The air tastes bad. Smoky and slightly full of eratochemicals. Like a class 5 energy transfer regulator burned out.
That probably happened during the battle.
Lady Lorma kicks ass. Tara’s mother picked a good one.
We were fighting? Why were we fighting?
We’re not on Frangfrang anymore. Just when I thought I was talking some sense into those damn daznasas. I’ve never met plants who were so unfriendly. That whole planet needs an attitude adjustment. Maybe a genetic adjustment. Davy could fix it. He could make it so the food doesn’t need to be chemstripped anymore to be safe. Davy could do it easily.
Davy is saying something. It’s something like, « Power…blow your mind…dumbass …concentrate. »
“We almost had them,” Lieutenant N’Sha says. “They’re retreating into a wormhole.”
That’s weird. Really weird. I can hear N’Sha better than Davy?
Something is wrong with my head. Maybe if I pound it against the wall a few more times, it will loosen up.
That’s better. I can clearly hear Owen saying, « That only works on ancient electronics when there’s a loose connection. Do it to anything solid state, and you risk breaking something vital. »
Is my brain wired or solid state? It’s kind of mooshy, isn’t it? Maybe sloshing will work better than banging. Maybe that’s why I have an urge to spin in circles.
“Damn,” says Lady Lorma. “That ship was too well-shielded from our scanners. Without a closer examination, we’ll never be able to identify who attacked us.”
“It’s definitely a CenGov design,” says N’Sha. “We could tell from the battleports.”
Wow, they’re really smart. It’s kind of surprising when humans are smart. Except Tara. Thinking about Tara makes me feel so much better. If I can just keep my focus on her, maybe the world will stop spinning.
« The world will stop spinning if you stop twirling around, » says Davy.
“A decade ago, we wouldn’t have been able to fight off a ship like that,” says N’Sha. “Our technology has improved so much from trading with the Combine – especially the Quicknodes.”
“So much has changed,” agrees Lady Lorma. “Earth used to seem so far out of reach.”
Wait. Earth? Self wants me to know something about Earth. Something very, very important. “It’s on Earth,” I tell them.
“What?”
“Your Holiness!” exclaims Lady Lorma. “Did that ship go to Earth?”
“How could he know that?” asks N’Sha. “It went through a wormhole.”
“The Quicknodes can track through wormholes,” says Lady Lorma. “Why not the Archon? Just because he’s never done it before – every time we think we’ve seen the limits of his power, he pulls out a new trick. Sometimes, I almost believe that malarkey about the Living God.”
“You shock me, Lady Lorma,” says N’Sha, but she doesn’t smell or sound shocked at all. “I thought you were a devout Archonist.”
“Aren’t we all?” says Lady Lorma.
I see. That was probably sarcasm.
“Look,” says Lady Lorma, “Have you ever known him to be wrong – no matter how insane he’s acting?”
N’Sha considers. “We could divert our course to Earth. We were supposed to go to Skyvale and Tobria, but given the fiasco on Frangfrang, I think it might be politic to reschedule.”
“I know what Tubby would want us to do,” says Lady Lorma. “But Tubby’s a wuss…I mean, he’s such a typical male. He’d want us to return to the Domha’vei and demand an explanation from the Alliance. But I suspect that Archon Tielo wants us to go to Earth. Am I right, your holiness?”
It takes me a moment to realize that I’m being consulted. “We have to go to Earth,” I agree.
“You heard him. That’s a direct command from our god,” says Lady Lorma.
“But what about the Matriarch?” asks N’Sha.
“He’s got that handled. That I’m certain of. He would never leave her in any danger – no, that’s wrong. He couldn’t, physically couldn’t. It’s hard for those of us born on Skarsia to completely understand, but his loyalty is inborn, grown from the root.”
N’Sha nods curtly. “Then let’s go hunting. He’d damn well better be right.”
Frangfrang is closer to Earth than Memehaven, but the shortest wormhole path from Frangfrang to Earth is a little longer than the shortest wormhole path from Memehaven to Earth, which is one of the reasons CenGov chose to locate on Memehaven. The shortest path from Frangfrang takes 14.43638942 hours, which gets us just outside the orbit of Mars. Mars is on the other side of the solar system right now, but Earth is in a really good position relative to this wormhole. If Earth were where Mars is now, we’d have to go through an entirely different set of universes and it would add another two hours onto the trip.
That’s why pathfinders are so important. In the old days, there would only be one wormhole path between any two systems. So if Earth were far away from the exit, it would take us weeks in normal space to get there. Clive Rivers worked with pathfinders for a long time before he became a political criminal, which is why we used to rely on him to find paths for us even though he’s a mega-dick. Now we have Cyrus. Cyrus is a pathfinder. He just knows where to put the holes. I’m not sure how that works, but it sure is convenient.
Travel gets more convenient all the time. On a good horse, you can do 80-90 kilometers a day. A hovercar can go that distance in about 40 minutes. A flyer could do it in ten minutes if that’s the only distance it had to go – I mean, you have to figure in takeoff, landing, and getting up to speed. At maximum speed, a standard commercial flyer on Dolparessa can go about 1200km/hr. On Skarsia, it’s closer to 1350, on Volparnu 1175. That’s because it’s wise to avoid breaking the speed of sound, which is determined by the average thickness of the atmosphere combined with climatic factors. Not that it’s dangerous, but the sonic boom really annoys people, so supersonic flight routes are be plotted through inconvenient wildernesses.
Wormholes, on the other hand, are always plotted near inconvenient wildernesses, because if you put them too close to civilization, the spacecraft could emerge into a bunch of debris. Earth is a good example. They’ve shot more shit into orbit around Earth, the moon, Mars, certain asteroids…lots of garbage around the sun, but mostly in the same orbit as Earth. Just between Mars and the asteroid belt is really the safest place to put a wormhole.
Skarsia is different. It’s best to put the wormhole outside the orbit of Volparnu because the power grid messes things up. Nobody has ever really figured out why, but it probably has something to do with pos-matter and the nul-universe and making it dangerous to poke holes in spacetime there. That’s why most travelers to the Domha’vei stop off at Eirelantra and catch a local flight if they need to go to Sideria or Dalgherdia or something.
Davy is saying something again. Davy is saying « We don’t give a fuck. Pay attention. »
Pay attention to what? The atmosphere, maybe. The smoky smell is gone. How many molecules of good oxygen are there? You know, there are fewer molecules in a cubic meter of air in Denver than Miami. Tara was in Denver once, and she had a terrible sinus headache. She was never in Miami, though. Miami hasn’t been safe for centuries. Too many things crawled out of the swamps after the ecodump of ’76.
« PAY ATTENTION TO LADY LORMA. » Davy yells.
Lady Lorma is saying, “If I know Tubby, he’ll have sent a message via the hub at Memehaven. It will be waiting for us once we reach the Sol system.”
I walk up behind Lady Lorma and begin to sniff. She’s shed a considerable amount of dead skin cells, and really needs a shower. Also, she’s several ounces too light because she’s dehydrated. “Need water,” I suggest.
Lady Lorma turns around and jumps…I guess she didn’t notice me approaching. “Somebody get him a glass of water,” she commands.
“If CenGov is behind these assassination attempts, they might intercept a message sent through Memehaven,” says N’Sha.
An ensign hands me a glass of water. She smells afraid of me. “Thank you,” I tell her.
“That would be as good as admitting their guilt – and they don’t want to get on our bad side. These diplomatic visits to Alliance worlds were supposedly to mend fences,” says Lady Lorma.
I try to hand the glass to her.
“You asked for it,” she snaps.
“Supposedly – but if the Matriarch had been killed by a radical group on Frangfrang…”
Now what am I supposed to do with this water? I transform it into mercury.
“It only works if we can’t trace the trouble back to Memehaven,” says Lady Lorma. “That’s why I’m betting that the message will be there. Archon Tielo! What are you doing? That’s toxic!”
I turn the mercury into sand. In the background, I can hear Davy droning, «…wasting power… » When did Davy get to be such a wet blanket?
Pay attention to Lady Lorma. I stare her directly in the eye.
“Is there something you want to tell me, Your Holiness?” she snaps.
Is there? There is! “It’s buried beneath Earth’s second tallest mountain. It’s a secret.”
“What? Some kind of hidden base left from when CenGov controlled the planet?” asks N’Sha.
“I thought that the elite class rarely set foot planetside,” adds Lady Lorma. “I’d think they’d be too afraid of bio-contamination to establish a base there.”
A base? I can see something about a base. “On the moon!” I shout. “We need explosions!”
Lady Lorma shakes her head sadly. “He’s just raving again.”
“You’d better hope he’s not just raving,” says N’Sha. “We came all the way here because we bet on his perceptions. It will be embarrassing if our enemies escaped to the Fomalhaut Corridor instead.”
“Especially since we’re going to have to explain our sudden appearance to the government of Earth,” says Lady Lorma.