“Hey, don’t worry, I’m okay,” he mumbled at her through a rapidly numbing mouth. Xante winced, his face expressing the kind of pain Dellian was feeling.
“What?”
“It’s Rello,” Ellici sniveled.
“Shit, what about him?” Instinctively Dellian looked to check his optik display, the little fringe cluster of icons that represented each of his squadmates: those wondrous brothers, lovers, lifefriends. The icon cluster was always there, enabling them to watch out for one another, no matter what, when, or where. Except when he’d cancelled his link to the habitat network to keep the fight off official records. Right now there was nothing.
“He’s dead, Dellian. He killed himself.”
The medical department took up an unexpectedly large slice of the station’s toroid, an open section long enough that Kandara could actually see the floor’s gentle upward curve as she followed Captain Tral and Jessika. It was like walking through a newly built cyberfactory that hadn’t yet been fitted out with its systems. Walls, floor, and ceiling were all glossy white, bisected with dark structural girders so the space resembled a modern art installation.
Something to do with the bleakness of the soul.
The depressing layout wasn’t helped by the big treatment bays created by circular glass walls; their distant spacing amplified the section’s nascent theme of separation. Her footsteps echoed relentlessly between them, louder than the soft buzz of the security drone escort sliding through the air above, their weapon muzzles discreetly retracted.
Only two of the fifty bays were being used. One contained Feriton Kayne’s corpse lying on an operating table. A five-strong xenobiology team was clustered around, wearing full-body hazard suits the same color as the station’s uniforms, their faces peering down behind helmet visors as the tangle of surgical arms hanging from the ceiling began to probe the alien brain tissue. To Kandara, the instruments looked like something left over from the Spanish Inquisition. But then hospitals always unnerved her, ever since those last two hopeless hours of her mother’s life in the emergency trauma room.
The other occupied bay had twin stacks of intensive care modules standing beside Soćko’s gurnez. Lankin and a couple of the station’s medical technicians were in attendance, but didn’t appear particularly concerned. They had Soćko covered in sensor disks to monitor his vitals. A couple of the security drones hovered near the ceiling, also watching.
As soon as the three of them entered the bay, additional security shields slid up out of the floor, sealing them inside. All Kandara could think of was a large-scale lab cage, the type they trialed dangerous toxins in. “How’s he doing?” she asked.
Lankin indicated one of the screens on top of a stack, where colored graphics danced at a slow, regular tempo. “Brain activity is picking up. And his blood chemistry has almost normalized.” He glanced at Jessika. “Is there anything else we should be doing?”
“No. He’ll recover, I’m sure.”
Kandara watched her closely, trying to work out if the concern was genuine. It seemed to be; but then, human emotional reactions were probably just a routine handled by alien algorithms inside that nonhuman shell. But I’d grown to like her. How?
She normally prided herself on her instinct, but Jessika had crept in under the radar. Just like Feriton Kayne. And that put every reflex on a hair trigger, powered by suspicion. The demons inside her head were rattling the cage her gland’s neurochemicals used to contain them.
“Is there anything about you that’s real?” she asked abruptly.
Lankin and Captain Tral gave her a surprised look. Jessika merely affected a weary sadness.
“What you see is what you get,” Jessika said.
“Okay, so tell me: How many of you are there?”
“The Neána? Four of us were grown in the insertion ship.”
“That’s like a politician’s answer. How many ships?”
“I genuinely don’t know. It may have been just us, or there may have been more. Personally, I think there must have been other missions. Among senior government figures and globalPACs, the level of mistrust directed toward the Olyix is higher than I’d expect to occur naturally. It makes me believe other Neána are out there, kindling suspicion. I have no proof of that, because I was never given that information. Emissaries work on a need-to-know basis. The abode cluster the insertion ship came from is very security conscious.”
“So Neána live in abode clusters?”
“Between the stars, yes.”
“Are they similar to our habitats?”
“Again, I don’t know. Abode cluster is simply the most meaningful translation.”
“Or not,” Tral said.
“Misinformation?” Kandara asked.
Sie shrugged. “It’s what I’d do.”
“We discussed that between ourselves,” Jessika admitted. “Our origin might be nothing more than an abandoned Neána equivalent to a von Neumann machine. Given how powerful the Olyix are, it would make sense to leave this galaxy altogether if you can.”
“So why not ‘advise’ us to do that?” Kandara asked. “Why tell us to hide?”
“The Andromeda galaxy is over two and a half million light-years away. Your technology is not advanced enough to build a habitat capable of flying that distance. Nor is ours—at least not with the knowledge I have. The distance is simply too great.”
“We’ve been running project studies on transgalactic travel for a couple of centuries,” Lankin said. “The resources are far beyond even Utopial society. For any chance of success when traveling sublight, you’d essentially have to take an entire solar system with you. And even then, given the timescale, whatever species that began the trip would have evolved into something completely different—or died out—by the time you arrived. If it’s the second scenario, that leaves the mother of all impact problems if the solar system’s star didn’t decelerate.”
“Accelerate a whole star system,” Tral said with amusement.
“Theoretically, that’s within the ability of a Kardashev level three society,” Lankin told hir.
“A what?”
“Kardashev level three is as far up the evolutionary and technology scale as a species can get. Essentially: god. Though some postulate that level four is also possible, we just can’t really envisage what it might be like.”
“A Kardashev level three would be able to squash the Olyix like a bug,” Jessika said. “The problem is, the Olyix arrive long before anyone even reaches Kardashev one stage.”
“You just said the Neána escaped the Olyix,” Kandara said. “If your people are hiding between the stars, won’t they be evolving to that level?”
“Possibly. But I’m what they sent you. And the Olyix are still around. So it doesn’t look like they’re there yet. Sorry.”
“Or your abode cluster didn’t want us to have Kardashev level technology, particularly weapons,” Kandara mused. “I get that; humans running around the galaxy with planet-killer guns wouldn’t be my idea of a fun era to live in.”
“If we had the weapons that could eliminate the Olyix,” Jessika said, “then we would have used them ourselves.”
“Okay, so let’s build some trust here, you and me. Like we used to have. Who are the other two that came with you and Soćko?”
“Lim Tianyu and Dutee Gowda. A month ago, Dutee was in South Africa, while Lim was on Tnjin in the Trappist system. Happy now?”
“A month ago?”
“We’re not in constant contact, Kandara. G8Turing pattern recognition might pick that up.”
“Fair enough. Will they be getting in contact now?”
“I expect so, as soon as the invasion begins.”
Kandara got Zapata to splash mainline news streamers across her tarsus lenses. There was nothing about the Olyix yet, so she told the altme to watch fo
r any new mention of them. “When did you all arrive?”
Jessika smiled at the question. “In 2162. We splashed down in the Beagle Channel. Crap, but that water is cold! It’s enough to put a girl off swimming for life.”
“So where’s the ship that brought you here?”
“Gone. Each function it performed, every maneuver, was achieved by consuming and converting its own mass. Launching us down through the atmosphere was its last task. There was nothing left after that.”
“Convenient,” Tral muttered.
“Integrating into human society was relatively easy for us. You stream a lot of dramas about criminals and undercover agents. Documentaries, too. Inventing a valid history for myself was simple.”
Kandara laughed. “You learned tradecraft from solnet fiction shows?”
“Some of it. Yes.”
“So switching between Utopial and Universal societies was all bullshit?”
“Pretty much. Being an immigrant excuses a lot of ignorance, and it means no one in your new location is ever going to meet the family and old friends you reminisce about. Your personal past is what you tell people it is—backed up by official files, which were all forgeries.”
“Mother Mary! Well, we both know you fooled me—each time.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way. For the record, my friendship toward you is genuine. I like you, Kandara.”
“You have real emotions, then?”
“Of course. They’re integral to self-determination. Emotion governs the majority of human responses.”
“Interesting. But, for instance, if you had a choice between rescuing a child from certain death or accessing critical data from an Olyix…”
Jessika chuckled. “Have you ever considered becoming a solnet talking-heads show host? I don’t think even they would ask something so ridiculously hypothetical. And for the record, I would save the child. That’s not even emotion, that’s simple logic. The child situation would only happen once, and every life is precious. If the Olyix information exists, there will be many opportunities to retrieve it.”
“She got you there,” Lankin said cheerfully.
“Okay.” Kandara gestured at Soćko. “Do you love him?”
“Like a brother. Which is as close to a true definition of our relationship as language and circumstance allows. And on the logic front, having him conscious will help enormously in the fight against the Olyix.”
“So having him sabotage the Olyix transport ship was all part of your plan?”
“Not specifically. Soćko and I knew the Olyix would be snatching humans for various experimental trials so they could prepare their cocooning strategy. Our goal when Yuri was assigned to investigate Horatio’s disappearance was to insert Soćko into their operation; that way he’d be able to see what they were doing and how far into the human underworld their influence extended. We succeeded in a way we didn’t quite anticipate.”
“So Soćko let himself get captured?”
Jessika sighed. “Yes. The advantage of that is that it’s helped us expose them to you. But the waiting was tough like you’ll never know.”
“And in the meantime you’ve been busy feeding Ainsley’s paranoia?”
“Come on, it didn’t need much feeding. Suspicion is practically self-propagating in Universal culture, so I moved out here to Delta Pavonis to work on level one Utopials. I have to say, Emilja is far more rational and skeptical than Ainsley.”
“But you made it happen,” Kandara said. “You convinced her.”
Jessika waved an arm expansively. “Yeah. Mind you, she was always a little doubtful about the Olyix anyway, and she’s smart with it. The Utopials’ existing security bureau wasn’t anything near effective enough—you saw that firsthand when we worked together. It was collecting too much contradictory information about the Olyix: the disinformation me and my colleagues were creating, and the Olyix countering that with their own disinformation. None of it rang true, but there was too much noise for it to be nothing.”
“No smoke without fire,” Kandara said.
“Exactly. And once I was embedded in the bureau, I could point our investigations in the right direction, at the people disappearing, even the sabotage missions being launched against Delta Pavonis. It took a few years, but the Senior Council was persuaded. Once that happened, the Home Security Bureau got a huge resource allocation, which I helped guide.”
“And you suggested me for the assessment mission to Nkya?”
“In a roundabout kind of way. Feriton drew up a list of possibles. I concluded it was people he was suspicious about. You were on it because of your showdown with Cancer on Verby. Naturally, the bureau supported your inclusion because of that earlier mission.”
“Uh-huh. And the others?”
“Yuri I’d worked with before. Ainsley trusted him implicitly, and Feriton must have suspected him, because Yuri always seemed mistrustful when it came to the Olyix, so he was coaxed onto the team. Alik was another of Feriton’s suspects.”
“What about Feriton himself?”
“My number one suspect. That spy mission they sent him on to Salvation of Life was seriously bad news. Ainsley’s people simply had no idea what they were dealing with.”
Kandara squinted through the security screens at the other bay, where Feriton’s corpse was being analyzed. “Is his brain still alive, do you think?”
“Oh, undoubtedly. The Olyix will have cocooned it. Hell, it’s probably back in their enclave by now, along with all the other early test subjects.”
“Mother Mary!”
There was a certain glint in Jessika’s eye. “So you do believe me.”
“We’ll see.”
Callum wasn’t entirely surprised to find the Alpha Defense reception chamber was very similar to the one he’d walked into at Kruse Station; there were just more human troopers on guard this time. Their armor was heavy-duty and matte black, with shoulder-mounted weapons already being aimed at everyone coming through the portal. The lieutenant in charge, Amahle, was so tall that at first he thought she was omnia. Her helmet was off, though she clutched it tightly to her side as she regarded him suspiciously.
“Callum Hepburn?”
“You got me.” Apollo sent his personal code to the base’s network, which she seemed completely uninterested in.
Eldlund followed him through the portal, with Danuta Zangari right behind hir. Having Ainsley’s granddaughter along was like owning a personalized badge of authority.
“This way, please,” Amahle said.
Callum started walking. He wasn’t used to low gravity. Terraformed worlds were all chosen for their approximation to Earth in size and mass, giving them a similar gravity, while every habitat rotated to provide Earth-standard gravity at the rim. But Alpha Defense was on the Moon, buried nearly eight kilometers deep below the regolith. He concentrated on making slow, careful movements, trying never to make sharp turns. That way the momentum he built up would keep him moving in the same direction. Even so, he could feel his toes lift off the floor with each step, gliding him forward in a gentle, loping movement. The last thing he wanted now was to stumble and fall in slowmo, because as sure as Aberdeen was cold in winter, there Eldlund would be, considerately assisting him to his feet again like a care assistant in a retirement home.
Sure enough, the tall omnia seemed to be having no trouble walking in the one-sixth gravity field. Callum didn’t understand how that could be, not with those gangling limbs. But then Amahle moved with even more grace. Cursing youth under his breath, Callum made it to the portal door without losing too much of his dignity.
They went through into a plain, metal-walled anteroom. There was a physical door at the other end, standing open so he could see it was as thick as any bank vault. A transparent secondary door was closed just inside, with two armored figures standing guard. Whe
n he looked up, he could just see the outline of hatches in the curving ceiling, and declined to think of the weapons waiting behind them.
The transparent door slid open, and Amahle escorted them through into the Command Center. Alpha Defense had been set up in response to the Salvation of Life’s arrival, with all the corresponding concern about an alien spaceship containing prodigious quantities of antimatter. Following a time-honored tradition of government bureaucracy, committees and subcommittees formed, had expense-account lunches, and agreed to combine various existing agencies—mainly counter-insurgency services and space debris–monitoring offices—then provide a single budget passed by the Sol Senate. The aim was to provide a network of early warning sensors extending two light-years out from Sol so that no alien spaceship could ever get close without being detected the way Salvation of Life had. There was also going to be a comprehensive array of high-orbit weapons platforms above Earth to engage any hostile ship that did get close. Alpha Defense also—theoretically—had override authority to order city shields to be switched on.
A grand project with a noble aim: defending humans against whatever threat might be lurking out there in the galaxy. It was officially inaugurated in 2150.
By 2204 the sensor network extended just past the Kuiper belt, with funding for its second tier the ongoing subject of a partisan battle in the Sol Senate Finance and Resources Committee that had so far lasted eight years. Of the projected eighty giant weapons platforms needed to provide triple-layer protection around Earth, fifteen had been built and nine were in service, with a further eight under construction and plagued with redesign problems, massive cost overruns, along with numerous contractor financial malfeasance cases under investigation from the Senate procurement office.
Callum knew the basic history. But the Command Center didn’t reflect the malaise that beset the agency. It was a circular room with a concave floor, mirroring the Theophilus crater, eight kilometers directly below which it sat. Taking up the entire center was a holographic bubble display depicting the solar system. The habitats in their myriad orbits sparkled within their designator tabs: a rainbow orrery that was itself englobed by thousands of white course vectors of all the rocks and comets that crossed Earth’s orbit. Winding sinuously through them were purple vectors of ships under power, mainly carrying new solarwells in toward the sun, where they’d be dropped into the corona to siphon out power that would supply the whole Sol system with electricity. There were also vectors of ships heading out to virgin asteroids, where rocksquatting Turings could declare themselves independent and offer zero-tax registry for corporations. Directly opposite Earth, in the planet’s Lagrange 3 point, the Salvation of Life gleamed a malignant scarlet.
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