Chapter Twenty-Two
Portal Ship
The conclave raged, searches coming back from thousands of ships, all in the negative thus far.
The title of Entropy had been gifted to the human soldier as an almost sarcastic warning that the universe had a sense of humor, and it was a dark one. Elements in the universe often conspired to disrupt carefully laid plans, an example of a universal abhorrence.
The humans had a saying that had shown up during the brief conflict, something that had been pulled from their computers and their minds as the Ross worked toward the ultimate goal.
They seemed to believe that the universe abhorred a vacuum.
That was among the single stupidest thing the Ross had ever heard. The Universe was almost entirely vacuum. Arguably, in fact, the universe abhorred matter because it caused it to be clumped together as much as possible, and segregated away from the clean vacuum that the universe preferred.
No, the universe did not abhor a vacuum. It abhorred complexity.
The more complex a system, whether by design or accident, the faster it would be destroyed by the universe. Subject Entropy was a sly sideway joke about that universal constant, one that the Ross had long fought to overcome and yet still found popping up in one form or another, ruining their work.
But it had been a joke, dark thought it might have been.
Now, however, the joking had stopped.
This human with the title they had bestowed was seemingly intent on living up to the name they’d given her, and there appeared nothing that they could manage was sufficient to stop her!
Conclave after conclave shifted to full alert status, but transmitting the information was taking time… and none of them had any hint of where she had gone.
*****
Sorilla stood in front of yet another secure terminal, now well used to firing the alien computer up and even started to get a feel for the interface beyond the basics.
The Ross seemed to have a largely distributed data system, which honestly surprised her quite a bit. She would have thought that with their capacity to move things and information around the galaxy through the portal ships that they would have had a more… well, alright, distributed but evenly so, perhaps?
Instead, what she was seeing was more of a discrete repository of what was likely primarily localized information rather than some alien equivalent of the internet.
Or maybe I’m just accessing their intranet and haven’t figured out how to tunnel a request out into the wider network yet.
It didn’t matter too much, given the limitations she was currently working with, she supposed. What did matter was that she had once more managed to pull up the network map that she had looked at before.
Sorilla was careful to search through several random entries before she reached the one she wanted.
It showed a Ross ship, or outpost of some sort, on a world located three planets out from its yellow primary.
Sol.
She wasn’t sure she understood what she was looking at, if she were deadly honest with herself, but it had to have something to do with the Ross advance into human controlled territories. They had been there before.
And they left something behind.
SOLCOM had long been considering that the Ross were searching for something, though just what had remained a mystery. The motions through human controlled space had matched a search grid, once you accounted for the location and accessibility of jump points from each star they occupied.
That had matched up with the old ship on Child of God, though that was a bit of an outlier in other way. For one, there was a strong belief that it wasn’t a Ross ship… or, if it was, it was far removed from what the Ross had in service at the moment.
Which, didn’t matter, really. It might have been another race, someone the Ross had once fought, or traded with, or any number of other things. None of that mattered. What mattered was that it was important to the Ross.
Just like that spot-on Earth was.
Sorilla recorded the file into her system, then moved on exactly as she had from the previous entries, calling up the next one in line almost at random and checking that out as well.
They’re looking for something, but now the question is not only what, but why?
Well, perhaps a more important short-term question remained ‘how the hell was she going to get out of this mess?’, but Sorilla was trying not to bring herself down.
A quick check showed that there was no active connection to the ship or whatever it was on Earth. That was both a pity, because she’d like to have just teleported home… but also a relief, because she didn’t want the entire Ross military to follow her.
Either way, though, it still leaves me with a serious problem.
Sorilla started looking for another path through the portals, something that would take her somewhere… useful.
*****
Parithalian Cruiser Upwind
“Movement on the Ross’El vessel! It is accelerating on an intercept vector with our course!”
Elim swore softly, trying hard not to unnerve his people, but that was not what he wanted to hear. He’d almost felt like they might escape this mess before the Ross got over whatever it was that had caused them to, do whatever it was they were doing.
We have far too little information about this situation for my liking.
The Upwind was moving fast already, and still accelerating, toward the secondary jump point. They had the lead, and a good build up under them… but the Ross were faster.
It was going to be a race, and he wasn’t certain which of them would win.
“Signal the Envoy,” He said. “I would have a word with him.”
“Yes, Master of ships.”
*****
Sienele made his way down to the Master’s private office, where the Upwind’s Master of Ships was waiting. He nodded to the Parithalian guards on either side of the door as he approached. One of them silently reached behind him to key the door open, and Sienele walked through without fanfare.
Elim was seated behind his workspace, projections open all around him aside from directly between himself and Sienele as the intelligence officer came to a stop. The Master of Ships turned to him, a grim look on his face.
“I have been running the vectors,” Elim said. “And I believe that the Ross will be able to bring us to engagement before we can reach the Jump point proper. Our odds of victory are… not good.”
Sienele nodded impassively. He was aware of that. The Parithalian cruiser was a mid level combat vessel, capable of dealing and enduring, great damage in battle… but the Ross weapons were such that endurance meant nothing.
“I understand,” He said aloud.
“I am not certain you do,” Elim said, keying a file over to his projection and flipping it so Sienele could observe it correctly. “You brought this ship on board the Upwind, correct?”
Sienele nodded, slightly confused. “I authorized it, yes.”
“It is an older model,” Elim said. “But it is one of ours… We can refit it for an accelerator launch. Envoy, take your staff and get them ready to evacuate. Whatever you have is worth killing my ship for, and that means that it is of vital value to the Alliance… if the Ross are willing to risk war to keep it from getting out, then it must get out.”
Sienele nodded slowly, “I understand now. Yes, have the vessel refitted.”
“It is already being done. Go.”
Sienele, for once, didn’t try to remind the Master of Ships who was truly in charge.
He went.
*****
Portal Ship
Entropy was spotted on a vessel in the Sigma Nine Eight Three system.
Was?
She raided the ship’s secure terminal room, accessed several files on other vessel locations, then vanished back into the Paths.
This is becoming ridiculous.
Have all vessels advised to assign security to the secure terminal rooms adjacent to all entryways to the Paths.
New report, she was on a vessel in Xina Twelve Nine Three. Already vanished back into the paths.
What did she do there?
Unknown, they were only spotted shortly before she once more accessed the paths. One security drone was reported disabled, its weapon is missing.
The conclave groaned as one.
She was armed once more.
In reality it didn’t particularly increase her threat level, but it still felt like a step backward.
Inferior races were not supposed to be able to do this sort of thing. Yes, occasionally they were dangerous. Pests of all sorts could cause serious harm to the ill prepared, but this was simply beyond any reason.
She is searching for a way out.
Likely, but we have no way of knowing what her requirements for an acceptable… exit path might be.
But we do.
None of our vessels are within human controlled space at this time, as per standing orders since the loss of the fleet. She cannot escape there.
No, but she could escape to the Alliance. They are working together on this. What ships do we have near worlds that subject Entropy is familiar with?
The conclave paused, considering that question as they quickly refreshed the file they had on the one they called Entropy.
Not many. That was the answer they were hoping for.
*****
Sorilla hit the ground in another skid.
These landings are hard on the body, she groaned to herself as she slowed to a stop and rolled quickly to her feet.
Slipping through the twisted folds of spacetime that the Ross had turned into a transport mechanism was a visual cacophony and a sensory mind-fuck of the first order. At least if you had the sort of implant suite she was making use of, Sorilla supposed.
It felt like she was simultaneously being twisted in four different directions, folded into three, and stretched across a dozen more.
Only with more blue smell, somehow.
She didn’t understand it at all, and was trying her hardest not to think too much on it.
Sorilla didn’t think she could continue for much longer before the orders and warnings filtered out, so she had to move quickly to her ultimate target, but before she could hope to get anything there, she needed just a couple more pieces of information.
They were smartening up, though. She’d had to skip the last two ships she had jumped to because they had security already in place, locking up the secure terminal room tight as a drum. She might have been able to fight her way in, but Sorilla would prefer not to bring that much more attention to her actions at this point.
She had plenty already, after all.
So, she made a random jump… well, not random exactly, since she picked a target based on the data she had already stolen, but it was to a ship that was nowhere near anywhere she might be expected to try to get to. She was hoping that the Ross were like humans in that regard, slow to react and kind of dumb if they thought that the threat didn’t apply to them.
She hit the jackpot.
With the secure terminal room unguarded, Sorilla once more slipped in and got into the computer system.
If they’re looking for Earth, or something on Earth, I’d love to make life harder for them by erasing the relevant data but that doesn’t seem possible, Sorilla thought as she worked. She was scanning relevant information concerning the paths now, trying to improve her own understanding of them when she stumbled upon something.
She almost skipped over it. It was just a simple history file as best she could tell, but a translated phrase made her stop and look twice.
The Paths are the ultimate creation of the enemy, and the People have turned them to our own use, but beware that they are not as secure as we might wish, Sorilla read silently before backtracking and scanning the whole file into her OCR suite for later translation.
They didn’t build the portals, they stole them from an enemy…
That was interesting, and it explained a lot about how the Ross used, or perhaps misused, a technology that Sorilla would have assumed was an outright force majeure in almost any conflict. They didn’t have full grasp of the possibilities, or perhaps the execution. She didn’t know which.
Admiral Ruger will flip over this. Whoops, Sorilla heard the scrape of boots on the deck. Time to go.
*****
Parithalian Cruiser Upwind
“Flight deck has cleared the vessel for launch, Master of Ships.”
Elim nodded, “Signal them that we’re ready, hand launch controls over to the pilot.”
“Yes, Master of Ships.”
The Ross vessel was approaching on their stern at a ferocious closing rate, one that had actually startled him when he saw it. There was no way that the Upwind could avoid engaging the enemy, and so the sooner the intelligence acquired by the Envoy was off his ship, the happier he would be about things.
“The vessel is launching, Master of Ships.”
Elim could feel it, faintly, through the deck. The accelerator was throwing the ship out of the bay at a high rate, something generally used for slowing incoming vessels if they’d lost control of their thrusters but was easily modified to do just the opposite. On the screen he watched the old hull lance away from the Upwind, heading for the jump point at several times the acceleration it normally could have managed.
He doubted anyone on board was happy in that moment, but most of them were Lucians… and the rest would survive it.
Probably.
Elim wished them luck in any case, but put them immediately from his mind. His ship had a mission to carry out.
“Bring us around,” He ordered calmly into the chaos of the bridge.
“Yes, Master of Ships. Coming around.”
******