by Vox Day
“That was an unusual question. Is it relevant to the matter we discussed yesterday?”
“Quite possibly, yes.”
“And so you do have more information concerning the situation,” he said accusingly. “Well?”
“The Rigel was sabotaged,” York told him.
“No!” Hull protested, a startled look crossing his face. He shook his head. “That's not possible. Sabotage? On an Ascendancy cruiser? I've never heard of such a thing!”
“I doubt anyone has. There's a first time for everything.”
“I can't believe that!”
“Oh, you had better believe it, Captain Hull. The Rigel was almost certainly sabotaged—although captured might be a more accurate description—and forced into orbit somewhere in the very sector you've been studying.” She pointed to the screen. “There are no habitable planets, but as you have surely noticed, there are no less than eighteen planets in addition to two sizable asteroid belts. The motivation for the attack is clear enough; someone is after the sunbuster technology. We've been hearing rumors that an attempt would be made for years, but no one thought the rumors were anything more than the usual chatter.”
Hull didn't argue with her conclusion about the missing ship's location. She could see he was already thinking it through. If the cruiser had been sabotaged and gone dark, it would be all but impossible to find in deep space. The saboteurs wouldn't dare to transmit any signals for fear the Navy would intercept and trace them. That indicated a prearranged orbit, as it was the safest way to ensure it could be found in a reasonable time frame while remaining silent.
“An attempt by whom.”
“Prince Li-Hu. House Dai Zhan has been after the technology for nearly two centuries, Captain. Make no mistake about it, it was Li-Hu.”
“Impossible!”
“So we thought. In fact, I would have even agreed with you only last week,” York said calmly. “But that was last week.” She spread her hands. “House Malhedron maintains the galactic peace through its sole possession of the sunbuster. Its existence—the monopoly on force the technology provides—is what guarantees interstellar solidarity with Old Terra. No world, however alien, is apt to rebel against a military power that can nova its sun at will, Captain.”
“You don't sound as if you approve of this monopoly, Miss York.”
“It's a necessary evil. We may live by the sword, but we certainly don't want to perish by it.”
Hull retorted stiffly, “There's no danger of that. The Navy will see to its recovery.”
“Will it?” York regarded him bemusedly. “It seems to me that, for the time being, you are the Navy as far as this matter is concerned. How can you expect to prevent the technology from falling into Prince Li-Hu's hands if you refuse to believe he is after it?”
“The Dai Zhani are loyal,” replied Hull brusquely. “I have several in my crew.”
“So did the Rigel.”
“What you say amounts to an accusation of treason, Miss York.”
“It most certainly does,” she answered.
“I can't imagine any Great House or planetary government would dare to use a sunbuster. Even if they could manage to steal it from the Rigel, which they can't reasonably expect to accomplish. House Dai Zhan doesn't even have ten Horizon-class ships of its own. They'd be obliterated!”
“That's correct, but you're missing the point, which is that Ascendancy could not threaten to use it again, not if the ability to retaliate existed. The threat of the sunbuster would cease to become credible, and what has been for centuries a stable, if imposed peace would soon transition into an unstable period of revolution and upheaval throughout the galaxy. What passes for Terra's empire would be over.”
“The Ascendancy is no empire!”
“Not in name, perhaps. But regardless, once the technology is out of our hands, once the ability to destroy a star is no longer unilateral, we are no longer unassailable. You must know what that means, Captain. Once the fear of utter destruction is gone, you'd see a dozen systems in revolt within a year.”
“I admit the possibility, but that is pure conjecture.”
“You are a military man, Captain. To you, war means warships and troop landings and orbital bombardments.”
Hull nodded. “What else could it be?”
“War encompasses those things, to be sure, but it also concerns conspiracies, espionage, and murder. At its heart, there are always ambitious men in high places conniving after power.” She held the captain's blue gaze and did not look away. “A knife in the back can win or collapse an empire as quickly as a cobalt bomb, and it can do so with far less mess. History is rich with examples of great empires that fell over smaller things than the loss of their primary military advantage.”
“You make it sound so dramatic,” the captain observed, his voice skeptical.
“Dramatic?” She smiled thinly and snapped her fingers. “Just like that, one Shiva-class warship disappears in deep space. Yes, I believe you might well call it dramatic.”
Hull gestured and the screen changed. The view of the subsector was replaced by a familiar list of names. “This is all very interesting, I'm sure, but let's be practical, Miss York. I've reviewed the most recent ship's roster for the Rigel. Based on the names and planetary residences, there were only a few Dai Zhani aboard Rigel. Do you really believe that such a small group could take over a cruiser?”
“I do. As the doctor suggested, it would be easy once the crew was rendered unconscious. You know these ships better than I do, is there a considerable level of redundancy to the oxygen cycling systems?”
Hull made a face and growled low in his throat. “I don't know about 'considerable',” he answered. “We have a backup system, of course. Although I suppose if the primary system was sabotaged, it would be possible to wreck the backup as well.”
York spread her hands and shrugged. They couldn't possibly know what had happened to Rigel, but at least she knew how she would go about taking control of such a ship. It was so obvious, once the doctor had pointed it out. A ship was a contained environment. The various containment systems were designed against breaches, against incidental contaminants and other accidents. But they were vulnerable to purposeful attacks, particularly from attacks by crew members privy to the workings of the failsafes.
“What would they do with it?” Hull burst out. “What would they do with the sunbuster even if they secured it? No ship, from House Dai Zhan or anywhere else, is going to get within fifty light-seconds of the zone in question, York. The Navy will see to that. Even if they could neutralize the crew and take over the ship, they couldn't hope to man it without a pilot or navigator. And even if they had plans to meet another ship that is already there, they couldn't expect to remove the missile and slip it past the blockade that is already taking shape.”
“It's not a matter of could, but how,” corrected York. “We don't know what it is yet, but it's my responsibility to discover that how and prevent it.”
Hull drummed his fingers on the desk. “You appear to be convinced that House Dai Zhan is involved.”
“Entirely certain, Captain.”
“But all we know is that the ship sent a distress signal and then disappeared. Have you ever considered that it might have suffered an explosion or is disabled? I can't see how you can simply rule it out.”
“I haven't ruled it out. If it is merely disabled, the crew is well, and there have been no attempts to access the technology, I shall be delighted. But I don't worry about the possibility that things might go well.”
“Benbow would say that your relentless cynicism is unhealthy.”
“I'm afraid we AID agents have irreparably soiled minds,” replied York cheerfully. “We cannot afford the lofty ideals they dispense in the military academies.”
“That's too bad.” Hull shook his head and waved his hand. The roster of crewmen vanished from the wall screen. “You appear to be determined to see treachery in House Dai Zhan.”
“Prince Li-Hu, to be specific. And the hypothetical saboteurs, of course.”
“You have hard evidence?”
“It's mostly hearsay and corpses,” admitted York. She smiled disarmingly. “And rumors. But they are rumors that date back more than twelve years, and in such matters, I've found that corpses speak volumes.”
“If you're correct about it being sabotage rather than an accident, I could name at least one likely alternative.”
“I'd be interested in hearing your opinion.”
“The Integration.”
“The cyborg worlds?” York shook her head slowly. “It's highly unlikely, Captain.”
“Why would you say that? You know what we're doing here. You know why Draco was stationed at Xigaze as well as I do.”
“Of course. To seal off the cyborgs and prevent them from infecting the rest of humanity with their techno-religious madness.”
“And you would still deny they're good candidates?” Hull's voice rose. “They're freaks, abominations, men deformed by their evil star and their twisted faith in their false gods. They are far more dangerous to Man than a dozen rebel Great Houses!”
“They have the potential to be that dangerous, I agree.”
“They would like nothing better than to get the sunbuster, York. It would, as you say, negate Terra's ability to use the weapon, or at least put them in an improved position to bargain with the rest of humanity. But no matter what, they'll never be accepted by the Malhedrons or anyone else who values human dignity, never! And that is why they seek to impose their abhorrent, inhuman vision on the rest of us.”
“Never is a long time, Captain.” York replied calmly, understanding very well why Hull's hatred for the Integration was so virulent. Kurzweil's sun, Diable, was an outcast star. Flaring with a violet light that periodically turned scarlet, it was an anomaly among the billion stars of the known universe. Its planets were colonized during the fifth migration less than seventy generations before, but it had been cut off from all trade and travel once it was discovered that Diable's violet radiation mutated human genetics at an unusually fast rate. Freaks walked its four planets, freaks, and geniuses, and monsters.
To make matters worse, the rapid rate of human evolution there had coincided with the widespread adoption of an ancient, obscure religion followed by a few of Kurzweil's first colonists, a religion that promised salvation through Singularity, which it defined as the inevitable union of Man with his Machine. Somehow, science and faith had come together to produce the ultimate abomination: posthumanity.
Since then warships of Terra's galactic navy had sealed off the worlds of the Integration from the rest of mankind almost as effectively as if they existed in another universe.
“It doesn't sound like you have a problem with them,” observed Hull. The pale blue eyes probed York's face.
“Not particularly,” she answered. “I suppose an operative has to see these things differently.”
“Why is that?”
“Were you aware that the Directorate has agents active on Kurzweil?”
“You've been there?” Hull looked startled.
“Several times. Kurzweil twice and Nizhni-Rostov once. I can't say that I found most people there to be very much different from people anywhere else.”
“That's not the Naval perspective,” Hull answered.
“Understandably.”
“Is it the AID view?”
“It's my view,” she said. “I don't pretend to speak for August Karsh. God only knows what that man thinks of anything.”
“You see no danger in blurring the lines between Man and Machine?” Hull raised his eyebrows.
“The machine is merely an extension of the human mind,” York said quietly. “What is Man already, if not an integration of primate, stick, and soul? To expand that integration and elevate it to the level of a religion, as the cyborgs do, that is pure madness, but even so, the sentient machines are nothing to fear in themselves.”
“I can't agree with your reasoning, Miss York. Not at all. If those machines are not dangerous now, it's only because they're impotent. We've pulled their fangs by sealing them off. Would we have done that were it not necessary? Believe me, it is.”
“You've been indoctrinated into that view, Captain.”
“Indoctrinated?” Hull stuck out his jaw, his eyes narrowing.
York shook her head. “Don't be offended by mere observation, Captain. We're all indoctrinated. Indoctrination is a necessary aspect of our professions. It's how the system functions.”
“You speak strangely for an intelligence operative,” Hull accused.
“Perhaps. Have you spoken with many intelligence operatives before?”
Hull ignored the question. “You said the people there are just like normal humans. Do you really believe that? We know that many of them are fully cyborged, and some perhaps worse.”
“Worse?” asked York.
“I've heard rumors of deeper perversions.”
“Perhaps you mean the mind uploads.” York nodded. “They're not a rumor, Captain. They're a fact.”
“You know that for a certainty?” demanded Hull.
She nodded. “I've spoken with one such being. It's a fascinating form of quasi-immortality.”
“How could you be there without their knowing what you are, if they're so advanced?”
“A trade secret, Captain, but I can tell you this: An agent infiltrating one of the cyborg worlds is prepared for a very long time. Indoctrination doesn't even begin to describe the necessary procedures. Not many agents have the chance. I was fortunate.”
“Fortunate? I wouldn't say so,” Hull disagreed. “I wouldn't venture into that snake pit for anything.”
“Your education suffers,” she said with an amused smile.
“You think so?” Hull shook his head and said vehemently, “If I was named High Admiral of the Galactic Seas, we'd have used the sunbuster on them already, Miss York. We'd have wiped out that damned violet sun and its four devil planets my first day on the job. You know why? Because if we don't, someday the god-machines will break out, they'll break out and they'll launch a cyborg crusade throughout the galaxy. Then where would the Ascendancy be?”
“The same place, but with a different set of rulers,” York said wryly. “Who knows, we might even get some sensible government. Say what you will about machines, but if nothing else, they do tend to be logical.”
“That's dangerous talk,” warned Hull.
“Dangerous?” York smiled. “Are we not free, Captain? Could I be free if I wasn't permitted to share my thoughts, or you weren't permitted to hear them?”
“The thought is the father of the action,” Hull replied sternly.
“Now, there's an old chestnut, Captain. But if we're dealing in maxims, you might try this: None is so blind as he who will not see.”
Hull took a deep breath and folded his arms. “That is some of the most treasonous talk I've ever heard aboard this ship. Do your superiors really want agents who think the way you do?”
“Director Karsh wants his agents fully informed and flexible because our ability to think like the enemy permits us to survive on an enemy planet, Captain. And not only have I stayed alive, but every time I return from a mission on a new world, I find myself seeing things from new perspectives.”
“Flexible!” Hull spat the word.
As if she hadn't heard the venom in Hull's voice, York continued. “Much of what I have seen affirms the justice of Terra's rule, but not all of it. Does it make me suspect to say that? In your eyes, I suppose it does, but the consequence is that I have a better understanding of how the other side thinks, and therefore I am better able to pass for one of them. I am better able to anticipate them. Your answer to the machine intelligences is Shiva. But the military answer is ultimately a futile one because it is only temporary. You can't hold the Ascendancy together by force forever, you know.”
The captain reddened. “Please don't presume to tell me what t
o think, Miss York.”
“I'm not,” she declared cheerfully. “I'm merely answering your question.”
“True enough,” the captain admitted grudgingly. “I should have known better than to match wits with an intelligence operative. I may not agree with how you think, Miss York, but as far as I'm concerned, you've got more balls than any marine on this ship to do what you do.”
“Why, thank you, Captain.” She accepted the compliment for the apology she knew it was meant to be.
Hull nodded briskly. “So. Enough about interstellar politics. I suppose you've been thinking more about our situation. Have you reached any conclusions about that?”
“I have. If it was sabotage, the saboteurs wouldn't have risked disabling the Rigel in a subsector as remote as Zero Seven Zero Two without providing for a means of conveying the technology elsewhere. So, we must assume that any survivors we find are, at the very least, suspects, and treat them accordingly.”
“If any of them are saboteurs, they will face a court of military justice on this ship,” Hull promised firmly.
“No, that will not be possible, Captain.” York straightened. “I'm afraid the exigencies of intelligence work seldom permit luxuries such as courts and trials. But you need not fear justice will not be served. Never doubt that. Justice will be done.
CHAPTER FIVE
The higher its type, always the seldomer doth a thing succeed. Ye higher men here, have ye not all been failures? Be of good cheer; what doth it matter? How much is still possible! Learn to laugh at yourselves, as ye ought to laugh! What wonder even that ye have failed and only half-succeeded, ye half-shattered ones! Doth not man's FUTURE strive and struggle in you? Man's furthest, profoundest, star-highest issues, his prodigious powers—do not all these foam through one another in your vessel?
—from “Thus Spake Zarathustra” by Friedrich Nietzsche
AUGUST KARSH, the Ascendancy's spy-master, was tall and thin, with a narrow, austere face that gave him the appearance of a saint until one saw the eyes. They were cold, blue, and disconcertingly intense. Many men coming away from a meeting with Karsh found they could remember little except his eyes, the ruthless eyes behind which lurked a mind like a titanium trap. He was not a man much given to laughter, and it had been years since Clender, his assistant, had last heard him express his amusement aloud.