her shock pen in hand Ocean left the two guards resting in the same room that had been set aside for our comfort they’d wake up a few hours from now I hoped they’d forgive me they didn’t deserve that kind of punishment just because their superiors had been stupid we each tucked a Timur under a blanket scavenged from our room and carried them with us still harboring no plans other than trying to keep up the improvisation outside it was the kind of warm sunny day considered delightful by people unlike myself who have used for planetary environments the mist over the lake had burned off bringing fresh clarity to our view of the wooded hills on the opposite shore a warm breeze tinged with something that smelled like mint had given the air a Tang unlike any I’d ever experienced bright red winged things either insects or birds or some evolutionary compromise that appeared only on this world fluttered about just above our heads emitting bursts of song we seemed a million kilometers away from woe from death from conspiracies on a universal scale but we knew better and to see this place with knowledge of those evils fresh was to see this beauty as a cruel fraud upon any gullible enough to believe its promise there were only a few rear goal in sight all hustling around on their own personal errands there were many more dazed human beings refugees from the amphitheater all sitting around in the sunny places between patches of shade including a weeping few who had fallen to consoling each other with hugs nobody bothered us as we strolled across the compound why would they fare cuff and the others were still locked up in her pots chambers discussing what to do next the humans and other aliens present had no idea that we were dangerous Desperados sooner or later we’d run into somebody who knew what was going on and then we’d have to act
but right now it was enough to just act like the other traumatized and wounded and behave like we were headed nowhere in particular Ocean murmured it’s going to be pretty embarrassing if we have to team our way out of here if it comes down to sitting around in doing nothing while the world burns I’m willing to put up with a little embarrassment aren’t you being able to save the world and hold my head high in public afterward would be a welcome novelty the majority of the skimmers at the dock were of rear : design but there were also a couple of Homme SAP manufacture no doubt recent arrivals as Kreutz embassy sent rides for the survivors among our people a few slips were abandoned the missing vehicles probably still out and flying around collecting distant personnel or aiding with whatever still needed to be done at the site of the massacre as we drew close a skimmer of the gray colorless Chi manufacturer pulled up to the dock a number of limping Chi and virile hammersmith visible among the passengers I hadn’t seen him or Smith since last night and found myself feeling a twinge of pleasure to find him among the survivors even if I was not inclined to run to him for an emotional reunion it would have been nice to be able to just hop in one chosen at random and go flying off it would only take Ocean seconds to reprogram the genetic reader controlling access to the Confederate models but we had other business to take care of first business that took us into the building where we’d seen the largest concentration of the wound had taken it was no bustling trauma center there was one big paneled room thick with rear Gani firms the walls flickering with a glow designed to approximate candlelight a shifting diaphanous sculpture on the ceiling flickered with the rear Gong equivalent of soft music a visual symphony of colourful lights giving everything a cast that oscillated from pink to green and back again rendering this the kind of hospital that would have left this long-term patient suicide in short order we walked in just in time to see Tara Foxx as bloody as before but still oozing the eerie calm of a woman untouched by anything that had happened here disappearing through one of the curtains doorways at the far end in this chamber about 15 sentient of various races lay bobbing face-up on the clear high buoyancy liquid Rio Gong use instead of hospital beds most of the immediate first aid was being taken care of by hovering oh wait releasing nano fleets into the wounds but there were some non mechanized medics here as well among them paka captive Alinea her many bracelets clattered together as she finished her work on a young man whose face lay shrouded beneath the grain a night fog she looked at us counselor do you still feel like you fell off a fucking cliff I think I’m going to feel that for a while she shuddered I think we all will do you require any more assistance I think so but I see someone I need to talk to first give me a minute as you wish she said I gave Ocean a nod and hurried between the two rows of patients to the curtain’d doorway Fox had just used to exit behind it I found one of those annoying rear gold bathrooms complete with toilet that defied human anatomy Fox was at the sink washing the collected filth off her cheeks it was a doomed operation her clothing was still sticky from the blood of her employer and the trauma of the prior night had given her olive skin a pale cast that bolide her impassive facade I folded my arms do you still want my help finding Maren most normal people would have offered me vehement assurances of their concern for the girl Fox just studied my reflection as if the question had been to imbecilic to even merit a response I said I think we can help each other counselor unfortunately there’s some bad political fallout from last night’s disaster and much of its landed on my head she turned off the water and turned to face me dabbing at her cheeks with a black cloth handkerchief I’m supposed to be under house arrest for all the impact this had I might have told her it looked like rain why politics she folded the handkerchief into quarters and touched it to a spot over her right breast where it was stored away without any obvious opening of pockets I hesitated thrown off by her failure to comment the thing is I had to team two of her paths people just to get this far if I stay here they’ll just return the favor or lock me up this time with tighter security this at least prompted a question why is that my business because you recognize that whatever effect last night had on the political situation here it also made one missing girl even less important to the local diplomatic community than she was before because you know that everybody else here is going to be too busy just dealing with the repercussions to help you because they might even pull all their embassies from Vaughn leaving you with no support system at all if you still intend to stay here and keep looking for meirin but if you get me out of here and work with me you have my word that I will add the search for meirin to my list of priorities what followed was a vivid demonstration of the professional advantage she must have found in arranging her terrible enhancement rather than struggle with her qualms she just proceeded to the next question why would I trust you not because there’d be any point in offering and naked appeal to your emotions I recognized that to be a waste of time but you only have two options meirin forgotten by a diplomatic community that wasn’t falling over itself to help you before today or meirin kept in mind by somebody who has a job to do and is perfectly willing to defy that community in order to proceed if you want to find meirin but it all comes down to you know of my capabilities and whether you think there’s even a small possibility that I’m playing straight with you but you need to choose now her nod was immediate what do you need go straight to the dock where we arrived and wait for me don’t talk to anybody on the way don’t pick up any spare clothing or supplies just go I’ll meet you there in five minutes yes she said and walked out it was that simple no argument no frantic hurry no obvious misgivings over stepping outside the law on a planet already descending into chaos she just turned away from me and passed through the curtain threshold with less effect than I showed after the average satisfactory bowel movement I could only wonder what she was still feeling in that place beneath her Placid surface where she tamped all her emotions down tight desperation fear hope satisfaction grief at the loss of her employer it was impossible to know I had the feeling I’d need to by the time this was over I waited 30 seconds before leaving the washroom using the sink just for lack of anything more productive to do in the few seconds it took to scrub my hands I closed my eyes and activated my interface the sensation of water cascading through my fingers never went away but it slowed the water becoming more plasti
c the flow slowing to the consistency of jelly a brilliant blue filled the world and I found myself floating before the latest random avatar a winged creature with wings of fire and the pissed-off expression of every bland dip core functionary I’d ever known the face was not kroy’s but it could have been a relative we are very busy Andrea Court it was the first time they had ever said anything like that to me I thought blips knew how to multitask it is because we do that we can afford to give you even minimal attention but when we say that we are dealing with the repercussions of our slipping fortunes in this conflict we are in deadly earnest were they frightened I don’t suppose you’re talking about a few dead diplomats we’re that so Andrea Court then the implications of last night’s bloodshed would only be local but the last few hours have freed the beings you call the unseen demons to influence acts horrific to your species on more than 70 human planets my heart sank how the connections are too subtle and too tied up in our rules of engagement to explicate in the time allotted suffice it to say that they have struck everywhere at once there have been assassinations acts of war a spontaneous massacre or two and a few unprovoked incursions that might go so far as nuclear exchanges the death toll of all these events is not a few but Millions given the total population of human beings and the sheer number of planets you inhabit at this point in your history it works out to no more than a particularly bad day but all is connected and as this situation on vlad gets worse then so will the other fires burning elsewhere I felt a surge of pain and realized that it was my physical body the one standing before that rear golem basin biting my cheek hard enough to draw blood what’s so special about Vlad that would make it so crucial you asked the wrong question Valon itself is just a planet and we have no interest in planets except insofar as they provide the support systems for productive intelligences the Villani then they are crucial to our interests and therefore to your own terrific how much worse is it going to get here before long Pilgrim’s all over this world will be aware that the massacre in the amphitheater
not an isolated incident and that they are targeted wherever they walk conversely a group of peaceful Ani passing too close to Kreutz Embassy will be fired upon with weapons nobody is supposed to have brought to this planet the resentment caused by that will few all other confrontations by this day’s end the CID and Kazan houghton delegations will evacuate all their personnel from the planet surface and to other races will give your ambassador Croix word that their governments will not object to any hostile action against the indigenes this is a promise that they will of course not keep events will continue to build their own inexorable momentum until no possibility remains but the one we seek to avoid the AI source paused as if finding this recitation of horrors too much for them I imagined I could hear my own heart pounding in my chest though that was an impossibility within the interface where so many of our conversations took place in less than one second real-time it didn’t matter I felt the fear so I felt its physical manifestations as well which is what human complicity in the deliberate extermination of sentient beings terrible as that would be I fail to see why it would be such a turning point it’s happened before yes it has but the ability to commit such a terrible crime and get away with it is entirely proportionate to the sympathies of those who watch I still didn’t get it and then I did humanity is already seen not without cause as a vicious rapacious race by those like the chi who want your species expelled by force if necessary from the community of sentient life your races political security is far more precarious than your confederacies power structure has ever been willing to accept the Valon by contrast are prized throughout the community of sentient Nations by those who respect both their vast intelligence and the riddle they represent if the madness here is permitted to continue then your ambassador Croix does what comes naturally and the resentment of the other races will turn toward man if you cannot prevent this from happening the actual shooting war involving a consortium made of all the other Allied intelligences will follow by less than a year and your species will not survive it of course we wouldn’t there’s a reason why the Confederacy had never fought a full-scale interstellar war it wasn’t an empire but an umbrella organization a convenient fiction established to facilitate trade between worlds and allow the majority of mankind’s many thousands of separate squabbling societies a number that sometimes included as many as 000 separate nations per planetary surface to face the various alien powers as a united front it’s relative impotence had always been a good thing in that it kept our species as a whole from getting into too much trouble the occasional local Conqueror or madman might have to be smacked down from time to time either by their neighbors or by a unified police action and occasionally one idiot or another would pick a fight with one or another of the other races but mankind’s inherent disorganization had always given the rest of our species the advantage of plausible deniability but if everybody decided that they’d be better off if we were gone there was no way the Confederacy could ever muster enough organization for an effective defense of humanity as a whole we’d still be arguing even as the last of us were carpet-bombed we can’t let him do it we have to kill him this is not the madness of an individual but the madness of a historical moment if you kill him the others in the Confederacy who share his instincts will only take up his cause and commit the same unforgivable act your only hope to stop him is to take away his excuse by stopping the insanity that afflicts the Villani this left me even more lost than before I can’t do that I don’t understand the Villani even when they’re saying true but you remain the only one in a position to find the only diplomatic solution that will save a fraction of both species half insane from frustration I almost screamed at them you can’t leave it at that you have to tell me a terrible new element entered the voice of my secret masters regret we are sorry Andrea it will not be provided for you the situation is precarious there are
factions within our own collective that bitterly resent the only possible solution it is impossible for us to steer you the path can only be yours and then I was ejected not eased out of but ejected from the interface with a violence that left me reeling I had to clutch at the corners of the sink to avoid a collapse there was no mirror above the rear gone basin but I didn’t need one to know that I must have gone white things must have been bad all right in all our years of association I had known them to be arrogant manipulative and even cruel but I’d never known them to sound that lost that desperate that’s sad did the prospect of losing their war and condemnation to eternal life really frighten them that much i splashed some more water on my face tried it with my sleeve and returned to the bedside where Ocean Porrinyard stood in huddled conversation with pocket evil Ania circumstances had worsened here - Ocean now held his timur in plain sight levelled at her face whatever he’d told her she was now resisting leaning away from him as if afraid that casual contact would infect her with whatever madness he had I wasted no time what’s happening I told her Ocean said I winced Fox could at least be trusted to see that her agenda dovetailed with our own but faux Linea was an unknown quantity who I’d been hoping to enlist with sheer bullshit why the flashing ceiling lights changed sequence from her reaction it must have been some kind of silent alarm and you couldn’t think of anything better to do than threaten her forgive me Andrea but your logical and you expect other people to be logical you’d try to come up with some partial explanation this young lady would accept while leaving out everything you can’t tell her and it would all still come down to some version of trust me I just told her that we’re on the run and that we have teamers and that she needs to come with us you’ll have to explain on the way
Andrea Cort 03: War of the Marionettes Page 10