by Stephen Moss
Failing that he had planned to use the children to rule until the war was over, to force the world to do as he knew must be done. He sat in silence and thought of all he had lost. And in the depth of that darkness he instinctively reached out his hand for Jennifer, always there, always helping him get through this interminable ordeal. But not now. Not ever again, Neal knew that. He could only hope to never see her again, and never have to see in her eyes the hatred and disgust she must now feel for him.
Neal breathed deeply and hung his head.
And while Minnie and her small circle silenced the two opposing conspiracies, the world, ignorant of the dangers that so many had faced in the last two days, watched the missile-mine swarm rush outward into the night on its long journey. They hoped the salvo would find its mark; they hoped.
Fifth Part:
Interval F: A Different Approach
“Go!” shouted Quavoce, and they were off. To-Henton accelerated ahead almost immediately, his personal battlesuit, recreated in the sim in faithful detail, giving him more speed than Quavoce’s.
They ran toward an obstacle course, one that changed and refreshed itself constantly, one originally designed to test marines as they prepared for combat, but used in reality more by the wealthy, the self-titled nobility, as they tested themselves and sought to prove their worth to anyone pretentious enough to care.
Both their suits had the additional leg joint at the bottom, giving them an extended, amplified foot motion that significantly increased their speed. But Quavoce’s suit’s legs were shorter than To-Henton’s, which, among other aspects of his suit’s design, sacrificed pure speed in favor of greater agility.
Quavoce watched as To-Henton stretched out ahead, approaching the course proper. But soon he would have his chance to catch his rival, in the closeness of the course.
He forged onward, into the coming challenge, steeling himself before diving headlong at the morphing web that represented the first obstacle. As he leapt at the great semi-structure, he studied its shifting form. Looking for purchase. There, two lines intersecting as they moved past each other. He would grab hold there.
At the last moment he saw as To-Henton connected above him, and saw the ripple from the other man’s contact surge outward across the surface. He cursed as his intended landing spot moved out of reach, forcing him to change tactics at the last moment. He was forced to catch the line with his inverse knee, instead of his hand, clenching to hold onto it.
He would not be able to stop himself completely, so he wouldn’t try. Passing through the yawning gap in the netting that had threatened to be his downfall, he felt the tension come to his leg as he was slung downward. He let himself go, even pulling himself in to a ball as he passed under his own leg, and back through the netting once more, at speed now. At the last moment he released his leg, extending himself, and felt as he was flung outward and upward, his momentum now redirected.
It was his turn to surprise his opponent, and he studied his angle in the seconds before reconnection. There, he saw it and lunged out for it, grasping with all his might and shouting through his suit comms. The shout was not only a voicing of his effort, it was a distraction. A distraction for To-Henton who glanced downward, expecting to see his friend plummeting back to ground.
Instead he saw as Quavoce, suddenly far closer than he should have been, connected with an intersection of the shift-net and wrenched at it. Only just in time did he reassess his position and catch himself, darting his attention back to his own hands and feet as the net bucked in front of him, threatening to shake him loose.
He laughed with the thrill of it as he successfully saved himself and set to climbing once more.
“Nice try, you slippery little …” shouted To-Henton, his words trailing off as he focused on the task at hand. He had a lead, not as much of one as he had hoped for, though, and he was not one to underestimate his opponent. Not here, and not in life either.
They were friends and To-Henton trusted Quavoce, there was no doubt about that. But whether Quavoce still trusted To-Henton was another question altogether. In truth, To-Henton meant his friend no harm, none whatsoever. He liked the Mantilatchi, loved him even. If it was as common-place to join with another man in his own society as it was in, say, the Nomadi tribes, he would have suggested that to Quavoce a long time ago, such was his affection for him.
But it was not, and they had not, and so, though they had remained friends, they had also, it seemed, become rivals. Rivals for something Quavoce had never even really wanted, thought To-Henton, as he reached the top of the shift-net and flung himself over, giving one last parting rattle to it as he went.
What was really going on between Quavoce and Princess Lamati was beyond him, but it had been going on, well, on and off, for far too long now to be discounted as merely a fling. He judged his leap downward and jumped, kicking outward and downward in a calculated dive that would have faltered a fainter heart.
He glanced at his friend as he fell past, hot on his tail still, and coming up fast. It was not that he would begrudge the man a union with the princess, or even that he really wanted one himself, despite the very real power it would give him and the Eltoloman nation he represented.
There was a time when he and his fellow ministers back in the Eltoloman Parliament had thought that their best route lay with a marriage of their close ally Quavoce with the Lamat Princess. But as that had come to seem ever more unlikely, they had changed tactics, and somewhere along the way To-Henton had come to see that marriage as his right, his destiny.
He grabbed out with both hands to grasp a passing strand of the net as he went by, setting parameters on both claws to detach automatically if he could not connect with his feet as well. At these speeds, even his machine claws might be ripped free by the sudden rending, and he would need them if he hoped to keep his lead through the next stages of the treacherous course he now felt himself on.
- - -
Princess Lamati stood and stretched. She was naked, and almost happy.
She looked down at her empty bed. Yet another night alone, after an evening of athletic but, she feared, regretted sex with the man she hoped to pair with. As the afterglow had faded, he had left, as he so often did.
He was her lover, no doubt about that. And he was her prospect, she had made that clear early on. She wanted him to enter contract with her, and to begin negotiations for mutual progeny design, both artificial and real. Even if she had tried to keep it some kind of secret it would have been obvious to all but the simplest pundit and political observer that she was pursuing him.
She was seen with him often. He was gentile and considerate enough to never spurn her request to kneel by him, or eat at his circled table, but nor was he moving forward. His misgivings were all too real. And, she admitted only to herself, they were not without foundation, she could acknowledge that at least, but only here, to herself.
But that said, she could not wait for much longer. She needed a union. She had commitment from another, commitment that would, she believed, survive a more public unionification with the Mantilatchi, such was her hold over that state’s leader. But if Quavoce was truly going to continue to refuse her, she was going to have to make a decision. And she was going to have to make it sometime soon.
She sighed. Not now, though, not yet.
“Schney!” she barked.
He appeared at her bedside. He had been waiting for the past two hours for her to wake. She rarely got up much before sunrise, but on the rare occasion she did, it behooved him to not only come quickly, but to be prepared and compos mentis when he got there.
“What’s going on, Schney?” she said with disdain. She hated his name. It was common, in both senses of the word, just like him. He was, she knew, an underhanded little shit of a man, but he was resourceful, and she had rewarded him just enough to buy his loyalty, just enough to tie his destiny to hers. And once he was loyal, if only to his own continued success, then his lack of scruples served her purpos
es. Her last assistant, Brim, had suffered from an inconvenient conscience that had eventually won him an unpleasant end.
Well, unpleasant for him. Sar had rather enjoyed it. As Schney deftly and diffidently gave his update on the latest comings and goings around the fleet, she listened. She listened and she stretched, she listened and she yawned, she listened and she passed wind.
But she was listening. She was more attentive and careful than even she liked to believe, such was the depth of her deceit. She closed her eyes as he droned on, but there were sometimes kernels of importance in there, kernels you might not even realize were important. One such kernel was about to appear.
“… have appointed a new military oversight committee that …”
“Wait. Go back. Who did you say has appointed a new … ‘military oversight committee’?”
“The Hemmbar Archivists, Princess,” replied Schney, before going silent.
The princess was pensive a moment, then said, “Why, Schney, would the academics need a military oversight committee?”
Schney did not blunder into an answer. He was diligent, no one could fault him for that, and so he considered the question before replying. “Their purpose here, they claim, is to catalogue the history of humanity up until their coming extinction, and the details of the conquest, and finally to establish a hub of archival for the new world.”
He saw impatience start to flare on her face, as it had a tendency to do with an abundance only exceeded by its lack of forewarning, but he was getting to his point. “They claim the committee is to be dedicated to the war effort in particular. What is interesting is that, barring the notably minimal feed of data from our destination, we have had nothing but the prelude to the war effort for them to catalogue this entire time.”
“So …?”
“So, your grace, one has to wonder, what has changed that they would now find the war effort … of greater interest?”
“Quite,” she said, somewhat mollified by this cogent codification of her own misgivings.
After a moment’s thought she went on. “Have the AM perform a complete analysis of all communications with the Hemmbar over the last two years, more if that seems necessary to identify a set of probable causes for this change.”
Schney was nodding. Nodding and making note of the request to pass on as soon as he was done here.
“And … let’s invite the head of this … military oversight committee for a meeting. We can tell them of our own preparations, well, most of them, anyway.”
Schney nodded once more, and waited a moment. He knew her tone. She was dismissing him. But woe betide him if he left too soon, if he dared misinterpret, or heaven forbid preempt one of her countless unspoken rules.
He saw her expression change, though, and in a flash he was bowing backward and vanishing as he did so, as was his style. Leave her with diffidence, arrive with subjugation. Notes she appreciated. He calmed himself. He loved her, he told himself. He served her, he told himself. He must never let his hatred show, he must suppress it, banish it from his mind. She was his mistress, his burden, and his salvation. He would serve her as long as it served him.
He contacted the AM and set to work.
- - -
The final leg of the race was closer than To-Henton would have liked, but he was elated anyway. He had not needed to beat Quavoce here, he had needed to stay competitive, close enough in the tight spaces where Quavoce excelled so that he could use his greater speed in the final sprint to the finish line.
Quavoce saw it too. A lesser man might have resorted to lesser means in such a situation, veer away from friendly sabotage into outright attack. But such tactics, however effective, only deflated any victory that came from them anyway. This was a race, a test of speed and agility, not a battle sim.
He felt the air on his battlesuit’s face as he broke free from the final obstacle, a soupy swamp filled with cling-reeds that needed to be fought through, preferably working down into its depths to cut through the bases of the reeds rather than trying to rip through the fatter stems closer to the surface.
It was with very real relief that Quavoce extricated himself from the morass and dug in for the final run, gripping at the open ground and driving outward with all his might, free now, out in the open, and ahead, if only for a moment longer.
He sensed as To-Henton broke into his own sprint. He worked hard, adding every ounce of strength to push his suit faster, but his instincts told him it was too late.
To-Henton would win this one, then, thought Quavoce as the other man pulled level and began to eek out a lead, laughter coming through the suit comm. Not unpleasant laughter, not mocking. It was an achievement to beat Quavoce. He was a fierce competitor. But he was not a sore loser. He did not begrudge To-Henton his victory.
Not here, not now. But …
Why Quavoce continued to stay in their other race he did not know. Maybe it was his very love for his old friend To-Henton that did it. Maybe, he tried to tell himself, he wanted to try and save To from a loveless union with the dangerous Sar Lamati. Or maybe, Quavoce knew, the fact that To wanted her made her seem more … made it all seem somehow … made him crave …
No.
No. He did not want to unite with Sar. Allegiance was one thing. But a contract of marriage was another altogether. It was too often sullied by ambition. He would not do that. But how to convince To to stay away as well, how to do that, Quavoce did not know.
Interval G: Advocating for Devils
Kattel had been a simple man. Clever, in his way. Capable, certainly. He had gained a reputation as a reliable engineer, lacking imagination, perhaps, but not lacking diligence and a mind for details, critical traits in the field of mind-mapping.
For his area of expertise had actually capitalized the dichotomy of those two factors, as he sought to copy, faithfully, the imagination and personality of others, without adding any of his own in the process.
When he had been approached by the Nomadi Alliance to work on the mind-mapping for their Agent in the Advanced Team, Kattel had been both honored and skeptical. This was not the reason he had gotten into this line of work. Indeed it was quite the opposite.
He had become embroiled in this work not of his own free will, but as a work of love, love for his uncle, a man who had suffered for many years with a degenerative disease that attacked and slowly corrupted nerve centers in his brain. The effect was glacially slow, and often almost imperceptible, but over time it changed the sufferer, subtle tweaks in their personality leading them to become a different person, and all too often it changed them too much to let them continue to fit into whatever life, whatever family, whatever circle of friends, and whatever marriage had once been home to them.
His work, then, both therapeutic and curative, had focused on the process of analyzing which areas were under attack in each patient, and attempting to copy and duplicate those areas into synthetic substrates for transplant into the host’s mind, both providing a permanence of personality, and allowing the removal of corrupted cortices to stop the spread of the disease to other as yet uncontaminated parts of the mind.
He had been successful, but, in an ironic twist for a man otherwise bereft of a creative soul, the process had proven to be more of an art than a science. As the research had developed into a field unto itself, it had come to be known as personality forging, though it was, in truth, more forgery than forging, as its opponents pointed out all too often.
As more and more parts of a person were transplanted and augmented, at first for medical reasons but then, increasingly, for more elective motives, the inevitable question was begged: at what point is the person no longer there, and only the copy of that person? At what point does the surgery to remove a memory center or other cortex constitute not enhancement, but something closer to euthanasia?
Kattel had pondered the question more often than he could remember, and he could remember doing this very clearly because of his own synthetic memory chip, bolstering his recal
l function, an augmentation his job had necessitated.
But that had not been the route of his misgivings when he had been recruited to help prepare the Armada’s advanced team all those years ago. His objections had been those voiced by so many as the debate had ranged around the world. He knew the stories about the human race. Tales of cruelty and inequality that were, he assumed, often exaggerated, but must have had at least their foundation in fact.
Deep down he had known, like many others, that he was really indifferent to the future of that alien race, even if he wouldn’t have admitted as much. But his indifference did not mean he was keen to be a contributor to their wholesale slaughter. So he had wrestled with the issue, right up until he had been offered four times his previous wage point, and the free travel permit to all partner nations that was a perquisite of contribution to the war effort.
He had always longed to see some of the great cities of the world. Not just in sim, but for real. To take the long hike to the mountain citadel of Eltol, to wander the underground market labyrinth under Kyryl’s second city, with all its delights, both legal and otherwise. And, of course, to stand on the parapets of the Castelion of BaltanSant and stare out at the vast plains, the site of so many storied battles: the infamous Boneyard.
So he had agreed, and in doing so had become a part of the great war machine, inducted into its heart to become a cog in its inner-working, working with billions of others for a task that few truly supported, and even fewer truly understood.
He did not remember when he had changed. Not fully. He did not remember the event. That often plagued him. He could recall the time before. He could recall his apathy. And he could recall the time of work, of ever more complex tasks assigned to him as he proved himself and rose up to the rank of team leader.
But at what point he had become a traitor to the cause he could not, precisely, say. But a traitor he was, he thought, as he listened for a sign of the coming apocalypse. The ringing of the bell. The sign of his work’s success, either in the form of breaking news reports, or in the form of darkness. His own end, the bomb-maker hoisted by his petard.