The Xul inspection lasted only a second or two … and then it released her. Stunned, she watched it recede once more, rapidly dwindling toward the huntership in the distance.
“Looks like we passed inspection,” she managed to say after a few shaky moments.
“There is a problem, however,” Chesty2 told her. “That machine has reduced your velocity. Unless you accelerate, you will not reach the Stargate for another two hours, forty-seven minutes.”
“Great.”
“I do not understand your use of that word. The ambient radiation levels are already harming you physiologically.”
She sighed. “It’s called sarcasm. Can you get this thing back through to the listening post?”
“Of course.”
“Then do it. Deliver everything from Chesty3 you can extract.” She could feel something already, that faint, scratchy tingle that presaged a sunburn at the beach. This was going to be bad. …
Marine Listening Post
Puller 659 Stargate
1904 hrs GMT
The alarm went off and Gerard Fitzpatrick nearly fell out of his commlink couch. He’d been discussing the situation with Chesty, preparing to send out a follow-up probe, when an FR-100 transponder had lit up half a kilometer this side of the Gate. He started to check the ID, but Chesty confirmed it before he could link through.
“It’s Lieutenant Lee’s Night Owl,” Chesty told him in maddeningly even tones. “I am linking with my uploaded counterpart now …”
“Well? What does he say, damn it?”
“Lieutenant Lee’s mission was successful. They electronically penetrated a Xul huntership and have confirmed that news of Argo’s capture had extended to the Xul base at Starwall, at the very least. They have also made contact with the AI from the Argo, which should prove to be informative. Lieutenant Lee is a casualty.”
“Oh, Christ. How bad?”
“Not good. The radiation flux within the Starwall system is—”
“I know, damn it! How is she?”
“Alive. Barely. My counterpart informs me she may be near death. …”
“Well, scramble a work pod, damn it! Drag her in here!”
“Lieutenant Fitzpatrick, I must advise against that. The Night Owl is itself highly radioactive. We could contaminate the entire—”
“Chesty, I’ve got the watch, okay? That puts me in command of this listening post. Patch a Class-One emergency NL call through to Major Tomanaga. Upload the data Tera brought back, and tell him I’ve gone out to retrieve the lieutenant’s ship.”
“But—”
“That’s a goddamn fucking order!”
“Aye, aye, sir,” the AI replied, with rigidly correct service protocol.
Fitzpatrick knew he could buck the decision up to the Old Man—Major George Tomanaga at the LP’s main station two light-hours away. Either Tomanaga would immediately order him to send out robotic tugs to bring the lieutenant in—in which case, why the hell wait? Or he would delay while he conferred with his superiors at paraside HQ, which could mean hours of delay, hours that Lieutenant Lee did not have. Or he would say no, order Fitzpatrick to sit tight until properly equipped tugs could arrive from the main base, and that would take God-knew how long. Work tugs with rad screening were not exactly interplanetary greyhounds.
And Fitzpatrick was going out after her now, no matter what. This way, if the Old Man flashed back an order to him to sit tight, he wouldn’t have to disobey it.
A small but very guilt-feeling part of him was telling him that he should have gone on the sneak-and-peek, not her. Damn it, if she died. …
In a way, things had been easier in the old days, before the widespread introduction of nonlocal communications. A few centuries ago, he would have flashed off his intent to go pick up Tera, gone, and been back at the LP long before his message had even reached HQ. Having faster-than-light communications was a royal pain in the ass, since it invited micromanagement by the jerk-off remfies in their comfortable habitats far from the point of action.
Well, the hell with orders, and the hell with the remfs. Marines did not leave their own behind. …
USMC Skybase
Paraspace
2355 hrs GMT
“General Alexander. Please wake up.”
Cara’s voice brought Alexander upright in bed. “This had better be goddamned important,” he mumbled aloud.
Tabatha rolled over at his side. “Mmph. Martin? What is it?”
“Call from the office, Tabbie,” he said, caressing her thigh. “Don’t worry about it. Go back to sleep.”
“I’ll get us caff.” Nude, she slid out of bed and made her way in the near darkness to the bedchamber door.
He sighed. “Thanks, kitten.” Though they’d not formally married, Tabatha Sahir had been his domestic partner for a good many years, now, and she knew what a call from his assistant at this hour almost certainly meant.
“We have an upload coming in NL from one of our Xul listening posts, General,” Cara told him. “It sounds serious.”
“Tell me.”
Briefly, Cara filled him in on the bare bones of what had happened. Listening Post Puller 659 had noted the loss of some automated probes at a targeted Stargate. A Marine lieutenant and an AI had gone through to check things out up close and personal, and encountered a Xul huntership. The AI had successfully linked with the Xul, and they’d brought some hot data out.
As Alexander listened to a précis of that data, he felt his gut constrict, a hard, cold knot. Damn! The bastards found us. …
“Put that Marine down for a medal,” he told Cara. “We owe him a lot.”
“Her,” Cara corrected him. “And the LP reports she is seriously injured. She may not survive.”
“Shit. Keep me informed of her condition,” he said. “Okay. Pass the data up the line, Intel and the Joint Chiefs.”
“Very well.”
“And give me a map. Where the hell is this place, anyway?”
Currently, the bedchamber’s walls and domed ceiling were set to display the dark and murky blue fog of paraspace. Other Marines, he knew, tended to display scenes from Earth or Earth’s Rings, or generic starfields, or even keeping the displays blank and neutral, but he’d always found the shifting blue murk to be relaxing, a definite inducement to sleep.
As well as to wonder. Paraspace, more poetically known as the Quantum Sea, lay at the very foundation of what modern physics was pleased to call reality, whatever the hell that was. It was here that, in accord with the laws of quantum physics, particles and antiparticles popped into existence for too brief a space of time to measure, then winked out again, where standing waves of virtual particles formed the basis of matter