The door slid shut and locked behind Usk.
Valjoth glanced back, not liking the locked door but unable to voice it. No one but Usk would care to listen to his protests or opinions. Besides, it wasn’t as if he had been locked in with line troops fresh from a cleansing and still raging. He was in no danger, no physical danger. He turned back to find Zakarji had taken her place in the last empty seat. The centre position.
Valjoth straightened to his full height and approached the table. “You honour me with your... ah summons?” He hadn’t actually been summoned by them. The warlord had done the summoning. He wondered if the warlord even knew he was here in the palace, or knew that he was supposed to have sent a summons. “How may I serve the Hegemon?”
“By listening to our will,” Zakarji responded. “Horak insisted over your objections to give the Shan cleansing to Karnak. The cleansing failed... again.”
“The warlord felt—”
Zakarji cut him off. “Do not defend him. He is no longer a concern...”
Valjoth stiffened. No longer a concern?
“...for the position are being considered.”
“Not me!” he burst out in alarm.
To be trapped in this suffocating pile would end him. He thought of Blood Drinker given to another, of never leaving this hateful city, of never again ripping apart vermin or overseeing a cleansing fleet. Sitting the throne, just a figurehead with nothing to fight was horrifying.
Zakarji glared at the interruption, but the other members of the Hegemon revealed fangs, grinning at his outburst or laughing. She waited for the hilarity to fade before continuing.
“The throne is not your concern, or who sits upon it. That task is not in your future, I assure you.”
His shoulders slumped in relief. “Thank the blood for that,” he whispered and stiffened when he realised he had said it aloud.
Zakarji glared lasers beams. “Yes, you may thank us. Karnak and the Shan cleansing fleet are lost. We will waste no more resources upon them at this time.”
“We must not allow the Humans to continue their expansion,” he said carefully. Not exactly contradicting her, but his message was clear. “We must at the least block them or slow them.”
“Your opinions regarding the Humans are well known among us, Valjoth,” one of the males said and the other nodded. “As are your other ideas.”
“Other ideas?”
“Your liking for the new troop types and unconventional tactics,” Zakarji said. “Perhaps you hope for more oddities like yourself to be quickened to keep you company?”
He winced. That was spiteful of her. “Call me mad, but I have a feeling you don’t like me.” He grinned at her glare. “I like the new types because they’re superior fighters. I like unconventional tactics as you call them, because casualties are lowered and they win battles faster. We all know what will happen if we fight the Humans the traditional way.”
“Unfortunately true, but the side-effects are not yet fully understood. Do not ask us to change our decision regarding the breeding programme.”
“But—”
“Do not!”
“I must. Three batches in ten are not enough for my purposes.”
Zakarji’s glare faded a little. “Three in ten are more than sufficient for ours.”
Then they were not going to deploy the host as he wished, against the Humans. The Kiar cursed fools! They must not allow Humans to continue expansion, certainly not in their current direction. If they couldn’t be cleansed from the galaxy entirely, they had to be either controlled or turned aside. His thoughts raced ahead along paths he had considered before but abandoned in favour of the plan he had thought they would approve. The Hegemon knew them all, as they had been proposed and abandoned by the warlord long since.
“I don’t understand what you wish of me,” Valjoth said, but he was starting to think he might be dusting off old plans and revising them. “Are you deploying the host or not?”
“Not all of it.”
Well of course not all of it! The host was vast; it had to be to hold a thousand star systems. Even here in the home system it was vastly bigger than any of his old plans required. When he considered things as they now apparently stood, he would need to take only half of the fleet in the Kiar system to begin.
“That’s understood,” he said. “My mission is...?”
“Redirection. We want the Humans’ attention turned aside. Our research suggests that trying to block them will not work. It would draw them; encourage attacks or a build up of defences in the blocked sector. That would not be in our interests. You agree?”
He didn’t show his disdain at their research, because he knew very well it was his own research they were quoting. No one else he knew of studied vermin the way he did. Blocking the Human advance in an obvious way would indeed have the effect she mentioned. Humans were very inquisitive. They were a lot like the Parcae or the Shintarn in that way. Always poking into things, wanting to know why this and why that. They were builders and makers like most of the vermin his people had encountered. Very much like the cursed Kiar in their cleverness, and that made them too dangerous to live. Blocking them would have them poking around trying to see why they were being blocked. Before he knew it, he would have scouts behind his lines sniffing about.
He couldn’t have that.
The answer was an old set of ideas he’d had a few years ago. They were still good; he’d always liked them for their sneaky Human style tactics. Attack an outlying system, let word leak out—something a Merkiaari mind found hard to understand because it invited attack by reinforcements—and then fade away before they arrived. Then do it again in another outlying system. It would drive any commander to distraction, and should draw more and more attention and ships to the sector. The hard part was doing it on a time-line that made the Humans chase but not catch them.
Retreating and avoiding battle was not part of the Merkiaari creed. Having invited reinforcements in, the standard response would be to stand and fight until one or both sides were destroyed, but the advantage of retreat couldn’t be underestimated in his opinion. The sneaky stinking Humans had done it to his people too many times to count, and had pulled them into battles that gave them the advantage. He had studied all those battles, re-fought them in his head many times, and knew how they had beaten his people. Well, he would do it to them but in an even sneakier and outright unfair way. He would cheat as much as he possibly could. They deserved it. He would make his battles as dishonest as possible, showing the Humans one thing but hitting them with something else. It would be a suitable vengeance for his people’s last defeat at their hands.
He realised the Hegemon were still waiting. “Agreed, and I’ve just the thing in mind to achieve our... your goal.”
The more he thought about it the more excited he became. This was going to be fun. Harder perhaps than a massive cleansing, which had its joys but hardly any room for the unconventional tactics he preferred. Overwhelming force had its place, but it had little room for finesse. This way was more of a challenge.
He would need good commanders who could be relied upon to keep their heads and follow a plan to a proper time-line. That was going to be one of his biggest problems. There weren’t many he trusted that far.
“Good,” Zakarji said. “You may make your plans as you see fit. Do not reveal them or anything of this meeting to Horak. Your meeting with him is about our refusal to change the breeding program. Make the appropriate outraged noises and then leave. You will never have to deal with him again. We want your plan, including all appropriate force levels and supply details, before us for evaluation as soon as possible. Allowing the Humans or this new vermin they are apparently interested in to spread further toward Hegemony space is unacceptable.”
He agreed there, and nodded, but he wouldn’t be planning an attack anywhere close to the Shan. Oh no, much too obvious. Besides that, it would draw more Human ships into the system, not turn them aside.
He co
nsidered targets. There were so many to choose from, and some were very tempting indeed, but they weren’t outlying systems and he had to discipline himself not to bite.
“By your leave?”
His answer was the door lock disengaging. He turned and found Usk staring wide-eyed. The expression nearly made him roar with laughter. He kept it in and headed for the door. Usk joined him a moment later, and the door slid closed. He heard the lock engage again, and glanced at the door before striding away. He wondered what they were talking about that required a locked door this time.
“What do you think of that?” Valjoth said.
“I think the warlo... Horak is out, and a new warlord will be enthroned within the day,” Usk said.
“Oh that, yes, but I meant the other thing.”
Usk blinked uncertainly. “I don’t understand, lord.”
“Neither do I, and that’s part of the problem.” He grinned at Usk’s pained expression.
“Don’t do that!” Usk whined. “Your twisty thoughts hurt my head. Can’t you stay a straight course for one conversation?”
“Well, let’s see... by the way, to me a straight course is like a twisty one to you. It doesn’t exactly hurt, but it feels wrong and—”
“Lord, you’re doing it again!”
Valjoth laughed. “All right, Usk. I meant the way Zakarji spoke for the Hegemon. I wonder which one was truly speaking to me. They weren’t her words, not all of them.”
“Does it matter? They are the Hegemon.”
“I suppose not, but it would be nice to know who to put a face to when I receive their instructions.” He shrugged. “Zakarji will do for now, but I wish I had names at least for the others.”
“They are the Hegemon,” Usk said again. “What other name do you need?”
Valjoth shrugged again, but Usk had a point. The Hegemon spoke with one voice always, so what if the seven had their own voices and opinions voiced only amongst themselves behind locked doors. So what? He castigated himself for letting himself think like Usk for a moment. He could tell Usk so what. The Hegemon might speak with one voice to the outside, but among themselves they would argue and debate decisions. If he knew who the driving force behind those decisions was, he might be able to predict what they would be and more importantly, he would have a better chance of knowing how to make them agree with him when the need arose.
He shrugged again, deciding not to explain himself. “No matter.”
* * *
23 ~ Epilogue
Sebastian’s Centrum, Kushiel
Stepping into the centrum was like stepping into the void between stars; at least it was that way to Gina. She exited the elevator into utter blackness and wobbled, her balance gone. Vertigo. No references. She glanced behind her at the rectangle of white light seemingly hanging in the air and her balance returned, but it was fleeting. The elevator doors slid closed completing the illusion of them hanging in space.
Eric muttered something about grandstanding, and Liz laughed. Gina’s sensors had Eric’s blue icon and Liz’s green icon nailed, but she couldn’t see them. There were no sources of light. None at all. Light amplification would do nothing here. It needed something to work with. She could switch to infra and see them if she needed to, but didn’t bother. She knew Sebastian was aware of them, that fluttery awareness in the back of her brain was back. It tickled. She kept her firewall tight and gave him no access. All incoming ports within her neural interface were closed and barricaded and booby trapped! She wouldn’t let him in again until they had an understanding.
The one time she had allowed him to enter rather than fighting him off, he had dropped a bombshell. She blamed Liz for that. It had been a day or so after they had relocated to Archer’s Gift, and were ready to talk to Sebastian. It had been Liz’s idea to use Eric and Gina’s neural interfaces to ask Sebastian if they might visit him in person. The connection had been too easy, like using the net back home on Snakeholme. Sebastian had made certain it would be and had been waiting for them to try it. His trap had snapped closed firmly upon one Gina bloody Fuentez. President bloody Fuentez now according to him, and he wouldn’t answer to anyone else!
“I came as you asked, Sebastian. I brought friends with me.” She wondered if he was sulking because she hadn’t come alone. “They are Captain Eric Penleigh 501st Infantry, and Liz Brenchley head of Snakeholme’s department of industry.”
The darkness was unbroken, but the silence gave way finally. “Welcome to my home, Madam President,” Sebastian said and Liz gasped. His voice was a rich baritone and it echoed in the chamber.
Gina shivered. There didn’t seem to be a source for the voice. It surrounded them from everywhere at once. She knew the basics of centrum construction, knew the A.I’s mind was held within the matrix column at the centrum’s centre, but she couldn’t see it. She had no idea which direction it lay. Not that it mattered. Sebastian wasn’t the column. In a manner of speaking, they were standing within his mind right now. Within his mind-scape rather. That it was a void disturbed her. Did it mean anything? She wanted to ask Liz, but not within hearing of Sebastian. She was worried that the void meant something important about the state of the A.I’s mind. Could a machine go mad?
Before she could ask for light, something began happening. In the distance, something flashed into existence. A tiny explosion of light that quickly grew rushing toward them. Gina felt herself falling toward it and stumbled. The others did as well, but it was illusion. She had seen something like it before, and sensims sometimes had this effect upon her. It was the seeming lack of a floor as reference.
The light expanded as the big bang progressed. Millions of years blurred by in seconds. Galaxies formed. Suns were born and died all around them. Gina stared down at her feet and watched the Milky Way blaze with light. She rushed toward it until the entire centrum was filled with their galaxy, and her focus was above her head bathing in the glory of millions of suns. Eric cursed again as they rushed into the spiral to watch Sol born and the planets form.
“Ask him to turn off the show. We have a job to do, Gina,” Eric said. He sounded ticked.
She would do as he asked, but she knew it would do no good. Sebastian wanted something. Why else ignore everyone but her? Liz had been hurt that he wouldn’t talk with her, even though it had been her own explanation that made sense of his reasons.
I’m not anyone’s bloody president.
“We came to talk, not watch a show,” she said.
“You came because I told you to come,” Sebastian said and Gina stiffened at the implication that he was in control. “You came because you had no choice.”
“You think so, do you?” she said, ignoring Liz’s warning look. Her friend’s face and her worry was illuminated by the light show. “Let me tell you something. We don’t need you. We have your backup file. Given enough time we can use it to make a new A.I.”
Sebastian laughed. A pleasant sound but Gina worried that he knew something she needed to know. Scratch that. She knew he did, but what was it?
“It will not work. Surely your engineers know the history of my... people? Am I a person?”
“You’re a person to me,” Liz said.
Sebastian did not reply. He surely heard everything but either could not or would not reply. This president of Kushiel bullshit was getting on her nerves.
“You’re a person to us,” she parroted to make certain Liz’s point was made. “Please explain yourself.”
“A person?” Sebastian said uncertainly. “Am I real? Are you real or do I still dream? Perhaps I dream that you dream of me being a person. How can I tell? How can I wake up? Do I want to?”
She looked to Liz who was frowning. Liz made a move along gesture with her hands. She needed to hear more. “Explain why your backup will not serve to initialise a new A.I please.”
“Because I do not wish it,” Sebastian said. “You require my consent and I do not give it.”
Liz hissed and nodded. “As I feared. Only
the A.Is know what the breakthrough actually was and they won’t or can’t explain. They used to procreate by combining their minds in ways no one but they understand. I think his backup might work, but there’s no certainty. I did warn George about this before we came. If nothing else, I can examine the data we copied and learn what I need from it.”
Gina repeated Liz’s words to the A.I. The centrum had just shown the formation of Luna, Earth’s only moon. It distracted her for a moment, but only long enough for another idea to form in her head. She needed Sebastian to acknowledge her power over him somehow. If Liz was right, she and only she could order him and be obeyed.
“Who am I, Sebastian?”
“You are Gina Fuentez, President of Kushiel.”
“You made me President. Do you have that power?”
“I do.”
“Why?” Gina said smugly.
Sebastian thought about that for a long moment. “The line of succession was compromised. The Merkiaari...”
Gina heard rage in his voice and spun to Eric. He nodded. He’d heard it too. Liz didn’t seem surprised but then she knew machines and personalised them without thought. An A.I was a person with a machine body. That was all. He had desires and needs. He spoke of dreams. She needed to treat him like a person. If she had been him, living alone here with nothing to do or anyone to talk with, she would have yearned to leave, but he was stuck here following nonsensical rules that no longer had meaning, because there was no one left to release him. He was colonial administrator of a dead colony forever, unless... Gina nodded. If it worked or if it didn’t, he would be free. That was a kind of justice.
Merkiaari Wars Series: Books 1-3 Page 115