The Black Fleet Crisis_ Tyrant's Test Part 21

But Lando had crossed through only two chambers when the portal ahead of him closed as he approached it. Turning, he saw the portal behind him had closed at the same time. Neither would respond to his touch.

The portals to the inters.p.a.ce and the core were equally recalcitrant.

He was sealed in.

"Threepio, is anything happening there? All of a sudden, the express lanes out here are closed."

The only reply was a burst of white-noise static.

Then the s.h.i.+p groaned, deep and long. The chamber shuddered around Lando.

"Blast," Lando said, his eyes searching the boundaries of his prison.

"They're back."

The groaning continued, and the shaking grew worse. The glow-rings around the portals dimmed and disappeared. In the darkness, Lando was thrown against the face of the chamber.

She's turning fast this time--the propulsion system, whatever it is, is back online.

"Propulsion--stang! No, please, don't try it," Lando implored the s.h.i.+p. "Not after taking hits like those--" The vagabond paid him no mind.

Moments later, with the roaring growl and violent shaking at a terrifying peak, the vessel twisted reals.p.a.ce until it opened, then fell through infinity's door.

Twenty-seven hours after she had taken custody of the Qella remains, Joi Eicroth hand-delivered a stack of three datacards containing the cadaver's genetic sequences to Admiral Drayson at his home on the north sh.o.r.e of Victory Lake.

Drayson's face was haggard and his greeting embrace distracted. "I expected you to transmit the sequences to me in a secure packet." He rubbed his eyes.

"I expected it several hours ago, in fact."

"That was before we knew how extensive the sequences are. It would have taken me nearly as long to encode and transmit the report as it did to fly down here," she said, moving past him into the grand parlor.

"And I wouldn't have gotten to see you again."

A tired smile making a bid to reach his lips, Drayson followed her.

You're saying that you found something surprising?"

"Very," she said. "What species was that creature, Hiram? I would love to know more about its ethology and ecological niche."

"I have a small research team looking into that right now," said Drayson. "I hope to be able to share their findings with you soon.

What was the surprise?

Something about the amount of genetic material?"

She settled in a reclining chair facing the parlor's lakeview transparency. "It's that exactly," she said.

"This species has three--at least three---different types of cells that contain genetic material. The ordinary so-matic cells have sixty-two chromosomes--" "That's on the high side, isn't it?" asked Drayson, settling on a small padded bench nearby. "Go on."

"Yes, it is. But that's the smaller part of the whole," she said.

"This species has two other kinds of genetic material as well, in two different structures located in two different parts of their bodies.

"I call them code capsules, because they're encapsulated in a solid protein coat. There are billions of these capsules in that carca.s.s. I almost mistook them for a ma.s.sive parasitic infection--that's why I started looking at them in the first place."

"How big are the capsules?"

"Big. About the size of the biggest crystals of silicon dioxide out on your beach," she said. "But the same oval shape as the creature's torso. It took me five hours just to figure out how to extract them from their tubules and break through the protein coat without destroying the contents. The contents turned out to be nearly solid genetic material."

She gestured at the data-cards.

"Your DNA and mine together wouldn't fill one of those. I barely got the creature's genome to fit on three of them."

Drayson stared down at the objects in his hand.

"This is one copy? I thought you were doing the triplicate thing."

"One copy. As near as I could tell, almost five percent of the creature's body weight is genetic material.

That's unprecedented."

"What does it need with all that?"

"That's a good question," she said. "I don't know.

I do know that it's far more than information theory says would be necessary to specify and construct an organism of the size and complexity of the one you brought me."

"How much more?"

She squinted as she thought. "Maybe two hundred times too much."

"Which means what?"

"I don't know," she said with a shrug. "The context is missing.

Maybe when your team reports--" "Speculate, please."

Eicroth frowned. "Well, there's a lot of old biological history in our chromosomes, in the form of inactive genes. Maybe this is something similar, but covering a much longer history or a more convoluted evolutionary path."

"Any other ideas?"

"One kind of weird one," she said, showing a self-effacing smile.

"Maybe it's because I started off with the idea that these code capsules were parasites, but I keep wondering what good they are to the organism itself.

The protein coat just about ensures that they're inert. I also wonder how they're pa.s.sed on to offspring. The virus a.n.a.logy is tempting- -likewise for mitochondria."

"If you had to guess--" "If I had to guess, I'd say it almost looks like this species carries a giant catalog of spare genetic blueprints around inside itself."

"Blueprints for what?"

"I don't know. There's a kins.h.i.+p in the genetic se-quencesmsomething recognizable as kin, anyway. Bio-chemically, there'd be a family resemblance."

"What about the a.n.a.logy to the Fw'Sen?" Drayson asked. "Don't they mate only once, before they're s.e.xually mature?"

"You mean, could these be retained fertilized eggs?

I don't think so. The capsule tubules are completely separate from the somatic-cell reproductive anatomy."

She shook her head. "It's very odd, and I don't pretend to understand it. "

Nodding, Drayson stood. "I have to go do something with this," he said, holding up the datacards.

"Will you stay?"

Her smile brightened. "If my boss is willing to wait a little longer for the results of the dissection."

"I'll have a word with him," Drayson said. "Look, I'll be downstairs for a little while with this--get yourself something to eat if you haven't had a chance."

"When's the last time you ate?"

He shook his head. "I've had no appet.i.te."

Eicroth knew better than to ask the reason. "I'll see if I can find something for two," she said, reaching for his hand and giving it a squeeze. "Come on back up when you can."

The instant that Lady Luck left hypers.p.a.ce, its slave circuits relinquished control.

"That isn't supposed to happen," Pakkpekatt said, showing teeth and hissing.

His companion on the yacht's flight deck was Bijo Hammax. "What's supposed to happen?"

Agent Pleck appeared at the hatchway. "The usual arrangement for a hypers.p.a.ce beckon call is for the responding s.h.i.+p to ping the signaling unit when it jumps in," he said. "The beckon call sends a local reference signal, and the s.h.i.+p follows it to the location of the transmitter. If the beckon call sends a wave-off instead, the responding s.h.i.+p should jump out again immediately."

"And we're just sitting here?" said Hammax.

"Maybe we were stood up."

"Contact sweep," said Pakkpekatt.

"Coming up," Hammax said, turning to the displays at his station.

"Something out there."

"A more detailed a.n.a.lysis would be considerably more useful,"

Pakkpekatt said.

"Something big," said Hammax. "A lot bigger than we are. Look, this isn't where I work. Pleck, maybe you'd better take the number-two position."

Pleck slid into the seat as Hammax vacated it.

"Contact is capital, type three," Pleck read off the board.

"Too small," said Pakkpekatt.

"Range to contact, two thousand meters."

"Two thousand--stang, we're right on top of it," Hammax said, whirling toward the viewport. "We ought to be able to see it bare-eyed.

They can sure see us." He dug into a storage bin for the laser cannon controller.

"Contact is blacked out, cold, and adrift. No tran-sponder," Pleck said, then frowned. "A scatter of little stuff out there, too, same neighborhood. One floater that might be a body."

"Nothing that might be the vagabond?"

Pleck shook his head. "If she was here, she's gone."

"The same is not necessarily true of General Calris-sian,"

Pakkpekatt said. "We'll go in for a look. Agent Taisden, please stand ready with your recorders."

Lady Luck crept toward the wreck of Gorath as though wary of waking the dead. At five hundred meters, Pakkpekatt called for the bow lights, and a great metal corpse suddenly appeared before them.

"Strike-cla.s.s," said Pakkpekatt.

"Or used to be," said Hammax. "She's all stove in."

"This doesn't match what we saw at Gmar As-kilon," said Pleck, studying the spectral display. "This is not the same weapon the vagabond used against D-Eighty-nine and Kauri. It doesn't match anything in the database."

readable, and remained so as he flew Lady Luck around the derelict at a distance of a hundred meters.

Before the survey was complete, Hammax removed the targeting headset.

"What would you expect to happen if the transmitter got toasted?"

he asked, turning to the commander. "If Calrissian and his team were aboard--" "We need confirmation, Colonel Hammax, not speculation."

"That's my job," Hammax said, nodding. "I'll go get suited up."

Taisden grunted in surprise. "Excuse me--Colonel Pakkpekatt, would you take a look at the comm queue, please?"

Pakkpekatt spun his couch back toward the controls.

"When did that show up?"

"Just now," said Taisden. "Is that your personal comm code, sir?"

"No," said Pakkpekatt. "How very interesting."