“There is a very unfortunate twist in this mission. If I believed in that schedule, we could send a frigate from the Moon, but with the Martian fleet inbound we must prepare for trouble. The Columbia is the only ship fast enough that we have free to make that run. If Com Thieu accepts the probationary promotion, her first assignment will be ferrying you to and from Valhalla.
“To keep Thieu and San Diego apart, the five of you will be placed under a strict quarantine in one of the officer’s quarters. It is similar to the quarters you currently inhabit but smaller, and guards will remain outside the airlock at all times. You will enter and leave only wearing your armour with the masks darkened. I expect you will return in two and a half weeks. You can complete your bio-cleansing en route, after which the isolation will no longer be necessary. When you return, we can hope for better clarity about the political and military situation and will decide then upon the next step.
“Your official cover is that you are a crack commando team going to extract a critical asset from Valhalla. No one, not even Thieu, is to know who you are, nor will the crew be made aware of the target for the operation. The entire expedition is an ultra-secret.
“Com Thieu knows who you are supposed to extract, because we discussed Pantocrator in her presence when we first received his request for help. We both thought that we recognized who Alexander was, but Molongo says he is notoriously cranky and hopelessly anti-social, never comes out of his office willingly, and sometimes lives there for weeks at a time. The Alexander we know wanders the fleet and is friendly with everyone, if a bit obsessive about coding. Must be someone different. Whoever this Pantocrator is, he is going to have to join you in the isolation room. It may be a difficult trip back to the Moon.
“Does that disposition meet with everyone’s approval?”
I thought for a few minutes. That was an elaborate plan to attempt with a Martian war fleet lurking close by, but it promised to take us away from that fleet. I desperately wanted to be as far away as possible, especially with so much of the team assembled in a single room. I was having a hard time counting the number of things that could go wrong when the Martians finally revealed their hand.
The psychs had installed the med monitor in my head to break me into eight different personae. Mostly, I was the Cripple, but the transitions from one persona to the next were often involuntary. I did not want anyone messing with the programs in my head, but the offer to become a single, real person again seemed too good to refuse. If nothing else, I would become more predictable for my colleagues. I was not sure, however, which version of me would dominate in my newly integrated self. It would most likely be the Ghost, the domineering self I was before I was broken, but I had been the Ghost for barely two years and since then I had layered on ten more years of experience as the Cripple.
I had also made a few changes of my own while the psychs were dicing my mind into pieces, copying chunks of their code and making small changes to suit my own purposes. I could never have written that code myself, and I had never told anyone of those modifications. They had tried to lock down completely the Ghost and the Assassin, whom they considered the same persona, to be revived at their discretion when they needed to use me as a resource or a weapon. I had made small changes so that the suppression was optional. I could bring them forward when I saw the need and had chosen my own divisions between personae. Without some assistance from the Assassin, however fleeting, I could never have been an effective agent in CI. I would have spent my life locked in a mental ward going steadily more insane until the Martians came to execute me and destroy the Earth. I needed the Ghost to remember the Mission, to keep me ready for when that threat materialized. Which was now.
It had not worked as well as I intended, of course. I was nowhere near as good at psychological programming as the real psychs, which accounted for a lot of the instability I had been exhibiting. I would be satisfied if that part could be fixed without fully removing the original code.
In fact, there were a few parts of that code I emphatically wanted to retain, like my immunity to the emotional effects of torture. I would have to discuss my requirements carefully with this Pantocrator fellow before he started making changes.
Finally, I nodded and agreed out loud that it made sense.
Molongo gasped audibly, and I realized he had been holding his breath waiting for me to make a decision. He said, “I am sorry, Douglas, but there was never a good time to discuss this with you, and I am still not sure it is the right thing to do. You were suicidal before the original coding was written and might become suicidal again. Or you might become a sane and rational man again. It is a difficult choice and a desperate gamble. We have a day or two to discuss what ought to be done, now that we are both free of MI operator duties.”
I did not want to remind him that I was suicidal when I was sane and rational, nor tell him that I still intended to complete the same Mission. He probably did not know how I had tried to kill myself, although Singh and Morris would surely tell him.
Wang nodded, “Well, if that is agreed, perhaps you should go to get some dinner before bed time. I envy you that privilege today.”
Heading back to our room, Morris asked leave to join the Banshees for a meal. We tried to decide what meal it was, with our broken sleep schedules. Breakfast for him or a midnight snack? Lunch for us, or dinner?
When we reached our room, Evgenia left with Molongo. Katerina asked if she could join them, even though she would not be eating normal food for a few more days. They headed off, with the guards carrying Katerina clipped into her bed frame.
Morris apologized for delaying our meal but needed the washroom. While we were waiting for him to return, I checked for any incoming queued messages and found one from an unknown member of my team, someone called Vishnuram. He had to be Chandrapati, so I opened it and read,
I regret to inform you of the death of my close colleague Chandrapati, who succumbed to his injuries on the Earth Station Khrushchev at 2357-03-06 06:05. As you are aware, I have assumed his duties, and have been seconded to the LE office in New Chennai. Upon arrival, I was distressed to discover that the Immigration Officer was expecting Agent Chandrapati due to a mix up in the tickets that confused my ID with his. There has been so much turmoil on the earth stations recently. Fortunately, the obvious response was to hand me over to Law Enforcement directly, who will take care of my medical processing in the usual manner. Yours, Vishnuram
So Chandrapati had officially died and been reincarnated as Vishnuram. He would undoubtedly look quite different when next we met.
I mentioned Chandrapati’s metamorphosis when Morris arrived back. He replied that he had lived under the threat of assassination since the Westoz rebellion and admired my sang froid. Like Singh, he was confident that there were ways to outlive the Fatwa without killing all my neighbours. He suggested that I should do like Chandrapati, perhaps starting a rumour that I died already. I told him there had been an over-abundance of rumours about my death on Mars, mostly from punks boasting about their prowess. The real intelligence services within the rebellion had known they were false, and the Fatwa remained in effect. Too many people knew I had survived the Counterstrike and returned home. I expected Martian Intelligence had already interviewed many of them. I had been with MI ever since I was released from rehab. Officially, only a select few within MI knew my previous ID’s in sufficient detail to be dangerous, but that gave me no reassurance at all.
I tried to explain that I was more concerned about what would happen if I did not embrace justice. I knew the essence of what I had to do to satisfy Mars that I had been punished properly. That, however, addressed the core of the Mission and no words came out. I stopped myself before the screaming in the back of my head forced me to pass out, but it was close.
I tried to talk around the issue, to consider how different scenarios might play out, always badly if I tried to survive. Raul listened for a while, but rapidly got tired of my hyper-realistic pessimism and finall
y changed the topic to something more immediately practical – which of the flavours of battle rations we wanted to eat. As we were debating our few options, Begum buzzed and asked if she could eat with us, carrying a bulb and two bars of her own rations. She looked profoundly uncomfortable, having been escorted to the door by a marine and a sailor, so we invited her to join us inside.
Since we were at the door, Morris, Raul and I put in our orders with the guards, Marine Sa’id whom I was pleased to see and a sailor I did not recognize, both resplendent in full dress uniforms. The sailor took our orders, bowed her head slightly, and said, “Thank you, Sirs, Cap” and ran down the hallway to fetch our breakfast/lunch/dinner bulbs.
“Cap?” I asked.
Begum replied, “Yes, I have accepted Admiral Wang’s offer. I am to be the captain of a hell-ship being sent to the Moon for scrap, then a probationary captain for a special assignment. I am afraid, Raul, that I will not see you for weeks, maybe months. At least when I return, it should be safe for us to kiss. I was torn about whether to take the probationary promotion, to accept a demotion, or to offer my resignation, although I doubt he would accept a resignation at the start of hostilities. But you will probably not be on board much longer now, and when I tried to enter the officer’s mess I knew I could not stay here.”
She refused to elaborate, and the sailor soon returned with our bulbs. I looked at my bulbs and smiled slightly. The TDF could produce perfectly edible imitation pastas with sauce and some decent meat substitutes, but in action supplied only chewy bars and bulbs of liquid nutrition, forms of food that would not splatter over everything if we were forced to accelerate unexpectedly. We clustered in a corner and sucked on our bulbs. When she still did not say anything, I prompted, “Balladeers?”
“The worst. I thought it was humiliating to have an honour guard following me around all day. They are trying to compose a ‘Ballad of the Manila Bay’ and they wanted me to choose my favourite nickname. The choices ran from Piggy to Durga.”
Morris was born in the Indian subcontinent, and I had visited there regularly in my work for CI, so we smiled at the thought of Begum Thieu as the great Hindu goddess Durga who vanquishes evil and saves the Earth, while the male gods stand around helpless, but Raul just looked puzzled.
She continued, “I have lived with these people for the last three years. We have fought together, and I have watched some of them die in battle. We have mourned our losses, sung each other love songs, played endless games and argued together every night. We have celebrated victories in each other’s arms. I thought of them as my brothers and sisters. But after all that, I wonder if they even know who I am.”
Morris smiled the indulgent smile of the elder statesir who has seen it all. “Ah, my dear, they are just frightened by the approach of a war bigger than anything they conceived was possible when they signed up. This is just a distraction. It will pass, and their musical efforts will improve with time.
“Yesterday I visited the marines who had just returned from the Deng. I suppose half of them are back there again. Anyways, one of them had fought with the Centoz Militia back while I was a negotiator during the Westoz rebellion. He still recognized me after all these years and invited me to address the troops during one of their snack breaks. I was in a very poor disguise, of course, and I am surprised Dapeng has not chastised me for it yet. It is impossible for me to pretend to be a marine and there is no valid excuse for a civilian to be visiting the marine barracks on board. I told them to refer to me as the ‘Old Man’, which is an accurate description, and I thought a little confusion in the nicknames would not hurt.
“While I was there, they were already working on ‘Saving the Deng’. I had never appreciated the work that goes into a spacer ballad before. It is no wonder that so many of you prosper as entertainers when you get back to the Earth. They were trying to make it scan and play well in five different languages. Some of them are real musicians and inspired composers. Agent Ashura is not here, so I can leak this little fragment, which I think captures her nervousness at each new doorway, and the strength of her convictions once engaged:
Sweet Liberty, who trembled with fear
Like a newborn fawn in the spring,
Entered with a healing gale,
Warm strength against cold winter’s rage.
“It is blank verse to capture the idea and does not yet rhyme or scan properly in English, Russian or Hindi, but I think they are on the right path. I can say that the marines are utterly charmed with all the Banshee ladies, even Doctor Marin, whom they have hardly met. I suspect the same is true amongst the sailors. I am afraid, Cap Thieu that you are fated to the same adoration if you stick with the Banshees. It will also take someone with a finer spirit than we have yet heard to capture your essence. For myself, I have seen you at work and am very impressed. I have no doubt you will be remembered fondly and with great respect.”
Something nagged at me, something about Morris alone amongst the marines, but it would not jell into a real thought. Somehow that visit had been a mistake, but I could not remember why. It is one thing to be able to remember with clarity every page you have read, every face you have seen, and ever location you have visited, but another thing entirely to understand which ones might be important.
I did not want to be a mother hen with senior ministers in the Council, but I sent a memo to Wang’s office recommending that torso-guards be provided for all the ministers, light body armour limited to the chest and abdomen and intended to be worn under clothes. This would be particularly important on the Moon, where they would have to move through open, public places. I recommended they should continue to wear it until they had returned to the Earth. Having done that, the worry lessened, but still did not go away.
Begum and Raul moved away by themselves for the last few hours they would have together over the next weeks. I watched with some amusement as Doctor Marin moved closer to keep a stern, chaperoning eye on them, remembering that we had just violated her prohibition on eating together. I noticed the three of them getting more animated and moved closer myself.
It was sleeping arrangements again. There were four and a half hours available before Begum had to gather her belongings and take the transport to the Hammerhead. She wanted to spend the time sleeping here. The previous night had been too short after an exhausting day, and her new command looked equally bad. Raul insisted that she return to her regular quarters because her fellow officers would be throwing a promotion party that she was morally obliged to attend.
I did not want this to be the way they parted, so I stepped in. “Begum, take a two-hour nap, then you must go. Remember, Admiral Wang has had an even longer day, every bit as stressful, and will get no sleep at all for the next while. It comes with the job. Doctor Marin, knock her out.”
Then I headed over to the door and asked the sailor on duty to pass a request to Cap Thieu’s fellow officers. I reminded them that the Cap’s first command would be a hell-ship almost as bad as the Manila Bay. Out of respect for the survivors of that disaster, and in view of the current military action, could they please tone down the festivities and ensure that she kept to the departure schedule, or even be prepared to move out early? She would be there in a little over two hours, so they had time to prepare.
Then the acceleration alarms started to sound and by the time Begum was asleep, the Mao was in motion.
I listened for a while as Raul and Marin discussed our mixed up romantic lives. Raul and Begum were condemned to missions that would prevent them from seeing each other, normal within the military, but an unexpected complication for two people who had not even met two days before. Marin herself was half in love with Vishnuram, who was a celibate vegetarian and only one step from being a Hindu priest. They both shook their heads over Leilani and I, who were about as star-crossed as two lovers could be.
It was barely mid-afternoon by my old schedule, but I was exhausted. I suspected Begum wanted a nap in part to avoid more hazing from her fellow off
icers, but it was true that yesterday had been traumatizing for us all. The night in between had been short and for me was filled with nightmares. Looking around, I did not think anyone else was much better off.
I asked Marin if I could go down to the infirmary to use the helmet again, but she said that if I needed to sleep the ship’s surgeons had shown her a better solution that had recently been introduced for injured and hostile marines. It was a smaller version of the opaque helmet that fitted inside most armour. There were switches that could be set and locked in the armour to prevent motion. Combined with medical nerve blocks for my arms and legs, I would be almost completely immobile and incapable of broadcasting anything.
I mentioned that I would be sorry to miss Begum’s departure, but I had a nervous feeling that tomorrow would be a nasty day and I would need to be as rested as possible. I saw her suppress what was probably an arch comment about my waiting around all yesterday while everyone else worked, but honestly, I had found the stress much worse than when I was in action.
I let them insert the nerve blocks for my legs, help me struggle into my armour, turn off the armour, get the nerve blocks inserted into my shoulders, and fit the mini opaque helmet over my head. The real helmet fitted nicely over that. I heard Evgenia and Katerina arrive back, chatting happily and sounding refreshed from their brief escape. I drifted off almost immediately into slumber, clipped to the floor in a quiet corner of the room.
2357-03-06 21:00
Confrontation
I woke up with a sore back and a stiff neck. I was sure I had been dreaming again, probably nightmares, but could not remember any of it. I could not move my arms or legs, but my torso and neck were still under my control and ached as though I had been fighting to move the armour for the whole night.
Lord Banshee- Fugitive Page 12