by John Ringo
"Best have Sinbad look this over."
Davis pulled a small radio from his pocket. As he was about to press the talk button, he spotted the Indowy walking his way with a half dozen of his clanspeople in tow.
"Sinbad, can you make this out?' asked the chief, pointing at what was probably a shipping label.
"I can," answered the Indowy, looking down as usual, "but it really isn't necessary. It's for me."
"Oh. Well, what is it Mister Sintarleen?"
"It is hard to explain," which was the truth. "It is for . . . manufacturing parts . . . and . . . ummm . . . assemblies. Yes, that's it: assemblies," which was also the truth, if not the whole of it.
"Very well, Sinbad," agreed the Chop, holding forth a clipboard and pen. "If you will sign here for it."
"I can't see anything," said Daisy. "I can't sense anything. Are you sure it's working?"
Sintarleen gave an Indowy sigh. "Lady Daisy, you can't sense or see anything because right now the tank is manipulating and selecting the scraps of DNA we gave it. When it has enough to make a full cell then the process will begin."
"And it will make me a body? A real, human, body?"
"It will, if it works, if we have provided enough material. But I must warn you again, Lady Daisy, that it will have no mind. There are protocols built in to the machine, protocols I can do nothing about, that forbid the creation of colloidal sentiences by artificial means.
"Instead of a brain it will have something very like your physical self. Simpler of course. Not really able to think on its own. All of its intelligence must come from you."
"That will be just fine," Daisy agreed.
"There is one further thing," the Indowy insisted. "You will be connected with this . . . body . . . as soon as it starts to grow from a single cell. It will be under accelerated growth, but that growth will be irregular. Moreover, it will be, biologically, a human female body. Even in the tank it will be affected by human physiological processes. Those processes will affect you, Lady Daisy."
One thing you can say for having an AID run your galley, thought Chief Davis, you can be certain that the food is going to be first rate.
It wasn't that Daisy Mae physically made the omelets, or boiled the lobster, or flipped the steak. There were cooks and mess boys for that.
Instead, Daisy bought the very best ingredients out of her slush fund and—while she did not routinely show herself in the galley itself—would appear there suddenly and without warning, cursing like a cavalry trooper over the shamefaced cook if a filet mignon approached half a degree past medium rare when medium rare had been ordered.
And the coffee was always perfect. She ordered it fresh roasted from a little coffee plantation in the Chiriqui highlands, one of Digna's family holdings as a matter of fact. Then Daisy insisted that the big brewers be scrubbed to perfection, the water poured in at the perfect temperature, and the brewing stopped at precisely the right moment.
It probably didn't hurt that she was paying the cooks a small bonus under the table. Then again, good cooks took pride in their work. Having the best materials to work with, to produce a better meal, only fed that pride.
Actually, the coffee puzzled the chief. It was on the rationed list. And high end, gourmet coffee was on the serious rationed list. But there was always plenty of it and it was always perfect.
The chief took his cup, placed it under the spigot and poured, half quivering with aesthetic joy as the rich aroma arose around him. Yum!
Davis took his accustomed place at his customary table to a chorus of, "Mornin', Chief . . ." "Hiya Chief . . ." "Good eats, Chief . . ." Nose stuck in that good, good cup of under-the-table coffee, Davis acknowledged the salutations with an informal wave of his hand.
Without having to be told, one of the mess boys set a plate before Davis, the plate piled high with fried potatoes, a thick ham steak, and eggs over easy.
Before the chief could dig in Daisy materialized in the seat opposite his. She may have rarely appeared in the galley, unless something was about to go wrong, but she made a point of making the rounds of the messes.
"How's breakfast, Chief Davis?' she inquired.
"First rate, as always, Daisy Mae. How's our ship?"
Daisy felt a little tingle, somewhere in her crystalline mind. Our ship. After subjective millennia of utter loneliness it meant more than she could say to belong, and not to be alone. This was true of both parts of her. That part which was the original CA-134 had spent a miserable couple of decades uncared for, unwanted and unloved as well.
"I'm fine," Daisy answered. "Well, mostly I am. But I think a couple of the ball bearings in number two turret need replacing. I was testing it last night and heard a squeak that really ought not to be."
"Get someone on it right after breakfast," said the chief around half a mouthful of eggs.
"And the deck between the PBMRs could use some cleaning," she added innocently.
Sintarleen checked the progress of the growing form in the tank. If I am reading this rightly, everything is perfect for this stage of development.
Still, I don't like the temperature fluctuations. And the hormonal surges are sometimes out of control. How do these people, the female ones anyway, maintain their sanity under these circumstances?
As any human father could have told the Indowy, if asked, "the female ones, anyway," typically did not. Nor did any males forced into close company with a thirteen-year-old girl.
A happy mess made for a happy ship, believed Davis. Thus, he didn't immediately understand the problem, the sour faces and grim expressions that met him in the chief's mess.
He shrugged and went to pour himself a cup of coffee. He could check into it later. He might even learn something about the problem at breakfast.
He poured himself a cup of coffee, added cream and sugar and took a healthy sip.
And immediately spat it out again. "Gah! That's awful. What the fu—"
He stopped as his eyes came to rest on the calendar posted over the pot. Four dates were circled on that calendar.
In red.
Davis went to the sink and poured out the coffee without regret. Then he got on the ship's intercom and announced, "Swarinski, I was looking over the Nuke deck earlier this morning. It's filthy. Take a crew and get on it. Now."
The answer came back, "Chief Davis, I'm standing here, looking at it. The deck's spotless."
"Scrub it anyway, Swarinski."
Interlude
Boredom was for a time of unending routine. Boredom was not for the time after word had returned telling of the outright massacre of the first fleet to reach the new world of the threshkreen.
Face buried in the Aldenat' mush, Guanamarioch sensed something new in his messmates, similarly feeding around him. It was not anticipation, this new thing. It was something . . . something . . . something Guanamarioch remembered only dimly from his time in the pens as a nestling.
The Kessentai thought back, trying to recall memories he had long suppressed, memories of his small nestling hindquarters against the wall of the pen, fighting for his life against a horde of siblings who had decided he looked much like lunch. He remembered the flashing needlelike teeth, the yellow blood that flowed from a dozen tiny slashes on his face, neck and flanks. He remembered a lucky slash of his own that had disemboweled one of those who sought to eat him.
They had turned on that other one, then, turned on it and ripped it apart. That feeding had taken a long time, with the wounded one's pitiful cries growing weaker as dozens clustered around, each taking a small bite.
Guanamarioch too had eaten, lunging in to sink his teeth into his brother's hams before shaking his tiny head and tearing a bloody gob of warm, dripping meat from the body.
The God King had retreated to a corner then, bloody prize locked in the claws and jaws. There he had sat, trembling, alternately chewing and looking up to snarl and warn off any of the others who might seek to steal his prize.
He remembered being afraid t
hen, afraid that someone would take his meal and afraid, even more, that in the frenzy he might too be ripped apart while still living.
Guanamarioch lifted his massive head from his mush bowl and looked around the mess room. No, there was no tremblings of fear among his clanskin. But then, neither was Guanamarioch shaking.
Then something happened, something in itself trivial. A God King of about the same rank as Guanamarioch nudged the mush bowl of one slightly superior. The latter then immediately turned and tore the throat from the clumsy one. All the others present immediately grabbed their bowls and backed up towards the nearest wall or other vertical surface, each one snarling as he did so.
Guanamarioch did the same, and realized, as he backed his haunches to the wall, that the news of these new thresh had them all terrified.
He understood though. Never before had a fleet of the People met serious resistance from any but their own. To have a fleet, even a small one, almost completely destroyed was terrifying indeed.
A door into the mess deck slid open with a slight whoosh. Through the door passed an oddly shaped robotic device. This glided across the deck silently. It then hovered lightly over the yellow-blood-soaked area of the mess where the clumsy Kessentai had had his throat torn open by another. The device fit the dimensions of the ship's corridors and compartments well, leading Guanamarioch to think that this, too, was Aldenat' technology.
Singly and by twos, the others cleared out from the mess and formed in the corridor adjacent the mess. In a few, minutes only Guanamarioch and the killer remained, the latter staring madly at the corpse, apparently in contemplation of eating it. This was not, in itself, forbidden, of course; the ethos of the People demanded that thresh not be wasted.
It was, however, forbidden to kill aboard ship during migration without permission.
A senior God King, not the lord of the clan but a close assistant entered the mess, followed by two cosslain, the superior normals that filled the job of noncommissioned officers within the Posleen host. The senior took in the entire compartment in a single sweeping glance before resting his yellow eyes on the corpse and the nearby killer.
"Did you see what happened, Junior?" the demi-lord demanded.
Guanamarioch bowed his head in respect. "I saw it, lord, but I did not understand it."
The senior turned his attention back to the killer. "For what reason did you break the shiplaw and kill this one?" he asked calmly.
With apparent difficulty the murderer looked upward, away from the corpse, answering, "He nudged my feeding bowl."
"It is my judgment that this is insufficient reason to break the law of the People. It is further my judgment that this conduct merits termination of existence. Have you anything to say?"
Sensing death, and unwilling to die without a struggle, the killer launched itself at the senior Kessentai, claws outstretched and fangs bared. The senior, however, had not reached his position within the clan by being slow and indecisive. Even while the lower God King began his leap, the senior had drawn his boma blade and begun to swing. The blade passed through the thick neck almost as if it were not there. When the body struck it did so in two pieces, dead.
The senior looked at Guanamarioch as if measuring him for the recycling bins. At length, he decided that Guanamarioch had more value as a future leader than as a current meal.
"This is not to be spoken of further," the senior announced as he turned to leave.
Chapter 8
Diplomats are useful only in fair weather.
As soon as it rains they drown in every drop.
—Charles de Gaulle
Department of State, Washington, DC
The early morning sun shone brightly off the Potomac, sending scattered rays of light to bathe the Lincoln Memorial and the National Academy of Sciences. Some of that light, and it was perhaps the only brightness to the place, indirectly lit the walls of the Department of State where a meeting, judged by some to be important, was taking place.
The President's National Security Advisor was not entitled to quite as much deference as a Darhel lordling. Thus, she was received in a second class conference room. It was facing towards the Potomac, true, but the furnishings and wall hangings were not of the best. It would never do for someone in such a quasi-military, politically-appointed position to be made to feel that she was somehow the equal of the senior career bureaucrats of State.
The Secretary of State, who was not a career bureaucrat, fumed. Someone, somewhere in the Byzantine halls of Foggy Bottom, had deliberately set this up to insult NSA and embarrass him.
NSA was there expressly to discuss some of the President's concerns with regard to what he had called "sabotage" of American policy in places ranging from Diess to Panama. In particular, today NSA was concerned with Panama.
If State showed contempt for NSA, it was as nothing to what NSA felt for State. She'd thought them, in her own words, "lily-white, weak-kneed, overbred, limp-wristed collaborators with the communists," back during the Cold War. "Our very own fifth column for the Kremlin . . . pseudo-intellectual moral cowards . . . poltroons." And she had said that on a day when she was in a good mood. Her opinion was even lower now, when it wasn't just America's freedom on the line, but the survival of humanity itself.
The Secretary of State, himself, on the other hand, she liked and even, to a degree, respected. A well-dressed, distinguished looking Wilsonian Republican with clear, intelligent eyes and a full head of hair going gray at the temples, SecState was simply unable to control the senior career bureaucrats who actually ran the department. NSA thought that perhaps no one could really control them, at least not without shooting a fair number to gain the attention and cooperation of the rest.
Even then, she thought, the shootings would have to be public and every one of the remainder would have to be forced to watch them. The ability of a State Department fool to deny unpleasant reality is deservedly the stuff of legend.
"I'm not a fool, madam," the secretary said, shaking his distinguished Websterian head slowly. "I know my department is rife with traitors, collaborators and people running their own agenda. What I lack is the ability to do all that much about it. They know the system. Sadly, I don't. They work together to cover for each other and keep me in the dark. No one's really been able to control them since at least 1932 or '33."
Before the NSA could make an answer, her cell phone rang. Smiling apologetically, she answered it. Her eyes grew suddenly wide as she swallowed nervously. "I understand, Mr. President," she said, quietly and sadly. "Yes, Mr. President, I'll tell the secretary."
NSA looked up to the secretary. "I am informed," she said, "that the Posleen have crushed the Army's corps to the south of us. The Posleen have broken through and are coming north. I am supposed to evacuate and the President suggests that you do the same."
The impeccably and expensively clad Undersecretary of State for Extraterrestrial Affairs looked at his phone and then, nervously, at his watch. 9:26. Shit, they were supposed to be ready to evacuate me by now.
The undersecretary stared nervously southward, across the Potomac to where the scattered remnants of a wrecked Army corps and a ceremonial regiment were fighting to the death to buy a little time. Columns of smoke rose skyward from more places than the diplomat could easily count. In fact, he didn't even try. What difference did the amount of destruction make? What mattered was where it was heading, and how quickly it might reach him, here at Foggy Bottom, or his family in Bethesda.
Again, the diplomat glared down at the phone. Again he looked at his watch to see that bare minutes had passed. He started to reach for the phone, to contact his Darhel handler, when there came a bright flash from across the Potomac, from the general vicinity of Fort Myer and Henderson Hall. Following the flash a shock wave arose, turned dark by the smoke, dust, lumber and other debris it picked up and flung outward in all directions. The broad river itself bowed downward under the force, the passage of the shock wave plainly visible as a fast moving fur
row in the water.
In less time than it takes to tell, the diplomat uttered, "Shit," and threw himself violently to the floor, damage to his suit be damned. The shock wave dissipated rapidly but, given the amount of GalTech C-9 explosive the Marines had packed into Henderson Hall, it was still enough when it reached the Department of State to shatter the windows, rip loose bricks, and raise the overpressure inside the well-appointed office enough to knock the undersecretary out cold.
Which was a pity from the point of view of the undersecretary and his family, for the phone with his evacuation instructions began to ring mere minutes after he was rendered unconscious.
Because her evacuation instructions didn't depend on alien star transport, and because she had no family to sweat over, the National Security Advisor was not anxiously awaiting a phone call when the blast struck. Instead, she and a couple of aides awaited transportation by the parking lot abutting Virginia Avenue to the northeast of the State Department Building. The group heard the helicopter coming in down Twenty-Third Street before they saw it. When they did see it . . .