“It’ll be enough,” Brent said, grimly. “All we need is a suitable target.”
“The old problem again,” Tabitha agreed. “Do we pick on an isolated Killer starship, hoping to overwhelm it by sheer weight of numbers, or do we aim an attack directly into one of the star systems they’re redeveloping? If the latter, we risk disaster, yet with the former, we risk the Killers learning about our weapons…”
“It’s no risk,” Paula put in. “The Killers have their own FTL communications network.”
Tabitha scowled at her. She didn’t like being interrupted. “Are you sure of that?”
“Yes,” Paula said. She gave Arun a sharp look, and then turned back to the War Council. “It has long been theorised, even before Old Earth died, that it was possible to create wormholes and instantaneous communication links by creating two black holes that were perfectly synchronised. The Killers can create black holes at will. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t be able to use them to communicate.”
“There’s also indirect evidence,” Brent said. “The Killers reacted to the capture of one of their starships far faster than they could have if they lacked FTL capability.”
“Yes, Admiral,” Paula said, “and I believe that we can use that to our advantage.”
Tabitha smiled inwardly. Paula was presuming to dictate strategy to them?
“Go on,” Brent said, dryly. If he were offended, he didn’t show it. It was a surprising response, but perhaps it made sense. Standard military tactics were useless against the Killers, who brushed entire fleets of starships away as if they were flies. “How can we use their black hole network against them?”
“Simple,” Paula said. She shot Arun a second glance. “We create a black hole of our own and use it to hack into their communications network.”
Arun glared at her icily. “The Committee decided that any large-scale experiments with gravity generation would attract the Killers,” he said. Tabitha privately suspected that he was already writing out a disciplinary report in his head. Paula had crossed a line. “The ban on such experimentation was put in place for good reason.”
Tabitha kept her face blank, despite the tidal wave of laughter that threatened to burst out of her lips. Paula was hoping to manipulate the War Council into dropping the ban, a… cheeky attempt, and yet she might just be right. God knew the human race needed to do whatever was required to beat the Killers and end the fighting. If it was possible to link into the Killer network…
“And if it does attract the Killers?” Brent asked. “What then?”
Paula smiled. “You refit the Defence Force with the new weapons and have it sitting on top of the black hole,” she said. “If the Killers come to the system, they’ll run right into a trap.”
“And maybe the mice will manage to bell the cat,” Brent said, with a half smile. “I like it.”
He looked around at the other faces. “Shall we vote?”
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…