A Sword Into Darkness

EPILOGUE: “UNSHEATHED”

December 30, 2055; USCG Nightingale (SRC-7), Rescue Cutter on detached duty as survey vessel; Patron Quarantine Site; Asteroid Belt

Nathan did not react when Kris pulled herself into the cutter’s now empty wardroom to join him. He remained intent on the view taking up half the tiny common area’s wall, a screen showing the Patron drive star and the lumpy ring of debris that now surrounded it. The drive star was finally quiescent—the last of the angry red and purple coils of energy that had constrained and controlled it had faded away that morning. It now appeared to be a moon-sized dwarf star, an impossibility of nature that nonetheless existed as a new companion in the solar system. In the debris field, teams of Marines in armored vacuum gear supported by dozens of armed SSTOS, went from location to location, identifying tech, isolating and capturing Patrons who had survived the battle, and doing whatever they could to gather and catalog the artifacts and records of all the species the Patrons had “procured.”

It promised to be a fascinating endeavor, and all of the old crew had been interested in seeing what they would all learn, but not nearly interested enough to stay even one more day away from the relieved, celebrating Earth. Every other member of the Sword of Liberty’s surviving crew had headed home to reconnect with their planet and their joyous loved ones—all except Nathan and Kris. They were all heroes and had been slated to receive heroes’ welcomes, Nathan and Kris especially. But her lover and Captain could not pull himself away, despite every argument Dave Edwards made. And Kris would not even think of going without him.

Kris slid in next to Nathan and pulled his face away from contemplation of the screen. She closed in and they kissed, long and longingly. Eventually she pulled back, glad that his eyes stayed with her and did not return to the screen. “I’m worried about you, hon.”

Nathan smiled. “Worried? Why?”

“Your parents and my mom, and all our friends, and some no doubt absolutely EPIC parties are all waiting for us back on Earth, but you won’t go. You can’t leave all that Patron junk behind.”

His smile became tempered, more thoughtful, wistful. “I do want to go home.”

Kris grinned wide. “Then let’s go! We have our own stolen cutter, so we can do whatever we damn well please.”

“It’s not stolen. It was officially requisitioned and assigned.”

“Same difference, but my way is more fun and more in keeping with our track record. C’mon. Let’s go. Your parents want to see their son, freshly resurrected back into the land of the living and years younger than he has any right being.”

Nathan nodded and looked briefly back toward the now quiescent drive star and its ring of broken wonders. “How can you leave it behind so soon?”

“How could I not, Nathan? I’m as big a space geek as there ever was, but we’ve done the deed now. I’ve seen it all! We went further, traveled faster, discovered more, and accomplished things beyond what we ever expected to in our wildest imaginings. And we survived against the greatest odds. After all that, I’m tired. Even I am willing to let somebody else ask the new questions while I take a damn break. What about you? Why can’t you let it go?”

Nathan looked back at her, turning sober, serious, and anguished. “Because I still don’t understand it. None of what they told us makes any sense.”

“How so?”

“They said they collected the art of all these species, for prestige or for currency as the only truly unique and thus rare and valuable commodity in the universe. Everything else is just resources, easily obtained with nanotech. But the expression of perception, that somehow had value to them and—here’s what’s key—the larger society they dealt with.”

Kris looked confused.

“So what? They collected art and showed it off to all their buddies for credit or respect or whatever. Big deal.”

“It is a big deal, Babe, because it doesn’t make any logical sense. It took them 80 damn years to get here. What kind of society and commerce could possibly exist when it takes 80 years to reach the next station?”

Kris paused and looked at the screen herself, while this time Nathan watched her. “Well, they do have stasis.”

Nathan shook his head. “No, that’s not enough. I don’t accept it. There has to be something more, something that allowed them to have commerce and society as we know it, with regular interactions between sentients, not something mediated by nearly a century of travel and a lifetime in stasis. Sure, I can see them pulling out of this society for 80 years or 160 years to open new markets and artificially increase demand for the products you’re pulling out of circulation, but not as an every day thing, not when you could live your whole life between interactions. Otherwise, why bother trying to have a society at all?”

Kris pulled him into a long hug, facing him away from the screen that taunted him so. “Honey, staying out here isn’t going to net you those answers. You’ve asked an unsolvable question, until we can get the surviving Patrons to talk to us. But, I really doubt you’re going to gain any greater insight here and now rather than after a well-deserved trip ho—”

Nathan felt her stiffen in his arms as her voice cut off. “Baby?”

Kristene spoke again, but her voice sounded odd, like a little girl in shock. “There’s another mystery we didn’t know the answer to. Why did they go so slow, dragging that unnecessarily heavy drive star around with them?”

“Huh?” Nathan pulled away from the now limp Kris and looked back at the screen. Upon it, the drive star had changed. Instead of the miniature white dwarf, the inner portion had turned black. The outer edge became a silver swirling radiance, that spun faster and faster, extending tendrils of silver and gold light into the obsidian interior, an interior that now seemed not merely black, but distant, its shape having transformed from a sphere to a funnel that somehow receded from all directions at once into a new space.

Nathan’s jaw dropped.

Kristene sounded entranced again. “Maybe, the answer to both our questions is that the Patrons dragged a freakin’ wormhole mouth with them the whole way, and that setting up shop in that greater society doesn’t take 80 years … it just takes seconds.”

“Holy crap.”

They both stared at the newly transformed wormhole and wondered what lay beyond it. Would this be their entry point to a greater galactic society, a way into the limitless experiences of the universe at large? Or was this a Patron beachhead right in the heart of their solar system, a new front in a war only just begun? Nathan and Kris each sought the other’s hand and held tightly to one another.

Nathan turned concerned eyes upon Kris, and he felt both unsurprised and immensely relieved to see that she was smiling broadly. She, for one, refused to be cowed by the darker possibilities the wormhole mouth represented, preferring to embrace the wonder rather than the worry.

Her cheeks dimpled as possibilities and potentials multiplied within her thoughts. The jaded, tired scientist who only wanted to follow the rest of the crew home had vanished. Kris leaned in close. “You know, maybe there’s still something new out here to see after all.”

And Nathan knew then that everything would be all right.

THE END