by Alex Lamb
‘Understood,’ said Ann. ‘We’re on it.’
‘Wait,’ said Ash. He passed them a video feed.
Without the carriers, the remaining Nem ships appeared to be milling. They looked anything but aggressive.
‘They’re sending a message,’ he added.
In a video window, the face of Yunus Chesterford appeared.
‘Earth forces, we willingly surrender. Our peace crusade is postponed. We will await your further instructions with grace and patience. God be with you.’
He beamed as he said it, as if giving up was what they’d planned to do all along. Mark stared at the image in blank bewilderment. Yunus was alive? He checked the cameras in the lounge. Citra was watching the feed with a face drained of blood. Her eyes were wide open like a pair of empty bowls.
21: RECKONING
21.1: MARK
Mark took a shuttle from the Gulliver to the IPS Knid, Admiral Baron’s home system command ship. It was essentially an armoured space station with habitat rings under full gravity, enormous g-ray batteries and suntap-powered conventional-thrust engines. The docking pod delivered him to an immaculately decorated executive waiting room, about ten minutes early for his meeting with Uncle Ira.
Mark paced up and down for about a minute before Ann arrived. He froze in his tracks as she came into the room, immediately recognising the roboteer signature that she manifested via the room’s network. It didn’t belong with the face he was looking at.
‘Want to tell me what happened?’ he said quietly.
Ann’s lean features gave nothing away. She sent him a memory dump. Mark knocked it back and groaned involuntarily as understanding smacked him like a mallet. Tears sprang to his eyes. The man who’d almost been his father was gone. All that was left of him lay inside Ann. The years of resenting Will’s presence in his life reversed themselves in a single heartbeat.
‘So he’s still in there?’ he said, his voice breaking.
‘A piece of him,’ said Ann. ‘He’s asking to speak with you. Is that okay?’
Mark frowned. Part of him didn’t want to face this. He fought down the urge to refuse and nodded once.
‘Okay,’ said Ann. ‘I’m going to let him drive for a bit. Hold on.’
Her face went slack. Then her expression changed. Somehow, the sad smile that arrived looked like Will’s, even though the face did not. Will looked down at his front, and then back at Mark.
‘Well, this is odd,’ he said.
‘You could say,’ Mark croaked.
He found himself so distraught that Will’s small attempt at levity just cut a larger hole in his heart. For all his faults, Will had been a huge part of Mark’s life. Only now did he understand how big a gap his loss would leave behind.
‘Is there a chance they’ll be able to put you back together?’
Will shrugged. ‘It’s not clear how separable I am from Snakepit at this point,’ he said. ‘I half-hoped that the real me would have made it out by now. That didn’t happen, so I don’t know what to tell you.’
Mark waved a strengthless hand. ‘Couldn’t you … I don’t know … just use your smart-cells to separate yourself from Ann? Build a clone or something?’
Will smiled. ‘I tried that once. Didn’t work so well. Plus this isn’t the real me you’re talking to – I’m borrowing a bunch of Ann’s subconscious functions just to hold together. The Transcended put a lock on me that prevents self-duplication. It’s surprisingly effective, even now. I’ll keep trying, of course. However, I’d still be in Ann. Her DNA has been rewritten to host me, and I can’t edit myself out of her without killing her in the process.’
‘Don’t you remember how you did it the first time?’
Will actually laughed. ‘Hell no. I was the size of a planet at that point. I had some extra resources. Still, right now we have more important things to work on. And Ann and I make a pretty good team.’
Mark had no idea what to say. He was talking to a ghost. He stared at the floor.
‘I saw the memory dump you filed,’ said Will. ‘I want you to know that I’m incredibly proud of you. I want you to know I’m going to stick to my word. I’ll make sure you get full ownership of your interface. You’re your own boss from here on out.’
Mark bit back a jag of powerful, pointless despair. ‘I appreciate the sentiment but I’m pretty committed to the Fleet at this point,’ he said. ‘There’s work to do.’
Will nodded. ‘I never should have pushed you as hard as I did. And I should have come clean with the truth about your biological parents a long time ago.’
Mark brushed the comment off. The resentment towards Will that he’d felt before Carter felt so distant and childish now. It had no place in the person he’d become. Instead, Will’s plight just lent fuel to Mark’s fire. The problem of Snakepit merely added another target to his crusade.
‘It’s old news,’ he said. ‘I know where you were coming from now. It’s in the past, anyway. I spent a lot of time being angry with you and not enough noticing what you were trying to give me.’
Will smiled. He reached out and grabbed Mark in a hug.
‘Definitely odd,’ said Mark.
‘That was Ann’s idea, not mine,’ said Will. ‘She thought you needed it.’
Despite the creeping discomfort, Mark felt something in him relaxing, something that had been wound tight for a very long time. He hugged back.
‘Maybe it’s just that Ann is nicer to hug than you are,’ he said.
‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Will.
The doors at the far end of the room opened. Ira Baron appeared, followed by a swarm of assistants, organic and otherwise. He took in the sight of them and looked confused for a minute.
Mark and Will spontaneously stepped apart.
Ira’s expression was grave. ‘Are you two done?’
Mark nodded.
‘Then you should follow me,’ said Ira. ‘The clock’s ticking.’
21.2: ANN
Ira shooed away his entourage and ushered Mark and Ann aboard a private pod with security updates scrolling on the walls.
‘Thank you both for your reports,’ he said. ‘In the six hours since the end of the battle, I can assure you that they’ve been studied extremely closely. Clip in, please. We’ll be dropping gees.’
Ann’s shadow borrowed her mouth. ‘Ira, where are you taking us? What’s this about? I assumed you’d want us on our way back to Tiwanaku by now with a hold full of antimatter bombs.’
If the admiral of the IPSO Fleet was unused to being addressed so informally, there was nothing in his manner to suggest it.
‘Your mission plans have been prepped already,’ said Ira. ‘And yes, I want you out there ASAP. But there’s something I need you to do first. I have the mouthpiece of the raiding fleet aboard – in a secure environment, of course. I’d like you to meet him … it. You’ve both had more direct exposure to this threat than the rest of us and that might be useful. Frankly, we’re making up our response to this as we go along. There are no procedures for situations like this one.’
The travel pod slid up out of the spin-ring, dumping gravity as it went, and passed down the spine of the ship.
‘How bad were our losses, sir?’ said Ann.
‘Surprisingly light, in-system,’ said Ira. ‘Earth and Mars lost a few thousand people to radiation burns. The damage to exposed surface environments was extensive. Earth will probably have to scrap its last surface biome park, but frankly it wasn’t looking that great anyway. Other than that, we’re okay.’ He exhaled deeply. ‘The outer system is a whole other issue. A lot of our real estate from Saturn outwards was harvested or burned and the dead or missing number in the hundreds of thousands. We have about two million in quarantine who we rescued from those harvester-ships.’ He shook his head. ‘That wasn’t pretty, by the way. I’ll sp
are you the details. And we have billions in damage, of course. About eighty per cent of those stupid floating palaces the sect Leading love so much were scorched and sucked dry. Local economic indicators are in free-fall. But frankly, the econ-SAPs can go fuck themselves. We’ve got bigger problems right now.’
Ann cringed inside. This was what all those years of careful planning had come to. This hideous mess. She couldn’t help but reflect on every moment of moral quandary she’d squirmed over. She felt ashamed that she hadn’t let her conscience guide her long ago.
‘Sir, what are you going to do with the League conspirators?’ said Mark. ‘I mean, there are hundreds of them. Are you going to arrest them all?’
Ann was glad he’d asked. It saved her from the pain of doing so.
‘Nope,’ said Ira. ‘I can’t spare the officers at this point. They’ll have to live with their sins for now. I’ll handle them after this threat is neutralised.’
‘So that’s it?’ said Mark. ‘They all just get off, scot-free?’
Ira fixed him with a hard glare. ‘Oh no, son. They’re going down. They just have to work for me first. In the meantime, everyone’s role in this will be kept quiet to minimise the chance of revenge killings from within the Fleet. Except Sam Shah. I’ll be handling Sam myself. Personally. Along with Parisa-fucking-Voss.’
The pod gained gravity again as it headed out along a narrow docking spar. At the end of it, if the wall-screens were to be believed, sat a drab little supply boat. The pod docked and the door slid open to reveal an extremely white room that looked exactly like what it was – a cross between a very high-tech scientific lab and a prison.
A couple of Vartian Institute technicians were in there, working with projector bubbles full of unreadably dense visualisations. And standing inside a transparent cylindrical cell in the centre of the room was Yunus Chesterford – or what he’d become.
The new Yunus was a giant of a man with a rugged physique and a shock of white professor hair. Tiger stripes of densely packed orange freckles covered his skin. He wore a skin-tight silver garment that left nothing to the imagination. Ann found the sight of him repulsive.
‘I’ve already spoken to this creature,’ said Ira. ‘Nobody else knows we’ve got him here. There’d be a riot. So far as the public are aware the invaders are already dead. But I wanted to give you both the chance to speak to … it … before we take next steps. You might be able to get something out of him that we’ve missed.’
Mark stepped up to face Yunus. Yunus stared at him with bright, unblinking eyes and a cryptic smile.
‘Welcome,’ said Yunus. ‘It is good to see you. I am glad that you have come.’
‘Do you remember me?’ said Mark.
Yunus nodded. ‘You are Captain Mark Ruiz of the IPS Gulliver. Of course I remember you. I remember how troubled you were. How much you hurt. I could spare you that.’
‘Do you remember Citra?’
Yunus nodded again. ‘You mean Citra Chesterford. Who was my wife. And a biologist. I have memories of her, too. She was also troubled. She curtailed her career on my behalf and it frustrated her very much. She doubted herself. You should bring her to me. We Photurians are not defined by the small tasks that we do. She would be happier with us.’
‘I’m not sure that’s true,’ said Mark. ‘Is there anything you’d like me to tell her?’
‘Yes,’ said Yunus, in the same blandly enthusiastic tone. ‘Tell her that happiness awaits. My people will seek her out and save her. She will know joy.’
‘I’m sure she’ll find that reassuring. Tell me, do you love her?’
Yunus spread his huge, prophetic hands. ‘Of course I love her. I love all mankind.’
‘I thought so,’ said Mark. He turned away, and then hesitated. ‘You mentioned God in your broadcasts, by the way. Do you still have faith?’
‘I have no need of faith,’ said Yunus. ‘I have certainty now. My God is the Body, and the Body is God. God is real and immortal. You will come to understand this, as will all humanity. Joy awaits those who grasp that truth.’
Mark frowned walked back to where Ann stood.
‘I’m done,’ he said. ‘It’s revolting.’
[May I try?] said Ann’s shadow.
Ann took a deep breath and let the ghost drive.
‘Why did you come here?’ said Will.
‘To save mankind,’ said Yunus.
‘Then why simply raid us at the edges? Why not stay and collect hosts?’
‘It was not the right time.’
‘I see,’ said Will. ‘When is that time?’
‘I do not need that knowledge.’
Will snorted. ‘Convenient. And how will it be accomplished?’
‘I do not need that knowledge.’
‘Really. And what about those people who don’t want to be saved?’
‘God is generous,’ said Yunus. ‘The unwilling will also be rescued.’
Will turned to look at Ira. ‘Do you have a deep microbial scan of the prison cell I could look at?’
Ira gestured at the technicians. ‘We know it’s exhaling bioweapons, if that’s what you’re worried about. The cell is fully contained. What you’re seeing is a surface hologram on a hermetic pod locked down by Vartian Institute protocols. Not even light gets out of that fucking box without us checking it first.’
Will examined the scan data. For a few short moments, Ann’s head filled with a barely comprehensible whirl of images and ideas. Then understanding started leaking into her mind like air through a poorly sealed hatch.
‘They’ve stopped,’ she said.
[Right,] said her shadow. ‘They’re not evolving any more,’ he said aloud. ‘Whatever it was about us that they wanted, they’ve got it. That’s good. It means they don’t stand a chance of reclaiming their homeworld.’
‘Why not?’ said Ira.
‘Snakepit will only let the Nems in if they can assert primacy,’ Will explained, ‘which they can’t do unless they constitute a new mutation. But Snakepit’s seen this variant already, and it lost. We still have no idea what happened on the surface, but we do know the Nems didn’t get their planet back. So they’re locked out now and that’s how they’ll stay.’
Yunus’s face fell. ‘You’re wrong. The Body will be returned to us.’
Will used Ann’s mouth to smile. ‘That hurts you, doesn’t it? That you can’t go home.’
‘It is only temporary,’ said Yunus.
‘It’s got to suck, being evicted from your own God. Knowing that it doesn’t want you any more.’
‘It is only temporary.’
‘I’m sure they told you that.’
Yunus’s face distorted for a moment, his mouth stretching wider than nature would have allowed.
‘It is only temporary!’
‘There’s not much to learn here,’ Will told Ira. ‘This is a machine, nothing more. I’ve met smarter transit pods.’
‘Our assessment also,’ said Ira. He turned to the Yunus-monster. ‘You attacked our home system,’ he said.
‘We sought to enlighten,’ said Yunus.
‘No, you sought to plunder. It’s my intention to seek out your kind and destroy them all. Do you have anything to say for yourself, or your kind, in your defence before we dismantle you for our edification?’
‘We will build a new human empire without strife,’ said Yunus. ‘It will be fair and it will be peaceful. And it will achieve what you never could.’
‘We will bomb Tiwanaku,’ said Ira. ‘And your home planet is already lost to you. Will Monet saw to that. You have failed.’
‘You cannot stop us,’ said the Yunus-thing. Its eyes shifted from side to side in a weird parody of impatience.
‘Yes, we can. Your raid on Carter failed. Your raid here failed. You will do nothing but fail.’
; ‘You cannot stop us,’ the Yunus-thing insisted. ‘One by one, your worlds will become ours. You will be forced to reckon with us as a new race. Then your people will come to us voluntarily and be reborn in God’s grace.’
‘No, they won’t. And you can cut out that God shit.’
‘We will offer them eternal life!’
‘No,’ said Ira. ‘You will offer them death dressed up. I knew Yunus once. You are not him. Yunus is dead.’
‘I am more than Yunus ever was. Join me, Ira. Though you may shun me, I remember you and love you. Don’t make this difficult for all of us. Accept the Lord.’
Ira turned to Ann and Mark, his eyes full of smouldering rage. ‘So there we have it. Any final observations? Any questions?’
‘He sounds very confident,’ said Mark. ‘Except when you goad him about Snakepit. That’s not good.’
‘He’s been reduced to a piece of machinery,’ said Ira. ‘What should we expect?’
Mark shrugged. ‘Not that. On our way back here, Venetia Sharp analysed one of the brains the Nems used to pilot their carrier. The sense I got was that the modifications they gave it were a lot more subtle than this. So if they’re showing us a moron now, I’m worried that might be because they don’t want us to figure out how smart they’ve really become.’
‘I agree,’ said Ann. ‘Their strategy for the attack clinches it. Their development has exceeded all our expectations, even the edge-cases the League modelled. And the Snakepit microbes have welded themselves in deep. But for the stripes, Yunus could be a normal person. How long before we can’t tell?’
‘Then we don’t have any time to waste,’ said Ira. ‘We’re done here, I think. You need to saddle up and take the pain to Tiwanaku. This entire problem must be closed down before any more lives are lost. You’ll be leaving immediately and taking the New Panama fleet you brought with you as your strike force. They could use a lift back to the Far Frontier anyway. We’ll supplement their firepower with a constellation of Home Fleet ships we’ve picked out. Then, assuming that’s successful, there’ll be a long and very thorough clean-up operation which will include a trip to the Snakepit system to rescue Will, if we can. If we can’t, I’m ordering you to use a boser on that planet and melt it into glass. Do you understand?’