It might still try to dump that velocity. Turn about and return. But such a maneuver would require months, maybe years. Someone else would be designated as commander of Long Watch by then. So Riffan put the courser out of his mind, focusing instead on the suspected weapons swarm.
He watched and he waited, enduring the slow unfolding of time as radar waves propagated outward, moving at the speed of light but still requiring most of an hour to reach the nearest target, and an equivalent time for the reflected waves to return to Long Watch.
At last the first faint signals arrived. A DI compiled them into a blurry image, revealing the shape and size of the leading object in the swarm. They all studied it—Riffan and Pasha, Enzo and Zira, and Clemantine.
Zira spoke first: “It looks too small to be well armed.”
The object was like a dart, thin and elongated, only seventy meters from bow to stern and just a few meters in breadth.
Zira said, “It’s large enough to house a zero-point propulsion reef and enough bio-mechanical tissue to insulate a thin core of computational strata—but not much more than that.”
“Maybe it’s a plague ship,” Enzo suggested grimly.
Pasha proposed another possibility. “Maybe the swarm is meant to scout the system, chart our defenses and our weaknesses.”
Both suggestions sounded plausible to Riffan. He turned to Clemantine, wanting her interpretation, knowing that she’d endured a more harrowing experience of the Chenzeme than anyone else alive. He was taken aback by the shock he saw on her face. “Do you know what it is?” he asked her.
She bit her lip. He heard a hoarse tremor in her words as she said, “I’ve seen the form before.”
Pasha, eyes half closed in mad linkage with the library, said, “It’s the same dimensions as the ship that brought you home!”
“Oh, hey!” Enzo shouted in excitement, one hand tapping and stroking his control panel. “Riffan, I’ve got a radio transmission.”
“Radio?” Riffan echoed in confusion. Communications out of Deception Well came by laser relay—and it was far too soon for that.
Enzo said, “It’s a repeating segment. Voice. Human voice. Not encoded. Here, listen.” He touched a finger to the screen of his workstation and a man’s voice emanated from hidden speakers: Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot. A repeated phrase spoken in the language of Deception Well, but with an accent like Clemantine’s, only heard among the older generations:
Don’t shoot. I mean no harm. My name is Urban, formerly of the starship Null Boundary. Like Clemantine before me, I’ve come home. Then he laughed and added, Are you listening to this, Clemantine? I know you made it home, that you brought them the zero-point reef because I’ve detected its signature here. We won, Clemantine. We learned how to beat the Chenzeme. This courser you see? It’s mine. I took it. I hijacked it and made it my own. So don’t shoot. I’ve sent small outrider ships in-system as a communications relay. They’re harmless, but through them I can send you the history of the Null Boundary Expedition. You’ll want that. Respond to this. Open a data gate. And set up a resurrection pod. I’m sending my pattern through. Do it quickly. I won’t be in range for long.
A tonal signal followed, indicating a break, and then the message started to repeat: Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot… .
Riffan’s heart hammered in shock, in suspicion, in a desperate hope that it was all true.
He had not been born when Clemantine returned from the Null Boundary Expedition. In those days the Well had possessed only paltry defenses, but even so, Clemantine had approached cautiously in the tiny ship Messenger.
Excitement cut across this line of thought. The object picked up by radar had the same dimensions as Messenger—corroborating evidence that the radio transmission was true. Only someone familiar with the Null Boundary Expedition could have known what those dimensions were.
Clemantine had made her presence known months before she came into range of Deception Well’s orbital guns. Her ghost—an electronic version of her persona—had preceded the ship itself and a physical avatar had been grown for her. She’d testified to the history of the expedition up to the point she’d left it, she’d delivered a library of data, and she’d brought the propulsion reef that powered both Long Watch and Silent Vigil.
She’d been accepted for who she was, but Clemantine had not come back in the company of a Chenzeme courser.
Riffan turned to her as the voice continued to speak its repeated message. “Is it a trick?” he demanded.
Her eyes were closed, her lashes trembling against the pressure of a flood of emotion. “It is probably a trick,” she said in a husky murmur just audible over the recorded laugh. Her head tilted back as she drew a gasping breath like a swimmer surfacing after some long time underwater. “But it is his voice, his inflections, his attitude.” Her eyes opened. She listened—they all listened—until the message finished again.
As the tonal interlude began, she turned to Riffan. In words now sharp and sure she said, “Reply to him. Quickly. As quickly as you can. He can’t be allowed into Silk, not yet. Not until we’re sure. But we can bring him here. Give him the access code to a data gate, accept his pattern. We can examine it while his avatar is assembled. If there’s anything suspicious in it…”
A slight hesitation, that Pasha filled. “Then we end the process,” she said. “And wipe the avatar before he’s live.”
Clemantine’s gaze fixed on Pasha, as if really seeing her for the first time. Riffan thought she must be angry, but after a few seconds she acknowledged Pasha’s words with a slow nod. “Yes. Exactly.” Stern approval in her voice.
Then she turned again to Riffan. “In the meantime I suggest you adjust this ship’s course, take it closer to the swarm, and find the best angle for the guns.” She kicked off the wall and glided toward the still-open doorway.
Before she passed through it, Pasha spoke again. “This is why you’re really here, isn’t it? This is why you’ve spent centuries in cold sleep at this remote post. You were waiting for him, or them…”
Riffan hissed at her, appalled at the impertinence of such a question. Too late. Clemantine caught the edge of the doorway and turned back. Riffan braced for an outburst, a reprimand.
But Clemantine sounded only downcast, not angry. “Not knowing what became of them has been hard,” she confessed to Pasha. “If it is him, I will be grateful to hear his story. But to come here after so long, after all he must have seen, and in such circumstance—” She gestured at the projection. “Who is he now? Not the man I knew.”
With that she went out, and the sides of the door swept in, sealing shut behind her.
The message continued to repeat as Riffan turned to Enzo. “Do as she said,” he instructed. “Reply to him, and send him the key to a data gate.”
“On it.”
“We’ll need to isolate all data that comes in,” Riffan added. “Create a new library for it, separate from ship’s systems.”
Zira said, “I’ll set that up.”
“Thank you, Zira,” Riffan told her. “I’ll work on our trajectory.”