He knew so little about them…but he’d come to believe they were sincere, capable and brave, if not particularly prudent. Maybe they were trustworthy, too.
He smiled in thanks as Alex brought fresh wine to the table and they rejoined him. He let Caleb fill his glass—he was already contemplating how to finagle his own supply of the stuff—and leaned back in his chair. “The last time I visited your ship, you asked me how I broke away from the Idoni integral.”
“You said it was a personal question and deflected.”
“It was and still is. But you’re both going to get yourselves killed tomorrow, so why not? To understand, though, you need to appreciate how an integral impacts one’s consciousness and psyche. So if you want the story, you need the whole story. And after you hear it, you may regret asking.”
“I’m sure we won’t. Please.”
He stared at them for several seconds, then began.
“I was at this fete back in 6043. Typical orgy—figuratively and literally—of excess thrown by one of the Idoni elassons. If it had an ostensible purpose, I never knew it.” Garish fuchsia strobes had colored the air above circular tables overflowing with expensive hors d’oeuvres and fountains spewing potent drinks. Why did he remember the color of the lights?
“So as the hour begins to grow late and the spirits and hypnols have flowed beyond all propriety, I get invited to a private suite upstairs for a more intimate party with five of my closest strangers. I’m just there for the revelry, so I’m all in.
“After twenty minutes of dosing up and pretending to get friendly with one another, some servants bring these two aliens into the suite and leave them there.
“None of us had seen the species before, but they were exquisite: slender Anatype bodies with translucent skin that was warm, almost hot to the touch. Of course they didn’t speak Communis, and, beyond a sense that they weren’t animalistic and an impression they were sentient, I can’t say their intelligence level. I don’t know if they understood what was happening to them, or even understood what we were. I don’t know if they were male or female, or if their species had such distinctions.”
Alex looked perplexed, so he backed up. “Sexual experiences with aliens are rarely straightforward, so in and of itself, not being able to identify gender wasn’t anything unusual.”
She arched an eyebrow, but if she was judging him she’d better strap in.
“I was exceptionally high—we all were—and I can’t sit here today and say I didn’t walk into that suite intending to go through with a night of deplorable, blissful acts.
“But one of the aliens fixated on me. They had these pure, pupil-less silver eyes, and I could see my own distorted reflection in them. What I saw was a monster gazing back at me…as though the distortion in the lens had revealed the darker reality of my godsdamned soul. And I’m not speaking metaphorically.”
He cleared his throat roughly. Recounting the events proved more perturbing than he’d expected. It was too long ago to matter…and too important to ever forget.
“So I balked. I made excuses about a prior arrangement and fled the suite. I don’t think any of the other Idoni were sober enough for my departure to register.”
“You didn’t try to stop the others?”
The horror tainting Alex’s voice didn’t really surprise him; a century later, he was feeling a bit horrified himself. But he’d been different then. Naïve and weak. Also stupid.
“And get myself detained, tanked and mind-wiped? No. I wandered the fete for another three hours, trying to get high enough fast enough to pass out.” At some point it had finally worked, and he’d woken up the next evening on a cot in the anteroom alongside a few dozen other guests.
“A month later, I found out the species had been Eradicated. Following an initial evaluation, the Directorate had determined their only usefulness, if any, would be as pleasure slaves. A dozen ‘specimens’ were provided to the Idoni Primor for consideration, and the two I met that night were part of the sample group. After…whatever she did with them, she decided they didn’t meet her lofty standards and weren’t worth the trouble of domesticating, and the Directorate followed her recommendation.
“Per protocol, their cities were demolished by a Machim formation then their home planet harvested for resources by Theriz cultivators. The ones who had been brought in for evaluation were experimented on by Erevna scientists then euthanized.”
He took a very, very long sip of wine, on the off chance it had the power to magically cleanse away the filth which continued to linger in the depths of his conscience. He apparently radiated angst and self-pity, because they didn’t press or berate him, and when his glass was empty Caleb quietly refilled it.
It took another sip before he worked up the nerve to continue. “Something glitched in my mind when I found out. I couldn’t decide if it was guilt over how they’d been used—over how I’d almost used them—or horror at the realization that a creature I’d touched had seen their entire species killed before being killed themselves. I got stuck in the loop for…a while. A year, maybe.
“See, the nefarious trick of the integral is how it weeds out stray, unwelcome thoughts and ideas. It’s subtle, so much so most of the time you don’t notice the weight of sixty-four billion minds nudging your own toward ‘correctness.’
“But the kernel of revulsion never got fully erased for me. The integral repeatedly weakened it, but it kept growing back. Eventually I started nurturing it, actively fighting against the integral’s whispers.”
He leaned forward and dropped his elbows on the table. “And doing that got me flagged for ‘rehabilitation.’ I was ordered to come in for special treatment. But it’s not treatment—it’s a mind-wipe. They analyze your neural structure to determine what’s gone bad then tweak your genetics and incipient neural mapping to eliminate the flaw. A new you is awakened, but it’s not you anymore.
“So, seeing as I was going to die anyway—for the last time—I decided to try to escape. I knew a hypnol dealer who skirted the edges of allowable product and went to him for something that could destroy the integral node in my brain. He delivered, and I rented a room, locked myself in and took twice the prescribed amount.
“The next three days were agony—like eternal damnation in the Phlegethon river of fire. My brain was burning me alive from the inside. My thoughts were delirious, incoherent. My dreams were worse.”
Alex glanced away, her expression darkening. He must have hit a nerve. “Then, at last, there was silence. True silence, which turned out to be something I’d never experienced in my life. It was nearly as terrifying as severing the integral link had been, for a long time.”
He shrugged. “The burnout would have resembled a null incident to the integral, and they would’ve taken the opportunity to do their tweaking before regenesis. There’s presumably another ‘me’ running around now—a different, better version of me.”
Alex straightened up and blinked, as if shaking off the same spell lingering over him. “If you broke away on your own, how did you come to join the anarchs?”
He exhaled, grateful to have gotten through the worst of the story without curling up into a weeping ball on the floor. “It was a Praesidis, actually.”
Caleb looked at him sharply and leaned forward, and Eren suppressed an instinctive shudder. Inquisitor or not, intentionally or not, the man exuded danger when provoked. “Wait—there are Praesidis anarchs?”
Eren held up a palm to ward off the man’s intensity bringing him closer. “Don’t get too excited. I can count them on one hand. But there are a few, yes. That’s why I gave you the smallest benefit of the doubt back on the Administration station.”
Caleb took in the new information. “What happened?”
“I’d been running spare tech and hypnols and generally trying to stay off the radar and alive. No integral meant no regenesis and no new body. If I died, that was it. Denouement. One day I was on the Sculptor Arx smooth-talking this hypnol trader when
a Praesidis walked into the shop. I tried to slip away, but the trader made a scene over how our transaction wasn’t complete. I figured the line had finally run out and resigned myself to the inevitable. But—”
Alex interrupted him. “Why did you think this meant the end?”
“I’d managed to cobble together a neural layer which mimicked the Idoni integral on casual contact with another Idoni—barely, and I’ve got a far better one now, but it functioned. As for the rest of the Dynasties, so long as I looked right and acted right and said the right things, they assumed I was in the fold.
“Praesidis, though? Their diati allows them to sense the absence of an integral field. All they need is line of sight to the person.”
Caleb again straightened up in interest. “All the Praesidis have diati? Not solely the Inquisitors?”
Eren nodded while Alex refilled his glass for the…he’d lost count. The gaps in their knowledge were random and perplexing, almost as much so as the things they did know.
“Mind you, the Inquisitors are blessed with quite the overabundance of it, but they all carry at least a token amount. Any lineage that loses it entirely is culled. In any event, instead of killing me, the Praesidis woman asked me to lunch. We danced the dance and tested one another out, and I learned I wasn’t alone. There were other Anadens who had broken away, from all the Dynasties, and many of them were working with individuals from other Accepted Species to fight the Directorate. To resist.”
He sounded more enthusiastic than he’d intended, and genuinely so. In the aftermath, spilling his soul felt uncomfortably cathartic.
“I didn’t have to be asked twice. The anarchs gave me a purpose. A reason to be daring. And they gave me back the prospect of renewed life. Not as guaranteed as the integral had provided, but a lot more reassuring than what I had before, which was nothing.
“I didn’t join a new integral—there are no whispers in my mind from the other Anaden anarchs. It’s nothing but a wave connection between my consciousness and their internal network. And it’s sensational.
“Anyone who tells you life has greater value when it comes with an expiration date is full of shit. Immortality is worth the fortunes of galaxies.”
Alex regarded him too intently. “But it’s not worth everything. You gave it up for your freedom.”
His forced bravado faltered. That truth still terrified him today. “I did.”
‘Would you do it again?’
He jerked in surprise. It marked the first time the SAI had spoken during the conversation, interrogation, confession, whatever this was.
He stared up at the ceiling; he was accustomed to responding to disembodied voices, but not self-aware ones. “After knowing what it meant to lose my immortality, then regaining it? Ultimately, yes. I can never return to being a drone under the thrall of the integral. Doesn’t mean I don’t hope it’s a decision I’m never asked to make a second time.”
Alex regarded him with what he hoped was empathy. “Are any of the other species—the Accepted Species—able to undergo regenesis? I mean, your leaders have the technology. They could share it with the others and help them develop a method of regenesis that would be compatible with their particular biology.”
“Oh, for certain they could. They never will. What power does the Directorate have if not the power over life and death?”
“Are we sure we want to do this? If things go badly, we don’t get to wake up in a regenesis pod like Eren will.”
Caleb had been on the verge of collapsing in the bed; it had been a long day and tomorrow was guaranteed to be both far longer and infinitely more stressful. He hoped to fall asleep before his brain had a chance to spin up a maze of troubling scenarios. He also hoped the diati stayed out of his dreams tonight.
Now, though, he ignored the allure of the bed to regard Alex curiously as she discarded her pullover and slipped on a tank, a concession to the presence of their guest upstairs.
“You’re usually the one saying ‘damn the torpedoes.’ What gives? Talk to me.”
She sighed and began to rove distractedly around the room. “What Eren said about the value of life—about death, immortality and having to choose—kind of struck a chord for me. I suppose, having nearly thrown it away without even noticing, I’m finding I have a greater appreciation for my life these days.”
He’d like to tell her she hadn’t almost thrown it away, but he couldn’t force the platitude into words. He’d like to claim it didn’t make him happy in the deep recesses of his mind that she perceived her addiction in such a way, but he couldn’t do that either. In truth he was glad she believed choosing another plane of existence, one without him, would have been throwing her life away.
It was unforgivably selfish of him. But he was just a man, flawed and wanting her love.
He cursed silently for wandering off into his own vain musings while she contemplated literal life and death decisions. He reached out and took her hand in his, drawing her over to sit down on the edge of the bed beside him. “You don’t think we should go to Machimis.”
She shook her head. “No, we absolutely should go. If we can capture such a motherlode of inside information, it could make a pivotal difference in the coming war. We need it. AEGIS needs it, my mother needs it. This is why we’re here.
“I’m merely pausing at the precipice of the cliff, peeking down into the chasm and asking, ‘Are we sure?’ So…” she eyed him wearing an uneasy grimace “…are we sure?”
He tried to smile as he stroked her hair, to soothe away the grimace, but he suspected his expression ended up a touch complicated. “I appreciate what Eren said, and I empathize with his viewpoint. But I’ve spent my entire adult life risking death for greater causes. This is what I do. It’s who I am.”
“No, priyazn. You choose who you are every day, and no one decides it but you.”
It wasn’t a meaningless platitude coming from her. Her own life—now their lives—served as a daily testament to the truth of it, and how he loved her for it. “And you.”
Her nose scrunched up as she leaned in to rest her head on his shoulder. “Well, maybe a little.”
“Or a lot.” He kissed her temple, letting his lips linger against her skin for a breath. But finally he drew back and bent his elbow to lift his hand between them. They both considered the faint crimson sparkles that appeared above his palm.
He’d been thinking a lot about the diati lately. Not a surprise given the circumstances. When it had first come to him, he had felt like a pawn in a cosmic game, one where the stakes were not his own and the rules of play were hidden from him.
At times he still felt that way, but since the dreams began, his perspective had started to shift. Because Alex was right, more than she realized.
“I don’t know why this power chose me over the Inquisitor. But I think it might have had something to do with who I…choose to be, and the fact I freely make the choice. We’re sure.”
33
ANTLIA DWARF GALAXY
LGG REGION II
* * *
ZORAVAR BAZUK T’YEVK’S HEAD JERKED ABOUT in a violent nodding pantomime as Casmir explained the situation on AD-4508b, the mission and the required outcome.
The Ch’mshak commander sneered an approval when he finished, and Casmir’s stomach churned in disgust. He forced the neutral countenance to remain on his face, however. “You will receive some degree of cover from our hovertanks and CAS fighters, but we can’t deploy stronger weapons for fear of damaging the trees. Your…” he forced the word out “…people will have to do the bulk of the work, and they’ll have to do it on the ground.”
“Why we’re here, yes, Navarchos? Get bloody, we will, and spill much blood in return.”
The guttural barking coming out of the Ch’mshak could hardly be called Communis to any civilized ear, but it sufficed to express intent and inclination. “Yes, it is why you are here. The Kich’s limbs and pincers are dangerous, but their true weapon is their webbing. It will
encase you before you realize it and it is unusually strong, so once trapped it will be extremely difficult to escape.”
T’yevk lifted one of his claws and extended six long, curved talons. “We slice through it.”
Given what Casmir knew about the talons’ capabilities, he suspected it was true—which was one reason why the Ch’mshak were here. Also their size, strength, physical hardiness and vigorous bloodlust.
The Ch’mshak were intelligent enough to organize themselves, recognize hierarchies and build rudimentary settlements. They mated and cared for their offspring and buried their dead. But what they wanted to do was fight and kill.
If unsated for too long, their bloodlust exploded into carnage, and they had only survived as a species long enough to be discovered by Directorate forces because of rapid and copious reproduction. A clan victorious in one of their homeworld conflicts could triple in size before being challenged again.
Such a barbarous species would normally be Eradicated from orbit without hesitation. But their skill in effecting their brutality was uncommonly impressive, particularly for a species sufficiently evolved to understand and even, if incentivized, obey a more refined civilization’s rules.
They were rather the oddity, in fact—capable of functioning within a peaceful, ordered society while desiring nothing more than to rip apart limbs in savagery, to kill and die in rivers of blood.
So a deal was struck. The Directorate agreed not to Eradicate them using their fearsome ‘star-weapons,’ as the Ch’mshak called them, and in return the Ch’mshak agreed to fight on behalf of the Directorate. They agreed not to massacre the Directorate’s citizens, and the Directorate provided them regular outlets for their aggression. Outlets such as this one.
Casmir considered the beast tromping around his conference room, then filed an order for cleaning bots to scour the room as soon as T’yevk departed.
The Ch’mshak commander stood three meters tall and half as thick. They were bipedal walkers but dropped to all fours when running. Their thick hides were impervious to all but the sharpest, most forceful projectiles, but they wore a layer of armor over barreled chests for additional protection. Massive heads that somehow looked almost small atop their enormous bodies sported four eyes, two at the center and two on the sides. Thick, long tusks didn’t quite fit inside mouths framed by strangely full, saliva-coated lips.
Relativity: Aurora Resonant Book One (Aurora Rhapsody 7) Page 22