Heretics

by S. Andrew Swann

  He opened his eyes. He had fallen back from the twisted remains of the chair. His arm stuck up through the wreckage. Not his arm. Just some ragged piece of broken machinery.

  His back fell against another chair, propping him in a sitting position, the ferrocrete he sat upon painted with his own blood.

  Kugara leaned over him, arterial blood soaking her from the chest down as she tried to put pressure on the empty socket of his right shoulder. “God. God. God. You asshole. You stupid morey fuck. What the hell were you—What did you—God. Fuck!”

  “Not. So. Useless.” Nickolai’s breath came in ragged gasps. He could feel himself sliding into shock. He could hear Adam shouting at him, but he was too disoriented to make any sense of it.

  “What the hell were you—”

  “Other. Used me. Tach-comm on Eclipse.”

  “Damn it, that’s over—Flynn, someone, help me here!”

  “Not over.” He could feel Adam reaching for him, the voice boring into his brain, intensifying as Flynn’s face came into view. He faced Kugara and said. “His implants. Get back.”

  “What. No!”

  She reached for his wrist but she couldn’t grip him with her blood-slick hands. She couldn’t stop him from pressing the barrel against the orbit of his left eye.

  She couldn’t stop him from pulling the trigger and making the world go dark.

  PART FIVE

  Tribulation

  “Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.”

  —THOMAS PAINE (1737-1809)

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Devil’s Advocate

  “Standard procedure only applies in standard situations.”

  —The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

  “We view all Government as good until it aligns against our interests.”

  —ROBERT CELINE (1923-1996)

  Date: 2526.6.5 (Standard) Styx Orbit-Sigma Draconis

  They let the two of them cool their heels for nearly two hours. Toni found it hard to believe that 3SEC just wasn’t viewing the situation quite as urgently as she was—as they were. The two of them were locked in a lounge on the outer rim that had near full Stygian gravity, carpeting, pleasant indirect lighting, and a wall-spanning holo screen that showed the view from orbit. The slowly rotating view of the horizon of her home planet was probably what she’d see if they knocked a hole in the floor.

  Toni II sat on one of the couches in what Toni realized was a deliberate attempt not to mimic her pacing. Most of the time, when Toni glanced over at her double, she was looking at a chronometer set in the wall above a locked door.

  When she wasn’t glancing at Toni II, she was looking at the same clock.

  “What’s going to happen in six hours?” she asked herself.

  The herself on the couch said, “W1 will blow up.”

  “What happens after? What did you do?”

  “I tried to get hold of command, but communications were for shit after that happened. I couldn’t get anyone to respond to me, and by the time I gave up I had about forty minutes before W3 did the same. Thirty when I’d gotten the scout launched.”

  “Yes, you haven’t explained what happened. What prompted you to fire a damaged tach-drive inside a wormhole?”

  “I wasn’t intending to. The drive was so damaged I shouldn’t have trusted it to tach to 3SEC, like we just did. W1 didn’t just release real-space energy. The tach-pulse from that thing seriously damaged the coils on the tach-drive—”

  “I saw that in the telemetry.”

  “Did you see the course I had laid in?”

  “Yes, it was a textbook descending orbit—”

  “Coasting,” Toni II said. “Saving fuel for maneuvering on the other side. But my drives went off-line once I was committed. I lost any ability to change my course about twelve minutes before zero.”

  Toni thought of the damage she had seen in the scout. “Did you see what did that?”

  “No. I had other worries.”

  “So why did you fire the tach-drive?”

  “I saw the stars go out on the other side of W3.”

  “What?”

  “The light, the sensor data, everything coming out of W3 from the other side just winked out. Wormhole to black-hole ten minutes before impact. Then I had another spike of tachyon radiation, the drives overloading, all I could do was fire the bastard and hope for the best.”

  “Shit . . .”

  The implication of that sank in. On the other side of W3, twenty-two light-years away, was the wormhole at the L5 point between Xi Boötis and the colony planet Loki. What if that end of the wormhole faced a similar fate to the end of the wormhole in orbit around Sigma Draconis? Vanishing in a similar burst of energy.

  A similar burst of tachyon radiation.

  There would be no wormhole orbiting Xi Boötis in twenty-two years. And the tunnel through space- time would be knotted up on itself when she fired the tach-drive . . .

  It made her head hurt.

  “But you think that Loki wormholes might—” Toni began.

  “Yes,” Toni II answered.

  What was happening was broader than the system around Sigma Draconis. Something could be targeting the whole wormhole network. Toni didn’t even want to think of the kind of power that would take. Obsolete it might be, but it had taken the combined efforts of all of human civilization a couple of centuries to build the wormhole network.

  To attack all of it, at once, was almost beyond comprehension.

  “Why?” Toni whispered. “Why would anyone spend the resources to do it?”

  “It disrupted communications, it damaged my tach-drive. Think of what it must do to a tach-comm.”

  “Not to mention, no intelligence is coming from any ghosts after the attack.”

  “Sounds like prepping an attack to me.”

  “No. An attack that broad? No one has that kind of resources.”

  “No one human. That we know of. Do we know what’s out by Xi Virginis?”

  “No. But—” The door slid open, interrupting Toni.

  You’re kidding me . . .

  Through the doorway walked a man she had never thought she’d see again. She hadn’t seen Colonel Xander in over a year standard, but he hadn’t changed a bit. The same stupid goatee that was a hair’s breadth of regulation length, the same beady eyes and sardonic smile, the same posture that oozed arrogance.

  To add insult to injury, she could swear he looked younger.

  “You’re looking well, Lieutenant Valentine.” He arched an eyebrow. “Both of you.”

  “I’m sure you’ve been briefed on my reports, sir.” It was an effort to maintain a professional tone.

  He pointed toward Toni II, who was just getting to her feet after the initial shock of his appearance. “So you must be the ghost here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So, my Lieutenants Valentine, can you tell me why you disobeyed a direct order and came here on your own authority?”

  Toni nodded, forcing down her distaste at being in the same room as the colonel. What was going on here was much more important than any past history between them. “We’re under attack, sir.”

  “Oh, you believe these anomalies are an attack on Styx?”

  “We believe they’re part of a coordinated attack on the entire wormhole network.”

  “Indeed, and how did you come to this conclusion?”

  Toni glanced at her other self. Toni II didn’t say anything, but then, she was the ghost here and didn’t really have any official status. As identical as they might be, that was the primary difference between them.

  Toni gave the colonel a summary of their conclusions and where they came from. As she briefed the colonel, she slowly began to wonder why he and 3SEC was not treating this as an attack already. As soon as the trio of incoming wormholes were detected and their courses identified, it should have been obvious.

  Do we know that they aren’t treating it as an attack?

  She didn’t. But it was cle
ar that the colonel wasn’t reacting to her briefing as she’d expect a ranking member of Stygian Military Intelligence to act. For one thing, he didn’t press her for details. He watched her speak with a slightly dismissive expression, but he didn’t push her, ask for clarification or ask for a repeat of the information.

  Truly odd was the fact that when Toni related her experience with her own doppelganger, he didn’t take the opportunity to ask Toni II any questions. And from Toni II’s expression, the incongruity was sinking in with her as well.

  And, once she started questioning the colonel’s reaction to her briefing, she started asking herself questions about the colonel’s reaction to her. It wasn’t something she wanted to think about right now, but Colonel Xander had, a little over a year ago, been very interested in her. Toni had no idea if he made a habit of pressuring junior officers into his bed, if he thought he was actually seductive and charming, or if he was just obsessed with her. Whatever the reason, the colonel took Toni’s lack of interest in him very personally.

  Now, however, it was the colonel who showed a lack of interest. It felt completely out of character. Even if he had gotten over the physical interest in her, he was not one to forgive anything. If nothing else, she should still feel some of the anger that had prompted him to order her reassignment to W-Sigma-Drac-Three.

  But all she saw in Colonel Xander was a cold disinterest that was the only part of his manner right now that seemed appropriate for an intelligence officer.

  Perhaps over her 269-day exile she had inflated her importance to him.

  No, the bastard risked his own career to punish me. He had relied on Toni’s pride preventing her from bearing the stigma of filing a report on his behavior. On that basis, his non-relationship with her had been much more important to him than it had been to Toni.

  A year is a long time . . .

  “That’s enough, Lieutenant.” The colonel turned to face the door. “There’s an emergency session of the 3SEC command staff reviewing this issue. I think you both should be there to tell them what you just told me.”

  Toni saw her own relief in Toni II’s face.

  The door slid open revealing a quartet of military police wearing gray and blue and standing at attention. After exchanging salutes, the colonel said, “Please escort the lieutenants and follow me.”

  Toni II watched her younger self brief the colonel with a growing sense of surreal detachment. The whole situation felt wrong, for too many reasons, but when the colonel said they’d brief the 3SEC command staff, it felt like a weight had lifted off of her.

  The relief didn’t last.

  The colonel led them down a corridor, the four MPs flanking them, and it didn’t take very long to realize that they were not heading toward the administrative center of the station. The corridors the colonel took them down were empty of people, and after two lifts and a distinct reduction in the apparent gravity, they were in the maint corridors close to the axis. Most of the doors they passed now were air locks into the unpressurized areas of the station.

  “Where are we going, sir?” her younger self asked, and it was hard not to feel the distaste coloring that last word.

  The colonel stopped to enter a code to open a bulkhead. As it slid upward, he stepped through. The MPs ushered Tonis elder and younger after him. The bulkhead slid back down, leaving the MPs on the other side.

  What?

  The three of them stood in a large air lock, designed for the passage of heavy equipment from the maint corridor out toward the docking bays.

  The colonel turned to face them and smiled, “Like I said, you will be talking to the 3SEC command staff. At this point it can’t be avoided.”

  “What are you talking about?” Toni the younger said.

  “You’ve been seen by too many people, both of you. You both raise too many questions, too soon. You are going to need to provide a reasonable explanation to the command staff, enough to prevent them from disrupting things.”

  “What the hell?” they both said in unison. Toni II noticed that as she edged to the colonel’s right, her twin was doing the same to the left. Keeping distance and flanking the man in the cavernous air lock.

  He shook his head and pulled out a small large-bore needlegun—the subsonic kind that threw out hundreds of low-velocity projectiles that tore up flesh but wouldn’t penetrate through walls into vital systems aboard the station.

  “I’d stay where you are,” he said.

  The younger Toni stared at him and said, “You’re part of this.” Toni II glanced at the door back into the station and realized the MPs probably were part of it too. She glanced up to look for a security monitor, but even without finding it, she could assume that this air lock, and the corridor leading to it, were probably dark on the station’s security feed.

  It began to make a disturbing amount of sense: the confusion, the near paralysis when Toni had called in the situation, the bizarre commands from 3SEC to sit tight—Whoever was attacking the wormhole network had agents here, facilitating things.

  Somehow, in retrospect, it wasn’t that surprising that Colonel Xander was one of those agents. He shook his head and said, “You should have stayed where you were . . .”

  Toni II stared at him as her younger self said, “You’re more pathetic than I gave you credit for.”

  “Watch your language, Lieutenant.”

  “This isn’t even about your masters, whoever they are.

  The power that can amass the kind of resources to attack the whole wormhole network—what we’ve seen isn’t that much of a threat to them. Anything we’d say about the attack, the 3SEC command staff either knows now, or will know very shortly.”

  “You don’t know what you’re dealing with here.”

  She had gotten under the colonel’s skin. He was tracking Toni with the gun as she kept edging to the colonel’s left. Toni II knew she was being given an opening, but the air lock was huge. She’d have to clear the five meters between her and the colonel before that gun turned and went off.

  Toni kept goading him. “I know I’m dealing with a traitor.”

  Toni II saw the colonel tense, and she flinched inside. But the colonel had pretty much told them that he needed them alive. She just hoped her twin would stop short of angering him enough for him to forget that.

  “You don’t understand what is coming. A new age that will render provincial institutions like Styx and Centauri irrelevant.”

  Her younger self snorted. “I wasn’t talking about you turning on Styx, Xander.”

  “What?”

  You want me to do something? What? I should know, shouldn’t I?

  Her younger self, being the focus of the colonel’s attention, was doing very well in not giving any signals at all. Toni II frantically looked all around the air lock . . .

  Oh, hell.

  “You failed your new masters because of your own adolescent pique.” Younger Toni narrowed her eyes at him. “Or did they tell you to order me stationed in the path of that wormhole? The people pulling your strings, they probably won’t be pleased to know you risked your position as a mole doing that.”

  “I was within my authority. You were insubordinate—”

  The younger Toni had edged up next to a rank of hard-shell EVA suits. There was a similar rank of suits on Toni II’s side of the air lock. They were designed for heavy maintenance work, so the torso clam-shelled open like the exercise machine on the station. Probably would seal up in fifteen seconds or so.

  But it wouldn’t be quiet.

  “I’m sure you justified it to yourself, Xander. But it will be awkward for you if the command staff asks why I was ordered to stay where I was. If they ask that, they might ask why I was stationed there. From there, they might ask what it was you knew when you had me assigned there.”

  “This is bigger than any issues between us,” the colonel said while Toni II quietly slid herself into one of the open hardsuits. The one that was closest to the emergency manual release for the
air lock.

  If Toni II had any doubts about what her younger self intended, it was dispelled when her twin grabbed hold of a strut in the wall next to her. “I find it amusing that this didn’t occur to you when you were ordering me to sit in the path of the attack.”

  “It was the universe pointing out that I still clung to the obsessions of the flesh. And as much as it still pains me, I’m willing to give you the same gift that was given to me. I brought you here to show you what it means. Just take my hand—”

  Toni II smashed the cover on the emergency release with her fist, reached in and pulled the lever.

  Klaxons sounded and red lights began flashing. The colonel turned toward Toni II and yelled, “No, not yet!”

  The outer door started its crawl upward, and the sound of rushing air filled the still-pressurized air lock. As Toni II pulled the carapace of the hardsuit down over her, her younger self leaped in a low-G back kick. Her hands kept a solid grip on the wall, as both her feet left the floor to connect with the colonel’s gun hand. The weapon spun out of his grip, bouncing off the ceiling as the colonel himself took a low-G tumble into the center of the air lock.

  Toni II’s suit sealed itself with a pneumatic hiss. Outside, the sound of rushing air ceased, and the air lock filled with tiny motes reflecting the red warning lights. Toni now only felt the klaxon through the armor of the hardsuit where it touched the walls and the floor. Otherwise, it was suddenly silent.

  She turned her head to see her twin getting into a hardsuit of her own. As the younger Toni pulled the suit closed around her, the gun fell down between them and the exterior door silently slid home into the ceiling, revealing a broad catwalk extending the maint corridor into an unfinished, walless space.

  We just killed Colonel Xander.

  The realization started sinking in as the pressure check beeped on her hardsuit, and it released from its docking cradle. Toni II had been in the military most of her adult life, but the Styx Security Forces had been a peacetime force for decades. She had never even fired a weapon in anger. Now she had scragged her commanding officer.