Adiamante

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  I was tired, and Lictaer was in residual mind-shock, or it wouldn’t have happened, but that didn’t matter. Kemra only came up with skin, blood droplets, and hair before we restrained her.

  “I hate you! I hate your smugness and certainty!”

  The sourness of anger, fear, hatred, and who knew what else boiled from her, but I really didn’t care at that point.

  Lictaer and two others led her off, and I stared at the screen and the ruins there for a moment. Then I rubbed my neck and forehead. Sooner or later, I’d have to deal with Henslom and his troops—sooner, if they felt the way Kemra did.

  The netlink buzzed for me, and I reached for the connection. I still hated the control center, but once the new relay was installed, once I took care of the loose ends like Henslom, once Kemra was on the ship with the others, then I could stop being Coordinator and get out of the center—and spend the rest of my life paying for it.

  I took a deep breath.

  XXXVII

  When I’d estimated two or three days before I could get things stabilized enough to go look for Henslom and his marcybs, I’d been optimistic—incredibly optimistic.

  Eight days passed before we had magshuttled most of the survivors out of the holding areas and redistributed them temporarily throughout the remaining sixty-six locials.

  Sixty-six locials left out of one hundred and six, and that was after we’d destroyed the entire cyb fleet and probably neutralized ninety-nine percent of its weaponry.

  At least we wouldn’t lack for work, not for another few decades, and not until we met another set of idiots who thought that technology meant big ships and unlimited fusion power. I just hoped that the cybs didn’t try to send another fleet too soon, my brave words to Kemra notwithstanding, but building that fleet had to have cost them a lot, a whole lot.

  After a week, we were down to the handfuls of demis who either had lived outside the locial or who would be the core of the reclamation. I was one of them. I liked the area, and it was solid comptime work, and no one was going to argue about where I wanted to spend years doing comptime. Besides, I had one last chore before I resigned as Coordinator—taking care of the cybs remaining in Deseret.

  The rebuilt net worked, except in really low depressions or gorges, but even the complete original net had had some problems there. We’d managed to link in with the scattered demis in the area, and get a fair report on the cyb forces.

  The cybs had moved away from Parwon, following the valley to the north. They’d moved upwind to higher ground, possibly to avoid residual radioactivity, although the tach-heads had been relatively clean. Parwon center was mostly black glass—between the fringe of the particle beams that had slipped under the shields, and the single tach-head that had potted the admin building—now a large and steaming crater nearly two hundred meters across. Deseret locial was going to have to be relocated, or abandoned, or something, until the area could be reclaimed—and reclamation took time: centuries, if not millennia.

  The cyb forces numbered less than two hundred after blast casualties, encounters with demi families, and various local fauna. Two demi families had lost members to slugthrowers, but the casualties had been lighter than I would have expected. In a way, I suspected that the environment and the survivors would polish them off over the months, but innocents would probably be killed in the process. So we needed to do something.

  Rather than indiscriminate killing, of which there had already been too much, I really just wanted to take out Henslom and his officers. Then the restraint squads could round up the marcybs with comparatively little difficulty.

  Finding their general location was easy enough, and I still was Coordinator, and that meant I could commandeer a magshuttle.

  We loaded on at Berkin’s place. His house was fifteen klicks north of the holding areas and safely out of range of damage. His soulmate—a solid redhead—would be glad to see us leave permanently, but they’d both been most hospitable.

  The magshuttle pilot was Borin. He looked at me. “Is this that same cyb majer?”

  “The same Majer Henslom.”

  “Too bad the Construct kept you from killing him back then.”

  “If we didn’t have a Construct, we’d be like him,” I said softly.

  Borin looked away. It didn’t take him long to carry us another thirty klicks to the northeast where he dropped the dozen of us on a hilltop downwind of the general position of the cybs. The local demis had been helping, as they could, lead the cybs toward the northeast end of the valley that held one of the larger concentrations of vorpals in Deseret.

  “What are we doing?” asked Berkin as I checked the slugthrower and knives at my belt.

  “In theory, this is simple,” I said. “I’m going to try to disable one of the junior officers on the flank. After that, then let’s see if we can guide them close enough to the big vorpal lair. If not, take out all the officers.”

  “Isn’t that bending the Construct?” asked Gisel.

  “They broke it. Let’s go.”

  We spread out, with Berkin, since he knew the area, leading half to the west. Gisel led the eastern group, and I moved out ahead of Gisel’s group on the eastern flank.

  “They’re headed along the stream,” pulsed Berkin.

  “The whole group?”

  “Yes.”

  I tried a nature link. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t, and sometimes it didn’t help even if it did work.

  First came the meleysens. Extending and concentrating gave me the sense of a low bass subsonic, and against that I could hear the tap-thump of the cybs’ boots. At least, that was the way it felt.

  Another reach and the green chewing blandness of the samburs framed the meadow to the west. That did little good, because the ruisines heard the cybs and bolted before the cybs even knew the deer had been there.

  Then there was the cool black-edged probing of the mother bear who lived above the snye beyond the meadow. I tried to reach out, to warn her, but she was shielded.

  At the edge of my perceptions came in the laser hate of the vorpals, and I nodded. Henslom deserved vorpals.

  I eased through the piñons and cedars, keeping out of sight, trying to track down the junior officer who held the controls of the flank marcyb squad. I recognized him—Cherle, the blocky officer who’d been on the prairie dog fiasco. He’d learned from that. All of his marcybs were fanned out in front of him.

  The only sounds were those of the wind in the higher piñons, the crunch of boots on the frozen ground, and the occasional snap of a dead and dry sagebrush limb. The cold air held the scent of cybs, dried blood, and even of sweat, now that their scent-suppressants had worn off.

  Cherle scanned the area in all directions, his head swiveling, his eyes intent. Because the area, like much of Deseret, consisted of open ground, sagebrush, cedars, and piñons, all irregularly spaced, it took me nearly a stan to get within a few meters.

  Then I went into step-up, and crossed the few meters between us. Cherle’s head jerked, and he swung the slugrifle, but I was inside it, and moving too quickly, and too angrily. For a moment, I thought I’d struck too hard, but then he shivered, and tried to break away. My fingers tightened around his neck, and I pulse-blocked, letting him slump in a heap on the hard ground beside a cedar.

  “Stay,” I ordered the silent squad, overriding his own repeater, before easing back uphill after the main body. “Guard Cherle.” They stayed.

  “Cherle! Report! Report! Why aren’t you following? What do you mean by telling them to guard you?” Henslom’s transmissions burned from his repeater. “Babbege? Can you raise Cherle?”

  “That’s negative, ser.”

  “Friggin’ demis. May get us, but I’ll kill as many of the bastards as I can.”

  Babbege, sensibly, did not comment.

  “I’m going in,” I pulsed.

  “Ser?” asked Gisel.

  “I’m going to get him mad enough to chase me where I want him to go.”


  “You’ll do anything to avoid comptime,” noted a familiar voice across the net—Keiko’s.

  “I still love you, too.” With that I slipped back north and west until I could target Henslom’s repeater, still a half-klick away, but that was more than close enough.

  I tried to reach out, and got something else, practically at my feet—another small oval of adiamante, lying on the ground less than a meter away. Was it a remnant of the cyb fleet? One of the chunks still falling?

  For some reason I didn’t have time to fathom, I tucked the black oval into my jacket pocket, then edged sideways across the hill toward the small meleysen grove. There, I dropped behind the north side of a solid trunk and waited.

  He was with the vanguard, as I figured he’d be. When he was at one hundred fifty meters, I rammed the signal through his own repeater. “Henslom, you’re a miserable excuse for a soldier, and an even worse cyb.”

  Henslom’s head swiveled from side to side.

  “You couldn’t destroy a single demi with a whole fleet.”

  Terrible in his cold anger, Henslom lifted the slugger, and I could see the flexsplints on his fingers. Then the bullets stitched through the meleysen trees like the ancient killer bees, the scent of orange raining down with the tattered leaves.

  Behind the lower trunk, behind a meter of heart-solid wood, I waited, just as any demi would wait, calculating, triangulating as Henslom moved from ninety-one point three meters south southwest to eighty-one point five meters west south west. His breath rasped through his enlarged pharynx, as his crude selfnet revved his metabolism.

  “You’re still a poor excuse for a soldier, Majer,” I called. “Even if you had all your fingers.”

  A jay chittered in the pines beyond the meleysen grove, and the slugger flicked that way.

  RRRRRRRRrrrrrrrr … .

  The roar and the stream of composite left feathers, silver-blue, drifting down with pine branch fragments. Henslom moved to seventy-five point four meters south of where I was. His squad followed, dragged by the commands over his repeater.

  “They’ll all be in range before long,” Gisel pulsed from southeast of where I waited behind the meleysen grove, trying to ignore the sickly orangish scent that dropped around me.

  “How close are they to those vorpals?”

  “We’re all only about half a klick.” A pause followed. “I’d rather not …”

  “Take out one or two of the marcybs on your side—with a lot of blood. Then get out of there. Let the vorpals find them.”

  “That’s hard on the vorpals.”

  “They’ll survive.”

  A handful of shots echoed to the south and east of me.

  Then the marcybs’ sluggers roared again, and pine needles carpeted the paths that Henslom’s squads had blown through the pinons.

  “Gisel?” I pulsed, waiting for a lagged response.

  “Fine. Just being careful.”

  “Get out of there.”

  “Almost clear.” A pause followed. “I’m over the ridge, and I’m moving, ser. So are the vorpals.”

  “Henslom, you’re going to lose every last one of your marcybs, and you’re going to die here on Old Earth.”

  Another blast truncated a pair of piñons, and more silver-blue feathers floated down with the green needles.

  Henslom turned north, until he was almost looking at the grove where I waited, his slugthrower traversing a narrow arc.

  The scent of piñon drifted on the wind to me, and so did the hint of blood, a hint of blood that would travel farther downwind to the vorpals.

  “Berkin? Can you wound a couple over there—without getting seen?”

  “Easy.”

  “Do it.”

  Another few shots rang out, and Henslom’s head swiveled west.

  I could sense the ferity of the vorpals, and much as I would have liked to see Henslom’s reaction, I slowly eased back and then east.

  “Another volley, Berkin.”

  “You’ve got it, Coordinator.”

  Henslom swiveled toward the west. I slipped over a ridge line and began to run. “Draw back! Now! Regroup at the dropout point, and watch out for vorpals.”

  “Stet.”

  “Stet.”

  We didn’t have to worry. Drawn by the commotion and the scent and feel of blood, the vorpals slipped silently from their lair beyond the snye and surged downhill toward the unknowing cybs, much more willing to take on cybs than demis.

  For a time, there were only the sounds of the wind and muted bootsteps on hard ground.

  Then, an unwary marcyb went down with her throat slashed by the sharp incisors, even before her body could react. Two others went down before the sluggers roared again.

  “Get them! Fire at will!” snapped Henslom.

  Slugthrowers rumbled in panic, and marcybs went down, but not the vorpals, which dodged through the cedars and the piñons faster than the cybs’ reflexes could react.

  “Keep pulling back,” I ordered. “We’ll wait.”

  Cherle was almost awake when I got there.

  I took his repeater from him, used it again to put his squad in combat sleep, and took the time to tie him up thoroughly. Then we waited.

  Before too long, the pines, the cedars were silent again, except for the cold north wind and too many disgusting sounds from the vorpals. I would have liked to have seen Henslom’s face, but it wasn’t worth the risk.

  Gisel and his squad joined me, and we hiked a circular route back to the pickup point where Borin picked up the dozen of us, six dazed marcybs, and subleader Cherle.

  I stuffed Cherle and the marcybs in the back seat.

  “Cheer up,” I told Cherle. “You get to go home.”

  He didn’t answer, just looked at the magshuttle floor, mumbling, “Don’t understand … just don’t understand … .”

  When we landed at Berkin’s to the south, the black clouds massed over the seared earth and black glass that had been Parwon.

  A series of golden streaks flashed across the sky—more adiamante fragments coming to rest—hard memories of harder choices. My fingers went to the fragment in my jacket pocket for a moment, slipping around that smoothness that was neither hot nor cold.

  And because the Consensus Committee had resolved that the crisis wasn’t over, and that Old Earth still needed a Coordinator, I was still stuck with the need to go back to the command center with its odors of ozone, metal, and death.

  XXXVIII

  As planetary Coordinator, I had to go to Klamat as part of the ceremony that would send the cybs back to Gates. So I trudged out into the dawn, and waited on the de facto landing pad east of the end of the escape tunnel. I stood in the chill and the wind, wearing the damned black cloak that Arielle had made, even though it reminded me of Crucelle—and Elanstan and Rhetoral—the dagger, shield, and sword who had led the many who had given all to defend us … and the Construct. The occasion demanded the cloak, if only for me, and its personal symbolism. I’d also brought the chunk of adiamante I’d picked up in hunting down the last cybs. That seemed fitting, somehow.

  Behind me straggled Lictaer, Arielle, the six nameless marcybs, Cherle, and Kemra.

  Before the sun cleared the eastern peaks, one of the large magfield shuttles hummed out of the gray sky. The door slid open. I stepped inside and peered forward, recognizing a familiar face under short red hair—Lieza.

  “I’m glad you made it,” I told her.

  “Thank you. Be nice when things settle down.” Her eyes were tired, ringed with black.

  I sat down in the right front seat. Arielle sat across from me.

  “How are you?”

  “Fine.” Arielle paused. “Not now, please.”

  I deferred. Grieving was harder and longer for the rat-comps, for the logical, because loss is neither rational nor logical.

  The magshuttle’s door slid shut after Lictaer settled the cybs into the rear seats.

  “We’re lifting,” Lieza announced.

&nbs
p; As the shuttle lifted and banked toward the northwest, I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes, feeling guilty for being merely tired after seeing Lieza’s face.

  My eyes didn’t stay closed that long, because someone moved up next to me. I opened my eyes, trying not to sigh.

  Kemra stood there in her smudged and wrinkled green uniform. “I’d like to apologize.” Her eyes dropped, then lifted to mine.

  I sat there waiting. Behind Kemra watched Arielle, the hooded darkangel.

  “There’s … what else can I say? We didn’t know. I didn’t want to know.” The green eyes dropped again, and she swayed as the shuttle eased out of the wide turn.

  What could I say? That I’d practically screamed at them? It wouldn’t do any good to hammer that farther. I rummaged in my trouser pocket and pulled out the adiamante. “You might take this with you.” I handed Kemra the fragment of adiamante. “It’s one of the hull fragments.”

  “I’ve never seen a piece this small.” Her voice was neutral.

  “Old Earth is covered with fragments of adiamante,” I answered. “Until you came, I hadn’t realized how many there are. The meleysens can’t break them down. Nothing, except the interior of a sun, can change them.”

  “Or your defense net,” she added.

  “That’s a high price,” I pointed out. “But one we’ll pay if necessary. We hope it’s never necessary again.” I sighed. “It will be, but not against you and your people, I trust.”

  She looked at the adiamante. “I’ll try.”

  “That’s all any of us can do.” I looked at her.

  She looked back, finally saying, “I am sorry. It doesn’t mean much, and I can see how much you tried.”

  “Think about the adiamante.” I was too tired to say much more. “It says more than I can.” And it did—the hardest manmade substance, and it couldn’t stand up to the souls of human beings.

  I closed my eyes, and Kemra eased back to her seat in the rear of the shuttle, Arielle’s eyes on her the entire way. I wouldn’t have wanted that, but Kemra deserved that and more, probably.

  As ceremonies go, the one in Klamat wasn’t particularly impressive, but some events must be finished, and ceremonies are one of the few ways societies can observe endings. So a dozen of us, me and eleven members of the Consensus Committee, stood facing the cybs, with net-imagers focused on us and upon the dozen or so marcybs and the three surviving officers—Kemra, Cherle, and a subforcer from the cyb group that had attacked Ellay.