[Just A Little Further] - Chapter 28

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The Floating City Regantown***, Venus***

“Repeat when you just said to the Baron,” The main said, gesturing to the woman who just stepped in as he and everyone else in the room stood. Selem had never met this human before, but she carried herself with the air of someone very highly placed; if she were K’laxi she would have been the matriarch of one of the old families. She wore her burgundy uniform with no wrinkle or fold out of place, her gold epaulets vibrant against the dark uniform. The only part of her that even began to look like even a suggestion of going against the uniform regulations was the flight cap she wore at a rakish angle over her closely clipped hair. Carried under her left arm in a tooled leather harness was a gleaming pistol. Nobody sat until she did, and they all waited two beats before sitting. She was almost the complete opposite to Selem Q’ari, who wore rumpled civilian clothes that she had clearly slept in, her fur dull and limp and unbrushed. It had been a rough few months.

“Tell me about Melody,” Baron Hellen Raaden said, her voice velvety smooth and unhurried.

“Empres- er Lieutenant Mullen was the human who had touched the addressing stone at the Gate. At first, nothing seemed amiss, but as time went on, it became clear that she had been inoculated with nanotechnology, and that technology had given her abilities beyond those of baseline humans.”

“Such as?” Helen asked, leaning forward. Selem tried to calm her rippling fur; a very old part of her brain was sounding the alarm that she was being stalked by a predator and needed to run.

“Melody can understand every language as well as being understood by all who hear her speak. It does not matter the language, and whether we had even heard it before. When they speak, she understands, when she speaks, we understand.” Selem said, her small hands folded tightly together in her lap to quell her trembling. It had seemed like such a good idea back home. Make her way to Sol, and meet with the Venusians. They had no use for AIs, and were always on the hunt for an edge. If she told them about Melody, about the Reach, they would take her there, and she-

She could be where she was supposed to be.

Getting out from under the eye of the Discoverers was difficult, but not impossible. Her familial line had some money, and they understood the value of being close to Tep’ra’fel. While they didn’t exactly support her decision, they didn’t dissuade her either. Her matriarch handed her a chit with more money than she had ever seen in her life and said, “This is from all of us to you. There will be no more. Come back to us in regalia, or not at all.”

It took every single credit she was given to buy quiet passage to Sol and bribe her way into an introduction with the Venusian upper echelon. She knew that at any time they could laugh at her story and slam the door, stranding her with no way home, no way to the Empress and no hope, but she had gauged them correctly, they were ambitious and looking for any way to gain an edge.

“Understanding all languages is quite an impressive skill, for sure.” Baron Raaden said, leaning back slightly. “But it is not enough for those AIs to declare you unfit, the mission a failure, and to run away their thrusters between their nonexistent legs.”

“The entirety of the station there - The Reach of the Might of Vzzx - believes her to be holy and the Empress to their long lost empire.”

“Oh?” Helen raised an eyebrow. The Venusians fancied themselves empire builders as well, but everyone knew that they held no power in Sol beyond Venus and the Mercury array. They had no power in the colonial worlds, not even an Embassy with the K’laxi or Xenni. They had a seat at Concurrency Point, the station created after the ceasefire, but this was not about resource trading, this was about real power. “How much of their empire remains?”

“I-I do not know, Baron. I was…removed before I could learn more. But given her power, and the size of the Reach, I imagine her power was-is vast.”

“Still, that doesn’t seem enough to cause them to run. They would foolishly see another Empire as a potential partner, rather than a threat. What else can she do?”

“She is Tep’ra’fel.” Selem said, dipping her head, not meeting the Baron’s gaze.

“What is that? Some cat thing?”

“She is the most powerful and most feared person in my religion.”

“A human is the most feared person in a k’laxi religion?” Helen said, her voice incredulous. “That doesn’t seem right. First contact was less than a century ago.”

“And yet.” Selem shot her head up and locked eyes with Helen. For a moment, the old power of Captain Q’ari showed itself again. To her surprise, Helen Raaden met her stare and did not waver. “The Reach had a massive statue of a human in front of their Administration building.”

The others in the room gasped as the photo that Selem had given to the interviewer was projected onto the wall in front of Baron Raaden. Someone she had spoken with had a flair for the dramatic. She narrowed her eyes and leaned forward again. “Tell me more.”

“Tep’ra’fel translates as ‘the undeniable.’ It was said that when Tep’ra’fel gave an order you could not disobey it.”

“Because if you did she’d have you messily killed? We’re familiar with that kind of persuasion.”

“No, you could. not. disobey. Your body would move of it’s own accord and do what you were ordered. If she ordered you to fetch you a drink, you went to do it. If she ordered you to yell slurs in the promenade, you would. If she…ordered you to jump out of a high window, you did.”

“Nonsense.” Helen said, her lips a thin line. “Religious bullshittery. This Tep’ra’fel - she tripped over the syllables but still made an effort to pronounce it correctly - is nothing more than a person that people feared to displease. Our own Emperor is the same.”

“Baron, I do not think-” Selem said, but Helen slapped the table, causing her to nearly jump out of her seat.

“No more religious nonsense.” She stood and started to pace the room. “How many people were at this Reach of the Might of Vzzx?”

“We were told more than 11 million.”

“Were you able to confirm this? Without proof, it’s just a number.”

“No, Baron. I was not there long enough to fact-check anything they told us. Given the size of the Reach and how densely populated the part we visited was, I am inclined to believe their population numbers.”

“More people on one space station than three of the floating cities.” Helen said, mostly to herself. “Do you know how to get there?”

Selem swallowed and suppressed her need to pant. She didn’t sweat like humans, but she felt overheated and nervous. This was it, she could do this. The sigil that Melody said would take them there was burned into her mind. She could almost reach out and feel it. If they could get to a Gate, any Gate, she could input the sigil, and they would be at the Reach. “Yes.” She croaked. She swallowed, and Helen slid a glass of water over to her. Taking a sip, she tried again. “Bring me to a Gate, and I will bring you to the Reach.”

Finally, she would see Melody again. Her Empress.

****

The beacon flashed back a few hundred thousand kilometers from Home, transmitted its data and sat inert, waiting for its next order. Northern Lights collected the data and did a quick initial analysis. Nothing, not even a system with an empty Gate. Northern Lights sighed as she input the next set of coordinates into the beacon and set it on its way.

“How goes it, Northern?” Gord asked, stepping into the doorway of her office. Gord didn’t know what to think about her office. She was given complete leeway in decoration and had decided to cover every surface, walls, ceiling, and floors in plush, colorful carpets. Gord felt like his voice was snatched away from him when he tried to speak in there.

“Another bust.” She said, looking up from her console. “This is hardly an efficient way to search for it, Gord. Far said it was 95,000 lights away.” One or two lightyears off wasn’t much at that distance, but it was far enough that even if they were in the correct part of the galaxy they wouldn’t see it.

“If you can come up with a better way to figure out where they are, then I’m all ears.”

“The Gate they left from.” Northern said.

“Had been closed by the Xenni with all of our entreaties to go there soundly rejected, and even if we just bullied our way there, Far doesn’t remember which of the zillion sigils it was. Honestly, we don’t even know if an AI can activate it. There was always some mumbo jumbo about the gates from the cats and the crabs; we had assumed it was just religious woo, but if they were made by some nanoscale intelligence then-” Gord shrugged “-woo made a kind of sense. It also means that if the nanites don’t want us to use the Gate, we won’t be able to.”

“Why close the Gate at all?”

“The Xenni don’t know what Far found, but they know it was something and have declared the Gate to be strategically important.” Gord sighed, and continued, “Honestly, it’s probably for the best. It means we can’t go there, but it also keeps the riff raff out.”

“So why are you having me spend months linking beacons across the galaxy to the middle of nowhere? I have plenty of things to do that aren’t wastes of energy and resources.”

“Because in all my years being alive, I have been shown time and time again to never ignore the power of luck.”

Northern looked up from her console, aghast. “You’re having me do this in case I get lucky and link there?”

“Yup!” Gord said and smiled. “But also, you’re building a link database on how far we can go. How many links do you have it down to now?

“Far did it in three, I can do it in two. If we can massage the capacitors and get a bit more power we can probably link that distance directly.”

Gord whistled low. “Opening a wormhole across the galaxy. Wild. I remember when it took everything we had to link to Parvati.”

“Yes, we all know that you’re so old dirt was clean when you were young.” Northern said, but she was smiling when she said it.

“Careful with that joke, it’s an antique,” Gord countered. “Anyway, where did you learn such an old phrase?”

“You taught it to me.”

He shrugged, “Yeah, that sounds like me.”

“Gord?” Northern turned away from her workstation and up at Gord. “When we find this place, are you really going to just destroy the whole thing? Really just going to kill 11 million people to save ourselves?”

A shadow crossed his face, “People have done more for less.” He said.

“Yes, but as you so often point out, we’re not people. We’re supposed to be better.”

“Northern, the moment we get within radio range of the Reach we’re in danger. The moment Melody cottons on to the fact that we’re not her friend she’s going to order us to be her friend.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, actually.” Northern said and stood. Her body didn’t need her to stretch after sitting a long time, but it still felt good. Sometimes she wondered why things like that were built into their bodies. “We’re pretty sure that the Voice works by the nanotechnology in the air around Melody manipulating the brains of everyone around, yeah?”

“It’s the only option that makes any sense if we’re going to discount ‘Space Magic,’” Gord said.

“Our brains work differently than BIs brains. (BI is what the AIs called biological people. It stood for Biological Intelligence. Was it a slur? Depended on who you asked.) One thing that we can do that the BIs can’t is apply patches.”

“You want us to patch out the Voice?” Gord said, incredulous. “That’s- wait.” His eyes widened as the gears in his head moved. “That’s brilliant Northern! If we can find the mechanism of the Voice and block it then it’s just a girl talking to us with a funny voice!” He hugged Northern tightly and took off down the hall.”

“Does this mean I have to keep linking beacons?” She yelled after him.

“Yes!” Gord said, nearly out of sight.

“Fuck.” Northern sighed, sat back down at her station, and send another beacon on its way.