CHAPTER 1: Can a star ship attain the escape velocity of memory?

On the verge of leaving his home solar system, a weary pilot whispered a phrase rarely heard inside a mid-sized star cruiser:

“No idea where I’m going.”

Given the vagaries of space fold travel, most people would never think to head out aimlessly. Every return to normal space was fraught with potential hazards. A ship could skid into a stellar gravity well, have a near miss with a rocketing comet, or collide with a military transport. Only an utterly frazzled pilot would tell his nav-AI to “just go,” and generate its flight plan with a pseudo-random process. 

Yet at that moment, Cyril Night was just such a pilot, though acting way out of character. Until recently, he’d run his own lucrative engineering firm with utmost efficiency. But in his current state of mind, he was only too glad to let it go.

Though NightFire, LLC had won accolades across two galaxies and owned dozens of patents, Cyril considered the entire enterprise a failure. In his mind, it did nothing to justify his continued consumption of atmospheric oxygen. As the damaged hulk of a failed space agency probe crawled across his main view screen, his mind filled with a fast-motion recap of the last twenty-five years.

In hindsight, the initial thrill of starting his own firm had faded fast. The new principles of geothermal tech that he discovered soon became routine. After a handful of years, he was running NightFire in his sleep. He issued orders and solved problems under the shadow of a nameless longing.

In the end, he’d trained his team so well that they rarely needed to consult him. He was mostly called on for pitch meetings, where he effortlessly explained the benefits of NightFire’s proprietary, planetary-scale heating and cooling systems. One day, after arriving home from one last promotional jaunt, he decided to put the company itself up for sale.

Now, as the image of a swirling nebula edged into view, Cyril leaned forward in his acceleration chair and clicked his tongue.

Best decision ever, he thought.

The former energy mogul stood up from the command console of the Unfettered and took the nearest lift down to his capacious quarters. No worries. In the absence of specific instructions, a StarGuide 3500 nav-AI would trace a safe path all the way to the edge of space-time, if it came to that. Cyril refused to give it a thought.

Instead, he trudged into his expansive, marble-tiled shower room and stared into the full-length mirror on the far wall. A middle-aged human, at a time when longevity treatments had made that phrase almost irrelevant, Cyril’s tall, fit frame had weathered the years with barely a scratch. His still-handsome head, framed in salty black hair and a well-groomed beard, rested on a long, lean torso. At one time, he might have been mistaken for a dancer. Yet his good looks gave him no satisfaction, even though they had made him an object of desire many times over. In that respect, he suffered from the same malaise that had driven him to sell his business.

“Where’s the love?” he whispered.

In fifty-two years, he’d found it only once. But Noreen’s practiced deceptions, in tandem with his own wistful immaturity, had shattered him. In the years following their break-up, a series of intermittent romantic entanglements had brought him a similar combination of fleeting satisfaction and lasting frustration. Would a hot shower help him forget all that? Not likely. But he hoped it would help “reset his dials” for a few hours.

While the water flowed and the soap lathered, the Unfettered roared on. Cyril had purchased that rather extravagant vessel after selling his company, as well as his homes on Enceladus and Europa, and auctioning off his investment-grade art collection. Intended to be his permanent residence for the rest of his days, his completely automated ship was large enough for twenty passengers.

Somewhat to the dismay of its manufacturers, he’d ordered a wide range of customizations. Instead of a standard array of crew or guest quarters, Cyril envisioned a miniature world made up of several different domains. Some of these domains were as large as two or more conventional quarters combined. Each had its own distinctive attributes:

• Bedroom: Ambient light, sound and temperature gradients
• Galley: Food and beverage replicators keyed to premium molecule reservoirs 
• Spa: Gynoid attendants to relax muscles and release tensions
• Video hub: News, commercial releases, and AI-generated entertainments
• Gym: State-of-the-art muscle-toning machines, with available android trainer
• Library: Holo-book editions of works from across human history
• Solarium: 360-degree panorama with optional astronomical overlays 
• Holodeck: Sports, chess, go, role-playing and puzzles 
• Parks: Miniature hydroponic landscapes that evoked different cultures and eras

Far drabber were tech rooms devoted to maintenance, complete with charging stations for servicebots and more advanced models. In that same class was Cyril’s pristine, state-of-the-art sick bay. In addition to a cargo bay with transmat facilities for shipping and receiving, there was a launch bay to house two advance-design landers.

Inside this immense vessel, Cyril’s only companion was an odd-looking biomechanoid bird, Verulek, who only spoke when spoken to and was currently perched on the Unfettered’s command console. What did Verulek make of Cyril’s lack of a determined flight plan?

”I see nothing unusual about it,” said the brown-feathered AI. “Organics are never logical. Their actions are controlled by emotion and whim, which they later designate as  ‘destiny.’ I hesitate to interfere. In many cases, quite illogically, a fresh solution emerges from their folly.”

“I’d say you were in a dark mood,” said Cyril, “but you’re never in a lighter one. You’d be happier among the Zorn, I think.”

“Not at all,” said Verulek. “Nothing is more irrational than a mind driven by pure reason.”

“Uh … you mean without accounting for context?” asked Cyril.

Verulek clacked his dark orange beak.

“Close enough,” he said.

“Forget I said anything,” said his master.

“Technically, impossible,” said Verulek. “However, I acknowledge your intent. We will not speak of this again.”

Cyril watched the AI-driven bird fly off to his preferred perch in the Unfettered’s solarium. The strange, hybrid creature had been a gift from an alien friend that he preferred not to think about just then.

Probably never find out what happened to Grulen after I left, he thought, for at least the thousandth time.

Fortunately, and deliberately, Cyril’s new ship was the ideal retreat for a confirmed hermit who found the weight of his personal history and the chatty ways of everyday life too much to bear. So much so, that three months into his escape to nowhere, he showed no trace of nostalgia.

He certainly didn’t miss his student days. At the curiously named “Caltech” on Earth, everything he understood about life was turned on its head — including the idea that life could be understood.

At first, the transition was unbearable. He left Earth’s pristine, orderly colony on Enceladus, and fell headfirst into the turbulent, grubby, crowded, yet strangely magnificent ways of the human origin world. Only his love of complex problem solving, of creating structure out of chaos and the sheer joy of tinkering with a host of exotic materials had given him the courage to leave home. That and his uncle Corbin: 

You have a shot. You don’t take it, I’ll never speak to you again. I mean it. I’ve never seen so much talent and I won’t see it go to waste on this rock. Trust me, you don’t want to make the same mistake as your father.

Years later, Cyril finally understood Corbin’s warning.

Regret tore Kieran apart, he thought.

So he stuck it out, largely shielded from the weirdness of daily life on Earth by the bustling campus he lived at for six years and the enveloping intrigue of theoretical lectures, lab work and prototyping. Then there was Noreen. But his daydream of idyllic love proved as evanescent and delusional as the scientific principles he studied were measurable and tangible. Six months into what he thought was the rest of his life, Noreen left him for a health-food cult leader with a silky voice and an aquiline nose.

In the long run, it was that brush with the disheartening side of life that drove him to travel off-world as soon as he could manage it. With luck, there was a deceptively simple solution. Enrollment in the Interstellar Action Corps (IAC) allowed him to get away from everything that could remind him of Noreen. A few weeks after graduation and a joyless return trip to Enceladus, Cyril set out. Destination: Sylvran, the third planet in the Tartarus system, three parsecs away. Rumor was, its challenging culture would make his Earth experience seem like a holiday camping trip to the Zumurrud impact crater back home.

But the intriguing mission laid out by the IAC drew him in: to help build a geothermal system on a planetary scale. Stranger still, it would serve a world slipping back to its pre-industrial roots. The nuances of when and how cultural decline sets in were beyond his ability to grasp. Besides, he was too distracted by the thrill of the challenge and the comradery of the fifteen other specialists in his cadre.

Of the forty teams that the IAC deployed across Sylvran’s five continents, Cyril’s outfit was based on the outskirts of Alkruda, a sprawling village that had once served as the planetary capital. At that time, it had been a teeming metropolis, but that was centuries before Cyril stepped out of an IAC lander. Alkruda’s original outlines lived on, but only in scattered ruins of buildings, infrastructure and equipment.

Into the now-empty acres that surrounded Alkruda, the IAC built an advance design permanent spaceport to serve the Sylvrani now and beyond the time when the planned geothermal system was complete. Though self-repairing, the port was stocked with spare parts and included an android repair crew that lay dormant until needed. Similar ports were added to designated locations on each of the planet’s five continents.

At the same time, the IAC installed a planet-wide com-system that, for the first time in centuries, enabled local and interstellar communications. Both of these gifts to the Sylvrani were meant to lift them out of self-imposed isolation. In times of emergency, Grulen and the others could reach their near neighbors, instead of waiting for the Interstellar Conference to intervene. Even so, due to intense political wrangling by conflicting parties, it would be many years before the average Sylvrani felt the impact of this new technology.

Like the rest of the new arrivals, Cyril wore a standard-issue canvas field uniform, a drab one-piece garment in varying shades, depending on the wearer’s rank and function. As a design engineer, his uniform was sea green. As he eyed the crumbling remains of an earlier era, he might have thought it was the scene of intense fighting or a massive natural disaster.

But his IAC group leaders had already taken pains to acquaint him and the others with the Sylvranis’ social history, in a comprehensive holographic Mission Manual. One entry caught Cyril’s attention early on:

1A: TECHNOLOGY PROFILE

… current state of technological decline, as confirmed by deep scans of the planet’s surface. Because there is no evidence of a devastating global war, we are forced to conclude that the abandonment of technology was either voluntary or the result of a planet-wide epidemic. That a form of mass hysteria may have played a role is also under consideration.

It wasn’t until a planetary transponder signal, dormant for some two hundred cycles, suddenly snapped on again that we became aware of the deplorable conditions under which the Sylvrani….

Looks like some common sense survived, thought Cyril. A few people whispering in the dark, I guess….

But Cyril’s team leaders didn’t leave him much time to fill in the blanks, even in his imagination. As soon as he arrived, they hurried him off to a series of briefings and assigned him a workstation. The next morning, he was already swapping ideas with the rest of the project team in his sector of the planet. All in all, there were eight teams per each of the planet’s five continents. Collectively, they were tasked with creating a geothermal hub that could service the largest population centers. Each hub would in turn distribute heat and cooling to villages in outlying areas.

In that sense, the planet’s relatively low population, due to generations of technological breakdown and decline, proved a sad sort of blessing. It meant that the IAC could meet the demands of Sylvran’s huddled villages in far less time than it would take to outfit a series of major cities. Later, the modular nature of the geothermal systems the Corps proposed could expand as needed. With this optimistic mandate, Cyril set to work with a kind of exhilaration he’d never felt before.

CHAPTER 2: Murky secrets lurk beneath a quirky planet’s surface

Aboard the Unfettered, years after the IAC’s mission to Sylvran, Cyril rubbed the scar on his right forearm. That was the spot where a physiobot had inserted a quantum language module, to give him a basic command of Sylvrani. Within a few weeks, he reached a halting fluency in that decidedly alien language. Even if, that is, some of the words were almost unpronounceable.

Cyril walked out of his shower room and rummaged around for fresh clothes in his closet.

“Never had fun like that again,” he said.

During the IAC mission, he’d formed an undeniable bond with Grulen, a prominent Sylvrani politician. He was a figure many thought would soon be elevated to Kalmut, or Chief Officer of the fragile world government. With limited technology, the Sylvrani relied on smoke signals, carrier birds, runners, and a guild of brave sailors in wooden ships to build a wobbly consensus across the planet. A once-common beast of burden that had pulled rickety carts from village to village had gone extinct in the previous century. The culprit was a viral infection that Sylvrani medicine could no longer treat.

Though some forty years older than Cyril, Grulen had treated him like an equal from their first meeting.

“Everyone tells me you’re the one to watch,” he said. “Are they right?”

“Never watched myself,” said Cyril. “It’s kind of hard on the eyes.”

From then on, Cyril was the program’s main contact to the Sylvrani government and his bond to Grulen continued to grow. Once his preliminary designs emerged as the obvious frontrunner among competing options, the elderly Sylvrani greeted him like family whenever they met.

Gradually, the young human engineer adjusted to a society every bit as alien as Sylvran’s dominant species. In this respect, Grulen’s appearance was typical. Thirty years later, Cyril’s mind raced back to the mission manual he received from the IAC before his team set out for the Tartarus system:

2 A: Species Overview:

Standing about 1.8 meters tall, the Sylvrani parallel humanoid configuration, with significant differences. These include slightly longer limbs, more pronounced joints and an elongated neck. The Sylvrani skull features shallow cranial ridges that curve down to encircle its wide eye sockets. Skin color encompasses several shades of gray, which vary by geographical region.

Differences between the genders are apparent in subtle shifts in bone density. Females may appear somewhat slighter and shorter with less prominent joints and facial ridges. While the Sylvrani tend to be lean, corpulence is not uncommon at the upper strata of their complex society.

“Complex doesn’t begin to cover it,” said Cyril into his bath towel. 

Or so it had seemed to a young man used to the orderly life of a protocol-driven lunar colony and the academic structure of a human technical institute. Whereas the former environments were predictable and largely unchanging, Sylvrani society was organized around a series of interlocking ritual cohorts. Within each cohort, up to five families were arranged in a rigid hierarchy, determined by age, wealth or social status, based in part on their contributions to society. While a wealthier cohort member was usually dominant, that member’s status might be diminished by the distinguished military service of a poorer member.

Some actions were as unthinkable in one context as they were mandatory in another. A simple household purchase might be held up for days, until the cohort approved. Depending on location, time of day and a host of other circumstances, the Sylvranis’ social obligations to the other members of their cohorts could shift multiple times, over the course of a month.

Fortunately, Cyril and his IAC partners were largely shielded from the mandates of Sylvrani society. All the same, there were times when their work was temporarily halted, as when a dispute broke out over which Sylvrani official had ultimate authority over a particular stage of the project. And that was aside from the duty each Sylvrani owed to a nature-oriented religious calendar with a dizzying schedule of festive or deeply solemn holidays. Often enough, the latter coincided with a critical phase of testing or construction.

What Cyril was not shielded from was the everyday reality of life in a nearly pre-industrial society. While the IAC provided generators and compact micro-fusion plants to run every scrap of essential equipment, the squat, wood-framed cottages provided by the Sylvrani didn’t share in that abundance. Their adobe walls were cracked and the last faded traces of plant-based paint were grubby and water stained. After hours, the electricity available to Cyril was doled out in limited quantities. Crude incandescent bulbs offered erratic, flickering light that was barely adequate and made heating his rations on a cast iron wood stove a hit-or-miss proposition.

Similarly unreliable was a water heater that frequently required a swift kick to turn over. Though he longed to be free of condensed and dried packaged food, his experiments with indigenous fruits and vegetables had landed him in the IAC dispensary. The human digestive system, he learned too late, was grossly incompatible with Sylvrani plant life.

“You were warned,” said a physiobot, a statement he couldn’t quite hear over his own painful retching.

But like most of his teammates, Cyril was young enough to find “roughing it” kind of exciting. And in the warmer months, the exotic beauty of Sylvran’s flora and fauna almost made up for these daily discomforts. Forests competed with farms and many square kilometers of wild, undeveloped land where a riot of exotic creatures hunted, foraged and burrowed.

At this point in Sylvrani history, it was a planet of villages, not cities — though rumors of crumbling civic towers in the northern hemisphere suggested there was more to the planet than Cyril’s team could hope to grasp. Out of an abundance of caution, the IAC discouraged them from asking too many questions of their secretive hosts. This much the mission commander had made a point of emphasizing, even before they were aloft. Her eyes squinting, her words sent a chill down Cyril’s spine.

“You might find out more than you want to know,” she said.

Under these less-than-ideal conditions, Cyril, his fellow specialists and dozens of other comparable teams spread out across the planet, worked tirelessly for two years. They were aided by dark blue android technicians, which were designed for a variety of functions. These androids largely supervised the mobile automated drilling platforms and other AI-controlled, heavy equipment. Working together over several square miles of wild terrain, they might easily have looked like a swarm of large, alien ants to the Sylvrani, many of whom had no memory of intricate machinery.

Yet there were setbacks. An ongoing impediment was the lack of a robust indigenous manufacturing base. Cyril noticed hints of lost capacity in the decaying remnants of water and power lines. Occasionally, he even found a cracked solenoid or mud-caked pneumatic cylinder, buried under the lumber of a collapsed tool shed. Cyril couldn’t help wondering what had caused the planet’s steep decline to a nearly pre-industrial state. Grulen’s response to his questions about the past ranged from eyerolls to shrugs but always ended in an abrupt change of subject.

Not surprisingly, most of the replicating and fine machining had to be done on the large IAC transport that had brought the volunteers. Finished components were then sent down by transmat beam. But often enough, Sylvran’s intense electromagnetic fields scattered the beam and large chunks of the project arrived as a tangle of useless components. 

Nevertheless, the new geothermal system gradually ringed the planet and connected to smaller hubs with thousands of tributary pipes. One late afternoon, during the final stages, Grulen approached Cyril, wearing a spun-cotton tunic over stitched leather pants and thick-soled sandals. He took the young human aside and spoke softly, with his head bowed.

“Follow me,” said the weathered Sylvrani. “I want to show you something. Tell no one what you see.”

Grulen then did something extraordinary. He took the human’s smooth hand in his knobby, gnarled one and pulled him along a twisting path through a dense forest grove. It was Cyril’s first trip beyond the perimeter established by the IAC. On all sides, Sylvran’s striking foliage made a lasting impression on him.

Nestled between tall trees with broad, purple leaves, whose trunks reminded him of comically overgrown celery, were trees with delicate red leaves that hugged the ground. In the distance, he thought he saw a stand of conifers, but in the intervening mist of early twilight, they were hard to make out.

About twenty meters in, they reached a large, rectangular stone embedded in the forest floor, about a meter wide by 1.5 meters long. Grulen stopped, stared down at it and began clearing away a mass of broad, purplish leaves from its surface with his sandals.

“Help me,” he said.

Cyril joined in, not sure whether touching the leaves might cause the same violent reaction he’d had to his earlier, ill-advised meal of indigenous plants. Eventually, the stone lay bare. It resembled slate, but a faint blue glow around its edges made Cyril wonder if it were artificial. Grulen motioned for him to step back, then recited what sounded like an incantation or a solemn prayer. For the first time, Cyril’s subcutaneous IAC translator failed. 

Must be using an archaic dialect, he thought.

As the stone’s glow intensified, a sharp fissure appeared down its center and split it in two. Cyril now saw that the Sylvrani’s words were more likely a command sequence.

“Cover your eyes,” said Grulen.

As the two halves of the stone began to swing open, like the doors of an ancient root cellar on Earth, a blinding light blared out. Cyril was grateful for the warning and kept his hands cupped over his eyes even as he turned away. Not long after, he felt the aging Sylvrani’s knobby hand on his shoulder.

“Come now,” said Grulen. “Watch your feet on the drohenax.”

Cyril’s puzzled face righted itself when he saw a black escalator that led down from the newly created opening in the forest floor. Startled, he grabbed for the smooth, spongy side rails that ran alongside the rapidly moving steps. As they progressed, a pale-yellow glow welled up from below until the floor they eventually reached was bathed in light. From there, motion sensors flicked on overhead lamps to reveal an astonishing sight: An underground grotto stuffed to the gills with complex equipment.

“What sort of installation is this?” asked Cyril. “A military command post, a manufacturing plant, or…”

“Neither,” said Grulen. “Merely a hastily constructed storage vault. This way, my boy.”

The venerable Sylvrani led Cyril to a set of stairs that ran up to a raised platform about three meters above the vault’s floor. At the platform’s mid-point, he stopped, bent over its railing and pointed. Cyril gazed down on an array of equipment and large crates scattered over the length and breadth of the floor on either side.

In the midst of this haphazard collection of objects, not organized by size, color, or function, Cyril’s eyes rested on a large, semi-circular computer console in the center of the room. At least that’s what he assumed it was. Its elaborate interface resembled the kind of workstation he’d seen in tech labs on Earth, Enceladus and, to a lesser extent, on Europa.

True to the dominant Sylvrani design style, its makers had taken pains to make it look as if it had been grown rather than built. Or had they, in fact, developed a new type of biomechanical hybrid? Though dormant at the moment, it appeared to be capable of immense computational power.

“How?” asked Cyril. “I haven’t seen a single machine more involved than the toaster I’m afraid to use in my quarters.”

“Let me tell you a story,” said Grulen, “about the folly of granting cherished beliefs the status of reason.”

He gave Cyril a crash course in Sylvrani history, starting two centuries earlier when a fringe “back to origins” movement began a slow creep into Sylvran’s everyday culture. It had started in the planet’s northern hemisphere, where a small club of ideologues insisted that everything wrong with Sylvrani society could be traced to “habitual reliance on artificial thought.”

What began as a movement that touted the psychological benefits of “switching off,” gradually transformed into an aggressive mob of influencers who demanded change. A popular video program, “OriginsWay,” broadcast testimonials delivered by individuals and families who claimed to have found True Joy by returning to ancient, preindustrial practices.

“Their message spread like a contagious rash,” said Grulen. “Especially amongst bored affluent fools longing for an effortless path to enlightenment. And luck was on their side.”

A spike in childhood deaths linked to a series of leaks from a widely used micro fusion heating system gave the Origins movement a powerful wedge issue. Day in and out, they silenced apologists for the status quo by demanding guarantees no one could rationally provide. Their answer to every argument was, “Why do you hate children so much?”

Origins movement leaders knew their moment had arrived and they campaigned ruthlessly. Between arranging mass protests, lobbying the Board of Governors and deliberately sabotaging power plants linked to every major energy hub, they built groundswell support for their cause.

“They shut everything down?” asked Cyril.

“It took time,” said Grulen. “The last computerized workstations in the far north were dismantled only in my father’s era, seventy-five cycles ago. But by now, the younger generation has no idea of our past achievements. They take our impoverished state for granted.”

“And this … vault?” asked Cyril.

“A frantic attempt,” said Grulen, “by the few remaining resisters, to salvage as much of the old ways as possible and hope for better times.”

“So, was it you who switched on the transponder signal that we picked up?” asked Cyril.

Grulen’s eyes widened. He put a finger to his lips.

“To the extent to which I understand your question,” he said. “It is said that good fortune comes to brave souls who tempt fate. But I personally have never subscribed to that view. Surely it was Coelynthar, maker of all things, source of all that is good, ethical and wise, who intervened on our behalf.”

With that, the elder Sylvrani looked away, but not quite fast enough to conceal the mirth in his eyes and the grin spreading across his broad face. Before Cyril could ask the hundreds of other questions that flooded his mind, Grulen urged him to hurry down the stairs to the main floor and up the escalator to the planet’s surface. Though it seemed to Cyril that his host feared they’d lingered too long, once the stone door was sealed again, the elderly Sylvrani regained his composure.

“Tell no one,” he said a second time, and once again took Cyril’s hand to lead him back to the IAC settlement.

Along the way, Cyril asked how the Sylvrani had survived the transition to a new way of life. Grulen’s evasive answers seemed to boil down to a process that rolled out in several unruly stages.

“Lives were lost,” said Grulen, “to starvation and disease. I’m too ashamed of my society to discuss it further.”

The one detail that Cyril did finally wheedle out of Grulen was that the Origins fanatics had a pragmatic streak. They allowed the micro fusion generators that had provided heat and cooling for centuries to stay on, though they refused to service them.

“You are here because finally, the old engines ceased and we had nothing but wood stoves and weak electric fans,” he said. “We will not be whole when your team leaves, but at least we’ll have a chance to survive.”

Cyril eyed the Sylvrani’s dejected expression and decided that asking more questions about a taboo subject would get him nowhere. But when they reached the one-story wood framed house where Cyril would spend only a few more weeks, the aging Sylvrani surprised him with a wistful smile.

“Maybe your presence has taught us not to fear so-called advanced technology,” he said.

Cyril felt a platitude welling up in his throat and made a point of swallowing it.

“Good luck with that,” he said. Grulen’s smile widened and as he turned to walk away, a guttural chuckle echoed in the night air.

CHAPTER 3: A visitor’s ominous request

Cyril’s next few days were a whirlwind of packing, writing up and transmitting final reports, with recommendations to local leaders. His thoughts turned back to Enceladus and how hard it would be to pick up where he left off. Whatever happened next, he doubted he’d ever live so intensely again. As his departure date neared, Grulen and the rest of the Sylvrani operatives he’d worked with so closely for the past two years faded from his consciousness. He steeled himself for the return flight.

All the more reason that a few sharp raps on his front door, late at night, came as a shock. Cyril’s first thought was of an accident at one of the local geothermal units.

But it was nothing of the kind. He opened his door to see Grulen, standing in the moonlit, fall darkness with a large bird on his right shoulder. Though it resembled a terrestrial falcon in some ways, Cyril couldn’t help thinking that there was a trace of dragon genome in the creature’s DNA.

Don’t be an idiot, he told himself.

“Forgive me for intruding,” said Grulen. “I couldn’t let you leave without giving you a token of my appreciation.”

Puzzled, Cyril waved the elder Sylvrani into his kitchen.

“You have a pet bird?” he asked.

“Not a pet,” said Grulen. “An advisor. Right, Verulek?”

The bird pivoted his rounded head in Cyril’s direction and stared into the human’s astonished eyes.

“Neither,” said the bird. “I am simply an intelligence housed in a biomechanical shell. From time to time, my analysis clarifies Grulen’s own thinking.”

“A robotic bird,” said Cyril. “This is even more advanced than the … relics you showed me…”

Grulen winced,

“The less said about that the better,” he said. “However, I can say that Verulek was created at an even earlier time. I received him from my father as my father did from my grandfather. I, unfortunately, have no heirs.”

“Incorrect,” said Verulek. “Your daughter, Kufra….”

“Yes, yes,” said Grulen. “But she is still too young to look after you properly and … well, I am told my health is failing.”

“I need no ‘looking after’ in the sense you mean it,” said the AI.

“Times are changing,” said Grulen. “I detect a shift in the political wind. Though most Sylvrani welcome the IAC, there are some who resent it. I can’t afford to let you fall into their hands. If would be the end of you.”

Cyril stared at Verulek and tried to imagine returning home with an alien bird, let alone and alien AI.

“I’m sure I don’t deserve such a valuable gift,” he said. “Besides, the IAC has been very clear about smuggling souvenirs. And even if they allowed it, I doubt the authorities on Enceladus would agree. If they saw Verulek as a bird, they’d treat him like a potential biohazard. And if they saw him as an AI, they’d dismantle him for fear of a cyber-attack.”

“You may be right,” said Grulen. “If your officials actually saw him. But his makers, far older than even my grandfather, left nothing to chance. Verulek can generate his own light canceling field. Can’t you, boy?”

“The designation ‘boy’ is inaccurate,” said Verulek. “However, I can easily demonstrate the phenomenon that Grulen refers to.”

Cyril had no time to suppress a gasp as the biomechanoid intelligence disappeared.

“How about that?” said Grulen.

“It’s no good,” said Cyril, “The ship will still register the extra weight, which looks to be about … six kilos.”

“Which I will offset,” said Verulek, “with gravity modulators embedded under each of my wings.”

Cyril’s eyes narrowed.

“I can’t hide advanced tech without breaking every rule I signed up to obey,” he said.

“Verulek will hide himself,” said Grulen. “You need only ignore him. Please, this is bigger than either of us.”

According to Grulen, Verulek was one of seven biomechanical AIs disguised as indigenous animals. Aside from the subterranean vault that Grulen showed Cyril the day before, they were the sole repositories of Sylvrani tech. Like Verulek, most of the others were extremely energy efficient and were powered by a combination of solar batteries and ambient-energy harvesting.

“Verulek’s ‘cousins’ are scattered across the planet,” said Grulen. “They should be safe for now. But there remain a stubborn few Sylvrani who cling to Originist beliefs. If they come to power, they will root out all dissent. I have to make sure that one of the seven intelligences is safe.”

“I … don’t know if I….” said Cyril.

“Please, you must help,“ said Grulen. “Millions have already died due to Originist folly and cruelty.”

Cyril squeezed his eyes shut.

“All right,” he said. “Maybe I’ll learn a thing or two from your ancestors. What do you think, Verulek?”

The Sylvrani biomechanoid disengaged his light-canceling circuits and reappeared.

“Superficial scans of the IAC ship and your equipment,” said the AI, “suggest you have a lot to learn.”

“Snippy, isn’t he?” asked Cyril.

“But reliable,” said Grulen. “Guard him carefully and be prepared to listen when the time is right. I must go before my presence here becomes suspicious. Good luck.”

Still somewhat flabbergasted, Cyril watched his Sylvrani mentor steal off into the night and wondered what would become of him. He shut his cabin door and turned back to Verulek, who was now perched on his kitchen table.

 “I still don’t see how I can sneak you on board,” he said.

“When it is time to board your ship,” said Verulek, ‘I will engage my light-canceling circuits and my gravity modulators at the same time. Then I can fly into your quarters undetected. Once aboard, I will go into hibernation to conserve power. Between my reserves and the ambient energy of your ship, I will be able to remain undetectable.”

“Hope you’re right,” said Cyril.

What’s wrong with me? he thought. If they find out, I’ll never work again.

Soon the IAC told Cyril’s team to pack up for home. As planned, he brought aboard an  invisible, weightless stowaway. But if he thought his expectations had been shattered enough for one lifetime, he was sadly mistaken.

CHAPTER 4: Plagued by the memory of an alien plague

Halfway through Cyril’s return trip to the Enceladus colony, disturbing news appeared on his personal scanner, and that of every other IAC operative from his star system. Earth was under attack.

Still new to interstellar travel, humans rarely ventured far into deep space. Though they had well-established colonies on Enceladus and Europa, plus scientific and manufacturing compounds on the moon and Mars, plans to build their first “extra solar” colony were mired in the planning stages. Nevertheless, their AI-driven probes into the Tau Ceti system had caught the attention of the interstellar community.

A few years before Cyril set out on his IAC mission to Sylvrani, Earth’s world government received a formal invitation to join the Interstellar Conference. Representatives from the “local” branch had helped humans establish a dedicated com-link. Soon after, a flood of data, technical specs and theoretical papers streamed across space-time, as the wider universe worked to bring humanity up to speed in astrophysics and a host of other fields.

So when Zoe Demetriou, Senior Advisor to Earth Central received a call from Zorn Supreme Command, she wasn’t expecting the deadly ultimatum that came through her sound system. Confident in the support of the Interstellar Conference, she refused the Zorn’s demand for immediate surrender.

The consequence was an all-out assault on Earth’s moon base, a vital source of the raw materials that drove the human economy. The Zorn were a formidable enemy, whose superior space fleet bristled with lethal weapons. Just as menacing were their minds, which were augmented by the array of cerebral implants that studded their skulls. The implants communicated in real time with a vast database built from the digitized minds of several dozen conquered species. To be defeated by the Zorn was to live on only as an enslaved mental shadow.

Yet the humans, backed by their Conference allies, mounted a counter offensive. When the conflict began, Cyril was among the first to enlist, and served as the engineer on a front-line battle cruiser. Though the war dragged on for three years, the outcome was never really in doubt. The Zorn, dependent on the minds of others, had lost the ability to innovate. The more advanced species of the Conference eventually worked out a jamming signal powerful enough to break the Zorn’s connection to their database. Without it, the Zorn were helpless and made a scrambling retreat to their home world in the Andromeda galaxy.

Yet Earth’s Zorn war inflicted significant casualties. Among them was Cyril’s idealism. Though he’d left Sylvran with high hopes for improving the lives of sentient beings everywhere, by the time the Zorn were defeated, his outlook had changed.

Need my own power base, he told himself at the time.

And that thought was the impetus to start NightFire, LLC. His company earned him billions of credits and made him a force to be reckoned with in the tech world. But it had done nothing to fill the void left after he said goodbye to Grulen for the last time.

Whenever Cyril was troubled by war-time atrocities, his mind drifted back to the IAC project on Sylvran. The memories he formed there were all that had sustained him through the past few decades. Though Verulek had perfect recall of Cyril’s visit, reminiscing with an AI proved a sterile exercise in fact checking. Yet here he was again, escaping into reminiscence.

Until, that is, four months after boarding the Unfettered, a com-link call from the inky depths of space insinuated itself into his blissful disavowal of everything that smacked of responsibility.

“That’s Grulen’s old line,” he said.

He let the call go to message. This had to be a prank. Grulen had died fifteen years earlier, at least according to the message that Cyril received from the Sylvrani government. Perplexed, he stepped into a pair of green canvas pants and donned a matching long sleeve shirt. He picked up a leather glove that lay on his end table, trudged out of his quarters, and took the nearest lift to the Unfettered’s spacious solarium.

At the sound of his soft leather slippers on the polished hardwood floor, Verulek leapt from his perch on a round, blonde wood table near the main portal. That left Cyril just enough time to throw on his glove before the alien AI fluttered down to his extended forearm.

“What do you think?” he asked. “Can I trust that call?”

“The interstellar com you received was authentic,” said the AI. “The caller was, most likely, Kufra. No one else but Grulen’s daughter would have access to his line. I gather you would prefer to hear no more from Sylvran.”

Cyril shook his head.

“I’d prefer,” he said. “to hear no bad news. But what else would prompt Kufra to call me? She was a child when I left the planet.”

“The Sylvrani habit of producing offspring late in life is an ancient custom,” said Verulek. “In this case, Grulen’s daughter is a bridge from the past to the present. A transmitter of her father’s will.”

“You have the soul of a poet,” said Cyril. “But you’re right. I can’t ignore her without letting Grulen down. Do me a favor and listen in while I speak to her. You may detect nuances I will miss.”

“Inevitably,” said Verulek. “The little you know about Sylvrani culture would fit inside a neutrino with room to spare.”

“Poetic,” said Cyril. “Also snippy. Make contact, please.”

The Sylvrani AI leapt off his forearm and landed a few feet away, atop a viewing device Cyril had ordered for the solarium’s side portal.

“You appear to assume,” he said, “that I am endowed with an interface that can connect to your com-system.”

“Am I right?” asked Cyril.

“Yes,” said Verulek. “But if we return to Sylvran, I caution you against making such blithe assumptions. Even in its present state, the inhabitants will find many ways to deceive you if they choose.”

The biomechanoid flapped his wings twice. Cyril heard the distinct sound of an interstellar connection being formed through the Unfettered’s PA system. Then an unmistakable female voice bounced off the solarium’s walls.

“Is that you, Cyril Night?” it said. “Here is Kufra, daughter of Grulen. I believe you will remember….”

“Yes, of course,” said Cyril. “Of course I do. Grulen mentioned you more than once.”

“And he mentioned you to me more times than I can count,” said Kufra. “I spent my entire childhood up to his death thinking you were a mythological creature.”

“Maybe I am,” said Cyril. “I’m not the same as I was back then.”

“However close you are to that Cyril Night,” said Kufra, “will have to do. My father needs you.”

“What?” asked Cyril.

“Nothing is as it was,” said Kufra, “but much remains the same. For now, it’s enough for you to know that your heating system needs repair.”

“So it needs the IAC,” said Cyril.

“Later perhaps,” said Kufra. “The repair I refer to is not exclusively mechanical. I cannot say more or my transmission may be detected. Please say you will come to us.”

“I … yes,” said Cyril.

“I will smooth the way,” said Kufra. “You will simply say you are visiting the grave of your old friend.”

The com-signal went dead. Cyril nodded to Verulek.

“As we approach the Sylvran system,” he said, “Do a sensor sweep for off-world surveillance or infiltration.”

Verulek’s beak snapped.

“No need,” he said. “I have monitored the system constantly since I left it in the IAC ship. I detected a hostile foreign presence starting five cycles ago.”

“Don’t tell me it’s the Zorn,” said Cyril.

“As you wish,” said Verulek, “I will not tell you. I may, however, be forced to imply their presence.”

Cyril sunk his head in his hands. Reports of a resurgent Zorn fleet had been circulating on the interstellar newsnets for a few years now. That they should eventually show up near the Sylvran system made a kind of sense.

The Sylvrani are now much more backward than we were, he thought.

“What about the Interstellar Conference?” he asked. “They helped us with our little Zorn problem, some time ago.”

Verulek fluttered down to Cyril’s gloved hand again.

“Listen carefully,” he said. “This situation is not comparable to your experience in the so-called Sol system. A sector of the Sylvrani government invited a team of Zorn advisors to the planetary capital. The Conference cannot intervene directly in their sovereign decisions.”

“Sounds like a great argument against unchecked sovereignty,” said Cyril.

“Caution:” said Verulek. “Bloody wars have been fought in multiple systems across time over that very issue. The critical question involves determining who should set limits for sovereign regimes. Consider the billions of sentient populations involved.”

“Rings of Saturn,” said Cyril. “Let’s get moving. We’ll see what’s what when we get there.”

“So will the Zorn,” said the biomechanoid.

“I can’t let Kufra down,” said his human master. “Either you set a course for Sylvran, or I’ll handle it with my nav-AI.”

Verulek squawked.

“Done,” he said. “I have plotted the closest approximation of a stealth trajectory possible with this primitive vessel.”

Cyril asked his irrepressibly frank travel companion to craft a succinct brief on Zorn activity over the last five years and send it to the quantum tablet in his quarters. As he hurried out of the Solarium, one thought dominated his mind.

How can I stop the Zorn on my own?

CHAPTER 5: Spiraling, into the eye of the storm

Even with the powerful space fold engines aboard the Unfettered, it would be a solid week before Cyril reached the outskirts of the Sylvran system. That didn’t seem nearly enough time to prepare for this risky mission. Kufra’s oblique reference to problems with the planet’s geothermal system was surely a euphemism for meddling by the Zorn.

Fought those plug-heads for three cycles, he thought. I should know them inside out.

But as a young ship’s engineer, his perspective on the Zorn had been limited. Earth’s military commanders had made every strategic decision, based on intel from the Interstellar Conference. He knew precious little more about the Zorn than anyone else who consulted the interstellar newsnets. A typical article by a renowned exobiologist ran as follows:

1.1 PHYSIOGNOMY

While the Zorn adhere roughly to the humanoid model, divergences from that model are numerous and significant.

Skin is a pale shade of yellow. Vestigial feathers in varying hues appear on either side of the head. Hands and feet, though delicate, are flexible and resilient. Binocular eyes are deep set, an effect accentuated by the forward, conical thrust of the face. The broad mouth appears cavernous when open.

Ears are well-defined canals positioned directly under the eyes. They are matched by slits analogous to human nostrils in the center of the face. The Zorn achieve their warbling speech through manipulation of muscles surrounding a specialized organ embedded in the throat.

Perhaps the Zorns’ most distinguishing feature is the network of cerebral implants that dot their otherwise bald heads. These cylindrical, quantum-enabled devices glow, pulse and hum. Their primary function is to maintain contact with a repository of millions of digitized minds, captured from their numerous conquered species….

Cyril shuddered at the mention of the Zorn’s digitized victims.

Imagine having only enough awareness to know that you’re trapped forever, he thought.

But he was getting off topic. He needed a summary of observed Zorn weaknesses; anything he could turn to his advantage. After scanning for keywords, the newsnet report jumped to one of its later chapters.

25.1 COGNITION

The cognitive advantages attained by Zorn mastery of implant technology have significant trade-offs in two areas:

• Spontaneity
• Strategy is marked by rigid adherence to pre-determined 
  game plans

• Adaptation
• Field commanders are slow to respond to the unexpected in 
  real time
• Database is plagued by variable response times, due to electromagnetic storms, sun spot activity, radiation levels, etc.

Have to catch them off guard, thought Cyril.

Even with no clear plan of attack, the fact that he had a plausible strategic goal eased his anxiety down a notch. Clearly, any disruption of the Zorn implants’ function could send them into a tailspin. But what of the geothermal plant that he’d helped design and build thirty years earlier? To Cyril, it was a forgotten relic. He had to become immersed again in the specs for the project. But there was no reason to tackle that problem alone. He called out to his biomechanical companion over the Unfettered’s PA system.

“Better get down here,” he said. “I want you to look at something.”

“No need for imperatives,” said Verulek. “I exist to serve. Describe your problem and I’ll work it out on the fly.”

“Cute,” said Cyril. Why had so few of his human contacts been that personable? 

With Verulek’s help, he called up his thirty-year-old schematics. Viewed through wiser eyes, they looked crude. That is, despite being sound, logical and coherent, the design was surprisingly open and vulnerable. The systems he’d built with NightFire, LLC were tighter and almost impervious to assault by flooding, pollution, electrical mishaps or just about anything else.

By contrast, Cyril saw that his earlier design could be thrown off by a team of over-eager tunneling rodents. In all this time, he’d simply been lucky that no species comparable to the terrestrial Plains Viscata or the Zambian mole rat had ever evolved on Sylvran.

Could someone have sabotaged the system he designed for the IAC by taking advantage of its loose construction? Possibly, yet there seemed to be more in Kufra’s message than simple vandalism. More likely, Sylvrani society was experiencing a resurgence of the Origins movement, which Grulen had quietly evaded by signaling the IAC all those years ago.

But considering how technologically backward most Sylvrani were, they’d need help to find the geothermal system’s most vulnerable components. And based on Verulek’s observations, that help most likely came from the Zorn. Just in time, the Sylvrani AI swooped into Cyril’s quarters and landed on the arched, titanium floor lamp in the far corner of his living room.

“How soon before we reach a Zorn outpost?” he asked.

“The term ‘outpost’ is inaccurate,” said Verulek, “in that it implies a degree of permanence. We have, however, entered a region containing a series of Zorn space stations that form one arc of an off-center ring that encircles the Sylvran system.”

“Why do they need so many?” asked Cyril.

According to Verulek’s reading of intercepted Zorn communications over the last five years, the answer seemed obvious. They had been thoroughly trounced by the interstellar community the last time their ambitions got the better of them — and were determined to avoid ambush.

“They have established both an assault posture and a deep defense perimeter,” said the AI. “Have no doubt that they are scanning or have scanned this vessel from every angle.”

“If so,” said Cyril, “they’d find nothing dangerous here.”

“They will nevertheless consider your presence a threat,” said Verulek. “You bring information about life beyond the Sylvran system and of species that they do not, at present, control.”

“Maybe I should turn back and seek reinforcements,” said Cyril.

“According to one estimate,” said Verulek, “by the time you returned, Sylvran would either be destroyed or rendered culturally unrecognizable.”

“You mean, your estimate,” said Cyril.

“Incorrect,” said Verulek. “Analysis of Zorn assault patterns over time, and across multiple systems reveals a propensity for impatience.”

Cyril gulped. The danger was even more immanent that he’d gathered from Kufra’s voice.

“You actually think the Zorn are about to mount a space-based attack?” he asked.

Verulek’s beak clacked.

“You misunderstood,” he said. “The Zorn conquer more by infiltration than direct assault. In that sense, the mission they carried out on Earth was highly unusual. Your world must have seemed particularly resistant to influence.”

“Stubborn is the word,” said Cyril. “So based on that, there must already be a Zorn presence on Sylvran.”

But as Verulek reminded him, exerting influence did not always require physical proximity.

“We may assume that the Zorn have already established radio contact with a political entity or social group on the planet. They will wait to be invited to establish a base and serve in an advisory capacity. I will scan all communication frequencies en route and listen for chatter about a new embassy.”

“Let’s hope,” said Cyril, “that if the Zorn do occupy any building, it will be connected to my geothermal system.”

“That appears obvious,” said Verulek. “Why mention it?”

“Because,” said Cyril. “I just … may have the beginnings of a plan.”

“Caution:” said the biomechanoid. “Any viral or bacterial agent you might think to inject into the Zorn’s ventilation system would have a high probability of leeching into the general population.”

“What do I know of microbes?” asked Cyril. “I’m an engineer. It’s the Zorn implants I’m after. If I can create a suite of nanobots to transmit the right interference patterns, we could knock out their plug-ins. They’d be helpless. You have any schematics of typical Zorn implants?”

“I’ll see what I can find,” said Verulek. “Though based on my observations, the Sylvrani lack a manufacturing base capable of….”

“We have no idea what some Sylvrani might be capable of,” said Cyril. “After all, they kept you hidden for centuries. But if the Sylvrani can’t manage it, the Unfettered has several sophisticated replicators. ”

“Mostly dedicated to pastry replication,” said Verulek.

“Craters, your sarcasm subroutines are on overdrive. I’ll have to retool them before I get started on reprogramming my replicators,” said Cyril. “Besides, you never know what the Sylvrani might have tucked away.”

“I gather Grulen….” said the Sylvrani AI.

“Shh,” said Cyril. “With the Zorn around, even the quarks have ears. Just let me know what you dig up.”

Verulek flew off, to integrate more closely with the Unfettered’s main AI on the ship’s lower level. Alone with his thoughts, Cyril felt self-conscious about his isolation for the first time since embarking on his voyage to nowhere in particular.

Can’t escape the connections you make, he thought. Even when you ask nothing of them.

With a scowl, he pushed away such thoughts and forced himself to concentrate on a general set of specs for his weaponized nanobots. Though he lacked the detailed report that he hoped to receive from Verulek, human scientists had already compiled reams of data from the Zorn assault on Earth. Yet even with the analytical tools at his disposal, searching for the “gold” buried in the thirty-year-old files was exhausting.

Small wonder that Cyril, after a long day that had shaken him out of blissful escapism, dozed off in his chair within minutes.

CHAPTER 6: Fighting a formidable enemy with … ingenuity?

Soon after the Unfettered’s life support system switched on its virtual “morning” subroutines, Cyril awoke to find his face smashed into the small computer console in his quarters.

“How cozy,” he whispered. Dazed after a night of confused dreams, it was a good minute before his groggy brain reacquainted him with his changed reality. He stood up, shook the stiffness out of his neck and shoulders and dragged himself into his shower room. A look in the mirror did nothing to improve his mood. But after he’d grabbed for a hairbrush and made the best of his slept-in appearance, his grouchy attitude began to shift.

That’s when he realized how hungry he was.

Bird will have to wait, he thought.

He shuffled out to the corridor that ran past his quarters, and on to the narrow staircase leading down to the ship’s galley. With the aroma of a hot breakfast already teasing his imagination, he heard the distinct flutter of biomechanical wings in the near distance. As Verulek rounded the far corner and landed at his feet, Cyril lost all hope for a peaceful morning meal.

“Find anything?” he asked.

“Zorn technology has advanced considerably since their assault on Earth,” said Verulek. “Your plan to interfere with their implants faces several challenges.”

For starters, the implants were now heavily shielded. Worse, the Zorn had completely revised their code language. Cyril started down the staircase to the galley, which forced Verulek to make a series of undignified hops to keep up with him.

“Physical laws haven’t changed,” said Cyril. “And that imposes limits on even the most advanced systems. Where there’s a limit, there’s a compromise. That’s my way in. Just get me the updated specs. I’ll find an entry point.”

“We can go over them together while you breakfast,” said Verulek.

“Can’t it wait?” asked Cyril. “I need more time to wake up.”

“You have less time than you think,” said Verulek. “A Zorn probe ship approaches at high speed.”

Motion detectors flicked on overhead lights as they entered the Unfettered’s spacious, cheerful galley. Verulek activated the galley’s main view screen remotely to reveal a sleek, dark green needle-nosed ship rushing towards them.

“That’s some antenna,” said Cyril.

“The better to maintain contact with the Zorn master database,” said his AI companion.

“Wish I could snap it off,” said Cyril.

Then he remembered that he had a pair of armed landers. A well-timed shot from either one of them … but what was he thinking? He was no match for a skilled Zorn pilot, much less an AI controlled probe ship.

“An understandable urge,” said Verulek, “but such action would be counterproductive. It is reasonable to assume that the probe’s mission is simply to determine if you have hostile intent.”

In spite of the potential danger, Cyril couldn’t stop himself from walking over to his extensive bank of food replicators on the right side of the room.

“So we’ll do nothing,” he said, “and hope for the best. Tell me, is an AI capable of hope?”

“I am only capable of assessing the relative probability of various outcomes,” said Verulek. “And according to the onscreen image, it now appears, we are not in immediate danger.”

Cyril looked up in time to see the Zorn ship zoom past them, make a U-turn and zoom away in the direction it came. He breathed deep.

“Waffles?” he asked.

Without waiting for an answer, he retrieved a plate of them from the replicator, picked up a glass of orange juice that had just appeared on the device next to him and walked carefully over to one of the galley’s three tables. He entered a command into a small keypad embedded in his arm of his chair. On cue, a small trapdoor opened in his tabletop and a vial of synthetic syrup rose to its surface from a cabinet below.

He sat down and dug in. For a moment, not even Verulek’s impatient pacing could diminish the satisfaction of that first bite. The thought of imminent danger, however, has a nasty habit of damping down even the most exquisite pleasures.

His mouth still full of syrupy quick bread, Cyril leaned back in his ergonomic, forest green chair and locked eyes with the Sylvrani biomechanoid.

“What do you have to show me?” he asked.

Instantly, the schematics for an intricate electronic device replaced the view screen’s surveillance video of local space-time.

“This is the core Zorn cerebral implant,” said Verulek. “It functions as the template for the twenty-five types that they currently deploy. I have, of course, translated it to conform with human symbology and language.”

“The Zorn are ahead of us,” said Cyril. “I doubt you captured everything.”

“After conferring with Intelligence Unfettered,” said Verulek, “I have identified the structures for which there is no equivalent in human technology.”

For the next four hours, Verulek clicked through dozens of Zorn implant schematics. Cyril was astonished by the number of breakthroughs that the aliens had made.

“But to the Zorn,” said Verulek, “these implants are routine.”

Cyril put his head in his hands.

“Complex,” he said, “but they still rely on standard signal transmission protocols. And where there’s a pattern, there’s an interference pattern. That includes their shielding.”

Disrupting the Zorn would be at least a two-stage process: break the shields, then break the right combination of implants.

“You will need a delivery system, of course,” said Verulek. “I suggest….”

“If you’re going to say nanobots” said Cyril. “I’m way ahead of you. But manufacturing them in enough time will be impossible, even if I could get the Interstellar Conference involved.”

Verulek was swift to point out that the Conference was bound by its own non-interference policies.

That leaves Grulen, thought Cyril.

And Grulen was long dead. What could he hope to accomplish by returning to Sylvran?

“Grulen told me there were others who shared his … philosophy,” said Cyril. “Any chance a few of them survive?”

“Only in the sense that children may have inherited their cause,” said Verulek.

“Like Kufra,” said Cyril. “This is not good.”

“Do humans have hope?” asked Verulek. “If so, you may need to draw on it more than once before we complete our mission.”

Cyril walked over to a small portal on the left side of the galley and stared out into deep space.

CHAPTER 7: Arrows to brush off a brush with arrogant oafs

“Prepare to receive landing coordinates.”

The sound of an automated voice from the surface of Sylvran was a welcome relief to Cyril’s tired mind. After five days of grinding through his analysis of Verulek’s schematics, he would finally learn exactly what he was up against. The next sound he heard was Kufra’s joyous yet somewhat shaky voice.

“Cyril Night!” she said. “So glad you have arrived. My party will meet you at the landing site.” 

The Unfettered’s nav-AI guided the ship into a parking orbit around the planet, based on telemetry from the Alkruda space port. Cyril’s ship also captured the coordinates of the port’s designated landing strip. Verulek hopped onto Cyril’s right shoulder as he entered the nearest lift, on the way down to his launch bay.

“I will again engage both my light cancelation circuits and gravity modulators,” said Verulek. “We must assume that the Sylvrani political operatives who have struck a deal with the Zorn will be suspicious of your motives.”

Cyril shuddered. He was walking into a potential hornet’s nest in which any “irregularity” might be seen as a sign of hostility. But the bond he had formed with Grulen drove him on and, unexpectedly, gave him courage. 

With the now invisible and weightless Verulek along for the ride, he climbed into the larger of his aerodynamic, sapphire blue landers and edged into its charcoal gray command chair. As with the base ship itself, Cyril had spared no effort to make the lander ruthlessly efficient yet comfortable. With its low-key color scheme, subtle design details, and roomy dimensions, the ship enveloped its passengers in a luxurious embrace.

“Watch the claws, OK?” he said.

“Human skin is more delicate than I anticipated,” said Verulek. “I will keep that in mind if you are assaulted on the planet’s surface.”

The biomechanoid released his claws and fluttered over to the second of two acceleration chairs to Cyril’s left.

“Prepare for launch,” said Cyril, even though there was no crew or ground team to alert. Yet the ritual formality of that statement helped slow his fast-beating heart. All the same, expecting normality in a situation like this felt like a fool’s errand. At his command, the Unfettered’s launch bay opened to the depths of space. He engaged his thrusters and felt the slight tug against the ship that he’d come to expect.

“Inertial dampers need work,” said Verulek.

“Let’s talk about that later,” said Cyril.

Though Verulek had a point, Cyril was preoccupied with guiding his lander to the coordinates of the landing strip that the IAC had left behind thirty years earlier. As the ship emerged from Sylvran’s cloud layers, he was relieved to see that their work had survived intact.

Before long, the station built to the southeast of the landing strip appeared in the distance on his forward viewscreen. He zoomed in and saw a band of dignified Sylvrani, dressed in saffron, knee-length cotton tunics, approaching the station from the east on foot. Among them, he was sure he saw a female whose resemblance to Grulen was unmistakable.

Thanks to the lander’s autopilot mode, Cyril didn’t have to rely on his iffy pilot training, and that was a good thing. Despite the IAC’s impeccable auto-repair systems, the landing strip still needed routine maintenance to clear away fallen branches and the remains of unlucky forest creatures. Panicked by the prospect of a scraped-up hull, not to mention a crippling crash, he called out to Verulek.

“Any ideas?” he asked.

Instead of answering, the wily biomechanoid engaged the lander’s auxiliary thrusters and aimed them to deliver short, targeted bursts as they descended. By the time the lander was ready to touch down, the narrow landing strip was clear of debris. Cyril was forced to wonder how many more times Grulen’s gift would save his life. But once his ship glided to a halt, the rush of adrenalin forced that thought from his mind. 

He ran to the airlock, steadied himself, and walked down the exit ramp into the planet’s pre-dawn glow with as much calm dignity as his nervous thoughts allowed. Now invisible, Verulek followed and took care not to make a sound until he could risk taking flight. To the left of his ship, Cyril could already make out the group of nine Sylvrani, both male and female, who had come out to meet him. Slightly apart from the others was Kufra. She stood tall in a long white cotton tunic that reached down to her thighs, black leather pants and matching leather sandals.

Her face, as Cyril had already noticed on his view screen, bore a strong resemblance to Grulen’s, though softened by her youth. Was it his imagination, or was she straining against the urge to run up to him?

Don’t get too stuck on yourself, he thought.

It was enough that he’d landed safely. He assumed he would have to wait for the entire delegation to greet him, show him to his quarters and perhaps lead him to a ritual meal. The thought of the latter made his stomach tense, as he recalled his first attempt to eat indigenous Sylvrani foods. As it happened, he was spinning his wheels for nothing. After a formal greeting Kufra explained that the welcoming party was mostly for his protection.

“Though we were all curious to meet you,” she said, “if you look behind you, you will see why we were concerned for your safety. There are those among us who do not welcome your arrival.”

Cyril spun around in time to see a group of nine Sylvrani males, dressed in brown robes and leather sandals, stalking towards him. Two of them carried narrow torches mounted on hardwood poles and fueled, he assumed, by animal fat. One, who was unusually thin for a Sylvrani, wore a black band on his right arm that was emblazoned with the insignia of the Zorn Supreme Command: five interlocking isosceles triangles in bright yellow. He spoke up in a sharp voice.

“Off-worlder!” he said, “Your presence is a violation of Sylvrani sovereignty. Leave at once, or you will be taken into custody.”

Cyril’s jaw clenched, as he tried to choose among the many cogent replies that filled his mind. He needn’t have bothered. Kufra spoke out before his next breath. Her voice was clear and unwavering.

“Pildar Mutros, cease and desist. You have no authority in Alkruda province. Return to the East Lands or face prosecution.”

Pindar sneered.

“I will gladly risk prosecution at the hands of the weak-minded children who worshipped the traitor Grulen, your demented father.”

Kufra replied with ethereal calm.

“You have been warned,” she said. “My delegation is not made up of ordinary citizens.” 

Kufra’s delegates threw off their ceremonial tunics to reveal thick leather body armor. Each one aimed a menacing crossbow at Pildar.

“They are members of the Alkruda guard,” said Kufra. “Because you seem to have lost your way, they will be happy to escort you through the Greeshma forest to your homeland.”

At the sight of nine crossbows, Pildar and his cohort took a step back. 

“We are not the ones who are lost,” said Pildar. “We will speak of this again, at the next Council meeting.”

He turned to walk away and Kufra called out after him.

“Would that be the Zorn Council?” she asked.

At a hand signal from Pildar, the torch bearers in his cohort flung their flames down to the tarmac. The flash fire they started triggered the space port’s automated response system. Mobile platforms emerged from trap doors on the runway to douse the flames and check for peripheral damage to critical systems. 

By then, Pildar and his followers had started down the forest path that led to the east. Their confident stride was broken momentarily by the arrival of a single arrow right at Pildar’s feet. The belligerent leader waved it off and trudged forward without looking back.

“Duly noted, Delegate Kufra,” he shouted, “and duly reported when the time is right.”

Cyril stared after him, still not ready to believe what he’d just seen. Many years before, he’d heard only occasional, mild disagreement among the Sylvrani — usually over ritual observances or a dispute about a parcel of land. Nothing so overtly political, not to mention xenophobic. And definitely not associated with the Zorn. Kufra walked up to him.

“My apologies,” she said. “Pildar has been a negative influence on our society for years. But ever since the Zorn arrived, he has become hostile even to our most cherished values. But come, we should not linger here in the open. Secure your vessel and, please, follow me.”

Kufra led the way and Cyril followed, accompanied by the Alkruda guard, which he now saw was made up of males and females. Awash in nervous energy, he thought he detected a rapid flutter of birds’ wings behind him. Was that Verulek taking flight or just his over-heated imagination?

Soon they were clear of both spaceport and runway. Kufra plunged deep into the surrounding forest.

“I will take you to the final resting place of my father,” she said. “If Verulek is with you, I hope he will join us. Remain silent until we arrive. It is said that others are listening, though I myself do not believe it.”

His mind full of questions, Cyril only nodded. Was her skepticism real or a bit of theater, in case the Zorn really were listening? For the moment, he took comfort in the fact that her well-armed guard was traveling with them. 

After trudging for what felt like two kilometers, Kufra was as fresh as if she had just risen from a good night’s sleep. Cyril was exhausted. Decades of desk work had drained what little was left of his youthful vigor. He was relieved when Kufra called a halt and surprised by the confident way she ordered the guard to stand watch, before nudging him ahead.

“Perhaps you remember this grove,” she said.

“I do,” said Cyril, “but is Grulen … here?” 

“As you will see,” said Kufra.

A few more meters into the forest, she paused in front of a carved stone marker. Chiseled into it were the words:

GRULEN ALDEDRAR 

WISE LEADER

BELOVED FATHER

LET THE STARS 

WELCOME HIM

“Follow me,” she whispered.

As her father had done thirty years earlier, Kufra brushed aside a loose blanket of twigs and leaves to reveal a large, slightly inclined rectangular stone slab. She motioned for him to step back, then chanted a phrase in Sylvrani 

Exactly what Grulen said, thought Cyril. 

That moment had made such an impression on his younger self that he’d never forgotten it, even the chanted words that his subcutaneous translator still rendered as gibberish. As before, the stone slab glowed and a fissure appeared that ran top-to-bottom. Kufra stepped back, shielded her eyes and motioned to Cyril to do the same. The two halves of the stone opened as expected.

“Now,” said Kufra. She stepped on to the black escalator as her father had done. Cyril followed her down to the underground grotto but was nearly bowled over by a small rush of wind, which was accompanied by a muted flapping sound.

“Verulek?” he asked.

Sure enough, when Cyril and Kufra reached the bottom of the escalator, the feisty biomechanoid was perched on one of several unopened crates.

Kufra gasped and ran over to him.

“I am so glad to see you,” she said. “Cyril Night, I have not seen little Verulek since I was a child.”

“Your father entrusted me to the human’s care,” said the biomechanoid. “That may not have been wise, based on the data I have collected since we arrived. I might have stopped Pildar from collaborating with the Zorn ambassador.”

“You are here now, when we need you more,” said Kufra.

“The Zorn could easily have found another Sylvrani for sale,” said Cyril. “And what they can’t get with credits, they get with threats or worse. We saw that on Earth.”

“What matters now,” said Kufra, “is that you and Verulek can help us push back against Zorn assimilation. I fear it has already begun.”

Cyril’s heart sank as he watched Kufra collapse in tears onto a large, stainless-steel crate. With limited knowledge of Sylvrani culture he suppressed his impulse to give her a supportive hug.

They live by so many taboos, he thought. 

Instead, he looked over at Verulek. As usual, the biomechanoid’s unwavering gaze betrayed no trace of emotion.

“Is that true?” asked Cyril. “Have the Zorn already started to ‘convert’ the Sylvrani?” 

Verulek hopped to a crate closer to Kufra.

“Sensors indicate that no instances of cerebral scanning have occurred since we arrived,” he said. “The required tech is still aboard the nearest Zorn base ship.”

Kufra looked up; her gray, tear-stained face was covered with purplish blotches that were already starting to fade.

“You offer me no comfort,” she said. “The Zorn must first win over the hearts of my people so they will consent to the mind-stealing you speak of. At this moment, Pildar is rallying support in our Council Chamber. The Zorn know that the Interstellar Conference will not interfere with the decisions of a sovereign planet.”

Cyril’s throat went dry.

“Don’t they know they’ll be trapped forever in the Zorn database, that they’ll lose all….”

“Pildar promises them immortality,” said Kufra, “and a life free of conflict. I dare not think what the Zorn promised him.”

Verulek flapped his wings.

“I have just been scanning communications over the com-network left behind by the IAC. It appears that the appeal of Pildar’s words is growing among the Sylvrani.”

“We have to stop them,” said Cyril. “I have a plan in mind. But first, Kufra, what did you mean when you said I would find Grulen here?”

Kufra looked startled a moment, then buried her face in her hands.

“Yes,” she said. “I should have taken you straight to him. Come.”

She took Cyril’s hand and led him over to the large, semi-circular computer console that dominated the grotto. Verulek leapt up, fluttered above them and alit on the imposing device ahead of them. 

Kufra took a moment to compose herself, leaned forward and spoke into a circular view screen at the console’s center.

“Father,” she said, “we have visitors.”

Cyril stepped back on impulse as the view screen lit up with a holographic image of Grulen — just as he remembered him.

“Is that really you?” he asked.

The image appeared to chuckle.

“Part of me, my boy,” he said. “The Zorn don’t have a monopoly on cerebral scanning. Our ancestors had them beat by a hundred cycles or more.”

“And somehow, the technology survived the purge?” asked Cyril.

“Not somehow,” said the image. “A few hundreds of us in each generation devoted our lives to preserving the old ways. My father passed the task on to me as his father had.”

“And Grandmother,” said Kufra.

Grulen’s likeness smiled.

“Yes, she kept me from spoiling the secret when I agitated too hard against the regime,” he said. “Otherwise, they would have investigated us. She also managed our data archives to keep them save from corruption.”

“And now?” asked Cyril. “Now the Zorn threaten to destroy the Sylvrani altogether. I have a plan….”

“Of course you do,” said the image. “That’s why I asked Kufra to contact you. Now, come on, surprise me as you did before.”

Cyril stared at the image.

“I can’t believe it’s really you,” he said.

Grulen’s simulation smiled broadly.

“It isn’t!” he said. “This version of me incorporates the wisdom of the ancients. I can access all their secrets now. And I’m determined to stop the Zorn. What do you have in mind?”

Still a bit rattled, Cyril pulled a flexible digital tablet from an inside pocket in his jumpsuit. After a few taps he turned it to face the computer’s view screen. It showed a schematic of a complex miniature device.

“This should jam up Zorn implants something fierce,” he said.

“Should is a touchy word,” said Grulen’s likeness. “Any chance you can upload those specs to my system?”

Verulek’s beak clacked.

“Affirmative,” he said. “I will establish a wireless connection to the human’s ship and send you the files.”

“I was getting to that,” said Cyril. “But never mind. Should I wait here while you take a look?” 

“I’m still getting the hang of this console,” said the image. “Not sure what it’s capable of. I’ve spent most of the time since the transfer trying to keep an eye on your geothermal hook up. It’s still working perfectly, by the way. Come back tomorrow and I’ll have an answer for you.”

Kufra nudged Cyril aside.

“Father,” she said, “it is not safe for Cyril Night to leave this place.”

“It’s too suspicious if he doesn’t,” said the image. “By now, everyone in Alkruda knows that he’s here. Where would you tell them he has gone?”

“I’ll be safe in my lander,” said Cyril. “I assume Verulek can open a com-link between my ship and this console.”

“Of course,” said Verulek, “if Intelligence Grulen will approve the connection on his end.”

“You can count on it,” said the image. “Intelligence Grulen. I like that.”

“And you, Kufra, must return to the Council Chamber,” said the image. “I’m sure Pildar is making a stir about our friend’s arrival right now.”

Kufra stared down at the grotto’s rocky floor, then looked up at Cyril and took his hands in hers. 

“You are right, Father,” she said. “Cyril Night, we will do what we can to protect you, but you must be wary of Pildar. He will do anything to increase his authority, and I fear too many of our people are unaware of what is at stake. Now I must go.”

She turned away and dashed over to the escalator leading up to the planet’s surface. In seconds she was gone and Cyril wondered if he would ever see her again. 

“I should return to my lander,” he said. “I’m sure Verulek knows the way.”

“I do,” said the biomechanoid. “But I will take all due precautions.”

He engaged his light canceling circuits and disappeared. For a brief moment, Cyril felt Verulek’s weight on his shoulder until the falcon-like AI switched on his gravity modulators. 

“Always showing off,” said Grulen’s image. “Hurry now. My external sensors suggest you path may not be smooth if you delay.”

Startled by that ambiguous warning, Cyril followed Kufra’s lead up the escalator to the surface. All the way up he couldn’t stop wondering if he’d arrived in time to keep the Zorn from assimilating the Sylvrani. 

CHAPTER 8: A circuitous route to devise the right circuitry

Because he had arrived a few hours before dawn, Cyril was surprised by the burst of sunlight that greeted him on the other side of the hidden grotto’s secret entrance. As his eyes adjusted, his memory raced back to his first glimpse of the planet as a young man.

It’s like time has stood still, he thought.

The sensation was even more intense as he quickly reviewed every development in his life since he left Sylvran at the end of his IAC mission. Of course, another constant was Verulek, whose unerring directions led him back to the IAC spaceport. But at the sight of his ship, he stopped short. About three meters to the left of his lander stood Pildar and a tall Zorn. 

He recognized the latter’s uniform as a variation of those worn by Zorn soldiers during their assault on Earth. It was made from blood red synthetic silk, which was stiffened with thin metallic thread that glistened in the early morning light. The Zorn’s pant legs were stuffed into shiny blood red boots. 

On his arm he wore a black band identical to the one Cyril had seen on Pildar when they met earlier. Cyril was also struck, as he was many years before, by the faint buzz of electrical energy emanating from the alien’s cranial implants. 

“What’s this?” he whispered to Verulek.

“Remain calm,” said the AI. “The Zorn is unarmed and appears docile. I suspect he merely seeks to clarify your intent in visiting this world.”

Cyril clicked his tongue.

“There’s nothing ‘merely’ about a Zorn,” he said. “But let’s take it slow.”

His only option was to step forward calmly and convince his visitors to leave. He decided to adopt a breezy tone, and hope that playing dumb would buy him time.

“Waiting for me?” he asked. “I was just out for a stroll. I’d forgotten how beautiful your world is.” 

“We like it,” said Pildar. “That’s why we don’t want off-worlders, like you, poking their noses into it.”

“Who’s your off-worlder friend?” asked Cyril.

“This is not a personal friend of mine,” said Pildar, “although we meet frequently on friendly terms. Let me introduce Ambassador Dratali of the Zorn Collective.”

Cyril’s stomach turned a bit as the tall avian leered at him with his broad mouth.

“Pleased to meet you,” said the Zorn. “I hope we can expect your full cooperation as we work for the betterment of Sylvrani society.”

“Cooperation?” asked Cyril. “What do you want from me?”

Pildar sneered.

“Simply not to interfere in matters you don’t understand,” he said.

“Oh, I understand,” said Cyril. “Tell me, Ambassador, is this the same ‘betterment’ you brought to my home world thirty cycles ago?”

The Zorn scowled and pulled Pildar aside for a hasty exchange before storming off into the forest away from the space port. 

“The Ambassador,” said Pildar, “has a prior appointment. We’ll catch up with you later, it you’re foolish enough to overstay your welcome.” 

Cyril bowed and the tall, thin Sylvrani Council member rushed off to catch up with his 

Zorn “guest.” Once they were out of sight, Cyril hurried into his lander and switched on its limited defense systems.

“Show yourself,” he called out to Verulek, “and let’s get started. I want our nanobots ready before Ambassador Plug-head gets any more ‘concerned’ about the Sylvrani.”

Verulek appeared as ordered.

“Understood,” said the biomechanoid. “But I believe you have overlooked a critical component of your strategy to disarm the Zorn. As yet, we have no delivery mechanism.”

Cyril frowned. Up until then, he’d assumed that he could release the nanobots at any point in the planet’s geothermal system and its convection currents would carry them to their targets.

“A grossly inefficient strategy,” said Verulek. “Especially, that is, because recent sensor readings suggest that the Zorn may be closer to the first round of assimilation that I had thought. In fact, they may begin as soon as Councilman Pildar leads his next vote in the Sylvrani Council Chamber.”

‘There’s no time to build an automated delivery platform,” said Cyril. “And I doubt you’re configured properly to enter the system’s ventilation shafts.”

Verulek’s wings flapped spasmodically.

“Certainly not,” he said. “The thought of it nearly disabled my logic circuits. However, there is another.”

“Another biomechanoid, like you?” asked Cyril. “Yes, Grulen mentioned that you were one of many that his ancestors had made.”

“Only one other is located in this region,” said Verulek. “However, she may be ideally suited for the task, provided I can persuade her.”

“An AI that needs persuading to save lives?” asked Cyril.

“As was apparent when she was first activated,” said Verulek, “Chuldranek’s personality vector was crafted more for the entertainment of her maker than for practical purposes. She is … as you would say … a worry wart.”

“Not sure I would say that,” said Cyril, “but I see what you mean. So why contact her at all?”

Verulek explained that, just as he was modeled after a bird, so he could hide in plain sight from the Originalists, so Chuldranek was modeled after a species of tunneling rodent that had a lot in common with a terrestrial groundhog.

“Once she commits to the project, she can easily find her way to the appropriate nexus point in the geothermal system to deliver the nanobots,” said Verulek, “provided we upload its coordinates to her central processor.”

“See if you can find her,” said Cyril, “and lead her here. “Meanwhile, I’d better check in with Grulen’s AI.”

“Be sure to encrypt any communications,” said Verulek. “The Zorn, it seems, are extraordinarily advanced in surveillance.”

Cyril watched his AI companion activate the lander’s airlock and swoop out into the sunlight. After a few minutes of fussing with his transmitter, he patched his com-link into a secure line and reached out to “Grulen” in his secret underground grotto. The image of the elderly Sylvrani appeared on his screen, with a look of grave concern.

“There’s a problem with your design,” said the image. “The circuitry itself should do the trick, but you’ll never crank out enough of them in time. This single package will only knock out the Zorn embassy. What about the space stations you must have seen on the way in?”

“Yes, right,” said Cyril. “My goal is to solve the immediate problem.”

“Solve that and you solve nothing, my boy,” said Grulen’s image. “As soon as these Zorn are disabled, hundreds more can be here in less than an arc.”

“I should have thought of that,” said Cyril. “I guess the very idea of the Zorn got me too rattled. So … What if we digitize the whole thing and send it out on a carrier beam?”

“What good.…” said the AI.

“If we emulate my nanobot circuits and fold them into a self-extracting program,” said Cyril, “we can send the program out over a normal com-signal. All I need is the right signal transmitter. Once the program reached any Zorn facility, it could use the Zorn’s own resources to reconstitute itself. Our weapon would become an integrated part of their platform.”

“Ha!” said Grulen’s image. “They couldn’t disable it, without disabling their entire system. Brilliant! I just hope there’s still time.”

“See what you can come up with,” said Cyril, “and I’ll see what I can work up on my end. This isn’t such a novel idea, you know. There are probably templates for this kind of thing on the newsnets.”

“Either you’re right,” said Grulen, “or we’re sunk.”

Cyril’s screen went dark and he brushed aside the mounting panic that reared up in his mind. But the only cure for his fear was to dive into the work. And after several hours, he was just beginning to make progress when the lander’s main hatch opened and not one, but two biomechanoids tumbled in.

“I located Chuldranek,” said Verulek. “She has, however, questions which I believe that you are more suited to answer than I.”

Cyril swiveled his command chair in the direction of Verulek’s voice and saw what looked like an alien groundhog padding toward him on four broad feet. Her roughly cylindrical body was covered with a shallow coat of yellow-ish brown fur. She stopped and looked up at him with shiny black eyes that seemed likely to pierce him with laser beams at any minute. But the sound of her voice dispelled any hint of menace.

“Are you the Cyril Night I keep hearing about?” she asked.

Sounds like a precocious eleven-year-old, thought Cyril. 

“Yes, Chalundrek,” he said. “I hope you can help us….”

“Drive out the Zorn?” asked Chalundrek. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lovely idea. Totally impossible, but lovely.”

“You won’t give me a chance to change your mind?” asked Cyril.

“In exchange for the use of your charging station,” said the biomechanoid. “Haven’t had a decent charge in days. I’ve been running on reserves, you see, and….”

Cyril stood up and fought hard to suppress a grin.

“You’re right to be skeptical,” he said. “But Verulek and Grulen’s image believe

we’re on solid ground. Follow me.”

He led Chalundrek out of the lander’s command center and back to a larger console in the ship’s rear bulkhead. Verulek leapt up and fluttered after them. Cyril pointed to a wireless charging port at the bottom right of the console. He had to hope that human science had made enough contact with alien technologies to make his system compatible.

“Will this do?” he asked. 

Chalundrek wagged her head left and right. 

“Electromagnetic induction?” she said. “Archaic, but I can make it work — though you really should consider an upgrade.”

Cyril watched as a small panel opened on the creature’s left side. An even smaller, polycarbonate rectangle emerged and interfaced with the charging port, after a bit of wrangling.

“Better than nothing,” she said. “So how do I fit into your plans?

With help and a bit of diplomacy from Verulek, Cyril explained the planned assault on the Zorn, starting with their embassy on Sylvran. 

“Crawl into a geothermal conduit?” asked Chalundrek. “Don’t know how that would work with my claustrophobia.”

“A claustrophobic tunneling mammal?” asked Verulek. “That sounds somewhat improbable.” 

Chalundrek slapped her right front foot on the lander’s floor.

“Well, aren’t we feeling a bit too ‘machine mind’ this morning?” she said. “OK. I can cope if I have to. Just tell me this is going to work. And by the way, I don’t have hands to carry your … package.”

“Can you transmit a signal?” asked Cyril.

“Just a standard com-link signal,” said Chalundrek. “Will that work?”

Cyril nodded, and was already lost in thought, when the lander’s com-system lit up. It was Kufra, calling again from the space port left behind by the IAC.

“Whatever you are doing,” she said. “Do it soon, Cyril Night. Pildar has won his preliminary vote in the Council Chamber. If his proposal achieves a quorum, I’m afraid the Zorn will swoop in right away. Father says he has a surprise for you, so please contact him. Oh, I must go.”

The line went dead. Cyril went into high gear. By running NightFire, LLC, he’d learned all there was to know about realizing a complex project on a tight schedule. He contacted Grulen’s digitized consciousness at once. The elder Sylvrani’s weathered face appeared on the lander’s main view screen

“The delivery program is finished, my boy,” he said. “Just let me know where to upload it. Then you can slot in your implant disruptors. But there isn’t much time.”

As soon as Cyril’s lander received the data from the secret grotto, he patched the lander’s quantum computer into the larger system on the Unfettered and put it to work. He had to hope it wouldn’t take too long for his ship’s AI to incorporate his nanobot schematics into Grulen’s self-extracting shell program. 

“Too new,” he mumbled. For the first time in his life, he lacked the simple luxury of running a routine test. And yet, there was no way to test his work on an actual Zorn without tipping his hand. He had to rely on the decidedly abstract analysis that his ship’s AI could offer. What could go wrong? That was the problem. A tiny miscalculation….

Cut it out, he thought.

Instead of fretting over protocol, he set himself the task of designing a little backpack for Chalundrek to wear as she roamed through Alkruda’s branch of the planet’s geothermal system. Aside from fitting her properly, it also needed a flap that she could activate to release a small, self-starting transmitter.

“I have already arrived at a plausible schematic,” said Verulek.

“Who asked you?” said Chalundrek.

“Please,” said Cyril, “there’s no time for arguing.”

Chalundrek’s dark eyes met his and again he was strangely unnerved. 

“You’re right, of course,” she said. “Don’t mind me, I’m just trying to keep my processors from overloading. The idea of crawling through tunnels….”

Verulek’s beak clacked and an elegant set of design specs appeared on the lander’s view screen. 

“I’ll have to adapt my replicators,” said Cyril, “but now that we’re producing one signal transmitter, instead of thousands of nanobots, I should have just enough time to make this work.” 

“Chalundrek,” said Verulek, “upload your specs so we can be sure the backpack will fit.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” said the other biomechanoid. “When do we start?”

Cyril sighed.

Like raising a family, he thought. Not what I signed up for, especially with so much yet to be done. 

CHAPTER 9: A calculated course change in the aftermath of trauma

Even with cutting corners, it was three full days before Cyril’s retooled replicators had cranked out his miniaturized signal transmitter and the customized backpack Chalundrek needed to complete her mission. 

“Straps are too tight,” she said. 

“They’re also adjustable,” said Cyril. “Come on, we’re going to visit Kufra.”

“I will fly ahead and make certain she is home,” said Verulek. “If not, I will find her.”

Kufra was essential to Cyril’s mission. He planned to use the ventilation system in her modest home as an entry point for his biomechanoid courier. But to the extent possible, his planned assault on the Zorn forces in the Sylvrani system was at the trigger point. With nothing to lose, he decided to contact the secret grotto and give Grulen’s emulation a chance to weigh in. 

“Looks feasible from where I sit,” said Cyril’s digitized former mentor. “But now that I’ve been ‘quantized’ I don’t know if I’m the best judge of what goes on in the real world. Here’s a thought, though. I hope you’re not thinking of bringing Chalundrek to Kufra’s house yourself.”

Cyril gulped. It had seemed the easiest way to ensure that she arrived safely.

“You’ll give Pildar a gilt-edged invitation to call you a saboteur and Kufra your collaborator. ‘Why were they meeting in secret?’ he’d ask.”

“I suppose it is less suspicious if she gets a visit from a tunneling rodent,” said Cyril. “accompanied by a large bird. But not by much.”

Chalundrek nudged his shins with her fleshy snout.

“Whatever you once learned about the Sylvrani,” she said, “you’ve obviously forgotten. They love nature. Don’t worry. They’ll see the two of us arriving at her doorstep as a good luck charm.”

Before Cyril could reply, the lander’s hatch opened and the sound of Verulek’s flapping wings reached his ears. 

“Kufra is now at home,” he said. “I suggest we embark immediately. According to her, the political climate is shifting rapidly.”

Cyril’s eyebrows arched as he reviewed Chalundrek’s instructions with her one last time and confirmed the signal frequency that would open the backpack and release the transmitter into the nearest nexus point of the planet’s geothermal system. 

“The backpack’s built-in transponder will connect with the Unfettered and Grulen’s console in the grotto as soon as you enter Kufra’s ventilation shaft. You’ll have a holographic map to guide you to the nexus point and….”

“Please,” said Chalundrek, “I’m not a child. I heard you the first three times you told me this. Verulek, are you ready? Let’s get going before I run out of charge again.”

“Good luck,” said Cyril without thinking. 

His breath stuck in his chest, as he watched the two biomechanoids make their way out of the lander. Would his plan work? But though he had hoped for a moment of quiet reflection after three days of frenetic activity, it was not to be. Grulen’s image popped up on the lander’s view screen almost immediately.

“My boy,” he said. “You have to lift off, at once. Pildar must have won his vote in the Council.”

“How would you know?” asked Cyril. “Did Kufra tell you?”

“Well, he must have won it,” said the image. “I’m tracking radio signals from the Zorn ambassador. He’s summoning drop ships from one of their space stations. They’ll be on Sylvran in less than a rote. I don’t like your odds of getting away after that.”

“I wanted to supervise Chalundrek,” said Cyril. “But you’ll have to manage that now.”

“I’ll try to jam Zorn sensors from here,” said the simulation, “to give you some cover. Don’t know if it will do any good. Thanks for all you’ve done, my boy. But hurry!”

Cyril’s head throbbed as he sealed the lander for launch, turned the ship around and started down the runway he used when he arrived. His overly analytical mind cursed himself for not ordering a lander with vertical launch capabilities. But imminent danger forced him to focus on what mattered. 

“Wasn’t planning for a quick getaway,” he told his nagging thoughts. 

He pushed the lander’s engines hard, achieved orbit and headed straight for the Unfettered. A preset command sequence on his control panel prepared his base ship to receive him. After a few minutes of nail-biting anticipation, he arrived just as the launch bay doors opened. A snarling Zorn voice crackled out of his lander’s com-link: 

“Where do you think you’re going, human?”

Cyril ignored the alien bully and, as soon as the launch bay was closed, used the lander’s remote controls to charge the Unfettered’s electromagnetic shields and fire up his thrusters full blast. Intel from the Unfettered’s nav-AI showed him both the location of the nearest Zorn drop ship and the most direct route to the nearest logical space-fold point. Its suggested flight path was a tight corridor between six local ships and three more in the near distance.

Clear that hurdle, he thought, and I’m back to going nowhere as fast as possible. 

While that realization gave him hope, it didn’t fill him with the same sense of satisfaction he’d felt when he left Enceladus four months earlier. Since returning to Sylvran, he’d become reacquainted with the sense of community he’d felt as a young man. Before, that is, the Zorn invasion of Earth had so shattered his emotions that work, and nothing but work, proved the best way to banish the terror of war from his mind. 

Now here he was, alone again, but not blissfully so. The worst part was realizing he might never know if he’d pushed the Zorn back. But once again, immediate survival swept every ounce of whiny speculation out of his mind. With the optimal space fold point still an hour away, two Zorn ships approached from “six o’clock.” Menacing, dark olive-green monstrosities, decked out with a weapons array meant only to intimidate, the ships’ needle-nosed spikes reminded Cyril of cobra fangs. 

Though the Unfettered lacked any conventional weapons, apart from his landers’ limited weapons array, it finally occurred to Cyril that he had one very targeted weapon onboard. Without hesitating, he sent out the identical carrier beam he hoped Chalundrek had already deployed underground on Sylvran. If it worked, the Zorn pilots would be thrown into confusion, if not….

But he needn’t have worried. Though the two ships stayed on course a few seconds longer, eventually, they turned toward each other and opened fire. In an instant, they were both reduced to clouds of radioactive particles. The resulting blast sent shockwaves that propelled Cyril forward at a speed the Unfettered’s thrusters could never have matched on their own. It enabled him to reach his space fold point much sooner than expected and, after engaging his fold engines, he was well on his way to safety.

Later that same day, several light years distant from the Sylvran system, the formerly disaffected engineer felt waves of relief wash over him, followed by a lingering regret. 

For a brief time, he’d reconnected with a world of feeling that he’d fought to escape for decades. The Unfettered itself was meant to be his fortress, an unscalable retreat where he could be responsible to no one but himself. 

But now, Grulen’s image, Kufra’s panicked voice, even the nattering of the two biomechanoids haunted him. Had Chalundrek succeeded? Had Verulek protected Kufra from Pildar? Had the Zorn been stopped?

Have to let it go, he told himself. 

And for a few weeks, he drifted idly again until the Unfettered picked up a distress call from an inhabited planet only a few hundred thousand kilometers off his pseudo-random trajectory.

PLEASE, LARGE SHIP, IF THAT’S WHAT YOU ARE.

WE NEED HELP. OXYGEN GENERATION DOWN.

TEMPERATURES RISING. OUR WORLD IS RECLAIMING

ITSELF. PLEASE HELP OR SEND HELP. PLEASE.…

Cyril, who at the moment, was trying to enjoy a quiet stroll through one of the Unfettered’s lush artificial parks, heard the sound of desperation in the message and tried to ignore it. 

Bad case of terraforming breakdown, he thought. 

And once again, the past encroached on his solitude, as he remembered a severe incident from his early childhood. If it hadn’t been for an advance team of android technicians, Earth’s Enceladus colony wouldn’t have survived its first decade.

He stopped, looked up at the artificial sunset his AI always had at the ready and called out to the ship’s central AI.

“Plot a course for the source of that distress signal,” he said. “And let me know when you establish a com-link with the sender. Then give me a detailed sensor reading on what’s going on down there.”

“Working,” said the AI.

It wasn’t what he’d planned for, and he had no idea what help he could be. He’d offer as much immediate support as he could, assuming the planet wasn’t too far gone. 

“Cyril Night here,” he said, when the AI finally patched him through. “Have you contacted the Interstellar Conference?”

“The who?” asked the voice. “Please, Sir, get here as soon as you can. This com-link is breaking up and so are….”

It would be a tough slog, but Cyril’s management experience kicked in again. He immediately sent the coordinates of the planet to Aldor Duvree, his contact at the Interstellar Conference and conveyed the urgency of the situation in the most technical detail possible, based on his AI’s analysis. 

Within minutes, a hologram of Aldor’s reptilian face appeared before him

“Where the imploding neutron star are you?” asked Aldor. “I mean, I have the coordinates, but it looks like there hasn’t been any ship traffic to that sector for at least two hundred cycles.”

“Where I am,” said Cyril, “is where I’ve always wanted to be: where I’m needed. I see that now. How soon can you send someone?”

“Why not you?” asked Aldor. “We’ll provide all the backup personnel you need. Just send us a preliminary report.”

“I like that,” said Cyril. “But send a climatologist now. Sounds pretty desperate down there and they need a temporary ‘patch’ right away.”

“I’ll see your climatologist and raise you a terraforming engineer,” said Aldor. “Now, let’s talk about your stipend.”

“Forget it,” said Cyril. “Money I have. All I need is purpose, and this, my friend, is it.”

“Can’t have you working for free,” said Aldor. “That’s a bad precedent. You have a favorite charity?”

Cyril squeezed his eyes shut. 

“Check in on the Sylvrani,” he said. 

“You got it,” said the reptilian. “I’ll give you an update soon. And thanks. We need more operatives like you. Aldor out.”

The com-link closed and Cyril punched the coordinates of the distress signal into his nav-AI. It had taken a lifetime, but he finally knew where he was going.

^^^

Mark Laporta is a musician, composer and novelist. His science fiction series, Against the Glare of Darkness, is published by Chickadee Prince Books, the publishing house owned by Steve Acunto‘s company, CINN Global. His novels are available in paperback or ebook on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or at a bookstore near you.