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Krieger liked his new ship. He liked it a lot.
And it was his in every sense of the word. Blue had manufactured the thing himself, only using a transponder ID provided by Sharp to keep his new toy from being stopped for flying without one. Apparently this was the special kind used by deep cover diplomatic vessels. The sort that pinged a local node and promptly told every authority in listening range to politely fuck off and ignore anything it did.
He had named it the Abigail after Spencer, and thought of it as the Ab. The thing was mostly engines, a sleek needle shape fifty meters long. At first glance there seemed to be no way it could pack the sort of mass needed to open its own gates into the Cascade, but Blue had informed him that every spare space was packed with ultra-dense material. It was just over the lower limit needed to plunge through the dark beneath the skin of the universe.
He really hoped nothing got shot off the thing, or he was screwed.
“Ready for next jump,” he said to the ship.
“Coordinates locked in,” the computer said back in a warm if neutral voice. “Jump sequence scheduled. Countdown begins.”
This trip through the Cascade would be longer than the first, which had been more than six hours through a category two region of space. The turbulence—which was the name for sections of the underspace with worse than normal effects on human senses—would have driven him insane in the second hour if not for the advanced systems in place on the ship.
The single cabin within a ship that was mostly engines had every amenity one person would need, including a pilot’s cradle unlike anything Krieger had ever imagined, much less seen. It allowed him to fly the thing as if it were one of Blue’s drones, laying on his belly and comfortably supported while his hands worked the controls. A neural interface that somehow didn’t require an implant jacked into his skull let him work with more precision and grace than any human pilot before him could have managed.
The black tubes inserted into his veins were the only disturbing element. They delivered a steady stream of nanomachines into his bloodstream, cycling them in and out as they spent their charges and had to be recycled. Each hovered over a section of nerve somewhere in his body and projected a mild field designed to dampen their receptiveness. This had the curious effect of making Krieger feel as if his muscle, bones, and senses were all wrapped in a layer of tight fabric but kept the worst of the Cascade effects from melting his neurons into slag.
“Duration countdown please,” Krieger asked once the ship slipped through its gate.
“Eight hours forty two minutes until real space,” the computer said. “What interval would you like to—”
Krieger tried to wave a hand but failed to recall that his were locked into the cradle. It all worked out; the system apparently recognized the attempt and stopped speaking anyway.
“Just give me a five minute warning beforehand,” he said. “I’m going to try to sleep until then.”
The computer paused, which Krieger had internalized in his time dealing with intelligent machines as a bad sign. They thought at speeds which made normal human reactions like pausing unnecessary. They only did things like wait for a moment to put humans at ease. “I can put you to sleep if you would like.”
Krieger shivered. “No. That will not be needed, thank you. I will drift off on my own or not, as it may be. Please wake me at the appropriate time.”
The machine chimed assent. Krieger, freshly awakened by the thought of having something as fundamental as his wakefulness managed by an outside force, got to thinking.
Krieger lasted about three minutes before he was out like a light.
***
He was fully alert when the transition came. The rundown given to Krieger by Blue was illuminating. His view of the Children as all-powerful beings had the shine taken from it. They were mighty, a word he considered the most apt description of the race, but like the capricious gods of old Greece they left damage and fallout in their wake.
“Open log,” Krieger said. “Begin transmission to secure node for delivery to Commander Sharp.”
The computer dinged its assent. It would have been trivial for Blue to fly this vessel alone, by Ansible. And it did have one, else communication would have been impossible at this distance. Four thousand light years away. Four times as far as any human being had ever been from another.
But there was a risk involved. If something happened and the Ansible link went down, Blue would have lost control of the vessel and the technology—one the Children had not yet developed—would fall into their hands. Perhaps not the worst scenario imaginable if they kept their word and continued away from human space, but the fear was real. Would those who agreed to leave reconsider after gaining the ability to instantly communicate over any distance, allowing them to perfectly coordinate? That had always been the fear; the Children would have annihilated humanity without that single advantage on the side of Krieger’s people.
The onboard Ansible and its backup could be destroyed at a single command from him, and would be in the event the ship itself determined it would be taken captive. A human pilot could control the vessel without input from its creator, possibly even escaping.
“Blue, you were right,” Krieger said. “I don’t know if you are able to see what I am seeing over this link. Perhaps you have increased the bandwidth enough to carry video in real time along with sensor data. Your predictions were spot-on. Your people stopped in this system for what must have been weeks.”
His jump ended far inside the target system, with sensors running wide open to gather as much information as possible. There was much to see.
For example, about half of an entire moon circling the local gas giant was gone. Pieces as large as cities floated around its exposed outer core, the surface blasted and stripped away for raw materials. An abandoned gas mining platform nearly a quarter kilometer across pinged on the sensors exactly where Blue said it would be in a stable low orbit. Krieger didn’t have to inspect it to believe the thing was loaded with hundreds of drone ships, each capable of dipping into the thick atmosphere of the parent planet to filter hydrogen from it like whales sucking krill from the sea as they swam.
Abandoned crude refineries orbited the broken moon, places to prepare the raw chunks of matter for consumption by the nearly magical fabricators housed upon Children bodyships. This system had been one of only a few handfuls identified by long-range scouting initiatives on the part of the Children as safe places to avoid detection while repairing and upgrading. Of all those other systems, it was the furthest from the Alliance. A likely place to refuel and prepare their race for the long run to the other side of the galaxy or further.
Krieger noted the handshake signals coming from the abandoned tech floating millions of kilometers away. “The frequencies and encryption styles are Child design. They were here. The first way station is confirmed. I admit hoping you would be wrong, at least a little. Yes, it would mean the Children probably planned to attack us again, but then I would not have to spend another twenty hours in the Cascade before turning back around.”
The next stop was at least four jumps away, all of them arduous if not as long as the first two. There he hoped to find evidence the Children truly had left for the other end of their galaxy, perhaps beyond it. Their species considered this spot a good jumping-off point for potential movement into the ocean of dark between galaxies.
Krieger took a deep breath and prepared himself for another round of dull nerves and anxious waiting for something to go horribly wrong.