It was nearly time for the next internal pep talk, so he raised a hopeful eyebrow. “Do you happen to bring any late-breaking nuggets of information tailor-made to save our asses?”
Devon gestured vaguely and collapsed in a chair. “A few nuggets, though I doubt they’ll make or break anything. The Theriz regenesis lab at Chomar has a quirky power generator somebody will need to disable before they infiltrate the lab—if they’re infiltrating it rather than simply blowing it up. Also, the Machim regenesis lab in Triangulum has two extra layers of shielding beyond what’s standard, because the Machim are so hardcore. You should have the details around about…now.”
The next second he did. He looked plaintively at Will, who nodded with more vigor than he had any right to display. “I’ll work these details in to the briefing materials.”
“Thanks.” He returned his gaze to Devon; the young man could have sent the files over through the system, which meant the visit had a larger purpose. “What else is on your mind?”
“Figures that you’d be wise to me the instant I showed up. I know now’s not the ideal time to be making long-term life plans, but I am anyway. When this is all over, whatever the result—assuming it’s not the annihilation of humanity—I want to come work for you guys. For SENTRI. And maybe occasionally for ASCEND, too, but mostly for SENTRI.”
Will nudged his workscreen to the side so he had an unobstructed view of Devon. “We’d be thrilled to have you, but the work might be tamer than what you’ve grown accustomed to. I don’t think Richard’s had to draw a weapon once since we formed SENTRI.”
Devon’s expression looked pained. “ ‘What I’ve grown accustomed to’ is madness, and I have come to the conclusion that it’s going to be the end of me if I keep chasing after it. In the last two years people have tried to kill me at least half a dozen times, and I’ve killed more than half a dozen people. I’ve been mind-hacked, punched, stabbed and shot at. I’ve been the second human-AI hybrid lab experiment, an interstellar battlefield commander, a fugitive from justice and the spiritual leader of a revolution.” He sighed. “Forgive me if I sort of just want to be a coder and quantum ware troubleshooter again.”
Richard smiled kindly. “Nothing to forgive. No one will fault you for wanting a little peace.”
“And the thing is, there’s going to be so much work to do. Even if we don’t become best buds with our neighbors here across the portal, the knowledge we’ve gained from them will keep us busy for years—or decades if you don’t have me working on it. Some of their systems and methodologies are arbitrarily backwards and limited, but it’s only because of the whole dictatorship thing. Their understanding of dimensions and quantum mechanics and subatomic particles is aeons beyond ours. Then there’s all the medical-biological stuff.
“What I’m saying is, we can improve our systems—our computers, our algorithms, our data storage and analysis—by magnitudes of awesome using what we’ve learned here. Our cybernetics, tech and random gadgets, too. Oh, and our surveillance capabilities. Obviously. Hence, me working for you guys.”
Devon wasn’t wrong on any particular point; more importantly, he wasn’t wrong in his overarching perspective. “Are you certain you don’t want to go to work for one of the big research companies? Or, hell, start your own? You’d make a lot more money taking the private route. Plus, you’d be invited to fancy cocktail parties.” He winked at Will. “We never get invited to fancy cocktail parties.”
“Hate those. Don’t tell Emily. Yeah, I could go private, but I think I’d enjoy your kind of work. I like the underlying theme you’ve got going on of secrets and subterfuge and danger, because, you know, former revolutionary leader. I also like the notion that I’ll be helping people, in a more concrete way than a vague ‘making the world a better place’ ethos. Also, you need me. Back when you first met me, I told you I was better than a synthetic at spotting patterns and incongruities—well, you should see me these days. Now, I know we’re all super busy, so what do you say? Unofficially.”
He checked Will to find him shaking his head, which meant yes rather than no. “You’ve evidently given this a lot of thought. Okay. Whenever the current crisis is over and if SENTRI still has a place in the world that emerges, you have a job waiting on you. We’ll try to keep you from getting too bored.”
“Thanks. Oh, on a related note? Annie’s asking for a bit of new hardware when the time comes. She wants to work, too, and supposedly there isn’t enough real estate in my brain for the work she plans to do. I’m skeptical, but if she wants shiny new quantum orbs, I can’t refuse her.”
Richard shrugged. The technicals of how some portion of Annie was going to get back out of Devon’s brain and back into hardware would be beyond his comprehension even if someone explained them to him, so he didn’t ask. “I’m sure we can arrange some new equipment.”
Devon jumped up from the chair. “Great. On to the revolution, then. Not mine. Theirs.”
“David, you are not joining one of the tactical combat squads.”
“Is that an order, Commandant?”
His smirk suggested the question might be meant in jest this time, but Miriam didn’t intend to take any chances. “Yes. It is. You hadn’t led a ground mission in eight years when you took command of the Stalwart. Knifing enemies in the gut and hoping bruises are the worst you walk away with is for the young, and you haven’t been young in a lot longer than twenty-five years.”
“Then give me a ship. I don’t need a cruiser or even a frigate. In fact, I’d prefer something small, so I can pilot it myself. But I need to be out there—I need to contribute to this operation, and I need to do it from somewhere other than a command center. You don’t need me advising you. You’re leagues better than I ever was at seeing the big picture and using it to command your way to victory. Where you can use my help is out on the front line.”
Miriam groaned and sank onto the edge of the couch in their quarters. “Have you spent any time in a simulator?”
“You think I’ve forgotten how to fly?”
“No, but in case you hadn’t noticed, AEGIS ships have a fair bit of new technology powering them. A lot of the pesky details have changed since you were last in a cockpit.”
He tapped his temple with a fingernail. “I know. Even spent some time living in the circuitry of one of those state-of-the-art ships.”
She glared at him. She hadn’t forgotten that before he’d again been flesh and blood, he’d been quantum and virtual. The truth was…all his arguments were perfectly valid, and all completely beside the point. Her voice lowered a notch. “What if something happens to you?”
“No one is better at flying a ship than I am—no one but Alex. And possibly Commander Lekkas. Nothing’s going to happen to me.”
“Oh? The last time you captained a ship, you died.” Her chin dropped to her chest. “I’m not questioning your competence in battle or your flying expertise. I understand full well the mastery of a gamut of skills that was required for you to save over four thousand lives during an active assault.”
Silence answered her for a span. The silence of decades lived in the shadow of a single fateful act.
But now, on the other side of those decades, he was here to end the silence. “Should I have left them to die?”
“No.” She shook her head firmly. “Each one of us takes on the responsibility of dying to save others the day we join the military.”
He fell to his knees in front of her, close enough to touch. “Then what should I have done instead?”
“ ‘Should’? Exactly what you did. But I reserve the right to be hypocritical on this particular topic. I wish you had instead been a coward. Fled. Or saved the first few hundred lives and called it a day.”
He canted his head and looked up, trying to catch her gaze. “I wish I could have. So much. But I would never have been able to live with myself if I had run away.”
“I know. And it was never about the medals or the accolades, it was merely your nature
. You could never not be heroic….” Her chin slowly rose until she met his stare straight-on. Her lips parted to allow a whisper to escape them. “You still can’t, can you?”
“Not be heroic? Knowing the likely consequences, I frankly hope I never face such a choice again. But if I do?” He shrugged ponderously. “I don’t see how.”
She lifted a hand and gently touched his mouth with her fingertips. “Because it’s truly you in there, isn’t it?”
He fought a frown. “All this time, you’ve continued to doubt?”
She winced. “Doubt is not the proper word. Rather than doubt, I simply decided that you were ‘close enough.’ Closer than I’d ever had any right to dream of having in my life. In every way…‘close enough.’ ” Her hand trailed down over his chin and along his neck to rest flat against his chest. “But you’re not just a blueprint drawn by genes and memories. You’re not just a schem flow of a functioning mind. Your consciousness is in here. Your soul, tangible or not, is in here.”
Perhaps seeing and comprehending the meaning of the new light in her eyes and lightness in her voice, he smiled as he placed a hand over hers. “You forgot to include my heart, dushen’ka.”
She chuckled faintly, dropped her forehead to his and…let go. Let go of the reservations, the fears, the meticulously crafted wall guarding her spirit. Because she could. It was okay. Here, with him, she didn’t need to be afraid. Afraid of the pain lurking in the next shadow. Afraid of the cost of exposing herself. Afraid of committing everything she was and losing it all. Outside the cabin door, there were plenty of hazards waiting to be feared; outside a host of concerns and obligations and responsibilities awaited her. But here, he could be her sanctuary once again.
Her hand rose to curve around his neck as his wound into her hair. Her lips brushed across his cheek on the way to his ear. “Don’t you dare say, ‘Hi, Miri.’ ”
He shifted his body to demand her lips with his. “Why not? It’s apropos. Endearing, too. Arguably clever.”
“Too clever by half,” she murmured against them. “You can have one of the new Rasant fast attack craft. The AFS Amberg needs a captain—the officer assigned to it was scratched from the roster at the last minute for medical reasons.”
“That’s perfect. Thank you, my love i moya nastoyatel’.”
ANARCH POST SATUS
LOCATION UNKNOWN
Nisi stood staring out the viewports of his office, hands clasped at the base of his spine. It was a pose he reverted to so often that Caleb dared not guess what it indicated now. He didn’t turn around, so Caleb waited.
“You are going to kill my son.”
“I am.”
“Then you will do what I could not.” Finally he turned to Caleb wearing an almost sad countenance. “It must happen if Amaranthe is to have any chance of moving forward on some better path than the one the Directorate chose for it. More than and irrespective of this, he deserves to die. He has murdered so many people who were dear to me. He has murdered thousands who were dear to others and oppressed trillions more. He has grown mad from power, but in truth he was never a good man.”
Nisi’s gaze drifted away once again. “Still, I feel sorrow. He is my son, and his mistakes are my mistakes. His flaws, my flaws. Now I have sentenced him to death, yet I am forced to ask others to carry out the sentence and correct the mistakes that I lack the power, and possibly the will, to remedy.”
Caleb bit his lower lip to suppress a groan. “I don’t want to presume too much, but it’s possible you’re stretching the ‘sins of the father’ motif a bit far.”
“Perhaps you are right, so we will let it rest there for now. Are you prepared to handle the additional diati we can assume will become yours when he falls?”
“As ready as I can be. I could travel around confronting Inquisitors and drawing in their diati for the next century, and my power still would not compare to his, so ‘prepared’ doesn’t have much meaning in this context.”
“Have you discussed with your people the possibility of sending someone else after him? A team, of course, highly armed and—” Nisi stopped and shook his head “—but even the most skilled combat team would be decimated. An antimatter bomb dropped from orbit would not kill Renato. No, you are the only one who can kill him, for you are the only one who can rob him of the diati which protects him.”
“That was my conclusion as well.”
Nisi nodded. “Nevertheless, be prepared for the aftermath to be difficult. When the diati first joined with me—without asking for permission—I destroyed a city block. Then another city block. Or rather, I should say the diati destroyed several city blocks, acting through me. Neither of us intended the destruction, for it was merely a byproduct of the struggle to find some sort of workable symbiosis, but it resulted nonetheless.”
“I won’t struggle. Also, I’ve already cleared those hurdles. If his diati insists on coming to me—and I hope it doesn’t—the diati I possess will ease the transition.”
Nisi dipped his chin. “Nevertheless. I cannot say if Renato now controls more or less diati than I once did, but I can say this: the diati present on Solum today is magnitudes greater in strength. Though it does not procreate in the way we imagine, as diati has passed through endless generations into ever greater numbers of Praesidis, it has expanded and multiplied.”
Caleb sighed. He understood that for a man like Nisi, being consigned to watch from afar as the fates of his universe, his people and his family were decided was a difficult burden to bear. But the endless admonitions weren’t helpful.
“Then I won’t get close to any more residents than I have to in order to complete the mission. Respectfully, sir, all these concerns you’re voicing? None of them matter. You said it yourself: your son, the Praesidis Primor, must die, and I’m the only one who can kill him. Reality can be a cruel master at times, but it is our master all the same. So I’ll do what must be done.
“As for the rest? Maybe I’ll pay a price, maybe not. I don’t know what exactly will happen when he dies, but any experienced soldier or agent will tell you that you never know what surprises a mission is going to throw at you. I’m good at improvising—it’s surely one reason why the diati chose me. Whatever happens, I’ll find a way through it.”
32
AFS STALWART II
TARACH STELLAR SYSTEM
* * *
MIRIAM STOOD ALONE in the conference room. Her words were what would matter, not her appearance, and her audience numbered in the tens of thousands. So many would never fit in the conference room, therefore….
She activated the fleet-wide comm channel.
“This is Commandant Solovy. I speak to you now as you embark on the largest and most complex military operation any of us have ever taken part in. This is no longer maneuver warfare, and all our manpower and firepower, our every talent and asset, must now be focused on our objective.
“There is no time or space for flowery words of inspiration, and you don’t need me to motivate you. You know why we are here and why we must succeed today. What you need from me is to tell you how we are going to achieve victory.
“We have thirty-two separate mission targets spread across five galaxies: three regenesis facilities for each Primor, plus the Primors themselves. The mission profile for each target is unique, but they all are designed to work in concert to achieve a single overarching goal: the permanent elimination of the Directorate.
“The eight mission teams each consist of four subgroups, each one responsible for a single target. Every mission team will be multi-galactic in nature, as in every case a Primor maintains at least one regenesis location in a galaxy different from that of their home planet. This is done as a security measure, but we will overcome their security. Eight Caeles Prisms are now in operation, and we will use them all.
“We will also enjoy the assistance of our allies. Anarch agents will be taking on active roles whenever possible. The elimination of their rulers is, after all, their right. The Katask
etousya will be devoting the entirety of their available vessels to this operation. Furthermore, the Novoloume are contributing twelve thousand armed and crewed warships to the operation.
“Make no mistake—even with our every resource deployed, we face a daunting task. Our targets will be heavily fortified, and we will not have the luxury of time to defeat them, for the timing required is as tight as it is critical.
“In the simplest terms, a Primor cannot be eliminated until all three of their associated facilities are destroyed—or immediately before, under the assumption they would then be eliminated with the facility. However, they also must be eliminated swiftly once the strikes begin, else they will go to ground to equip new facilities for their regenesis, and we will find ourselves back where we started. This means we have a very short window in which to accomplish a great deal, one measured in minutes rather than hours.
“We succeed, and we will have freed dozens of galaxies and species from tyranny. We succeed, and we will have saved our home, our friends and our loved ones from the looming threat of annihilation. We succeed, and everyone has a future. So let’s get it done.”
AFS TAMAO
TARACH STELLAR SYSTEM
David took a shuttle from the Stalwart II to the carrier AFS Tamao, where his little Rasant was berthed. During the short trip over, he chatted with several of the servicepeople on the shuttle. Though he knew none of them, they all seemed to know him.
To their credit, only one person asked him if he’d started craving human flesh yet. He responded by saying he’d always craved human flesh, even in his first life, but luckily they made eVi palliative routines for that sort of thing. It had gotten the desired laugh from everyone in earshot, and he added ‘witty banter with strangers’ to the list of his skills that hadn’t completely atrophied.
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