Outstanding Intelligence Targets: Approximately three thousand, eight hundred and thirty Homo quantus are unaccounted for. An all-points alert has been issued to naval and intelligence assets in Epsilon Indi and Axis-adjacent systems. Elements of the 12th Fleet have been deployed on fast reconnaissance missions in multiple directions within two light years of Epsilon Indi. This effort is wholly inadequate, but most 12th Fleet assets are occupied with rebel activity around the Freyja Axis. Additional naval assets are urgently required to track down the remaining Homo quantus before they rendezvous with Anglo-Spanish forces.
Preliminary findings:
a) Many of the Homo quantus were resistant to probes and torture. Extensive physiological, neurological and genetic changes are evident in all detainees.
b) No evidence of weapons development was found at the Homo quantus base, called the Garret. The entirety of the Anglo-Spanish Homo quantus project seems to be devoted to developing mental capacities and perceptions in the Homo quantus that would have predictive military and economic value.
c) None of the detainees appeared to be capable of entering the predictive state they call the “quantum fugue.” They claim it is a rare state, a bioengineering success in approximately 19% of all Homo quantus. The names of all Homo quantus capable of achieving this predictive state are appended (Appendix A).
4. Belisarius Arjona:
a) Detainees consistently claim that Belisarius Arjona is capable of achieving that predictive state, and that he was absent from the Garret for twelve years. This is consistent with other intelligence reports that have placed Arjona in the Puppet Free City and at times in Epsilon Indi Congregate territories. Arjona was suspected of involvement in a prison break that freed a former Congregate Special Forces Sergeant Marie Phocas from the Epsilon Indi Maison d’éducation correctionnelle. DNA records at the Garret confirm Arjona’s presence at the Maison.
b) Previous reports co-locate Arjona with Sub-Saharan Union Major Iekanjika (see report X156JWP47 for details on this major for whom no records exist at the Union Academy at Harare) at the Puppet Free City and Blackmore Station. The interrogations also identified a Homo quantus accomplice: Cassandra Mejía. Mejía is regarded by detainees as highly competent in the Homo quantus predictive state, at the level of Arjona or higher. Investigations at both the Puppet Free City and Blackmore Station are ongoing.
c) On March 3rd, Arjona and Mejía returned to the Garret after a three month absence. They claimed to havetraveled back in time two weeks after having seen the Garret destroyed by a Congregate nuclear device, thought to have been a casse à face missile. The date and time given by all detainees correspond exactly to when Capitaine Arsenault actually fired on the Garret. The detainees were sedated while these actions were being taken and they would have had no way to have known Arsenault’s decision or timing ahead of time as Arsenault made the decision just before firing. It is unknown if this knowledge is some kind of trick, whether this was a genuine military prediction from within the Homo quantus fugue state, or if this is evidence of the claim of time travel.
d) This impossibility of time travel was acknowledged by all detainees, and apparently by the missing 3,830 other Homo quantus. However, only the 155 Homo quantus taken into custody elected to disbelieve this story enough stay behind after the warning. The remainder are reported to have fled in old cargo freighters.
5. The warrant for Arjona’s capture has been elevated to first priority and a reward of five million francs attached. A warrant for Mejía’s capture has been issued at the first priority and a reward of five million francs attached. The warrant for Phocas’ arrest has been amended, elevated to first priority and a reward of one million francs attached. The potential political complications of the Phocas warrant should be examined by 1st Division and measures taken.
6. Analysis: The Homo quantus as bioweapons: if the Homo quantus possess true predictive powers, they are possibly the most dangerous weapons in civilization and under no circumstances can the Banks be allowed any access to them. Far more unlikely, but far more dangerous, if the Homo quantus really have discovered some way to travel through time, no military or economic assumptions can survive. The capture of all Homo quantus should be a military and intelligence priority, above even the recapture of the Axis.
7. Analysis: The Congregate has historically eschewed human bioengineering, but now we cannot afford to sit out this new arms race. At the very least, we must understand the full capabilities of the Homo quantus. But the Congregate cannot afford to have a bioweapons gap. The Congregate must reverse engineer the Homo quantus and then develop a better, stronger Homo quantus.
8. Analysis: We do not yet know how the Union’s Sixth Expeditionary Force managed to exit the Puppet Axis at the Free City without having entered at Port Blackmore. No matter how it was done, the security of all Congregate Axes can no longer be assumed. The only way to properly estimate our tactical and strategic exposure is to capture and interrogate Arjona and Mejía.
Scarecrow
Mobile Counter-Insurgency Operations
Epsilon Indi
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
STILLS GOT HIS meeting with Iekanjika the next day. He didn’t expect it to go well. When he’d come to the Freyja Axis two weeks ago with thirty-nine other mongrel pilots, offering their services, he’d leaned on his knowing Iekanjika. Without her, there had been a good chance that all the mongrels with him woulda been blown into fish chow.
Iekanjika had been angry. Something about Arjona had her majorly pissed, even though as far as he could see, it had been an unqualified fucking success for the Union side. They’d not only gotten through to Epsilon Indi but they’d face-fucked the Congregate and taken the Freyja Axis.
But Iekanjika had been pissed about something and wanted to track down Arjona. She’d even offered Stills a giant reward for Arjona’s capture. Not that Stills wouldn’t throw Arjona under the bus, but you can’t draw blood from stone. Damned if he knew where Arjona had hidden himself away and it wasn’t any of his business anyway.
Stills was in a smaller tank, just himself, the kind they used to transport mongrels or isolate them if they got sick. The rest of the mongrels were in a much bigger pressurized water tank that had been built into the Nhialic.
Iekanjika came to the bay by herself. She was different from a lot of other officers. Lots of officers were professionals whose field happened to be soldiering. Iekanjika radiated warriorness first; she just happened to also be a professional.
She might have made a good mongrel. Fearless. Smart. Dangerous. Didn’t care what people thought.
“Good fight,” she said. The systems translated her voice into the electrical signals mongrels could hear in their magnetosomes.
“Good start,” Stills said.
“You have a message for me.”
“Arjona lasered me during the battle.”
“He’s a wanted man,” she said. “You want a reward?”
“I’m no bounty hunter. And I’m no messenger either. Out of affection I’m makin’ nice and not pissin’ on the rug.”
Iekanjika barked a laugh.
“He told me to tell you he’s got a business offer for you.”
“Are you really working for the Union now, Stills?”
“Have I given you a reason to fuckin’ doubt me? I dodged a shit-load of bullets and Congregate missiles yesterday and scared off two destroyers. Does her august Majesty desire me to fucking bleed to prove myself?”
“If you’re completely loyal, I can tell you that I want Arjona’s head. Badly. I want it attached to his body until I get back what he took from me, but after that, I’ll take it off his neck.”
“Look, you want me to seek and destroy Arjona? Order it. He’s a sneaky bastard, so I don’t know if I can get him, but if you want me to try, I will. But before you make up your mind, you want to hear his message? Nothing pisses me off more than a commander who changes her fucking mind when I’m mid-way through shooting someone’s ass off.�
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“What’s the message?”
“He told me to give you these coordinates,” Stills said, transmitting them to Iekanjika’s personal system. “He says it’s the location of the fifth Axis in Epsilon Indi, a fucking goodwill gift to you. He said he might be able to give you the locations of ten other mouths of the Axis Mundi in Bachwezi and in a neighboring node.”
“Did you check this?” she demanded.
“I’m the hired muscle, sweet-cheeks. I just wait for orders.”
“Does anyone else know about this?”
“Why? You gonna kill the messenger?”
“These coordinates aren’t near anything in Epsilon Indi,” she said. “How fast a recce could you fly without drawing any attention?”
“Solo, I can do close to sixty gees the whole way. I can take a circuitous route to obscure my trail for anyone trying to track me.”
“I want you take a member of my staff,” Iekanjika said.
“I appreciate the cojones of the Union and all, but that ups the fucking risk, don’t it? If you want me flyin’ a fighter with a military observer, even in an acceleration couch, you gotta know that you guys start to smear at thirty gees. If I have to pull more than that to escape detection or escape an ambush, I’m bringin’ you home a staff officer slurry.”
“Thirty gees is faster than Congregate missiles.”
“Not all of them.”
“Can you get my observer there and back without alerting the Congregate or the Banks?”
“Just don’t get used to me playing taxi or carryin’ around fucking messages. I’m a fighter pilot.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
AN HOUR LATER, Stills’ closed pressure tank was transferred into the cargo area of a command fighter and networked into the control systems. A Union major called Kuur was jacked into the ship’s systems from within a gel-filled acceleration chamber. Kuur was one of Iekanjika’s people, although that didn’t say much. That other major, the ass-licker, was also Iekanjika’s.
Command fighters outweighed the faster fighters, and didn’t play to mongrel strengths, but from the bigger craft a pilot could carry a group commander to direct a fighter squadron. Its inflaton tube was slightly larger, and the superstructure and weapons more numerous, but not enough for Stills to want to show his balls if he ran into a Congregate force by himself. Stills didn’t like sneaking missions, but this one ran straight through a war zone, so he couldn’t complain. He launched.
“So mamacita sent a major,” Stills said conversationally in his electrical speech. The computer translated. “I asked her to send someone who’d shut up like a lieutenant, or someone useful like a sergeant.”
“The Chief of Staff is named Colonel Iekanjika,” Kuur said.
“Sorry,” Stills said, not sorry at all. “I knew her when she was just a measly major. You puke much?”
“Of course not.”
“You might be in for a surprise.”
Stills rammed the acceleration to twenty-two gees, something he could just feel, stored as he was in the pressure tank, and reinforced in every part of his mongrel physiology.
“Your bones all still good?” Stills asked. “If you want to say uncle or call me papa bear, we can fly slower.”
Major Kuur responded slowly, as if having trouble forming words with his brain. “You... have a problem with officers?”
Stills ramped the acceleration up to twenty-six gees.
“No,” Stills said, “I love you guys. It’s great having the smartest people around all the time.”
“In the Union, pilots are officers,” Kuur said slowly. “I heard the mongrels turned down commissions and insisted on designing their own ranks.”
“Ain’t a mongrel alive who could live down wearing an officer’s bar or taking a fuckin’ salute,” Stills said. “God fuck, but I’d love some dog to do it though. I’d make sure he never lived down the embarrassment. Fuck, his kids’ kids would still be gettin’ razzed about it a hundred years later.”
“Flight-sergeant suits you?” Kuur asked.
Stills accelerated.
“You ain’t called me papa bear yet, so I edged up to twenty-eight gees. You still okay?”
“Officers take responsibility, Flight-Sergeant. You’re smart. You ready to take responsibility?”
“Thirty gees and you’re still conscious,” Stills said. “Good for you! And don’t ever think I don’t take responsibility. When Iekanjika asks me why four of your ribs snapped and gang-banged your lungs, I’ll tell her it was me.”
“Enough,” Major Kuur said finally.
“My mongrel rank isn’t really Flight-Sergeant,” Stills said. “That’s your translation. My rank is Papa Bear. You gotta say Papa Bear.”
After a long delay, Major Kuur responded. “Please slow down, Papa Bear.”
Stills laughed electrically and eased down to twenty-two gees. The major said nothing, but his heart rate, blood pressure and stress hormones dropped. From then on, when Stills had to course change to throw off any possible surveillance by Congregate telescopes or radar, he warned the major and made the changes below thirty gravities of acceleration.
Probably for the best. Stills didn’t know how many ass-hats Iekanjika had laying around who could be quickly turned into major ass-hats.
Six hours of evasive stealthy flight got them to Arjona’s coordinates. Stills brought the command fighter down to orbiting speed for this distance from Epsilon Indi’s sun and shut down the inflaton drive. Stills wasn’t sure what he’d expected. Every other Axis Mundi wormhole he’d seen had been heavily fortified. What would a naked wormhole look like in space? More fuckin’ space?
“It’s really there,” Major Kuur said. “An Axis. Thirty kilometers away.”
Stills focused his sensors, finding the same faint thermal source Kuur did, only a few degrees above the background radiation of the universe. The sensors also picked up a faint, changing light source. Cherenkov radiation, just a bit, something that would be drowned out by the wash of starlight from only a few thousand kilometers away. This was it, the fifth Axis of the Epsilon Indi system. People had been looking for it for centuries.
“Fucked if I know how that prancy contemplative little shit does it,” Stills said in wonder.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
STILLS WASN’T SURE how to read Iekanjika. Most baseline humans were spineless and chicken-shit, and he could only hear them in translation anyway. Iekanjika wasn’t soft and had never been talky. She seemed to have no interest in being the center of attention, and he suspected she held civilians in contempt. He guessed, if he thought about it at all, that she held the same finger up to the world that he did. When Major Kuur reported back to her, she asked Stills what he thought. Fucked if he had an opinion on strategic politics, but he didn’t think she was asking to blow sunshine up his ass. He didn’t think that anyone should fortify it yet. No one knew it was there and it was undetectable except up-close. And the Union didn’t have the firepower to protect another Axis.
“And what if I want to talk to Arjona?” she asked next.
“I suppose the little pecker’ll be in touch,” Stills said. “He wants a deal. He wouldn’a left off if he didn’t have a way to get an answer.”
“Presumably you,” she said.
“Maybe.”
“So we set up a meeting with him. He wants to talk to me, probably alone. Say he’s setting a trap for me. How would you do it if you were Arjona?”
“If I wanted to trap you? Fuck. We got superior speed and firepower if it’s just the two ships. There are two ways to shit on our chances. Either cut our firepower advantage or cut our speed advantage. He could do both with backup, but I don’t see it. You think he’s workin’ for someone else?”
“He stole from me and he’s now one of the most hunted people in civilization. Maybe he cut a deal with whoever caught him. To get to me or the Lieutenant-General.”
Fuckin’ shit on a stick, he hated the way the Union talked about their CO. T
he Lieutenant-General or The Old Lady, like they were honored to be allowed to refer to her. Well zarba! Her Highness crapped in a tube like everybody else in space. Wasn’t his business though. Fucking cultists.
“Say you fly me close enough to talk to Arjona,” Iekanjika said. “After we’re done talking, can you catch him?”
“In a big command fighter?” Stills asked. “I could catch anything except a real inflaton fighter, but he ain’t got one of those. Shit, even if he did, I’d lay money on me catchin’ one of them. Wouldn’t be pretty for you. You’d be a colonel soup when I was done.”
“I can take any acceleration Arjona can take,” she said.
She probably could at that. He had no idea what kind of military augments she was carrying. Hardened bone. Reinforced organs. Probably pressure-activated interstitial shock proteins.
“Do you have any split loyalties about this?” she asked.
“I got no loyalties to start with. Arjona hired me for a job. Now you did. I just want something to fly and something to fight.”
“I’ll make sure you don’t run out of either any time soon,” she said.
Iekanjika got pensive. She was a big shit now. Not the highest-ranking officer in the navy, but when she talked everyone knew to jump.
The Quantum Garden Page 8