Ayo

One: Shiva
640 A.E.


Deep in the swirling reaches of the Helix Nebula gleamed a solitary blue-white star. Its brilliant glow illuminated the nearby reaches of the dust cloud whose dark arms enfolded it, wrapping it away from the rest of the universe. The tiny hot star had ignited only a few decades previously, making it one of the youngest in its corner of the spiral galaxy.

However, its extreme youth was not all that captured humanity’s interest, reflected Captain Shavar Trechem as he watched it approach through the haze. The real lure of this tiny hot star was far more exciting--he could almost see it if he strained his eyes to gaze far ahead into the depths of the cloud. As he watched, he saw the bluish light flicker and shift in a patch of dust off to the viewscreen’s left. A shadow moved through the cloud, flowing with regal grace about the star’s environs--a shadow of vast proportions, and a shadow of endless allure. Many of these shapes had been seen before, silhouetted against the young star’s corona or its glowing gaseous envelope, and all showed the same electrifying traits.

From the way they moved, these shadowy shapes could only be alive.

The survey-ship captain watched the living shadow glide across the gas cloud, tiny against the vastness of space, and remembered the stir its first sighting had caused. Endless debate in the halls of human government, consternation that rose to a deafening crescendo until finally the first survey ship was sent out. And the second. And the third. All three had vanished, presumed prey to the vagaries of gravlift travel; each had, the home commands surmised, been ripped apart by their own gravity drives after being pulled into some uncharted black hole.

Trechem’s ship, the survey cruiser Solarian, was the fourth, the most careful, and thus far the luckiest. Escorted by a ship called Clydesdale, a massive defender armed to the teeth with six different grapples to pull a ship free of its own grav malfunctions, she had rocketed safely through the endless light-years and come at last to her journey’s end.

This little star. Trecha, it would be called--he had made it safely here, and thus the star would take his name.

He smiled to himself as the mysterious star crept closer.



Solarian and Clydesdale cut silently through the dust cloud, each leaving a wake of empty space into which disturbed wisps roiled and twisted and finally settled. The shadows in the dust were much larger now, and more numerous; Trechem could almost make out their shapes as they glided about. Glancing off to one side, he reassured himself with a glimpse of Clydesdale’s spherical hull beside his ship, then turned back to the shadowy shapes.

Shadows in the dust... the shadows of dreams, silhouetted against a bright future. A marvelous discovery awaited. If the ships could find their way between the star and the shadows, they would be shadows no longer... the light of their brilliant star would illuminate them, cast their fantastic alien forms into sharp relief. These magnificent people--the first aliens humanity had ever known. Life!

The shadows roiled closer, nearer. Squinting against the star’s blinding light, Trechem saw one of them move closer. His heart skipped a beat. It was coming! Coming towards them! First contact awaited!

Hurriedly he gave the order, his command to transmit the carefully formulated mathematical message that signaled human friendship, curiosity, desire for peace. Solarian’s transmitters sent the message out into space, across the radio bandwidths that had been thought most likely for communication.

Suddenly, as if a vast interstellar wind had touched it, a veil of dust lifted from a corner of the star. Blinding starlight, suddenly unmasked, gleamed through the hole; the captain threw up a hand to shield his eyes until the viewer modulated itself and he could see again. Against the light, the shadow was suddenly cut out in sharp silhouette: four podlike fuselages connected by myriad graceful, curving struts that waved gently like seaweed in the tide or grasses in a breeze. Trechem’s breath caught in his throat.

“It’s beautiful...”

A sharper ripple suddenly shivered across the slender appendages of the alien craft. As Trechem watched, transfixed by the ship’s beauty, his dream abruptly turned to a nightmare. From the alien craft lanced a single deadly beam of light that slammed into Clydesdale. The explorer ship’s escort splintered into its raw constituent energy; a spectacular, brilliant, glowing plasma spread like the white of a shattered egg. The beam retreated towards the alien craft, carrying with it Clydesdale’s remains.




Trechem leapt from his seat, his face going absolutely white. “Pangaia help us! Navigation, get us out of here!”

His bridge crew, also having seen the abrupt destruction, leapt into action. The gravlift drive roared into life as Solarian spun on its axis and shot into space, rocketing at improbable speeds towards the nearest major inhabited planet.

Trechem, whitening, sank slowly into his seat. His mind replayed again and again the moment of Clydesdale’s spectacular death, the alien’s deadly greeting. The explorers had not prepared for this... Destruction! That was what these aliens meant to humanity--swift impersonal death! The Worlds would never forgive him now.

As Solarian fled, the hot young star sank back into the pinpoint obscurity of its dusty lair. Trechem turned suddenly to look out the other viewscreen, gazing back into the malevolent point of light. Trecha, he had called it... it took his name in a spirit of discovery. What, then was the name of this instantly deadly alien? He shivered convulsively as he realized that there was only one possibility: Trechor.



“Sir.” The navigator’s voice, still tense, cut into his thoughts. “We’re going to have to quickstop soon, to catch our bearings. We have no assurance of which way we’re going at this point: I had no coordinates when we lifted out.”

“Go ahead.”

The gravlift’s rumble faded into silence; outside the bridge windows, stars whose light had been distorted by Solarian’s breakneck pace resumed their accustomed colors and places. The ship wallowed in the vacuum of deep space. Alone, thought Trechem. Thank Panna.

“Captain!” The navigator, bending over his instruments, suddenly shot straight upright, his voice a terrified squawk. “Shaza, Captain, we’re not alone out here!”

Trechem leapt from his seat. “What?”

“It’s followed us,” the navigator cried. “It’s gaining fast!”

“Then get us out of here! Random destination!”

The stars wheeled again, turning sickly blue as they plummeted towards the ship’s nose. The Trechor ship snapped to a point and was gone.

The captain, deathly white, pulled a slender ring off his finger; as it unfolded into a thin curled rod, he hooked it over his ear. “Governor Fadin Mareir,” he told the phone, pacing the bridge, willing his voice to stay steady.

Several quiet tones sounded in his ear; then a brusque male voice answered, raised in agitation. “Trechem! Qotha, why haven’t you called? We saw your footage--”

“Then you know what’s happened!” Trechem barely noticed the breach of etiquette he committed in cutting off the planetary governor. “There’s no question that these--these things--are hostile. We have to mount some kind of defense!”

“And for that we’ll need time. Random-walk the ship as far as you can: if it’s following you, you cannot let it reach Eridani before we’ve prepared.”

“Right.”

“Get to it. I’ll call when you can bring her home.”

“Right.” Trechem tapped the phone to hang up; as it coiled again, and he slipped the ring back onto his finger, he turned to face his bridge staff. “We’ve got to random-walk,” he announced. “We’re to buy time for Kiorikka to raise defenses. Navigation--keep us going as long as you possibly can.”


* * * * *


Planetary Governor Fadin Mareir slipped his miniphone back onto his finger and turned to the remote-conference mists from which the topmost brass of his planet’s Defense Department stared at him. “The news?” one asked.

Mareir closed his eyes. “Solarian’s captain is certain that the aliens are hostile. I’m confirming my earlier orders. You’re to throw all our defenses around this planet. Spread the news across Eridani: this system has to defend itself. Sooner or later Solarian has to come home; when she does, death comes with her.”


* * * * *



“Tialys! Come have a look at this!”

The tall, thin man who had just strolled by the faculty lounge’s open door paused and turned back, hearing his name. He leaned back to poke his head into the door and survey the scene. “Ric? What is it?”

One of the fifteen or so scientists and mathematicians gathered around the TV projection was already turned back, facing him. “You’ve got to see this!” Ric waved him into the lounge. “It looks like the Solarian expedition hit pay dirt.”

Tialys shot round the doorframe so eagerly that he nearly tripped over his own toes. “What is it?” he demanded, his narrow heart-shaped face lighting up.

“The networks are saying it’s alive.”

“Alive?” Tialys stared, a grin spreading across his face. “You’re joking.”

“No.” Ric shook his head, his smile fading. “But don’t get your head full of sci-fi first-contact scenarios, either. Come see what the nets are saying.”

Ric led his colleague toward the tall plas sheet into which someone’s miniphone projected the TV; sitting him down on the couch, Ric plunked down next to him. Tialys fixed his gaze on the projection in the plascreen. It was displaying a strongly blue-shifted shot of the Helix Nebula, rapidly growing as the camera sped towards it faster even than light. An artificially smooth voice-over was explaining that this was from Solarian’s point of view as the ship headed for its target. As the scientists watched, a bright point appeared in the center of the view, expanding rapidly:

“Trecha,” the voice-over explained, “the expedition’s target.”

The young star, they saw as the view expanded and the bright spot that was Trecha filled a fifth of the view, was half-shrouded in a veil of dust and gas. When the view suddenly stopped expanding and the blue-shifted view rebounded to normal colors and positions, a vast shadow suddenly appeared in the no-longer-distorted dust clouds. On one side of the view, Clydesdale’s spherical hull intruded. Another moment passed before, abruptly, the shadow veered out of the dust. Appreciative gasps around the TV attested to the scientists’ recognition of the alien’s beauty.

Then, abruptly, they saw what Trechem had seen. Clydesdale died, spectacularly--and the ship ate it.

Tialys sat staring in horror, his mouth hanging open. “So that’s how dreams die,” he commented at last.

“Shh, listen!” Ric silenced him with an urgent hand-wave, jabbing a finger at the TV. The video had ended, and the news anchor was back on screen:

“We’ve just confirmed Solarian’s report that this alien ship is following her. The Eridani, and especially the Kiorikkan, military has been placed on high alert. Correspondents all over the Worlds report defensive blockades being set up to surround inhabited planets.” The camera switched to an image of huge battleships, aligning into a grid that netted off the safest gravjump routes in towards Kiorikka. “The Eridani Confederation government, along with several state governments, has announced that everything is under control.”

“They’d flitzing better be right,” murmured Ric. “Do you realize what that thing did?”

Tialys nodded grimly. “Total mass-to-energy conversion, wasn’t it?”

“With the right starting conditions, it could...” Ric trailed off, swallowing hard. “Frankly, I’m not sure I want to think about it.”


* * * * *


“Trechem.”

Solarian’s captain nearly collapsed with relief. “Governor! By Panna, it’s good to hear from you!”

“Can’t say the feeling’s mutual,” Mareir muttered to himself. Louder: “We’ve set up defenses. Come home.”

Trechem nodded, a bit too enthusiastically. “We’ll change course immediately.”

“Join the defensive cordon when you get here.” Mareir hung up.

Sliding the minicell back on his finger, Trechem turned to his bridge crew. “Navigation, set course for Kiorikka. We’re going home.”

With great enthusiasm the navigator’s fingers flew over his keyboard, setting Solarian on the path towards home. Soon Epsilon Eridani shone before them, brightest of the stars crowded around the ship’s nose.

Trechem stared lovingly into his home sun’s filtered glow. “Never thought sunshine could feel so sweet,” he murmured. Louder, he added: "They’ve set a blockade along the gravjump route; we’re to join it once we get there.”

“I see it,” Navigation affirmed. “Slowing down.”

As the stars straightened out, the myriad sculpted spheres that were the Eridani battleships appeared, gridded in an even sheet that stretched off to either side of the view from Solarian’s bridge. Quickly the exploration ship took her place at the edge of the sheet; Trechem made yet another call, his phone uncoiling.

“We’re in place, Governor. Ready and waiting.”

“Good,” Mareir answered. “Report to the blockade commander. Commodore Risada Estemi. She’ll give you your orders from here on out.” With that he hung up.

Trechem stared out the viewscreen for a moment. Then, hollowly, he spoke to the phone: “Risada Estemi.”

The commodore’s glass-hard contralto answered after a moment. “Solarian, is it? Ready whatever weapons you have. Your pursuer’s coming fast.” She, too, hung up even before Trechem could respond.

Silently, Trechem slid his phone back onto his finger. “Charge the deflection array,” he heard himself say. “And for Pangaia’s sake, get ready.”



The blockade didn’t have to wait for long: a bare few centichrons after Solarian began charging her meager weaponry, the alien ship arrived. It skimmed in and came to a stop just outside the blockade. Its graceful shape glimmered against the blackness of space, its shifting blue hull faintly luminous as its swaying struts refracted Epsilon Eridani’s light.

“Lovely,” observed Commodore Estemi dryly from her battleship’s bridge, staring down at the alien. “If it moves another centimeter towards
Kiorikka, I want it blasted to bits.”

Her comm staff relayed the orders across the blockade. All across the sheet of battleships, high-powered gravitic weaponry hummed into vicious life. At the larger ships’ breechports, space itself seemed to shimmer as the grav-warpers prepared to unleash their fury. At the slightest movement, Kiorikka’s arsenal would reduce the alien to its consistent atoms.

The alien didn’t move. For an interminable moment it just floated there, its struts waving gently as if in a light breeze. Then, abruptly, it vanished.

Estemi stared. “Where is it?” she demanded.

Her officers attacked their workstations with stabbing fingers. “Behind us!” came the answer after an agonizing two centichrons. “It’s skirted the blockade--it’s reached Kiorikka!”

“Fire at will!” Estemi barked.

None of them managed to launch a shot.



The alien had reappeared two hundred kilometers above the sharp line that marked the Kiorikkan sunset and hung there for a moment, brilliant blue against the blue-and-tan flank of the planet. Below it, clouds rolled serene white on the dayside, cities glittered on the nightside. For another moment, Kiorikka rolled by in all her tranquil majesty, unconcerned, vibrant, alive.

Then everything went white-hot.

A colossal ball of incandescence suddenly flashed into being, subsuming the rocky planet’s crust. For a split second the gridded battleships were cutout shards of mirror, silhouetted white against black space, reflecting back the brilliant glare as Kiorikka became a tiny sun.
Nestled amid the blaze, the alien ship shimmered: abruptly the planet’s inferno arced back, slamming massive field lines of raw energy into the alien’s hull. It sucked them in thirstily, absorbing the searing thrum until the vast conduits thinned and faded.

Kiorikka was gone. Empty void yawned where, millichrons before, a living planet had glowed. Only the alien remained, intense azure against the void. Its blues roiled and twisted now with the fury of a storm at sea; its struts whipped back and forth like the lashing tentacles of some ancient Leviathan.

And then, abruptly, it too was gone.



Estemi afforded herself only a split second of dead shock. Then she snapped back to herself: “After it!” she roared.

For a moment, confusion reigned: then there was a shout from the navigators’ station. “It’s been sighted in Shiva orbit!”

Immediately the ship’s massive gravlift thrummed into life and she rocketed off, defying the very cosmic speed limit in her headlong pursuit.


* * * * *


“That’s the alien--it’s somehow skipped round the blockade! This is incredible!” the newscaster’s voice-over cried. Cameras zoomed deep, cutting out the alien’s black silhouette against Kiorikka. “What’s it doing now--?”

The television’s mist screen flared suddenly into hot white glare, casting lurid shadows across the lounge and the faces of the gathered scientists. Tialys flinched back, shielding his eyes. “Qotha!” he swore. “What in the Worlds--”

The light faded; he dropped his hand, staring back at the screen--and leapt to his feet, dragging himself out of the chair and grabbing the back of the sofa in front of him. His eyes stretched wide, his lips curled back into a grimace of terror. For a moment he hung there, staring into the emptiness where the planet had been. Then: “Mom! Dad!” he whispered, and bolted out the door.

Out in the hall he ripped the microcell off his finger, curled it round his ear with shaking fingers. “Liora Kimaki,” he whispered into it, his throat constricted with fear. The phone began ringing; he listened, his heart pounding. “Come on, Mom,” he gasped, “pick up the phone!”



Back in the lounge, chaos reigned. Some of the scientists were, like Tialys, ringing frantically for Kiorikkan family and friends; others, Ric among them, still stared transfixed into the TV screen. The news cameras watched the blockade breaking up in confusion, to the time of an anchor’s voice-over reiterating agitatedly how little was known about what had happened and why.

Abruptly then the anchor changed the subject. “This just in: the alien has changed course. It’s been sighted over New Luna!” Gasps around the lounge. Ric got up and tore out of the room, racing for the nearest window; he found it, threw it open, craned his neck to look out.

And there--the alien--a tiny blue squiggle, glimmering against the black star-sprinkled midday sky and the massive tawny curve of Shiva’s flank. As he stared in horror, Ric heard something else above the noise of the street and his own dismayed shout: a faraway whisper, like the distant roar of a flooding river or a faraway but ferocious windstorm. For a second his horror changed to morbid wonder. “Gods,” he whispered, then turned from the window, pushed his way past his colleagues, and bolted down the hall to find Tialys.



His partner was sitting in a corner of the hall, cradling the microcell at his ear, bent at knees and waist as if he’d coil himself into the phone. “Kytoren!” he was saying. “Thank God it’s you. I couldn’t--”

Ric snatched the phone from him and tapped it to hang up, cutting him off mid-sentence. Tialys glared up at him in shock and fury. “What do you think you’re--”

“Get off the phone and listen!” Ric snapped.

Taken aback by his usually affable colleague’s outburst, Tialys went silent and listened. The whisper teased his ears; he froze, trembling, for a moment, and then leapt to his feet. “Shaza! Is that--”

“I think it’s the alien, observing on Shiva. We’ve got to do something!”

A million thoughts whirled in Tialys’s head. “Distract it?”

“That should work, I hope...”

Tialys darted off in the direction of the building’s main entrance. “We’ll do some conversion of our own--launch a huge flare over the city,” he called over his shoulder to the following Ric. “Nothing too intense--no hard gammas this time--but big and bright. Right?”

“Got it.”

They came to the doors and burst out them, skidding to a stop on the foundation balcony. Tialys stared into the sky, fixing the alien’s position. The whisper was rising, reaching a deadly crescendo; the alien’s struts were beginning to lash ever more violently. The two physicists exchanged a brief glance, then both closed their eyes.

“Now.”


* * * * *


From orbit, the effect was instantaneous. Two points of light flared into being just above the outer limit of New Luna’s atmosphere, expanding rapidly until they merged into a nova of white brilliance. A second sun appeared in the New Luna skies.

The alien shimmered visibly, turning away from the gas giant’s whorled flank towards the little rocky moon whose thin atmosphere now burned with solar intensity. In its moment of confusion the Kiorikkan battleships, just arriving from their failed blockade as the whisper from the moon reached the peak of its crescendo, zoomed in and pounced. Gravitic weaponry turned space inside-out, ripping off one branching limb. The alien turned brilliant blue, blazing against Shiva’s tan: before the battleships could get off another shot, though, it vanished.

“Where is it this time?” demanded Estemi, glaring out her battleship’s screens at the suddenly-tranquil scene. “Tell the whole fleet--I want that thing found, pronto!”

“They’re on it already,” came the answer. A minute later: “It’s left the system. There’s evidence of recent gravitic travel in a straight line for Trecha.”

“Gone then. Good.” Estemi relaxed a little, sitting back in her seat, gazing down at the flare still blazing in the New Luna sky. She pulled out her phone: “New Luna Mayor’s office.”

A moment later, she was talking directly to the Mayor of New Luna City. Cheana Ksilden’s voice came, tense but relieved, over the line: “Commodore Estemi? You’ve saved our planet. I can’t possibly thank you enough.”

“I just carry out my orders, Mayor. And I didn’t call to be thanked, but to do some congratulating of my own. That diversion you placed--the flare--was immensely effective--”

“Don’t blame me for that!” snapped Ksilden, suddenly angry. “That ‘diversion’ turned the alien’s attention towards this moon; if your fleet hadn’t chased it off so quickly, it could well have blown New Luna apart. If you find out who put that out, kindly tell me so I can have him arrested.”

Estemi started. “You didn’t detonate the flare?”

“New Luna has no such capacity.”

“And you don’t know who did.”

“Of course not!”

“Well, could you please find out so I know who to decorate?”

A brief silence on the other end. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Had that flare not been detonated when it was, all my best indications are that the alien would have annihilated Shiva. With your gas giant gone, New Luna would have spun into Epsilon Eridani and died just as spectacularly. Whatever it was about that flare that distracted the alien, I need to know what it was so that it can be used in future encounters with these aliens.”

Another, longer silence: faint static hissed on the line. “All right.” Ksilden sounded abashed. “I’ll find out who did it, and what he did.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll keep in touch.”


* * * * *


Gradually the flare in the New Luna sky faded and vanished. On the foundation balcony of the university physics building, Tialys opened his eyes.

“Ric?” His voice came out distant, as if in a dream. “You all right?”

“Fine,” murmured Ric, swaying a little on his feet.

“It’s gone,” Tialys told him. “We did it.”

“Really?” Ric opened his eyes, scanning the sky. “Well. We did, didn’t we?”

“Yeah.” A long pause. “Ric, your hair’s standing on end.”

“So’s yours, if you look.”

“Uh-huh. Where were you getting the energy for that blast?”

“The usual place. You?”

“Same. I think we both need a lot of sugar, right now.”

“Right.”

They turned back into the building and trudged shakily back up to the faculty lounge, making an unsteady beeline for the snack trays and the coffeemaker, ignoring the other scientists who stood cheering and embracing around the TV screen. Tialys poured two tall glasses of the sweetest soft drink he could find, stirred in as much sugar as would dissolve, and handed one to Ric. “Cheers.”

Ric took a deep swallow and made a face. “Oh, yum. Recovery nectar.”

They plodded over to the couch and plunked down, sipping from the saccharine cups and staring dully at the TV when they could catch glimpses of it between their celebrating colleagues.

“We did it,” murmured Ric again, at length. “We actually pulled it off.”

“Yeah.” Tialys swallowed another mouthful of soda. “Though if you’re that skittish about it, I’m surprised we did.”

“No, I was confident--I’m not surprised we pulled it off. Just... unimaginably delighted. We’ve never done something that big before.”

“You must not be counting the sofa.”

“I wasn’t--we only threw that.”

“But it hit the ground flitzing hard.”

“You did that, not me.”

“And you fixed it when we’d finished--” Tialys cut off midsentence, staring at the TV, a frown creasing his brow. “Hey. Look at this.”
Ric looked. The newscaster was back on, announcing to the camera:

“This just in: the New Luna mayor’s office has announced that the party responsible for the flare detonated over the Saerolunia University District of New Luna City is largely responsible for New Luna’s survival. Mayor Cheana Ksilden has personally requested that the person or people responsible come forward so that the entire moon can congratulate them.”

Tialys and Ric exchanged glances. “We need to talk,” murmured Tialys. “My office?”

Ric nodded; the pair slipped out of the lounge and jogged down the hall to Tialys’s small, cluttered office. Its occupant sank into his hoverchair while his partner took one of the visitor’s chairs. “This is big,” Tialys said. “The Mayor’s asking us to show ourselves. You know, if it was for anything else I’d jump out of hiding... but this is Ayo.” He pronounced it as though it were an acronym--A.O., accent on the A. “Can we afford to let our cat out of the bag?”

“Well, it wasn’t as though we were terribly subtle about it.” Ric cracked a crooked half-smile. “Most of our colleagues are pretty familiar with the sound of disturbed resonance by now--some of them thought it was in the air ducts, they’ve been driving the janitors crazy--and before long someone’s going to realize that the flare was resonating pretty spectacularly. Besides, the paper’s already in peer review.”

Tialys nodded. “It’s going to get out sooner or later, and with the work we’ve already done about to be published, it’ll be as a scientific discovery, not some quack hypothesis. We can’t do much damage now, not unless we’re actively trying to.”

“So we call the Mayor?”

“Only so we can end the search, and maybe so we can fund the project--there might be an, er, fiscal reward. We’ll make sure she knows we have to be anonymous until the paper’s published.”

Ric nodded. “Your phone or mine?”