Extending far beyond the orbit of the planet was the artificial nebula, its outer boundary represented by a translucent, spherical green shell. A blue flag at the edge of the nebula marked the position of Long Watch. Another indicated Silent Vigil, on the opposite side of the sun.
Vastly farther out, the Chenzeme courser. A red flag marked its position, making it clear that Long Watch was situated to encounter it first—if it was bound in-system.
And if it was inbound? He worried it was not alone.
Warships like this one were known to run in pairs, with one ship dark. Cold and dark and therefore invisible, its propulsion reef quiet as it coasted through the void on a pre-planned trajectory designed to bring its gun into position to deliver maximum destruction. A trajectory detectable only if it chanced to eclipse some background object while the narrow eye of a telescope was turned its way.
He linked to the astronomical DI. *Re-examine all survey imagery. Look for any indication of a second ship, running dark.
*A re-examination is already underway.
Good.
He turned to the astronomer. “Enzo? We really need that trajectory. A rough estimate, at least.”
Enzo shook his head. “Not yet. Not for a while. But if we put another telescope on it—”
“No, I don’t want to do that,” Riffan said. “We know where the courser is. What we don’t know is whether or not it’s alone. Now more than ever, we need to continue the standard full-sky scan.”
Pasha must have picked up on his worry, because she spoke in a voice so firmly determined Riffan knew it was a play to shore up his confidence. “If there is a second ship, we’ll find it and we’ll hit it—or Silent Vigil will—before it knows we’re here. It doesn’t know we’re here, Riffan. We’re dark, too.”
Not entirely true. Long Watch had a heat signature. It was unavoidable given that the ship had to provide an environment warm enough to sustain biological lifeforms. And they potentially advertised their position every time they engaged in bursts of laser communications with the head office in the city of Silk—although such communications took place over a narrow beam unlikely to be detected even with some scattering from the nebula’s dust and debris.
“We need to get this right,” Riffan said quietly, speaking as much to himself as to the bridge crew. He did not feel adequate to the task but that didn’t matter. The task was his.
“Oh,” Enzo said. A soft solitary syllable, dull with fear. His head was cocked, his eyes unfocused as he contemplated some newly arrived data visible only to him. “Oh,” he repeated. “This is not good.”
He looked up, looked around, looked at Riffan. “I put a DI to the task of analyzing recent data from the gravitational sensors. It’s found a series of perturbations. Faint. Very faint. But real. A swarm of them, each with a signature that suggests a propulsion reef.”
“A swarm?” Riffan asked, his stomach knotting painfully. “Does that mean multiple objects?”
Enzo’s lip stuck out. He scowled, he shrugged, then finally he nodded, conceding the distasteful truth: “Six discrete sources of perturbations. I’m assuming six distinct objects.”
By the Pure First Light!
“Do you have locations?” Pasha snapped. If she felt any fear, she kept it firmly locked away.
In contrast, Enzo’s voice shook when he answered her: “There’s data enough to triangulate, to chart their recent movement. All six objects appear to be following roughly parallel paths, separated by intervals between one and two light-hours. I’m going to show you estimated trajectories. Posting on the display… now.”
Six thin lines, bright orange in color, popped into existence on the projection of the Near Vicinity. The lines curved, suggesting paths that dipped slightly toward the sun. In his mind, Riffan imagined another curved line, one that connected the still-unseen objects in the swarm. Extended outward, that line pointed in the general direction of the courser.
In a subdued voice, Enzo said, “Note that less than a light-hour separates Long Watch from the closest object in the swarm.”
Pasha spoke aloud the obvious conclusion. “That proximity can’t be coincidence. It knows we’re here.”
Clemantine woke from her latest sojourn in cold sleep, brought slowly to awareness by the ministrations of her body’s complement of Makers—complex nanomachines programmed to sustain her at peak physical condition and to defend her body at a microscopic level.
She did not allow her Makers to affect her mood, so they did nothing to ease the anxiety that arrived with awareness.
Her first thought: How much time has gone by? Impossible to know if days had passed, or years—or centuries?
She’d left a personal Dull Intelligence on watch, charged with overseeing the integrity of her cold-sleep chamber and instructed to awaken her only for a short list of explicit reasons:
If her personal security was threatened.
If there was an existential threat to Deception Well.
If ever there was a visitor or news of events from beyond the system.
She did not try to guess between these reasons. As her thoughts quickened, she assumed the cause of her waking encompassed all three.
The transparent mucilaginous tissue of her cold-sleep cocoon pulled away, retreating in shimmering streams along the ribbons of its anchoring umbilicals, leaving her adrift in the zero-gee of her tiny chamber aboard Long Watch.
Clemantine was not part of the ship’s small crew. She was but an elder legend, an artifact of a tumultuous past, a hero to her people, and as such she was granted certain privileges—like the privilege of maintaining a private sanctuary here on the edge of the system. Forgotten by most as she was ferried forward in time through the routine of cold sleep, always awaiting some word, some echo of salvation from those who’d left long ago on a quest to find the source of the Chenzeme warships. They’d been just a small company of adventurers. She’d been one of them, once, and an avatar might be one of them still in an alternate life. A better life than this one? Or a worse life? A life already ended? No way to know.
“How long?” she asked, speaking aloud to the empty chamber.
The DI that had wakened her answered in its familiar voice, speaking through her atrium:
*Seven hundred twenty-three years, one hundred twelve days, two hours, thirty-two minutes.
“By the Unknown God,” she whispered, taken aback at such a span of time. Far longer than any she’d ever spent in cold sleep before.
The Dull Intelligence made no response to this comment, commencing instead on a status report as its instructions dictated it should do, brief line items spoken in a nurturing masculine voice audible only to her, summarizing the centuries so as to orient her in this age:
Deception Well’s active population had slowly increased, tripling in size. Many still lived in the capital city of Silk, built around the column of a space elevator, 320 kilometers above the planet’s surface. Many more now lived on the planet, in scattered villages.