by Alex Lamb
16.2: WILL
Will sat in the defunct ship simulation, wordless with shock after the feed Balance sent him of his visit to the Dantes had finished. Seconds later, the god materialised, still wearing his uniform and doubled over with laughter.
‘Did you see their faces?’ said Balance, tears rolling down his face. ‘It was priceless!’
Will felt sick and said nothing. The sight of his old friends had opened up a chasm of longing in him.
‘They came here on a fucking boat,’ said Balance, guffawing. ‘As if they thought that would sell it for me. A boat!’
He tossed Will a half-chewed message icon. It landed in his lap. ‘… n us in helm-space,’ it read.
‘I have to admit,’ said Balance, shaking a gleeful finger, ‘they have gone to Crazy Town on the details. I mean, hats off to whatever hive-minded shit-weasel thought this one up.’
He planted his bicorn askew on the frozen avatar of Ira.
‘What if they’re real?’ Will snapped. ‘What if you’re throwing our one chance away?’
‘Oh, come on, Cuthbert!’ said Balance. His laugher redoubled even while a furious light built in his eyes. ‘You must have seen that shitty ghost-filter they were working, right? The one it took me about three seconds to hack, with the special surprise behind it? My dead wife? All mopey-dopey with tears in her eyes?’ His voice took on a manic edge that said nothing good about how close Balance was to unleashing mayhem. ‘My most sacred template of all? They kept that gem back, did you notice, just as soon as they figured out how pathetically their puppet show was playing.’
Will had to admit that detail had confused him, too. How could Rachel possibly be aboard? He’d heard them explain that they’d come through Backspace to reach the Willworld, but finding Rachel seemed like a terrible stretch. While he still saw no explanation for the ship other than it being real, doubts had started to creep into his mind.
What if some other Glitch had sold them out to the Photurians? Could he imagine Smiley doing such a thing? Not easily, he decided.
Balance wiped his eyes. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘That was fun. You ready to talk now? I mean, you don’t have to. We still have plenty of time for mind-crushing later.’
‘What if you have the wrong Glitch?’ said Will.
‘It’s possible,’ said Balance. ‘You guys are like roaches. Little fucking roaches with my face on them. There are so many of you. More every year. For the life of me I still can’t figure out why this planet keeps bothering.’
‘Perhaps because you’re losing it.’
‘So you keep saying!’ said Balance. ‘In about twenty-three per cent of interrogations. It’s a common fantasy that justifies your pitiful existence. But if that’s true, tell me why Cancer levels worldwide are actually dropping now.’
Will tried to hide his surprise. Given what he’d seen, that statistic simply couldn’t be true.
‘That’s right, Cuthbert. The world is stabilising, which means my branch economy is working. Which means your delusions of grandeur aren’t worth shit, and you’re irrelevant.’
‘I’ve seen what you can’t see,’ said Will, his anger rising again. ‘I’ve seen inside your soul like you never can, and what I found there sickened me. How did a version of me get to be so blinkered and patronising and deaf to the words of his own copies?’
‘How? I’m the version who has to spend all his time listening to corruptions of himself,’ said Balance, menace building in his gaze again. ‘The version who has to hold all this together so that every other thread can live the decent life that he can’t have. The version who’s heard your sick, poisonous shit so many times that he can’t take you seriously any more. You know what’s keeping those shitty puppets alive right now? You. I’m holding off on ripping that ship open and sucking all the data out of it because I’m half-convinced that you actually think it’s real. Just like your fuckwit siblings believed the last scam they saw. So if you want that ship to leave the system in one piece, you’ll start talking about what you know before I get bored. Enjoy your viewing, Cuthbert One-Four-Nine-Seven-Three. Let me know when you’re ready to chat.’
16.3: MARK
The day after Will’s visit oozed tension. Judj tested the data they’d been given for malware, and then they pored over it together. They drew the obvious conclusion: Snakepit didn’t trust them. The footage showed a history of increasingly subtle Photurian attacks, slowing in frequency while they ramped in sophistication. The last had done a plausible job of impersonating IPSO, using freshly converted humans who must have been culled from the fall of New Angeles.
So far as the Will-thing was concerned, they were just another invasion attempt. Each had been repulsed as easily as the last. At the same time, Will hadn’t revealed the slightest hint of how he’d survived on the surface of the planet in apparent isolation. Without that data, it was completely unclear how they could convince Will of their humanity, or what he hoped to achieve by preventing them from leaving.
Mark found it exasperating. To come so far only to be thwarted by mere paranoia? He might as well have stayed on Galatea where that commodity was cheaper than sand. His last hopes for the mission were unravelling, leaving an empty ache behind.
The following morning, a new message from Will arrived.
‘Hey, GSS Edmond Dantes,’ he said cheerfully. ‘That threat window you mentioned has expired!’ He looked around as if confused. ‘Is it possible that you’re not being tailed after all, but were actually trying to deceive me?’
Palla launched a reply. ‘We gave you an estimate,’ she said. ‘As to where they are, I have no idea. Maybe we were lucky.’
‘You know what?’ said Will, leaning in to his camera. ‘I’m starting to doubt your otherwise totally convincing narrative. I’ve looked over your history files, though. Amazing stuff. So moving. My congratulations to your screenwriters. That Suicide War? Wow. Talk about pathos.’
Mark worked at not grabbing the comms-link to yell curses at the sick creature at the other end.
‘It was all so impressive that I wanted to see if you’d actually follow through on the phoney attack,’ Will went on. ‘But now I guess you’ve blown your budget and I’m getting bored.’ He exhaled noisily. ‘So here we are. I’ve decided to dismantle you to find out what your plan actually was. And why you’re using the faces of people from my dreams. And how the fuck you got hold of them. So if any of you have something that you’d like to say before I start, now would be a great time.’
Mark lost it. ‘Palla, a channel please,’ he said tightly.
She handed it to him.
‘Listen, Will,’ he said, glaring into the feed, ‘making this mission happen has been my life for the last decade and nothing about it has turned out as I expected. I understand disappointment and frustration. I’ve felt plenty. I know what it means to fight against an enemy that’s always trying to cheat its way past your guard. That’s been our lives. So I get where you’re coming from. But for the love of science, can’t you stop being a fucking idiot for just one minute?’
In his video feed, Will’s smile turned south.
‘If you care that much about who we really are, why aren’t you asking for DNA samples?’ said Mark. ‘If you’re concerned that we’ll fake them, take some neural scans. And if that won’t put your mind at rest, then come and check out the anti-Phote regimen we use on ourselves and ask yourself if you have a single technology that’s as thorough. You run on some kind of mashed-up Phote tech by the looks of things, so I’m pretty sure you don’t.
‘Because, you see, Will, doing anything other than that is lazy and dumb. It’s denial in action. If there’s not a single piece of proof we could offer that would convince you that your theory about us is bullshit, isn’t your theory just faith? And if that’s the fuel you’re running on now, then I’m certain that you’re not the Will Monet I knew and admired. You’re some cheap, low-rent Photurian knock-off, propelled by the same self-deluding garbage, and nothing we can
do or say will ever convince you.’
Will stared into his camera feed with wild, inhuman eyes.
‘Denial again,’ he said. ‘You know, I’m getting really bored of that narrative, son. For starters, it ignores the fact that when you’re facing an evolving existential threat, sometimes conviction is all you have. I’ll tell you what, though, I’ll follow up on your request and do some nice science on your remains.’
He clicked his fingers. In the same moment, a thousand drones clamped onto the Dantes’ hull, adhering to every bay door and portal on the ship’s surface. Simultaneous soft assaults bombarded their sensors. Mark watched in horror as the warnings spooled up around them. His attempt to get Will to raise his standards had apparently failed, and with it, his dream.
‘Mesohull defences activated,’ said Palla. ‘Titan mechs moving to position.’
‘Soft incursions detected,’ Judj added. ‘Ready to initiate purge.’
‘I’m warming weapons,’ said Ira. ‘I can’t see us shooting our way out of this, but that doesn’t mean I won’t try.’
Mark cursed his helplessness. From the quarantine core there was little he could do but watch. He itched for the helm he couldn’t have.
Palla shot him a glance while she worked, her eyes full of despair. ‘You didn’t deserve this,’ she said. ‘Sometimes you’re an asshole, Mark, but you’re at least a good asshole. A great asshole, even. It’s been a pleasure to work with you. In fact I …’
Then, just when it looked like their luck couldn’t get any worse, a red flash bloomed just a handful of AU further out as a ship travelling under stealth-warp dumped its envelope. Palla’s words trailed out in shock.
As the glare faded, the image of a nestship-sized vessel resolved – ember-warp enabled and very similar in profile to the Edmond Dantes. Its surface had the curious, bulbous texture of something made out of fused drones. The one major difference was the enormous, ugly-looking boser cannon mounted on the front.
‘Humans and the vile interloper Will Monet,’ came the imperious voice of Nada Rien on the public channel. ‘Prepare to receive our everlasting love.’
In his video channel, Will blinked in surprise and then burst into peals of laughter. ‘This is the threat?’ he said. ‘One ship?’
Will clicked his fingers again. All across the system, dozens more copies of the Ariel Two started to uncloak.
16.4: NADA
Nada surveyed the armada of ships appearing around her with nothing but Photurian joy raging in her heart. She’d arrived too late to head off the Abomination and her cronies before they reached the homeworld, but they’d apparently fared about as well against Monet as her own people had over the years. A more fitting end for their disgusting mission was hard to imagine. Had she room inside her for schadenfreude or irony, she might have laughed, but such emotions would have been a poor substitute for the glory she felt. Her own attempt to save the homeworld might succeed or fail, but now the Yunus could surely be nothing but proud of them.
‘Initiate suntap connection,’ she said. ‘Raise the new shield.’
While they’d purposefully forgone the use of false matter, their rebuild of the alien boser had prompted a few obvious improvements in their quantum shielding – a tightly related technology. Against Leng’s protestations, she’d ordered the changes to be made, insisting that these two features were adequate for their needs. Her reasoning? That their goals had shifted. They now sought direct access to the homeworld, not only joyful reconciliation with their enemies.
She’d used that same argument to justify suspending her release of an arrival message until she was deep into the system, even though it had been excruciating to delay that moment. Somehow, the dissonance still churning inside her had helped, even while her crew had keened and squirmed at their stations at how dishonest it felt.
‘I am receiving a tight-beamed message from the Vile Usurper,’ said Ekkert.
‘Play it,’ she said.
The repugnant visage of Monet appeared. ‘Photurian vessel,’ said Will, grinning like a maniac, ‘the might of the Willworld is tracking your ship. Depart immediately or I’ll take you apart, too.’
Nada prepared a reply.
‘We will not leave,’ she said. ‘You will relinquish control of our world and come to love us as your superiors.’
‘I hoped you’d say something like that!’ Will exclaimed.
The shield came on just in time. Beams lanced out from Monet’s guard-ships to burst harmlessly against their defences.
‘Leng, time to suntap?’ she said.
‘Eleven minutes.’
Nada wasn’t worried. Their last fuelling had left their antimatter reserves fully charged.
‘Have the guard-ships raised shields?’ said Nada.
‘Yes,’ Leng told her.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Target the closest and remove it.’
Their beam spiked out, locking weakly on to the enemy’s quantum-agitated armour. A second, invisible beam, rather like a suntap entangler, fired alongside.
‘Feedback cycling initiated,’ said Leng. ‘Tuning. We have a match. Boosting now.’
The boser gained strength, punching a hole straight through the nestship. At the same time, their weapon went into a saccadic firing pattern, mashing everything in the heart of Will’s craft until antimatter release was guaranteed. The nestship splattered itself across the stars.
Destroying a capital-class starship had proven remarkably easy. That was what they had aimed for, though achieving it left Nada with the profound sense of having cheated by not beating him with his own level of technology. She suppressed it; by that time, several guard-ships were closing and coordinating their fire.
‘Prioritise the attacking vessels,’ said Nada. ‘Remove them until the assault ceases.’
She watched her energy and iron reserves shrink under the extraordinary bombardment as she’d known it would. Meanwhile, her rebuild of the Infinite Order dispensed justice to one nestship at a time. It wouldn’t have been possible had their new shield not dynamically adapted itself just like the cannon, siphoning raw material off the oncoming beams.
It came down to enemies versus resources. A human would have fretted over that fatal race between numbers but Nada only felt the rigid confidence of righteous zeal. Five guard-ships died. Eight. Thirteen. To destroy so many vessels of such enormous power in so short a time was unheard of. She had clearly overdone the repurposing of alien remains yet she did not care. Her ship was punched this way and that with every blast by the shells of tortured bosons slamming through local space. Her crew bounced indifferently around the cabin on their umbilici, their attention firmly on their temple-tasks.
Her reserves dwindled. Then, just as she was readying herself for a worthy death, it all stopped.
‘The assault has paused,’ Leng whispered.
Nada had believed it would, yet still felt the magic of that moment viscerally. Monet and the homeworld were joined and the homeworld did not waste resources on pointless violence – not when superiority was clear.
She looked at her subnode’s face and saw that it was wet with tears.
‘The enemy appears to be regrouping,’ he said. ‘Do you want to move to capture range for the Dantes?’ His voice trembled with emotion.
‘No,’ said Nada, awed at herself. ‘Approach Snakepit directly. Ignore the Dantes.’
‘But Superior Nada!’ cried Nanimo.
‘Ignore all dissonance,’ said Nada. ‘This is destiny.’
The Usurper had broken off his attack. This opportunity would only come once.
Their ship restarted its drive and slid closer to the star. They’d depleted their reserves already and zeroed the timer on their suntap connection. However, Nada could feel the Protocol singing in her veins. This was how it was supposed to go. She was asserting primacy as they’d tried to do so long ago. The Dantes, her greatest concern, remained overwhelmed by Monet’s own forces and hadn’t even had the chance to fire.
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br /> ‘Acquire geostationary orbit around the homeworld,’ said Nada, her voice cracking.
Will’s drones swarmed after them but did not fire. They warped in unison, forming beautiful, deadly clouds that followed them in. From the homeworld, fountains of new drones were rising. The sight of them was so perfect and so dangerous that Nada could barely breathe.
They nudged close to the homeworld, but still returning fire did not come.
‘I am receiving messages from the Vile Monet,’ said Ekkert in an awed whisper.
‘Ignore him,’ said Nada. ‘He will only ruin this moment. Are we also hearing a Protocol signal?’
‘Yes,’ said Ekkert, breathless with anticipation.
‘Reply to that instead. Commune with it. Zilch, target a defensive node at random. Fire a direct spike, minimum duration and energy.’
The smallest damage would do. That was how asserting primacy worked. The planet had already worked out which variant race was strongest and was ready to submit. Now all that was required was a tap on the world’s exposed chest to symbolise who had won. The beam pierced the atmosphere, vaporising a defensive node and sending up a perfectly circular mushroom cloud from the surface.
‘Target destroyed,’ said Zilch. He was openly weeping, something like perfect delight distorting his features into an uncontrollable rictus. ‘Time to suntap, approximately five minutes.’
In the wake of the impact, they waited. Drones milled around them, flashing and darting like the beautiful fireflies from which they drew their name.
‘Receiving another message from Monet,’ said Ekkert.
This time, she permitted it to open. On the screen, the face of the hated monstrosity was twisted in an expression that was almost Photurian in its intensity. His voice came in a choked gasp.
‘You … have … asserted …’ He twisted this way and that as if in the deepest kind of pain. ‘No! I do not accept it! Never!’
Will screamed. His face came apart into shards, cycling violently through a billion subtle variations of his own features. The channel closed.