The Eve of War Read online

  Awen placed her thumb on top of the button. She let her mind move back to the dais once again, the horrible memories flooding her senses. The smell of smoke, of burning flesh. The ringing in her ears, the muted screams of the dying. The taste of blood in her mouth, the excruciating pain in her body. And the mwadim.

  “Here goes nothing.” Awen pressed down on the button, and the microneedle punctured her skin.

  Chapter 22

  Awen placed the stardrive on the table and sucked the blood from her thumb. The device started to glow and then separated with a metallic click, splitting lengthwise. From a bright central core, the drive emitted a blue holo-projection above the table, a scene that swirled about like a flurry of light snow. Eventually, thousands of blue pinpoints of light resolved into a three-segmented symbol.

  Awen, Ezo, and TO-96 leaned in. “What is it, Ninety-Six?” Ezo asked.

  “Searching,” the bot replied, his head tilting back and forth as he scanned the three-dimensional image.

  Awen found the symbol fascinating. Two opened-ended arches connected at the apexes like chain links, their four ends tapering to points. Bisecting the horizontal plane was a ring that seemed to lock the arches in place. The collection of three shapes slowly rotated over the table, casting blue light on everyone’s faces.

  “I’ve never seen it before,” Awen said, wondering at the symbol’s meaning.

  “Neither have I,” Ezo said.

  “And neither have I,” TO-96 said. “In fact, this symbol is not listed on any of the Galactic Republic’s records and does not match symbology for any known sentient species.”

  “Seriously?” Ezo asked. “I thought you knew everything about everything.”

  “Everything is a relative word, sir.”

  “Really? Because the way I use it, it’s not.”

  Awen looked at the bot. “Wait, so you’re saying it’s not from our galaxy, then?”

  “Not conclusively, Awen. The galaxy is, after all, a very big place.”

  “Or maybe it’s a secret order or something,” Ezo added. TO-96 looked at him. “You know, like a conspiracy group, an off-the-books Repub hit squad, something like that.”

  TO-96 tilted his head. “I don’t think so, sir.”

  Suddenly indignant, Ezo placed his hands on his hips. “And why not?”

  “For one, I already have a record of all known galactic conspiracy groups and kill teams, known or supposed.”

  “Wait—you do?” Ezo asked.

  “Secondly, those groups don’t go around placing their locations on stardrives. We already know where most of their headquarters are.”

  “Wait, wait—you know that too? How am I just now discovering this? How am I just now discovering this?” Ezo looked at Awen, who shrugged. “Ninety-Six, it’s like we don’t even know each other anymore.”

  “What can I say, sir? Like a woman, I’m a mystery who you’ll never fully unravel.”

  Awen beamed. “Well said, Ninety-Six.”

  “Thank you, Awen.”

  Ezo was incredulous, his mouth hanging open.

  Awen returned to the symbol in front of them, studying it carefully.

  “What does it do next?” Ezo asked.

  “I’m not sure, sir,” TO-96 replied. “My sensors are not showing any activation functions beyond what Awen has already initiated.”

  “So that’s it, then? It’s just some random symbol?”

  “It’s not a symbol,” Awen offered. “Well, not just a symbol. Symbols imply a shared meaning between two parties. But I’m assuming whoever coded this drive didn’t expect anyone to receive it who knew them already.”

  “Why do you say that?” Ezo asked.

  “Because not even TO-96 here knows this symbol. Which means this little drive is either a long way from home or—”

  “Whoever made it wanted it to get into someone else’s hands,” Ezo concluded.

  “Exactly.”

  “So, any ideas about what it might be?”

  “Maybe,” she said, reaching for the three components. “I wonder if it’s a puzzle. A key of some sort.” She grasped the circle, her hands closing around the light, and twisted it slightly like someone might loosen a stick caught between rocks. Then she maneuvered the arches individually so that they slid out from one another. As soon as the three elements were separated, the arches rotated and embraced the circle with their apexes to the far left and right sides of the new shape, resembling a planet with a ringed debris field. Then a swirl of small lights emerged in the center of the circle, forming a tiny cluster.

  “It’s a star system,” Ezo said. The three of them watched as the system of little lights grew so large that it overtook the symbol.

  “And one there’s no record for,” TO-96 concluded.

  “Wait,” Ezo said. “You seriously haven’t seen this one before?”

  “Sir,” the bot said, his eyes scanning the swirl of lights, “I am ninety-nine percent sure that no one has a record of this.”

  Awen studied the cluster of lights, looking closely at each planet. “Someone clearly coded this drive with great care. The detail is incredible.” She moved her body left and right, up and down. “You’re documenting this, right, Ninety-Six?”

  “Every millisecond, yes, Awen.”

  “Good, because—hold on. There,” she said, pointing to the fourth planet. “It looks habitable.” Her finger no sooner touched the sphere than it expanded to fill the holo-projection. The planet looked like a perfect terrestrial class-four world, capable of propagating carbon-based life. Continents of green floated in large bodies of blue, and two white caps adorned the poles.

  Suddenly, the second symbol appeared on the planet’s surface, its diamond and two arches centering on a coast near the equatorial line.

  “A capital, perhaps,” TO-96 offered.

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Awen said.

  “Let me get this straight,” Ezo interjected. “You’re saying that a star system that no one knows about has a habitable planet with a capital city that just so happens to be marked on this stardrive. And that’s because…”

  “Because someone wants us to find it,” Awen answered.

  “Haven’t you seen the holo-movies?” Ezo said with his hands in the air. “These types of stories never end well. It’s why we pay lots of credits to watch them—because seeing someone else get vaporized is much more rewarding than seeing yourself get vaporized.”

  “Well,” Awen said, “think of it this way. If the Order wants this stardrive, and we have to assume the Republic wants this star drive, then whatever it leads to must be pretty important.”

  “Important enough to stay away from,” Ezo added.

  “Important enough to be very expensive,” Awen corrected. “Making whoever finds it very, very rich.”

  Ezo’s mouth froze open, and the two of them stared at each other. Gotcha, Awen thought.

  “You know,” Ezo said, crossing his arms and stroking his chin, “I’m having second thoughts about this planet. I think it might be worth visiting. Ninety-Six can help me avoid being vaporized. Plus, who knows? Maybe there’s a new race of pretty aliens who think Ezo’s exotic.”

  “Here we go again,” TO-96 said.

  “There’s just one problem,” Ezo said. “How do we get to a system no one has charted?”

  “That’s a good question,” Awen answered. “And I fear that’s where we may not have enough information.”

  “May I interject something?”

  “Of course, TO-96,” Awen said.

  The bot pointed to a small cluster of three inward-facing triangles floating beneath the planet. As soon as his finger touched them, the planet disappeared, and the stardrive began to pulse.

  “What’d you do, ’Six?” Ezo asked.

  “I’m not entirely sure, sir. I was hoping that the shape was a data-entry field.” The bot leaned back as the space above the table suddenly filled with text that flowed down in vertical streams. TO-96
’s servos chattered as his head twitched to keep up with the code.

  To Awen, the lines of data looked like a waterfall that cascaded down from a source far above them, one rivulet overlapping with others behind it. Even if the characters had meant something to her individually—which they didn’t, as the characters were completely foreign to her—she could no more tell what the message said than read a message on a holo-pad as it was tossed across a room.

  “You getting this?” Ezo asked with excitement. TO-96 did not respond, his head still stuttering in the cascading blue light. “It’s not a rhetorical question, ’Six!” Still not responding, the bot jiggled, his whole body shaking in the effort. The data stream was flowing more quickly now, the characters running together in long lines. “Ninety-Six!”

  Suddenly, the blue streams of light disappeared. TO-96 froze and fell forward, catching himself on the table, Ezo holding the bot’s chest in his arms. The bot looked down at the stardrive as it returned to a steady soft glow.

  “What in all the cosmos was that about?” Ezo asked, pushing the bot upright. “Are you okay, Ninety-Six?”

  TO-96 looked up. “I know where it is.”

  Then a new item appeared over the table. It spun slowly, taking the form of a funnel with a coordinate designation hovering beside it, written in Galactic common.

  “What’d you do?” Ezo asked. “Wait, was that whole thing some sort of download or something?”

  “It seems I have received a sizable amount of data, yes. Including precise coordinates.”

  “To a system outside our galaxy?” Ezo asked.

  “To a system outside our universe,” the bot corrected.

  Ezo and Awen were stunned, looking from the holo-projection to TO-96 and back. “But… how is that possible?” Ezo asked.

  “The multiverse,” Awen whispered.

  “The what?” Ezo threw his hands up in the air. “Just great! I have a bot who’s missing a piece of his head and a mystic who’s lost hers entirely.”

  “Sir,” TO-96 said, “assertions about theoretical quantum states do suggest that multiple universes are not only plausible but probable.”

  “Yeah, I know, I know,” Ezo said, waving the bot off. “But did you hear what you just said? Theory. None of it’s real enough for us to see what this stardrive is proposing.”

  “But we’ve seen it,” Awen added.

  Ezo was not entertained. He raised one eyebrow and placed his hands on the table. “You’ve seen it,” he said without enthusiasm. “You’ve got to be kidding me, Star Queen.”

  “We’ve seen it,” Awen repeated, crossing her arms. “The Luma engage with these dynamics all the time. In the Unity of all things. There are more states of being than any one mind can fathom.”

  “Superpositions,” TO-96 added.

  “Superstitions is more like it,” Ezo said.

  “That’s the technical term, yes. Superpositions, that is.” Awen glared at Ezo. “For us, however, it is more like layers of reality rippling outward from a single point of action. Each wave represents an alternative state that extends itself into new ways of being. Think of it like a tree that grows limbs, then branches, then twigs, then leaves and seeds. In autumn, seeds make their way into the ground, some of which become new trees over time. One tree can produce an entire forest if the conditions are right.”

  “Can someone tell Ezo how we suddenly moved from cosmology to botany?” Ezo asked.

  “It is a quaint analogy,” TO-96 said.

  “I don’t care about quaint!” Ezo exclaimed. “I care about a star system hovering over my table that no one’s ever mapped in another universe!”

  “Well, sir—”

  “No, ’Six! Don’t answer. That was rhetorical.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Awen squinted at the new object in the holo-projection. “So, is that a wormhole?”

  “No, though I believe it may behave much the same way as a wormhole.”

  “I’m confused,” Awen replied.

  “So am I,” Ezo said.

  “Without making it too complicated for you,” TO-96 said, taking on the air of a professor, “wormholes are essentially gateways that connect two points in the same space-time. Unlike a black hole, however, they contain no event horizon. A black hole’s event horizon is known as a singularity.”

  “Where all things become one,” Awen offered.

  “Precisely,” TO-96 said, jabbing a finger at her. “The problem with a singularity is that it’s fairly problematic for anything that needs to stay atomically stable in order to survive.”

  “You mean, like people,” Awen said.

  “Like people, yes. Or planets. Anything as you know it will not retain its present form as it is drawn into the gravity well of a black hole.”

  “But you’re saying it’s not like either a wormhole or a black hole?” Awen asked.

  “As far as I can tell, yes. This cosmic feature has the singularity of a black hole but the portal properties of a wormhole. It appears to make use of something called quantum tunneling.”

  “So it’s like a black hole and a wormhole, but it’s not either of them,” Ezo summarized.

  “Correct, especially since neither term is used by the Novia Minoosh.”

  “The Novia who?” Awen moved toward the bot, her eyes alight with wonder.

  “The Novia Minoosh. They are the race who formed the gate and whose star system we observed.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Ezo exclaimed. “They formed that quantum-gate thingy?”

  “As I said, the Novia Minoosh don’t call it—”

  “You actually know their name?” Awen asked, leaning over toward TO-96.

  “Why, yes. That is what they listed in the data provided to me in the—”

  “It’s a new civilization!” Awen yelled, completely abandoning decorum. “In the multiverse! I can’t believe this!” She started pacing back and forth, her hands fluttering beside her cheeks. Ezo and TO-96 stared. Ezo was surprised by her sudden outburst. This version of Awen wasn’t anything like the well-mannered emissary they’d known up to this point. “The implications are…” Awen paused, searching for the words. “Oh, mystics—this is groundbreaking! This is extraordinary! I mean, the academy always postulated that quantum displacement would populate latticed anomalies, but this! It’s…”

  Awen was out of breath, glancing back and forth between them. Then she suddenly remembered herself. She stopped pacing, straightened her back, and cleared her throat. “Forgive me,” she said, having regained her composure. “This is a—an important breakthrough, which—”

  “It’s okay, Star Queen. You can freak out.”

  Awen threw her hands in the air. “Right? It’s unbelievable!”

  “I do share Awen’s enthusiasm,” TO-96 said, “though in slightly less demonstrative expressions. It would appear that this quantum tunnel, as I think we should take to calling it, is positioned in the outer reaches of the Troja quadrant.” TO-96, now apparently connected to the stardrive, caused it to zoom out without using his hands until the quantum tunnel appeared as a small blip in a larger collection of star systems. “There.”

  “I’ve never been that far,” Awen said.

  “I don’t think anyone’s been that far,” Ezo added. “We’d have to, have to…” He trailed off as though lost in calculations.

  “We’d have to take on a second drive core,” TO-96 said.

  “A second drive core?” Awen repeated. “You can do that?”

  “Quite easily, yes,” the bot replied. “Or a drive-core modulator if we want to get there more quickly.”

  “A modulator for higher levels of subspace travel,” Awen said. “They increase speed over time, depending on what levels a ship is outfitted to achieve.”

  “Precisely, Awen.”

  “A few Luma ships have them, but I thought they were expensive. As in, sell-the-ship-to-buy-the-modulator type of expensive.”

  “Once again, you are very perceptive,�
�� the bot said. “In fact, both a second drive core or a modulator currently exceed the balance of Captain Ezo’s credit account, which presently rests at—”

  “Hey, hey,” Ezo said. “Don’t you know it’s not polite to share our financial status with guests?”

  “I was merely trying—”

  “You were trying to lessen the Star Queen’s hopes of making it to the quantum tunnel,” Ezo said, moving around the bot to place a hand on Awen. “And that is no way to treat such a lovely—and respectable—guest.” He looked at TO-96. “Don’t you see how badly she wants to meet these Novia Nims, Mini, Moosh—”

  “Minoosh, sir.”

  “Nooshes? Awen, I promise you”—Ezo looked her straight in the eyes—“we are going to get you there, or my name isn’t Idris Ezo.”

  “But, sir, your real name is—”

  “Shut it, ’Six!”

  Chapter 23

  The little girl let go of her mother’s hand and approached Magnus. He wasn’t sure what to make of the child’s identification of him, as he was quite sure he’d never met her before. He would have remembered her or her parents—well, at least her mother.

  “Come down,” she said, motioning him with her little fingers.

  “Piper, don’t be rude, darling,” Valerie said.

  “It’s not a problem,” Magnus replied, though inwardly, he always got a little nervous around kids. He’d only had one sibling—an older brother—and no cousins.

  Magnus knelt and placed his helmet on the floor. “I’m Adonis,” he said, guessing they should start on a first-name basis. He didn’t want to be “Mr. Magnus” to her—that was his father.

  “I know.”

  “Piper!” Valerie scolded. “Mind your manners.”

  “I’m Piper,” she said, holding out her hand.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Piper.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” she replied, shaking one of Magnus’s fingers. Then, in one quick motion, she let go of his hand, dropped her stuffed animal to the floor, and placed both her palms against Magnus’s cheeks. Magnus almost recoiled; the gesture was so intimate, and he was a stranger after all. But her face held curiosity and delight, and he felt that pulling away might disappoint her. She smiled at him, her hands pressing harder against the sides of his face as his lips smushed together. Magnus looked up to see that Valerie was aghast.