I don’t have time to look in the mirror. It doesn’t matter: I know who I am. I’m not going to be pretty.
I run to the station’s main hatch. Half a dozen Hreck are already suiting up. “No!” I shout. “It’s mine.”
They scurry in confusion, waving their little claws. “But sir,” one of them gurgles through a voice-synthesizer. I wave them away. I cannot allow them to do this.
Lens has studied the history of the first conflict with the Great Dread. Neither the ELFF nor the SongLuminants had ever known warfare. Their first impulse was to negotiate, which proved absolutely impossible. While it was clear that the Dread were intelligent, they seemed to have no capacity to communicate with other lifeforms – or no interest in it.
The Eer-gaaani had long since forsworn battle, and had to rediscover lost technologies – lost technologies that ultimately proved worthless. The Great Dread are composed of both matter and energy. When attacked, they are able to manipulate their composition to best resist the attacker. When they are about to incur damage from a physical weapon, they shift that part of their bodies to an energy form.
Energy is incapable of incurring damage per se, but as Self has painfully discovered, beings composed of pure energy are vulnerable to destabilization. Unlike Self, whose nul-energy form imbues a physical matrix, the Great Dread’s physical manifestation is wholly physical. So weapons calculated to disrupt energy won’t affect it.
After long experimentation, the Eer-gaaani developed a weapon that would work. It was a simple sonic emitter that produced a vibration destabilizing the Great Dread’s energy. In order to work, however, it had to be attached directly to a physically manifesting part of the Dread’s form. Upon contact, it made the Dread’s energy manifestation impossible, which left it vulnerable to physical weapons, such as military-grade lasers.
The trick was this – since sound won’t propagate in empty space, the thing had to be attached, and try as they might, the Eer-gaaani couldn’t figure out how to automate it in such a way as to outsmart the Dread. The traditional method was that a warrior in a spacesuit personally placed the emitter when the Dread manifested its tentacles to grab a tender bite to eat. Of course, it was a suicide mission: the warrior would either end up being the Dread’s last meal, or vaporized by the laser.
Then Lens understood what had puzzled Axel: hundreds of tiny crustacean spacesuits, and none for me. I was an Advanced Sentient. Advanced Sentient lives were worth something. Lens had also been pretty certain that if an individual Hreck could not be persuaded to make an heroic sacrifice, then the SongLuminants would be perfectly willing to telepathically possess its body, abandoning it just before it was consumed. Self knew all about telepathic projection. Suzanna had been aware, but helpless, the whole time Lucius was using her body. I imagine what it would be like trapped in the tentacles of the Great Dread, powerless to fight back.
I concentrate, drawing nul-energy up from the roots of Yggdrasil, and grab two Hreck spacesuits. There is enough material here to rearrange it into one – and the right material, too. It is a simple matter of design.
I can do it. I can do it easily, by which I know I’d been designed to do it. I can feel the envy of the Goliath emanations. I can picture Seth sitting in a spaceship bathroom, a pile of failed roses at his feet. Silly Seth, who was designed for moral reasoning! I can’t make a rose either, and I know it.
I suit up as quickly as possible, and shut myself into the airlock before the Hreck decide to interfere. I have access to a small propulsion booster – well, two, really, since I hadn’t bothered to merge them. I strap them side by side onto my back. I open the hatch and point myself in the direction of the Great Dread.
Now, to get its attention. It’s just my luck that Tara would show up here at such a crucial time. I only hope that the pulse cannons of the Hreck will be enough to draw the Dread away from her spaceship. The ship will have more energy, but the flares from the cannons are easier pickings.
For a moment, it seems like it isn’t going to work. The Dread ignores me. But then it turns, and I have the distinctly uncomfortable feeling that I have been spotted. It vanishes and reappears almost on top of me. They have teleportation?
Shit.
The monster is larger than a battleship. It glows a dull red in the patches where it squirms in and out of manifestation. Its fur pulses in the sunlight, and I realize that it is intended as a gathering surface for solar energy. Dozens of pairs of legs twitch impotently, useful for land propulsion, but useless in space. On the other hand, the tentacles which replaced the first six pairs are quite practical for snatching prey and delivering it up to the cruel forcipules protruding in front of the mouth. I’m not ashamed to say that I feel a shiver of fear. After all, it is going to kill me. Unlike the Hreck, though, it won’t be a permanent death.
Oh man, there has to be a better way. If I have to kill these things individually – and we don’t yet have a grasp on how badly this galaxy is infested – how many times will I have to die? It had taken over a million years to hunt down all of the Dread in the first conflict. And they are not unintelligent. They started to see it coming. Despite that, it seems that in a lot of cases, their feeding instinct was stronger than wisdom.
The monster draws closer. It seems to be moving by expelling a stream of gas – not so different from my jetpacks. That means it’s reasonably slow, but I’m not much faster.
One thing we don’t know is how much communication these Dread had with the ones in the Sculptor Dwarf galaxy before they were erased after the last war. If these are an isolated group, they might not be aware of the strategy the Eer-gaaani had developed. It’s possible the reason this one is abandoning caution is that it doesn’t know what I am trying to do. Or maybe it is just hungry.
And then all warmth, all light is gone. Tara and her companions have vanished from the bridge of their ship. Panic gives way to bewilderment. The Dread hadn’t gone near them. It was a teleportation effect. What the hell?
Bewilderment gives way to panic again. Tara is gone. Who cares how she went? She is gone, and that is very, very bad.
In that moment of distraction, I find myself plucked up by a writhing tentacle. It has sucker pods which adhere to my spacesuit. As it steers me towards the poisonous forcipules, I can feel it draining the life from me. I can’t allow myself to succumb, not yet. One last blast from my jetpack, and I’m moving, sailing past the mouth and towards the antennae. The sucker still holds; momentum carries the tentacle with me.
I’m aiming for below the antennae. At the base is a feature unique to centipedes, the organs of Tömösváry. Taxonomist had been shocked to learn how similar the Dread were to centipedes on Earth, and speculated that it was impossible to be a coincidence. These organs were used to sense vibrations, and as such, were especially vulnerable to the tactics we intended to use.
I make contact, placing my foot at the base of the antennae. I take a deep breath and begin to sing. It isn’t ordinary singing – it is a deep intonation, double-vocalized in the manner practiced by the monks of ancient Tibet. Instinctively, I reach into myself, finding my heartbeat, letting my breathing, letting the vibration of the tone synchronize. I can feel the vibration traveling through my body and into the space where my adversary makes contact with my boot. Such a subtle tremor, rattling through its body, too faint to be heard even if the creature had ears, but enough to shake its energy completely back into physical manifestation.
The tentacle continues to grasp me, trying to maneuver me back towards the mouth. There’s still the sense of energy draining. Worse, I can feel its alien mind. It isn’t altogether unpleasant, not like the sort of deep scans used for interrogation by CenGov’s telepathic corps. Jamey and Chase remember that sensation all too well. No, this isn’t agonizing, but it is alien. Not damaging, but disgusting.
The plan is working, though. The Great Dread is being forced to reify.
I make myself ignore the distractions, ignore the incursion of the alien mind, harder still, ignore the disappearance of Tara, and focus on the sound of my own heartbeat, the sound of my own voice.
I can’t ignore it. I am being absorbed. But the Great Dread is physical now. Why don’t the Hreck fire at it? Could it be that they don’t want to fire at me? Maybe they have compunctions against killing an Advanced Sentient. Idiots – I will be dead either way, and death doesn’t matter to me.
But this does. My consciousness is being absorbed. My heartbeat is no longer mine. I am losing – losing myself. My heartbeat isn’t good enough. I can’t focus.
And then I remember that I am still wearing the locket underneath my spacesuit. A token of the only thing in any universe worthy of attention.
My voice breaks into a scream.
Tara!