These days, it seemed that everyone around her was better than her, and in ways she could not force herself to be. Habidah had said she didn’t believe in redemption, or at least that redemption didn’t matter. Maybe she was right. Meloku had a long way to go.
“You’re welcome,” she made herself say. She took to her couch.
At her silent request, a new set of images replaced the camera views. These came from Ways and Means’ sensors. The blue-white orb of the Earth peered at them from every side.
Just as at the conference, Meloku felt the weight of the Earth bearing on her. She’d seen countless worlds like it – larger, richer, more populated. Somehow this one was heavier by far.
She called up more images. Maps of orbital space, on different scales and with different indicators, filled in to the best of Ways and Means’ ability. Telescope images, too, of sunlight glinting off reflective hulls. Cylindrical shadows caught in silhouette against cloud and ocean. The intruder’s combat drones, waiting. And watching.
Some hours ago, Ways and Means had fired its engines to halt its drift away from the Earth. It held position. The enemy’s combat drones had seen it. They had done nothing.
These images showed her everything she needed to know, available at a glance. And she might need to know a lot. She and Fiametta were to lead the vanguard. The first wave of Ways and Means’ agents back on the surface.
The first and far from the last.
An acceleration warning trilled in the back of her head. Ways and Means fired its engines.
Fiametta breathed more evenly as she sagged into her seat. Point seven gravity was not quite what she was accustomed to, but felt far better than freefall. Her heart rate slowed.
Not for the first time, Meloku wondered if Fiametta really understood what was happening here. Meloku said, “You don’t have to be here. You have plenty of time left to get off.”
“I can’t.”
“Ways and Means will do exactly what it intends to do whether you’re on the ground or not.”
“That’s why I can’t miss it.” Fiametta glanced at Meloku. “Same reason I’ve gone along with any of this. It’ll happen regardless. If I’m not here, I won’t have a voice.”
Then again, maybe she understood more than Meloku gave her credit for.
The shuttle’s plotted flight course wrapped around one of the globes. They were bound for a small army camp at the fringes of Russia – or would be, as soon as they got close enough for sensors to identify the right one. They would find Fiametta’s people. Her company. Her captain.
They would recognize Fiametta. They might believe what she told them. If they then listened to her, and then Ways and Means, that might make them useful.
Colonization wasn’t all raw force. It was also give and take, reward and punishment. The Earth would be divided between those who would listen to Ways and Means’ agents, and those who wouldn’t. Those who listened would have power, favor, wealth. Ways and Means would treat them as leaders and negotiate with no one else.
Fiametta was one of those hand-picked leaders. If Fiametta’s soldiers could be swayed to Ways and Means’ side, they would have an outsized role in the fate of their world. Just like Fiametta herself.
Meloku would be alongside her. She wondered how much more Ways and Means was going to ask her to do, and if it would be worse than what she had done to Queen Joanna.
A shrill note sounded from her demiorganics, sharp enough to make her wince. Not an alarm this time. A signal, directed not only to the planarship but its crew.
A warning call – from the combat drones. There were no words, but the message was plain. Come no further, they said, or the ceasefire ends.
Ways and Means jammed its signal.
Osia transmitted, “Hard acceleration in five.”
Ways and Means did not always speak to its agents itself. It had an aura of mystique to maintain. It would not have done for the peoples of the Unity to learn to hear the amalgamates’ voices very often. It had assigned Osia the task of coordinating the shuttles and those of Ways and Means’ agents who remained on the surface.
For having been away so long, Osia had settled back into her role easily enough. Meloku suspected she was more Ways and Means’ creature than she had ever been willing to admit.
Not long after Ways and Means had requested Meloku to escort Fiametta, Meloku had tracked down Osia. She found Osia staring at a hatchway that, according to Meloku’s demiorganics, had once been Osia’s old quarters aboard ship. She had been staring at the hatch, as if afraid to go in.
Meloku had not cared why. Ways and Means would not speak to Meloku then. It had claimed she had been given all the instruction she needed, but she suspected it knew what Meloku was about to ask. Meloku asked Osia instead. “How do you know the intruder isn’t going to torch Ways and Means’ agents on the surface, like it torched the satellites and the communication outposts?”
“It went out of its way to avoid killing crewmembers during its last visit.”
“It also killed over fifty of them up here.”
For all that Osia had human-like eyes, they were the most impenetrable part of her. She said, “If it does, I’m afraid you’ll be the first to find out.”
Now Osia was lodged safely somewhere in one of Ways and Means’ shelters. She had not been ordered to take part in this travesty. Meloku told Fiametta, “Brace yourself.”
Ways and Means did not intend to allow the combat drones to initiate hostilities. Beam lances ran a half-dozen combat drones through. They flew apart in flashes of light, boiling away into luminous clouds of gas.
The other drones reacted at once, igniting their engines, flickering defensive fields to obscure their exhaust’s origin. Ways and Means had saved the greater number of its weapons for them. Cannon barrages tore through their exhaust plumes, breached their fields, left brilliant and fading auroras of molten and vaporized metal.
Ways and Means’ defensive fields shook off the parting shots. It did not need to maneuver. Osia’s warning of high acceleration had been a precaution. This was not a fair match.
Neither side had intended for it to be. The drones were just a line in the sand, not the sword waiting on the other side.
The surviving drones raced away from Ways and Means, accelerating at speeds that would have liquefied any passengers. Ways and Means’ beams picked off those in reach, pushing the rest back as the wind would a cloud. It could not get them all. Some were already out of effective range. More dropped below the horizons.
They would gather in the Earth’s shadow to harry and harass Ways and Means. And then to wait for the opportunity to do more.
Ways and Means did not know what might happen after that. Opening a transplanar gateway the size of a planarship took enormous energy. The intruder might not have had that much on standby.
Osia transmitted, “Acceleration warning suspended.” The battle had gone as hoped. Ways and Means had not needed to maneuver. Yet.
Fiametta could not hear Osia. She had her eyes tightly shut. Meloku wished she could bear doing the same. “You might as well open your eyes.”
If Fiametta was in for the duration, she might as well learn. Meloku doubted she would ever learn enough to understand, but she recognized she had underestimated Fiametta too many times already.
A series of muffled impact thumps echoed through the deck plating. They came in rapid-fire succession, the beat-beat-beat of a piston. Fiametta flinched. On the sensor map, a sequence of new lights sprang from Ways and Means. They fanned out in a broad and flattening cone.
Combat drones. The snaps of their powered catapults reverberated through the hull. Ways and Means was sending them after the enemy’s remaining combat drones.
Combat drones gobbled antimatter fuel, though, and the ship’s antimatter stocks were limited. It fired only as many drones, Meloku saw, as it estimated would be enough to just barely win an engagement. They outnumbered the enemy by few
er than ten drones. Shaving the margins thin.
Another piston beat echoed up the shuttle’s landing struts. New satellites launching, to replace the lost. Ways and Means could not fight without effective sensor coverage. The combat drones had sensors, but there were not enough of them. Each replacement satellite wore a thruster jacket to help move them rapidly into position.
Meloku was surprised that Ways and Means had had so many satellites at the ready. But it had known, for years, to expect trouble. It would have known its satellites were vulnerable.
“Last chance to disembark,” Meloku told Fiametta.
“Stop it,” Fiametta snapped.
Osia transmitted, “Acceleration warning, thirty.”
On the map, a trajectory line sprang from Ways and Means. It curved high above the Earth. The plan called for Ways and Means to keep to a distant orbit, seeding satellites and more combat drones. It was to drop shuttles everywhere it went – to every corner of the world.
Meloku did not expect to be aboard the planarship for the next engine burn. Central Asia was just over the horizon. Ways and Means’ momentum would carry the shuttle almost right to it.
Sure enough, Osia said, “First launch ready, five.”
“Too late now,” Meloku said. “Brace yourself.”
The shuttle was attached to no powered catapult like the drones, but it didn’t need to be to make a fast exit. The thrusters kicked Meloku in the rear. Once the landing surface was far enough away, the shuttle’s main engines added more weight.
Meloku’s chest squeezed the breath out of her. Beside her, Fiametta gasped. The pressure never got as bad as last time.
Meloku switched the camera views from Ways and Means’ back to the shuttle’s. The warm orange of the hangar complex fell away. Everything but the rear cameras, where the engine exhaust burned hot, turned dark. The shadow fell away, became a silhouette.
Ways and Means’ bulk occluded the stars. At first, Ways and Means was a flat plane, a shadowed horizon. The reflection of the shuttle’s engine exhaust glinted where the light caught its edges. And, on the opposite cameras, the sunlit crescent of the Earth loomed over them. Morning was near.
Ways and Means’ engines flared bright. It went from a world to an array of blocky shadows, half-lost against the sky. Then it was cloaked behind a haze of billowing exhaust. Soon, the only object they could see clearly was the Earth. Even Fiametta had learned to parse the images enough to be impressed. She let out a sharp breath.
That acceleration reduced as they gained distance. The weight of Meloku’s ribs eased off her lungs. Fiametta wrapped her fingers around her harness webbing. Her hand trembled. Every other one of her heartbeats came prematurely. She stilled her hand when she realized Meloku was watching.
She asked, “Which of us is in charge when we get to the surface?”
“Who do you think?”
“I’m not going along with this to take orders.”
This assignment was going to be just brilliant fun. “That was part of the bargain you made.”
“No,” Fiametta said flatly. “That was a choice I never had. You would have taken charge regardless.”
More lights speared away from across Ways and Means. More shuttle launches from all over the planarship. They dived out and away, gaining speed. These weren’t passenger shuttles, but multipurpose vehicles like the one she and Dahn had shared. Their passengers didn’t have to hew to the limits of fragile human bodies. The shuttles accelerated hard, rapidly outpacing Meloku and Fiametta.
Fiametta’s gaze was glued to the images of the Earth. The last time she’d been up here, she’d had little enough context for what she was seeing. She could not have appreciated the scale.
She was a fast learner. Meloku granted her that. But nobody could have learned fast enough for what she was being asked to do. Meloku asked, “Puts your life in a different perspective, doesn’t it?”
Fiametta did not appear to listen, though, from the uptick in her pulse, Meloku knew she had. She had caught the barb too.
Ways and Means fell into the dark. Though it was not accelerating as much as it could have, its engines washed out the stars. It would be visible from the Earth. A bright, bold star piercing the skies – a comet sprung from nowhere.
Ways and Means intended its arrival to be portentous. It wanted people ready to believe their world was about to end. Belief was power. Shaping belief was the best, most cost-effective way to rule a people. Ways and Means knew this very well. So did Meloku. Fiametta’s power had been based in belief, but Meloku wondered if she understood all that meant.
Her “inner voice” had not put her in a trance, or overwhelmed her conscious mind, as Meloku had overwhelmed Queen Joanna. It had not needed to. That would have been inefficient. All it had done was changed what she believed. Fiametta had done the rest on her own.
The rising heat in Fiametta’s cheeks and forehead said she knew she was being watched. Meloku asked, “Still think this is for the best?”
“It is for the best. It’s what I would do.”
“Have you ever considered that what you would do is wrong?”
“Not in a long time,” Fiametta answered.
Meloku wondered if Ways and Means had ever opened a real dialogue with its backup, had ever argued with itself.
Ways and Means’ engine exhaust dwindled. Its antimatter reserves were running low. The amalgamate refused to say how much it had left. It only assured its crew that it had enough fuel left to complete the course it had plotted. Presumably with a little more left for maneuvers.
It had chosen such a high orbit not only to keep a safe distance, but also to keep a good vantage. It would not need to expend as much fuel later on. There was no part of the world that its orbit would not eventually cross. Should its cannons be needed anywhere, it would only have to wait.
The other shuttles raced ahead, falling into clipped orbits. Some fell, diving like seabirds. Most raced ahead. All across the monitors, the rosy horizon broadened. Its curve flattened.
Fiametta said, “I didn’t think you, of everyone here, would try to set me doubting. Niccoluccio told me who you were. Is this some kind of test?”
“If Ways and Means wanted to test your commitment, it would find a better way than me.”
“Sure.”
The lines on the maps solidified. Ways and Means’ sensor coverage expanded. Its new satellites were falling into place. On the other side of the world, in flush daylight, Ways and Means’ combat drones closed on their counterparts. Lightning flashes seared the exosphere. Beam fire. Accented by exhaust from missile launches.
Meloku took her eyes off long enough to glance at Fiametta. Fiametta’s gaze was fixed on her.
Fiametta asked, “Why are you trying to shake me?”
With a shock, Meloku realized that Fiametta thought she might be a traitor. For an instant, she couldn’t find her breath. “I would never betray us to that thing,” she said. “No side in this is right.”
“There’s no such thing as ‘right’ in any of this. You used to know that, didn’t you?”
Meloku opened her mouth to answer, but before she could make a sound, a shrill warning from her demiorganics drove the words from her.
The alarm came from Ways and Means. It was urgent. Followed shortly by another, from her shuttle’s sensors.
Light split the horizon ahead, flaring brilliant off the sea. The clouds cast deep shadows, their fingers stretching across the sea. It was if the whole Earth were bending about a single point in orbit, on the edge of collapsing into a singularity.
It was no sunrise.
It was a planar gateway. A great deal of heat and light was pumping out into open space. Already, their shuttle’s sensors picked out the intruder’s silhouette, hiding behind it. It split wide the seam in space, forcing its way through.
Meloku couldn’t breathe. This time, the intruder was emerging over their horizon. The shuttle’s sensors s
aw it clearly, even against the heat and light of the gateway. That meant it could see them just as easily. It was already in weapons range.
There would be no running.
Her demiorganics seized control of her physiological functions, forced her to breathe. They jammed calming chemicals into her adrenaline-laced bloodstream. If the intruder wanted to kill them, there was nothing she could do. It would happen any instant.
There was still a chance she and Fiametta might survive. The intruder hadn’t fired on any of the shuttles, even the closer ones. But it was firing. Traces of heat rippled along its mirror fields. Even at this altitude, there were still enough loose particles of atmosphere to illuminate the beam fire.
All of its fire was directed skyward, at Ways and Means. It had not been bluffing. It intended to destroy the planarship.
Meloku thought she’d heard Osia’s voice for a flash of a second, but then there was nothing. A glint of light, like the sun against silver, caught the shuttle’s sensors. Ways and Means had encased itself in a mirror field. No signal could get through, in or out.
This shuttle, and all of the others, were on their own. They were cut off from contact with Ways and Means. The intruder continued to refrain from firing on them.
It was hoping for converts, Meloku realized.
It had good reason. On the orbital maps, the weave of flight trajectories shifted. Long, slender fingers cast outward, into space. Some of the shuttles broke their assigned courses. They weren’t diving to the surface to take shelter. They were racing toward the intruder. Traitors.
The tail end of Ways and Means’ mirror fields grew a white-hot cloud. Engine exhaust fell through the fields. Ways and Means was moving. On its mirror fields, the reflection of the exhaust doubled against itself, stark and eerily beautiful.
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