by Jerry Aubin
“Fellow members of the Council—have you all forgotten the actual wording of the Collective Pact? We pledged to never launch an unprovoked attack. Nine billion of our people died at the hands of the monsters who built that ship! If Adan’s Destruction isn’t sufficient provocation for me to act as I did, what exactly would be?”
A sizeable number of those around the room appeared sympathetic to Rilee’s rationale, but they were outnumbered by attendees who remained stoic and unyielding. The story of Adan’s Destruction was a cornerstone of their society, but it had become painfully obvious over the millennia of her travels that fewer and fewer people who remained on Earth truly appreciated its impact. It was likely an inevitable outcome as the population grew to be dominated by those born long after their homeworld was restored to its former glory, but it frustrated Rilee nonetheless. Even more so given how the Leadership Council was once again under the control of Randel. Someone who had experienced it all firsthand should have known better. He spoke.
“Everyone here respects your dedication and passion, Rilee, but I must insist that you observe Council protocol and return to your seat.”
Rilee wanted to ignore the directive, but as Randel’s lips curled into a self-satisfied sneer she reconsidered and moved to sit. She attempted to signal her disrespect by walking straight through the man’s body a second time, but he stepped aside as she approached and denied her the satisfaction. Once Rilee was seated, Randel gestured towards a man across the room who spoke.
“Our ants have battled the occupants of Adan’s asteroid across many planets through the years, and the Council’s stance has always been to take the vessel by force if one of our ships ever encountered it. Your actions today forced us to revisit that longstanding position, and we discovered there’s no longer a consensus. Fortunately, your engagement with the vessel was limited and they’ve disappeared once again, so an immediate resolution from the Council is not necessary.”
Now it was Rilee’s turn to grin in satisfaction. “The asteroid has not disappeared. It left the system, but my sensor team discovered what appears to be a trail. We’re not yet certain we’ll be able to find them, but right now I believe we will.”
The man paused for a deep sigh before he continued. “Well then, that changes things and we’re forced back into making a decision.” He looked around the room and received silent nods of agreement from a half dozen members. “I lead the Homeworld Security Committee that is responsible for evaluating this situation. Our formal recommendation is that you should track the ship if possible but that we must begin a full debate with the entire Council before allowing you to take any additional direct action.”
The man sat down and Rilee shook her head in disbelief.
“These people tried to destroy our planet, and you want me to just follow them around while the lot of you argue about whether we should fight back?”
“That’s the problem, Rilee. It most likely wasn’t the people on that ship right now who fired those nukes.” Rilee’s heart beat faster in response to the condescension dripping from Randel’s voice. “I shouldn’t have to remind you, of all people, how violently opposed Adan and all of the other citizens of the West were to our Upload technology and the concept of moving from Skin to Skin. That fact strongly suggests the people running that asteroid right now are hundreds of generations removed from those who did us wrong. Is it really our place to make Adan’s descendants pay the ultimate price for his treachery?”
“You’re acting like they might have become peaceful explorers at this point when we’re certain they’re anything but. They’ve repeatedly attacked our ants without provocation, and they’ve similarly assaulted other species as well. Doesn’t that suggest their culture is just as dangerous today as it was back then and should be stopped now that we might finally have the opportunity?”
There was momentary silence and a number of members squirmed at Rilee’s observation. Finally, the youngest woman on the Council spoke.
“You raise a valid point, Rilee. However, we find ourselves curious if perhaps we just need to help the residents of that asteroid find their way. They must believe that they are but one ship traveling the stars all by themselves. As such, they likely feel threatened by many situations we would instead consider to be opportunities. Our society has had the benefit of so many ships like yours traveling the cosmos and relaying valuable knowledge back to Earth. Many of us believe that if we have an opening to share all that we’ve learned with the people on that asteroid, they’ll understand the error of their exploitive ways and become better representatives of our species.”
Heads nodded around the room and Rilee was able to evaluate the sentiment she was up against. The woman didn’t appear to speak for the majority, but it was a sufficiently large bloc of the Council’s youngest members to stymie a vote. Rilee faced a steep challenge to sway enough opinions, but past experience had proven their deliberations would be painfully slow and provide her plenty of time. She stood.
“I must return to my bridge to participate in our hunt for the asteroid. If indeed we’ve discovered a means of tracking them, I will follow the will of the Council and not engage them directly until I successfully convince you to allow otherwise.”
Rilee cut the transmission. She stood and stretched to reorient her senses back to her physical body. Her last comment was probably not the smartest from a political perspective, but she wanted to put Randel on notice that she was coming for him. Many thousands of years earlier she had used bold action to align the Council’s perspectives with her own, and she committed herself to finding a path that would achieve that outcome yet again.
22
Ma’am—the asteroid just launched a missile!
“Why the hell am I just learning about this now? It’s been more than seventy-two hours already!”
Rilee tried to modulate her voice, but it was clear from Kalyn’s expression that she hadn’t succeeded. Numerous discussions, many heated, had occurred over the previous weeks in an attempt to repair the rift that had formed between the longtime friends. Rilee believed Kalyn’s actions in reporting back to the Council after their initial encounter with Adan’s asteroid were a massive betrayal of trust. Her lieutenant had genuinely believed she was fulfilling her duty to the Collective Pact in response to actions which she considered illegal and immoral. Their relationship had naturally undergone stress through their countless years together, but it had never experienced such a serious blowup. It was only within the last day that Kalyn had been allowed back to her post on the bridge. The woman took a breath and replied.
“This is not to criticize your earlier decisions about my status, ma’am, but this delay happened because I wasn’t here to be sure we were aware of all critical information. Somewhere along the chain, your order to keep the soldier ants hidden was not fully communicated. We Uploaded a trainee into the queen, and he defaulted to the regular deployment protocol and sent a soldier out on patrol. Fortunately, his supervisor blocked the release of any alarm pheromones and prevented a full-blown battle, but analysis of drone footage revealed that a member of their landing party was killed. This was confirmed by surveillance from orbit that showed their landing shuttle ejecting a body into space on its way back to the asteroid.”
Rilee was displeased by Kalyn’s explanation but was forced to agree with her assessment. The weeks since they first encountered Adan’s asteroid had been a blur of intelligence gathering for the crew of the Oceania, and it was no shock that some important signals had been lost in the sheer volume of noise. It had started when the gravitational anomalies had indeed led them to the ship, ironically catching up with it back in the same system where their initial encounter had taken place.
While they observed the asteroid’s search and rescue activities amongst the wreckage of its fighters, Rilee’s crew made a critical discovery. The anomalies which had allowed them to follow the asteroid were transient. The starting point to the trail they had followed had become undetectable b
y the time they returned to the white dwarf. If Rilee was to keep the asteroid from disappearing back into the vast universe, she would have to remain on its trail at all times.
Rilee needed to stick close but evade discovery. This meant that all of their surveillance was performed while Oceania remained far beyond any reasonable estimate of the asteroid’s effective sensor range. They relied on a constellation of miniature stealth drones to closely track the ship and relay back massive amounts of intelligence data.
Eventually the asteroid departed the white dwarf and, after two days of nonstop tracking, Oceania caught up with the ship at a system Rilee had coincidentally visited previously. A thousand years earlier it had been incapable of supporting human life, but generations of ants had terraformed the planet and it was finally nearing the stage at which a colony would be established. Rilee had officially traveled to the planet decades earlier to evaluate the ants’ handiwork but with the ulterior motive of marveling at the massive carnivorous trees the planet was famous for. That first trip had ended after a minor disaster when they lost one of their best pilots and his fighter in a training accident, and Rilee had left expecting to never visit the system again. She was weighing different responses to Kalyn when the sensor team leader called out in alarm.
“Ma’am—the asteroid just launched a missile!”
“What? How did they discover us?”
“It’s not coming for us, ma’am. It appears to be targeted at the surface of the planet.”
Kalyn jumped in. “Alert all drones on the surface—emergency ascent to fifty kilometers! Orient all sensors to the ground and give us full spectrum analysis of any detonations.”
The bridge went silent as everyone performed their duties. Rilee kept her eyes locked on the primary display tracking the inbound missile. Once it reached the atmosphere, the missile unveiled its deadly cargo and fifty independent warheads began their inexorable descent. Rilee became momentarily lightheaded as she recalled similar sights that had been burned into her memory thousands of years earlier. She had been powerless to stop Adan’s Destruction back then, so it pained her all that much more to stand by while his asteroid nuked yet another planet when she could have ended the threat weeks earlier. She called out.
“What’s the targeting analysis on the warheads?”
“It’s a full spread against the primary landmass, ma’am. Assuming those are nukes, our ants will be ash in two minutes along with the whole continent.”
Rilee rose and spoke sharply as she stomped towards her meeting room. “Comms—I need to address an emergency session of the Leadership Council!”
The connection was finalizing as Rilee sat down, and she sat back and observed the Council chamber fill up with the other attendees. More of her fellow members were present in virtual fashion than had been during their last meeting, but Randel paced around the middle of the room in his physical form as he had before. Once she noted that a quorum had formed, Rilee jumped up and spoke.
“I have followed the orders of this Council and have trailed Adan’s asteroid without revealing my presence or taking any direct action. As a result, I’ve stood idly by as the ship’s occupants just unleashed a nuclear attack on yet another planet. I regret to inform the Council that Terraforming Colony 597C has been obliterated.”
Rilee paused to let her words sink in. Around the chamber, almost no one who had previously blocked taking action against the asteroid would make eye contact with her. Most focused down at their feet while a few stared blankly ahead. The only exception was the youngest member of the Council who met Rilee’s gaze when it was directed at her. The young woman stood and addressed the chamber.
“I hear the frustration and torment in your voice, Rilee. I can only imagine how very hard it must be for you to realize you caused this tragedy thanks to the careless mistake of one of your ant operators.”
Rilee’s heart pounded. She didn’t know if she was more angry at the young woman laying the blame at her feet or the realization that she had a mole within her crew who was leaking information. She waited to reply until she gathered her thoughts and was confident of delivering them with sufficient composure.
“Yes, we had an unfortunate error that led to an ant soldier attacking the asteroid’s landing party. I will accept full responsibility for that. It’s absurd, however, to believe that nuking an entire continent is a reasonable reaction to a single death. How can we conclude this situation is anything but further proof that the inhabitants of that vessel are still as dangerous and destructive as they were when it was Adan at the helm and he murdered nine billion of our citizens?”
The body language around the room revealed to Rilee how the asteroid’s nuclear attack had pushed far more of the younger members toward her position than had been the case in their previous meeting. She didn’t believe that she had a clear majority across the Council yet, but it appeared close enough to warrant an attempt to sway the rest. She was about to charge ahead and deliver her full case for obliterating the asteroid when Randel spoke.
“I agree with Rilee that the inhabitants of the asteroid made a very poor choice in this situation. Knowing her for as long as I have, I anticipate the next request will be that we allow her to destroy the ship and remove any further threat. I understand her rationale and I recognize many of you are moving closer to her opinion the same way I am, but I must say that I’m not prepared to take that drastic step just yet. I would like to propose a compromise instead.”
Everyone was engaged with Randel’s words, and Rilee was forced to conclude she had lost whatever momentum she had started to establish. She would have hoped the man had adjusted his position after being so viscerally reminded of nukes’ effect on a planet, but it was far more likely Randel was just riding the shifting winds of the Council’s politics. The man lived for power, and there was little doubt in Rilee’s mind that he was savvy enough to align with the large bloc of younger members who represented the future of the Council. She was left with no choice but to let Randel detail his counterpoint without ever having the opportunity to present her argument in her own words. He continued.
“Even before today’s horrific events, it has been clear from their repeated violent interactions with our ants that the inhabitants of Adan’s asteroid have a very different approach to exploration and colonization than we do. It appears we may be forced to take a more active role in reducing the harm they are causing across the universe. Otherwise, we will be complicit in their conduct and may regret our inaction when other species attribute those same behaviors to us. I don’t believe we have enough information to destroy the asteroid and all of its colonies just yet, but I’ve identified a proposal to get us there.
“First, we will seek out as many of the asteroid’s colonies as possible. Their current position combined with the data we have about where our ants encountered them in the past will support educated guesses about their travels through the years. Once we find their colonies, we will gather up the inhabitants and consolidate them on a handful of planets. This will allow us to keep a close eye on all of them and enable quick action once we agree on next steps.
“While that’s going on, we must gather more detailed, in-depth intelligence about the society on board that asteroid. I’m not sure how we accomplish this, but it’s critical we do so. We may all ultimately agree with Rilee that its current inhabitants are just as guilty as those who left Earth and tried to destroy our home, but I know many of us will feel much better reaching that conclusion with the support of concrete evidence.”
It was obvious from looking around the room that Rilee would fail if she tried to make her original case to destroy the asteroid immediately. Randel had blocked her once again, but he had also sparked an idea. If he wanted in-depth knowledge about what was happening on board that vessel, she just might have the perfect way to get it. If nothing else, her nascent plan would put her in position to take the action necessary to deal with Adan’s asteroid if the Council proved they were not up to the d
uty themselves.
23
This is an extremely bad plan.
The thing that frustrated Rilee the most about Kalyn over their many millennia of working together was the fact her lieutenant was allergic to silence. The woman made small talk yet again while they waited for the next step in the plan to be ready.
“Remember when you were a child, ma’am? Three months was a veritable eternity. We started shadowing that asteroid three years ago, and it feels like it might as well have been yesterday.”
Rilee smiled. “Three years or three hundred, Kalyn, I’ll put in whatever time it takes to bring the people on that rock to justice. Or are you making that comment in some weak effort to diminish the fact that I predicted what they would do next a full ten months ago?”
“I should have known better than to doubt your understanding of these people after all the surveillance you’ve analyzed, ma’am. That planet down there is gorgeous. Why did the Leadership Council waste it as a resettlement location for all of the asteroid’s colonists?”
“Do you remember the story from a few hundred years back about one of our commanders who went rogue and deployed his ants to disband one of the asteroid’s colonies?” Rilee brought up an image on the screen of humans dressed in animal pelts. “This is the planet where that happened and this is one group of those colonists. Check out their eyes—hardly any whites at all. Nothing but brown iris and black pupil. The Council established an ant presence a while back to assist with all of the sociologists who wanted to study the disparate tribes that had isolated themselves. Since the planet is so resource rich and given the bugs were already here, the Council decided this was as good a spot as any to start dumping off the other colonies.”