“Have you used them?”
“Not the way Captain Follett thought. The original configuration had almost no guidance to it. But Sergeant Leoni got some missile training somewhere along the line, and he attached those engines that you see near the fins.”
“That’s impressive. Is Sergeant Leoni somebody new?”
“New?” a jovial voice barked from the other side of the truck. Mortas watched a set of worn combat boots cross behind the vehicle, and then a man with a full head of gray hair appeared. Stripped to a sweat-dotted T-shirt, he had a barrel chest and a bit of a gut. A merry smile showed gaps between his teeth, and then he was shaking Mortas’s hand. “I been in this war for thirty years, young lieutenant. Done everything from grunt infantry to general’s driver. I even did a turn in the stockade.”
“From the gig as the general’s driver?” Jander gave the man a wild grin, recognizing the archetype.
“What can I say? He objected to my off-duty use of his vehicle. I owe him one; I met a better class of people in the lockup.”
“I been there. Except I was in solitary.”
“Really?” Leoni studied his face, reappraising him. “You’re gonna have to tell me about that sometime.”
Strickland tried to redirect the conversation. “I was just showing our new battalion supply officer how you improved the darts.”
“Aw, it wasn’t just me. The boys and girls in my company are pretty handy with tools. They cooked up a simple launcher so we can load these beasts up with food, shoot ’em into the sky, and then the guidance takes ’em right to troops in the field. We lost a few of ’em, getting it right.” A secret grin. “Crashed one of ’em into the personal shuttle of a Tratian general who was asking too many questions. Not while he was in it, of course. Anyway, we finally worked out all the bugs and can put rations down just about anywhere you like.”
Strickland grinned. “Best part is, this being our own concoction, Roger can’t hack in and redirect them. No HDF system even picks them up.”
“Excuse me, Sergeant Leoni, but you mentioned your company? What company is that?”
“The First Independent Transportation Company, sir.” Both NCOs laughed. “We’re the truck-driving equivalent of the Orphans. You see, with all the desertions when Force units first came here, there were a lot of outfits getting broken up. Left a lot of truck drivers without a home. Since the Orphans have no organic transport, I just started picking up a vehicle here and a driver there, and asked Colonel Watt if we could be of use.”
“You’re not an Orphan?”
“Oh, I’m an Orphan, sir. Back before your brigade was ever called that.”
“You’re gonna have to tell me about that sometime.”
“I will, sir. But right now we have to get this show on the road and you need to get to your shuttle.”
“All right.” Mortas looked toward the airfield. “Can you point me in the right direction?”
“We can do better than that, sir. You’re with FITCO now. We can always find you a ride.”
Chapter 4
“Senator Mortas. What is your vote?”
Olech came to with a start, just as he had on the day when this memory had occurred. He looked left and right in confusion, noting the tense muscles of the senators seated closest to him. The semicircular desks rose behind him and fell away to his front, where the chamber’s speaker was calling for his decision.
All the sensations of that day returned—the nausea from the uncharacteristic binge the night before, the grinding doubt at what Lydia said was the smart move, the gnawing belief that this was just plain wrong. The wounds inside his abdomen, which had quieted during his years in the Senate, had come alive that morning. They clawed at him as he stood.
“I vote . . . nay.”
His decision seemed to echo across the chamber, but it elicited surprisingly little response. Olech thought he heard someone blurt out, “What the hell?” in the rows behind him, but his eyes were firmly planted on the desk when he sat.
“Senator Mortas has voted against the measure.” The speaker called for the next ballot, but Olech heard none of it. Slowly raising his eyes, he saw two faces turned around in their seats, stamped with disapproval and anger. Not a week earlier he’d assured both of those senators that they could count on his support.
Finally finding the nerve to seek out the only face that mattered, Olech blanched to see that Interplanetary President Larkin, specially invited for this important vote, was staring directly at him. He’d given his word to the white-haired man, and then gone back on it. Instead of resentment or hostility, Larkin’s lined features bore a long-suffering stillness, as if this latest affront was nothing when compared to all of the other betrayals in that hall.
Acid burned in his stomach, making him wish that the old wounds had reopened, anything to take him out of there. The vote went on and on, but Olech now began to see it as something that had already happened, that Larkin’s reform had been narrowly defeated. Control of officer promotions in the Human Defense Force would remain with the Senate, and so the command structure of the Force would become even more political in its behavior.
Olech’s fingertips tingled, and he saw with relief that the long table was fading away. His next view was the raised gallery walkway outside the Senate chamber, normally packed with staffers and reporters, but now empty except for him and a graying man walking beside him who was his duplicate.
“What just happened, Mirror?” The shame of the event rode the words. “Why didn’t you speak to me before this memory?”
“Of all the votes you cast as a senator, this one baffles me most. I did not want to prejudice your reaction.”
“That wouldn’t have made any difference. I feel now the way I did then. Sick, ashamed, and stupid. I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway.”
“Not an unusual event in the history of your race.”
“My wife always had excellent instincts for the smart play, but somehow on this one she called it wrong.”
“It cemented you in place with Horace Corlipso’s faction, which was one of the goals you and your wife chose early in your career.”
“Just because it got us what we wanted didn’t make it right. The Force was already riven with its own factions—hard not to, with an interplanetary alliance—but commanders in the war zone were starting to make strategic decisions based on political factors because the Senate controlled who got promoted. Larkin recognized that danger, and almost managed to wrest that power away from them.”
“You promised to help him.”
“Of course I did. I’d been out there, I’d fought in the war, I knew the threat this represented. How could it not be bad for the troops, or for just winning the conflict, if decisions in the field were being made to please politicians on different planets?”
“You could blame this on your wife, you know. She pushed you to do it.”
“She was listening to the wrong people.”
“She was a political operator, in the same environment as everyone else. And she was your closest adviser and confidante. She had an obligation to provide better counsel.”
“It was a joint decision.”
“You and I both know it was not.”
“Oh, but it was, Mirror. We both wanted status. We both wanted power. And we both fooled ourselves that we were only going to do it the one time.”
“You look fifty pounds lighter than the last time I saw you, General.” Reena Mortas spoke while walking down a long, cylindrical passageway.
“That was quite some time ago, Madame Chairwoman,” General Merkit, the commander of the disjointed space city known as the Construction Zone, answered comfortably. “I never got the chance to thank you for making me go rebuild the Orphan Brigade. It changed my life.”
“And I thought I was just making it difficult.” Reena laughed once. “You’ve done a splendid job out here.”
“It wasn’t half as hard as it at first seemed. So much activity, so many con
voys coming and going, factory stations as far as the eye can see, all infiltrated by the worst kinds of profiteers and schemers you ever met.”
“I’m not sure about that last part. I am from Celestia, you know.”
“This gang would have given them a run for their money, ma’am. But as with most overblown bureaucracies, there’s usually one big rule or a single powerful agency that can bring it to its knees.”
“And that was?”
“The security authorization to work here. As military commander, that one’s all mine. Doesn’t matter if you’re the richest ore hauler in the galaxy or a board member with Zone Quest; if I yank your credentials you have to leave. I did it a few times, just to prove I would, and even now I have to toss a hard case every once in a while. But you threaten their ticket to making money, and you get their attention.”
A large security detail walked behind the pair, the Chairwoman’s bodyguards mixing with Merkit’s protectors. When Olech had installed the general in the Construction Zone with the unpopular mandate of ending the rampant corruption, he’d surrounded Merkit with a hand-picked team from his own force. Although the two guard teams had barely spoken to each other, the gathering had been a bit of a reunion.
“Ulbridge tells me you’ve made some key personnel changes out here.”
“That part was easy.” The corridor ended at a circular hatch guarded by armed men wearing the gray tunic of Mortas security. The door stood open on enormous hinges, and it glistened with counter-surveillance gear. “When I pull the credentials from some crook in the hierarchy, I get to pick the replacement. You’d be surprised at how many of the discharged veterans working out here have a deep hatred of Zone Quest, Victory Provisions, and their cronies.”
“No, I wouldn’t.” Reena stepped over the hatch’s raised opening, followed by Ulbridge and Merkit. The room was two stories high and cylindrical, and its walls were covered with large viewing screens.
“So I had a ready talent pool of people who’d been blackballed by the corporations. They’re grateful for their new jobs, and enjoy rooting out corruption. They’re also hooked into an extensive, informal intelligence operation among the vets and the low-level workers; very little goes on that I don’t hear about.”
The hatch closed behind them, and the lights came up. A single command console stood in the center of the room, encircled by two half-moon tables with several chairs.
“This is the most secure compartment in the whole Construction Zone, Madame Chairwoman. We can speak freely here.”
“My people already swept the place, ma’am.” Ulbridge slid between the tables and activated the console. Different screens flickered into life while Ulbridge slotted a highly encrypted disc. Reena and Merkit took their seats.
“So what can I do for you, Chairwoman Mortas?” Merkit asked.
“A small favor.” Reena breathed the words out like a prayer. All around them, the walls took on the darkness of space. Stars twinkled into existence a few moments later, and then one of them slowly brightened as the focus intensified. Planets orbiting the star began to take shape, as well as numerous dead asteroids, but then the resolution stabilized on a single gray planet.
“Name it, ma’am.”
“General Merkit, you’re going to win the war.”
“—which brings us to the star system that we’ve been covertly studying for almost a month.” Reena had been walking back and forth for much of the last thirty minutes, describing the unlikely chain of events that had brought this group of unexplored planets to her attention.
“I have a question before you proceed, ma’am.”
“You think it’s crazy that I’m accepting a vision from a Step Worshiper’s dream as an indication that these planets are the origin of the Sims.”
“I am skeptical of that part, but it’s not my question.” Merkit shifted in his seat. “You said that the alien encountered by your stepson detailed the creation story which the Sims believe—that they’re the mutated descendants of long-duration human space voyages that got lost out here.”
“Yes, but the alien also maintained that the Sims’ belief was a lie, implanted in their brains by their actual creators.”
“I understand that. But I believe your stepson is probably correct in suspecting that much of what the alien told him is somewhat based in fact.”
“Why is that, General?”
“I’ve spent a lot of time around accomplished liars. Many of them try to stay close to the truth because it’s harder to disprove what they’re saying. And some of the good ones think they’re so darned slick that they can hand you a giant clue and you won’t catch it.”
“I remember a general who was like that.”
“My time with the Orphans showed me I’m not slick at all. But back to my question. The Sims believe they’re the mutated descendants of humans who came out here with the equipment to artificially create succeeding generations. If that’s true, the Sims would be a self-sustaining race. However, we’ve never detected anything at any time during the war that suggested the Sims have this capability. Its absence seems to blow a giant hole in the alien’s description of this Sim creation story.”
“Very good, General.” Reena nodded at Ulbridge, who began tapping keys on the console. “The Sims who met with my stepson shied away from discussing their origins, so there was no opportunity to compare their beliefs with the shapeshifter’s description. However, one part of the alien’s explanation suggests an answer. The Sims are supposed to have been receiving convoys over the decades of the war, each one being the next serial in a staggered arrival of more and more important elements of Sim civilization. The ability to generate life artificially is so crucial to their survival that they may believe that equipment won’t arrive until the very last convoys.”
“So the Sims’ actual creators could be manufacturing the newest generation, keeping them in a form of stasis while feeding them memories of a nonexistent past and the skills they would need upon awakening,” Merkit mused. “That way they’d retain control of how many Sims are produced. And when the Sims won the war, their creators would just shut off the machines.”
“That is exactly the assumption we followed.” Reena shifted her gaze to the screens, which now retreated from the solar system under observation. The bright star became just one among many, and then digital indicators began to appear at a great remove. “Although we couldn’t risk going near the system, we did ring it with covert monitoring systems.”
“What did they show?”
“Nothing, at first. Three entire weeks passed with no activity in that system at all. I was on the verge of ordering closer reconnaissance when this happened.” The view intensified, rushing in toward the suspect planets again. The largest of them appeared lifeless until a tiny spark popped into life on its gray mass. Like an ember rising from a fire, it left the dark planet and then swung away into space.
“That was a launch.” Merkit stated, coming to his feet.
“Yes.” Reena’s lip curled, still relishing the discovery. “It’s a sizeable craft, and it moved out of the system at a speed consistent with Sim vessels.”
Ulbridge entered more commands, and the screens switched to a blurred image hurtling through space. Still observed from a distance, it was a wedge-nosed craft with the boxy fuselage of a personnel transport. Merkit walked toward the picture as if in a trance.
“Tell me you were able to track where it went.”
“It was a risk, but we had to know. A robot probe followed it, all the way to a region of space well outside the war zone. This spot right here.”
The screens resolved into another black view, but Merkit didn’t notice. The dark void was nothing more than the background to a tableau of astounding significance. Arranged like ships at anchor, hundreds of spacecraft similar to the one launched from the gray planet hung in the gloom as if frozen.
“We believe this is the next convoy of new Sims. The ship we tracked slid right into place with no addition
al adjustments, the way it would if the entire complement were asleep. Or, more accurately, not yet born.”
“Our ships do the same thing, before and after a Step.”
“Yes, but at the end of a voyage our people wake up. The energy readings on our vessels climb substantially during and after that process. The new vessel appears to have gone into an energy-saving mode, and hasn’t moved. They’re all just sitting there, powered down, with no emissions indicative of signals or scans.”
“What have we learned about the planet of origin?”
“Long-range surveillance says it has gravity and a weak atmosphere, but that it’s not habitable by humans.” Reena waved a hand, and the view focused on the forbidding gray orb. “So far we’ve detected nothing unnatural about its surface. No structures, no antennae, no monitoring stations. The launch originated inside the planet itself.”
“So whatever’s happening there is hidden.”
“Right now, yes. But we’ve developed a plan to find out what’s going on inside.”
“And that’s what you want me to handle.”
“Yes. There are too many eyes on me, and too many ways for this to be discovered. You’ve got total control of the stations out here, and so much activity that you could take this over and get us the answers we need.”
“It would be my pleasure, ma’am.”
Reena stood next to him, staring at the screens. “We cannot let them know we’re onto them. Proceed cautiously. I’ve assembled a team of experts in a wide range of disciplines, all of them loyal, who will be arriving here in small, disjointed batches that I’m sure you can disguise as something else. They’ve been studying this planet visually, and have drawn some conclusions about its makeup.
“Other teams are augmenting robotic reconnaissance to get us closer and, ultimately, to enter the planet itself. You will do that only on my say-so, and only after completing all other studies on this planet, and on every other planet, moon, satellite, and asteroid in this system.”
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