Each squad had a fabricator, but only one, that could do much of what Cussler could do with his body. But it was slow, and fabricating was costly, forcing team leads to make painful tradeoffs deciding which to fabricate, tech that bolstered team communications and the trafficking of intel, or weapons that were likely to be more devastating against the enemy. There was no way of knowing for sure which approach would prove successful, overreliance on intel, or overreliance on brute force. Though the brute force method was strategic in its own right, and favored by team leads who were better at countering well-armed resistance, than countering enemy stratagems. A leader who knew which method to rely on when was likely to advance quickly over others.
But the nature of the game meant that you needed to take over enough honeycomb-like cells, push back your front lines enough from you to have more time to contemplate the bigger picture and bolder strategies—and to further diversify your fighting force according to new niches you could now afford to occupy in the ecosystem of warfare. You could spare soldiers, for instance, with skills in different areas, to follow their passions, and what they were best built for. Some of these mavericks might well build you a better fabricator, or tweak weapons for you that the fabricator spit out for more specific uses, or repair the weapons that became damaged to relieve the fabricators of some of their responsibilities, freeing them up in turn to procure still more diversified firearms. And the more fabricators you commandeered with each sector you took over…
It was a great system for evolving military leaders who would be future strategic masterminds from the ground up. But with the emperor the only one with enough intel and a sophisticated enough intelligence gathering network to be any real threat to an outside invading force like the one Cussler represented… the system had some distinct loopholes worth taking advantage of. Cussler already had in hand everything he needed to overthrow the emperor of this world singlehanded—able to play the chess pieces on his chessboard better than he could.
That, of course, was not his mission. His mission was to put Dufus extraordinaire, Vestos, in that position, so he could be easily played like a puppet when the time came for Sonny to pass the order on to Cussler for him to make his move.
Of course, there were limits to Cussler’s strategic approach as well. This was one world in a galaxy where every world was set up like this. And while a similar approach may put him in the same position he currently enjoyed on each of these worlds, he couldn’t be certain. He thought of those Archipelagos that Darwin discovered, where evolution on each island world in a group of islands was so unique, there was no predicting the variety of colorful lifeforms to emerge.
This could become a real problem for Sonny and the Shadow Warriors come time for them to move quickly. And a solution was needed to address it.
Fortunately for Cussler, within the Jardarian galaxy, the planetary emperors were constantly co-conspiring with other planetary emperors, forging new alliances and dissolving old ones, with a similar aim in mind, to expand the number of worlds under their control in a given sector. Those alliances, if impressive enough, and deemed effective enough, were often courted in turn by sector emperors, in charge of entire sectors, higher up the food chain, again looking to expand their regions of control.
This meant ships trafficking goods, intel, supplies, armaments, soldiers, you name it, from world to world. And it was terribly easy for Cussler’s progeny to stow aboard any ship landing on this world destined in turn for some other, and wait for the ship to eventually return to a sector-stronghold-distribution and intelligence center.
All it took for Cussler to make a “child” was to sweat out another cluster of hive minds that engaged in sequence. The first hive mind would grow their numbers so a Cussler clone could sneak aboard a ship as so much space dust, or perhaps as a pebble in some soldier’s shoe, if not a layer of muck covering his uniform.
Once on board ship, the Cussler clone could dust the weapons, or whatever was being distributed, in the same way, multiplying the vectors Cussler could disseminate along accordingly.
Of course, even this way, it would take time to seed an entire galaxy. Cussler may well come to be in many places at once in time, all strategic to various degrees, but he couldn’t be a one man army, not in the time he needed to achieve his aims. But he was just a Shadow Warrior. And his job was to maximize his intelligence gathering, while forwarding what he learned to Sonny. Sonny would decide from there who else among his Shadow Warriors to seed the Jardarian galaxy with to give him the more complete picture he needed. Those players would no doubt allow Sonny to do more with less as Cussler did. The timeline they were working under left no other option.
Cussler communicated his current situation to another Shadow Warrior functioning like a parcel deliverer on one of the ships landing on Phronos. All the Shadow Warrior needed was access to the information stored in any of Cussler’s “children” already on board. This way another Shadow Warrior could continue the relay of information to Sonny without anyone tapping more obvious transmissions, such as Cussler putting through a singularity phone call, which, if pressed, he certainly could do, just by fabricating the item the way he did any other.
Cussler’s sense of self-satisfaction of a mission well accomplished might be a bit premature, but he couldn’t prevent the flood of elation sweeping through him all the same. That in turn triggered another idea well above his paygrade, one he would have to think hard and long about forwarding to Sonny. Because it was the kind of thing that gave Cussler strategic advantage over Sonny. And it wasn’t exactly like backstabbing had gone out of fashion with their kind, as if coups couldn’t be planned and executed against Sonny when the time was right. Anything less and Sonny probably wouldn’t even trust his own people.
The thought that had bubbled to the surface of Cussler’s mind was this: what if Mother’s “freaks” weren’t genetic mistakes? What if they were her most strategic weapons, superior even to Theta Team’s ability to infiltrate worlds?
Of course, that begged the question of how Mother could possibly know which strategic assets she would need ahead of time?
Was she already playing some game well above the heads of humanoids’ ability to fathom?
Or was she simply milking her ability to see into other timelines when reaching out to her sister ships for all it was worth? It was Cussler’s understanding that even this ability was limited for Mother, as the singularity lines she used to communicate with the Nautili in other timelines was reserved for emergency communications.
It wasn’t like her mind was wired like a Cream Umbrage, who might well spend much of their lives sifting timelines. Still, a supersentience could pack a ton of intel into even brief emergency transmissions.
No matter how Cussler scratched, he couldn’t satisfy that itch the question posed in back of his mind regarding just how Mother pulled off this magic. The bulk of her intelligence was built on pondering probabilistic universes that might come about through her interventions, to avoid missteps. And, of course, Mother’s interventions, not being at all the same as humanoids playing master of the universe games, it was a fair bet that the Cream Umbrages did not see well into Mother’s probabilistic universes, only the ones brought about by the interaction of humanoids throughout the heavens.
Cussler decided he would continue to meditate on this problem and collect intel, through an ever developing spy network of his own. He was bioengineered, after all, as little more than a self-propagating spy network.
Who knows, he might well be able to rival Sonny’s Shadow warriors in time. Though Cussler had one distinct disadvantage Sonny did not—he was bioengineered for penetrating worlds like this one, nasty, vicious places more akin to Venus in Earth’s solar system. Intel gathered there surely couldn’t be as useful as the intel gathered on more habitable worlds where more humanoids lived. Or could it?
Rumors were already reaching him of Mother making inroads into just these kinds of worlds in an effort to decentralize and magn
ify her mind power and super-sentience at the same time. If that were the case…
Perhaps Cussler’s time hadn’t yet to come. But it could one day. The day may well arrive when his network spread far further than Sonny’s Shadow Warriors, and included worlds of far more importance to Leon’s mission objective, and Mother’s.
He could better appreciate now the position of all of these masters-of-the-universe war gamers working with similarly limited intel that was never enough to give them the truly big picture. But all they could do was continue to spread their spy networks, continue to make the right decisions to keep from getting their heads cut off until they had a clear enough signal that the time had come to make their move.
Speaking of staying alive until then…
Vestos had returned, panting, bloody, missing an arm from the elbow down.
“You need me to regenerate that limb for you?” Cussler asked.
“Would you?” He continued to fight to get his breathing under control, which meant he was hacking harder than ever. Only the incessant sound of warfare prevented him from giving away their position. “Some of the other team leaders invested in better bio-repair, figuring they had too shallow of a learning curve to ever make it to the top otherwise. I, being the dumbest of the dumb, should have invested more than them in biorepair nano, figuring I’d die that many times more in less time otherwise.” He needed to take a break to pant up a storm. “I guess I was more of a true Jardarian in those days, figuring it was my duty to die for the greater good.”
“What changed your mind?” Cussler asked, spitting out the replacement body part for him along with the self-sealing nanites that would cause the limb parts to quickly anneal together.
Vestos attached his new left arm and held it in place until he could control his fingers from his brain, before letting go. “The last shall be first, you know? That’s what we tell one another when others continue to outthink us on the battlefield to find the confidence to keep going. It’s a lie, of course, that you tell yourself. The dumbest shall be the first in line to die is the only way to translate that adage. But with you at my side. I might well live long enough to be the smartest person on Phronos, and who knows…”
Cussler could sympathize. He was playing a similar game when coming up against the likes of Sonny. He felt an almost paternal bond forming with Vestos. He would still be the stooge Sonny needed to make Sonny’s plan work. But what was to say Vestos couldn’t also serve Cussler’s needs, long term, long after Sonny had made his play and moved on, this galaxy firmly within his crushing grip?
“All right, big guy, what’s next?” Vestos asked, his gasping subsiding a bit. “This strategy is pretty much played out. For what it’s worth, we control two-dozen sectors now, and I have a whole array of brainiacs at my disposal, former team leads and their protégés. That should accelerate things, shouldn’t it?”
“Yes, we can advance across the battlefield at a geometric rate, if we play our trump cards right. Here’s our next move. You’re going to secure your strategic advantage by inviting your brainiacs to specialize in one or another strategic or tactical endeavor. This enhances their value, makes them all the more irreplaceable, and so all the more difficult for you to take them out in a game of too many queens in the same nest, at the same time that it locks them into a niche within the ecosystem of your empire from which there is no escape.”
“By the gods, I love being brilliant, however vicariously.”
ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-EIGHT
THE PREMONOX GALAXY
IN THE COLLECTORS’ MENAGERIE
THE PLANET ARGASSIA
The Argassian ambassador Anor had some real problems indeed, Sonny thought to his amusement; even more so in the ambassador’s other capacity as chief oligarch for the Premonox Galaxy. Anor had convened a meeting with the other oligarchs to discuss the most recent disturbing turn of events, all brought about, mind you, by the Origine planet, currently cloaked, and inside the Corox solar system that served as command central for the galaxy, Corox, the equivalent of a civic center.
“Thank you for prioritizing this meeting with us, Sonny,” Anor said, placing his hand behind his neck. The Argassi, according to the intel gathered by Sonny’s Shadow Warriors, maintained the custom of grabbing on to the back of the neck, meant as a warm greeting. It had evolved from when mothers grabbed their young by the neck, from days when the Argassi, much like Sonny’s people, walked primarily on all fours. Sonny held his temper, because the gesture struck him as one of intimidation; a person with their hand on his neck was a person in a position to snap his neck.
Besides towering a foot or more above Sonny’s head, the caramel-colored, shark-skinned Argassians had tentacles growing out of their heads, hollow tubes, once used for breathing underwater. They were largely vestigial, serving more of a purpose when they actually lived underwater. The more of these tentacles an Argassian had growing out of their head, the lower the person’s rank in their society. As Anor had the least of them of any Argassian, just two, he was a natural for rising to the top. His inner circle included three-tentacled oligarchs, four-tentacled heads of state and corporations. Their attendant staff, who were there to sexually gratify them and serve as waiters, maids, butlers, security guards, and whatever other services they needed provided, mulled about, always within sight of their handlers, ready to be summoned at the slightest gesture.
The Argassians lived in dark caves, much as they did when they lived underwater, when they once darted out of those caves at amazing speeds to snatch their prey and electrocute them enough to stun the life out of them. Much like Earth’s electric eels. Little had changed as they evolved. Their cave-like dwellings retained the sea-encrusted coral life, adorning them like mounted jewelry. Only now those chief residences were surrounded by acres and acres of glass enclosed space—essentially terrariums. Instead of fish swimming about, the lowest class of Argassians, with enough tentacles to cover their entire heads, running down to their shoulders, a positive riot of extensions, much like a sea anemone, were permitted to roam about inside the terrarium, gardening and farming their own foods. Periodically, the chief Argassian with four or less tentacles would dart out of his cave, snatch up one of the lowest caste, drag them back into their cave, in less than a second, stun them, mate with them for long lengths of time, re-stunning their prey as necessary to keep control of them, before feasting on them.
The valley and hills about them were dotted with these terrariums serving as estate homes for the civic center leaders.
Sonny knew he would only be meeting with Anor, who would pass on their decision to the lower castes, once arrived at.
This calming walk out in the sun in such an arid world, whose plant life was largely comprised of succulents and cacti, themselves former corals that had had to adapt to a changing planetary orbit, as well, was meant to give Anor the upper hand. Breathing in the sea salts which still saturated much of the soil from when this area was once ocean, was calming to his people, and also enhanced their neural processes.
According to Sonny’s Shadow Warriors and the intel they’d collected, the regions were still prone to flash floods that would submerge everything, up to and including the tallest hills surrounding this valley and the neighboring valleys. Only the tallest of mountains on the planet would be safe from the periodic deluges, and no one lived there. Again, the pull of the past was great for the Argassians, who could as easily breathe underwater through the tentacles in their heads. It went without saying, the ones with fewer tentacles lived higher up the slopes of the hills, where they would be less likely to be submerged for as long, and where the waters would be more oxygen-saturated to compensate for the fewer tentacles they had feeding the flash flood’s life-giving properties to their heads.
“The situation is critical,” Anor declared. “We have many species on many worlds throughout the Premonox galaxy. Some more evolved than others. But none that has truly lost their taste for war. The most evolved of us, of course, merely
profit from the constant warfaring of the more primitive species. There is definitely good money to be made in assisting these lowlifes in their relentless attempts to foster one another’s suffering. But without sufficient outlets for their rage outside of the Premonox Galaxy, I fear it’s a zero sum game, our best customers devouring one another. So we require intergalactic warfare to keep the whole delicate system in balance. And that balance is now upset. We are at a loss to explain the many peoples of the Premonox Galaxy turning on one another to the point of ignoring intergalactic tensions.”
“I can well understand your sense of urgency,” Sonny said, sympathetically. “You need both a quick, short-term fix, yes, as well as a longer-term solution to ensure this dratted state of affairs never recurs. Why, the loss of income alone…”
“We were told you were a person we could speak to, who understood the sensitive needs of oligarchs.”
“We all have our place in the food chain, do we not, and that is mine, catering to the highest of the high,” Sonny said with a well-polished humility. “I assure you this problem will be dealt with immediately. I can promise you an immediate cessation of escalations on your many worlds, not a complete end to the in-fighting, which would be bad for business, but I will throttle it down to an ideal level.
“This I will do,” Sonny continued, “while turning everyone’s attention to raising intergalactic tensions to new heights, to ensure profits are higher than ever from intergalactic warfare, to cover my nominal fee, while still bringing more profits than ever upon you. Of course, such a timely solution will also keep The Collectors off our backs. We know how they hate it when hostilities subside between member galaxies.”
“If I never see those people again, it will be too soon,” Anor confessed. “And if I may be so crass as to ask the specific nature of this nominal fee?”
“Ten percent of sales, even as I increase your sales by fifty percent. Once we’re out of The Collectors’ Menagerie I believe I can increase those sales by several hundred percent or more, making my ten percent even more insignificant by comparison.”
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