Full Count

We got airborne again without any more resistance from the Vorak.

The radio chatter we picked up from Lakandt was chaos. Red Sails forces had made it to Marshal Tispas’s location and retrieved him successfully, but not quietly. Word had spread—possibly by both sides—that the Marshal’s condition was dire.

Apparently that was a mixed bag. Having lost their leader, some Vorak forces were in disarray, while others had become even more resolute.

But whatever the case, every one of them was too busy to focus on the Jack.

I wouldn’t breathe any easier until we had a comfortable two million miles between us and Paris’s moons. Maybe three, just for good measure.

Materializing Daniel’s dogtag in solid form gave me some comfort. I slung it around my neck.

In the meantime, Nai, Tasser, Nerin, and I were concerning ourselves with after-action reports. Nothing formal, but there were a lot of questions about Coalescence, some of them even from other people.

“After really using it to its fullest, I don’t feel like I made the superconnector,” I admitted.

“After experiencing it too, I can understand the instinct,” Nai said. “It’s a strange thing.”

“It’s not just how complex it is,” I said. “I can barely remember the moment I activated my Adeptry. I didn’t even realize I could do it for days. I feel like I’d understand it better if I’d really made it.”

“Are you trying to give Daniel credit, or just trying to sell yourself short?” Nai asked.

“…Maybe both,” I said.

“Trouble with that theory,” Tasser drawled, “is that if Daniel helped you make it, how’d it drag him into your head?”

“We could have…or the…” I started.

Except Tasser was right. To connect my brain to Daniel’s enough to share things between us, the superconnector would need to have been built already.

“…It’s just the more I learn about psionics, the more I feel like a fraud,” I said. “I know more about them than anyone, but that’s not out of any true expertise. When I try to imagine the moment of…inspiration, where I first made something psionic…it doesn’t seem like I could have done it alone.”

“I think you’re trying to beat yourself up,” Nai said. “Which is fine. Your prerogative, but don’t expect us to help.”

“Meanwhile, in the reality where friends are supportive…” Tasser chuckled.

“I can understand Caleb’s self-pity about some things, but not against the thing that just defeated four Vorak headliners and their Marshal,” Nai snorted. “…But if I were to force myself to be supportive…Adepts are known to have an easier time picking up skills around them, even ones they aren’t totally conscious of.”

“Sorry?”

“Farnata that learn Adeptry around Vorak—not even talking to them, just in proximity—have been found to develop augmentations more often. Vorak that learn around Farnata have been found to pick up a wider range of tricks, and other Farnata specialties like flash formation. Just being around another Adept can sometimes see you pick up their tricks, or at least a version. You and Daniel might have been the only ones still alive, but it could be possible another abductee made something psionic before dying, and you somehow picked it up and built on it.”

“That would be a lot more convincing if any of the others had still been alive by the time we activated,” I said. “…But you’re right. Enough with the pity party.”

I looked her in the eye and forced confidence like nobody’s business.

“I made something great, regardless of whatever help I got. And I, for one, intend to understand what I’ve built.”

“Reflect and hypothesize then,” Nai prompted. “Coalescence, what is it?”

“Sharing capabilities,” I said. “Whatever either one of us could do, we’re both capable of. Including Adeptry somehow.”

“Mass was cumulative,” Nai noted.

“That’s not saying much,” I mused. “Add your mass limit and mine together and we get a figure that’s roughly equal to just yours.”

“Still, I could tell the mass limit was combined,” she insisted. “It wasn’t very much more mass, but I could definitely make a few extra kilograms. We? Agh, I still don’t know what word to use.”

“Range wasn’t cumulative,” I noted. “Both of us could create inside your range, but the two distances didn’t add together.”

“But you—well, ‘we’—were materializing beyond ‘Caleb’s’ normal range,” she said.

“I think…it’s [rolling with advantage…]” I said.

Nai frowned.

“Why am I getting the impression of…dice?” she asked.

“It’s part of an Earth game,” I explained. “Normally you roll a die, and take the result. But when you’re given ‘advantage’ for a roll, instead you roll two and always take the higher result.”

“But you don’t get to add them together,” Nai followed.

“Exactly. Your maximum range is what eighty-ninety meters? Mine is maybe thirty. If you take both our skills, it doesn’t matter who’s doing the materialization, neither one of us can materialize something a hundred-fifty meters away.”

“But between the two of us, we can still utilize the whole of both our mass limits,” Nai said. “So when we materialize something, whoever’s range reaches further overwrites the other’s, but with the mass limits combined.”

“Are you following this?” Nerin asked Tasser.

“A little? I got to see it firsthand, but this might just be an Adept thing,” Tasser replied.

“Magnitude was additive, range was ‘overwriting’—as you put it,” I said. “And precision was…just… wow.”

“That was about my reaction too,” Tasser said. “You’re precise, Caleb, but not that precise. You were placing a lot of those kinetic bombs without looking.”

“Did you notice what else I did with them?” I asked.

“You pointed for all of them,” Tasser said. “As a matter of fact, you didn’t do any motionless Adeptry that whole fight. Every single time, you made a motion.”

“Differentiation was a problem,” Nai said. “If we didn’t give each materialization a motion of some kind, we would have mixed up which body we were orienting the construct with.”

“That sounds like a pretty big drawback,” Nerin said.

“Maybe,” Nai said. “But the benefits more than outweigh it. We haven’t even brought up the sensory advantages and cognitive speed. It’s…just insane.”

“You should have seen what we did with Shaper,” I chuckled. “We recalibrated the fire on the fly so it could burn through the first creation. They gave it the same kind of augmentations Megatherium had, but we turned it to ash in seconds. You should have seen their face!”

“I imagine it looked a lot like mine,” Tasser grimaced. “People are going to be talking about that fight for a long time, friend and foe both.”

“I’ll say,” Serral said, descending the ladder. “We’re already receiving transmissions from command about why we had a diplomat in a battle, but still not nearly as com asking how a First Contact civilian managed to fight four Red Sails headliners and win.”

“Technically it was three headliners and the Marshal,” Nai said.

“I understand your minds were somehow psionically fused?” Serralinitus asked. “That is, Caleb’s brain was with you when your body fought Shaper?”

We nodded awkwardly.

“Then it was four headliners,” Serral said. “…Still, I really didn’t think we had a chance when they showed up. So…good job.”

“Boo!” Nerin cried. “That’s the lamest feedback ever!...Captain, I mean.”

The three of us smiled. Everyone from Demon’s Pit knew Serral was no good at positive feedback.

“Credit goes to Nai,” I said. “She was the one who guessed it was possible.”

“Explain to me the risks of exactly what ‘it’ is,” he asked. “What do I need to be concerned about? You were vague before we launched, and I let it slide because we were still in a warzone. But now I want a proper debrief. Are either of you going to keel over dead because of this?”

“It’s hard to say,” Nai admitted. “I’m still nursing a headache that could wake the dead. Pretty sure Caleb is too. But the normal risks of Adeptry are murky with this. If it had been just me doing all of what we did? I’d be dead right now of accumulation. But while Coalesced, we were capable of more precise creation than either one of us alone. So it’s hard to say how bad our accumulation might be.”

“What I’m hearing is that you would both benefit from a medical evaluation?” Serral asked.

Nai nodded. “Do we have any ice packs on this boat?” she asked.

“Can’t you create some?” Nerin asked.

“Oh please don’t talk to us about creating anything right now,” I winced.

“Ah, right,” she said.

Shinshay replied.

Nerin said.

Serral gave Nerin an intimidating look, daring her to do something that I couldn’t quite make sense of.

Serral said,

“” they said, descending into the galley. “”

Shinshay handed a beanbag-looking thing to Nai, and she slapped it on her forehead. Shinshay offered one to me too.

The cold did feel good after the long day I’d had.

“Nerin, how confident are you in your ability to assess their medical conditions?” Serral asked.

“Decently,” she hazarded. “Neither one is showing neurological symptoms, so that’s good. But any more than that is going to mean psionic junk. So if Caleb doesn’t know, no one else could. It would be best if we could fly somewhere with an Org facility, or any hospital would do.”

“That does bring up the question,” Nai said. “Where are we going now? We didn’t have a secondary destination in mind because we were in a hurry, but we’re clear now. Where are we actually going?”

“That is the next topic,” Serral said. “…Actually, ”

The Jackie Robinson extended roughly fifty meters nose to tail, with ten decks total. Ten crew was more than enough to operate a ship its size, but it still made for a pretty empty vessel.

Unless you stuffed all of us onto the ship’s second smallest deck.

Technically it was only nine of us. Weith was still in the pilot’s chair one deck above, but we could see and hear each other easily through the step-ladder’s hatch.

“Isn’t the question whether or not we burn straight for a Beacon?” Dyn asked.

“More or less,” Serral said.

“Don’t we have to?” Fenno snorted. “The timing of this attack was right after Nora left. This invasion might have had other objectives, but the timing was wholly about Caleb.”

“I agree,” Nai said. “I’m reading the reports from Lakandt. The rak attacked High Harbor. If Caleb isn’t safe at Coalition HQ, he’s not safe anywhere in this system.”

“We should contact someone first,” Serral said. “We won’t be receiving all the information out here. Command might have something to say, but for now, I agree. Weith, lay in a course for Beacon…bah, which ones are even active? Or in reach?”

“…Uh…Captain, we might want to wait a minute,” Weith said from above us. “Check scopes down there. Confirm what I’m seeing.”

Serral and Tasser both ducked over to the screen displaying anything detectable near us.

“Long range,” Tasser noted, dialing in our sensors. “Red Sails vessel.”

“Dira,” Serral swore. “That’s a gunship.”

“Lightshift says its burning hard for us,” Weith said. “Two hours away, tops.”

“Options to flee?” Serral asked.

“We can outrun them, but the longer this goes, the more trouble we’re in. They’ll get more ships to join in, cut us of and box us in. If we aren’t running to somewhere, they’ll get us sooner or later.”

“And probably before Laranta can get any help to us,” Serral said.

“…We’ve got a transmission from them,” Weith said.

The radio crackled out the Vorak’s message;

“Coalition ship, this is the Red Sails Armed Vessel Gesgurias. Under Congressional Assembly charter, your vessel is imminently in violation of interstellar quarantine. It will be destroyed if it attempts to take the Human out of this system. You are ordered to reduce your thrust and prepare to be boarded. Signal acknowledgement and compliance.”

“…Well that didn’t last long,” I muttered.

“There’s actually a second message,” Weith said. “Uh…hang on, actually. We have a lot of messages coming in, and I can only listen to one of them at a time…”

He flicked a few switches, routing different messages to different consoles on our deck.

“Here, this is probably the most important…” our pilot said.

Another message started playing, this one in English.

“[Caleb don’t go near a Beacon. I know it’s insane, but we just shut down one on accident, and we’re getting psionic feedback like crazy. Just listen to this…fuck…just…don’t go near any Beacons. Fuck, why am I talking to Caleb, the admiral will pass the word on—]”

The transmission cut off abruptly.

I glanced at Nai. She was probably the only person who understood any of that, but Nerin seemed equally puzzled as me.

“…What was that?”

“Uh…I’m not sure,” I said. “It was from Nora…she mentioned Admiral Laranta passing word onto us.”

“We do have that one,” Weith said. “…The transmissions are actually being rerouted by the Vorak ship.”

“What? These are coming from this gunship?” Serral asked.

“The certifications are intact,” Weith said. “They’re just retransmitting the encrypted signal. These aren’t faked, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Enough,” Serral huffed. “Nai, Fenno, Deg, each of us take a transmission. I don’t think we have time to listen to them all one at a time.”

What followed was a very chaotic game of telephone in dual psionic-auditory stereo.

Nai listened to a message from Laranta. Serral listened to the gunship’s continued messages, and Fenno and Deg were each listening to two other updates that were rolling in.

I asked Tasser privately.

he shrugged.

“Caleb, I have two messages, one from Laranta, the other from Nora,” Serral said. “She prefaces it saying it’s for you only.”

“I have a widebeam emergency warning,” Deg said. “A research Beacon near the inner worlds shut down too? It’s being distributed on Organic Authority channels though.”

“What’s the message from Laranta?” I asked.

Serral played it.

“Caleb, I don’t know what you did or said, but I just got a priority communique from Marshal Tispas going under anesthesia. They just sent every scrap of technical data they have on these shutdown Beacons. They offered an armistice over these Beacon shutdowns. It’s contingent on you steering clear of them. We’ve heard from [Miss] Clarke too. She corroborates what Tispas is saying, and I don’t think she has motive to lie. We’re routing as much information to you as we can, but bouncing the signals around the planet is slowing things down. Captain Serral, stay in communication for now, and don’t set any course heading toward a Beacon until we sort things out.”

“I have a follow-up to that one,” Fenno said. “We’re a few hours behind on these transmissions.”

“Serral, we’ve heard about the gunship. Under no circumstances are you to provoke it, but do not let it board you either. Acknowledge you won’t go near any Beacons. And respond to these messages already!”

“So…what do we do?” Deg asked.

“…I do not know,” Serral admitted. “Weith, for now, start a burn away from the gunship. I’ll transmit our…half-compliance. But if they shoot at us, I want to be ready to evade their torpedo.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Serral sat down and started transmitting to the Vorak ship. And then another message which would hopefully reach a Coalition satellite relay above Paris. And then he had to respond to the Vorak gunships hails.

We were close enough that light delay was only a few seconds, and they were apparently quite fed up with our radio silence.

“We will not decelerate, you will not board us, and we will not attempt to transit a Beacon…for now,” Serral said to them.

“…We are cleared to fire. Cease your—”

“You already threatened us,” Serral said. “We won’t decelerate, but we won’t set a new course either. If that’s not good enough, then shut up about it and shoot already.”

“Can we survive a missile?” Nerin asked.

“Not sure,” Serral said. “Nai?”

“I might be able to materialize chaff in our drive plume,” she said. “Warheads don’t usually survive a peppering of molten slag, but it’s not accurate at all. It would be a last ditch effort.”

“Well,” our Captain grimaced, “it seems we have the same problem still. I don’t particularly feel like surrendering to the Vorak after making it so far, but we also have a gunship bearing down on us.”

“I’m having a bit of trouble following this,” Shinshay said. “Are we not running?”

“It’s more that we have nowhere to run to,” I said. “The Vorak are finally sharing information with Laranta about the Beacons, but it turns out they weren’t kidding. Nora is even saying so.”

“So, even if the Vorak weren’t about to shoot us if we tried, bringing Caleb near the Beacon might shut it down anyway,” Shinshay said.

“Yes,” Serral said. “High Harbor received two more messages from Humans on Archo. The first was basically what you already heard with some more color. Nora and the Vorak she’s working with accidentally went near a Beacon between Yawhere and Harrogate’s orbits.”

“I thought Beacons didn’t work too close to stars,” I frowned.

“They’re not traversable if they’re too close to a star,” Serral corrected. “The Beacon itself can still be maintained and operated. The wormholes they punch are just too small for anything but signals. But that’s all a research station would need. Apparently the Vorak in charge with them didn’t know there was a Beacon there.”

“And it just up and died on them, complete with psionic feedback…” I said through gritted teeth. This was too neat.

Was Nora lying? If so, she’d just repeated the lie to the whole system. Not unlike Tispas had with his warning about me.

God, it had felt so good to vent right to Tispas’s face after our battle. I might have signed my own death warrant though.

Because Tispas was surely incapacitated for now. One of their subordinates would be calling the shots for now. I doubted their focus would be on anything except the battle or lack thereof.

If the armistice went through, however temporary, it would still mean the Vorak in charge focusing on everything that wasn’t us.

These rak were under standing orders issued hours, or even days ago.

They might shoot us just for refusing to decelerate. They hadn’t yet. But the day wasn’t over either.

And that wasn’t even considering Nora yet.

Did she have a reason to lie? What the hell was she thinking? She couldn’t have made that much progress with the otters so quickly, right? It had been days. Most of that time, she’d probably been thrown into a cell and kept under guard while they failed to listen to whatever she had to say.

…Except I’d pointed her toward Umtane.

If she’d come back on her terms…no, what was I even thinking ‘if’?

She’d apparently made enough progress to go inquiring a Beacon research station. What else had she been up to?

“…You said there were two messages. What was the second?” I asked Serral.

“For your ears only,” he said, tapping another button.

“[Alright Caleb, we’re doing this in order, so you’ve heard about the Beacon fiasco we had. But we left out what we were doing there because it involves ENVY. Long story short is that I’m still in contact with them. We found out how much time the scattered abductees have—it’s about two weeks—but we also managed to get a solution. ENVY broadcast an update to be retransmitted on wide beams in…well, I don’t know how many systems, but it’s going everywhere. ENVY says it would only work this once, and I think I believe them. So this update should unlock the ships and get them to start broadcasting SOS to anyone who can hear. Failing that, it enabled the autopilot and some basic UI for passengers. Don’t worry, it’s not giving anyone on board piloting control, but it should let people hit a button and start limping toward the nearest planet. So…please talk to the Coalition; there’s going to be abductees needing help in their systems too. I sent Admiral Laranta a message about this already, but it’ll carry more weight coming from you. People need to be ready to help the abductees out there. There’s…a million things wrong with this plan. But it was the only way I could find to help the abductees as quickly as possible. I know it’s rich coming from me, but we need to be working together. Just…send me a reply to this message. We need to stay in communication to help everyone.]”

That was…something.

On the one hand, she was dead wrong; there were way more than a million things wrong with that plan. It would be exposing countless of those abductees to the mercy of whoever reached their ships first. None of them would speak the language, and it would be every communication barrier problem I had but all over again and worse.

On the other, it was better and quicker than anything I’d thought of yet, which was nothing.

It stung to admit, but Nora had actually done good work here. With the benefit of hindsight—even just a few days—if I’d known her leaving would accomplish something like this, I’m not sure I would be able to oppose her departure.

It didn’t mean I would have gone with her, but she’d found a way to do something at least. Delivering the abductees into the hands of strangers was better than leaving them to slowly starve in the middle of space. It had to be.

“So…what do we do?” Tasser asked, “…still.”

“It doesn’t matter what Nora says. If the Marshal really did go under anesthesia, then one of the Esten have command. They’ll be under standing orders, and Nora’s Beacon mishap will only reinforce their initial concerns: if we go for a Beacon, the gunship launches a torpedo at us,” Serral said.

That was a sobering thought. The Jack wasn’t really a military vessel. It was fast and boasted impressive technology, but it had no real defenses to speak of. Nai was the closest thing we had to ship weaponry.

It wasn’t nothing, but she’d have trouble attacking or defending from a gunship a few hundred thousand kilometers away.

Much like seafaring back on Earth, most ships didn’t carry armaments.

“…It would be an impressive way to die,” Shinshay said. “Being blown up by a torpedo?”

“That’s not much consolation,” I told them.

“Oh sure. It’s just spacecraft weaponry is so expensive. Even the one torpedo to shoot us down would cost a fortune,” they nodded. “It probably costs more than this entire ship.”

“Wait, why?” Tasser snorted.

“Ships can have pilots,” Serral said. “But the computer systems necessary to guide a torpedo to its target have to onboard the warhead, and they’re obviously spent with each weapon.”

God, alien computers were so lame…

Wait…

“I’ve seen Vorak torpedoes before,” Nai mused. “The ordnance only accounts for a fraction of the weapon’s mass. The rest is all sensors and processors. You know they actually have a specialized nutrient solution for their missiles?”

“So do we,” Serral said. “The Deep Coils have a reward for anyone who can find out what we soak our processors with.”

Waitwaitwait…

“So what do we do?” Dyn asked. “If we just keep drifting, that gunship is going to reach us soon enough. Then…well, we all get arrested don’t we?”

“Depends on how closely the Sails follow diplomatic procedures,” Serral said. “Caleb and Nai might have been fighting, but we still have a right to defend ourselves. Technically we’re flying under a diplomatic flag, and the Vorak altered their military plan to go after us specifically…there’s a lot of factors.”

Wait…

“What if we flew for Archo?” Nerin asked. “Nora was roommates with Nai and I for weeks. I have a hard time believing she’d just turn us away, especially since the whole purpose of this ship is to help Caleb.”

“That’s actually not a bad idea…” Serral mused. “I doubt the gunship has orders to fire upon us moving. They’d want to confirm our course in order to fire. If they saw we were heading sunward, they might not fire.”

Everyone else was talking, but my brain was moving a million miles an hour.

“Are we being a little glib about the prospect of death?” Shinshay asked. “Not that I’m opposed, I’m just a bit lost as to what the appropriate reaction to all this would be.”

“Our attempt to get a First Contact alien out of a warzone is being complicated by the fact that psychic machines might be contaminating the height of three civilizations’ technology,” Tasser mused. “I don’t think single ‘appropriate’ reactions exist.”

“Hmm. That does make sense,” Shinshay said.

“Which brings us back again to what do we actually do?” Tasser asked.

It seemed like silence was going to be his only answer, but I caught up with my own train of thought. I had been a few moments away from missing Coalescence accelerated thinking, but I still got there in the end.

A mad grin spread across my face.

“We are not going to Archo,” I decided. “I think we can still win. Actually win: get away, I mean.”

“We’re stuck in this system,” Serral said. “There’s real evidence for this psionic Beacon concern. Even if Laranta hadn’t ordered me not to, that’s not the kind of thing I’m willing to risk. And I don’t think you are either, Caleb.”

“No risk involved in what I have in mind,” I grinned. “No, in fact, we’re going to do exactly what the Vorak really want us to do.”

Tasser saw the look on my face and made the same connection I had. “Oh! That’s an awful idea. Let’s do it!”

Nai was only a few hours off from Coalescence so following my thought process wasn’t hard for her either. “That’s genius. Weith, vector us for the nearest Beacon,” she said.

“Belay that,” Serral muttered. “The nearest active Beacon is nine hours away at our maximum burn. We’d never make it. And, again, we aren’t doing that.”

“She didn’t say the nearest active Beacon,” I said.

“The nearest Beacon is in Vorak controlled space,” Tasser said, consulting charts.

“Beacon 5,” Serral nodded. “It’s one of the inoperable ones… ah, of course. Weith, calculate that course and get us moving.”

“Uh…yes, Captain,” Weith said, beginning to tap at the helm console. “…Why?”

He was not alone in his confusion.

“...Because Tispas is right! Of course!” Shinshay exclaimed. “Beacons are shutting down. Psionics are seeming more likely to be involved, and the Vorak won’t shoot us unless they see us doing something to make things worse.”

“Who better to solve a psionic problem?” I asked. “Surely the Vorak can’t complain if we go for a Beacon that’s already broken. Let’s go fix the thing and get the [hell] out of here.”