused oncapturing humans, but they hadn't been very clever about it. But then, they hadn't had to be very clever, not when they were big, strong and nearly invulnerableto human weapons. They could simplysmash through barricades, destroy armoured suits and take humans asprisoners. The real mystery was why thealiens had simply allowed Nancy and Zach to run around their ship withoutinterfering.



“Maybe they’re not intelligent at all, not as weunderstand the term,” he continued. Therewere all kinds of speculation on what sort of aliens might lie beyond the Rim,but there were plenty of aliens – and unintelligent life forms – to studywithin the Association. “The Mental Bugsof Sigma 7334 are not intelligent, yet they are capable of enslaving other lifeforms – even intelligent lifeforms. Or the Hive Rat on TerraNova...that mimics intelligence, but isn't actually capable of intelligentthinking.”



Nancy turned her head slightly to face him. “They hate us,” she said, softly. Her eyes defocused and she lolled back in hisarms. “I can feel them hating us. They’re watching us, even now, hatingus. And they are coming for us.”



Zach stared at her. Another flicker of light seemed to dance at the corner of his eye...andby the way Nancy looked at it, he knew that she had seen it too. The aliens...he’d never considered that thealiens might be something largely beyond humanabilities to perceive. But if the alienscame from an alternate universe, why did they have to be humanoid – or material– at all? The flickers of light they’dseen might be the closest any human could come to seeing the aliendirectly.



The thought was terrifying – and yet reassuring. They could be surrounded by the aliens,unable to see them or even sense them, but the problem might work in bothdirections. The aliens might be unableto see humans, just as humans couldn’t see them, forcing them to build toolsthat could work in both universes. Everytime they escaped a Shamble, they literally turned invisible to thealiens. They had to wait until somethinghappened to reveal where the humans were hiding to send the Shambles after themagain.



He snickered as another thought struck him. The incident that had fused the two shipstogether had been unplanned; he’d bet his last dollar on it. And thatmeant that the aliens were in just as bad a state as the White Star. The enemy ship was hardly invincible...



But how did someone fightan enemy they could barely see and couldn't touch?



“I can see them,” Nancy breathed. Her eyes closed as Zach held hertightly. “They’re here...”

 

Chapter Seventeen<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />



“It looks at least twenty miles in diameter,” Jimmy said,after a moment. “Very weird internaldesign.”



“You weren’t with us during the storming of Asteroid 234,”Buzz said, remembering one of the more savage battles of the Earth-HegemonyWar. The Hegemony had dragged a handfulof asteroids into planetary orbit and used them as orbital weapons platforms,digging their tunnels deep into the asteroid’s shell. They'd proven difficult to storm, if onlybecause standard breaching pods were useless in gaining access to the interior ofthe asteroid. “The aliens might havefound a living creature and wormed their way inside, riding it like we wouldride a horse.”



“Or perhaps they engineered something for the purpose of interstellarflight,” Gino suggested. The alien craftwas a massive uneven sphere, with passageways running throughout the fleshymass. “What might we do if we couldsubvert a horse’s brain?”



“Nothing good,” Buzz said, shortly. The more he stared at the holographic image,the harder his brain found it to comprehend what he was seeing. Could the ships have moved even closertogether in the hours since the first collision? The WhiteStar’s look at the alien ship had been seconds after the firstencounter. What had happened in the dayssince then? “Can you pull out the otherrecords and see what happened?”



“Nothing good,” Gino said, after a long moment. “These are the security files...boss, theyhad sensors and cameras everywhere. Ibet you that they even had cameras in the bathrooms.”



“I wouldn't take that bet,” Jimmy said,thoughtfully. “Most of the people on theship came from serious money. One whiff of scandal and they’d ****ing burythe ship’s operators in legal ****.” Hefrowned, studying what the hull sensors had reported in their last few secondsof operation. “Besides, anyone studyingthe records could tell where they'd come from; they wouldn't have anydifficulty tracing the recordings of someone in bed with his lover back to the White Star. Who would go on a cruise if they knew thattheir entire lives were going to be monitored?”



“Anyone travelling by Marine Shipping,” Buzz offered. They shared a chuckle. Everything the Marines said or did on the assaultcarriers was monitored and recorded, something that hadn’t always gone downwell with the Marines. But then, they'd volunteeredto give up their essential rights to protect the rights of civilians. “What do the security records say?”



Gino worked the display. “Multiple incident reports, coming in from all over the ship,” he said,slowly. “I think they picked up on someof the early reports of decompression – even if the decompression didn't reallyexist. Several dozen passengers simplyvanish without a trace. An hour or solater, there are intruder reports on all decks; unknown aliens appearing out ofnowhere and attacking the human passengers. And then the sensors faithfully record every last life-sign blinkingout, one by one.”



“They’re all dead,” Jimmy said, slowly.



“Or taken onboard the alien ship,” Gino offered. “I don't think that the security system wouldhave seen what happened onboard the alien bastard.”



“But they attacked the crew and passengers,” Buzz said,sharply. After all he'd seen, he couldno longer hope to find any of the passengers alive. The Admiral was going to be disappointed. “They didn't come in peace.”



Jimmy, surprisingly, wasn't so sure. “These entities have a very different outlookthan us,” he said. “They might be unableto recognise us as living beings, as intelligentbeings. For all we know, they’re strandedin the interdimensional rift and are trying to do whatever it takes to breakfree.”



“I don’t think I would attack the other ship if I woundup stuck to it,” Buzz said, sharply. “I’dneed the help of the other crew to break free...”



“Yes, but they might feel that communication isimpossible,” Jimmy said. “Or if they don’trecognise us as living entities, they might not realise that it is possible to talk to us. Their technology is so different from oursthat they may not understand that we built our ships.”



“You mean...they may see us as something infesting the White Star?” Buzzasked. “How is that even possible?”



“It isn't, not in our universe,” Jimmy said. “We see a starship and we know that thebuilders are intelligent. But them...aflea might ride on a dog without actually controllingthe dog. Given their technology...”



“Bugger that,” Gino snapped. “You saw what they did to the Captain. They must have known he was intelligent fromthe moment they stuck wires into his head.” He held up a hand before Jimmy could say anything. “I know; they might not recognise us as intelligentor even life forms in our own right. Butthey were willing to use the Captain as raw material to make the ship run. God alone knows what else they were prepared to do to the passengers. I think we have to assume that the aliens arehostile, even if they are not intentionallyhostile.”



Buzz nodded. “Wecannot assume any less,” he said. Heglanced around the security compartment, watching for the first sign of theglow that marked a shift into another universe. “I think we have to go check out Engineering, and then make our way backto the shuttle – assuming that it’s still there.”



He checked his communicator. There was still no response from the shuttle,or any starship the Admiral might have dispatched to discover what had happenedto Pelican. He looked over at Nan, who was breathing hardas she stood waiting for them. Everything had just caught up with her at once.



“Professor?” Heasked. “Are you all right?”



“I don’t know,” Nan admitted. “All of the data we recovered...it suggeststhat we don’t know everything about the universe. It will allow us to make great strides inunderstanding quantum space and its relationship with other universes, yet...itwill open us up to dangers and risks we cannot even begin to comprehend. I don’t even know if we should be studying what happened to the White Star.”



Buzz shook his head. Such an attitude was incomprehensible to him.



“I don't think it would make any difference,” Jimmysaid. “If Mentor hadn't given humanitythe secret of opening quantum gates, if we’d remained on Earth fighting eachother, would it have made any difference to the Funks or the rest of theAssociation? Ignorance is only blissuntil whatever it is that you’re ignorant about shows up to kick your ass – andthe Funks would have kicked our assesif they’d arrived before 2015.”



He shook his head. “These...unseen aliens know that we exist now,” he added, “and if they’reinclined to be hostile, they will come for us – whatever we do. The onlyhope of defeating them is learning as much as we can and using that knowledgeto build a defence.”



Nan staggered slightly. “But they’re so much more advanced than we are...”



“That’s the wrong attitude, Professor,” Buzz said. But what would Newton or Galileo say if theywere confronted by humanity’s future technological developments, to say nothingof the towering civilisation that had been old long before the first humans hadlearned how to produce fire on demand. “Sure,they’re advanced – and they can do things we can’t. It doesn't make them unbeatable, let alonegods.”



He keyed his suit’s HUD, checking the local atmosphereand then accessing the diagrams of the ship. “Cross-reference the internal security report with our HUDs,” heordered. Gino nodded, disconnected theblack box from his suit and inserted it into a pouch. In front of him, a line leading to theengineering department appeared, displayed by his HUD. “Let’s move.”



The glow from the bridge didn't seem to have spreadfurther into the ship, although there was no way to know just how much of the White Star was caught in the rift – or rifts– at any one time. If the security reportsof bulkheads being lost represented points where the alien ship had interpenetratedwith the White Star, there could beliterally thousands of points where they could accidentally step over from oneship to the other. He compared thereports to what they’d encountered ever since they’d boarded the luxury vesseland was relieved to note that every place that had been flickering betweendimensions was marked on the security report. They might be able to get to engineering without risking further contactwith the aliens...



But if the aliens were controlling the process, theymight have advantages of their own, he realised numbly. They could manoeuvre their troops – their Shambles– in their own ship, using the dimensional rifts to appear in front of theMarines, or behind them, trapping them on the White Star. He found himselfstudying the security report frantically as they reached the first internalhatch, a set of airlocks intended to separate the forward half of the deck fromthe rear half. Who knew what might bewaiting in front of them?



Nan’s voice broke the silence. “Can’t you hack into the ship’s onboard securitysystems and find out where the aliens are hiding?”



“I’m afraid not, Professor,” Gino said. “Most of the ship’s power reserves appear tobe completely drained – I’m not even sure why the emergency lighting is stillworking. We could presumably repower thesensor network, but there’s no way to ensure that the aliens won’t simply drainit again...”



Assuming that theyare controlling the effect deliberately, Buzz thought, in the privacy ofhis own suit. The moments when his suithad lost power had worried him; there was no way to ensure that it wouldn't happenagain, perhaps when the Shambles were right on top of them.



“The hatch should be easy to open,” Gino said, openingthe panel beside the hatch, “but I think it’s been completely depowered. Even the emergency systems are gone.”



“Someone is going to want a few words with the designers,”Buzz said, as Gino started to work on the internal control systems. “These hatches are designed to be openedmanually, if necessary.”



“But no one anticipated that they would lose all power,even the trickle charges intended to keep the systems functional,” Ginosaid. There was a flash of sparks frominside the panel as he tried to power it from his suit. “I don’t think that that was covered in the warranty. You know how much over-engineering the lawyersinsist we work into safety equipment. They shouldn't have failed without the craft being destroyed – or somethingoccurring right outside our experience.”



“Like an alien ship from another universe,” Nansaid. She chuckled, a littleharshly. “I think that that would becovered under Act of God.”



“Got it,” Gino said. The hatch jerked once, and then sprang open. “Oh, ****!”



A Shamble was standing there, looking down at them. It was very far from humanoid, with six legsand a plethora of arms reaching out towards the humans. Buzz swore and grabbed Nan by the arm,pulling her backwards as the Shamble advanced towards him. There was something in its gait that wasoddly familiar, nagging at the back of his mind as he took aim and opened firewith his plasma rifle. This time, thebursts hardly affected the Shamble at all; it didn't even slow down long enoughto repair itself.



“Damn...they’ve adapted completely,” he said, as Jimmyand Gino opened fire. The Shambleignored them, advancing directly towards Buzz and Nan. He couldn't tell if the Shamble had targetedthem because it had seen them first, or because he’d been the first to fire onit. The creature’s arms started to growlonger, extending themselves towards him, and he jumped backwards. “Professor, run!”



A hand snapped around his boot and started to drag himback towards the Shamble. Red warningsflashed up in his HUD as the creature tightened its grip, threatening to crushhis leg into powder. God damn it, heasked himself, how could it be so strong? There wasn't a lifeform in the known universe strong enough to crush anarmoured suit with one hand; even an augmented human, enhanced to the limits offlesh and metal, couldn't break into a suit. He reacted at once as other arms locked onto him, triggering thethrusters built into the suit’s boots. Awave of fire scorched the Shamble and sent it stumbling backwards, just longenough for him to break free.



“Over here,” Jimmy snapped. Gino had already hustled the Professorthrough the opened hatch and was standing by the panel on the other side. Buzz saw what he had in mind and ran,avoiding the Shamble’s grasping hands to jump through the hatch. “Now!”



The hatch slid closed with terrifying force, cutting theShamble in half. It’s head landed infront of Jimmy, allowing him to watch as it slowly broke down intonothingness. More warnings flashed up inhis HUD as he pushed the sensors closer to the decaying creature, alerting himto an unknown biological hazard. Thesensors couldn't tell what the Shamble had been made from, or why it dissolved soquickly when killed. Buzz suspected thatthe aliens didn't want to leave behind any samples of their technology for thehumans – and the rest of the Association – to study. The Federation did the same with its ownadvanced technology.



“That was close,” Gino said, grimly. “Boss, if these things are immune to ourweapons...”



“Then sooner or later our luck will run out,” Buzzfinished. He looked over at Gino andgrinned. “Didn't anyone tell you? The only easy day was yesterday.”



“I think that was actually three weeks ago,” Jimmy said,meditatively. “I was in bed with threegirls and two guys, having a complete orgy. You really had to be there to understand the marvel of...”



“I think your girlfriend is a very understanding woman,”Buzz said, dryly. Marine relationships didn'ttend to last very long, not when the Marines could be called away at a moment’snotice to deal with alien encounters and threats to the Federation. “Lucky you.”



“It was her idea,” Jimmy said, as he led the way down thecorridor. “I wanted a quiet evening inand maybe a movie; she wanted to callfour of her friends and have an orgy.”



“Aye, right,” Gino said, sarcastically. “I’m sureit was her idea.”



“It was,” Jimmyinsisted. “Would I lie to you?”



“Well,” Gino said. “There was the time youclaimed that those little grey aliens from Zeta were obsessed with anal sex...”



“That’s true,”Jimmy said. “Is it my fault that their anus is also their vagina-analogue?”



“And then there was the time you...”



“Quiet,” Buzz snapped. He'd heard something further down the corridor. “What the hell is that?”



The Marines raised their weapons and listened, carefully. A moment later, they heard it again; ascraping sound in the distance. Buzzexchanged glances with Jimmy and held up his hand to signify that they wouldtake point, leaving Gino to watch Nan. Advancing carefully, they halted outside a sealed door marked SICKBAYand hesitated. The sound appeared to becoming from inside the compartment.



“On three,” Buzz said, and pressed the switch beside thedoor. There was a click, but nothingelse. “Damn. Gino, see if you can open this hatch.”



Gino nodded and started to work on the access panel. “Someone’s been busy here, boss,” he said,after a moment. “They’ve completelyfused the processor that governs the door – they didn't want anyone gettinginside.”



“Or getting out,” Buzz said. He pressed his helmet against the hatch,activating an audio-discrimination program that should have been able to identifyany sound from the inside. The programwas untrustworthy at times and the Marines knew better than to rely on it, butthere was no other choice. “I wonder...”



The sound of scraping grew louder and then fell away,before starting again. Buzz felt a coldchill running down his spine, sensing that somethingwas just on the other side of the hatch, struggling to get out. A mouse might feel the same way, knowing thatthe family cat was just waiting for it to poke its nose out of the mouse holebefore snatching it and eating it for dinner. The sounds seemed to split; the program insisted that there were atleast three humans in the room, although Buzz didn't take it for granted. A Shamble could easily have sounded likethree humans...



“You think we should give this one a miss?” Gino asked. “Anything could be in there.”



“The sickbay might have records we need,” Jimmy said,softly. They exchanged glances. Blasting their way into the sickbay would beeasy, but then...if there was aShamble on the other side, they would be caught with no place to run. “Hang on...the ship’s doctor had an officefurther down the corridor. We can see ifwe can get into there before we do anything else.”



Buzz nodded and the Marines slipped down the corridor,holding their weapons at the ready. Thedoctor’s office should have been sealed too, but it was wide open – and deserted. Someone – or something – had trashed theroom, suggesting that there had been a deadly struggle before the humans hadbeen dragged off to meet whatever fate the aliens had in mind for them. His sensors flickered up alerts as he took inthe smashed test tubes and other damaged pieces of equipment. Someone had ransacked the room with noconcern for their own safety.



“The ship had one of the best doctors in the world,”Jimmy said.



Gino snorted. “Somehero of yours?”



“Yeah,” Jimmy said. He was studying the journal left on the man’s desk. “He was one of the men instrumental inproducing medical nanites for the human race...”



His voice trailed off. “Oh, ****!”



Buzz lifted his weapon before realising that there was nothreat. “Jimmy?”



“The Shambles,” Jimmy said. “The Shambles are us!”

 

<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><font size="3">Chapter Eighteen<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com
“Nancy?” Can youhear me?”

Nancy was barely aware of Zach trying to talk to her asher mind drifted. The pain in her leg wasfading, to be replaced by a feeling of...disconnection from the entire universe. She knew, intellectually, that they wereonboard an alien craft of unknown origin and in terrible danger, but somehow itdidn't seem to matter. All that matteredwas the roaring in her mind and the presence of countless aliens surroundingher. She could feel them

Their presence pervaded their ship, their thoughtsflashing from place to place quicker than her mind could follow. She felt her eyes open, allowing her to seeflickers of light dancing through the ship, but no matter how she looked she couldn'tsee them clearly. They seemed to alwaysbe on the edge of her vision...she was dreaming, she knew she was dreaming, andyet she was awake. The aliens had pulledher into their mentality.

They were huge,she realised, as she tried to look at them. Vast creatures contained within a tiny space, so small and yet so largeat the same time. Her mind was caught upin their backwash as they rocketed through the ship, pulled along as if it had beentorn entirely out of her body, leaving her a disembodied entity. The aliens didn't seem to notice her, orperhaps they simply didn't care. Theirthoughts were so different that itwas impossible to read them, or perhaps she simply couldn't make sense of whatshe was seeing. But she was sure that ifthey turned their gaze on her, they would shrivel her like a mist that had beencaught in the sun.

Her mind floated through the alien ship, sensing itsgreat slow thoughts as it prepared for...something. The concepts were laid out in front of her,but none of them seemed to make any sense, as if she couldn't understand thealien language. Her father had once toldher that science was universal and everyone understood basic scientificconcepts, yet the aliens seemed to defy her father’s bold prediction. Or maybe she was just too ignorant tounderstand. Years of life with herfather’s money buying her everything she wanted, apart from a stepmother whowas more than just a gold-digger, had left her ill-prepared to face the worldon her own, or to understand what the aliens wanted...

As if the thought had been asked and answered, somethingstarted to unfold in her mind. Agreat...hunger, a compulsion so powerful she knew nothing could hope to resistit, seemed to flare through the alien ship. The ship itself was intelligent, she realised slowly, something craftedin the image of its makers. And yet itwas solid and they were not. It took hersome time to realise that in the land of ghosts, the ghosts might have asolidity that the living would envy, maybe just enough to build something thatwould be able to survive in both worlds. Her mind started to spin helplessly as another alien flashed past her,governed by...

...A hunger. Anall-consuming hunger that threatened to swallow up everything in the entiremultiverse. A cold dispassionate planthat admitted of no human weaknesses, of nothing that a human would recogniseas morality or compassion. The aliens didn'tsee anyone else as equals, she realised slowly, but then there was no one ontheir level. Even the Cats, the most ancientand powerful race known to exist, were biological. The aliens were far beyond biology. They shaped and crafted other life forms atwill.

“Why...” shestarted to demand, before realising that she’d already had the answer. The hunger that drove them onwards providedall the justification the aliens could want. Whatever they hungered for, they were determined to get it, no matterwhat stood in their way. New imagesflashed to light in her mind, as if they were pushed into the gestalt bysomeone or something outside the shared mentality of the aliens. The Shambles were hunting, searching for theintruders they could barely sense – and their masters couldn't sense atall. But if they realised that she’dbeen sucked into their gestalt...

They ignored her as her mind started to roam further,looking for answers. A cell appeared infront of her, holding countless humans suspended in the jelly-like liquid thathad held Joe Buckley prisoner, waiting for the aliens to come turn them intomore monsters, or break them down into raw material for their ship. There was no sense of shame or guiltsurrounding the aliens, no awareness that they were preying on creatures with aright to exist; they didn't seem to care abouthumanity, or anything else.

As it that was enough to unlock one of the mysteries, theanswer unfolded in her mind. The alienshungered for domination, for absolute control over the entire universe. No other creature had the right to exist intheir domain, unless it was as food and raw material. Just as humans had hunted and eaten animalsfor food, the aliens hunted other forms of intelligent life, life designed toexist in the normal universe – the human universe. They would use their captured humans asslaves...no, less than slaves, for a slave had a chance to be free. The humans would be their puppets as theyextended their domain into their native universe, followed rapidly by everyother race in the Milky Way. And thenthere would be the rest of the universe...

It was on a scale so vast that she couldn't even begin tocomprehend it. She knew that the aliens were talking about billions of light years, of trillionsof life forms broken down for raw materials or converted into slaves...andyet it was too large. How could anything plan on such a scale? Even the Cats hadn't set out to build theirAssociation overnight. Her mind reeledand spun through the alien mentality, sensing a feeling of...irritation from the aliens, an awarenessthat something hadn't gone quite right. But they were still confident of ultimate success, no matter what hadhappened to their ship. They had all thetime in the universe.

Of course, shethought, remembering what Nan and Zach had told her about what had happened tothe White Star. The aliens weren't perfect; they certainly weren'tall-powerful. They’d meant to kidnap theentire ship – the moment she thought that, she saw other ships that had beencaptured and transported to the alien dimension for dissection – and take itwith them, not wind up trapped in a dimensional rift along with their would-becaptives. And they’d proceeded withtheir plan, believing that they could eventually disengage the two ships orotherwise abandon the White Star toits fate. They hadn’t realised that arescue party would arrive to rescue the missing passengers.

Her father had told her that the Unseen Reaches wererarely visited by the Association. No wonder,not if starships had been known to disappear there. The answer was right in front of her; thealiens had sucked the starships into energy storms, dragged them into auniverse where most of their technology simply failed and then boarded theships and captured the crews at leisure. And, not knowing about the aliens, the Association had simply tried towarn everyone not to fly through the Unseen Reaches. They hadn't even begun to realise why so many ships had disappeared there.

And they wouldn't, not if the aliens had their way. They’d keep on kidnapping starships untilthey were ready to proceed with their invasion. She could see how it would play out; all of a sudden, quantum spacewould be badly disrupted, preventing the Association from travellingfaster-than-light. And then the alienswould start using their slaves to sow chaos while they took over the entireuniverse. How could someone fight a planlike that? How could anyone deal with aforce that was utterly indifferent to human technology?

But perhaps they shouldn'tbe, she thought, savagely. A team did manage to board the White Starafter she crashed...

New memories unfolded and she blanched. Zach had admitted, reluctantly, that therescue team had lost their own starship. They hadn't realised that it had been deliberate enemy action, becausetheir technology couldn't control discharges from quantum space. The unseen aliens, on the other hand, could direct discharges, using them asminefields to prevent anyone else from accessing the White Star until the aliens were ready to take her home. They seemed to be working on that rightnow...

All of a sudden, the aliens seemed to look at her. Nancy froze, feeling utterly exposed to theirmental gaze. They saw everything in hermind, from her earliest memories to the terror she’d felt when she’d seen herfirst Shamble; they were aware ofher. How could they be aware ofher? But if humans had caught sight ofthem out of the corner of their eyes, surely the aliens could do the same,whatever problems they had in actually perceivingthe human race. Sheer panicgalvanised her and she fled back to her body, feeling the aliens slowlystirring to follow her. And then she crashedback into awareness and felt her leg aching in pain. They would be following her...

***​

Nancy sat bolt upright, gasping for breath. Zach caught her before she could move herbroken leg away from the makeshift splint and held her tightly. She’d been babbling while her mind had beenwandering, but nothing she’d said had made sense, leaving him unsure of what todo. He’d kept trying his communicatorand the other devices he’d pulled from the suit, yet none of them workedonboard the alien ship.

“They’re coming,” she said, as she started to try tolever herself upright. Zach put his armaround her shoulders and helped her to his feet. “I was in their mind; I saw them.”

She started to shake as Zach picked her up and headedtowards the nearest passageway. If theyhad somehow read her mind – and it didn't seem too unbelievable, compared towhat else they’d proven able to do – they would have known where they were intheir own ship. The aliens themselves mightnot be able to see humans very clearly, but their tools could presumably trackdown fugitive humans with ease. They’dcertainly had no difficulty kidnapping everyone onboard the White Star.

“They intend to invade this realm,” Nancy babbled. Zach cursed his own tiredness and growinghunger. A Marine would have kept going –what he’d read about Marine training had horrified him, if only because he hadn'tknown that anyone could survive suchtreatment – but Zach was feeling his own energy draining away. “I saw their thoughts; they think of usas...cattle, something they can domesticate at will. They’ve been kidnapping ship for generations,poking through into our universe and preparing their plans...”

Zach listened as they stumbled upwards. In truth, he had no idea where to go, wherethey could find their way back into the WhiteStar. And even if they did get back onto the human ship, wherecould they go that the aliens couldn’t chase them down? But he wasn't going to sit down and wait forthe aliens to catch them, not when he knew what the aliens would do tothem. They’d either be turned intoShambles or fed to the alien ship.

“They’re preparing to return home,” Nancy continued. “I could feelthem laying their plans – they’re trapped, but they’re not helpless. They think they can separate the two ships.”

No technology Zach knew could undo an interpenetration event,but no one had ever seriously considered the possibility of two ships surviving a collision in the firstplace. A collision with another mundanestarship would have destroyed both ships; logically, only the weird extra-dimensionalnature of the alien starship could account for what had actually happened. But why had it happened in such a manner inthe first place? Maybe the aliens hadliterally intended to scoop the WhiteStar up in a butterfly net and the whole procedure had gone horrifically wrong.

But maybe he was over-thinking the whole problem. The conjoined ships were flickering betweenthree different universes; normal space, quantum space and the alien homeuniverse. If they thought that theycould hold the ships in their universe long enough to disembark, they couldabandon their own ship and allow the interpenetration process to complete inthe normal universe. The resultingexplosion would be seen across the galaxy, but too late for anyone to wonderwhat had caused it. And the Admiral’ssquadron would probably be wiped out in the blast. There would be no one left to tell Earth whathad happened.

Ahead of them, the corridor suddenly flexed and startedto close in on them rapidly. Zach cursedand spun around, running for his life. The alien ship was a living thing! No doubt it could sense their location, even if they were on about thesame sort of scale as bacteria, or a virus. He found himself considering possible ways to infect the alien tissuewith something deadly, before realising that it would be difficult withoutactually being able to analyse samples of the alien technology. He ran down into an intersection and glanceddown one of the other passageways. AShamble was advancing towards him, crawling on hands and knees. Now that he knew what the aliens did toproduce them, he could see the human muscles underneath the Shamble.

A second Shamble appeared from a differentpassageway. This one seemed to be fivehumans woven together in a caterpillar-like shape, linked into one hugeentity. Zach stared for a long second,and then ran for the third corridor, praying that there would be nothing waitingfor them down there. He could feel the alien ship’s presence allaround him, but no Shamble awaited him, not until he reached the top of thepassageway. A single Shamble stood nearthe entrance to another corridor, watching him with blandly inhuman eyes. It didn't move at all, but it didn't need to move. All it had to do was wait until its comradesarrived and then they would grab the humans between them.

“Put me down and climb the walls,” Nancy snapped. Zach looked at the fleshy bulkheads andrealised that she might have a point. The bulkheads were shining slightly, as if they were covered in sweat,but he was sure that he could have climbed them easily. But there was no way he could bring Nancy upafter him. “Go!”

“I’m not going to abandon you,” Zach snapped. He looked around desperately, staring at thegreen-yellow walls. There had to be another way out. But he saw nothing, not even the glow thatmarked the space between dimensions. “I...”

The lead Shamble entered the compartment and headedtowards him. Zach picked up his pistol,wondering how many rounds he had left in the chamber, even though he knew itwould be futile. If plasma weapons couldbarely damage the Shambles, a pistol wouldn’t do much damage. Or...

“Hang on,” he snapped, and ran at the Shamble blockingthe door. It reached out for him and hefired twice, directly into the fleshy mass that had replaced the humanhead. For a moment, it was distractedand he threw himself between the creature’s legs. Nancy screamed as she hit the floor, jarringher leg free of the makeshift splint, before she started to slide down thepassageway. Zach followed her, uneasilyaware that they could be sliding all the way down to the alien craft’s stomach. “Keep talking to me...”

The gravity in the shaft seemed to shift and then cut outaltogether. Nancy whooped as she floatedinto the air, banging off the fleshy bulkheads just before the passageway cameto an abrupt end. They fell into anotherlarge chamber, illuminated by the eerie white glow...and beyond the glow, Zachcould see human-designed bulkheads. Swimming through the air wasn't easy, but once he caught hold of Nancyhe was able to propel her towards the glow – and hopefully into the White Star. He started to follow, just before the firstShamble emerged from the passageway they’d followed down from the trap. It seemed to have no difficulty sticking tothe floor as it reached for him, its arms growing into long tentacles thatthreatened to grab him and pull him down to the alien creature. Cursing, Zach swam frantically through theair and into the glow, hoping that the creature wouldn't follow him. The glow seemed to flare up around him...andthen gravity reasserted itself. He fellto the deck and banged his elbows, before scrambling to his feet and over toNancy. She was lying where she’d fallen,looking up at him nervously.

“It might come after us,” Zach said, as he picked herup. The pain was minor compared to hers,he told himself firmly. Besides, he knewthat becoming a Shamble was very painful. “We have to run.”

They made it through the first set of hatches and Zachused the multitool to close them, hoping that it would deter the Shamble. “This is one of the lower decks,” he said,after a moment. “We’d better see what wecan find you to bind your leg properly.”

Absently, he keyed the communicator, but there was noresponse. “And then I think we need toget back to the shuttle,” he added. “Ifwe can't contact the Marines, we may be in some trouble.”

Nancy started to giggle as he broke into the firstcabin. It looked to have been abandonedin a hurry, judging by the way a pair of suitcases had been tossed around bythe owner. There were no actual medicalsupplies, but there were enough clothes for Zach to bind her leg properly. A small stick even allowed her to limp upright,although he didn't want her to risk walking until they got her to a properdoctor.

“The engineering department is only two decks away,” hesaid, finally. “I think we’d better gothere next.”

 

Comments?


Chapter Nineteen<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />



“They’re us?” Buzzrepeated. “What do you mean; they’re us?”



“I mean that the aliens transformed humans into Shambles,”Jimmy said. “I’m not sure how – Doctor Mansurreferred to a form of biological nanotech, from his notes. I don’t think he thought that it was natural. It spread too fast.”



Buzz looked up towards the transparent pane that shouldhave shown them a view of sickbay. Someone had darkened it, but he could hear the sounds of somethingmoving inside, scratching away at the bulkheads. It didn't seem to be able to break out, butthe fact it was still alive after two weeks of starvation was alarmingenough. A Marine would survive that longwith augments, but an unaugmented human should be dead by now.



“He kept a log,” Jimmy said. He hesitated. “Do you want me to read you the highlights?”



Buzz nodded. “0925– ship suffers catastrophic failure, cause unknown. Unable to raise bridge, engineering or securityoffice. Hatches to forward compartmentsealed; quarantine alerts sounded throughout the ship.” Jimmy shook his head. “0934 – all internal communicationslost. Primary and secondary powerlost. Sickbay internal power supplyintermittent. Shielded power sourcesappear drained. Seven patients brought tosickbay by caretaking staff, three with minor injuries, four in a state ofpanic. All sedated lightly.”



Gino looked up, sharply. “All sedated? He didn't try toheal them?”



“If the power was threatening to go down, some of histools might be unreliable,” Jimmy pointed out. He turned the page in the logbook. “1012 – passenger reports that a bulkhead ate her husband. Sedated. Still unable to raise senior command staff; Lieutenant Moscow incommand. Unable to make contact withdecks two, three, seven, eight and ten. Deck nine communications available only with housekeeping staff, whoreport that their hatches have sealed. Suspect decompression.”



“Lieutenant Moscow would have been nineteenth in the chain of command,” Buzz said, softly. Unless the passenger liner followed verydifferent rules to the military, command would have devolved upon the lowestensign in engineering before it fell to someone whose main task was keeping thepassengers entertained. “He wouldn't havebeen trained to cope with such a crisis.”



Jimmy nodded. “1034. Lt. Moscow leads party through tubes to commanddeck, having suited up and urged all passengers to do the same. All contact lost. 1105 – passenger arrives badly wounded,claiming to have been attacked by an alien monster. Wounds detailed in medical log, almostcertainly caused by a wild animal. Examination showed tissue samples of unknown origin in patient’swounds. Attempted to remove tissuesamples.”



There was a long pause. “Tissue samples metastasised through human body, faster than any knowndisease. Attempt at removal unsuccessful. Attempt at placing subject in stasis unsuccessfulowning to failure in the tube’s independent power supply. Deployed nanotech purging tools in an attemptto prevent the unknown tissue from spreading any further. Positive results...



“1129 – correction, no positive results. Alien tissue has infected the patient’sentire body. Remaining medical equipmentinsufficient to remove tissue without killing the patient in the process. Tracking tools report that the alien tissueis active in the person’s brain. 1139 –three more victims of alien attacks arrive at sickbay. Resorted to amputation to remove alien tissuefrom Kenneth Bush. Other patients toofar along to be helped in such a manner. Received report from Manual; decks four and five reporting sightings ofalien monsters...



“1156 – no further contact with decks four and five.”



“Sounds like he knew they were doomed,” Gino said, “andyet he was still making notes in his log.”



“I’ve done the same for patients I was sure would die,back during the war,” Jimmy said, quietly. “It’s part of the medic’s creed.”



He turned another page. “1206 – Nurse Holloway killed by blow from the first infectedpatient. Ordered evacuation of sickbay;infected patients too badly infected to escape, even assuming that they weresafe to take with us. Activated capturegas; no discernible effect. Suspect thatchange in victim’s internal biochemistry may have conferred some immunity tothe gas. Sickbay quarantined at1210. Continued to observe the threeinfected from my office. Their behaviouris seemingly instinctive. They do not attemptto unlock the sealed doors, but merely throw themselves at it time and timeagain. Biological sensors reportatmospheric contamination of unknown nature. Internal purge system inoperative.”



“****,” Jimmy said, looking up from the log. “Boss...this thing could be airborne.”



Buzz winced. “Canyou confirm that?”



“Doctor Mansur couldn't identify what was loose in thesealed compartment,” Jimmy said. “Frankly,sir, the only proof we have that it wasn't airborne is that none of us havebeen infected.”



“As far as we know,” Buzz said. He saw Gino gulp and nodded in sympathy Normally, their medical nanites would makeshort work of any unwanted alien viruses, but with their power so unreliablethe nanites might have deactivated themselves. The genetic modifications they’d had spliced into their genome weredesigned to counter human viruses, not unknown alien tissue samples. “How does it end?”



Jimmy looked back at the log. “1234 – contact lost with all otherdecks. Have removed internal operatingmodules from sickbay hatch to prevent overriding of quarantine procedures. Drawn one capsule of Black Omega fromemergency stores. Gunfire heard in thecorridors outside. If you read this log,remember us.”



He shook his head slowly. “That’s the last entry, boss,” he said. “If he took the Black Omega, he would be dead by the time the Shamblesgot their hands on him.”



Buzz nodded. BlackOmega was a suicide drug; quick, painless and incurable. It wasn't often spoken about on Earth, butspace’s unforgiving rules sometimes left spacers helplessly stranded in space,unable to do anything apart from waiting until their oxygen ran out. The Wall of Heroes in Florida paid silent testamentto the men and women who had died trying to build Earth’s space industry beforethe Galactics arrived in force. Combining Earth’s primitive technology with Galactic science had beenthe only hope for independence, but the price had been terrifyingly high. Sometimes, left with no hope at all, a spacerwould opt for suicide instead of waiting to die.



He walked over to the transparent pane and tapped a key,shifting it back to transparency. InsideSickbay, three Scrambles were tearing at the hatch, their inhuman strength rippingthrough the bulkhead, but unable to break through the metal hidden underneaththe plastic sheeting. They’d torn thecompartment apart looking for a way out, but found nothing. The designers had intended Sickbay to becompletely separate from the remainder of the starship and they’d succeeded remarkablywell.



“He did record a great deal of data about thetransformation,” Jimmy said, picking up a data chip and slotting it into hissuit. “It acted almost like a cancer, exceptit moved far faster than any natural disease – more like a form of unrestrictednanotech rather than anything else. Andit moved like a military machine...it established beachheads in every part ofthe body first, and then launched its takeover bid. Mr. Bush was damn lucky that the Doctormanaged to amputate the infected part of his body before it was too late.”



“Not that it helped him much,” Gino said.



Nan had sat down on one of the chairs and justslumped. Now she looked up,seriously. “Can you not design your own formof nanotech to counter the alien material?”



“I’m honestly not sure,” Jimmy admitted. “Programming nanoprobes to obliterate alienmaterial is easy, but this stuff spreads at terrifying speed. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that ithas its own defences against countermeasures – some of the people on this shipwould have had nanites running through their bloodstreams. We’d probably have to program the nanites toreproduce themselves and then we’d be risking an attack of grey goo.”



“Better getting dissembled by one of our own machinesthan being turned into one of them,” Gino said, nodding towards the Shambles inthe quarantined compartment. “Do youhave any idea why the aliens didn't come for them?”



“None,” Jimmy said, flatly. He walked around the Doctor’s desk andstarted to fiddle with a locked cabinet built into the bulkhead. “Gino, come give me a hand with this. They always secure them against unwantedintruders.”



Buzz watched as the two Marines concentrated on thecabinet, and then walked over to Nan and placed a hand on her shoulder. “You all right?”



Nan shook her head. “I shouldn't have come,” she said. “I shouldn't have listened.”



“I know,” Buzz agreed. Nan shouldn't have come withthem – and if they’d known in advance what they would be facing, none of themwould have been sent into the White Star. But they’d assumed that they needed an experton quantum space and so they’d sent the best that Earth could provide. And that person hadn't been able to cope withthe crisis inside the White Star. “I’ll get you out of this, somehow.”



Nan didn't look up at him. “We’re all going to die here,” she said. Her voice was soft, almost inaudible. “This ship – both ships – rely on asuspension of natural law. Once that lawreasserts itself, both ships will complete the interpenetration effect and...”



“Bang,” Buzz said. He gave her a hug. “We will be out of here by then...”



Nan ignored him. “EverythingI knew about quantum space is wrong,” she added. “I’ll have to spend years studying what we’vepicked up here, all the records from the black box and everything else...and Imight never solve all of the puzzles. And if these creatures are hostile, I will need to solve all of the puzzles...”



Buzz looked down at her. “Tell me something,” he said, slowly. “Does it have to be you whoworks out what the aliens did to keep these two ships separate, even thoughthey’re conjoined?”



“I’m the one who was brought here,” Nan said. She grinned, suddenly. “And if we share what we’ve found with the Galactics,they might crack the secrets first and then Earth would be in real trouble.”



“Assuming they don’t already know,” Buzz said. Whatlies beyond quantum space? “Butlook...Albert Einstein didn't solve everypuzzle, did he?” Nan shook herhead. “Nor did every other scientist inEarth’s history. They just added pieces tothe puzzle, adding to mankind’s understanding of the world around them. You can do the same. Your work here will help shape humanity’sscientific research for hundreds of years.”



He patted her on the back as Jimmy finally managed toopen the safe. “Got some programmablenanotech here, boss,” he said. “Theseals haven’t been broken, so they should be free for us to program at will.”



“Right,” Buzz said. “Can you use them to counter the alien infection?”



Jimmy hesitated. “Ibelieve so,” he said, finally. “But I willhave to remove the prohibition on reproducing themselves. I need your permission to proceed.”



Buzz scowled. Everyone was scared of rogue nanotech, even the Galactics. They’d lost a handful of worlds to nanotechexperiments that had run out of control, some dissolving the worlds into dustand others inflicting far worse fates on the helpless victims on theplanet. The Marines had come up withproposals for using nanotech as an area denial weapon, only to have them shotdown by higher authority. No one wantedto see another world destroyed by rogue nanotech. The Galactics would have responded harshly ifeven a whisper of rogue nanotech had reached them.



Nan spoke before he could say anything. “Can you program in a cut-off switch?” She asked. “And program them to ensure that all their children have the samecut-off switch?”



“Of course,” Jimmy said, looking faintly offended. “I’m not going to program them to evolve. That's where they lost control of the rogue nanotech in Sector 66.”



But at the speedthey reproduce, could you ever be sure? Buzz asked himself. The capsulein Jimmy’s hand was tiny, barely larger than a baby’s finger, but it held billions of nanomachines, all ready tobe reprogrammed at will. Nanotechreproduced with terrifying speed and, despite all precautions, sometimes ranout of control. The Galactics who hadcome up with a plan to use nanotech to build starships directly out of rawmaterial had thought that they’d programmed in adequate safety precautions too.



“Do it,” he ordered, finally. “Program them to target alien tissue alone,not anything remotely human. And ensurethat they draw their power from the living host. We don’t want them dependent upon outsidepower.”



“Just in case the aliens turn off the power again,” Jimmyagreed. He placed the nanotech capsuleon the table and started to use his suit to interface with the controlroutines. “I don't know why they botherleaving some of the power on.”



Nan looked up. “Theymay not be in control of the effect,” she reminded them. “If it’s a natural part of their universe,they may not even realise that it exists.”



Buzz nodded, and then looked back at the transparentpane. The Shambles had stopped hammeringon the metal hatch and had moved to a point where they could stare at the awayteam. Gino lifted his rifle, clearly readyto open fire if they broke through the protective barrier...although they shouldn't be able to break through atall. Even an armoured man would find itimpossible to crack through the transparent pane.



“Done,” Jimmy said. He held up a pair of injectors. “Ithink that injecting this into an infected person will cure them, or at leastslow the infection down long enough for us to get them into a stasis chamber.”



“Then perhaps we should test it on those unfortunates,” Ginosaid, nodding towards the three Shambles as they banged their hands against thetransparent pane. “Couldn't we turn itinto a gas and pump it in there.”



“not without opening the hatch,” Jimmy said. “I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer tohave something better than this suit when we open that hatch.”



“True,” Buzz agreed. “We’ll have to leave them there while we go to engineering.”



“And then get our asses out of here,” Jimmy said. “We know what happened to the people in thisship, boss, and it wasn't pretty.”



Buzz nodded. “Comeon,” he ordered. “Let’s move.”



There were more signs of a struggle further along towardsthe rear of the ship, places where the ship’s security personnel had made theirlast stand against the alien shambles. The scene was eerie, unlike any Buzz had seen before boarding the White Star. He’d seen battle sites after one side had won and the other had beendefeated or had quit the field, but they’d all had bodies scatteredeverywhere. This battle site had nobodies at all; the only proof that there hadbeen a violent battle was the bloodstains scattered on the bulkheads. Jimmy wanted to do a DNA test, to confirm whohad died in the battle, but Buzz said no. They didn't have time to waste.



His HUD popped up a time display upon command. They hadn't thought that they would losecommunications, but it was an ever-present risk when fighting the Galactics andthere was a procedure in place for it. If more than ten hours passed without communications, the shuttle crewwould assume the worst and disengage from the hull, heading out in the hopes ofmaking contact with the Admiral and his ships. They had three hours left before the shuttle left, assuming that theShambles hadn't gone after the shuttle and her crew. Surely they would have sensed the shuttle’sarrival...?



He shook his head as they left the last of thebloodstains behind and headed down to engineering. The corridor bulkhead seemed shifty, glowingfaintly, as if there was a powerful light source right behind the metal. He felt a sense of unease as they steppedcloser, checking the floor for unexpected drops. The alien ship seemed to have extruded itselfwith unerring accuracy right into the most important parts of the White Star. Nan might postulate that the near-collision had been as much asurprise to the aliens as it had been to the human ship, but Buzz wasn't sosure. Or maybe the aliens had simplygotten lucky. It would be years –centuries, perhaps – before they understood all of the science behind what hadhappened to the White Star.



“Careful, boss,” Jimmy said. He pointed an armoured finger towards one ofthe bulkheads. “Look at that...”



Buzz followed his gaze. The alien ship seemed to be growing intothe White Star, the metalbulkheads slowly being replaced by biological technology that grew out of thebulkhead and reached along towards engineering. Ahead of them, the solid hatch that should have barred all access intothe engineering department – at least without the right access codes – had beentorn open by inhuman strength. And thebiological technology – he couldn't help, but think of vines extruding from themain plant – was melding into the mechanical technology that normally operatedthe White Star.



“My God,” Gino said. He was looking up at the quantum core, the heart of the quantum drive. It had been melded with alien technology...andit was glowing with power. There was noway that it should have been able to remain active for an hour, let alone two weeks. And yet it was still thrumming away. A dull sound, as if the metal itself was screaming in protest, was echoingthrough the entire chamber. “What havethey done to it?”



“I don’t know,” Nan said, grimly, “but I think we’dbetter find out. That sound isn't thesound of a healthy drive. It sounds asif it’s going to fail at any moment.” She hesitated, her eyes following the alien tendrils as they reachedinto the distance, back towards the ship’s four fusion power plants. “And then we all die.”

 

Only one major problem with this story Chris.
THERE'S NOT ENOUGH OF IT!!
More please?
Matt

 

More will be coming tomorrow.

Chris

 

Finally caught up after not having time to read for a few days Thanks Mate

 

Awesome story as usual,great read!

 

Chapter Twenty<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />



“Where are we?”



Zach hesitated. “I’m not entirely sure,” he admitted. He’d done his best to memorise the WhiteStar’s interior, but he’d largely relied on the diagrams stored within hissuit – and his suit was gone. “I thinkwe’re on the lower decks, but I can't be sure.”



Nancy nodded. “Ithink so too,” she said, softly. They’dbeen staggering along for what felt like hours. “Why don’t they put signs on the walls?”



“They wanted the ship to be modern, so they had computersystems to give directions to anyone who was lost,” Zach said, ruefully. “And since they lost most of the ship’spower, none of those systems will work any longer.”



He scowled as they came to another intersection, withcorridors leading off in three directions, each one studded with hatches thatled to middle-class cabins. Zach hadglanced inside one of them and rolled his eyes at the tiny boxes, even if they were on a luxury cruise liner. The quarters he’d been assigned onboard Pelican hadn’t been any smaller, and he hadn'thad to pay thousands of dollars to enjoy them. Some people just wanted too much luxury in their lives.



The White Star neverstopped extorting money from its passengers. Meals were free – well, they were included in the original price – and someof the basic entertainments were open to all, but others were extras, rangingfrom complicated VR simulations to massage parlours and services that seemed tobe vaguely defined. Zach had been toldby the Marines during briefings that the WhiteStar carried a small number of prostitutes – classed as sexual healthworkers – and their services to available to anyone willing to pay theprice. Given how much of the ship’scomplement of passengers were extremely rich, Zach had no doubt that theirprices were very high indeed. TheFederation had no sin laws – there was little enthusiasm for turning it into agenuine supranational government – but prostitution was still banned in half ofits member states. Someone must havebeen paying out bribes to make sure that there was no investigation.



“If we keep heading towards the stern, we should run intothe engineering compartment,” he said, finally. The real question was how they were going to get up the levels into thecommand section. Nancy had suggestedusing the tubes, but Nancy couldn't climb up a ladder with a broken leg, evenafter he’d splinted it. She leanedagainst him as they kept moving, glancing around her fearfully. They hadn't seen any of the flickers of lightthat represented the aliens, but Zach was grimly aware that that meantnothing. The aliens could have sent asmall army of Shambles after them. “Areyou sure you’re ok?”



“I’m fine,” Nancy grated. Her face was pale and she was trembling against him, but she was stillgoing onwards. She’d survived two weekson the ship without any help, he reminded himself, even though the Shambleswould have tracked her down eventually. “Justkeep going.”



They staggered down the next corridor, and then the next,heading down towards the stern wall. Therear of the ship was sealed off to passengers, who were not supposed to enterthe engineering compartment under any circumstances, but there should be anemergency set of hatches to allow evacuation if the **** hit the fan. Zach checked the multitools he’d brought withhim and prayed that they would be enough to open the hatches, knowing thatwithout the suit forcing the hatches open would be impossible. He stopped as he heard a rustling noisebehind them and glanced back, but saw nothing. The eerie silence surrounding them was more disconcerting than thenormally ever-present hum of the starship’s drives.



“This corridor keeps twisting,” Nancy said, in a dazedtone. Zach looked down at her, and thenalong the corridor. It seemed to have noend, just an endless series of hatches leading into passenger cabins. In the distance, he could see a humanoid shapeahead of them. He started and draggedNancy to one side, only to see the entity performing the same action. It took him a moment to realise that theywere staring at their own backs. Thecorridor had turned into an impossible loop. “What happened?”



Zach cursed, struggling to grasp what had happened. The corridor had been twisted somehow so itwas separate from the rest of the ship, bent into an endless dimensionalloop. They could keep walking foreverand never escape, just like a holographic chamber might rotate the scenery aroundthe occupant in a form of holographic treadmill. The surroundings would change, but the userwould never actually physically move.



“The interdimensional flux must be getting worse,” hesaid, unsure of what to do. If they keptwalking, they’d get nowhere – and yet if they walked back, they’d simply getnowhere either. They were trapped. Perhaps there was a way out of the loop byusing the tubes, but Nancy couldn't use them. He cursed, wishing that one of the Marines was with them. Two people could probably carry Nancy throughthe tubes without major difficulties. “Ithink...”



There was a blaze of eerie white light in front of themand the entire corridor seemed to dissolve, blurring back into the alienship. Shapes appeared against the light,marching forward with implacable determination. He didn't need to take a close look to know that the aliens had senttheir Shambles hunting for the missing humans; grabbing Nancy tightly, heturned and stumbled back the way they’d come. The dimensional loop seemed to have faded, thankfully, or they wouldhave stumbled into the Shambles from the rear. Instead, he felt them clumping after the two humans, tracking themthroughout the ship. The aliens mightnot be able to see humans very well, but their biological tools had once been human. They would have no difficulty tracking thehuman escapees until they were hunted down and turned into Shambles themselves.



“I think they’re splitting up,” Nancy said. Zach blinked in surprise; the Shambles had noneed to split up, not when they were chasing the two humans down a passagewaythat had only one destination. Or werethey going to hunt down the remaining Marines? He keyed the communicator and was rewarded with a screech of static,suggesting that normal communications were still not working. A sense of isolation overcame him as he struggledforward, chillingly aware of the Shambles following them. They could easily be the last humans leftalive and unchanged onboard the WhiteStar. “Where are they going?”



“I don’t know,” Zach grunted. The Shamble who was still following them wasgetting closer, covering the distance with long strides that seemed to shakethe deck. He glanced up and saw a hatchin the overhead plating, one that would lead them up to the next deck if theycould get to it, but the Shamble would catch them before he was up the ladderand gone. Besides, the ship’s internalstructure was badly warped. The alienscould walk through one door and appear on another deck. “I think we need to keep moving...”



He stumbled through a set of doors and came to ahalt. In front of them, half-hidden inthe semi-darkness, was a glowing mass of gelatinous ooze...and inside the ooze,he saw human beings, suspended in the liquid. Some of them looked wounded, or injured; a handful looked as if theywere dead. A couple of faces were familiarto him from the briefing, famous people with powerful friends, but the otherswere strangers. Behind them, the doorscrashed open as the Shamble advanced into the compartment. Zach took one last look and walked around theooze, carrying Nancy into the next compartment. Unlike the last compartment, it was brightly lit, revealing the very latestin cooking equipment. No ration bars or preservedmeals for the pampered rich kids on the WhiteStar. They had their meals preparedfor them as if they were back on Earth. Unsurprisingly, the compartment was deserted – and stank. The chefs had been hard at work when the White Star had collided with the alienship and had abandoned half-cooked food when the Shambles attacked.



“Hang on,” he said, carrying Nancy over to thestairs. The Shambles had shown asingle-minded determination to capture individual humans before, sometimesignoring more tempting targets in favour of their original prey. He had to hope that he, not Nancy, was theShamble’s first target. Thankfully, thekitchen – or whatever it was called onboard a starship – extended up threelevels. “Climb up the stairs if you can,but stay out of sight. I’ve had an idea.”



There were dozens of cooking tools lying around on thevarious tables. Zach picked up a set ofknives as the Shamble crashed through the doors and advanced towards him. There was no expression on its face – it lookedlike a mass of walking cancer cells, barely even humanoid – but he could havesworn that it was angry. Its prey hadkept running instead of stopping and surrendering, allowing it to drag themback to its masters. Zach had animpression of what life would be like if the aliens managed to invade the humandimension, of what would happen if they won. The trillions of human andalien individuals would become little more than farm animals, used as rawmaterials for the alien biological technology. Whatever it took, he knew, it could not be allowed to happen.



He hefted the first knife, took aim and threw it directlyat the creature. The Shamble recoiled asthe blade stuck in its head, but kept advancing forward, seemingly undeterredby the second and third knife Zach threw at it. He missed with the fourth knife and then ran around the table, avoidingthe Shamble as it lurched at him. Long tentaclesgrew out of the Shamble’s arm and lashed out towards him, sticking to tablesand chairs as they caught hold and allowing the Shamble to pull them out of itsway. Zach cursed as one of the strandscaught him and started to drag him back towards the creature, forcing him touse the next knife to cut himself free. The tendril that had caught him dropped away into dust as he ducked andran around the next set of cooking tables. A plan was slowly forming in his mind.



The next compartment, left open to the air, was a freezerthat stored meat for the benefit of the richer among the starship’spassengers. Zach almost gagged at thesmell, but ran inside, daring the Shamble to follow him. The meat had been defrosting for over twoweeks and had gone rotten, but the smell didn't deter the Shamble as it marchedforward, catching sight of Zach at the far end of the compartment. It’s legs seemed to absorb the rotting meatand blood that littered the floor, adding to its already colossal biomass. Zach realised that the creatures could devouralmost anything organic – which explained what had happened to the oxy-grass onthe upper levels – as it advanced forward remorselessly. As it reached for him, Zach ducked to theleft and ran around the Shamble, up through the next row of hanging meat. The Shamble followed, slicing through rottingchickens and turkeys, too late to prevent Zach from running out of the door andslamming it closed behind it. For aterrifying moment, he couldn't see how to lock it before realising that it wouldhave locked automatically. The chefswere the only ones permitted to enter the meat locker and take what they neededto cook for their patrons.



The Shamble started to bang on the hatch as Zach glancedinto the next compartment, picking up a bottle of cooking oil and a roasting torch. He had a vague memory of something like itbeing used to selectively burn cooked meat, perhaps in one of the fancier fastfood restaurants, but when it tested the device it produced a small flame,barely larger than a cigarette lighter. Carrying them both with him, he raced over to the stairs as the sound ofbanging grew louder. It was terrifyinglyeasy to imagine the Shamble absorbing all of the meat and using it to boost itsstrength to far greater levels.



Nancy had managed to crawl halfway to the next levelbefore her strength had failed her. “Whathappened?” She asked. “Are you all right?”



“Not unless we keep moving,” Zach snapped, passing herthe torch while he scattered the oil in their path. There was a final crash from below as theShamble burst out of the freezer and advanced towards the stairs. Zach helped Nancy to her feet and theystaggered up the stairs onto the next level, leaving a trail of oil behind them. He put Nancy down as they reached the nextlevel and then took the torch back from her, running back to the shakingstairs. The Shamble was climbing uptowards them, its unseeing face turned towards Zach. Carefully, Zach poured the remainder of theoil on the creature’s form and then used the torch to set it on fire.



The Shamble staggered backwards as the flames washed overits bulky form. Zach had no idea if thefires would actually burn hot enough to set its flesh on fire, but maybe it didn'tmatter. The creature stepped backwardsagain...and fell, hurtling down the stairs and cracking its head against thedeck. Zach doubted that that would stopthe creature – they had proven resistant to a bullet through the head – but it shouldcertainly slow it down long enough for them to escape. The rising smoke made him choke as hestumbled back towards where Nancy was lying, waiting for him. He picked her up, winked at her, and carriedher back towards the hatch leading out into the ship.



“Flames seem to deter them,” he said, after amoment. If anything, the fires down onthe lower deck had grown stronger. Thestarship would normally have sealed off the compartment and activatedfire-suppressing fields, but without main power online half of the emergencysystems seemed to be useless. “Perhapswe can make a flamethrower and get rid of them that way.”



On impulse, he glanced into a set of cupboards and pulledout a handful of ration bars. He had noidea why the White Star’s chefs hadkept them in the kitchen, unless it was what they ate themselves, which hedoubted, but they’d come in handy for feeding Nancy and himself. Interstellar law did stipulate that ships were to carry ration bars for emergencies,if nothing else, and he was quite sure that this counted as an emergency.



“Yuck,” Nancy said, but she took her ration bar without hesitation. “I hate these things.”



Zach glanced at the manufacturer’s label and nodded insympathy. The Bandit Six corporationproduced ration bars made from algae grown on Earth, intended to feed the poor,but they made damn sure that the ration bars tasted awful. They’d originally intended them to serve as encouragementfor people to find jobs and earn money so they wouldn't have to exist on rationbars for the rest of their lives, yet it was perfectly possible to make aration bar taste like something that hadn't come out of a cow’s buttocks. The WhiteStar chefs had probably been ordered to ensure that the passengers keptbuying their expensive food or something equally cynical.



He chewed on his bar as they left the kitchen and walkeddown towards the engineering compartment. At least this part of the ship seemed relatively normal, although thelights were dim and there were faint sounds in the distance that made him wishfor more bullets for his gun. But they wouldn'thave done any good against the Shambles anyway. They’d shrugged off plasma fire in the past. They stopped briefly outside sickbay whenthey heard noises from inside the compartment, only to see that someone hadsealed the compartment and then removed the control processors to make itimpossible to reopen it without proper tools from back home. Zach hesitated, wondering if they should walkto the bridge, before catching sight of the sealed hatch at the end of thecorridor. Breaking through it would beimpossible without his suit.



The hatchway to engineering lay open in front of them,puzzling Zach. Federation Navyregulations insisted that the engineering compartment had to be closed to all,but the engineering crew and senior officers. Even most of the ship’s crew wouldn't be allowed to enter thecompartment unless accompanied by a senior officer. The sound of the ship’s drives were growinglouder as they walked up to the door and hesitated. He was sure that there was something movinginside...



He entered – and jumped back as a plasma rifle waspointed at his face. “It’s me,” he said,quickly. The Shambles didn't useweapons, they just relied upon their bodies. “Don’t shoot!”



“Zach,” the Marine said. Gino, if Zach recalled correctly. He'd worried that they were all dead. “What the **** happened to you?”



Zach found himself grinning helplessly as he lookedaround the compartment. Nan was standingin front of the main console, tapping in commands; Buzz and Jimmy were loweringtheir plasma rifles and opening their suits. Buzz was grinning from ear to ear as his face came into view.



“It’s a long story,” Zach said. He hesitated...and then looked at Buzz. “Captain, I’m afraid I had to kill JoeBuckley.”



Buzz stared at him for a long chilling moment. Zach had barely known the Marines, but they’dworked together as a team for years. They’d known and loved each other as comrades; losing Singh alone hadhad to hurt. And Joe Buckley had justbeen torn from them by the aliens and then...



“Explain,” Buzz ordered, tightly. “Now.”

 

<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><font size="3">Chapter Twenty-One<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com
A Marine would have given a clear, concise and preciselydetailed account of everything that had happened since he had been separated fromthe group. Zach’s report was incoherentand tended to go off on tangents, but eventually Buzz had the basic idea. Joe Buckley, one of the bravest men he’d everhad the honour to command, had been infected with the alien virus – or whateverit was – that transformed men into Shambles. And Zach had had little choice, but to kill him to prevent him fromcompleting the transformation and becoming a monster. It had probably been a mercy.

“If we'd known about the infection in time, we might havebeen able to do something to boost our immune systems,” Zach finished. “I think...”

“I don’t think so,” Jimmy said, grimly. He was tossing one of the nanotech capsulesup and down in his hand as he spoke. “Whateverthe aliens have devised, however they produced it, the damn stuff spreadsfaster than anything short of nanotech. No alteration to our immune systems would have rendered us immune to thetransformation. It would just have givenus a false sense of confidence.”

“Understood,” Buzz said. “Get out of your suit and see what you can do for Nancy. Nan?”

In engineering, the WhiteStar’s computers and other equipment seemed to work perfectly, despite thepresence of alien biomass scattered throughout the compartment. Nan had been trying to understand preciselywhat the aliens had been doing with the ship’s quantum drive, pulling up itscontrol routines and analysing them – and, at the same time, trying to figure outwhere the power was coming from. Theship’s fusion plants couldn't hope to produce enough power to keep atransdimensional rift open indefinitely.

“Much of what they’ve done works against what we knowabout quantum space,” Nancy said, thoughtfully. “In hindsight, I wonder if the Cats deliberately closed off angles ofinquiry for us when they gave everyone the quantum drive. No one studied the basic theory of the drivetoo closely, at least until Earth got interested in ways to excite quantum spaceand seal us off from the rest of the universe. I think that that might have been intentional.”

She shrugged. “Rightnow, the conjoined ships are actually cooperating to keep the rift active,” shecontinued. “If one of the drives fails,the two ships actually will interpenetrateand they will be destroyed. I think the aliens are actually working onwidening the rift to the point where they can separate both ships and free themselvesfrom the White Star, but it won’t beeasy. Our equipment couldn't do it atall.”

“Because the interiors of both ships have becomeintermingled,” Zach said. Nannodded. “They must not be in control ofthe rifts between alternate realities.”

“I don’t think they are,” Nan agreed. “At best, they can steer their ship to somedegree; the real trick would be designating what isn't part of their ship and abandoningit in normal space. There would still bean explosion, but it wouldn’t affect their dimension. Or so we think.”

“All right,” Buzz said. “By your best estimate, how long do we have until the aliens separate thetwo ships?”

Nan frowned down at the console. “Maybe an hour, maybe more,” she said. “I think they may intend to cut their ownship in half and abandon the rest to be destroyed when the remainder interpenetrateswith the White Star. The rift in realities would cut through theirship like a knife through butter.”

“But their ship is biological,” Zach said. “It might survive losing half of its biomass –and they’d be home. They could presumablycall on help from others of their kind.”

He looked over at Buzz. “Captain,” he said, “this ship cannotbe allowed to return to its home universe.”

Buzz had come to the same conclusion. All the evidence suggested that the alienswere implacably hostile, with an ethic that chilled him to the bone. Their willingness to use intelligent lifeforms as biomass for their ship, or to turn them into shambling horrors toserve as their tools in a universe hostile to their kind...nothing they’d donesuggested a race willing to coexist with anyone else. Even the Hegemony had admitted that otherraces were intelligent, though they’d determined themselves to be the galaxy’sdesignated master race.

“I agree,” he said. It was funny how calm he felt, knowing that he’d probably just committedhimself to suicide to stop the aliens. “Nan,what would happen if we disabled this drive?”

“The two ships would interpenetrate,” Nan said, “but I couldn'ttell you which universe would actually feel the force of the blast. If it went up in normal space, the Admiral’ssquadron might be destroyed; if it went up in quantum space, we might screw uptraffic in the Unseen Reaches for centuries...”

“Which isn't really a problem,” Buzz pointed out. “Very few races use the Unseen Reaches fortravel.”

“Yes, but there’s no way of knowing just how far theeffects will spread,” Nan insisted, sharply. “The IDG projector didn’t pump more than a hundredth of the energyinvolved here into Sol’s quantum space – and that disrupted quantum space travel over several light years fornearly a week. Extrapolating here, wemight isolate several sectors from the rest of the galaxy – and the effectsmight last a great deal longer than a week.”

Zach looked up at her. “You mean we really want the ships to explode in the alien homedimension,” he said.

“Universe, not dimension,” Nan corrected,pedantically. “If we could do that, itwould work – but there’s no way to predict the shifts between dimensions. We’d probably be much better off trying totime the explosion so it goes off in normal space. It would look like a supernova, but therewould be no dangerous long-term effects.”

“We think,” Buzz said. Setting off a supernova would have an effect on every nearby world – butthen, the Unseen Reaches was largely depopulated anyway. “How long would it take you to rig somethingup to trigger the blast?”

Nan hesitated, almost as if she was a deer caught in apair of headlights. Buzz had joined theMarines knowing that he might have to lay down his life for Earth, but Nan hadnever been off-planet before. Could shebe trusted to engineer their deaths, even if it was in a good cause, or shouldhe ask Gino to do the work instead? Silently, he cursed the Admiral and promised himself that he would givethe man a sharp lecture on the dangers of bringing civilians along on what hadbecome a suicide mission. He’d been sodetermined to cover his own ass that Nan’s ass had been put on the line.

“Give me ten minutes,” she said, finally. “I should be able to program in a glitch;when they try to separate the ships, the drives will shut down and the twoships should interpenetrate. And as theywill have to do that in their universe, the blast should go off right in theirfaces.”

Buzz hesitated. “Areyou sure about this?”

“I think so,” Nan admitted. “Much of their tech seems interwoven withours to keep it operational during the shifts through different universes. They’d almost have to do it in theiruniverse, and then allow the ships to fall back into our universe, or they’d beunable to get home. I can give you thetechnobabble if you want...”

Buzz shook his head. “Get on with it,” he ordered. “Jimmy– how is she?”

“Not good,” Jimmy said. He’d removed Nancy’s trousers and was poking away at her leg with hisbare fingers – and a sensor. “She’s notonly broken her leg in two places, there’s internal bleeding and a very realrisk of infection. If she hadn't been...modifiedby her father, there would be a great deal more pain. As it is, I think we’d better put her in oneof the suits, once I’ve shot her up with some more anaesthetic.”

“She can have mine,” Buzz said. Both Jimmy and Gino opened their mouths toobject, but Buzz spoke over them. “Youtwo are going to be needed more than me...”

“Far be it from me to dispute that,” Gino said, mischievously.

“Just you wait until we get back to Wellington,” Buzz said, darkly. He started to climb out of his suit, stepping down the operational levelto novice. The suits could normallycarry someone out of the line of fire, even if they had been knocked out, butin the strange environment that the WhiteStar had become he didn't trust any of the automatic systems very far. They’d just have to be careful not to shakeNancy’s armoured hand. “You’re going tobe doing press-ups from now till doomsday.”

“Yes, boss,” Gino said.

“I have a question,” Zach said, as he held Nancy stillfor Jimmy’s injection. “There arepassengers trapped in biomass on the lower deck. Shouldn't we be trying to rescue them?”

Buzz hesitated. He’djoined the SEALs to fight, not play humanitarian, but every fibre of his beinginsisted that they should attempt to rescue the alien prisoners. But the aliens were powerful and their techso alien that it was unpredictable. Freeing their prisoners might mean carrying infected personnel back toEarth...

...But if he was wrong, he’d just condemned hundreds ofpeople to death when the two ships finally met their end. He struggled with his conscience for a longmoment, trying to determine the best course of action. There had to be a way of maintaining quarantinelong enough to ensure that the prisoners were safe, uninfected by anythingdangerous. And yet he knew that he didn'tdare take the risk. The Galactics hadhad plenty of experience in subverting people and sending them back to serve asunwitting spies – the one field of constant technological development was the espionagefield – and that involved technology humanityknew and understood. Who knew what theunseen aliens, with biological technology beyond anything humans had everimagined, could do?

“We can't,” he said, finally. The Admiral would probably insist on a court-martial,bringing his career to an end, but there really was no other choice. “We can't take the risk.”

“But...” Zachsaid. “We could save them.”

“I don’t think we can,” Jimmy said. He helped Nancy to her feet and half-carriedher over towards Buzz’s suit. “You’veseen what their technology can do, Zach. The people on this ship were their prisoners for over two weeks. Just because they don’t look like Shambles doesn’t mean that they haven’t been changed bythe aliens. Once they extend theirclutch into a person’s brain, we have no choice, but to kill them.”

Buzz’s suit opened up in front of Nancy. “You have to be very careful with the suit,”Jimmy warned her. “I’ve programmed in aroutine that should avoid placing too much strain on your leg, but I don’tthink we can avoid some...problems, not when the suit is designed to follow it’soperator’s every move. Once we get back toa ship, we can start to repair your leg properly – or grow you a new leg if necessary.”

“A new leg,” Nancy repeated. She sounded woozy, as if the combination ofdrugs in her system were producing unfortunate side effects. “Will it be longer than my old one? Stacy used to say that my legs weren't longenough...”

Jimmy snorted. “Onceyou get back home, you can buy whatever cosmetic improvements you like,” hepointed out. “You could even growyourself a clone body that looks like your favourite actress and have yourbrain transferred into it, if you liked. How many women are there out there who look like what’s her name now?”

Nancy giggled. “Theyall wanted to look like her,” she said. Thesuit’s legs sealed themselves shut, followed by the chest. “And they made themselves mindless bodies tolook like her. I don’t know why theybothered to omit the brain; it always seemed mindless to me.”

Buzz rolled his eyes. Human law hadn't really kept up with the advent of Galactic-levelscience, allowing all kinds of transgressions to become normal before thegovernments got over their shock and started to ban them. One of them had been stealing an actor’s – oractress’s – DNA and force-cloning a perfect duplicate, minus the brain, whichthey would transfer their own brain into. It had opened up a whole new debate on just what constituted a person’sprivate property; did they have a right to sell their own genetic code, or wasit a transgression against basic morality? And she was right. Most actorsand actresses were pretty mindless anyway.

It hadn't been the only problem. VR simulations could allow someone to havesex with a holographic duplicate of...well, anyone. Some electronic brothels paid royalties tofamous actors and actresses, but others defied them to do anything about havingtheir likeness stolen and used by unscrupulous producers. And the problems had only gotten worse whensome clinics offering medical procedures of dubious value had gotten establishedon colony worlds, particularly the semi-independent ones. They brought in much-needed revenue,discouraging local governments from acting against them. Why shouldn't they allow the clinics tooperate on Mars? They needed the moneyand someone had to satisfy the demand.

“We’re going to have to climb up to the highest part ofthe engineering compartment, then head across and up the tubes,” he ordered, skimmingthrough the diagrams of the ship he’d memorised. Fitting up the tubes would be tricky with thesuits; Nan and Nancy would just have to activate their antigravity systems andhope that they didn't fail until they reached deck one. “At that point, we will board the shuttle andhopefully escape from the ship before it can be destroyed.”

He looked over at Nan. “Are you done yet?”

Nan’s hands were shaking, but her voice was steady. “I think so,” she said. “They’re gathering energy to hold the ship intheir universe for more than a few seconds. Once that peaks, the drive will deactivate itself and the two ships willcollide. And that will be the end of thethreat.”

Zach frowned. “Butour tech doesn't work in their space,” he objected. “How do we know that the whole idea willwork?”

Nan grinned. “Ithink they’ve set up a universal warping field around the drive here,” shesaid. “Or perhaps a transdimensional stabilisingwarp field...”

Gino snorted. “Andwhat exactly does that mean?”

“It beats saying magical field,” Nan said, her grinwidening. “They are altering the laws ofscience over a very small area, relatively speaking. Their universe’s laws won’t be allowed tointerfere with the drive, which means that they won’t be able to stop myprogram from switching the drive off. And that will be the end of the WhiteStar.”

Zach rubbed his sweating forehead. “And us, if we don’t hurry,” he said. “Captain, can I suggest that we leave now?”

“One moment,” Buzz said. He couldn't blame Zach for wanting to get to the shuttle and leave theship behind. “Nan...can they deactivatethe program?”

Nan hesitated. “Idon’t think so, unless they manage to find a way to use our own codes,” shesaid. “Oh...”

“Yes,” Buzz said. “TheCaptain.”

He explained to Zach what they’d found while Nanencrypted the system. “I’ve altered thebase codes,” she said, finally, “and scrambled the passwords. They won’t be able to hack into the systemfor hours, even if their computer systems are better than our own. By then, it will be too late.”

She hesitated, and then spoke on. “I’ve also added a routine to activate twohours from now,” she added. “If the aliensrealise what has happened and don’t bring the ship back into their ownuniverse, the drive will switch off anyway when the conjoined ships enternormal space. There will be a supernova,but that will be the end of the threat.”

“For now,” Buzz said. Judging from what Zach had found – and what they’d seen on the bridge –the unseen aliens might continue to pose a threat even after the White Star was destroyed. “Is everyone ready?”

He looked over at Nancy, who had left the helm of hersuit open. “Leave it open unless we runinto danger,” he ordered, looking up at the ladder climbing up to the upperlevels. It reminded him of some of thetraining simulations, except those had always featured human or Galactic enemies. “I’ll take point; Zach, you follow me as soonas I reach the top. Nan, Nancy and Ginocan follow then – Jimmy will bring up the rear.”

“Best place to be,” Jimmy said, cheerfully. “Hurry up, boss. The clock is ticking away right now.”

Buzz nodded and climbed up the ladder. So close to the quantum core, the gravityfield seemed to be unstable, threatening to push him back down the ladder orleave him floating helplessly in the middle of the chamber. He gripped the ladder tighter, ignoring thedeafening racket from the ship’s drives, and finally reached the top. The engineering compartment was spread out infront of him like a massive cathedral, with the quantum drive open for hisinspection and the fusion cores, hidden behind the quantum drive, ready for arepair crew to enter and repair if necessary. He felt his head spinning suddenly and stepped backwards, towards thehatch that should lead them to deck two. Zach climbed up beside him and scowled.

“I always hated heights,” he admitted, as Buzz went towork on the hatch with a multitool. Itwas designed to be hard to open from the outside, but it should have been easyto open from the inside. The engineersmight have had to flee a coolant leak or something equally dangerous. “Can you...”

The hatch hissed open, revealing a Shamble. Before Buzz could do anything, it started toadvance forward, threatening to push them off the platform and send themfalling down to the engineering deck, twenty meters below.

 

Chapter Twenty-Two<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />



“****,” Buzz cursed.



The Shamble advanced forward, already growing tendrils andreaching out towards Buzz. It was slowand unsteady, it’s five legs unsuited to humanoid walking, but it didn't needto move faster. There was nowhere forBuzz to go, apart from a long fall down to the metal deck below. Zach and Nancy had survived such a fallthanks to the interdimensional rifts running through the conjoined ships, buthe wouldn't be so lucky. Even anaugmented Marine wouldn't survive that.



“Get back,” Zach snapped, but there was nowhere togo. Or was there? “Buzz…”



“Stay where you are,” Buzz ordered. Marines were taught to have an excellentsense of their surroundings, and he’d noted everything out of habit as he scrambledup the ladder. He stepped backwards,trusting in his memory to tell him where the edge was, and watched as theShamble advanced on him. It seemed to beignoring Zach, thankfully. “Come on, youbastard...”



The Shamble reached for him and Buzz jumped backwardsinto empty air, reaching out desperately to grasp the ledge as he fell. He caught it and scrambled for the pipesrunning under the platform as the Shamble followed him into nothingness. Unlike him, it didn't have time to grab atthe ledge before gravity took effect and it plummeted down to the deckbelow. Hanging from the pipe, Buzzlooked down and saw the Shamble slowly picking itself up from the deck. The fall hadn't killed it! Alarmed, he motioned for the others to scrambleup onto the platform and then swung himself onto the ladder, climbing up theladder himself. Below them, the Shamblewas starting to follow him...was it his imagination, or did it look much lesshumanoid?



“Get into the corridor,” he ordered, drawing his laserpistol. It was useless against the monstrouscreature, but it could cut through the metal ladder. “Hurry!”



The Shamble was climbing with astonishing speed, despite itsmass. It had to be heavier than even thefattest human, yet it just kept going upwards. Buzz braced himself and started to cut through the rungs, cursing themetal compound the engineers had worked into the ship’s ladders and walkways. The Shamble might have realised what washappening, for it threw up a webbing of material that latched on to Buzz’sfoot. Cursing, he cut it free and thenfinished cutting through the ladder. Itfell free and the Shamble crashed down to the deck again. Buzz picked himself up, noted the bloodfalling from his leg, and ran for the hatch.



“Jimmy,” he yelled. He could feel somethingworking its way inside him, burning through his body’s natural defences and thenanotech the Marines used to augment themselves. “Jimmy!”



“****,” Jimmy said, cracking open his suit. “What the **** happened to you?”



Buzz felt an overpowering tiredness that threatened toovercome him. He’d beaten the endlessroute marches that the Marine drill sergeants had forced them on, failing any candidatewho even flagged slightly, but this was different. His own body was threatening to shut downcompletely – and when he opened his eyes again, he would be a Shamble. They might have some awareness left, justenough to let them watch helplessly through their own eyes as their transformedbodies killed or transformed their fellow humans. Marine discipline was melting away in theface of panic, and tiredness...



“Got me,” he said. Even shaping those two words was incredibly difficult. “Nanotech, now.”



Jimmy pressed the injector against his chest and pushedthe trigger. “There's enough in this podto kill an army,” he said. There was agrim note in his voice. “But we neverhad a chance to test it.”



“Test...it...now,” Buzz gasped. He looked up to see Zach and Nan staring athim. “What...the **** are you...lookingat.”



“Keep still,” Jimmy ordered. He stuck a sensor probe into Buzz’s bodywithout even bothering to ask permission. “Remarkable rate of growth, this material; it converts everything intoalien biomass at terrifying speed. Iwondered why the Shambles didn't look more human.”



Buzz wanted to tell him to shut up, but his mouth refusedto work properly. His lower body seemedto have frozen; he could no longer even feel his penis. Two types of technology, each from adifferent universe, were battling it out inside his body and he couldn't feel athing. His eyelids felt suddenly heavy,but he refused to close them. He was convincedthat if he closed his eyes he would never open them again, not as a humanbeing. The Shambles hadn't even had eyes.



Memory flickered across his mind’s eye. There were no individuals in BUD/S training;the prospective SEALs were expected to work as a team from day one. They’d all known to run sideways from thebeaching boat in training, knowing that the boat could cross the sand withterrifying speed. All of them exceptone, who’d either panicked or forgotten what he'd been told. Buzz had watched with horror as the boat ranhim down and crushed him into the sand. Poor Carl hadn't been the first to die while trying to become a SEAL andhe hadn't been the last.



No individuals inthe Federation Marines either, he thought, feeling his mind slowly fadinginto nothingness. I’m sorry...



Something was whispering near him, words that made no sense. Nancy had told him that she’d seen the alienmentality when she’d been injured, when she’d hovered right on the edge ofblacking out completely. Telepathy was rarein the Association – and unknown among humans, outside of various charlatans – butthe aliens seemed to use it extensively. Maybe they were all pure telepaths. They’d certainly shown a flair for avoiding the natural laws of thehuman universe in the brief encounter. Had it really only been seven hours since they’d boarded the conjoinedships? It felt as if it had been yearssince they’d started running through the ship’s corridors like rats in amaze.



...And the entire ship was taking on a spectral air...



Jimmy thumped his chest. “Get up,” he snapped. Buzz’s eyesopened – he hadn't even realised he’d closed them – and looked up. The medic was bending over him, examining hislegs. “I think you’re clean.”



Buzz stared at him. “You think?”



“Well, the nanotech did kill most of the alien ****,”Jimmy said. He sounded ratherirked. “And once it killed a criticalmass of gunk, the rest of it simply came apart and dissolved into yourbloodstream. There’s still a nasty cutwhere it struck you, but I think you’re in the clear.”



Buzz looked around him. The mental image of a spectral corridor didn't match what he was seeing withhis own eyes. “How sure are you of anyof this?”



“I'm not,” Jimmy said, flatly. “My recommendation when we get back to theships would be to order a full quarantine until we knew for certain that we weren'tinfected. We can't risk something likethis getting loose on Earth.”



“Maybe it won’t be able to survive on Earth,” Nan said,slowly. “Perhaps it depends on the localalteration of natural laws...”



Jimmy shook his head. “The...infection, virus or bacteria or whatever, is perfectly adapted toour natural universe’s laws,” he said. “Theycould dump it on Earth and the entire biosphere would be adapted into somethingthey could harvest.”



“So,” Zach said, as Jimmy helped Buzz to his feet, “whyhaven’t they?”



Buzz frowned. Hefelt unsteady, almost as if he was a child recovering from a nasty bout of theflu. “What do you mean?”



Zach met his eyes squarely. “We have deduced that the aliens areresponsible for the energy storms that infest this part of space and that theyare probably responsible for the number of ships that disappear here,” hesaid. “But the Unseen Reaches have beenmarked as dangerous for over a thousand years. Why haven’t they completed their pre-invasion reconnaissance andlaunched an attack by now? Where havethey been for the last thousand years?”



Gino coughed. “Growingtheir invasion army?”



“You can force-grow a clone to adulthood within twomonths, if you configured it to have no brain,” Jimmy said. A clone with a brain would probably not beviable unless it was allowed to grow to adulthood normally, after beingdecanted from the cloning vat. Besides,the whole procedure of growing intelligent clones was banned on generalprinciples. “These aliens could probablyclone enough humans to serve as raw material for an army of Shambles within afew months.”



“We assume,” Buzz said. He nodded to Jimmy, who stepped back and allowed him to stand upright onhis own. His leg hurt like hell, despitethe augments built into his body. “Iftheir universe is so different to our own, how do we know that time doesn't movedifferently there? A thousand years onour side of the universal barrier might be a few seconds for them. Is there any reason why that can't happen?”



“Unknown,” Nan said, flatly. She glanced at her arm as if she was looking ata watch. “The physical properties ofalternate universes are unknown to us.” She hesitated. “There used to bea theory that quasars punch into universes of energy and spew the energy outinto our universe, but scientific consensus suggested a simpler answer untilthe Galactics turned up and explained that some quasars were flickering in andout of quantum space.”



“I remember,” Zach said. “They thought that quasars were extraterrestrial navigationbeacons. There was a great deal of disappointmentwhen they finally worked out that they were natural.” He shrugged. “But could there be a time difference between the universes?”



“Impossible to say,” Nan said. “I think it’s a reasonable theory, but there’sno way to prove it.”



“Sure there is,” Gino said. “We step back into the universe and discoverthat everyone we knew is a thousand years dead.”



Buzz scowled at him. “I think we’d better assume that we are going back home,” he said,sharply. His feet still felt wobbly, butat least he could walk. “And thatShamble probably has friends on the way. Come on.”



They’d had to cut their way into the elevator to get downto deck three, he reminded himself as they probed carefully towards thetubes. The aliens would probably haveblocked that angle by now, unless they were genuinely unconcerned about theteam’s movements. Perhaps they reallydid operate on a different timescale, suggesting that their movements might beliterally instantaneous from the alien point of view. They’d considered the possibility before, hadn'tthey?



“That’s the way into the tubes,” Nancy said. Gino tried to open the hatch and discoveredthat it was locked. That would neverhave happened on a military starship, but it did make sense on a civilian ship,even if it was a maintenance headache. “Imanaged to open them easily...”



Gino finally unlocked the hatch, revealing an eerie translucentglow leading into the alien ship. “Theships must be moving slightly,” Nan said, her voice betraying just how nervousshe was. “Perhaps the aliens arepreparing to disengage earlier than I planned.”



Buzz glanced at his watch. They’d wasted time trying to escape the lastShamble and then watching as Jimmy disinfected him of alien gunk. Only thirty minutes were left before thealien craft was meant to leave...and Nan’s program destroyed both ships. He looked into the light, faintly disturbedby how welcoming it felt, before pushing the feeling aside. They’d have to risk the elevators after alland hope that the aliens hadn't placed guards on them.



Gino peeked around a corner into the passageway leadingto the elevators and swore. “One Shambleon guard, boss,” he said. “It’s juststanding in front of the elevators, blocking our path. I think we’re going to need to destroy it.”



Buzz glanced around him. Anything could be used as a weapon with a little ingenuity, but for oncehis ingenuity seemed to fail him. Thelounge held nothing that could reasonably be used as a weapon, certainly notagainst a Shamble. A quick check of thewine cabinet revealed a number of expensive drinks, including some that hadcome from halfway across the galaxy with prices to match, but nothing theycould use as a weapon, unless...



“We can set the room on fire,” he said, remembering howZach had ignited cooking oil to deter a Shamble from chasing him anyfurther. “Or...”



He glanced into a side cabin and started to laugh. Someone – probably a male, judging from thebrands – had purchased vast amounts of deodorants and other cosmetic supplies,enough to make him smell like a perfume shop. They could be used asmakeshift IEDs with a little care; Gino and Jimmy took the bottles he passed tothem and started setting up a trap for the Shamble, while he warned Zach, Nanand Nancy to remain in one of the nearby cabins. If worst came to worst, they'd have theirchance to escape to the shuttle by climbing up the elevator shaft.



“Ready,” Jimmy said, finally. It was a verymakeshift IED, but it should give the Shamble a nasty surprise. Part of his mind pointed out that theShambles seemed to adapt to whatever was thrown at them – the first Shamblesthey’d met had been easily destroyed by plasma fire – and Buzz hesitated. But they didn't have the time to waste. “Captain?”



Buzz lifted his laser pistol and fired on theShamble. It didn't hesitate, but startedto come towards the threat, arms already extending out into fleshy tendrils. Buzz shuddered as soon as he saw them,remembering how quickly one of them had infected him and almost turned him intoone of them. The Shamble ignored theside passage – and the civilians – while advancing on the Marines. It’s fleshy face held no eyes, but it seemedto sense its target anyway. Or maybe thecreature did have eyes, hidden somewhere where humans wouldn't expect to seethem. The Marines knew countlessGalactic races that were anything, but humanoid. Some of them were more dangerous thananything close to humanity because they were so unpredictable.



He dived for cover as the Shamble ran right into thesmall barricade and kicked its way through it. There was no way to tell if it registered it as a threat or not, but asecond later it was too late. Jimmyclicked a makeshift switch and the IED exploded right underneath theShamble. A human would have been badlywounded, perhaps even killed; the Shamble merely staggered back, clutching at itslegs. It’s tendrils caught fire, burningaway into nothingness, but the main body of the Shamble was still intact.



“Now,” Buzz snapped. Gino picked up the bucket containing various cosmetic liquids and threwthem over the Shamble. Unlike the materialsthey’d used for the IED, this liquid would burn instead of explode....theShamble vanished inside a towering sheet of flame, so hot that Buzz foundhimself having problems running around it and up to the elevator shaft. Fortunately, the shaft was still open and theladders seemed untouched. He led the wayup the shaft, hoping and praying that there were no more Shambles blocking theirpath. “Hurry.”



“My God,” Jimmy said. Buzz glanced down and saw the burning Shamble staggering into the lift,reaching for them. It should have lostits balance at once, but somehow it managed to stay upright, growing new tendrilsto replace the ones it had lost in the fire. There was nothing left they could do to escape. Weapons wouldn't harm the Shamble and therewas nothing they could use to make a second IED. “Boss, tell every girl I was seeing that Iwas thinking of her when I died, ok?”



“What...”



Too late. As Buzzwatched in silent horror, Jimmy let go of the ladder and dropped down onto theShamble. The sudden impact caused it tolose its balance and let go of the ladder, sending it – and Jimmy – tumbling backdown the shaft. There was a flash oflight from where they hit...something andthen there was nothing, but inky darkness. Nancy and Zach had fallen into the alien ship; absently, he wondered if Jimmyand the Shamble had crashed into its maker’s ship too. There was no way to know.



“He...” Nan couldn'tfind the words. “He gave his life forus.”



Buzz said nothing as they reached the top of theshaft. The hatches had been left open, thankfully,but there was no sign of the Marines who should have been monitoring theuppermost deck. Feeling a cold shiverrunning down his spine, he climbed out of the shaft and helped Nancy over theedge. The girl hadn't quite mastered hersuit and had been having real problems climbing out of the shaft. Leaving her to wait for Zach, Nan and Gino,he ran along to the observation blister, where the shuttle should have beenwaiting along with the remainder of his platoon, but no one was there.



Suddenly nervous, he ran up and climbed into theshuttle. Something had torn through the equipment, wreaking it beyond easyrepair. The helm console had been tornapart, as had the communications systems and the handful of supplies they’dleft behind when they’d first boarded the WhiteStar. There were bloodstainseverywhere and scorched panelling where the Marines had fought their finaldesperate battle. Try as he might, he couldn'tsee any signs of dead Shambles.



Singh was dead, Joe Buckley was dead, Jimmy wasdead...and for what? The shuttle wasuseless now, and they were stranded on a ship that was about to explode. A sense of hopelessness threatened toovercome him, a legacy of the alien infection. Why bother trying to escape? Theship was about to die and they’d die with it. Perhaps it was better that way; whatever infection he might still carrywould be wiped away by the explosion as the conjoined ships interpenetrated anddied.



But it wasn’t in him to give up.

 

Oh thou wise and benevolent master of words we humbly thank you for your lessons in patience. For if you were not teaching us patience it would be cruel to leave us so long between posts.

Thank you for both your lessons and your writing.

 

ChapterTwenty-Three<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />



“It’s gone?”



“Rendered useless,” Buzz said. Zach stared in disbelief at the damagedshuttle. Someone or something had tornthe interior apart. Maybe it could befixed, but not in the fifteen minutes they had before the ship exploded. “How else can we get off this ship?”



“Lifepods?” Zachasked. There would be lifepods all overthe ship, by law. Every since theill-fated Titanic had hit an icebergand sunk, it had been law that every ship had to carry enough lifeboats for everyoneonboard, from the highest to the lowest. It had been a law that had been carried over into passengerstarships. “There will be some on thislevel.”



“They won’t be able to get us far away enough from theships in time,” Buzz said, thinking hard. The explosion – if it went off in normal space – would be greater thananything else mankind had ever produced. And even if it went off in the alien universe, no one quite knew what wouldhappen if the rift remained open long enough for the blast to flash throughinto normal space. “What if...”



“The forward section was intended as an emergencylifeboat,” Nancy said, from her suit. “Iread it in the emergency instructions – if people need to go further than thevicinity of the starship and all the shuttles are gone, the forward pod can bedisconnected and...”



“You’re right,” Buzz said. He darted back into the shuttle, picked up ahandful of supplies the Shambles hadn't bothered to destroy, and then jumpedback out. “Come on!”



Zach followed Nancy away from the observation blister anddown towards the prow of the ship. He’dforgotten about some of the more elaborate emergency precautions built into theWhite Star – but then, they’d been sofocused on the shuttle that it hadn't occurred to them that they might haveneeded to seek another way off the doomed ship. If Pelican had remainedoutside...the aliens had destroyed her, he was certain. Their control over interdimensional rifts wasa formidable weapon, far more powerful than anything known to the Association –or mankind.



“Damn it,” Buzz snapped, slowing to a halt. Ahead of them, the corridor was glowing withtranslucent white light. Zach could seethe fleshy mass of the alien ship below it. There was no time to detour around and hope that the aliens hadn't infestedthe entire section. “We’re going to haveto go through it.”



The sound of the WhiteStar’s labouring drives cut off the moment they entered the alienship. It was oddly silent, without eventhe heartbeat Zach had noted the last time they were trapped onboard theorganic construction. Absently, hereached out to touch the fleshy mass and was surprised to discover that it feltcold, rather than the warmth he remembered from earlier. Part of it almost seemed to be dying...butthere was no way to know.



“Perhaps we could shoot nanotech into their ship,” hesaid. “Maybe it would draw power fromthe biomass...”



“Except that the last of the modified nanites died withJimmy,” Gino snapped. The Marine soundedas if he had reached the end of his tether. Nine Marines had boarded the WhiteStar; only two remained. Joe Buckleyhad been transformed into an alien monster, Singh had died saving theirlives...and Jimmy had fallen to his death, sacrificing himself so that theothers could live. Zach remembered howsome of his classmates had mocked and belittled the military and cursed themunder his breath. The Marines put theirlives on the line so that no one else had to do it for themselves. “If we get stung, we get killed. Understand?”



Zach pulled his hand away from the alien biomass andfollowed Buzz deeper into the alien ship. His head started to hurt as he contemplated the dimensions of the alientech, how it seemed to fold away in ways that no human mind could easilyfollow. It might well be bigger on theinside than on the outside, a ship where time flowed in different patterns tothe normal universe. Or maybe he wascompletely wrong. They knew very littleabout the alien’s home universe and hopefully there would never be anotherencounter. But that hope was likely tobe disappointed. The aliens haddemonstrated implacable hostility in creating the Shambles and using a humancrew as raw material for their technology.



“Here,” Buzz said. They reached an intersection that seemed to lead back onto the White Star. Zach followed him, only to feel time itselfseeming to slow down for a few seconds...before they were tossed forward andejected out into the human ship. Behindthem, the glow faded and vanished from sight. “What’s happening?”



“The aliens must be preparing to disengage the ships,”Nan said. She sounded badly rattled,just like everyone else. Zach made amental note to insist that all future away teams were more carefully chosen, nomatter who wanted to cover their ass. “Ithink...”



“****,” Gino snapped. “Shamble!”



The creature was standing there, blocking the passagewaywith its looming presence. Buzz turned,intending to lead them down a second passageway, only to see another Shamble standingthere. The aliens must have deliberatelyejected them at the right spot, Zach realised, just before he saw that thethird passageway was empty. It didn't takea military genius to realise that they were being herded down a specificcorridor, away from the forward section they intended to use as a makeshiftlifeboat. Buzz ordered Gino to bring upthe rear as they ran down the third passageway, alert for a trap. They ran into a common room and stopped. Someone – something – was waiting for them.



Buzz swore out loud. The Shambles hadn't been recognisable as human, not until they’drealised what the aliens did to convert them into shambling monsters. This one was recognisable, all right; Jimmystood in front of them, his head recognisable on top of a vaguely humanoidfleshy mass. It struck Zach, as hestared at the hybrid, that the larger Shambles had to have been combinations oftwo or more people; there just wasn't enough flesh and blood in the averagehuman to produce some of the bigger monsters they’d seen. But Jimmy still looked recognisable...



“They know what you are planning,” Jimmy said. His voice was chillingly familiar. Zach stared in disbelief at the formerMarine. “Do you think that they willallow you to stop them?”

***​

Buzz had been taught, right from the start, to controlhimself at all times. Rage and hatredmight not have been the path to the dark side, as his trainers had joked whilethe candidates sweated their way through BUD/S and the Marine Training Course,but they were the path to blowing military operations and could therefore notbe tolerated by marines. And yet,staring at what had once been a friend and comrade, he found it hard to keephimself under control. He wanted to blowthe entity that wore Jimmy’s face to tiny pieces, and yet part of him resistedthe impulse because Jimmy had once been a friend. Zach had killed Joe Buckley – and looking atJimmy, Buzz no longer had any doubts about Zach’s decision – but could he killJimmy?



“Why?” Zachdemanded. “Why are you doing this?”



Jimmy’s head lolled forward, as if whatever force wasusing it as a puppet couldn't be bothered presenting a human facade. “The universe is theirs to use as theyplease,” Jimmy’s voice said. He musthave been infected the moment he landed on top of the burning Shamble, part ofBuzz’s mind noted. The infection hadproceeded so quickly that he’d been unable to inject himself with thecounter-nanotech, unless they’d already adapted to resist the cure, just asthey’d adapted to resist the weapons the Marines carried. “Everything is theirs; their destiny is to absorball into their control.”



“The Hegemony claimed that too,” Zach said, flatly. “And we beat them.”



“The Hegemony was nothing compared to us,” Jimmysaid. He was almost certainlyright. The Hegemony had been a societydeveloping the early principles of metal-working when it had been discoveredand uplifted to Galactic standards. Theyhadn't really understood the principles of their own technology, nor had theirsociety evolved to fit its new position. The unseen aliens, on the other hand, were advanced, powerful and sodifferent that the psychological warfare used against the Hegemony probablywouldn’t affect them. “You and your kindwill be absorbed into our...”



His voice broke off, suddenly. “Boss,” he said, after a long moment. “Kill me!”



Buzz stepped forward. “Jimmy?”



“Boss...kill me,” Jimmy repeated. His voice sounded as if he was in terriblepain. “I can't hold on....you have tounderstand....they are monsters. Theyare a horror beyond comprehension. Theywarp and twist our bodies and they eat our souls. They will adapt us all to service them...”



His head lolled again, his voice becoming toneless. “You will all join us,” he said. Behind them, Buzz heard the footsteps of theShambles as they advanced down the passageway. They weren't hurrying – but then, they didn't need to hurry. “We will use you to spread our word amongyour kind...”



Jimmy seemed to regain control for a second. “Boss, they know what Nan did to the drivesand they have cancelled it,” he added. His face seemed to twist in agony, reminding Buzz of how he’d felt when he'dbeen infected with the alien virus. “Please...”



Buzz lifted his plasma rifle and pointed it right atJimmy’s head. “I’m sorry,” he breathed,and pulled the trigger. Jimmy’s head seemedto explode in a burst of white-hot fire. The transformation must have been incomplete, because the alien flesh didn'tresist the plasma fire. Buzz vaporisedthe entire body, hoping and praying that wherever Jimmy’s soul went after hehad died, he was free of the alien contamination. But there was no way to know. “I'm sorry...”



Zach sounded bitter as he spoke into the silence. “Do you think that they’ll do that to all ofus, if they win the war?”



“I guess so,” Buzz said, still a little dazed. Jimmy had died fighting the aliens inside hisown head, a fight he’d been losing before Buzz had killed him. “They could spread their virus everywhere andoverwhelm the entire Association.”



“Boss,” Gino snapped. “They’re coming!”



Buzz saw the flickers of light at the corner of his eye,just before the oncoming Shambles broke into a stumbling run. “Come on,” he snapped, praying that thealiens hadn't had a chance to alter the corridors ahead of them. “Run!”



He unhooked a grenade from his belt and primed it,holding his hand down on the key. Therewas an emergency door ahead of them, if he recalled correctly; Gino saw what hehad in mind and prepared to close it the moment they were all through thegate. He tossed the grenade at theShambles as Gino closed the door, feeling the deck rattle as the grenade wentoff. Humans would have been killed ifthey had been caught in a blast at close proximity, but the Shambles...he heardthem thumping on the hatch with terrifying force a moment later. The hatches were supposed to be proof againsteverything from explosive decompression to hijackers trying to board and stormthe ship, but no one had prepared for the Shambles. He glanced back and saw the gaping holepunched in the hatch, followed by one of the Shambles slowly oozing through thegap. It would be after them as soon as itreformed itself into a humanoid shape.



The noise of the ship’s drives suddenly grew a great deallouder and he realised that they were out of time. He kept running anyway, urging them allforward, knowing that they might be vaporised at any second without knowingquite what had hit them. But nothinghappened...he found himself checking his timer as brilliant flashes of lightflickered over the bulkheads and discovered that the alien craft should haveleft minutes ago. Jimmy had tried towarn them, he remembered; the aliens had found the trap Nan had left for themand removed it before attempting to separate the conjoined ships. Nan wasn't trained to sabotage starships and besides,the White Star was a civiliancraft. It wasn't so easy to rig theentire ship to blow. Offhand, he couldn'teven recall if she carried a self-destruct system. She certainly didn't carry the antimatterpods that military ships used as a makeshift self-destruct if the standard systemhad been knocked offline.



Nan came to the same conclusion. “They took my program out of the computers,”she said, grimly. “They might have takenthe second one out as well.”



Buzz didn't doubt it. The aliens had had access to Jimmy...and if his ravings had beenaccurate, the aliens had probably probed his mind and learned everything heknew about the boarding party. He'd knownwhat they’d done to the White Star’s drives. They presumably knew about thecounter-nanotech as well...Buzz made a mental note to insist that the Admiraldestroy the White Star at once, ifthey every managed to get off the infested ship. Maybe he should even urge the Admiral tovaporise the surviving away team members as well. They might be carrying the virus with them...



“Here,” Nancy said, as they passed through a second setof hatches. At least Jimmy hadn't knownwhere they were going. “I think you haveto convince the computer that it’s a real emergency.”



“Leave that to me,” Gino said. He opened his suit and linked into thecomputer systems governing the makeshift lifeboat. The computers on the uppermost decks hadn’tbeen so badly exposed to the pervasive effects of the alien home universe,although there was no way to know for sure. They’d had to weave their own technology into the human technology justto ensure that they could steer the conjoined ships and hold them in place longenough for the aliens to escape, along with their human captives. “I think I can break into the system.”



A dull thump echoed through the compartment. The Shambles were outside, trying to breakin. It was a fully-verified airlock,secure against everything, yet Buzz found himself unconvinced that it wouldhold the Shambles long enough for Gino to disengage them from thestarship. The designers had only everenvisaged it as a last-ditch attempt to save some of the passengers if the White Star suffered a catastrophicaccident. His lips twitched at thethought. How else could they describe what had happened to the liner on hermaiden voyage?



“Get into the suits,” he ordered, opening a compartmentto reveal a handful of spacesuits. They wouldn'tbe personally tailored to the wearer, and they wouldn't have any of theadvanced equipment built into the Marine suits, but they’d provide protectionagainst vacuum if the Shambles punched their way into space. Explosive decompression probably wouldn't hurtthe Shambles any, not if they were resistant to plasma fire...but maybe they’dfreeze. “Hurry!”



“Something is fighting me,” Gino said. “The WhiteStar’s internal computer network seems to be coming back on line...eitherthat, or the aliens are using their own systems to **** with us.” Buzz found himself glancing around in hopesof spying one of the ghostly aliens, but saw nothing. “I think we may have to trigger it manually.”



“Do it,” Buzz ordered. Time was ticking away; God alone knew what would happen if the aliens hadn’t found the second program. But Jimmy had known about that too. They’d have to convince the Admiral todestroy the White Star. “Hurry.”



The sound of banging was growing louder. He found himself looking over at Nancy, whohad taken a seat and wrapped her hands together, praying for deliverance fromthe hell her life had become. She’d heldup well, even if he didn't quite understand how she'd survived the two weeksonboard the White Star alone, withoutbeing detected and hauled off by the Shambles. But then, she’d kept herself to the uppermost decks, trying to avoid theweirdness as much as possible.



Or maybe she isinfected and the infection never went active, he thought, sourly. There was no way to tell. The Admiral would have to have them all rigorouslyexamined before he allowed them onboard his ships – and even then, there wouldbe doubt. They might never be allowed tosee Earth again. There were asteroidsettlements where diseases were studied, a long way from a planet where thediseases might get out and kill thousands of people before they were broughtback under control; perhaps they’d spend the rest of their lives in a quarantineward. Being a prisoner, no matter how luxuriousthe prison, didn't sit well with him, but was there any choice?



“Got it,” Gino said, sharply. “I’ve programmed in an evasive course that shouldsend us out beyond the quantum space discharges. Everyone take a seat and brace for impact.”



Moments later, the entire lifeboat rocked as explosivebolts blew her out into space. Thegravity field vanished a moment later, leaving them clinging to their chairs asthe lifeboat’s internal drives took control and started steering them away fromthe White Star. Buzz held his hopes under firm control,knowing that the aliens could still try to kill them – and might be less restrained,once they were off the White Star. They didn't need to worry about accidentallydamaging the starship any longer.



“Brace,” Gino snapped. The entire lifeboat seemed to tumble, like a boat caught up infast-moving rapids. “They’re trying tokill us...brace!”



There was a second burst of energy rocking the lifeboat,and then silence.



“I think we’re free,” Gino said, after a longmoment. He shook his head indisbelief. “They actually tried to blastus with a quantum space discharge. Whatthe hell can do that?”



“Never mind that,” Buzz ordered. “Get me the Admiral.”

 

<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><font size="3">ChapterTwenty-Four<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com
“Admiral, something’s happening,” the sensor officersaid. “I’m picking up additional quantumdischarges around the White Star.”

“Show me,” Admiral Louis Vaclav ordered. There were only two hours left until theShimmering Harmony launched their attack on the White Star, an attack that would certainly ruin his career. Act to prevent it and risk war with anotherGalactic race, or allow it to happen and be blamed for letting a human starshipbe destroyed. “What are they doing overthere?”

“Drone #5 reports a small craft escaping the distortions,”the sensor officer said, a moment later. “She burned up her one-shot communicator reporting it.”

Louis nodded, tightly. The Galactics had never been able to build a FTL communicator smallenough to fit on anything smaller than a heavy cruiser, but humanity hadcreated the one-shot transmitters to allow a drone to report back in real timeand then destroy itself. Building an FTLreceiver was easy; provided he was willing to spend drones like water, he couldhave a far more up to date picture of whatever was going on than any GalacticCO. But no one knew for sure just howadvanced the Shimmering Harmony actually were...

“Order Drone #6 to identify her crew and see if they havea preliminary report for me,” he ordered. “If so, the drone can burn itself up transmitting it forward.”

“Aye, sir,” the sensor officer said. There was a long pause. “They’ve forwarded a report...sir, it’s CodeCromwell.”

Louis blinked. Code Cromwell was only used in one circumstance; invasion imminent. It was neversupposed to be used outside the Nine Stars, outside humanity’s small sphereof influence – and why would it? Aninvasion of the Tarn Empire or even the Gobbles wouldn't be a matter for immediateattention. Why would any of the Marinesuse Code Cromwell to report on the WhiteStar? Unless, of course, they haddiscovered a threat...

“Download the full report and upload it to my station,”he ordered, returning to his chair and sitting down. A holographic image of Captain Osbornappeared in front of him. “Run report.”

“Code Cromwell; I say again, Code Cromwell,” Osborn’svoice said. “Galactic-level threatdiscovered; entire universe in danger. All passengers and crew dead save one. White Star must be destroyedin order to save everything. Pelican Code Terminal; I say again, CodeTerminal. Surviving members of the awayteam may be contaminated with a Level X virus – recommend strictest quarantine proceduresfor receiving the team. Destroy the White Star at once; I say again, destroythe White Star at once.”

Louis stared at the message as it came to an end. Destroy the White Star? His career wouldnot survive, not in any form he cared to recognise. Pelicangone? And a universal threat? The Associationwas huge, but it only covered two-thirds of one galaxy, nothing like the entireuniverse. How could anyone have encountered a threat to the entire universe? And yetCaptain Osborn wasn't known for wild flights of fancy. So much was unprecedented about the wholeaffair that it was quite possible that there was a threat to everything. And what Level X threat had they discovered on the White Star?

Human quarantine procedures were classed at Level 1 toLevel 5, each designation calling for stricter procedures and a certaindisregard for civil liberties in enforcing the quarantine. Level X was tighter than any of them, awarning that the true level of the threat was unknown and nothing less than thestrictest procedures would suffice. Ithad only ever been invoked when an alien disease had appeared to spread intohuman bodies. Most of the threats hadbeen handled by programmed nanotech, but there was always the danger ofencountering something that spread too far before it could be stopped.

“Admiral, the Shimmering Harmony are moving,” thetactical officer said. Louis glanced up,still mired in indecision. The alienships were breaking formation and heading in towards the White Star, sweeping space with emissions the battle computers classifiedas targeting sensors. He’d beenreluctant to take his ships in any closer to the conjoined ships than strictly necessary,but it was clear now that he had no choice. “They’re preparing to attack the WhiteStar.”

Louis hesitated. Allow them to attack or risk starting another interstellar war? And if Captain Osborn was correct, thedestruction of the White Star mightmean the successful termination of a threat to the entire universe. He smiled, despite himself. There wouldbe a certain amount of cover in the message that Captain Osborn had sent tohim. Maybe...

“Alert all ships,” he ordered. The squadron had been at yellow alert eversince as the Shimmering Harmony starships had agreed to wait. “Howe isto remain here and monitor the operation from a safe distance.” Or at least he devoutly hoped that ten lightminutes was a safe distance. “The remainder of the squadron will form upon the flag and prepare to advance upon the WhiteStar. Our objective is to destroythe ship; I say again, the White Star isto be destroyed.”

“Understood, Admiral,” Captain Crichton said. If she was bothered by the order to open fireon a civilian passenger starship, she kept her doubts to herself. “All hands to battle stations; I say again,all hands to battle stations.”

Louis settled back in his chair, watching the ShimmeringHarmony as they glided towards their target. They moved with an eerie grace that suggested a more advanced technologythan the Cats, although there was no way to be sure. Humanity had improved upon the technology theGalactics regarded as standard; there was no reason why the Shimmering Harmony couldn'tdo the same, hidden away behind the quantum distortions that protected their homeworld. And the IDG projector had worked a similarmiracle for humanity at the Battle of Earth...

“All ships report ready, Admiral,” the Captain said,finally.

Louis keyed his console. “The battle line will advance and engage the enemy,” he said,formally. White Star was supposed to be defenceless, although she did have powerful shields. But with a Code Cromwell, there was nothingto be gained from taking chances. “I sayagain, the battle line will advance and engage the enemy.”

***​

“What the hell’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Gino snapped, from where he was hookinginto the navigational systems on the lifeboat. “My best guess is that gravity shockwaves from the rift or thedischarges are slamming into us.”

“But that’s impossible,” Zach started, before realisinghis mistake. “How the hell do they doit?”

“There’s always been a gravimetric distortion associatedwith opening a quantum gate,” Nan said. “Theytwist the gravity pulses so they actually travel faster than light for severallight minutes, allowing them to be detected by long-range sensors. If gates disrupt the fabric of space-time,why can't these...interdimensional rifts do the same?”

The lifeboat rocked again as Zach settled back in hischair, feeling sick. Normally,compensators would handle any effect on the passengers, but the lifeboat eitherdidn't carry them or Gino had accidentally deactivated them while powering upthe boat. He stole a glance at Nancy andsaw that she looked just as sick as he felt, before she smiled weakly athim. Whatever else happened, they wereaway from the White Star and theunseen aliens.

“The sensors on this boat are shot to ****,” Ginomuttered, as Buzz pulled himself free of his chair and swum over to helphim. “I can barely get any outside viewat all.”

“At least the Admiral got my message,” Buzz said. They’d picked up the drone’s query as soon asthey escaped the quantum discharges aimed at them by the aliens. Zach couldn't even envisage how such a systemcould work, although Nan had been muttering to herself about extrusion fieldswoven into the warp and weft between quantum space and normal space. He hadn't been able to follow her and hadlargely given up. “They know that there’sa threat on the White Star.”

“As long as he does as you suggested,” Zach said. The WhiteStar could not be allowed to fall permanently into the alien universe – andthe alien ship could never be allowed to return home. They had the data on counter-infectionnanotech and God alone knew how much else, intelligence their superiors – if theyhad superiors – would desperatelyneed to plan the invasion. “Will he?”

“I used Code Cromwell,” Buzz said. The doubt in his voice suggested that he tooworried that the Admiral wouldn't do the smart thing. “There isn't a higher code in the entireFederation.”

There was a pause as the craft rocked again. “I’m picking up...roughly fifteen starships,”Gino said, suddenly. Zach saw Buzzglance up, sharply. The Admiral’ssquadron numbered nine ships, all cruisers. “Alien ships, Galactic designs...”

He hesitated. “Ithink. These sensors are useless.”

“You can go outside and peek if you want,” Buzzsaid. “You did transmit the distresscall, didn't you?”

“Of course,” Gino said, with some irritation. “And one of the ships is heading right forus.”

***​

“Detach Anson torecover the lifeboat,” Louis ordered, as the squadron approached the flare ofdistortion that marked the location of the WhiteStar. No one – ever – had seen sucha churning maelstrom in space, outside the Great Eater at the heart of thegalaxy. Discharges from quantum spaceseemed to flicker open, unleashing a spray of energy into normal space, andthen close again, leaving no trace of their existence. “They are to tractor the lifeboat outside theconflict zone and then wait for orders.”

“That leaves us with seven ships, Admiral,” Crichtonpointed out. “That might not be enoughto stop...whatever we’re facing.”

Louis nodded, grimly. Back during the last war, human intelligence had known their enemy’s strengthright down to the last blaster charge. Now...there was no telling what theywere facing, apart from the fact that it seemed to be able to open rifts into quantumspace at will, on a scale well beyond anything humanity had ever managed. The ships were beaming back the full reportsfrom their sensors to Howe, just toensure that something got back to Earth if the unknown aliens destroyed thesquadron. But he had a feeling that it wouldn'tbe enough.

“Pass the order,” he said, calmly. Ahead of them, the Shimmering Harmony wasmoving into attack position. Unlike mostGalactics, they seemed to have copied the human long-range missile system – or maybethey’d devised their own – or else they had something that had never been shared with anyone else. “Continue to take us into the fire.”

The lead Shimmering Harmony ship belched a stream ofgreen energy into the maelstrom surrounding the White Star. Louis came tohis feet in disbelief as the sensors tracked the impossible pulse, noting thatit was unlike any other Galactic weapons system they’d seen in the twenty yearssince Earth had been introduced to the galaxy. It seemed to be just slightly slower than light speed, with a longerrange than Galactic phase cannons or any other form of directed energy weapon.

“Report,” he ordered. “What is that thing?”

“Uncertain,” the sensor officer said, finally. “Battle Comp calls it a beam of coherentplasma, but I don't know how they manage to keep it coherent long enough to hitthe White Star...”

Louis nodded, slowly. The Shimmering Harmony continued their bombardment, firing into the White Star...which remained stubbornlypresent, along with its conjoined partner. Louis glanced at the sensor readings and swore; somehow – and he had noidea how – the alien ship’s shields were protecting the White Star aswell as itself. And those shields werealarmingly strong...each of the blasts fired by the Shimmering Harmony wereharmlessly absorbed or deflected from their targets.

Space rent open around one of the alien ships, ripping itapart in a gout of energy. The others promptlystarted running evasive patterns, avoiding a second and third gash in thefabric of space and time. Each of therifts unleashed streams of energy even when they didn't destroy a starshipoutright, presenting a formidable navigational challenge to the squadron’shelmsmen. Louis, feeling a little beyondsurprised any longer, shook his head slowly. Hell, he wanted something thatcould do that. But Galactic science hadnever been able to tap the unimaginable power of quantum space.

“Entering firing range,” the tactical officer said. Ahead of them, the White Star was flickering in and out of existence, but she was stillprotected by the alien technology. “Admiral?”

“Open fire,” Louis said, shortly. The squadron opened fire with phase cannonsand torpedoes, slamming compressed antimatter against the alien force shields. Humanity’s phase cannons had been designed toautomatically rotate through all of the possible frequencies, allowing them tofind the one frequency that would allow them to pass right through the shield as if it wasn't there, but the alien shieldseemed to have no such weakness. By now,most of the Galactics had improve their shield generators too. “Try and get me a read on the alienshield. Where is it being generated...?”

“Unknown,” the sensor officer said. Space twisted nearby and unleashed a wave ofenergy that blew one of his cruisers into flaming debris. “The closer we get to the alien ship, themore my sensors have problems scanning it. All of the readings I’m getting make no sense at all. The bloody thing doesn't seem to have a weak point.”

Every ship has aweak point, Louis thought. But thealien ship seemed to have none, unless...

He leaned forward. “Switch our fire to targeting the WhiteStar outside the conjoined zone,” he ordered. “Now!”

The squadron altered course, pouring fire down on apassenger liner that they should have protected. There was a moment when the shield seemed tocover the White Star completely andthen it started to fail as the ship started to shimmer out of existence. The aliens were going home, Louis realised,as the distortions surrounding the conjoined ships grew stronger; wherever theycame from, they couldn't be allowed to go home. Osborn had been right. There was a deadly threat here and they had tostop it...

“Their shield seems to be wavering,” the sensor officersnapped. Updated targeting coordinateswere flashed to all seven ships; moments later, the Shimmering Harmony addedtheir fire to the newly-exposed weak point. “Admiral...”

“I see it,” Louis said. The distortion was growing stronger, shimmering into something notunlike a quantum gate....but a gate fixed in position, leading...where? There was no way to know. Gravity waves were already spilling out ofthe rift, hammering away at his ships. “Keepfiring...”

The shield collapsed, allowing the barrage to tear awayat the exposed hull. No normal shipcould have taken such a pounding, but the WhiteStar had been altered by the aliens. It held up for seconds, falling into the rift, before the field finally collapsed. A colossal shockwave lashed out at thesquadron as the two ships interpenetrated and died in a flash of fire. Louis was picked up and thrown across thebridge as the compensators fought to protect the crew from the worst of theshock. He heard the ship’s hullscreaming in protest before the systems finally got control of the ship’stumble and stabilised her. Nothing he’dexperienced in the war had been anything like it...

“Report,” he ordered, as he pulled himself to hisfeet. Half of the consoles were blinkingup red lights, warning of savage internal damage to the ship. Chances were that the rest of the squadronwas in the same boat. “What happened?”

“Ensign Toomuc is dead,” the Captain said. He'd been at one of the secondary scienceconsoles when the shockwave had hit the ship. His neck was clearly broken. “Sensors?”

“Mostly down,” the sensor officer said. She hesitated as she worked through herdamaged systems. “I have five beaconsfrom the rest of the squadron.”

Louis scowled. He’ddetached two starships from the fleet and one had been destroyed, suggestingthat another ship had been taken out before the alien ship exploded. Most of the blast had to have spilled into quantumspace or their home universe, he realised slowly, or the entire squadron wouldprobably have been wiped out. And as forthe rest of the squadron...

“Make contact with Anson,”he ordered. “Do they have the lifeboatin tow?”

“Yes,” the tactical officer said. He was bleeding from a nasty cut to hisforehead, but he’d returned to his station. “They were on the edge of the blast zone.”

The sensor officer coughed. “I think there might even bea permanent rift in space-time where the WhiteStar was destroyed,” she said. “It’sthrowing out a great deal of energy and radiation I don’t recognise.

“Sir, the Shimmering Harmony are gone,” the tacticalofficer added. Louis looked up,sharply. He’d hoped that he might be ableto salvage his career by establishing relationships with one of the most secretiveraces in the known universe. “Eitherthey were destroyed in the blast or they left while we were still trying torecover our sensors.”

Louis scowled. “Isthere any way to tell?”

“I don’t think so,” the sensor officer admitted. “All of our drones were taken out by theshockwave. There’s so much disruptionleft in normal space that I can’t say anything for sure. Howe mighthave observed their departure...”

“Leave it for now,” Louis ordered. Galling as it was, it wasn’t an immediate concern. The Federation would attempt to make contactwith the Shimmering Harmony through the Association and thank them for theirhelp, as well as gently probing to find out what had happened to the alienfleet. “Take us back to Anson.”

And hope like hell,he added to himself, that we can letCaptain Osborn and the rest of his men come home safely.

 

ChapterTwenty-Five<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />



“At least they gave us some creature comforts,” Buzzsaid, dryly. “But how long are theygoing to keep us here?”



Zach shrugged from where he was sitting on theblankets. The squadron had transportedthem back to Clarke, the closest human-occupied system to the Unseen Reaches,where they’d been transferred to a habitation module intended for work crewsconstructing new space-based defences. It hadn't escaped his notice that the module had been left in a freeorbit around the system primary and that a pair of gunboats had been assignedto keep an eye on them from a safe distance. The medical station, established by Federation Navy doctors withexperience in working with alien diseases, was also rigged to blow. Someone had taken their first report veryseriously.



In the five days since leaving the White Star, they’d been poked and prodded by a dozen doctors, eachone testing theories concerning the alien infection. Every single one of those tests had come backnegative, although no one was taking that for granted. The aliens had shown a remarkable level of adaptabilityin the White Star and it was quitepossible that the infection was inside them, biding its time until it couldstart to spread on Earth. Zach privatelywondered if senior officers in the Federation Navy hadn't quietly consideredsimply vaporising the module and reporting them all dead. He certainly couldn't blame them for thedecision, if they made it.



They had managedto recover more footage from the suits and their onboard sensors than anyonehad expected, but little of it had made sense. It reminded him of a trend in movie production – jerky cameras, as ifthey were being carried by the actors – that had been popular just before FirstContact. The scenes moved fromunderstandable images of the interior of the White Star to obscure patterns that suggested that something orsomeone had jammed the cameras – or, as Zach had pointed out, the cameras hadtried to record something existing in the alien dimension and been unable to doso. It was as good a theory as any.



There were no images of the Shambles, oddly enough, or ofthe interior of the alien ship. If theyhadn’t all made a consistent report, Zach suspected that the debriefing teams wouldn'thave believed a word of it. Now, back inreality, the Shambles and their unseen masters seemed more like a nightmarethan anything real, even though there was the rift in time and space where the White Star had been. It would be easy to forget everything, saveonly for the fact that seven Marines had died on the conjoined ships. And every passenger and crewman of the White Star, save for Nancy, wasdead.



The news bulletins they’d been allowed to read had simplynoted the destruction of the White Star andthe Randolph by unknown quantum spacephenomena. Someone somewhere wasprobably coming up with a story to explain the destroyed cruisers and the Pelican that wouldn't place themanywhere near the White Star’s rift. It sounded, Buzz had pointed out, as ifhigher authority had decided to suppress the truth for now, perhapsforever. With the unexpected involvementof the Shimmering Harmony, and the question marks raised over what the Catsknew about the unseen aliens, it was probably their best choice. There would be panic on Earth if the truthever came out, if it was believed. Somuch had happened that was outside all normal experience that it was easy tobelieve that it would be ignored.



Nan had been putting the time to good use, cataloguing everythingthe sensors had picked up about the conjoined ships and working on a number ofpreliminary theories about the alien home universe. Buzz and Gino had been much less active,clearly bored out of their skulls despite the entertainments the medical teamhad provided – and the constant poking and prodding from the doctors. Everyone seemed to have a different theoryabout their experience and the alien biological matter, including one thatwondered if they’d simply misinterpreted what they’d seen. Surely the aliens had to be corporal, atleast as humans understood the term; maybe the ship itself was the alien andthe Shambles were its drones.



And Nancy had been pacing around restlessly. She had been the least prepared of them allto encounter hostile aliens and she was young, too young. There were times when she just broke downcrying, finally releasing her emotions after finding safety, and times when sheexpressed an interest in joining the Federation Navy – or the FederationMarines. Buzz had pointed out that thenumber of female Federation Marines could be counted on the finger of one hand,but it hadn't deterred her. Even thefact she would have to work her way into a national SF unit first hadn't slowedher down.



Zach himself had written out the first preliminary reporton the aliens – the Unseen, as he’d decided to call them. The basic form was identical to every othersuch report, but there was far more speculation than fact in his report. He’d noted that many of his conclusions werebased on observation and theories, rather than hard data, although Jimmy’sfinal words had suggested that Nancy’s vision of the alien mentality had beenaccurate. There was no observable reasonfor the alien hostility, but while some humans might beat themselves up overreal or imagined sins against the aliens, he knew better than to think thatthey needed a reason. Some people werejust bastards who needed a punch in the nose, picking upon the weak becausethey could. The Unseen seemed to be thesame.



The alien technology had been the most speculative partof the report. He’d noted that thealiens seemed to have a high degree of control over quantum space, a controlthat could perhaps be duplicated by humanity in the future. The innards of their ship seemed to be largerthan the outside would suggest, although he’d made it clear that their sensorshad been unreliable and even if they’d been working properly, it might just bea sensor error caused by the close proximity of the White Star. Their biologicaltechnology was perhaps the most dangerous aspect, he'd concluded; they showed acapability to absorb knowledge from human minds – he’d added, reluctantly,Jimmy’s claim that the aliens ate souls – and a willingness to convert humansinto raw material and fuel for their technology. If they ever overcame the disadvantages theyhad in working within the normal universe, they would pose a threat to everylast race in the universe. There was noway to know if there was a time differentialbetween the alien universe and humanity’s home, or if Nan’s speculations hadbeen way off the mark. The invasioncould happen at any moment.



He hadn't been able to say much about building defencesagainst the aliens, should they return in force. Human technology had failed when it wasbrought close to the alien universe; if they extended that field into normalspace, resistance might become impossible. But biological technology worked in both universes. Humanity would need to improve its immunesystems – to prevent infection – and develop biological technology of itsown. He had no idea how to begin – and he suspected that no oneelse would understand either. Butbiological technology was far more adaptable than anything else, as far as hecould tell. The human race needed that technology.



Looking around the medical module, he shook hishead. Would they ever be allowed to gohome?

***​

Buzz had never talked to Admiral Sampson before; he hadn'teven seen the Admiral outside a briefassembly on Terra Nova, back during the war. Speaking to the man who had led humanity’s fight against the Hegemonywas humbling, even though he was justa man.



“I read the report from Mr. Lynn,” Admiral Sampson said,without preamble. Neither of them likedwasting time with small talk. “Do youendorse it?”



Buzz didn't hesitate. “Absolutely, sir,” he said, flatly. He’d read Zach’s report carefully and added his own notes andobservations. “I believe, if anything,that it doesn't go far enough.”



“So I see,” the Admiral said. Buzz’s own report had recommended addingflamethrowers to any Marine unit that might be deployed against the Unseen infuture. And maybe they could come upwith nastier nanotech to deploy if the Unseen returned in force. Galactic treaties meant nothing if the entireuniverse was on the brink of extinction. “And can we risk letting you out of the module?”



“I don’t know,” Buzz admitted. Right now, he was bored – and felt as if thedoctors had examined every last atom of his body. “I believe that we are not infected, but certaintyis impossible.”



“I know,” Admiral Sampson agreed. “We can't make this public, not now.”



“Yes, sir,” Buzz said. It wasn't agreement and the Admiral would know it. There was nothing to be gained from keepingthe while encounter a secret; besides, whoever ran into the Unseen next wouldneed what had been learned from the first encounter. “Do you intend to inform the Galactics?”



“I’d like to inform the Cats and ask them if they encounteredthe Unseen in the past,” Sampson said, tightly. “But Ambassador Li hasn’t been able to secure an interview with any ofthe Cats. They haven’t been talking to anyone over the last year or so...”



“Maybe they’re all dead,” Buzz suggested.



“It’s possible,” Sampson agreed. The Cats were biologically immortal – and tired. Even the one who had made First Contact withhumanity had been burdened down with his immense age. There were – or there had been – Cats whowere older than the entire human race. “Ihave been urging Li to make contact with the Shimmering Harmony, but theyrarely respond to any questions from the lesser races.”



Buzz nodded. He’dread the files on the Shimmering Harmony after they’d reached Clarke and hadbeen surprised to see how little was known about them, even by the Association. They had to be hiding something, but what?



“There will be a top secret research effort intodiscovering defences we can use against the aliens,” Sampson continued. “I want you to lead that team – along withthe rest of your away team. It will keepyou occupied...”



“And under observation,” Buzz said. On one hand, it was irritating to feel as ifhis superiors didn't trust him, but given what they’d seen of Unseen technologythey would have been fools to trusthim completely. “Thank you, sir.”



“Thank you,”Sampson said. “You may have helped savethe galaxy.”



“But no one will ever know,” Buzz finished.



“No,” Admiral Sampson agreed. “No one will ever know.”

***​

Nancy stared out at the stars, understanding – for thefirst time – why so many spacers didn't want to return home. Space was vast, so immense as to be beyondher understanding, yet it was also comforting, unlike a planetary surface. The Unseen would never understand the beauty inthe stars, she realised, remembering what she’d seen in their mentality, andwould never see them as anything other than something to be exploited. They had such power and yet they lived suchisolated lives.



Her father was dead, the lawyers had said, although they hadn'tsaid much about how he’d died. Zach – sweet kind Zach – had warned her thatthe Federation Navy had classified everything about the encounter with theUnseen, reminding her that she too was bound by the Earth Security Act. She hadn't needed the warning. There was no need to tell the lawyers whathad happened to her father to get them to acknowledge her as the new CEO of BrighamTechnologies, Inc. Her father had heldmost of the stock and ruled it with iron determination, refusing to allow hiscontrol to be contested by the other stockholders. They would object to a girl who had barelyreached the Age of Consent to taking the reins, but they would have nochoice.



Not that she intended to change anything, well...notmuch. Brigham Technologies couldcontinue producing cutting edge technology for the human race, but it wouldwork on another project, a project that was all hers. They would find another way to open a gatewayinto the Unseen universe, a way that would allow Nancy to reach themdirectly. She could speak to them, asshe had touched their minds, and show them that they were wrong. There was no need to consume the entireuniverse to feed an endless hunger for power and dominance.



And as soon as she was out of the module, the projectwould begin...

The End?​

 

Very cool eager for the next installment Thanks Mate

 

Thank You for sharing another one of your wonderful tales Chris.
I can hardly wait for the next saga.
Matt

 

Thanks guys!

More coming soon.

Chris