Galactic Thunder by Cameron Cooper (best book club books txt) 📗

rights safely preserved in clear plasteel to prove it, so they didn’t need to constantly crow about the venerability of their enclave.

In fact, Wynchester quietly got on with its affairs, seemingly indifferent to the rest of the busy galaxy. They had been one of the last to sever their connection with the array when the third empire collapsed, not because they were reluctant to do so, but because they were so self-contained, they had almost forgotten it was there.

Being cut off from the rest of the galaxy had not impinged upon them very much at all. Anderson Marlow, who had done most of the jumping about the galaxy to visit the isolated cities and worlds and convince them to destroy their datalinks with the array and take back their independence, had almost forgotten that Wynchester was there. It was one of the very last places he had visited.

That didn’t make Wynchester a backwater. Not in the least. Although most of the rest of the galaxy probably thought it was exactly that—an old, creaky, calcified place which should be left to spend its dying days soaking up the strong white sunlight from Plinio.

That is exactly the impression I had about Wynchester, too. When Lyth had announced he was moving the Laxman Institute there, it had seemed appropriate to me that the very young technology which Laxman had developed be housed in the very oldest of cities. Then I promptly forgot about Wynchester once more. The old cylinder city has that effect on people.

Until they visit the place.

Lyssa had been there more than once, but Lyth had not insisted she call the city home, or even linger there more than she wanted to. Her knowledge of the place let her jump us to within a few kilometers of the Great Lock, which all non-resident craft were required to use. Only resident ships could use the Lesser Lock, on the other end of the cylinder, if it was closer to home for them.

My first view of the old city that wasn’t an image in the archives was an extreme closeup, which gave me a clear impression of the size of the thing.

“Damn…” I breathed, staring at the monster-sized structure which filled our view, blocking both Darain, the third planet, and Dara, the planet’s moon. Wynchester used the LaGrange point between the two to stabilize its position around Plinio.

Wynchester was nothing to look at from the outside. The metal shell was patched, seamed and discolored. I could see bots moving over the hull like fleas, barely visible. If they were the standard size for vacuum-enabled bots, it made the cylinder huge.

I stared at the thing. “How big is it?” I asked Lyssa, who stood by my shell, concentrating on chatter between her and Wynchester’s traffic control.

She glanced at me. “The radius of the interior is ten kilometers.” And she went back to her polite conversation.

I did the math quickly. That made the circumference nearly sixty-three kilometers!

I studied the cylinder we were floating slowly toward, reassessing the battered exterior once more. I shoved the view feed through to the diner, where Dalton and Fiori, Marlow and Jai were yucking it up over scotch. “Look at this,” I told them, as I fed the view to the screen emitter on the big table they were sitting at.

I had left the party reluctantly, to come to the bridge for the transition out of the wormhole, so there would be a least one human to speak to the city if needed.

But there was no need. Lyssa had a prior relationship with the AIs and human controllers, who apparently had no idea they were speaking to a digital entity. Or perhaps they did know and just didn’t care. Perhaps that was a reason why Lyth had moved the Institute here.

Still, I stayed where I was, staring at the structure, recalling dusty, childhood stories about Wynchester. It had taken a century to complete the construction of the place. The asteroid belt in this system had been mined for resources to build the cylinder, to the point where there were few rocks left in it.

It had taken another fifteen years to generate a breathable atmosphere inside. A project of such vast size and duration had only become possible once humans had learned how to extend their lives with regeneration therapy. That had allowed one person with a powerful vision, Sawda Ajello, to drive the project forward until it was complete.

Ajello had become a metaphor for persistence, after that. Children were encouraged to “stick like Ajello”.

We drifted toward the Great Lock. The elongated rectangular maw showed light beyond it but little other detail. There was a shimmer to the air in front of the slot.

“A molecular barrier?” I asked Lyssa.

“A strong one,” Lyssa assured me. “They used to use plasteel doors like a normal lock, but the doors take ten minutes to close properly and the lock takes another twelve hours to fill with air, so they don’t use them unless they have to, now.”

Twelve hours!

I reassessed the Great Lock, which looked like a smaller ring sitting upon the end of the main cylinder. The Lesser Lock would be the same, only smaller still, I guessed. The Great Lock rotated anti-clockwise, the opposite direction to the main cylinder, which would offset torque and keep the structure stable. I guessed the Lesser Lock would move in the same direction as the Great Lock, too.

Now we were closer still, I could see that the “slot” of the Great Lock was actually huge. We wouldn’t just squeeze into it, we would be able to pass through while dancing a jig, if we wanted to. There was room to spare.

Dalton tramped up the ramp and came over to my shell. “I wanted to see it for myself,” he said.

Lyssa approached the lock from the starboard side. I could see the silhouette of another ship inside the lock, heading toward the port side, which would be their starboard. I adjusted my understanding of the scale of the