Invardii Series Boxset Read online

  “They took themselves out of the picture to give us a better chance,” said Jeneen wonderingly.

  “Perhaps,” said Andre. “Perhaps it was a last desperate attempt to generate continuing opposition to the Invardii, when they saw they couldn’t win on their own. How can we attribute motives to a people we know so little about?”

  “Still,” said Jeneen, “it leaves us with another question – where did the Rothii go?”

  “That’s our job, people,” said Finch. “Untangle the threads and see what the story really is. And when a thread is broken, the detective work gets that much keener.

  “Now, back to the ship with you, and take a break. It’s been an extraordinary day, so rest and recuperation are next, and that’s an order!”

  They gathered up their gear, and at Finch’s command they found themselves back in the cargo ship.

  CHAPTER 7

  ________________

  “We have to go back there,” declared Sallyanne Montoya, Regent Cordez’ off world specialist, as she looked earnestly around the people seated at the long table in the Prometheus boardroom.

  The meeting had started out as a discussion of what they’d learned from the data downloaded at the ancient Rothii archives on Ba’H’Roth. Celia’s research team had discovered a Rothii ‘golden era’ that ended around half a million years ago, and downloaded a lot of material around a few key questions.

  “I know it’s frustrating you’re not able to ask questions of the archive whenever you want to,” said Finch, “but we can’t guarantee any part of the Spiral Arm is safe to visit right now. The Invardii have taken over much of Sumerian space, and there is the possibility we might lead them to the very thing we want to keep from them.

  “I could send a Javelin squadron along with the research team, but that may not be to our advantage. The Reaper Ships seem to travel in large groups, and a Javelin squadron accompanying a research vessel isn’t likely to be enough of a deterrent for them.”

  “You don’t understand,” said Sallyanne, in frustration. “I’m beginning to see how the three races descended from the original Caerbrindii, how that descent made them think in certain ways, but it’s mostly supposition and guesswork. The things the Rothii take for granted – so they leave them out of the information they record – tell me more than what the Rothii actually say.”

  “I understand what you’re saying,” said Finch reassuringly. “Can you tell us what you’re seeing in their history, and I’ll try to work out if the risk is worth a visit to Ba’H’Roth.”

  Sallyanne sighed. This was the worst sort of exercise for an interplanetary sociologist. Knowledge was built on a number of assumptions that could easily be disproved by the next lot of research. Putting several steps together, and laying claim to an understanding of anything about a culture, was almost suicidal.

  Still, she felt her conclusions to be true with every ounce of her sociologist’s intuition. She would have to live with the fact that later events might make her words today look foolish.

  “I think the Rothii were the only ones to stay close to their original genetic form,” she said abruptly, leaning forward on the table.

  “I’m not saying the humpty-dumpty shape on stilts Roberto showed us was their original form. Genetics has to work within certain physical limits, and the Rothii shape is too specific to be natural – but I think it’s an idealised form of themselves.”

  The others looked a little lost.

  “If human ‘ideals’ were put into practice genetically, all men would be two metres tall with broad shoulders, and women would be a standard head shorter with identical secondary sexual characteristics.”

  “If you mean large breasts, say so,” said Andre, who was very vocal on male and female ‘roles’, and also a fan of plain language.

  “In the same way,” continued Sallyanne, ignoring the interruption, “The Rothii appear to have ‘standardised’ themselves to some sort of ‘heroic’ ideal, whether for the sake of art, vanity or efficiency is hard to say.

  “Long legs are very efficient, and Human legs increased in length when we started roaming the savannahs looking for leftovers from predator kills. It’s also true the Rothii developed on small planets where low gravity made an extreme elongation of limbs possible. However, the ratio of length to weight-bearing capacity for Rothii legs lies exactly at the optimum point, and that never happens in nature.

  “There are always other considerations, for example the need for a decent sprint to escape predators kept Human legs shorter than the theoretical long-distance ideal for our mass and shape.

  “There are too many examples of optimisation in the Rothii physiology like this, and the conclusion I draw is that the Rothii are a genetically modified race, and they have been modified to standards or ideals of their culture.

  “However, this is a side issue. The main point is that the Rothii, though rather modified, have kept reasonably true to their evolutionary selves. This is despite having the technology to make massive changes to themselves if they wished to do so.”

  She paused. Now she was really stepping out into unproven ground.

  “I believe the Invardii and the Druanii had no such interest in keeping their natural evolutionary shapes, or staying anywhere near them. I believe they became hybrids, incorporating whatever they needed to achieve their goals. For the Invardii it meant incorporating whatever would help them live in the star rich Core, and utilise its great energies. For the Druanii, anything that would help them adapt to the cold interstellar spaces at the very edges of the Spiral Arm.”

  She waited for some reaction round the table. Most of those present just looked shocked. The only attempts to genetically modify Humans had ceased over 200 years ago, when the unpredictability of the results, and the perversion of the idea by individuals, caused a world-wide outcry. The whole area of adaptive research was shelved, and severe penalties were put into place for anyone foolish enough to experiment with it.

  “So what you’re saying is that we can expect the Invardii and Druanii to take any shape, almost any form?” said Finch quietly.

  “No,” said Sallyanne. “I’m saying much more than that. If it has suited them to adopt a purely metal body, then they’ll have done so. If they’ve found a way to live as a stream of plasma in a circuit, then maybe that too. I’ve no idea what they might have done to themselves since they developed sophisticated technology.”

  Finch whistled slowly. “That might explain the Reaper Ships. For all we know the Invardii could have adopted a form that is able to live inside those things, at plasma-like temperatures. But you’re saying there’s no telling what they might look like.”

  Sallyanne nodded.

  “This doesn’t give us a reason to visit Ba’H’Roth though,” said Finch. “Unless you think knowing the current form of the Invardii may highlight a weakness in their make up we can exploit.”

  “No, no, not that,” said Sallyanne. She took a deep breath. “It’s more to do with some of the Rothii references in the archives.”

  Finch smiled, and raised his eyebrows encouragingly.

  “They must have had ways of fighting the Invardii, and we should be able to use those methods too, whatever they were. They were flesh and blood, and we are flesh and blood. It should be possible to adapt their weapons so they become our weapons.”

  “How do you mean?” responded Finch.

  “Look, I’m guessing about all of this,” said Sallyanne in exasperation, “but what made me really think were some references in the archive material to something we’ve only been able to translate as ‘battle gods’.”

  Celia nodded her agreement, and walked over to a data point at the side of the boardroom. She called up references from their research notes.

  “Look here,” she said, and Finch joined her. “The tense and pronouns don’t agree.” She pointed to an example in front of him.

  “While the literal translation is ‘gods’, the pronouns imply they are things, objects
. And here,” she said, pointing again, “the tense implies they still exist.”

  “Mm,” he muttered, finally. “That is odd. Though it may just be the timelessness of spiritual truth. Most religions refer to gods as existing in the past, present and future.”

  “We thought of that,” said Roberto, “but the Rothii were very specific about their spiritual beliefs. They seemed to favour something more like a life force than a ‘God’ as we might think of a creator, and it’s not that they’re talking about here.

  “The fact remains their language suggests they had a military-style force that was ‘eternal’, as part of their defence forces. Something they called a god factor.”

  “You think it might be a ship, or a weapon, something we could use,” said Finch excitedly, following Sallyanne’s logic at last, “and you think it might still be there, on Ba’H’Roth!”

  Sallyanne smiled. “Something like that, though the archive records we’ve looked at so far don’t give us any clues as to where these ‘battle gods’ might be found – or if they still exist.”

  There was a long silence, while Finch weighed up the situation.

  “I’ll have to clear this with Cordez,” he said at last. “We can’t afford to risk key personnel unnecessarily, and there’s plenty of work you could be doing here.

  “But yes, I think we might be going back to the Rothii archives.”

  Sallyanne smiled, and Andre punched the air.

  CHAPTER 8

  ________________

  Celia and her team were back in a stationary orbit above the Rothii home world. She looked down at the small brown and grey, parched, deserted planet. Sallyanne stood right beside her, immensely excited by this moment. It was her first visit to Ba’H’Roth, and the information she had seen downloaded from the Rothii archives after the first visit made her eager for more. Finch stood beside her.

  “Oh, pearl of great price,” said Finch softly to himself. He was referring to an old story that had once motivated Humankind. The archive below had already given up secrets, like pearls, that had redefined the evolution of the galaxy they lived in, and it may contain a great many more. The research team were at some sort of turning point, he could feel it in his bones.

  Roberto stepped onto the bridge.

  “Everything’s assembled in the cargo bay,” he said, “and Jeneen and Andre are already down there. We can go when the rest of you are ready.”

  Celia looked at Sallyanne to take the lead. They had worked well together during the expedition to K'Sarth, but it was Sallyanne’s sociological skills that were most needed this time round.

  Sallyanne inclined her head to Celia, letting her know she still preferred to follow the normal command structure. Celia smiled. Being the leader was fine with her, and it made things a lot simpler. She knew that Finch would also defer to her. He was just along for the ride – out of his own considerable interest in the mission, and to keep his finger on the pulse.

  That left the bridge to Geelong and the two flight officers he’d brought along to run the ship. Everyone else gathered in the cargo bay of the freighter.

  Finch had stuck with his original assessment, that they were better off travelling as inconspicuously as possible, with the Reaper Ships now moving freely about large tracts of the Spiral Arm. He had not sent a squadron of Javelins with them.

  The freighter had sub-space radio in case of trouble, and they had travelled with the smallest possible energy signature they could generate. Now it was time to enter the Rothii archives once again, and this time they wanted to ask some very specific questions.

  Celia hoped the sentinel program would recognise their ship, or the people, or something about them. She didn’t want to bombard the planet with messages, as they’d done the first time round. Finch was against advertising their presence within the Ba’H’Roth system in any way.

  “Celia Darpagio, commanding officer Earth research team, requesting access to Rothii archives,” she said firmly, speaking into the recesses of the cargo bay.

  There was no reply. No sign of the synthesised voice that appeared out of thin air the first time they visited the archives, and nothing coming over the ship’s systems.

  Celia was about to repeat her address when there was a small popping sound, followed by a faint hiss. She looked at Roberto, who shrugged, which meant he was just as ignorant of what was going on as she was.

  “Access to Rothii archives granted,” said the voice she remembered from the first visit, that resonant voice with a breathy dryness that was almost a rasping sound. It came out of the air, as before, and this time it was suspended somewhere between Celia and Roberto.

  The cargo bay began to dissolve, and for a moment they were suspended in an endless grey. Celia felt a tingle like electrostatic electricity run along her skin, and then walls began to form around the research team.

  The same high, vaulted ceilings appeared, all corners and squares. The walls were sculpted in somewhat different shapes this time, but suffused with the same soft, clear light. The team were standing on another surface of polished granite, but there was no pool leading back into the shadows.

  As before, a series of workstations wrote themselves out of the walls and onto the floor. The team staggered as they were released from the invisible binding associated with the strange Rothii technology, and regained their balance in the new surroundings.

  “No pool,” said Finch softly, and Celia raised her eyebrows.

  “And I recorded a weaker signal from the sentinel program when we were in the cargo bay,” said Andre briskly.

  “I thought we stayed in the cargo bay,” said Roberto, “and the archives came to us.”

  “What’s reality?” said Andre obliquely. “But something’s certainly different about the archives – I guess we can add that to the list of questions we’ve already got.”

  With a sense of repeating the exact same motions, he took out a processor and slid the conduit home in one of the workstation gates.

  “Still compatible with our equipment,” he reported, and settled in to open a connection with the database. His first quest would involve looking for answers to technical questions about Earth’s Javelin star fighters.

  Finch helped Celia assemble one or two things so she could get started, and then left them to it. He turned his attention to the space they were in. It was definitely smaller, and that wasn’t just because the pool had been removed. The AI program was changing the way it did things, but why?

  The research team soon discovered that it was a question the archive was not going to answer in a hurry.

  “You think the sentinel program is what?” snorted Andre, as the team compared notes at the first break.

  “Um, yes, I suppose ‘shy’ is not really a helpful word,” said Sallyanne apologetically. She had been trying to find out why the sentinel program was acting differently.

  “But it is avoiding any questions relating to itself. When I ask the same questions in a different way it clams up and threatens to go off line. Working from what I suspect about the archive and its probable objectives, I think it’s hiding something it doesn’t want us to know yet.”

  “So what are you saying?” said Jeneen, who had been helping Andre with technical specifications for the Javelins, and hadn’t yet got her mind around the more sociological questions Sallyanne was looking into.

  “Let’s leave that for the moment,” said Sallyanne, not yet ready to share her guesses about the archive’s hidden objectives. “The weaker signal in the cargo bay is easier to explain.

  “The sentinel program monitors events in the Spiral Arm – I’m not sure what it’s range is, but I think we can assume it has sub-space capabilities – and it’s now keeping its power output to a minimum. When you think about it, it’s quite a risk for it to even acknowledge us, considering the Invardii probably have the same sub-space capabilities. The fact it’s taking that risk is interesting in itself.”

  “I think I’m with Jeneen,” said Fin
ch, with a smile. “What exactly are you saying?”

  “Oh. Right,” said Sallyanne. “I think we’re getting preferential treatment. I think the sentinel program has a place for us in its plans, which means the Rothii anticipated a new rising power at some stage in the never-ending struggle between the descendants of the Caerbrindii.”

  “A king-maker,” said Finch wonderingly.

  Andre gave him a curious look, while Sallyanne nodded.

  “A race strong enough to help one side against the other, and tip the balance of power, which would break the deadlock,” finished Finch. The look in his eyes hardened. He didn’t like being played.

  “We are nobody’s pawn,” he said sharply. “Not if I have anything to do with it. The Rothii will not slip us neatly into their plans as a bit player while these ancient races dominate the galaxy.”

  He remembered a few words Cordez had passed on from Ebert, his mentor, and repeated them now. “Bow to no one, bend no one to your purposes. When differences no longer matter, all die of mediocrity.”

  Roberto nodded thoughtfully.

  As they sat around, sipping their drinks, Celia offered her report on the archive references to a ‘battle god’.

  “It’s weird,” she said. “It’s as if the archive clearly wants us to know about these machines, if they are machines, but won’t tell us where they are or how to use them.”

  “Mmm, like a teaser of some sort,” said Finch. “A dramatic device to bring to our attention something that will be important later.”

  Celia raised her eyebrows. “Since when did you get to be so literary?” she commented, with a hint of admiration.

  Finch shrugged. “You get older, you see gaps in your knowledge. You stop being so one-sided as a person.”

  “Then there’s hope for us all,” said Jeneen with a grin.

  “Though it’s an interesting point,” continued Finch. “How do we know whether the Rothii had storytelling, and moments of dramatic intrigue. Then he let the topic lapse.