Writers of the Future, Volume 28 (21 page)

Hours go by. Days. There’s only one good place for me to hide. I don’t see the Grunge anywhere. In light of what I’m about to do, the blood rushes in my ears. Cautiously, I duck into the Honeycomb. I’m a ghost in the darkness.

Zip, zip, zip.

Despair is a tidal force that follows them in, a slow-moving breaker of inky darkness, the capstone on my pyramid of failure, a whirlpool I’m suddenly drowning in. Every finger, every toe, my temples, throat and glands, my taut heart—my whole existence—suddenly registers a deep-sinking
pain.
Even the Honeycomb can’t stave it off now. Despair is the ultimate me. The crushing force just behind the anger (the bitter rage!) and it’s finally, after all this time, caught up with me in here.

I’ve just led the Grunge into the Honeycomb. Me. I’ve compromised the entire human race.

Like phosphorescent fish hunting prey, they come with their pretty lights. Three of them: the two from inside my Preconscious Mind and the one from inside my mother’s.

There’s only one way into the Honeycomb from my glen, and one way out. And now they’re here. Seriously, I should have just let them catch me. Torture me. Murder me. I’m selfish. I need to survive. But I’ve always been “just surviving.” Survival is everything life has ever been about for me, no matter how hard I’ve tried to will it otherwise. No matter how hard I’ve tried to reason with myself.

The black cloud of despair envelops me. Then it shrugs off my back like a cloak and presses me callously against the wall inside my cell. My despair is so profound, I don’t care. I’m a rag doll in its grip. I ball my hands into fists, throw my head back.

And realize I’m singing.

Deep and far, the song I’m crying is of utter longing—and I simply release it. Coils of shimmering music, my very essence, pour from my lips in flowering colors: indigo, blue, violet, crimson, blush. I bring my hands to my face—then move them away, as if pushing off to fly, as if pushing away all regret. My tears are glistening descants. Visible song replaces my battle gear until I’m flowing with harmonies, my hair a buoyant shock of chords. And the music is gushing out of me like a power.

A single tone answers. A silent, powerful shock-wave. Two more follow. It’s the Grunge.

Zip, zip, zip.

Darkness and color, music and despair, lure them closer. I’ve backed all the way to the edge of my ledge. The void is waiting to claim me. They’re coming. I look behind me into that black nonexistence. Closer.

I’m singing!

From out of the tangled mass of color, music, darkness and noise, the closest Grunge reaches a hand for me.

And then they’ve passed, as I faint dead away over a rock in my prominence, bits of song falling like hissing diamonds all around me.

J
anie
?
” Someone’s calling.

I feel a dull throbbing in my temples. But my chest no longer feels hollow. Instead, I feel . . . relief.

There’s a cry, followed by silence.

I wait through the death and rebirth of eternity before I open my eyes. My musical cloud of desolation has rolled off the ledge—along with apparently the Grunge, because I don’t see them anywhere. And there are people running toward me from somewhere far off.

“Janie!” Sebastian squeals, braking just shy of my head. The rest of the cloud disperses and I see bridges behind him, recently constructed, arching out of the darkness to my ledge. Half of COP Phoenix is standing on the one closest.

“Janie.” Sebastian grabs my forearms, yanking me up. “They went over! They did! We saw them. They went right over the ledge into the void!”

Lt. is right behind him with Basely. He’s panting slightly and looks pissed off.

“Are you stupid
?
” he reams me out. “Girl, you could’ve gotten everyone killed! Why didn’t you stay at the COP
?
You’ve got no real training yet.” I see the slightest hint of a smile working his upper lip.

“Tall Bill.” A wide-eyed Basely is pointing feverishly at the void. “He fell off the ledge and never came back.” Basely shakes me. “Tall Bill was a part of me. The day he fell off that ledge, a part of me was unmade.”

Then it sinks in. The Grunge from inside me are gone. Gone forever, I think, hardly believing it.

Lt. is the next one to grab me in a pincer grip, and he spins me around so that I’m facing him, while decisions, plans and epiphanies move across his features like waves in the Honeycomb. “Dammit, soldier, that was ignorant. The most foolhardy—” He shakes his head. “—and frankly genius tactical maneuver I’ve ever seen. How long have you been planning it
?
”

I make to answer, but wind up smirking instead, because for the first time, as I observe the mismatched, ragtag team from COP Phoenix, I feel completely whole.

“Game plan,” Sebastian fills in the blank, saying it all.

“Welcome to Outer Recon,” Lt. agrees. Pumping my hand, he slaps my back.

I
am codename Siren. I lure constituents of the alien race known as the Grunge into my body. One by one, I bait them into my holy of holies, the interface between my waking consciousness and my soul—my sparkling glen.

I seduce them through the door to the Honeycomb, where the Collective Human Consciousness sleeps, waiting to take back their god-given bodies. I tempt them into the darkness, where I watch them fall off the ledge, into the void, one by one.

The more Grunge who cease to exist, the more of humankind can reclaim the right to exist in the way we were made to exist.

And I’m not alone.

There will be other sirens. I am the first. But the team from COP Phoenix is waking up more sleepers every day. We’re training them. Their will is strong. The erudition is spreading.

One day soon, we’ll be free.

Contact Authority

written by

William Mitchell

illustrated by

RHIANNON TAYLOR

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

William Mitchell was born in 1973, just three months after the last man walked on the Moon. Which means that in his lifetime, no human has gone more than four hundred miles from the surface of the Earth. So perhaps it’s this slow pace of real-life progress that has made him turn to fiction to see how the continued conquest of space might play out.

He started writing ten years ago, finding early success with horror rather than science fiction. More recently he has returned to SF, with a scattering of small-press publications and a couple of novels underway. Having read a number of Writers of the Future anthologies and come away feeling as if his imagination had been stretched in twenty different ways at once, he started entering in 2009, achieving a finalist position at the first attempt. This winning story was his third entry and his first professional sale. He is also a member of the London-based writers group “The T-Party.”

His day job is in aerospace engineering (he admits to being a rocket scientist when pressed). With a full-time job and a family at home he has to be quite creative in finding time to write and gets most of it done standing up on the London Underground during rush hour, typing with his thumbs into a PDA he bought on eBay. His contest-winning story was written that way, plus a few tens of thousands of words before that. If his thumbs give out before PC-neural interfaces are developed, he’s in trouble.

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

Rhiannon Taylor works as a freelance artist and writer in Chicago, Illinois. She is known for her maniacal focus, driven work ethic and sense of humor. Her art reflects fantasy and sci-fi elements or themes, and often illustrates her written stories. A Wacom tablet and Photoshop are her chosen arms in the grand battle of visual artistic expression. She has won numerous art awards, such as the Triton Art Show awards for first, second and third place and a $10,000 scholarship for her art. She has published both her art and her fiction writing. Her work is on display at a permanent exhibit in downtown Chicago. She currently attends Columbia College Chicago studying fiction writing and illustration. In her spare time, she puts together online articles on writing, book reviews and free art tutorials. She also applies her creativity to cooking, though she has no plans to pursue a culinary career.

Contact Authority

F
rom this distance the gas giant filled the window, ten Jupiters’ worth of roiling hydrogen and helium, a glowing expanse of turbulent orange cloud banks circled by rings of slate-gray ice. The moon system alone could occupy researchers for a generation—over a hundred in total, ranging from the frozen outer bodies to the quartet of inner moons, trading surface matter at a rate of ninety thousand tons a day as they flew through a tube of shared volcanic ejecta, making the inner ring glow like a mist of radioactive lava.

Kaluza Station was orbiting at half a million miles, away from the worst of the radiation, but with field readings high enough to mask any stray RF emissions it might give out. A good place to hide, and a necessary measure considering why it was here. Optical signature was still an issue though, so even the running lights and internal illumination had to be dimmed—going dark, in every sense. As a result, the planet’s reflected glow gave the rec room an insipid orange light as Jared Spegel sat by the window, killing the downtime between shifts.

“It’s stunning, isn’t it
?
”

“What
?
” Jared turned away from the view, unaware that someone had sat down opposite him.

“I don’t think I ever get tired of looking at it. Do you
?
” The girl was young, early twenties or so, wearing the general-purpose fatigues of the Green Shift workers. One of the researchers probably, maybe a biologist or a historian.

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said.

“You’re Jared, aren’t you
?
Jared Spegel
?
”

“That’s right.”

“You work in Remote Observation
?
Running the satellite nets
?
”

“Yeah.”

“Look, can I ask you something
?
”

“Sure.”

She got up from the table and moved round next to him, then leant over as if to whisper in his ear.

“I want you to come with me now. Just get up and follow me, and don’t make a sound. Got it
?
”

He felt something jabbing into his side, two prongs that could only be a Taser. Her tone had changed too, far from the breezy chatty air she’d given off at first. He got up slowly, then moved toward the door as she kept in close at his side. The rec room was almost deserted, but still not the place to get into a tussle. But if the hallway was empty—he weighed up his options, thinking back to his Operative training, visualizing the moves he could pull to dodge the Taser and put her on the ground before she had time to react. Then they got to the door and out into the hall. Two station guards stood there waiting; she acknowledged them with a nod and they fell into position on either side. Any chance he might have had was now gone.

“Where are you taking me
?
” he said.

“Commander’s office,” was her reply.

S
o who the hell are you
?
” The station commander sat behind his desk, his black military fatigues covered in patches from various postings he’d filled before taking on the unique responsibilities of this job. The name “Anderson” was splashed across his chest in silver capitals.

“My name is Jared Spegel, sir.” That much was true, but even as he said it, he knew his cover had been blown. It was the only explanation for what was happening.

“And you came here from Mission Planning back on Earth, with a tour in Deep Space Routing before that, and then two weeks ago you’re suddenly drafted in here to drive the Remote Observation fleet. Is that right
?
”

“Yes, sir,” he lied, while Anderson seemingly nailed him to the back wall with his eyes.

“Really
?
Because I have friends in MP and DSR who have never even heard of you. And nor have any of the instructors on that Orbital C3I course you’re supposed to have taken. In fact, no one you claim to have known and worked with even recognizes your name. So once again, do you mind telling me just who the hell you are
?
”

This mission was a disaster waiting to happen from the start, Jared thought. He hated rush jobs, and this was one of them—no time to build a proper cover, no time to prepare for contingencies. He looked round the room, at the two guards and the woman who’d apprehended him—looking as if all she needed was the slightest excuse and the Taser would come out again—and realized his options were getting scarce. It was time to come clean.

“Can I speak with you alone, Commander
?
” he said.

“Anything you can say in front of me, you can say in front of them.”

“Not this. You’re right that I’m not who I say I am, but if I can show you my ident listing, you might understand.”

Jared leaned over and put his hand on the desk, palm down, fingers spread—but not his right hand, which coded the biometrics for Jared Spegel, legitimate crew member, but his left, which coded another Jared Spegel altogether.

The commander sat back from his screen, the suspicion in his eyes turning to intrigue. “Sal, Lieutenants, step outside, please.”

They went, but slowly, and the woman kept her eyes on Jared right up until she left the room.

“Make this damn good,” Anderson said once they were alone.

“Sir, my name really is Jared Spegel, but everything else is a cover. I’ll get straight to the point—I’m with the Office of Alliance Liaison, and we have reason to believe that someone on this station has already contacted the Caronoi and is continuing to do so.”

The commander almost turned white, his earlier resolve replaced by unmitigated shock.

“Who
?
” was all he seemed able to say.

“That’s why I’m here, to try and find out.”

The commander steepled his fingers, thinking quickly, his composure returning. “You need to speak damn fast, Mr. Spegel. Tell me everything. Now.”

S
ixty years had passed since humanity had first made contact with intelligences from beyond Earth. In those intervening years, they had learned a lot about the wider universe they now found themselves in, but not the full picture. They knew of the Alliance, the vast conglomeration of civilizations with millennia of mutual contact behind them; they knew that those civilizations numbered in the hundreds, if not thousands; and they knew that vast as it was, the Milky Way was not the limit of the Alliance’s tenure. Of those races, however, humanity had directly encountered just four, including the so-called Sprites, that altogether inappropriate name for those vast sentient replicators named after the bizarre chirps and beeps that appeared when physicists first conquered gravity and stumbled upon the galaxy-wide g-wave communication system that explained why radio-frequency SETI had remained fruitless for so long.

And they knew that sometimes, when a new civilization was encountered, the Alliance would react not with welcome, but with obliteration. And whatever the closely guarded criteria were for acceptance or oblivion, they knew that sixty years ago, humanity had come within a whisker of being wiped out.

S
o, Mr. Spegel. Why is this the first I’m hearing about a breach in my own damn station
?
”

Jared had been excused from Anderson’s office for over an hour once he’d told the man what was happening right under his nose. He’d been kept in the outer office, not exactly under arrest, but actively dissuaded from leaving, listening to the muted voices of Anderson and the woman called Sal just beyond. Then, finally, he’d been allowed back in.

“Sir, you must understand that given the seriousness of this situation, no one can be above suspicion. Ever since we were appointed as Contact Authority for the Caronoi, we’ve known that there can be no room for mistakes. We’re not sure, but we think that by being given the chance to bring another race into the fold so early in our own membership, we are being afforded a great honor by the Alliance. And whatever it was that almost saw us wiped out—it’s likely we’re still being judged, even now.”

There had been chaos on Earth when humanity’s near-eradication was made public, a few full-scale wars, too, as the divide opened up between those wanting nothing to do with the Alliance and the threat it still posed, and those who realized the clock couldn’t be put back, contact couldn’t be undone, that Earth was now part of the interstellar community whether it liked it or not. Decades on, pragmatism had won out, an uneasy acceptance that the Alliance did things for a reason, and one day we’d understand.

Now that compliance meant putting another race under the spotlight.

Anderson looked down at the displays on his desk, live-feed schematics of the Caron system and the eighteen planets that made it up, including the gas giant Caron-e they were currently orbiting, and Caron-c, Earthlike in so many ways, whose inhabitants were meant to be getting the surprise of their lives in just three weeks’ time.

“Well, this is the situation,” he said. “I do not appreciate having my authority circumvented on this station, no matter how much ‘suspicion’ you feel inclined to aim at everyone based here, including apparently me. But I talked to your people just now, and then I called the chiefs back on Earth, and then they called the UN. And guess what
?
Not only did they back up your story, but I’m supposed to give you everything you want, on a plate. The thing is, I’m not going to do that. You can carry on with your investigation, but you won’t be doing it alone. Maybe you don’t work for me, but Sal does, and she is going to monitor every move you make on this station. Is that understood
?
”

Of all possible outcomes, this was probably the least disastrous. “Understood,” he said.

S
al was the head of the commander’s troubleshooting staff, Jared found out once he’d talked to her without a Taser in her hand. In essence, her job wasn’t too far from his own—clamp down on anything that could constitute a foul-up. It seemed to be the default structure for all human activity now that potential Alliance judgment was a feature of every endeavor—military-style organization, military-style discipline, no tolerance for mistakes.

She led him to one of Anderson’s briefing rooms, their hastily established base of operations. There they were due to be joined by the chiefs of the station security division, the analysis division and the systems support division, but so far no one else had arrived. As soon as they were inside, Sal shut the door and turned to face Jared.

“I hope you know what you’ve done here,” she said to him. “The commander is under more stress right now than you can imagine. Three years we’ve been posted here studying the Caronoi. Now we’re just three weeks away from breaking cover and you pull this stunt. If the Alliance even suspect that we are about to screw this up, then we could be history—this station, you, me, the whole human race. Do you understand that
?
”

Jared felt himself tensing, ready for an argument. “Yes, I do understand. Do you understand that someone on your station may already have broken cover and might be bringing judgment on us even as we speak
?
I’m here to stop that, remember
?
”

“You better hope you’re right,” she said.

The other attendees began to file in at that point, casting curious glances at each other and at Jared and Sal, clearly still in the dark as to why they’d been called. Anderson was last to turn up. He sat everyone down, then took them through what was known so far. Jared saw the same reactions on their faces that he’d seen on Anderson’s, the reaction turning from horror, to disbelief, then ultimately to anger.

“If someone is talking to them already, it could be disastrous,” the security guy said, a man called Benning. “You must have some idea who it is.”

“The initial theory was someone in Remote Observation,” Jared said. “That’s why I was posted there. But I managed to rule that out pretty quickly.”

“Why there
?
” one of the systems guys said. “In fact, how do you know about any of this
?
”

“Because that’s our job. Officially, Alliance Liaison’s role is to be the interstellar face of Earth, to deal directly with Alliance races. But unofficially our biggest job is containing screw-ups. We make it our business to monitor everything that happens in off-Earth affairs, including this station. We get copies of the mission logs you send back to Earth, and we have algorithms specifically designed to look for inconsistencies—in this case remote observation satellites which for the last eight weeks have been sitting with their high-gain antennas half a degree above ambient temperature when by all rights they should have been off altogether.”

Benning smiled grimly. “I’d heard that your outfit was more like an intel cell than a diplomatic group. So tell me something, Mr. One-Call-Away-From-Alliance-Central—”

“I don’t work with the speakers, remember. I don’t get to actually talk to
them
.”

“Well, whatever, but answer me this. We get pretty much ninety-eight percent coverage of all the Caronois’ communications. If someone here has opened a line of communication to them, we would see them react even if they didn’t respond directly. So where is it
?
”

Jared nodded; the question had occurred to him too. When twenty-first-century Earth first discovered they weren’t alone, there was planetwide uproar, even before news of their near-eradication broke. Not that the Caronoi seemed the type to exhibit mass hysteria, but news of contact would still have a big effect on them.

“My guess
?
” he said. “Message one would have been ‘keep a lid on this, listen, but don’t respond.’”

“But you don’t know for sure.”

“No, but I’m getting close to finding out.”

“Close
?
” Sal said. “You’ve been fumbling around here for two weeks now, when telling us straight out could have found the answer in days.”

“I know, but I had my orders.”

“Lucky we found you then. Because now that you’re under our orders, we might actually get somewhere. So, what are we looking for
?
”