Storming Heaven

Chapter Twenty-Six

Something had happened.

She could feel it in the whispering pervading the Killer network, strange images that hovered on the brink of becoming comprehendible, yet somehow beyond her understanding. The Killer mentality was a vast chamber of ordered thoughts and cold dispassion, but she could feel the shock pervading the entire area. It had alarmed her when she had first felt it — it might have been a sign that her presence had been discovered — but it wasn’t focused. It might not have been aimed at her — no, it hadn’t been aimed at her — yet something had happened. She leaned forward, feeling her body-image tilting within the Killer mentality, and tried to listen to the whispers. They rose up around her and suddenly they were deep inside her.

The violation hurt, a rending tearing wave of endless pain that lasted until she remembered that she didn’t have to feel pain and stopped it. The images were more than just a direct download from a memory cell, or even a live feed from the MassMind; for a long second — it had felt like hours — she had been part of the alien mind. Her human body was laughably small, her self-image nothing compared to the strange organic-technical biology of the Killers; the only thing that staved off a headache was her conviction that she didn’t have to feel one. Even as she pulled herself out of the stream of data, it still echoed through her head. Her body felt puny compared to the alien mind.

And it was hard to focus, to remember what Chiyo had actually looked like, if she had been anything beyond a cluster of human thought routines operating in an alien mental matrix. She found it hard to remember what she had been and ended up sitting in a corner, sucking her thumb as she tried to pull herself back together. She looked down at her self-image and almost screamed again. Instead of her human body, there was a cluster of cells, without gender or apparent organs. She closed her eyes and concentrated, opening them again to see a childlike body, as she had been before she grew up and became an emancipated citizen. Her mother had never allowed her to shape her young body according to the dictates of fashion — the young Chiyo had wanted to be stick-thin, then overwhelmingly fat, and then a change of gender or race — and Chiyo had resented her dreadfully, then. Her appearance now was almost comforting, yet she couldn’t afford to fall back into a childish mind. It would mean her certain death when the alien realised her presence.

She concentrated desperately and finally recalled her body, remembering an outfit she’d worn a year before boarding the scoutship for her final mission. It had been a good party at one of the Defence Force bases, when calibrations had been few and far between, and the newly-promoted Chiyo had allowed herself to go wild. She was still baseline human, but she had worn a skimpy top and a set of feathered wings, allowing her to drift through the air like an angel. The mental image helped her to concentrate; it was easy to believe that she was drifting through the alien computer network, studying it without drawing its attention. She remembered one of the young male soldiers she’d met at the party and smiled to herself, wondering where he was… and what had happened to the Killers. Something had scared hell out of them.

It wasn’t easy to access the memories again, but she had to try. They rushed at her again, frighteningly powerful, but this time she was ready. The Killers didn’t see the universe as humans saw it; there were gravity sources, radiation and stellar events, and that was it. It dawned on her slowly that the Killers might not even be able to see human starships, or understand that humans existed apart from their starships… it seemed unlikely, but humans hadn’t realised that the Killers occupied gas giants. Two mighty civilisations had existed for over a thousand years without either really being aware of where the other was…

The images rose up in her mind, showing her scenes of great beauty wiped out in a split second. The very atoms in the air were breaking apart, releasing their energy in an onrushing explosion that finally threatened to consume her. She found herself sweating, despite the lack of a physical body, as the fires raced towards her position and overwhelmed her. The sensations she was feeling bore no resemblance to anything she had felt before; it seemed impossible, but it was as if she was feeling what the observing Killer had felt. Years ago, on a dare, she had taken a direct memory download from a boy in her class and experienced weird sensations from a body very different to hers. It had taken her weeks to stop checking for a penis that had never existed on her body. The Killer was completely alien…

But the images refused to fade. They changed, suddenly, and she realised that the first Killer was dead. This time, she was floating high over a gas giant that was rapidly becoming a star, fire reaching out over its atmosphere. She was dimly aware of massive constructions trying to make their way to orbit, to open wormholes and escape from the onrushing storm, but it was too late. She cried out as a tendril of fire reached up towards her and the world went white…

She was watching from further away as the city — if it were a city — vaporised under the onrushing wave. It looked almost as if it had been deliberate, as if the city had been targeted purposely… and somehow, on the edge of her mind, she knew how it had been done. Focused gravity waves could have caused such an eruption, but there was no source, only the tiny knot of radiations that had escaped into the inner solar system. She followed and found herself too close to the star, blinded by the waves of radiation… and then the star started to destabilise and explode. It was too late to escape…

The conclusion was impossible to avoid. My God, she thought, as she felt her body returning to normal. We killed an entire star!

Everything suddenly seemed to make a great deal more sense. The Killers had been absolute masters of space for so long that they’d never been genuinely threatened… and now they’d been hurt. It might not have mattered in the long run — the Killers had thousands of starships and probably millions of planets — but in the short term, they’d never been stung like that before since their first contact with non-Killer life. They had only vaguely been aware of other intelligent life, seeing them all as rivals to be exterminated as quickly as possible, never really accepting that there was a serious threat. There was a serious threat now.

She recalled her duplicates and drank in their memories. Between them, they had explored almost the entire Killer network and worked out what corresponded to what. It was impossible to read the Killer thoughts directly — that might have alerted the Killer to their presence — but they could listen and try to comprehend. They would never learn specifics, but they might get a general idea of what was happening…

It was easier, somehow, after having seen space through a Killer’s eyes. The Killers were seriously worried. The Grand Plan — the capital letters somehow came through the translation — was threatened. The Enemy had destroyed a star and killed many of their… collectives? Individuals? Group-Thought? She couldn’t comprehend the terms they used, or how they worked; the Killers were alien, after all.

And then she saw what they had in mind.

The realisation sent her reeling back into the outer depths of the Killer matrix. It was impossible to believe that they would succeed in their mad aim, yet they believed that they could succeed… and they had the technology to try. If they succeeded, the Community would be exterminated without even having a hope in hell of fighting back. No wonder the Killers were holding back. They would destroy all their enemies in one fell swoop!

She concentrated and started to produce more duplicates. The risk of being discovered no longer mattered. The risk of creating duplicates she could no longer reabsorb no longer mattered. She had to find a way to warn the Community before it was too late, even if it cost her life and sanity. The human race had to survive.

It was all that made her life worthwhile.

“Give me two good reasons,” Administrator Arun Prabhu said, “why you should not be immediately sacked from your current position and assigned to some station at the end of nowhere?”

Paula held herself perfectly still. The Administrator hadn’t offered her a chair, or any comfort at all, and she had the uncomfortable feeling that at any moment, he might throw her out physically. It was almost like facing her father after he had discovered some childish misdemeanour, or her principal after a practical joke had gotten out of hand, with the promise of certain punishment in the future. Arun looked dark with anger, and disappointment. She really had blotted her copybook with him.

“You decided, on your own initiative, to attempt to convince the most powerful men and women in the galaxy to rewrite a policy which has been in existence for over five hundred years,” Arun continued, without waiting for her to answer. “You decided to call into question the… assembled understanding of the Technical Faction in front of our few peers and the MassMind itself. You may well have caused a major dispute within the inner ranks of the Community government. I spent the last four hours fielding questions — very hostile questions — from all kinds of government officials. Do you have anything, anything at all, that you wish to offer in your defence?”

Paula said nothing. She had been summoned back to Intelligence the moment the meeting ended — and given strict orders not to communicate with anyone else until after she had spoken to the Administrator. She had disobeyed that instruction just long enough to send a personal message to Chris, but she had said nothing to anyone else, although that wouldn’t be enough to assuage the Administrator’s anger at her. He was right, in a sense, she had broken all procedure, but there had been no choice. Humanity’s only hope for survival lay in understanding gravity technology… and they had reached the limits of what could be learned by computer simulations. They needed a real experiment.

“The Circle is already pushing for your expulsion,” Arun said, coldly. Paula blinked. The Technical Faction’s governing body rarely involved itself in the lives of ordinary researchers. “It may surprise you to know that many of them want to use you as a live test subject for retroactive genetic sequencing experiments, or other procedures that require a live human for the final touch. Others want to expel you in disgrace to places so primitive that they think that a time machine is just a watch. What do you have to say for yourself?”

“Only what I have said before,” Paula said, finally. It had taken the efforts of all her implants to keep her voice calm and firmly under control. “We must learn how the Killers manipulate gravity in order to master their technology and destroy them before they destroy us.”

“And all of the simulations agree that creating a black hole would be detectable right across the galaxy,” Arun said. Paula didn’t bother to dispute it. Gravity waves moved at FTL speeds and a new black hole would send them echoing for thousands of light years. “Do you deny that your… experiment would certainly be detectable by the Killers?”

“Of course not,” Paula said, silently grateful that her hands were clasped behind her back. He couldn’t see how tightly she was gripping them together. “The ban on such experimentation was intended to prevent them from tracking us down.”

“And you decided to ignore the ban,” Arun said. His eyes refused to leave her face. “Why?”

“You never actually forbade me not to discuss it with the War Cabinet,” Paula pointed out. They’d only discussed the new weapons and other insights into Killer technology. “In fact…”

“Don’t give me that legalistic crap,” Arun thundered, genuinely angry. Paula felt a brief shiver of regret and forced it down with an effort. The die had been thoroughly cast. “You should know better than to discuss such matters without clearing them with your supervisor first.”

Paula took a firmer grip on her temper. “The Killers have rediscovered us,” she said, calmly. “If they were unaware of our existence, which is unlikely in the extreme as they attacked New Singapore last year, they are now aware of us beyond doubt. There is little to be lost by attempting to create a black hole. We may even be able to link into their communications network and talk directly to them.”

Arun scowled at her. “And if it does lure an entire Killer fleet to the new black hole?” He asked. “We can’t stop one ship, let alone an entire fleet…”

“Even if our fleet is armed with the new weapons?” Paula asked. “Are you sure that we would lose such a battle?”

“That’s not your decision to make,” Arun said, coldly. “Allow me to remind you of our purpose, Paula. The Technical Faction was founded to explore scientific questions that were officially decreed forbidden territory by Earth’s various governments. We created the foodstuffs that would have fed Earth’s teeming multitudes using genetic engineering, despite the belief on Old Earth that genetic engineering was somehow evil. We created cures for diseases that had plagued humanity since the dawn of time. We developed fusion power and improved fission reactors. We carried out the first tentative experiments into antimatter production and use. We ignored the whims and foibles of an Earth packed with morons who believed that science was dirty and filthy, who ignored the fact that science was the only thing keeping them from barbarism, and created wonders. We ignored their religious prattle and their claims to moral superiority, we rejected their belief that they were somehow qualified to tell us what to do. And it was rewarded! We survived when Earth itself died.

“It was us who developed the technology that allowed humanity to survive after Old Earth was destroyed. It was us who created the warp drive and all the little wonders that keep us alive. It was us who created the MassMind and started to incorporate all of humanity’s hopes and dreams into a powerful communications system, cheating Death herself. We carried out the experiments that produced the Spacers and offered humanity another path to immortality. We even developed newer and better weapons for the war against the Killers. We did all that selflessly. We never asked for anything in return, but to be left alone.

“We are not a fighting force, nor are we a government. Our relationship with the Community has always been one where we worked with the Community, without acknowledging that it had any right to dictate to us. We don’t need anything from the Community, but the young minds that could make the next set of breakthroughs; we had all the resources we could use to carry out whatever experiments we wanted to carry out. Our only weakness was simple. If the Killers came to visit, we could no more stand them off than an entire wing of Defence Force starships. We did not dare to do anything that would attract their attention…

“And you, you imprudent girl, decide to push the War Council into approving the creation of a black hole!

“The remainder of the Community now knows about the supernova bomb,” he concluded. “You just ensured that they will soon also know about the black hole generator, which will have its own effect on our relationship with the remainder of the Community. We may find ourselves forced into taking a more active hand in events, which would cripple our political neutrality and scientific independence. And all of that, Paula, only matters if we survive the next few months. What happens if the Killers come to terminate the threat?”

Paula took a breath. “And if we create the black hole well away from anywhere vital?” She asked. “There are hundreds upon hundreds of stars light years from anywhere that we could destroy. We could make sure that there’s no gas giant in the system to avoid the possibility of exterminating another Killer settlement…”

“You don’t understand,” Arun said. “Last week, the Killers knew that we were hardly a threat to them. Yes, we captured one ship out of thousands and destroyed a second through sheer luck. Now, they know we can blow up stars at will… and soon enough, that we can create a black hole. Will they regard that as a serious threat? How else can they regard it?”

Paula said nothing. “I am deeply disappointed in you,” Arun concluded. “If it had been up to me, you would have been stripped of your position and exiled. As it is, the Defence Force has requested your presence, despite our protests, and you are assigned to the fleet they’re assembling at Sparta. You’ll get your chance to create a black hole in a system no one, even the Killers, will miss. You’ll also be there when the Killers arrive — if they arrive — and your life will be on the line, along with thousands of others. I just hope you find it worthwhile.”

He smiled, without humour. “Your black hole might even be the key to ultimate victory,” he said, looking her in the eye. His voice was curiously flat and she felt another pang of regret. The Technical Faction had rejected her. The Circle had probably already decided to banish her. “I just hope that it doesn’t devour us all.”