Sly Mongoose

by Tobias S. Buckell

  “So did you. Though people won’t stop talking about what you did.” Pepper had punctured the escape bubble with a sword to fall a hundred feet and land on the airbag of a ship filled with the Swarm. He’d taken it over to land on Aegae.

  “You rode a dying city down to the ground,” Pepper said. “They’re talking about you as well. Trust me.”

  Timas was embarrassed. “I was lucky.”

  “That’s the spirit.” Pepper smiled. “We’re all lucky. Enjoy the gift of life, and love the moments that come next.”

  “I will.”

  “I wanted to give you my condolences, for your father.”

  Timas glanced down and held himself together, gripping a pillow. “Thank you.” He didn’t want to face that right now. So far it had felt like Ollin had gone away on a long trip, and his absence wasn’t an absence, but a temporary hole. Like a blind spot.

  “I wanted you to know, if you ever want it, you have a position with the Raga. You could work on a ship, see what worlds they see.”

  “Thank you. I’ll consider it.” He didn’t tell Pepper he had made other plans.

  Pepper nodded, and then he looked uncomfortable, not knowing what else to say. “Well, I’ll be on my way. I’ve found some new business on the way down that has my attention.”

  When he was gone, Katerina sat on the bed by his side. “Somehow, thinking about him just wandering around, looking for something to do without the Ragamuffins directing him, makes me nervous.”

  Timas agreed. “It’s the age.”

  “Age?”

  “He’s like Van, with those creatures he made. Only Pepper’s project is us.”

  Katerina shivered. “That’s just creepy.”

  “So.” Timas struggled to sit up straight. “You said you need to talk to me.”

  “I’m now speaking as an avatar of the Consensus, do you understand?”

  Timas bit his lip. “Yes, I understand.”

  “Your application has achieved sponsorship and a successful vote. You are now a citizen of the Consensus, with all the rights and protections that entails.” Katerina shook his hand, her face a frozen mask of formality, her words intoned like a judge’s.

  Then she broke into a great big smile and hugged him. “Congratulations.”

  Timas grinned back. “Thank you.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” She punched his shoulder.

  “I wasn’t sure I would get in.” He’d filled out the paperwork, and since he didn’t want to fail in front of Katerina, had asked Itotia to take it to any Aeolian she could find.

  His mom had kept herself busy, as if trying to work the memory of Ollin away. She’d even taken his spot hovering around the edge of the pipiltin, getting involved in the politics of the survivors, and the newly developing Xenowealth, as it was called.

  “Are you sure you want this?” Itotia had asked.

  “We need to be involved, and to understand them,” Timas said. “And I’m tired of Kat seeing things that I can’t, or talking about things she is learning as she reads them on the spot while talking to me.”

  “But to become Aeolian . . .” Itotia shook her head. “A zombie . . .”

  He had always thought the Aeolians were weak, rich, and foppish. But Katerina had been through all the same things he had, and faced them just as fiercely. “They face the same enemy we do: the League. Besides, we’re all foojies now, Mom, you and me, everyone from our city. Foojies no matter whether we go to our sister cities, or back to Aztlan on New Anegada. Or any new Aeolian city. And they’re not zombies; we’ve seen real zombies, I don’t think I can ever call the Aeolians that again.”

  “But my own son, with a metal eye.”

  “I’m told not everyone has to wear it. It’s something you do to let outsiders know you’re a citizen. Like wearing a badge, or something.”

  Itotia had assented, but didn’t look thrilled.

  Katerina leaned back, and got serious again, snatching Timas away from memories. “You are also aware, that as part of the Consensus, you have rights, but you also have responsibilities.”

  Timas nodded, nervous. “Yes.”

  “Your name has been drawn from a limited pool, an unfair civic assignment, but one deemed needed by vote. You are to be avatar to Hul-bach.”

  “I’m not even a part of the Consensus yet,” Timas protested.

  Katerina grabbed his hand. “I know. We’re just letting you know what’s in store. We’re going to get you wired up for citizenship tomorrow, that’s why you’re still in the medical center.”

  “Oh.”

  “But, since you can leave for now, do you want to go get something to eat together?” Katerina asked.

  “Yes.” Timas felt like he could leap out of the bed, but she still had to help him. He had been badly burned by the inside of his white-hot suit, and the new skin regrown by Hulbach’s advanced medics here still felt stiff.

  Eventually it felt okay to walk on his own, and they stood in the park by a wrought-iron arch, looking out toward the wormhole. They found a small place serving stews and soups, not too far from a large green space where small tents camped, full of refugees.

  “Our little secret,” Katerina said, when she handed him a bowl of steaming stew that smelled divine. They’d been giving Timas packets of warm goop in the other building, all made to help him and full of medicines. But tasteless.

  “Our secret.” When the tiny robot that probed and investigated his injuries fell out of the ceiling, it had complained about damage to his teeth, throat, and body.

  The human doctor, an Aeolian, had come in and talked to him about fixing all that, and also about preventing it from happening again.

  Now there were pills to take that would help his mind readapt, things to read. His bulemia wouldn’t go away overnight, but he had tools to fight it. One was knowing what Yatapek, and his parents, had unconsciously forced on him.

  Half the battle, the doctor said, was realizing that it would hurt him to continue, and that he had a problem that needed addressing.

  Timas sat with Katerina, listening to her talk about what being an avatar was like, and ate his entire bowl of soup and savored every drop. With her to help, it would all be okay, he thought. He would get past this, the death of his father would ache less, and he would find a new home again.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  Pepper found Itotia not too far away from Timas and Katerina. “Spying?”

  She jumped, and turned to look back at him. “Just curious; they called to say he’d left the medical building.”

  “They make a cute couple.”

  “They’ve been through a lot together.”

  Itotia had the red eyes of someone in a great deal of private grief. Timas, he’d seemed somewhat still in shock. But the young always bounced back faster, and Timas was still doped up to the eyeballs.

  “Will she move on after things settle? Is he trying to impress her by turning . . . Aeolian? How much will she hurt him if she leaves for other things?”

  Pepper looked at them chatting in the distance. “We only ever have now.”

  “I know. I know.” She pushed her newly cut bangs out of her eyes.

  “I didn’t come to talk about Timas, though.”

  Itotia looked at Pepper. “What, then?”

  “There are delegates down here. It seems like everything not to do with the League has journeyed to Hulbach. And somehow, you’ve found your niche.” Itotia, not being allowed to become pipiltin in the more patriarchal Yatapek, had nonetheless been all over the cavern, talking to representatives in long sessions about what to do next.

  “You know what some of the talks have been about. I have yet to meet them, but I know the Dread Council of your Ragamuffins has met to figure out how much fuel it would take for one last attack against the League. We know a great deal of their force is on the other side of this wormhole, which means a lot of their worlds are vulnerable.”

  Pepper leaned against the tree. “We have. M
any want to attack.”

  “Like you.”

  A slow grin. “I only wish for the party responsible for all this to pay.”

  Itotia sighed. “It will be a disaster. We’ll kill each other off, and bankrupt each other. The cost in human life will be immense, and the aliens will be the winners, as it will be the League against the Ragamuffins.”

  “And I agree with you.” Pepper waited for the shocked look to fade. “As a founding member, a standing chair of the Dread Council, I think it would be suicide for us to face off against the League.”

  Pepper took her toward the wormhole, and didn’t stop until they were in front of it. “The Dread Council cannot afford anymore to fly ships back and forth between New Anegada and Chilo. We’re almost dry, Itotia, but we’re forming a cordon around the wormhole that leads out toward Ys and Nebler. That’s the new DMZ.”

  And a lot of captains had protested bitterly at leaving New Anegada to protect Chilo. Even though half the Raga fleet still remained at New Anegada, they’d all fought so hard for the planet that it was hard to do something like this.

  With little antimatter left, they’d be limping slowly from wormhole to wormhole, using tethers to throw ships out toward their destinations, and using chemical rockets. Things were changing.

  Pepper continued, “The League backed off upstream through the wormholes. Now we have to decide what to do here. You’re right. We need something unified. We need the Xenowealth. We need to figure out how to coexist, because when we get the technology to get out past the Forty-Eight worlds, there will be other aliens out there. They’ll have even scarier weapons, and if we can’t figure out how to fold them in, it will always be xenocide. Us or them, constantly. And one day, one group that’s stronger will come across us and wipe us out because we’ll have a reputation, and be a threat.”

  “So you’re with the Xenowealth?”

  “The Dread Council agrees with you.” Pepper nodded. “Good luck putting your new political entity together. It sounds messy.”

  She looked relieved.

  He saw it in her eyes. She would help create it. She had the skills, honed from working with Ollin and on Yatapek. And she was like her son. Give them a cause, something larger than themselves, and they both responded: taking it on their shoulders and soldiering on.

  “Just one last thing,” Pepper said. “Where’s the Satrap?”

  “It’s gone silent ever since it heard that League diplomats would be coming to offer up a peace agreement, signing the DMZ over to the Xenowealth formally if we all agree to pretend that they didn’t try this.”

  “Ah.” He was, Pepper thought in a self-congratulatory moment, becoming better at this . . . lack of brute force. He’d helped usher in something new in this world, but for only as long as the Ragamuffin ships could hold that upstream wormhole against the League. But he was getting better at doing these things.

  Being a sly bastard.

  But of course, there was still the case of revenge for the millions dead and the loss of his two limbs. He’d mislead Itotia a bit.

  What Pepper had planned next was not going to be sly at all. It would be a return to some very old habits.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  The den lay deep in Hulbach in an area few knew how to get to. It was an area filled with deadfalls, poisonous air traps, and airlocks camouflaged to be indistinguishable from the rock wall around them.

  The Satrap lurched even deeper through its defenses into its most private chamber. Over the millennia it had grown massive, three hundred feet long, but unlike some of its former brethren, it had always prided itself on being able to move through its own warrens.

  Through the eyes of the fourteen drones walking solemnly next to it, armed and alert, it could see what it looked like. Giant, pale, sometimes the humans compared it to a massive trilobite, but without any natural armor.

  Hundreds of filaments roiled from its front end, fine enough to plunge deep into any conscious being’s brain. They tapered all the way down to points so fine they could caress and fire individual neurons.

  The drones around it—Gahe, Nesaru, and human—had brains wired to the local computing environment, as did the Satrap. It used this modern device to control them, although sometimes it missed the physical feeling of taking direct control.

  As it entered it took care to utilize every feature of its indentured army to scan its private den: a full view of every crevice, shadow, smell, and sound from three different species.

  So it completely felt the stab of panic when all that disappeared right out from under it and all its resources fell away.

  Something was attacking its personal den.

  The League had come for it!

  The Satrap’s tendrils whipped out and found the nearest head and plunged deep in, taking control and regaining its sight.

  Another couple stabs. It had three viewpoints, Gahe, and two human, scanning the tunnel it had just come through.

  “Prepare to defend the den,” Amminapses ordered its drones through the voices of the three it controlled. The others blinked as their own personalities came to the fore. They were confused and out of sync with where they were.

  None of them had seen the den before.

  They reacted, though, fanning out and getting their weapons up and ready to protect it.

  Something thudded quickly from shadow to shadow and one of the drones fired at it. Sparks flew, a few shots hitting something.

  Then it was gone.

  But the Satrap, through the Gahe drone that it controlled, could hear heavy breathing. It flicked the Gahe’s ears about, trying to find the source.

  “Who’s there?” Amminapses finally asked. The assassin had to be human. None of the client races that held the Satrap in such high regard would ever dare think of something like this.

  “I’m death.” The voice echoed all around. “I have an offer to your drones not under your control. My issue isn’t with them: leave and live. Stay and die. You have ten seconds.”

  It was human.

  Two human drones looked around, then took off at a sprint.

  Amminapses was disgusted. Disloyal, disgusting . . . humans. They couldn’t be used unless under its thrall. The Nesaru, however, now they were a credit to their race. They backed in closer to the Satrap, chirping quickly back and forth to each other, trying to determine where the intruder was.

  The Nesaru chirped at the walls, using the sound to echolocate the intruder.

  Something dropped from the roof, and Amminapses struggled to spot it with its drones. They lit it up with flashlights, revealing a hulking suit of metal.

  “You!”

  Pepper shot the first two human drones in the head. Deadly accurate. Deadly fast. The Satrap wondered who gave him those skills and upgrades as it watched the deadly performance. The Satrap’s initial defenders dropped without even firing and Pepper leaped away. Three Nesaru exploded out after him. Cracking gunshots filled and reverberated throughout the den, deafening everyone.

  One Nesaru dropped from return fire. The second, Pepper closed the distance on, as bullets sparked and dented the powered suit and the armored hands Pepper held up in front of his face.

  He hit it straight on and didn’t stop. Amminapses saw in horror that Pepper had destroyed the drone much like he’d done back on Yatapek. The Nesaru spoiled for a fight, but were light. Unless they got their quills in their prey, they were toys.

  Pepper threw the third one at the nearest Gahe. The Gahe screamed as it was speared in the face.

  Five Gahe ran off as a herd, veering away from Pepper toward the tunnel.

  Amminapses would have shot them in frustration, but Pepper turned on the remaining three drones that Amminapses controlled. Shot number one dropped the Gahe, number two, one of the humans.

  Then Pepper walked forward. “Did you, for a moment, think that your actions would not have consequences, Amminapses?”

  “What are you talking about?” At least this drone had a bead on Pe
pper with its gun. The closer he got, the better the chance of the headshot working.

  “I thought, when you had the counter-infection ready so quickly, that it was awfully useful to have that just lying around.” Pepper fired, the movement too quick for the Satrap to anticipate, and the drone dropped to a knee, wounded.

  Despite total control, the drone almost dropped the gun. As it bled, the Satrap had to force it with all its mental might to hold the gun up. “That was judiciousness,” Amminapses said.

  “I didn’t think about it much,” Pepper said. “I was just grateful to have an ally. Not until I met one of your drones, and she said she’d seen the sunset on Midhaven recently, did I suspect anything.”

  “My drones have been to many worlds.”

  “A visit to the heart of the League? A strange place. It got me wondering, and then Itotia told me about your odd reaction to hearing the League was coming.”

  “Defeat is written into my fabric of being. It is time for me to retreat and give up dreams of reestablishing the Satrapy. I can offer you technologies.”

  “Yes! Yes, you can.” Pepper shot the drone’s hand again, and when it dropped the gun he crossed the distance and kicked the weapon away into the shadows. “But you’ve made that offer before, haven’t you? I asked myself, why bury yourself here to hide, and why have an antidote? You told Timas you wanted to gain control, and what better way than with a clean sweep. You gave the League this weapon, a final solution. You told them where to find it, how to alter it.

  “Of course, you knew what it was for, and that it would probably even evolve itself to hunt for all intelligent life in this area. That’s what it does, it’s part of those counterintelligent defenses you claim the universe has made. But we’re clever monkeys, and the League, after setting you free in exchange for your transmitting these things to them from a safe location, they decided to hunt you down anyway.” Pepper laughed.

  But he was close enough. The Satrap whipped tendrils at him.

  Pepper had another surprise: a sword. He tossed the gun aside and sliced and twirled his way through the sudden forest of tendrils Amminapses threw his way, trying to get in through his scything to take his mind.