by Shawn Jones
“I’m trying to be good about that.”
By the end of their walk, they were almost back to the armory.
Cort read her. “Now that we understand each other, would you like to see what you didn’t see?”
“What?” Biyadiq was confused for just moment. Then she remembered, and chided herself for letting him surprise her. The manipulative warrior walked her through the entire enemy ship, patiently lowering her guard the entire time, making her think her suspicions were unfounded, then this?
“You think you can trust me with that?”
Cort pointed at his neck. It was hard to tell from her skin tone, but he suspected Biyadiq was blushing.
Curtly, Salana said, “I really don’t like you reading my mind, General Addison.”
“Believe me, I don’t like it either, Salana. I showed you parts of the Erom ship because I didn’t want to hit you with too much information at once. It’s is no longer a mystery to you, so you can focus on what I want you to see.”
“What are you hiding?”
“First, George has printed a CONDOR for you.”
“A CONDOR?”
Cort turned into the armory and led her to the armor locker next to his own. She noticed her name was written on it, over another name she didn’t recognize. “Meet the CONDOR-m, Salana. M is for medical. You have just as much armor as the combat version, a small mounted weapon, and everything you could possibly need to act as a field medic, or take care of me on the surface.”
Salana walked around the suit. It was nearly identical to a standard CONDOR, but without the usual weapon mounts. Without its camouflage activated, the suit was a light shade of red, with white crosses on the front, back, and both shoulders. Cort explained the modifications that George had made for the medical suit, included a stokes mount, additional internal and external ports for the delivery of biosynthetics, and an enhanced sensor suite. He showed Salana how to put the armor on, and activate it. Then Cort donned his own suit and they walked past two Marines at a security airlock, and back onto the Erom ship.
Cort opened a channel to Salana and reminded her to use the command channel, and not the speaker set on her suit. She was too excited to learn the new system to complain about having the order repeated to her for a third time. They approached two other CONDORs, who watched four Erom working on the damage.
One of the CONDORs turned to greet them. “Hi, Salana. Nice outfit.”
The voice startled the doctor, and she turned to find its source. She saw Kim’s name on the HUD, overlaid on the CONDOR standing closest to them. “Kim? You have armor?”
The HUD identified the other CONDOR as RemOper, which she quickly learned meant Remote Operator, as controlled by George from a node of his gel core. Cort monitored her to make sure she didn’t abuse the suit or its surroundings as she got used to her new tech.
“I’ve ordered George to learn everything he can from them. Anytime you see an Erom outside of their berth, George is controlling one of the CONDORs that escort them. Kim or I will be in the other, because I want a human to be on hand as well. We can sometimes pick up on nuances that George doesn’t.”
Kim told Salana they would like her to be one of the observers for the Erom work detail as well, but only if she was willing to qualify with a weapon. “You probably won’t need it, George can handle anything you might face, but it’s a job requirement for that suit. Even to be a medic.”
Salana started to speak, but Cort stopped her. “No. Don’t decide now. Just think about it. We can talk tomorrow, and you can decide if you even want to consider weapons training.”
—
The next morning, Cort had coffee while he watched Salana and Kim don their armor. Cort thought Kim might be more patient than he would, teaching the peacenik how to use a gun. He was right about her. Salana’s hunger for tech and knowledge was stronger than her hatred of violence. She wanted to wear that armor so much, that she was willing to at least learn how to use a gun, if not actually use it.
Kim walked her through the use of the small, shoulder-mounted weapon. She showed Salana how to activate it with her HUD, then aim and fire it. The mounted system was more intuitive than a handheld weapon, so both Cort and Kim thought it might be easier for Salana to adapt to.
Salana listened to Kim with rapt attention, but consciously kept her mind occupied with thoughts of biosynthetics. Cort wasn’t going to read her mind while she trained to kill, if she could prevent it.
Kim stepped up to the armory's firing line, and, talking through each step, used the weapon to score forty-six out of fifty on the five target, ten points per target, qualifying range.
Cort beamed with pride. His wife scored as well as any of his Marines could have, given the fact that the system had been built specifically for Salana’s CONDOR. Other than Cort himself, no one had ever worked with the smaller ballistic weapon.
Salana walked to the firing line, activated her HUD, and began firing, with deadly focus. Three seconds later, all five targets showed tens; Salana had fired a perfect score.
Cort muttered, “Fuck me.”
Salana turned around and looked at Cort. “Given what happened in the other universe, General, you might want to consider a new turn of phrase.”
She walked toward him, pointed at a MAT rifle and said, “May I?”
Somewhat dumbfounded, Cort shook his head and raised a hand. “By all means.”
“By the time I was born, the Multiple Ammunition Tactical rifle was the most proven weapon in human history.”
Kim took her helmet off and sat down beside Cort. They watched Salana use the firing range for ten minutes. Kim bumped his CONDOR-clad shoulder with her own and said, “You know, she’s right. You need a new exclamation. That one isn’t going to cut it anymore.”
He turned his head and faced her. There was no anger in her words. No pain in her mind. Kim was just stating a fact. Cort was not going to use that phrase ever again. He turned back to Salana just as she threw a handgun at him.
With a grin, she said, “Clean that for me, okay?”
Cort smiled. “This is why you were mentally programming synthetics earlier; you didn’t want me to know you were about to make an ass of me. I thought you hated guns.”
“You made the ass out of yourself. You should have let me talk yesterday, when Kim first asked me if I would qualify.”
Salana looked at her score. Nine hundred and ninety two points, out of a possible thousand. “I hate war. I know it’s necessary sometimes, but I hate it. Nonetheless, I’m not foolish enough to walk into a warzone without knowing the tools of the trade.”
The solvent Cort used to clean the handgun smelled remarkably similar to what Cort imagined crow must taste like. When they were finished, he ordered George to print Salana a full weapons kit, and offered to make the two women breakfast.
As the armory locked behind them, Kim said, “But seriously, stud, I’m the only person you can ever say that to again.” She hooked her arm in Salana’s and said, “You made an ass out me too, you know.”
Cort realized that Salana was Kim’s first true friend since Heroc had died defending Dalek.
—
Rai had his hands full on the surface. Nature conspired against him when the exos found a freshwater lake and the river it fed. They attached to hundreds of thousands of fingerling fish, and on the way down the river, the fingerlings were fed upon by other members of the planet’s food chain. The exos exploited the system to spread across the surface at a rate neither George nor the Ares fighters could keep up with. Less than a day in rank, and I’ve already blown it.
He put his helmet on and looked at the corner of his HUD. A blink connected him to Cort. After relating the turn of events, Rai sent the latest imagery to Cort, and apologized for losing containment.
Looking at the map, Cort was reminded of his grandmother's varicose veins. Only these veins reached across two continents and were spreading rapidly. He commed Clem, and told him to keep training th
e Neanderthals, but to focus on military protocol as a whole, not the mission at hand. When Clem asked why, Cort looked back down at the map, and said, “We’ve lost the surface. Start training them for security.”
He saw several dozen exos moving rapidly across the surface and zoomed in on the area. To no one in particular, he muttered, “Fuck.”
He reconnected with Rai and told the captain to pull his men back to elevator sites. “They are airborne. Birds must have gone for the fish.”
“I’m sorry, sir. This is my fault.”
“No Captain. This is war. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. We’re losing right now. Redeploy your people and get back up here. We have to figure out how to keep them on the surface until we can evacuate the planet.”
—
Sun did not want to help the humans. They may have saved xyr people, but that didn’t mean xe trusted them. Repairing the ship was necessary, no matter what though. Weapons were another concern; fortunately, the concern was not xyrs.
And the one called Ares—their leader—he was single-minded. His goals were not dependent on Erom survival. And the damned fool had destroyed the ship! Ares—what was the meaning of his name? Fool? Ass? Bloom trusted Ares. Sun trusted no one. The Ares leader may be better than the parasites, but for whom?
His damnable sword! How did a metal blade do such damage? The Erom could graft to one another with such an edge. At least the fool’s blade made the repairs easier. If only there were not so many to be made.
—
“Can you imagine never aging?” Kim asked at lunch. They were talking about Dvok.
“That's not the part about Dvok’s story that gets me,” Cort said. “I’m getting hung up on reproduction.”
Salana asked, “What do you mean?”
Cort shook his head and commented that at some point in development, a fetus goes from being a parasite to a dependent, but separate being. To him, it seemed like that knowledge alone would stop the abortion debate that still raged among the religious in the Ares Federation.
“That’s the moment a soul must be imparted to the child. But for them, it’s also the moment the child stops developing. Pretty heavy.”
“Heavy?” Biyadiq asked.
“A term from my time. It means, hell, I dunno. It means thought inspiring, I guess.”
“Oh. In my time the term was probably epochal.”
“Have you started reading history yet, Salana?” Kim asked.
She was reading about the Cull, a time when extremists from two historical and religious enemies had combined their efforts to kill all of humanity. She told her dining companions that she wasn’t sure humanity was worth saving. In turn, Cort reminded her about Dvok’s sphere, that humanity had saved, at least temporarily, another species.
“I suppose.”
Bane stood up in the other room and walked over to Salana. He sniffed her leg then rested his head on it, staring at her. She said, “I thought dogs wouldn’t hold your gaze. This one stares at me as if he is looking into my soul.”
Kim explained that Bane was a wolf, and that while domesticated dogs were naturally submissive to humans, wolves demanded a human earn their place in pack hierarchy. She introduced the smaller wolf as Shart, and suggested Salana not ask about the name.
“I thought they were extinct.”
Cort explained to Salana about Sköll, his first wolf. Sköll had been a grey, and when Cort arrived in the future, he learned that canine species were extinct. Sköll’s DNA was used to reestablish the species.
Cort felt an emotion from Salana that reminded him of their earlier talk. She said, “General, I’ve considered asking you to take me back to my time. I know that’s not possible though. I recognize that you wouldn’t allow it, and to be honest, experiencing the future is appealing to me. But I do have a request.”
“Okay.”
She reached down and scratched behind Bane’s ear. Then she asked for a wolf. Cort smiled and suggested she learn about pack politics, and wolf care, along with Diane, since he planned to give her a wolf as well, once he saved her.
“Thank you. Why don’t you have a pet, Kim?”
“They aren’t pets. Don’t forget that. If you’d rather have a pet dog, that can arranged, too. But wolves are companion animals. There is a difference. I did have one that I lost to a dinosaur on Solitude. I’m not ready for another one yet.”
“A dinosaur?” Salana asked. “They are real?”
Cort showed her his flexpad, and several of the dinosaur species on Solitude.
“I heard Dalek talking about them, but I thought it was just a child’s tale.”
“Nope. You’ll see real, live, dinosaurs soon enough.”
Eleven
In Ceram’s office, the insectoid explained to Cort how the new synthetics would kill the exos, and why they were safe for the planet. Cort was only half-heartedly listening, though. Instead, his thoughts were about Solitude and the life he could build there with those important to him. He changed screens on his flexpad and looked at the genetic profiles of the refugees. Solitude was going to have a more diverse human genome than post-cull Earth would. Diane is going to flip over the little dinosaurs. Diane...precious time needed to rescue her is being used to save the Threm. But I have to save them. His pulse raced and blood flooded his brain at the thought of losing the opportunity to be reunited with his daughter.
He switched to another screen on his flexpad and brought up a map of Solitude. In ten years, he could double the population. He looked at the other species. By the time I die, I can have a hundred thousand humans, and a thousand Nill. Hell there will be a million Jaifans. I could even let the Erom breed. If they wanted to work together, great. If they didn’t, each species could have their own continent. The Erom would thrive in the volcanic zones.
He thought about the coming war with the Cuplans. By that time...
Kim sat beside him and saw something in Cort’s eyes. There was pain, but there was also a look of realization. He crumpled to the ground as Ceram dropped to his side. A moment later , he was on a medical bed, with Ceram and Biyadiq bent over him.
“What’s wrong, Ceram?” Kim asked.
Ceram placed a band around Cort’s skull and activated it. Cort’s body twitched, his eyes blinking rapidly. Ceram showed Kim a flexpad. The temperature in the center of Cort’s brain was fluctuating.
The blinking stopped and Cort said, “I’m a god.”
Kim was pale, and Salana took her hand, as if to say, “I told you he was crazy.”
“Baby?”
Cort repeated himself, saying he was a god, at least to the Threm. He told them there was a five hundred meter tall statue of him in one of their underground cities. He sensed doubt from them all, but dismissed it and kept talking. Cort had to save the planet, because in the future, he would be a god—a living god who had saved their entire planet.
“Baby, no. It didn’t happen that way.”
Cort asked for his flexpad and tapped his ear. Kim was getting agitated. Cort could read her doubt. “No, Kim. It’s okay. George, send the imagery from the Threm temple to your mom’s flexpad.”
“I cannot, Father. You made me promise.”
Cort told Kim it was about paradox. “That was why George wouldn’t sync with his core. He knew things that would alter his core’s first interaction with me. It would also affect how I fought the alien ship.” George couldn’t tell them when he was asked about it.
“Kim, listen. George’s core on Solitude doesn’t know us yet. It won’t for more than three centuries. But if our George syncs with it, then it will just be waiting for us. It might reach out to us sooner, and some other species, or maybe Bazal, will interact with it differently. That could change our timeline.”
George was hesitant to release the imagery stored in his memory, but Cort told him he didn’t know how to beat the exos, and if that information was in George’s gel memory, they needed it. “Are you ordering me to release the files, Father?”
“No, Son. I’m asking you to follow your own conscience.”
It was a long moment before George said, “I will send them to Mother.”
Before Kim could open her flexpad, Cort looked at the medicos. He told them not to talk to anyone about what was happening. Things had to happen a certain way, in accordance with George’s knowledge of the Threm temple. Information there outlined how Cort fought and beat the exos.
“We just have to follow the script. That’s what George has been protecting. Otherwise, I don’t become their god.”
With wide, incredulous eyes, Biyadiq said, “You are truly insane.”
Kim turned her flexpad around, her own skin even paler. “No, Salana. He’s not. To them, to the Threm, he’s really about to become a god.” The image there was of an impossibly tall statue of Cort, with Bane sitting on one side of him. Cort’s sword crossed the wolf’s neck, and a lifeless exoskeleton hung from his other hand.