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  This is why we are here, Wilson; the abbess knew we’d be in danger and they won’t be surprised if we die. This is why she wants us to kill my brother. The war, in a way, has already started.

  We have to get into cryo, San.

  She almost started crying again. Thank you, Wilson. I’ll see you at the wormhole; I just want to run one more calc.

  San hooked a foot on a floor strap and unlatched her helmet, then began undoing suit seals. The Marines looked away. The chamber felt cold, its steel deck freezing against bare feet. San heard the lieutenant say something but she ignored the man, instead pushing off the wall and diving toward the tomb’s entrance. Once she lay on her back, the two halves sealed with a thud. A moment later the needles sprang from their holes with a snick sound, their penetration somehow calming her in the face of everything that had happened.

  I am the answer to war. I will see all and by calculation and design will know the future, will navigate my brothers and sisters through the jaws of our enemy.

  “Navigation linkage off,” she whispered. “Administer serum, one dose.”

  San shifted in a microsecond, now hovering over Zhelnikov who looped one arm through a wall strap so he could face the other occupant in his quarters: her brother. She fought a sense of disgust. The feeling threatened to break her concentration with its distraction of emotion, yanking her from the river of quantum particles that flowed around her in a cold current of electricity. She struggled. Soon the emotion had left and San resubmerged into the flow, wallowing in the energy of its promise.

  “The Proelians are phantoms.”

  Win shook his head. “This was stupid, Zhelnikov. Your brothers are too eager, take too many chances.”

  “I didn’t know of this plan. They never should have made such a blatant attempt. Now the abbess is scouring her ranks for traitors and she will find them. It will put us back.”

  “And we were here, Zhelnikov. Right here in the middle of Proelian crews, in a ship immediately adjacent to one where an assassination attempt just failed. I look forward to the questioning. Tell your people they are morons.”

  San drifted closer. She lowered herself to face Win, inches away from his matte resin faceplate, curved and faceted with clusters of sensors that made him even more of an insect, the folded arms of his servo harness its legs. Where is the web? A spider always had a web and Zhelnikov appeared as though he’d been stuck to its strands for decades, pinned against sticky silk that would never let him free even if he wanted to flee. For Zhelnikov, the web would have been a comfortably familiar home.

  Come, young thing.

  As if an invisible fist grabbed her by the ribs, a force ripped San from the Higgins and dragged her outside, into space, where Jupiter passed, then Pluto, the acceleration constant and marked by stars that smeared into bolts of light. Part of her wanted to slow. The stars drew her attention, their energy palpable at a distance but even more intense when her consciousness moved through the furnaces themselves, a sea of fusion-charged gas and brilliance. San stopped fighting. Resistance was pointless, this was a Sommen grip. They had found her and pulled her consciousness to wherever they wanted.

  Days seemed to pass. San stopped, landing in a dark space lit by pale blue lights that hovered in midair to reveal black and green arches joining far overhead. Alcoves at regular intervals held statues. The figures depicted Sommen warriors in poses of violence, their black trunks naked and striped with thick and cabled muscles, and with faces contorted to reveal row after row of needle teeth. And those eyes. Even though lifeless statues, the black orbs called to her, almost making her miss the fact that a live Sommen floated in the middle of the vault, encapsulated within a long, transparent container filled with fluid. It gestured to her with thin arms. A priest.

  Yes. A priest. And a killer.

  I have never killed, said San.

  You will. And at first you will enjoy it. Then you will learn to ignore the attraction of death and its power, and you will emphasize calculations and their meaning.

  Mathematics is the way.

  Because mathematics is the way through space and time, the solution to life, and the path toward the glory of destruction. It is good that you know. Let me look at you.

  San felt herself dragged closer, just outside the liquid tank. The Sommen slammed its head against it and its movement startled her, almost jolting her out of her trance with the realization that a leader among the most violent threat mankind had ever faced was now mere inches away; it didn’t matter that it wasn’t in real life. Reality was always relative.

  You are human, the thing said.

  What else would I be?

  There was another. At first we admired your progress, but then saw that once more you had strayed. It was not human. No species should change its essence and stray far from what they are. If they do, they lose what was meant to be.

  I don’t understand. Another?

  You know him. I see him in you, but you are different. Un-defiled.

  My half brother. I only found out about him recently.

  The Sommen made a gurgling noise and San sensed gentle waves of joy. It was laughing.

  Your thoughts leak, it continued. You need more practice. I see your brother’s death and you as the killer. I see that this has been ordered by your elders. It is wise for your old priestess to order this destruction and it is a thing of art to give you the task. This is a moment, in which you will learn much about war, about death, and about what it will take to become strong. We approve of what we see in this plan.

  Why did you bring me here? she asked.

  To see and talk. You aren’t the enemy. Humans are the way, the doorway to life eternal.

  I don’t understand that either.

  Now San sensed joy again, this time directed at her. So young. You’ve never seen the shadows of dead civilizations, or any of the things older than my species and that are long gone now. Forgotten, but still deadly. How could the maker have gifted your kind with so much? It is another piece that, when put in place, tells us that you have been chosen. All this is in the books.

  The religious texts? I have them, in my mind, but I can’t access them yet; they have to emerge on their own.

  They will. Tell your masters that we approve. Go.

  San woke in the tomb, her forehead damp with sweat at the same time she shook, part of her mind still trying to absorb what had just happened, another trying to rid itself of any remaining serum. She heard a crackling nearby and ordered the clamshell to open a bit, just enough room so she could free one arm and drag the headset into place.

  “San!” the captain yelled in her ear.

  “Here, Captain.”

  “The Jerusalem has finished its calculations and is already starting its burn, and the Higgins will be ready after that; we’ve approved of a minor course change for the Higgins so we don’t all arrive at the same spot simultaneously, but will approach from multiple directions. We need you to run the last-minute calculations.”

  “I’ll get on it now, Captain.”

  “And when you’re done, get your ass into cryo; we’re not wasting any time once the new route is locked in.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Win vomited into a vacuum line. The hose had popped from the ceiling and he pressed the mask against his face while suppressing a scream; all his muscles had cramped. Cryo sleep hadn’t agreed with his biochemistry and both hands erupted in pain when he moved them, forcing the fingers to disconnect the chem-tubes one at a time, their ends glinting in the cabin’s light and reminding him of malaysian susuks—charm needles. He threw up twice more during the process and then hit the button to open the chamber, allowing him to spill out and into his quarters. Soon the compound he’d been given to handle sustained high-g acceleration wore off, leaving him with a sensation that he’d been converted into a deflated balloon.

  Win knew their route would have taken them in a line that passed through the hydrogen-rich atmosphere of countless gas giants,
a delicate mathematical operation that had to ensure more fuel was taken on than was lost in such a massive gravity well. And maybe there had been one or two water runs. Something tugged at Win’s mind; he was supposed to do something when cryo ended.

  Get to the ashram . . .

  Win struggled into his undersuit. In this weakened state he would never have been able to do it on Earth; weightlessness was a gift. By the time he’d wrestled the armored servo harness out of its locker and squeezed into it, he had a chance to look at the chronometer and froze. He double-checked and hit the button telling it to resync with the ship’s clock, but the answer didn’t change.

  Almost a full two years. Gone. Anything could have happened on Earth during such a long period, and Win wondered how much he’d missed during transit. The exit into the corridor outside raised even more questions; Win emerged to see a group of crewmen shackled together, some of them unconscious with head wounds that trailed beads of dark blood and smears of red now covered the previously pristine walls. Three Marines guided the prisoners. Each of them held Maxwell carbines and one saluted to Win, the maneuver tricky in zero g.

  “Morning, sir.”

  “What happened?”

  “We had orders to round up these ones after cryo. Some of them resisted.”

  The confusion threatened to make Win nauseous again and he sped in the opposite direction, trying to recall the way to the ashram. His memory resisted. Win saw his recollections as if they’d been dipped in fog that he wiped off before calming his nerve endings, willing his head to stop pounding. By the time he reached the ashram, the communication station was already buzzing and Win paused to look through the glass dome. Wherever they were, the Higgins was alone in empty space, with only distant stars as companions and no sign of the other ships. He grabbed the handset.

  “We were out for two years, Zhelnikov. When I woke up, Marines had detained a bunch of the crew.”

  “You were out for two years, Win. I came out of cryo a couple of times to oversee things and make sure we came out on top.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We transited two wormholes while you slept. Even with the reports of potential Chinese ambushes we had to take the chance and go for transit without having you scan ahead; the Proelians on board had rigged the cryo-tank monitoring system so that if we had thawed you, half would have automatically awoken. I needed them all asleep.”

  Win closed his eyes. Part of him shot out but then stopped, close enough to Zhelnikov’s quarters that he felt the man’s brainwaves leak through the bulkhead, juxtaposed with the handset’s sensation of cold plastic. The awareness of being two places at once made Win feel sick again and he opened his eyes.

  “You left the group. You took a different route than the other ships, and now the Jerusalem and the Bangkok have no idea where you are.”

  Zhelnikov nodded. “We’re making for Childress Station—my research facility. One more transit and we’re outside the human authorized zone. I and my organization planned for the detour prior to boarding this vessel on Earth and we were able to staff the Higgins with a large number of loyal crew and Marines.”

  “But not all the crew.”

  “No. Not all.”

  “What will happen to the Proelians? You can’t keep them in the brig during acceleration; there are no couches. Even with their engineering if we get into a combat situation they’ll be slammed against bulkheads and broken open like watermelons.”

  “We don’t need them. And we couldn’t risk sabotaging their cryo chambers; it could have been detected. You and the Marines will jettison them from the shuttle airlock after finishing your scan and we will say they were killed in a Chinese ambush. Right now I need you to recon through the last wormhole transit—Zebra-Two-Five—and survey Childress Station; it’s outside the human-permitted zone. I want to know if anyone is around, Sommen or Chinese.”

  The thought of killing so many Proelians excited a part of Win, who grinned as he spoke into the handset and ignored the suction sounds of his suit drawing saliva from his chin. He willed himself to be calm.

  “I see the wisdom.”

  “Win, one last thing.” Zhelnikov paused, interrupted by a coughing fit that sent scratches of static through the line. “If the Sommen are there, I want to know everything. How many ships, how many warriors—everything.”

  “I understand, Zhelnikov.” He replaced the handset and, without waiting, injected a bolus of serum.

  This time it was effortless. Win’s consciousness disengaged from his body as it hovered, a shell of material with arms that looked lifeless while it remained in trance. He sensed the ship’s engines, dormant as they coasted. Soon an instinct emerged from what he assumed was the Sommen part of his neural structure and Win urged his presence to expand, forcing him to imagine that his soul transformed into a diffuse cloud of dust—one that filled a vast portion of space on his side of the wormhole—an invisible nebula. Anything that travelled within range of his expanded presence would collide with a part of his soul, sending a tremor along its network and leading him back to the source.

  I am a messenger of death. Garrisons live by my message, warriors fight on my word alone, and merchants cannot supply without my knowledge. The words were Sommen. He almost stopped concentrating on the task of scanning to instead take a closer look at how the passages had infiltrated his thoughts, but Win stopped, reminding himself to stay alert. Without my sight, the empire collapses into disconnected settlements, doomed to a slow death with the passing of time. A death without war, without combat, and without meaning. I give meaning to empire and glory.

  Something entered his network. At first he didn’t feel it but after the thing moved for some time it became clear that the object was tiny, tumbling end over end through space and in the direction of the Higgins but still far enough away that the ship’s sensors would never have picked it up even if they’d been switched on. The thing gave no emissions of its own. Whatever it was, Win decided, it wasn’t supposed to be there but lacked power, suggesting that its arrival was unusual. Curious, he focused, collapsing his consciousness back to a point where he could view the object close up.

  A signal buoy.

  Win recognized the black scarring on the buoy’s metallic surface and realized that something had shot at it, missing or else the buoy would have disintegrated, but close enough to damage the thing’s propulsion unit and power supply. Now it coasted, dead. After noting speed and position, he lined up its trajectory and flew alongside it, backtracking in the direction from which the thing had come, tracing a path to a small white star. Not a star, Win corrected himself: the wormhole. The buoy had transited the wormhole from Childress Station.

  He broke trance for long enough to grab the handset and message Zhelnikov.

  “I’m sending you the coordinates of a signal buoy. Its propulsion unit is destroyed and the thing looks like it may have come from Childress; it’s a human buoy for sure, Fleet design. Have the ship move to intercept.”

  “Win,” said Zhelnikov. “When you start scanning the other side of the wormhole, be careful. If the Sommen are operating there, they will have a priest with them.”

  “Is it safe to use another dose of treatment?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then do not fear, old man.”

  Win whispered a command into his helmet mic and then gritted his teeth when a needle inserted at the top of his spine and between the vertebrae. He hissed. His heart raced, picking up so much speed that it felt as though all four limbs vibrated with the pulsation and Win fought the urge to vomit, willing the sensations to pass.

  Without warning, a searing heat erupted within Win’s skull and he screamed inside his suit, loud enough to deafen his own ears. He laughed at the irony: Nobody else can hear me.

  As if pulled by a magnet, Win’s consciousness flew again from the ashram; he watched as the Higgins shrunk and then disappeared in darkness. Then Win turned, the wormhole now close-by and enormous, grow
ing as he sped forward. He imagined it was a mirrored marble the size of the sun, which emitted a cold light of its own that brightened as he closed in, its bluish-white rays blinding in their intensity. In a blink he was through.

  Backlit by the wormhole’s light, Win moved into the darkness on Childress’s side and mentally ran through the coordinates Zhelnikov had given him. His mind overlaid a map. He oriented as quickly as he could, ignoring the hiss of space and streamers of particles that jetted from the wormhole. By the time he moved out, Win had started his mantras.

  The way is always toward the inevitable, toward death. There can be no glory without war, no war without planning and no planning without control. My mind is a vessel. With this vessel I contain my thoughts, and by containing my thoughts I control them. Thoughts are a transmission. Thoughts can run astray, can be intercepted. An intercepted thought can bring defeat.

  A burst of light caught Win’s attention. Then another. He moved in faster, the view of battle taking shape where a Fleet vessel already burned—a carrier. It had been cut into three pieces that now moved together in a straight trajectory, the sections tumbling out of control and spewing gases along with personnel. Win closed his mind to their mental screams. It was a distraction, a threat to his concentration, and if this was a Sommen attack he needed to remain undetected. There was no room for error.

  A Sommen ship moved past. It emerged from the darkness of space and a section of its side began to glow a bright orange where three jets of plasma rocketed from it, heading toward one of two remaining vessels, both battleships. The ship began to turn, attempting to evade. Before it could dodge the plasma beams, one of them slashed into the vessel along its spine, cutting through the hull in a fraction of a second and almost slicing it in two down the ship’s length. The other two Sommen plasma beams missed, dissipating in the distant blackness of space.

  The last battleship turned, its bow now facing Win and the Sommen ship. Win prayed for it to fire. At first he had trouble picking out the vessel’s details because it was so far away, but as it closed Win saw the tip of it start glowing in preparation for attack. Both vessels fired. Blue plasma streaked from the Fleet ship and passed over the top of Win’s head. A miss. Even missing, the beam had come close enough that Win saw a portion of the Sommen ship melt and then disintegrate, spewing white gas into the vacuum.