The Animus Gate (Book One of The Animus Trilogy) Page 24

  “Well, the telegates, probably. We’ve been puzzling over them ever since Old Earth discovered its first one all those centuries ago at Jupiter's Lagrange-5 point. Why?”

  “Okay, well, imagine a gate that didn’t go to a different part of the galaxy, but...like a different dimension. One that was like our own.”

  “Gods below, Darius. Is that what’s in Baloneth? No wonder the fur has been flying.”

  “No, what’s down there is kind of like...a listening post. It taps into some kind of space station that I guess orbits this special gate.”

  “Then where is the gate?”

  “I don’t know, precisely. I have some map data. I gave it to the Federation when I went to the Pegasus. A good thing, too, because the suit that recorded it all is gone.”

  Cahill shook her head with disbelief. “So what you’re telling me is...there are people who came through the gate, and now they’re attacking us? Why?”

  “Well, why does Sar-Zin invade systems? Resources. Expansion. Knowledge. Power.”

  She snorted. “A familiar refrain.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “How much time do you have? Look, I’ll give you the short version. You’re still a young buck, so you haven’t seen enough to pick up the patterns. The rhyming of history. But I’ve walked the lands and traveled the stars. Maybe if I pass my knowledge on to you, it’ll make a difference in all this mess. Despite everything.”

  She sighed and shifted in her chair, seeking after a comfortable position. “All the violence of man. All the lying. All the stealing. You might wonder how we could colonize planets and stick keep things together, given all the things we do to each other, and to the other civilizations of the galaxy. I used to wonder myself. But then I thought about what mankind had to be in the past, in order to be what it is now.

  "You see, when we were living in caves, when we were just another part of the food chain in the wild, we had to be aggressive in order to survive. Sometimes we had to be willing to kill and take if we wanted to see the sun come up the next morning. But in order for that organism to survive in the long run, in order for it to be a civilization instead of a cautionary tale, it must be able to temper or regulate this aggression, or else...”

  “Or else it destroys itself.”

  She nodded. “Exactly. I think every intelligent species has to deal with this challenge. We have to be aggressive at first, but then we must find a reservoir of...of empathy. There needs to be a balance. That’s the order of things. The discovery and achievement of self-regulation. Maybe that’s why I joined up. To regulate those who would not be regulated. For the good of mankind. Maybe I knew a whisper of these truths even when I was young, and I had the fortune to be able to follow it.”

  “So why haven’t we destroyed ourselves?” asked Darius.

  “I think we were about to, when we were still limited to the Sol system. Then we found that telegate, in the nick of time. But instead of raising our ambitions for human culture, Sar-Zin took our aggression and pointed it outwards. It’s been the source of his power ever since.”

  Cahill unstrapped herself and floated towards the hatch. “Life can have nuance,” she said, “but we’re not all that complex. We’re primates who spend most of our time crawling on the thin crust of a molten ball of rock and metal, itself a speck floating in vacuum. So, while I think about a lot of shit, I don’t actually search for deep meaning in the human condition. I just aim for a sense of purpose. And sometimes a few truths surface along the way.”

  She floated in the doorway and turned to face him. “Anyways, are you hungry yet? I might have some actual food around here that I could scrounge up.”

  “I could eat. By the way, where the hell are we?”

  “The Baldoran system. We’re just a couple gates away from Sol now. We’re on a cargo ship.”

  “In zero-gee?” asked Darius.

  “Not every spacefaring creature out there likes gravity, Darius. I’ll be back in a few.”

  He wondered if she was talking about the crew or the cargo.

  Well, like Doctor Kilpatrick had said, it’s a big galaxy out there.

  ✽✽✽

  Once they were confident that he would remain alive, they sealed his pressure suit back up and let him float freely throughout the smuggler’s berth. It was a larger container than usual.

  He drifted to the entrance ramp of Figueroa’s ship. Her transport had become a kind of private space within the berth. Nadira floated within the cabin, eating a sandwich thoughtfully.

  The gunmetal gray exterior of the Archimedes bore a few new mementos of battle; its dents and arc burns were like scars. He could see where the worst of it had been replaced with new panels over the years. And in the Federation, those “new” panels were often just sheets of composite that had been recovered from less fortunate starships.

  Ultimately, the supply logistics of a resistance could be mistaken for that of outright scavengers, or even pirates.

  He decided not to say anything about crumbs in zero gee. “I think I figured it out,” he said to her. “That magic number. 113.”

  “The one we’ve been seeing everywhere?” she asked. “What does it mean?”

  “It’s their name, more or less. The people who built those things. Languages come and go, but...numbers are universal. They left it as—as their signature, I think. They wove it into everything that they did, because math is built into the universe.”

  “Have you been smoking the jaffa?”

  “I’m serious.” He floated to within a meter of her and tried to resist the urge to pick crumbs out of the air. "I think their mark is a...a kind of path. It’s led us to that dimension portal. And I think we can use it as a weapon. I’m just...” He shook his head. “I’m not sure how yet.”

  “Then why us? Why now?”

  Darius looked around the cabin of the Archimedes as if it might hold answers, or even clues. The empty rows of second-hand seats, with their straps and buckles floating in the air, offered little in the way of inspiration.

  “I don’t know for sure, but...when I was in that pod, I...I heard a voice. It told me things.”

  “Maybe it did. But you were also dealing with oxygen deprivation.”

  “Either way. It seemed to be saying that someone had opened that portal, and it wanted to find out who. Or tell me who.” said Darius. “Maybe drinking that tea allowed it to communicate with us. I think that stuff broke down some kind of barrier.”

  “Perhaps your father opened it. Maybe even by accident.”

  “No, it seemed to be saying that the portal was open before that, in some way. I don’t know, maybe someone on the other side had been tinkering. But Dad didn’t see things clearly and didn’t know what to do. He...he panicked.”

  “Well,” said Nadira, “I’ve definitely had some strange experiences with things like mushroom tea. But I don’t recall communing with interdimensional entities.”

  He chuckled. “Maybe you just weren’t taking enough.”

  Darius watched Bellamy, Figueroa, and Cahill milling around the container’s metal table. They were a good group.

  He squinted at Nadira. “Does the name ‘Orida’ ring a bell?”

  “Well, the only Orida I know of are the Raz Orida. They were related to the Raz Akandi. ...And you’re giving me that stare again. What did I say this time?”

  “I...I saw the Akandi, or something like them, when I drank the tea. In a memory from my childhood. And the voice I heard when I was in that escape pod said it was Orida.”

  She shook her head. “Not possible. The Orida disappeared hundreds of thousands of years ago. I think it was just your mind playing tricks on you. Now, how are you feeling? Are you hungry? Can I get you something to eat?”

  “I feel lucky to be alive. I don’t know—maybe that’s a feeling I should be having more often.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I guess I never felt much gratitude for...” Darius waved his hand arou
nd. “This. This whole thing. I never really thought about it, but when you do, it’s kind of amazing that all of this is here. Planets and moons crawling with billions of creatures. Light from huge orbs in the sky as they smash hydrogen atoms together like a natural fusion reactor.

  “I mean, think of it. Old Earth orbits more than 90 million miles from Sol. Yet if you stood on the surface of the planet for too long, the sun would burn you. If you stared at the sun for too long, it would blind you. From more than 90 million miles away. That’s amazing to me. Also a little terrifying.”

  Nadira chuckled. “Well, D, it seems that your near-death experience has made you quite the philosopher.” She patted his arm. “They’ve actually contemplated the subject for thousands of years.”

  “Oh?”

  “Have you ever heard of Plato? He wrote a dialog about the immortality of the soul, around three thousand years ago. Phaedo, it’s called. It’s very good, you should read it sometime.”

  He looked her in the eye. “What do you believe? What do you think happens to us after we die?”

  “I think you should stay away from people who claim to know the answer to that one, first of all. But I’ve seen things in my time. Like pieces of a puzzle. They lead me to believe that death is not the end. But ultimately, we are informed mostly by our direct experiences. And if your experiences are normative, I think it’s natural for you to conclude that people simply cease to exist. To conclude that things like ghost stories are just that. Stories.”

  Nadira finished her sandwich and began braiding a lock of hair. “I think what matters, Darius, is how you choose to live your life. If you have only one of them, then you might as well make the best of it. If you have many, then maybe there is a pattern you can learn from. Come, let’s get something to eat.”

  Darius hopped down after her, and they walked over to a crate that had been pulled from the transport. She began rummaging around in it.

  “That’s what I’m trying to do,” said Darius. “Make the best of it.”

  Nadira pulled a meal pouch out of the crate and led Darius to a nearby table.

  “We all are,” she said as they sat down. “Even Sar-Zin.”

  He stared at her. “You actually find some good in him? After...after everything that you’ve found out?”

  “Not necessarily. The problem, Darius, is that everyone has a different idea of what will fulfill them. And everyone sees themselves as the hero of their own story. For Sar-Zin, it means power and control at any cost. He gets the same feeling from crushing a rebellion that you do when you fight for people’s lives and for what they believe in. His self-interest versus your empathy. It’s the oldest war in all of creation.”

  “You make it sound like neither side is inherently ‘good’ or ‘bad.’”

  “Maybe they’re not. But one side can grow too powerful. And when that happens, it’s usually up to the other side to restore the balance. But while evil carries within it the seeds of its own destruction, sometimes that evil is so great that its seeds can destroy everything. That’s what happened to Old Earth.”

  “I never thought about it that way.”

  “Not many did. Not enough, anyway.She handed him the meal pouch, and he ate in thoughtful silence.

  Bellamy came over to the table. His left arm was in a sling. “Hey, guys. Darius. I’m glad we could scoop you up before you turned into a space popsicle, buddy.”

  “Me too, thanks. Hey, sorry about your rifle. Those things are hard to swim with.”

  “Don’t worry, I put it on your tab.”

  “What happened to your arm?” asked Darius.

  “I fractured it at some point during the infiltration. Probably when I went sliding through that door. Didn’t even feel the pain until we were heading out on the transport. Adrenaline, you know? If the Federation had a neppa supply, my bones would probably be as hard as yours.”

  Darius shrugged. “Once that supply gets cut off, the effect goes away. Takes a few months.”

  Figueroa came over to join them. “Maybe that’s why you lasted in that escape pod for so long,” she said.

  “Aren’t those things supposed to have like a week’s worth of air?” asked Darius.

  “They are,” said Figueroa, “but the tanks on this one were faulty. The only O2 you had was the stuff in the canisters on your pressure suit.”

  Darius shook his head. “Why am I not surprised.”

  Bellamy patted him on the shoulder. “We’re all coming back in one piece, at least. More than I can say for the opposing force.” He looked over to the hammocks. “Well, I’m gonna try to get a few more hours of shuteye before we dust off.”

  Figueroa nodded. “Wheels up in three hours, Davy.”

  Darius wasn’t looking forward to his next visit to the Pegasus. Now they would find out where Nadira had hidden her stash of evidence of Sar-Zin’s crimes. That would bring them to the endgame—and he still couldn’t clearly see their path to victory.

  ✽✽✽

  Darius sat in the council chambers of the Pegasus, with another full audience. Nadira sat on a bench by the door.

  “Well, that’s quite a report,” said Van Chen. “Not only are people already coming through that portal into this universe, but they are actively hostile and well-equipped. Sounds like our kind of luck.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Darius. “They don’t appear to be too fond of either us or the empire.”

  Alexei Schneider spoke up. “Do we have any indications that our empire has been crossing over as well? Perhaps they instigated the hostilities.”

  “Well,” said Darius, “they do have the map from Hephaestus, and they may have been able to use it to locate the portal station. But due to the nature of how Nadira and I were captured at Baloneth, I think the other side knew about the empire before the empire knew about them.”

  “Yes,” said Cynthia Dolan. “I think our issue with intelligence leakage is figured out. The other side knows more than we do, and they've been using that advantage to maintain a wedge between us and the empire.”

  Darius turned to Van Chen. “So it looks our next steps are to recover Nadira’s archives and upload them for wide-band broadcast across the whole empire. I don’t think its citizens will be able to stomach that level of corruption.”

  “That depends on how well they have lived under Sar-Zin’s rule.” The comment came from the portly balding man Darius had met in this room during his last debrief. He was Abelard Dumont, and he was in charge of “acquisitions.” It was his job to buy, find, or steal supplies for the Federation. “While everyone on this ship has witnessed the empire’s dirty deeds first-hand, we are ultimately in the minority. There may be millions of us, either actively or just philosophically. But there are billions of them.”

  “That’s true,” said Van Chen. “But we don’t need to trigger a full-fledged revolution. We just have to push Sar-Zin into thinking that he needs to prevent one.”

  “What’s your thinking?” asked Dolan.

  Van Chen looked at Nadira. Nadira nodded.

  “Vauxhall Anchorage,” said Van Chen. She tapped at a virtual interface on the table before her, and a set of holo projections appeared in the center of the room.

  “I vaguely remember it,” said Schneider. “They were the last of the old leftists, if I recall. This was generations ago, though. Why would it be relevant now?”

  “Indeed,” said Van Chen. “The records have been pretty much scrubbed from the archives. But we have...one personal account indicating that Sar-Zin went there in person.”

  Dolan nodded. “He’s done that a few times.”

  “Yes,” said Van Chen. “Each time he’s done it to project the power of the empire. At Vauxhall, it was to complete the map of his authoritarian rule. I think we can use that insight to our advantage.”

  “How?” asked Dumont. “Do we lure him into some kind of trap?”

  “Yes, actually,” said Van Chen. “We expose his crimes, and we leak the information abou
t what awaits at that red blinking dot that they saw on the map at Hephaestus. His ego, his ambitions, and his arrogance do the rest. He'll be drawn to the portal.”

  “But what if Sar-Zin defeats the opposing force?” asked Schneider. “What if no force is there on the other side of the portal to meet him? Then he gets exactly what he wants. We have to ensure that he loses.”

  “If the other universe mirrors our own closely enough,” said Van Chen, “then their emperor will be mired in scandal at roughly the same time. We can send a scout across to monitor their channels and report back. We could even broadcast our dirt over there, in the event that our counterparts have not yet done so.

  “Either way, there’s one thing we can do to our emperor. Split his fleet. By leaking the location of the Pegasus. One imperial flotilla heads to the portal, while another heads to Sol. I don't think he'll be able to resist the lure of dealing with both problems at once.”

  Dumont rose to his feet. “That’s insane!” he said. “They’ll crush us like bugs!”

  “Not if we expand our notion of the weapons that we have at our disposal,” said Nadira.

  The room turned to her.

  “What do you mean?” asked Dolan.

  Nadira plucked a metallic pen from a magnetized patch on her pressure suit and let it fall to the floor of the council chamber. “I’m talking about gravity. Auggie, could you please show them the battle plan?”

  “With pleasure,” said Van Chen.

  ✽✽✽

  “That’s the craziest plan I’ve ever heard,” Darius said to Nadira. “Also, couldn’t you have picked a better place than my father’s study to hide your evidence? And maybe a method of hiding it that didn’t require you to be physically present?”

  They stood in the main armory of the Pegasus. It wasn’t as well-stocked as Darius would have liked.

  “When I hid the files, Darius, I couldn’t anticipate a scenario where the planet or your parent’s house would be actively monitored by the empire. On the bright side, we won’t have to telegraph a connection between the Federation and the exposure of his crimes, which would potentially make him suspicious.”