Triad. Sheila Finch

      Borgo Press Books by Sheila Finch

      Garden of the Shaped: The Shaper Exile, Volume I

      Infinity’s Web: A Science Fiction Novel

      Shaper’s Legacy: The Shaper Exile, Volume II

      Shaping the Dawn: The Shaper Exile, Volume III

      Triad: A Science Fiction Novel

      COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      Copyright © 1986, 2007 by Sheila Finch

      Published by Wildside Press LLC

      www.wildsidebooks.com

      DEDICATION

      For my daughters,

      April, Dawn, and Laurel,

      with love

      OPENING QUOTATION

      Language is, like nest-building or hive-making, the universal and biologically specific activity of human beings. We engage in it continually, compulsively, and automatically. We cannot be human without it.

      Lewis Thomas

      Language is a virus from outer space.

      William Burroughs

      CHAPTER ONE

      Day One

      I almost died today.

      Even now—safely back on the Ann Bonny—I still tremble when I think about it.

      Things began well enough, CenCom.

      Update: Lil Cheng ordered the Ann Bonny into geosynchronous orbit at 1306 shiptime, still too high to see anything of Ithaca 3-15d because of the dense cloud cover. After the stress of the journey here, the silent, subjective feeling of pressure as we moved across space, orbit seemed full of creaking, as if the Ann Bonny were letting herself relax. I too had a desire to stretch, crack joints, after a long confinement in cramped quarters.

      Then Sky Selele, our CompSpec, reported the scans had picked up something no one had noticed on the first visit: there was a wreck orbiting Ithaca 3-15d.

      I voted with those who wanted to explore. After all, it’s my first assignment, and I want to sample everything. And freighters don’t usually stumble across such finds as this. Lil had misgivings, but she went along with the crew’s decision. She insisted we suit up. We took the shuttle, Butterfly.

      First impressions: it wasn’t a human ship.

      And it looked as if something had ripped it apart.

      It was about a kilometer long, very thin and spidery in the middle, with bulbous swellings at each end. A row of clear domes like a trail of ant bites marched along its length. The ones that were still intact flashed mirror-like at us. (I don’t have the technical terminology for this; I’m a xenolinguist not an engineer, and I’m sure Carli and Lil have already sent you the official report in any case.) The impression I got from the mangled ship was that some force had bitten and clawed, tearing the metal skin till it bled its life away into space.

      We approached with extreme caution, coasting over the lacerated hull, waiting for an update from HANA. I could see bulkheads warped under the impact of some unimaginable force. What looked like gunmounts had been crushed and in some cases ripped totally out of position. Something that might have been an array of derricks for some purpose I couldn’t guess spilled out of the aft blister like ruptured intestines leaking from a slaughtered animal. But we didn’t need our computer to tell us that whatever it was that had killed the alien ship had long since moved off. The corpse was cold.

      So we prepared to dock Butterfly in the gaping wound that seemed to have been a docking bay in happier times.

      That was a mistake.

      Butterfly hovered over the entrance to the bay. Carli Alvez, our Chief Engineer, and Shelly Matiz, our shuttle pilot, argued over a spot to touch down in the midst of all the rubble that looked horribly like smashed landing craft still locked in place. Then something slammed violently into the shuttle. I was thrown against the safety webbing—my neck wrenched sickeningly inside my helmet—and my vision went black.

      So did the command board of Butterfly.

      I woke up a couple of hours later in the medbay. The ship may have been dead, its occupants long since crumbled to dust or sucked out into space, but apparently some of the automatic weapon systems were intact. We were the aliens here, and the ruined ship had taken its vengeance on us. Luckily, the damage it had sustained lowered its accuracy and its efficiency and saved us from joining the debris in this orbiting graveyard.

      HANA remoted us back—and scolded us for not waiting for that update.

      I came through it with little more than a fierce headache and a sore neck. But I might have been killed. And I admit I was scared.

      Lil thinks it was the Sagittans who wrecked the alien ship. If she’s right, why? They seem to consider themselves a combination of cosmic lawgivers and galactic police force. But what does that mean for us and our mission?

      I saw a Sagittan ship for the first time on the way out here. Or experienced it, to be more precise—a lingster should be careful about such things. We were heading for Xyrus 9 at the time, a slight detour. We were coming in past the outer planets when the Sagittan ship showed up. One minute there was nothing outside but the blackness of the outer reaches of the Xyrus system. The next, there was another blackness on the black—deeper, more a knowledge the ship was there than a visual clue. They made no attempt to stop us or establish communication, but paced us for several minutes as we went in. And I swear I felt their probe roving over us like the touch of an invisible hand. It made the hair on the back of my neck rise. Then they were gone.

      Sky said afterward that they’d activated HANA to transfer information. She says they can bleed the info out of our computer, and there’s nothing we can do to prevent it. It doesn’t work in reverse.

      You told me I must keep this personal log, CenCom. Today, for the first time, I had something disturbing enough to record. My getting this assignment—I know you really didn’t want me to have it—depended on my acceptance of this condition. I suppose you don’t think I’m good enough, just because I don’t have the experience. If you’re expecting me to crack under pressure or something, you’re mistaken. I think I came through my first “combat” experience pretty well.

      I wasn’t sure at first that I wanted to be assigned to a freighter. I’d hoped for a more glamorous mission. But newly graduated xenolinguists usually have to hold desk jobs for a while. I’ve seen lingsters wait around for years before they got into space. This will be easy.

      Just as long as there’re no more ugly surprises like the orbiting wreck.

      This is all I have to report at the moment. Sky says this goes straight to you over the Net, coding HANA out. I suppose that’s the reason you don’t want me using my link. It really is time-wasting typing this in, when I could send to HANA so much faster. And I don’t understand the need for secrecy.

      Lil just announced the members of the landing party for tomorrow. Besides herself, there’ll be Dori Tsing, the Commerce Agent, and I.

      And the man, Zion Marit.

      This is Gia Kennedy, out.

      CHAPTER TWO

      Just let this last one be as uneventful as all the rest.

      Lil Cheng gripped the controls against the familiar bump of landing—a bad habit she’d never managed to break in thirty years of occasionally piloting a shuttle. Which was probably why they’d kicked her upstairs to skipper the freighter where she could do less damage.

      The experience with the wreck had left her edgy. She’d spent two hours on the bridge afterward while Sky Selele queried CenCom. But the Central Computer back on Earth knew nothing about the alien ship or its fate. And it hadn’t been willing to speculate. “Is it