“So, you don’t even know which ones are going to try and kill us?” Isaac asked.
“We do not,” LOK admitted. “Assessment of core protocol code suggests that the probability of the loss of life-preservation protocols is on the order of 2.5%, plus/minus 1%.
“Genocidal Regional Matrices are a low-order probability. The larger number of Sub-Regional Matrices suggested that they are the most likely to represent genocidal unverified nodes.”
“So far, all we’ve seen are Sub-Regionals, correct?” Amelie noted. “I guess you may be right.”
There was a long pause, the kind that suggested LOK was talking to XR-13-9 itself.
“A Sub-Regional Construction Matrix does not have the authentication controls to disconnect itself from the background relay network, as appears to have been done around Refuge. The node detected at Hearthfire was not a sub-Matrix of the twelve previously identified nodes.”
Amelie froze—and Isaac did take her hand under the table, squeezing reassuringly as she clung to him for some stability.
“So, that disconnection must have been done by a full Regional Construction Matrix?” she asked, surprised at how level her voice sounded.
“Yes. And to have implemented that disconnect, the Matrix must have been aware that other nodes still possessed intact life-preservation protocols. It is possible that we may not be able to locate Rogue Matrices of a high-enough tier, as they have acted to prevent us doing so.”
There was another pause.
“We may have underestimated the threat level to Exilium.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this before?” Isaac snapped. Now it was Amelie’s turn to squeeze his hand calmingly.
“We did not know. We are in the process of securing control of the system designated ‘Refuge’ at this moment in time, and more updates are arriving. This is new information to us as well.”
Amelie might have been projecting the sheepish, but now the remote was clearly attempting to imitate human body language as LOK bowed his entire torso forward.
“We projected that we could warn you of any real threat. We appear to have been incorrect.”
16
Octavio, being merely human, couldn’t make sense of the massive strategic display at the heart of the Shining Rivers’ military command center. His understanding of how the projectors worked suggested that he’d need echolocation to make any sense of it.
Fortunately, he did have a translation protocol running in his tattoo-comp, which was projecting a similar model of the planet Vista to his contact lenses.
“The Iron Peaks are a problem for another day,” the Shining Mother was telling her commanders. “What is the news from Sunset Waters?”
Sunset Waters was one of the farthest surviving states, according to the flashing icon on his globe. That put it on the edge of the zone of devastation.
“Nothing,” the general replied. The translator turned the sharp underlying chirps into a flat tone. Octavio suspected that was a pretty good translation of the emotional content.
“Then we have to conclude that Sunset Waters and Darker Sands are no longer functionally intact as nations,” the Mother told her officers. “We need to reach out at a lower level—mayors, functionaries, lower-level commanders.
“You have acquaintances, friends—darkest waters, we have contact directories. Start at the top and call your way down.”
Several junior officers dipped, folding their legs in a gesture Octavio saw as a cross between a curtsy and a bow, and started to withdraw. Sleeps-In-Sunlight held up a webbed hand to stop them.
“Do so from aboard a ship. Detach Sharkhunter and her task group,” she ordered.
“Great Mother, to send a carrier into their waters…”
“I cannot commit an act of war against a country that no longer exists,” the Shining Mother snapped. “Skyfallen will move to Darker Sands with her task group. They should be close enough to provide mutual support, and they have the supplies to provide major medical and food relief once we have made contact.”
“If any of their fleet remains, we risk triggering a crisis,” the officer who’d objected reminded her.
“Unless their officers have lost all sense of reason, they will understand we are there to help,” Sleeps replied. “But if we must destroy the remnants of their fleets to rescue their people, we will. Am I understood, Voice-Of-Warfare?”
A Voice-Of-Warfare was one of the most senior generals, if Octavio was understanding correctly.
“If you can provide my people with those contact directories, we might be able to get in touch with someone,” he offered. He coughed delicately, though he suspected the meaning might be lost. “Our computer technology is more advanced than yours. Given some key to make a connection, we should be able to access their network and learn who is in control. If anyone.”
“Then we would again be in your debt,” Sleeps-In-Sunlight told him. She paused. “Would you be able to override the general communication channels?”
Those would be television and the datanet on a human world, Octavio reflected.
“I’m not certain,” he admitted. He was actually quite certain his computer techs could do it—it was a question of how long it would take. “If there are existing emergency broadcast protocols in place, that might help.”
“We will provide everything we have for our own protocols,” Sleeps-In-Sunlight told him. “As nations descend into chaos, we must reach to the ones we know are still there: the people of our world.
“If I must seize control of my planet, I would rather let our people know we’re coming. I don’t want to fight a war. I just want to make sure nobody starves.”
Octavio nodded, making a note on his tattoo-comp. That would be sent up to Scorpion as soon as he was outside the command bunker, letting them know to get ready to launch a benevolent cyber-attack on the planet’s datanets.
Knowing engineers and computer techs, he’d be surprised if they hadn’t already done half the work.
“You realize that we’re talking a completely different computer architecture, right?” Torborg Africano asked Octavio an hour later, once the Captain had made it back into the sunlight of Shining Sunset’s streets.
“Trinary code versus binary at a machine level, literally nonhuman coding logic, no artificial intelligence assists, some fascinating physical structure to account for the downright weird silicon formations they use as chips?” Octavio smiled at the tiny image of his com officer as he rapidly ran down the list.
“Yes. That’s why I didn’t make any promises. Logically, however, every nation should have an emergency broadcast system, and we just need to activate those and link them to the Shining Mother’s speech.”
“Doesn’t matter if the protocol already exists if we can’t talk to their hardware,” Africano replied.
“And you haven’t been working on that since we got the translation protocols up and running?” Octavio asked sweetly. “I know computer techs and software engineers, Lieutenant Commander. How close are we to being able to crack Vistan computer systems?”
“We can access any system you want,” the com officer replied with a sigh. “Actual cracking is going to take a bit longer. Maybe a couple of days still.”
“Torborg,” Octavio held the younger woman’s gaze for several seconds. “Time is being bought with blood. Several of the nations we’re watching are descending into civil war. We don’t have the bodies to impose peace, but Shining Rivers might—if they can move troops into areas that are expecting and waiting for them.
“To pull that off, the Shining Mother needs a full broadcast. Tomorrow would be acceptable; today would be better. Gods, Lieutenant Commander, they’ve got a pair of nuclear carrier groups steaming towards the Impact zone as we speak.”
“I’ll see what my people have pulled together,” Africano promised. “I can’t promise miracles, though. Even tomorrow might be pushing it.”
“Do what you can. And transfer me to Lieutenant Commander
Das,” Octavio ordered.
“Wilco.”
A moment later, the image of his tactical officer appeared on his screen.
“Sir!”
“You’re keeping an eye on the surface, I presume,” the Captain said.
“It isn’t pretty,” Das warned him. “We’re still a couple of weeks from anywhere really starting to run out of food, but hoarding and similar problems are starting up everywhere outside Shining Rivers and the Iron Peaks.”
“Nowhere else is imposing order and rationing?”
“A couple of smaller-scale operations,” she said. “A city here, a city there. Most of the global communication network is shattered or closed off; I’m not sure any of the stable areas are able to reach anyone else to ask for help.”
“We’ll work on that,” Octavio promised. “What about armed forces? Aircraft, missiles, warships?”
“Our friends’ two carrier groups are moving towards the passage into the big ocean,” Das told him. “They’re not the only people in the intact zone with carriers, though. Probably a dozen carrier groups left on the planet, and only four of them are the Shining Mother’s.”
“Keep an eye on them all,” he ordered. “I know we can’t stop guns, but if anyone starts launching missiles, what are our intercept odds?”
There was a solid ten seconds of silence.
“Poor but existing,” Das finally said. “I can take down ICBMs from here without issue, but surface-to-surface missiles will be harder if someone starts up a wet naval battle. Aircraft are more vulnerable, but then we’re actually killing people.”
“Do it if you have to.” Octavio shook his head. “First preference is to stop anybody killing anybody as best as we can. Second preference is to back up the Shining Mother’s people. I don’t like the idea of helping her conquer the planet, but it seems like the best option to make sure we can evacuate everyone.”
He chuckled.
“It’s some consolation that she seems to like the idea of conquering the planet even less than I like the thought of helping her.”
“Lucky her,” Das replied. “We’re keeping an eye on the Iron Peaks as well. They look like the only landlocked nation on the planet, but they are not saying nice things about us on the networks.”
“We’ll deal with them at some point,” Octavio said grimly. “If only because I’m not willing to leave sixty million people behind…but we’ll deal with the people who are going to starve without help first.
“Your job is to make sure as few people die as possible, Lieutenant Commander,” he concluded. “Link in with Shining Rivers’s military command net. Feed them anything you think is useful, but make sure we control the link.”
“Paranoid much, sir?”
“These people are in desperate straits, but we don’t know them at all,” Octavio told Das. “Let’s keep our eyes open and an entire deck of options up our sleeve for a while yet.”
Octavio was still having problems recognizing individual Vistans, though he was starting to pick out the mottling patterns and different heights and so forth that distinguished them.
Fortunately for his still-learning eye, Sings-Over-Darkened-Waters was still wearing her uniform as she waited for him by his shuttle. The iconography of her insignia looked gaudily exaggerated to him, but the three waves and star of her rank needed to be legible to echolocation, not merely sight.
There was nothing anywhere in the Vistan city that he would have interpreted as script, though now that he thought about it, he should have been looking for an extravagant version of Braille, not symbols.
“Catalan,” Sings greeted him as he and his guards approached the landing site. It was becoming less of an improvised facility by the minute, he realized, as his people and the Shining Spears had set to work to establish both better security and better facilities.
“First-Among-Singers,” he replied. “How may I assist you?”
“You have already done more than I had dared hope,” the alien said. “You are returning to your ship now?”
“Yes,” he confirmed. “Another shuttle will be coming down in an hour to continue turning this into a landing site, but I need to be on my command deck.”
“And I in my command pool,” Sings agreed. “You know this enemy, Voice-Over-Voices. We prepare to face a war against our broken world, and we cannot fail to look to the void-sea for the return of this threat.”
He sighed.
“Walk with me, First-Among-Singers,” he told her. He began a slow circuit of the outside of the slowly assembling human camp.
“We don’t truly know this enemy that well,” he admitted as their respective guards fell farther back. “What we know are their cousins, AIs of the same type that are not trying to murder everyone they encounter. They started with the same tactical and operation protocols, yes. But they also both started with a protocol for the preservation of existing life.”
He gestured to the dark clouds above them.
“The Rogues who attacked your world have lost that one,” he pointed out.
“I understand,” Sings told him. “We are expecting a flotilla from your AIs soon, yes?”
“That is part of why I have to return to space,” Octavio agreed. “In case we make a mistake.”
“We will take our lead from you,” the leader of the Star-Choir told him.
Scorpion’s Captain managed to conceal a chuckle he wasn’t sure Sings would have caught either way. The remaining guardships were battered wrecks. Even the masses of untouched asteroid they used as shielding had failed under the task of being used to push the terraforming spikes.
They’d reloaded their magazines, but he didn’t regard the Vistan ships as combat-worthy. If there was a new battle, Scorpion—whose weapons did not depend on magazines and whose matter-conversion power system was disturbingly forgiving of fuel variation—would carry the brunt of it.
“I hope we will have time for our engineers to finish the design for the gunboats they have been discussing,” he said instead. “Those will help even the odds.”
“Which returns me to the waters of my first question,” Sings noted. “What do you expect of our enemy?”
“If the Sub-Regional Construction Matrix that fled is the only threat in play, we have most of a year,” Octavio stated. “It has the capacity to manufacture everything up to combat platforms, but it can’t manufacture many of them simultaneously. Matrix operational protocol is that they will always return with a superior force. Always.
“So, a Sub-Regional Matrix will build temporary shipyards and assemble a strike force at least twice the size of the one we overcame. That will take most of a year.”
Six to eight weeks to build the yards, depending on what other resources the Matrix had available. Six to seven months to build a combat platform. Travel time wasn’t a factor, so they were looking at nine months or so before the Rogues returned with at least four combat platforms.
By then, Lestroud and Giannovi would have arrived. With a battlecruiser and her escorts, Octavio was confident they could defeat the next wave of Matrix attackers.
“And if this Matrix has a Great Mother of its own?” Sings asked.
The Vistan commander was far too smart for her own good, Octavio reflected.
“Then it depends on what other forces they had available,” he told her. “If there is a Rogue Regional Construction Matrix in play, we could come under attack within days. More likely weeks to months, but…still long before my reinforcements can arrive.”
Sings considered, the continuing chirps from her breathing quieting to a dull metronome.
“Then those bombers must be begun immediately,” she decided aloud. “Even before we have resolved matters on the surface. We must be ready for the war against the void as well as the war against the storm.”
She shivered, a whole-body motion Octavio hadn’t seen from a Vistan yet.
“It will not help us if we save our people from the storm to lose them to the monster of the void.�
�
17
There were days that Octavio Catalan wished they hadn’t traded exotic matter for tachyon communicators. On the one hand, without one, he could never have reported home about the events in Hearthfire, and he’d have had no choice but to abandon Sings-Over-Darkened-Waters and her people.
On the other hand, without one, he wouldn’t have received the strategic update that confirmed his worst nightmare: according to the Matrices, there had to be a Regional Construction Matrix operating in the area.
One that, if not necessarily a Rogue, was definitely trying to conceal its operations from the rest of the Matrices. Octavio had no choice but to assume that meant he was looking at a Rogue. A full Regional Construction Matrix, capable of building everything from recon nodes to Sub-Regional Matrices in full parallel.
Worse, from a grand perspective, a Regional Construction Matrix could build another Regional Matrix. If there was one Rogue Regional Matrix, there were more.
The entire scouting and survey program took on a darker tone in light of that. He’d been sent out to make sure the region around Exilium was safe. Now they knew it wasn’t, which made the survey ships tripwires.
The warp cruisers’ job had become to die so that the Republic knew where it wasn’t safe to go…and Octavio hoped that Isaac Lestroud hadn’t realized that yet. He was prepared to face that fate to keep Exilium safe, and he knew the other scout ship Captains and crews would be too.
Lestroud would send them out on that mission—but the Iron Admiral would never forgive himself for it. Octavio Catalan had worked for the man for too long to expect anything else.
He opened a channel to Engineering.
“Tran, how are we doing on the repairs?” he asked the grease-smeared Asian woman whose image appeared above his desk.
“Well, we chopped an asteroid into small pieces and hauled those back into orbit,” the chief engineer replied. “Most of those are gone now. Hull breaches are covered, and we’ve started at least initial repairs on Turret B and the remaining pulse guns.”
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