She tapped her slate, and fragments of speech filled the air, distorted, soaked by static, ghost voices speaking and fading away.
“To begin with,” Golvin said, “these are all radio broadcasts—like twentieth-century technology, not like the laser and other narrow-beam transmission methods the ISF and the space agencies our competitors use nowadays. In fact we picked them up, not with the Tatania’s comms system, but with a subsidiary antenna meant for radio astronomy and navigation purposes. The messages don’t seem to be intended for us—they’re leakage, essentially, that we’re picking up fortuitously.”
Jiang said, “Maybe these are from scattered communities, on Earth and beyond. Radio is all they can improvise. Requests for help, for news—”
“I don’t think so, sir,” Golvin said politely. “For one thing, the distribution is wrong. We’re picking up these messages from all around the plain of the ecliptic—that is, all around the sky, the solar system. From bodies where we have no colonies—none of us, either UN or Chinese—such as the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, some of the smaller asteroids.”
“Survivors, then,” Jiang suggested. “In ships. Fleeing as we are.”
Golvin shook her head with a scrap of impatience. “Sir, there hasn’t been time. Nobody can have fled much farther and faster than we did. And besides, there’s the question of the languages.”
Beth listened again to the voices coming from the slate, both male and female, some speaking languages that were almost, hauntingly, familiar, yet not quite…
Earthshine said, “I can help with some of this. My own systems are interfaced with the ship’s; I have a rather more extensive language analysis and translation suite than the vessel’s own.”
McGregor grunted, as if moved to defend his vessel. “Nobody expected the Tatania to need such a suite, sir.”
“Evidently the situation has changed,” Earthshine said smoothly. “There seem to be three main clusters in these messages—three languages, or language groups. The first, the most common actually, is what sounds like a blend of Scandinavian languages, Swedish, Danish, mixed with old Celtic tongues—Gaelic, Breton, Welsh. The grammar will take some unpicking; much of the vocabulary is relatively straightforward.” He glanced at Jiang. “The second group you might recognize.”
Jiang, frowning, was struggling to listen. “It sounds like Han Chinese,” he said. “But heavily distorted. A regional dialect, perhaps?”
“We’re hearing this from all over the solar system,” Golvin said. “If it’s a dialect, it’s somehow become a dominant one.”
Penny asked, “And the third group?”
Golvin said calmly, “Actually, that’s the easiest to identify. Latin.”
There was a beat, a shocked silence.
McGregor said, “I might add that we’ve had no reply to our attempted communications, by conventional means, with ISF command centers. And, of course, we haven’t replied to any of these radio fragments. The question now is what we should do about all this.”
Penny nodded. “I don’t think we have many options. I take it this vessel can’t flee to the stars.”
McGregor smiled. “This is, or was, a test bed for new kernel technologies, to replace the generation of ships that first took your parents, Beth, to Proxima Centauri. But it’s not equipped for a multiyear interstellar flight, no. In fact we don’t even have the supplies for a long stay away from dock; as you know, our escape from the moon was arranged in something of a panic.”
“We need to land somewhere soon,” Beth said.
“That’s the size of it.”
“But where?”
“Well, we don’t have to decide immediately. We’re still speeding out of the solar system, remember. It took us three days under full power to accelerate up to this velocity; it will take another three days just to slow us to a halt, before we can begin heading back into the inner system.”
Golvin said, “And then we will have a journey of several more days, to wherever we choose as our destination. We’ll have plenty of time to study the radio communications, maybe even make some telescopic observations of the worlds. Maybe,” she said brightly, “we’ll even be in touch with ISF or the UN by then.”
“I doubt that very much,” Penny said drily.
“Yes,” said Earthshine, watching her. “You understand, don’t you, Penny Kalinski? You suspect you know what’s happened to us. Because it’s happened to you before.”
McGregor stared at him, frowning, evidently unsure what he meant. “Let’s not speculate. Look, I’m the Captain. I’m in command here. But the situation is… novel. I’d rather proceed on the basis of consensus. I’ll give the order to fire up the drive for deceleration. Do I have your agreement for that? When we’ve come to a halt, we’ll review our situation; we’ll make decisions on our next steps based on the information we have to hand then.”
“Good plan,” Penny said. “Unless, by then, somebody makes those decisions for us. Think about it. We’re in a massive ship with a highly energetic drive, about to plunge back into a solar system where—well, where we may not be recognized. We’ll be highly visible.”
“Fair point. But we have no choice. All agreed? Then, if I can ask you to prepare for the burn, to make your way to your couches and lock down any loose gear…”
6
The trierarchus of the Brikanti vessel Ukelwydd was known to her crew, as she was known to her family and associates, only by her given name: Kerys.
It was a custom of the Brikanti, especially those Pritanike-born, to eschew the complex family name structures of their fiercest rivals, the Romans, all of whom seemed to trace their lineages all the way back through various senatorial clans to the Romans’ Etruscan forebears, and also the traditions of the Brikanti’s oldest allies, the Scand, with their complicated son – or daughter-of-this-fellow naming convention. Such as the tongue-twisting surname of Ari Guthfrithson, the druidh who stood before Kerys now, rather ill at ease in the commander’s cabin, and looking at her with growing exasperation.
“Trierarchus, I get the sense you’re not listening to me.”
Kerys allowed herself a grin. “Well, you’re right, druidh Ari, and I apologize. It’s just we’ve been so busy—prospecting like crazy at this latest teardrop before we move on to the next, and the next, following a schedule drawn up by some idiot in Dumnona with a blank parchment and a blanker mind and absolutely no experience of what life is actually like, out here in the expanses of Ymir’s Skull… And you walk in with this incomprehensible news of—what? A ship out in the void?”
“A ship that shouldn’t be there, trierarchus.”
“You see what I mean? Incomprehensible. Would you like a drink? I’m stocked up with the usual.” Meaning Brikanti mead and Scand beer.
Ari raised an eyebrow. “I haven’t heard the rumors that you have some wine from Italia tucked away in here, by the way.”
“Hmph,” Kerys said, reaching for the relevant bottle in a compartment of her desk. The Roman bottle was pottery, shaped like a miniature amphora, and came with a couple of matching mugs into which she poured the ruby wine, working with care with the ship’s thrust operating at less than full weight. “You’ve sophisticated tastes for one so immature.”
“I’m twenty-nine years old, trierarchus,” he said, sipping his drink.
“Younger than me by the best part of a decade, by Thor’s left arse cheek.”