Leviathan (Asher in Ordered Space Book 2) Read online

  Asher checked his own net, and pinged for any response, getting no return. It couldn’t even locate Jaydrupar or Chuck, despite them being only a few feet apart. “It must have hacked all our networked systems,” he said. “Now it doesn’t even need to shut down Life Support to kill us. It can probably fry our brains directly.”

  “Very likely,” said Jaydrupar, from somewhere in the darkness.

  “Is anyone else starting to feel…I don’t know…sort of sleepy?” asked Chuck.

  Asher turned toward her voice and was about to reply when he realized that he was feeling tired. Very tired, in fact. His limbs felt heavy. He couldn’t even tell if his eyes were open anymore. “Gas?” he tried to ask, but his voice trailed off.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “Good day, Asher,” said a familiar voice. Asher opened his eyes, and was forced to close them immediately when a harsh light flooded in. He tried to think clearly. Who had spoken? He thought that it might be Qwadaleemia, but he couldn’t really hear her, not like that. The voice he associated with her was really a product of his translation software. Maybe she was talking directly through his net, somehow. He tried to open his eyes again, and found himself blinking furiously as the light caused his eyes to water. He reached to wipe the tearing away, and found that he could move his arms freely. He rubbed his eyes and stood up, reeling a little. He looked around.

  The light, which had seemed so harsh when he awoke, was actually quite dim. It had a distinct blue green cast. He was in a circular room perhaps thirty feet in diameter. The ceiling was highest in the center and descended to meet the floor at the edge of the circle. Where he stood, near the center of the space, it was perhaps a meter above his head. The floor and ceiling were featureless black, with the now-familiar coruscating blue and green flashes rippling across them. The space was empty save for a pedestal in the exact center, on which rested a blue-green, glowing cube. Qwadaleemia and Faraneeta stood to either side of the pedestal. Faraneeta was leaning close to the cube, with her tendrils playing over its surface. She almost appeared to be trying to eat the thing, but Asher was familiar enough with Cythran physiognomy to know that she was manipulating it. As her tendrils tracked across the glowing surface, they left ephemeral trails of black where they touched.

  “What’s going on, Qwadie?” he asked, hoping his translation software was working again.

  “Welcome to Nezlethar,” she replied.

  “What’s that? Where are we?”

  “Nezlethar is the name of this vessel, at least as nearly as we can render it in your language. We are now in the main control space.”

  Asher looked around again. That didn’t seem right. “You’re saying this is the bridge? But the ship is huge, surely the crew must be in the thousands. Where are they?”

  “There is no crew. Or rather, there was no crew. In a sense, I suppose Faraneeta and I are the crew now. Nezlethar is largely autonomous, though; it requires little oversight.”

  Asher looked around, and saw that there was an second pedestal behind him, which he must have been seated on when he was unconscious. He settled back onto it now. “Are you saying this whole thing is an auton?” he asked. That seemed almost too ridiculous to be believed. He had seen some pretty big autonomous units, things like the excavators at the Archon mine, but this was orders of magnitude larger.

  “In a sense,” said Qwadaleemia. “It might be more accurate to think of Nezlethar as a sentient being in its own right, though. It operates to a fairly high-level program, but within that scope it has almost full decision-making power. Everything from low-level operations to major mission decisions are taken by it alone.”

  So, Asher thought, I’m in a five-kilometer-long sentient ship that has just eaten a whole fleet and is now being crewed by two Cythrans. That was a lot to digest, but he had to start somewhere. “Where’s everyone else?” he asked.

  “They are safe, Asher. They have been placed in stasis for the time being. Nezlethar has not yet decided what to do with them. We convinced it to let us speak to you because we trust you. We are hoping you can take its message—and ours—back to Hokozana.”

  “And what message is that, Qwadaleemia? ‘An unstoppable sentient leviathan is coming, run for your lives?’”

  “Let me begin with something simpler. As you will have realized, Faraneeta and I are welcome here, as you and your people are not. Does this not suggest something to you?”

  “Yeah, it suggests that you were the rat all along.”

  “Rat?” Qwadaleemia waved her tendrils in a manner that indicated puzzlement. “I do not know this word. We are welcome here because this is our place. Ours, the Ferethers’, the Shamblers’, and that of all the other sentients of our lineage.”

  “What do you mean, ‘your place?’”

  “This is our place of origin, Asher. Nezlethar is the laboratory where we were made.”

  “You were made by this sentient monster?”

  “We were created here, but not by Nezlethar. We and it were both made by something else, as were all the beings that you think of as Ferether variants. We came here, in part, to learn who that creator was.”

  Asher almost laughed at that. “You’re looking for God, aren’t you? That’s what this has all been about.”

  “I am not sure about a god, Asher. We are looking for our creator. The computer back at Archon settlement led us to Nezlethar, as it was intended to do. We have been in communication with it for two weeks now. We thank you for bringing us to it.”

  “But you could have come here whenever you wanted, couldn’t you? You had Meridian. You could have flown here…” Asher trailed off. Of course the Cythrans could have come here at any time, but that wasn’t what they wanted at all. “Is it revenge, Qwadie? Have you set all this in motion just to get revenge?”

  Qwadalemia looked at him steadily. All she said was, “There is no ‘just’ about it Asher.”

  ***

  Asher could barely speak once the scale of the Cythrans’ plan for vengeance began to dawn on him. It was monumental. Eighteen Hokozana ships were already in the hold of the leviathan vessel, their crews in some kind of stasis. If the Cythrans chose to take this monster into Ordered Space, he doubted that anyone would be able to stop them. They could destroy Hokozana and DiJeRiCo, if they wanted. He had little doubt they could also destroy the Ferethers. It all depended on how much control they had over the ship. On how much Nezlethar bought into their plans.

  His conference with Qwadaleemia ended abruptly when the pedestal he was seated on began to draw away, moving along the floor by some mechanism he couldn’t see. He tried to stand, but was unable to. The pedestal conveyed him through a portal that opened at one side of the control room and along a long, featureless passageway. It took him past openings to three other corridors. At the fourth opening, it turned smoothly. He was now in a second passageway, barely distinguishable from the first. This one was perhaps a bit narrower, and the ceiling was somewhat lower. He was trundled through several more turns and into smaller and smaller corridors. Finally, after what seemed an eternity but, according to his neural net, was only about twenty minutes, the pedestal came to a halt. To Asher’s left, a portal opened in the wall of the passageway. The panels that retracted from the sides of the doorway swung to block the corridor in both directions, then the pedestal abruptly retracted into the floor, dropping Asher unceremoniously onto his backside.

  He stood and walked cautiously through the portal. Beyond the doorway was another round compartment, far smaller than the control room, but otherwise identical. In the center of the room were three pedestals, two of which had people sitting on them. The occupants of the cell were Marcolis and Jaydrupar. Both were staring at Asher.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “It is not possible, Asher,” Jaydrupar was saying. “All the evidence demonstrates that the Cythrans are behind everything that has happened thus far. They must be the ones who convinced the bandits to attack. They must have hired the mercenaries. How c
an you defend them now?”

  Asher was a bit puzzled about that himself. “I’m not defending them. Not exactly. I’m just saying that I still think there’s more to it. Something else is going on.”

  “You have to see Hasim’s point, though,” said Marcolis.

  The three Hokozana operatives had been going over Asher’s conversation with Qwadaleemia for more than two hours now. Once the other two had overcome their astonishment at the the situation they were, as ever, ready to get down to business. At first, they had all been in agreement about the Cythrans and their aims. Clearly, they were out to annihilate Hokozana, probably DiJeRiCo, and almost certainly the Ferethers. Slowly, though, Asher had started to wonder about that. “Why speak to me at all?” he asked the others.

  “To gloat?” posited Jaydrupar.

  “I don’t think Cythrans could be bothered with gloating. Qwadie said that I would be sent back to Hokozana with a message, something that would come from both the Cythrans and the ship. She never said what that message was. Why send me back at all, if what they intend is the complete destruction of Hokozana? You’ve seen the power of this ship. If it fell on an Ordered Space caught unaware, there would be no stopping it.”

  Jaydrupar seemed about to reply, but Marcolis spoke over him. “I see two problems with that, Donnie. First, you have not been sent anywhere. We are all still here, held prisoner. Second, I wonder whether anyone could stop this thing no matter what preparation they had.”

  Asher slapped his forehead. “Damn it, I forgot about that!”

  “What?” asked a startled Marcolis.

  “You’re both supposed to be in stasis. Why are you awake? Why are the three of us here in this room? We three, who of all the Hokozana operatives in this fleet are the ones most involved with the Cythrans? I’m telling you, something else is going on.”

  Jaydrupar laughed. “What does it matter, Asher? We have no control over whatever happens now. If you have not noticed, we are in the belly of a monster one hundred light years from the Human Zone.”

  “Ninety-four light years,” Asher corrected him. “More or less.” Jaydrupar just scowled.

  At that moment, something shifted around them. It was difficult to perceive at first, but soon it was clear. They were accelerating. It was very smooth, making it even harder to detect than it would be on a large Hokozana vessel, but there was a definite change in gs. “We’re moving,” said Marcolis.

  “They must be taking the ship through the jumpgate,” said Jaydrupar.

  Behind him, a panel retracted, revealing a clear portal that looked out onto empty space. “Not the ship,” said Asher. “Just us.” The other two turned to look as the leviathan ship swung into view through the portal. Their little round room was flying away from it at intrasystem speeds.

  ***

  The flying room hurtled through the jumpgate mere moments after leaving its mother ship. Within seconds, they were looking at the pale green of Dominion Two again. A Hokozana scout came into view and then disappeared again. As it slipped beyond the edge of the portal, they could see its fusion torch light.

  “Back in Archibald,” said Marcolis. “I presume the four ships that didn’t make it through the jumpgate before the leviathan shut it down will be following us shortly.”

  “They won’t catch us,” said Asher. “There’s no way to be certain, of course, but I think that we’re going very, very fast.”

  “How can you tell?” asked Jaydrupar.

  “Just instinct, I guess. I’ve been on a lot of ships, and something tells me this one is faster than any of them. Where do you think we’re headed?”

  Qwadaleemia’s voice replied, presumably directly through his neural net again. “You are going back to Lutetia. This vessel has been detached to recover the Shamblers.”

  “Can you two hear her?” he asked.

  “I hear her, Donnie.”

  “As do I. It must be some kind of subnet transmission that activates our translation software. She sounds the way she always does, but of course that is a construct of the software. I imagine she sounds differently to the two of you.”

  Qwadaleemia’s voice continued as though they had not spoken. “The ship will rendezvous with a trusted contact near the Archon mine, in approximately twenty-six minutes. You will be dropped there. The ship will proceed to the laboratory, load the Shamblers and return to Nezlethar without you. That is all.”

  “I don’t get it, Qwadie,” Asher called to empty space. “Why drop us outside the mine if the ship is going into it?” There was no reply.

  Asher stood and walked to the portal in the wall of the vessel. Outside, he could see nothing but the starfield. Wherever Archibald was, he couldn’t spot it yet. He tried to look back the way they had come, but he couldn’t see around the curve of the ship. There was no way to tell if the Hokozana ships from the jumpgate were following. “Still no message,” he said.

  “I noticed that as well, Donnie,” said Marcolis. “If she wanted us to carry a message to Hokozana, it must not be a verbal one. Perhaps we are just to tell them about the existence of the leviathan. Maybe that is all she wants. A warning to be left alone.”

  “In character for what we know of the Cythrans,” said Jaydrupar. “They have hidden for the past year. Perhaps all of this has simply been to engineer for themselves a safer hiding space.”

  “A minute ago you thought they were going to blow up half of Ordered Space.”

  “My thoughts are always evolving, Asher. Besides, in our current situation, what is there to do aside from speculate?”

  Asher wondered about Jaydrupar’s idea. Perhaps the Cythrans really did want nothing more than a safe place to hide from the corps, the Ferethers, and everyone else who had conspired to destroy the lives they knew. He thought about Garueeria. Would Qwadaleemia have taken the risks that led to her creche mate’s death if that were all she wanted?

  ***

  They landed in a rocky valley a short distance southeast of the Archon open pit mine. The portal all three Hokozana operatives had been standing at to watch the approach of Lutetia retracted, allowing them to step directly out onto the surface. As soon as they were out, the door closed behind them, leaving a solid black surface. The saucer-shaped vessel whirled around and leapt into the air, dashing off toward the mine. It made no sound as it flew. Asher had never experienced a landing as smooth. Whatever else the creators of Nezlethar were, they were incredible engineers.

  He looked around. They were in a vaguely familiar narrow valley. It would have been a canyon if the sides were only a little steeper. To the south and east, a range of rolling hills a few hundred feet high wrapped around the valley. To the north and west was a taller range of craggy outcrops, broken in the center by a steep-walled pass. “The breach,” said Asher.

  “What?” asked Marcolis.

  “I just realized where we are. That pass there is the breach that the bandits used to get into the mine.”

  “That’s right,” said a new voice. “Just through there and you can be back to Archon, if that’s where you want to go.”

  All three operatives turned around to see a figure wrapped in khaki fabrics, carefully chosen so that they almost blended into the face of a nearby boulder. The figure stepped out of the shadow of the rock and unwrapped a scarf that hid her face below the eyes. It was May Roca.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “It’s good to see you again, Asher,” said the leathery woman. “You’ve brought some friends, I see.”

  “May Roca?” asked Asher. “You’re the Cythrans’ contact? And what happened to your accent?”

  “Oh, it’s still there when I need it. Part of the act, I guess.”

  “So you’re the rat. How did I not see that?”

  “No one suspects the simple country rube, I guess. Plus, you like me. Who are your friends?”

  Asher introduced her to Marcolis and Jaydrupar. It had never really occurred to him to suspect May Roca. As she said, he had liked her. She seemed straightf
orward, and her motivations—to get off the planet and find a better place for herself than what her parents had made—had seemed simple and admirable. Thinking of her as a Cythran double-agent was going to take some getting used to.

  “So,” May Roca asked, once the introductory pleasantries were over, “do you want to go back to Archon, or are we going somewhere else?”

  “Well…” Marcolis said, then trailed off. Jaydrupar looked around uncertainly.

  “Before you decide, there’s something you should know. Meridian isn’t in control any more. A substantial force—one hundred ops or so—landed right on top of the settlement yesterday, with considerable orbital support to take out our aerial defenses. The whole place is under the control of an outfit called DiJeRiCo now. You know anything about them?”

  It was all Asher could do to keep from laughing. “We have heard something about them.”

  “We’ve been at war with them for a year,” said Marcolis.

  “Really?” said May Roca. “I kind of heard you lot were fighting someone, but I already had a job, so I didn’t pay much attention.”

  “You had a job?” asked Jaydrupar.

  “She was working for the Cythrans, of course,” said Asher. “She’s probably the first person they hired once they heard about the alien computer over the Dark Wave.”

  “I hired them, actually. At least at first. I found them on some wreck of an orbital in the Ghost system. You ever been there? No? Well good for you, it’s a terrible place. Anyway, they were good with mechanical stuff and the outfit I put together for a job was a bit short a the time, so I took them on. A few months later, I was on my own again, looking for work, when they got in touch and asked for some assistance. The money was good, so I threw in with them.”