by David Ryker
Finding nothing to throw, Saito threw his arms out wide behind his chest and screamed into the ceiling. The audience swayed under the sound and Hess’s ears rang. When the echoes died away, the president dropped his head heavily into his hands and heaved desperate breath after desperate breath.
Good God, Hess thought. I'm watching a man break in real time. Maybe I'm watching the Federation break with him. One quick glance at an unimpressed Van Liden chased away that idea, but he couldn't help feel a brief flutter of schadenfreude, seeing his nemesis suffer.
“Those men... died today,” Saito stammered loudly.
After a moment of quiet, Hess heard everyone breathe as one.
“Good.”
One of the Spartans dropped the word like a grenade and leaned back in her chair.
Hess was already moving by the time Saito sprang and he caught the president mid-air. The man was surprisingly light. They tumbled together along the concrete floor and, even as they skidded, the generals and the guards exploded into action, a cacophony of unholstering weapons and aggressive grunts.
“Stop it, Saito!” Hess hissed into Saito's ear as they rolled across the floor. “You’ll ruin everything! Stop!”
The president thrashed and battled, trying to free himself from Hess’s grip. He wasn’t much stronger, but he sprawled and spread his limbs wide and pinned Saito to the floor. Even if he failed, the hosts had nothing to fear from such a slight man, lithe with soft hands.
“Please, Saito, see sense.” Hess whispered as quiet as he could, struggling for breath. “This is the most important time… in the history of the Senate. We’ve got… to keep a cool head. You’ve got… to be remembered.”
Saito grunted and strained until the struggle finally stopped. Hess hoped he'd seen reason, that now was the perfect time to make peace. If they left it too long, it might be the only time. Nothing, he knew, greased the wheels of diplomacy like blood.
“Fine!” Saito snapped.
Hess tested an arm, lifting his weight away to see if Saito would spring again.
“I said fine!” he shouted.
They had become a spectacle. The Senate guards gathered around protectively but the Spartans cracked their knuckles, ready to fight. Slowly, the two men got to their feet. Hess couldn’t shake his anxiety, but things seemed to be settling. He dusted down his clothes.
What the hell have I got myself into? he thought. But maybe it’s actually going to plan. He might not have planned for this exact eventuality, but Saito making a deal with the Spartans was certainly to his benefit. And any way in which the president could be shamed or shocked or embarrassed or hurt, that helped, too.
Really, he knew, anything which brought about the collapse of the Earth-centric Federation. The Spartans didn’t seem too scared, which meant they had a plan. We still have a fleet, I think, hidden away somewhere. There’s still hope here and everything’s accelerating. We’ve added a dash of chaos to the mix. I’ve just got to make sure I’m in the right place when we come out on the other side. v
His mind raced, trying to stitch together all the disparate threads as the whole thing unraveled in front of him. Hess felt alive, his thoughts boomed and burned, and he made sure to hide his smile. It didn't look good, to enjoy the end of everything. But Fletcher’s defeat brought the Federation that much closer to collapse. All he had to do was steer the future in the right direction.
The guards circled around the two men, but they hesitantly parted to allow a person through. It was Ghoulam. He slapped a hand against Saito’s arm and a number of generals twitched before holding themselves back.
“Saito,” Ghoulam clucked, “Saito, Saito, Saito. Bit of passion. I like that. You Federation types, always so stuffy.”
The Spartans cackled again but it seemed different this time. Hess noticed the mood changing in the room, becoming more optimistic. A wave of positivity he intended to ride.
“Quite,” managed Saito, swiping dust from his shoulders.
Hess knew the man well enough to know that he was seething. The two had campaigned against one another. Practically a war for men like them. He had spent nights sitting up staring into Saito’s soul through any image he could find, and he felt he could read the president well. His clipped syllables and blunt decorum hid the rage.
Ghoulam, it seemed, noticed it, too. With a hand on the small of Saito’s back, he led the president toward the cracked window. A moment for diplomacy, Hess knew he had to be involved. He stepped forward and a hand grabbed his upper arm. A tight leather-worn hand coated in nicotine stains. He looked back into the face of Van Liden. The old general held him back.
Before Hess could tug or try to free himself, the man let go. He saw the general’s face crumple with pain as Alison stood squarely on his toe and bumped in between the guards, distracting them and complaining of feeling faint. There is plenty of promise in the girl. Hess grinned and joined the men as they reached the window.
The view over the black Spartan mountains stretched far. A landscape lit up by a million burning lights. There were buildings everywhere. No one on any other world thought of this place as a technological marvel, Hess thought. The Federation’s propaganda worked tirelessly, teaching everyone about this malcontent, scum-filled backwater. Make the most rebellious colony seem like a hellworld, ensuring few would follow suit.
“Your planet…” Saito spoke slowly. “It is not what I expected. To be up here, among the clouds.”
Ghoulam, the shorter man, stood next to the president and surveyed his home world.
“Our ancestors lived down there.” He pointed between the mountains, below the clouds. “But after all the wars, against you, against ourselves, we had to move higher. Your people bombed our planet into nothingness. We had no choice but to build in the sky.”
They watched the setting of the suns as distant ships flew by, silhouetted against the blood-red horizon.
“I...” Saito struggled with his words, trying to wrap his thoughts around reality. “I lost a lot today. Fletcher was a... friend. We've lost a great deal. Mistakes happened in the past.”
Ghoulam joined the president in a moment of silence.
“Gentlemen—” Hess inserted himself into the conversation. The maudlin atmosphere helped no one. “I believe there is a need to do business.”
When they did nothing to remove him, Hess knew he had won. The past hours and days and weeks and months had all led to this. He made himself the bridge between two sheer cliffs and the gatekeeper at either end. Hess was the structure itself and the raging river below, whatever crossed was what he allowed, whatever passed between these two men was whatever he deemed suitable, massaging their egos in equal measure.
The negotiations began there and then. Soon, it emerged that there were two options. Hess allowed his thoughts to chase out ahead. The two leaders were locked into the conversation and he held all the keys.
He could easily sacrifice Saito on the altar of the Spartans, working them both into a fight and burning down the entire Federation in one fell swoop. Destroy any chance the deal had of succeeding, ensure that neither side found a reasonable outcome, and he would end it all in mutually assured destruction.
Two days ago, this would have been the only option but it felt less than appealing now that Fletcher had failed. Why create a wasteland and call it peace?
Instead, he could tie these two inexorably together in a deal. Doom Saito to inevitable failure and make sure the Spartans go down with him. Then, when both parties had dealt with this alien threat and mortally wounded themselves in the process, he would be able to step in as the savior.
He would be able to look back on this moment and claim that it was the making of humanity, with Acton Hess as the chief architect of the survival of the species, assembling his enemies into a circular firing squad.
Hess felt his ego throb, emboldened by his own imagination. He hated Saito enough to let him succeed ever so slightly. He feared the Spartans enough that he was happy to lad
en them with a limp-minded president, hanging Saito and his whole horrid government around their neck like a millstone in a high tide. Once it was all done, he could restructure the entire Federation. It would be a lot easier with hardly anything left of it.
No one would be in thrall to the Earthbound fools and their damned system ever again. No more pips, no more indenturing towers, no more shifting populations around and grinding them down into nothingness, no more home rule from a planet filled with nothing but the ghosts of the past. Hess smiled; the choice was as good as made.
He looked to see Alison listening to Loreto’s message on her page. Whatever the admiral had sent, it didn’t matter now. Hess held the future of humanity in the palm of his hand. The only way he saw it surviving was with him at the head.
The smile on his lips was inescapable and slim.
Time to change the world.
18
Loreto
The synapses in Loreto’s mind flashed like dying stars, sucking all his thoughts into a black hole. Above, the mist-ridden shapes of humanity’s greatest ever Fleet flickered and died. Next to him, Menels vomited. Cele wrapped her arms around herself and leaned into Hertz, who held onto her shoulder and scratched at his beard with baleful eyes. Loreto blamed himself but Fletcher, the Senate, the Exiles, and the Symbiot all shared responsibility, his numb brain decided. But, in the end, it all came back to him.
I will be the guiding light. His message had reached no one. Or it had and they’d done nothing. He couldn’t decide what was worse. Goddamn stupid fools!
Beside the chamber entrance, the Exiles stopped conjuring mist and huddled together, their whispering language fidgeting out. The whole battle, they’d measured and analyzed everything like some great science experiment. If he hadn’t felt so sick with dread, Loreto would have raged at them. The dead deserved respect.
“Sir…” Hertz’s broad accent pulverized the word, shell-shocked. “What now?”
“There’s not many of us left,” Loreto thought aloud. “Just the Vela and the First Fleet and whatever we can scrape together. We fight.”
“But–”
“But nothing,” Loreto interrupted. “Those people died trying to save us, Hertz. We’ll damn well do the same.”
Each syllable clanged like a heavy hobnailed step toward the gallows. He looked up to see Of the Hanged Tree, the Exile leader’s mask bent low between its comrades, rustling.
“Unless they help us,” Loreto finished.
“You think they will?” Hertz asked, patting Cele’s shoulder. “They don’t seem too inclined…”
The captain was right. The Exiles had learned enough Federation basic to parrot lines from ancient books, just so they could tell him where to stick his help. I’ve got to make them care, but how? Humans had killed a million species in their time. No one wept for the Dodo or the tiger. How many native species had the terraforming towers erased? We might as well be a particularly uppity algae to them.
The chamber door opened and the aliens stood on either side, ushering the humans toward the exit. They’re done with us, Loreto thought, or just testing us to see how we react. The more time he spent in the Exile ship, the more he felt he was being watched. He’d lived on spaceships his entire adult life. They clanged and creaked and groaned. This alien ship did none of that. It was a maze of corridors and hallways and hangars stuffed with junk. He saw no living quarters, no control rooms, no instruments. He saw none of the random detritus required to actually feel alive on a hammered-together metal tube floating through a hostile vacuum. But he led his crew out of the door, into the corridors.
Desperately, he wanted to lean across to Hertz and bounce his ideas off the captain, hoping his friend would call him a fool. We’re being observed, he wanted to shout, every single one of our movements is being analyzed by these things! But he kept quiet. Fletcher’s Fleet had died in the blink of an eye. If he wanted to live – if he wanted to save people – he needed these aliens on his side.
They walked a different route. Loreto had visited that chamber before but he recognized nothing. If it’s even the same chamber. His paranoid thoughts were scrambled. His imagination ran wild, wondering whether these organic walls detached and moved and altered when he wasn’t looking. The crew slumped along silently and he hoped their minds were equally ablaze with ridiculous notions.
As the Exiles led the humans, Loreto had time to watch the aliens move. It worried him and he struggled to explain why. Though they moved like birds—in short, sharp bobs–they remained somewhat… artificial. He’d seen organic creatures move. Even when they stood still, they panted or leaned on one leg or bit at their fingernails. Uncannily still, these creatures spared no extra expense of energy.
“Sir!”
Cele’s voice reverberated along the hallway and the crew ran toward her. They found her, detached from the procession, pressed up against a transparent wall. On the other side were two Exiles in a laboratory, standing over a white sheet with a square cutout. Through the square, Loreto saw a latticed, black material and he recognized it instantly. They were dissecting a Symbiot.
“It screamed, sir,” she explained. “We have to do something.”
They’re taking apart their enemies like a science experiment, Loreto thought. They’re either merciless, or terrified.
“Come on,” he told Cele. “We have to go.”
She didn’t argue. Reluctantly, she unwrapped herself from the window and joined the crew. Loreto stood watching for a moment, wondering what was catching his eye. Then he realized: They’re operating with knives. Not lasers or machines. Honest-to-God knives. There were no computers in the immediate vicinity. Surely they’re not so scared of an infection that they wouldn’t even have a closed network nearby? Whatever lay under the sheet screamed, a brittle, vicious shriek which set his neck hairs on end. He stepped away from the window but the image lingered.
The walk brought them to the largest room Loreto had ever seen aboard a spaceship. A hangar, ostensibly, but larger. One wall was dedicated to a colored window, fifty meters high, which reminded him of the ancient churches halfway down Providence. Clear enough to let the starlight in, opaque enough to hide the darkest reaches of space. The colors changed constantly, like sands across a desert dune. Looking down, he saw the speckling of the filtered light turn his hand yellow, then green, then blue.
Around them were fighters and machines. They were burned, broken, and all were different shapes and sizes. Some had wings, others consisted of two metal loops threaded together. The entrance elevated them above the hangar floor and Loreto could see that the wrecks covered the entire surface.
“These must be all the other species,” Cele whispered. “It’s a museum…”
Of the Hanged Tree traced the vertical line.
“It’s a graveyard,” Loreto muttered.
A catacomb, a reminder of the permanence and the frequency of death. He looked at the designs of all the ships and imagined the species that had piloted them. The Exiles had known them all. Maybe they’d tried to save a few. We’re not the protagonists in this story, Loreto realized. We’re just another chapter.
The remaining Exiles had taken up positions around the hangar. They began conjuring again and the mist swelled. This is how they tell stories; they brought us here deliberately. Of the Hanged Tree stepped aside. By now, Loreto could identify the leader. The arrangement of the instruments on the suits differed and the manner in which the lights appeared, deep inside the mask, seemed individual. As one alien stepped forward, he tried to remember its appearance.
“O’er Combs to Nails,” it said, in the same synthesized, raspy voice, pointing a finger at its chest.
“Where do you get these names?” Loreto asked, half-interested, as he cocked his head back and saw the mist swirling above them.
The first shape to appear took the form of a rectangular box, straight lines and flat surfaces. Loreto didn’t recognize it and waited for it to dissipate and take the more refined f
orm of a ship or a planet.
“It’s the codex,” Menels said. “The thing that got us into this mess.”
Loreto didn’t have time to argue. The man was right about the shape, however. Two meters long, rather than five centimeters, it was clearly a codex.
“You’re the one who gave it to me?” Loreto pieced together the puzzle and looked at the Exile.
O’er Combs to Nails drew a vertical line. Alright, thought Loreto, so there’s a faction who want to help us but they’re arguing among themselves. I’ve got to make them see they’ve got skin in this game before it’s too late.
“Mem-or-ies, Ad-mir-al,” the Exile rasped at him, offering open palms.
The whole crew watched as the mist from around the hangar began to agitate. Hertz stumbled backward, clinging on to Cele’s thin shoulder for balance before collapsing on to the floor. But the mist moved faster. Quickly, it disappeared from around their feet and sunk down into the lowest reaches of the cemetery hangar.
“Look.” Menels pointed. “It’s surrounded the ships…”
The mist clung to the dead fighters, assuming their forms. The ghost ships rose up above them, flying in formation.
“No man,” the Exile began, in a voice like a human preacher, “can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.”
They must have been in our network, Loreto thought. That’s where they’ve found all these old recordings. I must have given them access with that codex.
But his thoughts came to a halt. He couldn’t concentrate on anything other than the scene playing out above him, made from mist. Even without a narrator, he found it easy to understand, as though the ideas were being beamed directly into his head from a faraway satellite.
With the right conditions, he learned, an Exile might live three sol centuries, much longer than even the most expensive human lifespan. But there was a time before the Exiles were exiled, when they had a planet, a place to call their home. A time when their species had a name which would not fit well onto a human tongue. A time when they had their squabbles and rivalries and wars, like any other species. They were engineers, tweakers, desperate to know every small detail of every machine.