“What?” Niko said incredulously, setting down her tea. She’d thought she had a few hours to herself to read, but then Dabry had appeared in the door of her chamber with startling news.
“The rumors were true. The Gate isn’t working,” Dabry repeated. He added, “Reports indicate that it stopped functioning about three days ago.”
“Were there any signs beforehand?”
He paused, listening to something on an inner channel. Niko knew from experience he was listening to multiple channels at once; it was one of Dabry’s talents and the main reason she’d recommended him for training as her sergeant in the first place. He shook his head. “Not a sign of it.”
Niko’s voice was dangerously low and full of tension. “I know there were rumors, but come on. You’re telling me that the ancient alien gates, upon which the majority of the Known Universe’s species depend for travel, have failed?”
“Just this one, it seems like,” he said. “There’s no talk of others elsewhere failing. We’re in visual range now. Let’s go to the pilot chamber. Thing, put the Gate up on your screens there.”
By the time they got there, they had accumulated Atlanta and Gio as well, summoned by ship comms chatter. The main visual screens flickered with movement, silver flecks against the stars’ burning curtains. They could see the Gate hanging in space, surrounded by the ships that would normally have been passing through it. Even as they watched, they saw another pulling in.
Atlanta stared at the Gate, transfixed. She’d seen them before, many times, but always in working order: a vast silvery ring hanging in space, its inner depths filled with purple and blue and green fire. No matter what angle you looked at it from, that fire filled the structure, which was not a simple ring, but adorned with carvings of plants and animals that had not been seen in millennia.
Scholars had dedicated their lives to those carvings; they were different on each Gate. Near this one, like most of them, was a small space station that had grown like a barnacle on whatever structure the Forerunners had originally left there, and a few loose chunks of rock, tethered to that structure.
Every Gate was powered by the black hole at the heart of whatever galaxy hosted it. The ship could feel this one’s distant tug, but some force kept the Gate where it was in relationship to the faraway, massive smolder of gravity moving on its skin.
Atlanta’s eyes were wide. She knew it should be filled with mystic fires, but this one hung dead and inert, and all you could see through it were the stars on the other side. A small ship was traveling back and forth, in and out of the Gate right now, as though trying to taunt it back into life.
“Why are there so many ships here?” she asked. “There have to be dozens!”
“I’d bet many have been ordered by their governments or owners to stay and watch. This is an unprecedented situation,” Dabry said.
“Some may have run out of fuel too,” Niko said. “If they were planning on coming out of Q-space right at their destination and refueling there. There’s a lot of space stations and moons in reach of this Gate. In which case they’re waiting on someone to bring them enough to get out, and we’ll get hit with a pledge. Stay back and out of hailing range, Dabry…”
“Too late, Captain.”
Niko grimaced.
“What’s a pledge?” Atlanta asked.
“It’s a tradition that started with the Free Traders,” Niko said. “Any time you’ve got ships together and some of them are running out of supplies, everyone that has some of that kind of supply chips in. Keeps everyone alive. It’s a code of conduct. How much is it?”
“Standard amount of water and fuel per person. Nothing out of the ordinary.” Dabry turned to Atlanta. “It’s important to support the system. We might thank the stars for it ourselves someday.”
“Doesn’t make it any easier to stomach right now,” Niko grumbled. Her face brightened at a thought. “More than a day, and that means someone is already working at starting a trade tangle. I bet all those ships would like a meal that isn’t reconstituted ship-food. Plenty of them will have fuel to go from ship to ship.”
Her eyes met Dabry’s. “That’s a bit of an opportunity, isn’t it? Particularly with a load of Velcoran goods to use up, since they can be adapted to so many species.”
“It could work,” he said thoughtfully. “And if this is a temporary glitch, and the Gate comes back to life, we’d be here. Thing, what would you think about setting up a restaurant in the front lower hold?”
“That is warball space,” the ship said reverently.
Niko made a face.
“But you could reabsorb a lot of the current interior and clear it out, couldn’t you?” Dabry said. “We could replicate furnishings if it was too much effort for you to grow them.”
This time, the ship sounded a little haughty. “I am more than capable of creating furniture. What sort of furnishings do you wish?” It hoped that Dabry might give it free license; it had been doing research on restaurants and had thoughts on the matter, but, disappointingly, Dabry said, “Basic tables and benches in a range of sizes. Spacers don’t need fancy.”
He rose.
“Where are you going?” Niko said.
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Milly’s supply alone won’t cut it. I’m going to go see what’s available in the gardens.”
He exited and Niko chuckled. “There goes a happy man,” she told Atlanta. “He hasn’t had new people to cook for since we first had to flee TwiceFar before the Arranti chewed it up. Gio will be happy at more cooking, too, don’t think I don’t see you grinning, my friend. But better yet, he’ll get a chance to wheel and deal a little, see what other foodstuffs he might be able to swap for. Lassite will grumble that he is maître d’ing again but accede, and Milly will outdo herself with desserts.”
“I’m new,” Atlanta pointed out. “Newer than that, at least. You didn’t uncrate me until you all had fled.”
“And there you were all dewy-eyed and ‘Captain Larsen, you’re my only hope!’”
Atlanta turned red. “Well, I thought it was true at the time,” she said ruefully. “How was I to know I’m just a diversionary clone?”
Niko patted her hand. “More than just a clone! A clone of an Imperial heir! Think of what we could do as far as forging their endorsement of our food! And anyhow,” she said, sobering for a moment, “as I keep having to point out, you are a member of this crew, and welcome in it.”
Atlanta’s eyes got misty.
“Don’t cry on me,” Niko warned her. “Or I will make you go do fight training with Talon again until you have sweated so much you have no moisture.” She hated shows of emotion or gratitude. “Shoo.” She flapped a hand at the young woman. “Go help Dabry figure out what sort of table he wants to set and get his menu together so we can get set up and start beaming it to the other ships.”
Atlanta exited and Niko turned back to the view screen and the dead Gate hanging in space, ships circling it, dwarfed by its immensity until they were no more than toys passing in and out of the vast, ornamented hoop.
Despite the cheerfulness of her tone with Atlanta, she was worried. The death of the Gates meant the death of much of the Known Universe. Only three species did not use the Gates, and none of them were sharing the technology that allowed them to do so. Without the Gates, they would move from obscurity to prominence: the Beringed, who claimed to have found another way to access Q-space; the Nephalese, who claimed to move instantly via teleportation; and the Shrug, who usually just said that they’d learned to move “pretty fast.” Shrugs were known for understatement, to ridiculous lengths.
She shook her head and returned to more practical matters. “Thing,” she said to the ship. “How did Arpat Takraven entertain when he brought guests aboard?”
“He never brought guests aboard,” the Thing said.
Niko frowned. “But he spoke of inviting Lolola back to his ship.”
“That would have been uncharacteristic,” the Thing said. “But he had not traveled in me for several years before that trip. Perhaps he had changed his ways?”
“It seems a large change,” Niko said, “to go from totally unsociable to inviting someone back to what is essentially one’s quarters.”
She filed the discrepancy away in her head. This was a question she’d ask when they met with Arpat and told him the stories he’d asked for. She had no doubt that there would be other questions, but she did hold some doubts as to whether any of them would be answered.
Takraven was one of the Known Universe’s truly rich, and he operated outside most of its laws, leading a life regulated only by internal whim and the demands of time itself. That was something no one had ever learned how to affect, although some claimed that the mysterious Arranti had managed it and used it as part of the lengthy and inexplicable games they played among themselves.
She ran her fingers over the instrument bank in front of her. The Thing grew its furnishings according to its own dictates, for the most part, and this console was not an exception, made of the glossy, chitinous material that it excreted as rapidly as it needed to.
The bioluminescent lights, soft green and blue and amber glows, ran in wavy patterns between tiny rows of logos. Like most of what the ship extruded, it was unnecessarily beautiful. She wondered what sort of gene patterning created that genius with curve and line. Was it truly innate? She had never been inside any other bioship; they were incredibly rare and fantastically expensive, a thing of stories and viddies.
And yet here she was, commanding one, moving across the Known Universe in search of her lost love while a pirate king breathed doom at her heels. She shook her head. Was this really the Golden Path that Lassite had predicted? He had never said exactly what lay at its end, but the implication was that it would be at the level of events she had once known, the interplay of power between galaxy-states and empires, the eons-old game of war and intrigue and betrayal.
She had been betrayed before. Probably she would again, truth be told. Her fingers sought the patterns of the light studs again, as though searching for the reassurance she could not find.