Duty, however, was duty. He put Babbage’s jewelry in the recycler and opened the message. Cortázar was too close to the camera or else had chosen for reasons of his own to be slightly out of focus. His wide chin and thin, black hair should have been unremarkable. Sauveterre rubbed his hands like he was trying half-consciously to wash them.
“Captain Sauveterre,” the strange little man said. “I’m pleased to report that the sample arrived intact. Thank you very much for taking custody of it after its liberation. I am, however, distressed to hear that the fleet is running behind schedule.”
“It’s a few days over the course of months,” Sauveterre said to himself and the screen. “We’ll make it up.”
“I know you are aware that both supplies and time are in short supply until the artifact has been brought to heel. In order to help make up for this shortfall, the research group has put together some plans and specifications for some of the modifications the Barkeith will need in order to dock with the artifact. Several of them can be started by your engineering teams en route. And of course, if you have any questions, I am at your disposal. Cortázar out.”
The screen flipped to a series of technical drawings. There was more than enough about those to disturb him as well. They called all the alien technology by the name protomolecule, but of course, that far-traveled set of life-hijacking microparticles was only one object in a much grander toolbox. And if Cortázar had interpreted the top-clearance data from the MCRN probes correctly, what they had found would be much easier for humanity to tame and make use of.
Still, the changes Cortázar wanted for the Barkeith were unpleasantly organic. Less like they were fitting a new model of airlock on the ship, and more like they were carving it into some kind of colossal prosthesis.
It’s the beginning of something very new and very powerful, and if good people don’t step in to accept the power, bad ones will. It was what Admiral Duarte had told him the night he’d brought Sauveterre into the fold. It had been true then, and it was true now. He switched on the camera, adjusted his hair, and began recording.
“Message received. I will take the plans to my engineers at once. If they have any concerns, we will be in touch.” Short, to the point, minimalist without being rude. Efficient. He hoped it would come across as efficient. He rewatched it to be sure and considered rerecording it and changing concerns to questions, but decided he was overanalyzing it. As he sent it off, his system chimed.
“Captain, we have clearance from Medina.”
“Do we now, Mister Kogoma? Kind of them. What was the resolution of their tracking number situation?”
“The freighter is moving in to dock with the station, sir.”
Well, there was another ship for the skinnies to commandeer. If the Toreador had known which way the wind was blowing, they’d have hightailed it back to whatever hardscrabble planet they’d come from and tried to make do without whatever they had lost anyway. As it was, the Free Navy would just keep gobbling up the ships that came through, starving out the colonies. Weakening them. By the time the Belters figured out they were fighting a rearguard action against history, Duarte would be in position.
War, Sauveterre thought as he pulled himself to the command deck, had long since ceased to be about controlling territory. The job of a military was to disrupt its enemies. Generations of low-scale war in the Belt hadn’t been an attempt to hold Vesta Station or Ceres or any of the dozens of little floating supply hubs in the vast emptiness. It had always and only been about keeping the OPA or any other Belt force from coalescing into an organized force. Until the rules changed, and that organized force became useful. The Free Navy would have made itself decades before if men like Duarte had let it. Now that the Belt finally had it, they would find just how useless it was.
As long as it kept Earth and what was left of Mars busy for a few years. After that… The reward of audacity was the chance to steer history.
The command deck was in trim. Everyone in their couches, the displays freshly cleaned, the controls polished. The Barkeith would arrive at Laconia Station as smart and sharp as she had left Mars. And they wouldn’t be wearing bracelets. He drew himself down to his command station and strapped himself in.
“Mister Taylor, sound the acceleration alert. Mister Kogoma, inform the fleet and Medina Station that we are proceeding.”
“Sir,” the tactical officer said, “permission to open weapon ports.”
“Are we expecting action, Mister Kuhn?”
“Not expecting, sir. An abundance of caution.”
Kuhn didn’t trust the skinnies either. That was fair. They were a bunch of thugs and cowboys who thought that because they had guns, they had power. Sauveterre thought it was early for the Free Navy to start double-crossing Duarte, but they were stupid and impulsive. It didn’t do to assume an amateur force would make the same decisions as a professional. “Permission granted. And warm up the PDCs while you’re at it. Mister Kogoma, please advise the fleet to do likewise.”
“Yes, sir,” Kogoma said.
The Klaxon sounded and Sauveterre settled into his couch, the sensation of weight returning over the course of seconds. The transit to the Laconia ring was short. The space between the rings was almost claustrophobic compared with the vastness of real, open vacuum. And dark. Starless. The physics wonks said that there wasn’t any space on the other side of the rings. That whatever bubble they all existed in ended not in a barrier, but in some more
profound manner that he couldn’t picture. He didn’t need to.
The Laconia gate drew closer, a handful of stars burning solid and clear on the other side of it, and growing as they came near. The exhaust plumes of the fleet vanguard glowed brighter as they passed through. There would be new constellations there. A different angle on the galaxy, like a whole new sky.
“Approaching the ring, sir,” Keller said from the navigation controls. “Passing through in three. Two…”
Keller fell apart. No, that wasn’t right. Keller was where she had been, sitting as she had been sitting. But she was a cloud now. All of them were clouds. Sauveterre held up his hands. He could see them so perfectly: the ridges of his fingertips, the spaces between the molecules, the swirl and flow of his blood beneath them. He could see the molecules in the air – nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide all bouncing madly against each other, obscuring some more profound space between them. A vacuum that penetrated them all.
I’m having a stroke, he thought. And then, No. Something else is wrong.
“Kill the drive!” he shouted. “Turn about!” And the waves of his words passed through the visible but invisible air in an expanding sphere, bouncing against the walls, shuddering where they intersected with the cries of fear and a blaring Klaxon. It was beautiful. The cloud that was Mister Keller moved her hands and miraculously didn’t slip through the vast emptiness of her control deck.
He saw the sound coming in the rush of molecules before it reached him and he heard the words. “What’s going on? What’s happening?”
He couldn’t see the image on the screens to know if the stars were there. All he could sense were atoms and photons of the thing itself, not the pattern they made. Someone was screaming. Then someone else.