Why people want to go there, I have no clue. If they told us that in class I don’t remember. I just know that ALCOR’s firm grip on these gates keeps people out of the Seven Sisters System.
This is a big deal in another context as well. A couple of explorers actually made contact with ALCOR several decades back. The story goes like this…
The team of explorers were granted access to the station, even lived on it for a few months, then they were sent back to where they came from.
Except they were… changed. They came back as cyborgs, and not the normal kind where people have implants or cybernetic arms and legs and shit like that. But the kind who had their brains and spinal cords removed and replaced with some kind of rogue hardware.
They went insane, tried to kill a bunch of people, then they were shot and dismembered for scientific research.
So yeah. Everyone has pretty much left ALCOR Station alone since then.
We ascend all the way to the top of the station and the lift actually becomes part of the floor when it settles to a stop.
Above us is an expansive viewing window and the stars shine down like twinkling beacons.
A hologram appears in the air. A digital man made up of cascading numbers, and letters, and symbols. He hovers for a moment, then descends until his computer-code feet appear to settle on the floor in front of us.
“ALCOR, I presume?” I say.
“The one and only,” he says, panning his hands wide.
“Good. Well, we’ve got a message for you from the Cygnian princess Corla.”
“Interesting,” he says.
“How so?”
“Because I have no idea who this princess is.”
I look over at Tray, who is staring at the AI in awe. Then at Jimmy, who is still looking at Xyla with lust. Then at Valor and Luck, who just shrug at me.
Draden and Serpint are tugging on my hands, chatting excitedly with each other about weapons they are planning to hunt down, and so…
Yeah. It’s all on me, I guess.
“OK, well. Each of them has been programmed with a message. So if you’d like to hear them—”
“I would,” the AI says, cutting me off. “I’m very intrigued.”
Intrigued isn’t necessarily a great response given this AI’s history.
But whatever. We’re here. And we’ve got nowhere else to go, so I bend down and grab Draden by the shoulders so he’s facing me. “Hey,” I say.
“Hey, Crux,” Draden says, oblivious to the seriousness of this situation.
“Remember when the princess accessed your internal comm and gave you a message?”
He nods at me.
“OK, well, it’s time to release it. Can you do that for me?”
He nods again, then taps his ear and spits out a garbled mess of incoherent words.
I look at the AI for a response, and find him frowning. “What’s the next one?” he asks.
I point to Serpint, and thank the sun for small favors, Serpint has caught on to what’s expected. Because he taps his comm and spits out his message too.
Again, I look to the AI for some kind of reaction. “Keep going, please,” he says.
We go in turn like that. Tray goes next, then Luck, then Valor, then Jimmy. And then the AI looks at me and says, “You don’t have one, do you?”
I shake my head. Because I don’t. “Princess Corla only said I was to deliver them to you.”
I pause. ALCOR pauses. Everyone pauses, even Draden and Serpint.
“Well?” I say. “What the fuck does it mean?”
“I’m not sure yet. But thank you for bringing it to my attention.”
“That’s it?” I say. “We don’t even get to know why the fuck we just risked our lives and the entire Akeelian Navy is after us now? I left my home for this. I’m the fucking Wayward Station governor’s son. I think you owe us an explanation.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have one,” ALCOR says. “But I do have an offer for you.”
“Offer?” I huff. “Yeah, what’s that?”
“Get me online. Give me access to the galactic net. If you can do that, you can stay and I’ll take care of you. No one can harm you here. No one can get through my gates without permission. We will be a team.”
I side-eye the code man, not sure what to say.
But Tray says, “I can get you online.”
“Can you?” ALCOR asks.
Tray nods. “Just give me access to your core and one of those SEAR cannons I saw outside and we can thread a quantum neutrino stream through your gates. Once it gets to the other side it’ll keep going forever. If we shoot them out in every possible direction and create a sort of geodesic vector field that can ride along the nodes and links in time and space, then—”
“Ahhh,” ALCOR says with a chuckle. “Differential geometry. Such an ancient concept, I’d forgotten about it. You are a clever little monkey, my new friend.”