by David Weber
"But, of course, it didn't work out that way," he said quietly, "for Anu's plan failed. Somehow, Dahak remained at least partially operational, destroying every parasite sent towards it. And it never went away, either. It hung above him, like your own Sword of Damocles, inviolate, taunting him.
"If he hadn't been mad before, Commander, he went mad then. He sent most of his followers into stasis - to wait out Dahak's final ‘inevitable' collapse - while only his immediate henchmen, who knew what he'd truly planned all along, remained awake. And once he had total control, he showed his true colors.
"Tell me, Commander MacIntyre, have you ever wondered what happened to all Dahak's other bridge officers? Or how beings such as ourselves - such as you now are - with lifespans measured in centuries and strength and endurance far beyond that of Terra-born humans, could decivilize so utterly? It took your kind barely five hundred years to move from matchlocks and pikes to the atom bomb. From crude sailing ships to outer space. Doesn't it seem strange that almost a quarter million Imperial survivors should lose all technology?"
"I've … wondered," Colin admitted. He had, and not even Dahak had been able to tell him. All the computer knew was that when he became functional once more, the surviving loyalists had reverted to a subsistence-level hunter-gatherer technology and showed no particular desire to advance further.
"The answer is simple, Commander. Anu hunted them down. He tracked the surviving bridge officers by their implant signatures and butchered them to finish off any surviving chain of command. And for revenge, of course. And whenever a cluster of survivors tried to rebuild their technology, he wiped them out. He quartered this planet, Commander MacIntyre, seeking out the lifeboats with operational power plants and blowing them apart, making certain he alone monopolized technology, that no possible threat to him remained. The survivors soon learned primitivism was the only way they could survive."
"But your tech base survived," Colin said coldly, and Horus winced.
"True," he said heavily, "but look about you, Commander. How much tech base do we truly have? A single carefully - hidden battleship. We lack the infrastructure to build anything more, and if we'd attempted to build that infrastructure, Anu would have found us as he found the loyalists who made the same attempt. We might have given a good account of ourselves, but with only one ship against seven of the same class, plus escorts, we would have achieved nothing beyond an heroic death."
He held out one hand, palm upward in an eloquent gesture of helplessness, and Colin felt an unwilling sympathy for the man, much as he had for Dahak when he first heard the starship's story. Unlike Dahak, these people had built their own purgatory brick by brick, but that made it no less a purgatory.
"So what did you do?" he asked finally.
"We hid, Commander," Horus admitted. "Our own plans had gone hopelessly wrong, for Anu couldn't leave. So we activated Nergal's stealth systems and hid, biding our time, and we, too, went into stasis."
Of course they'd hidden, Colin thought, and that explained why Dahak had never suspected there might be more than a single faction of mutineers. Anu must have been mad with the need to find and destroy them, for they and they alone had posed a threat to him. And if they'd hidden so well he couldn't find them with Imperial instrumentation, then how could Dahak, who didn't even know to look for them, find them with the same instrumentation?
"We hid," Horus continued, "but we set our own monitors to watch for any activity on Anu's part. We dared not challenge his enclave's defenses with our single ship. I am - was - a missile specialist, Commander, and I know. Not even Dahak could crack his main shield without a saturation bombardment. We didn't have the firepower, and his automatics would have blown us out of existence before his stasis generators could even spin down to wake him."
"And so you just sat here," Colin said flatly, but his tone said he knew better. There were too many Terra-born in this compartment.
"No, Commander," Horus said, and his voice accepted the knowledge behind Colin's statement. "We've tried to fight him, over the millennia, but there was little we could do. It was obvious the threat of an evolving indigenous technology would be enough to spark Anu's intervention, and so our computers were set to wake us when local civilizations appeared. We interacted with the early civilizations of your Fertile Crescent - " he grinned wryly as Colin suddenly connected his own name with the Egyptian pantheon " - in an effort to temper their advance, but Anu was watching, as well. Several of our people were killed when he suddenly reappeared, and it was he who shaped the Sumerian and Babylonian cultures. It was he who led the Hsia Dynasty in the destruction of the neolithic cultural centers of China, and we who lent the Shang Dynasty clandestine aid to rebuild, and that was only one of the battles we fought.
"Yet we had to work secretly, hiding from him, effecting tiny changes, hoping for the best. Worse, there were but two hundred of us, and Anu had thousands. We couldn't rotate our personnel as he could - at least, that was what we thought he was doing - and we grew old far, far more quickly than he. But worst of all, Commander, was the attitude Anu's followers developed. They call your people ‘degenerates,' did you know that?"
Colin nodded, remembering Girru's words in a chamber of horror that had once been a friend's study.
"They're wrong," Horus said harshly. "They're the degenerates. Anu's madness has infected them all. His people are twisted, poisoned by their power. Perhaps they've played the roles of gods too long, for they've come to believe they are gods, and Earth's people are toys to be manipulated and enjoyed. It was horrible enough for the first four thousand years of interaction, but it's grown worse since. Where once they feared the rise of a technology that might threaten them, now they crave one that will let them escape the prison of this planet … and they couldn't care less how much suffering they inflict along the way. Indeed, they see that suffering as a spectacle, a gladiatorial slaughter to entertain them and while away the years.
"Let's be honest with one another, Commander MacIntyre. Humans, whether Imperials or born of your planet, are humans. There are good and bad among all of us, as our very presence here proves, and Earth's people would have inflicted sufficient suffering on themselves without Anu, but he and his have made it far, far worse. They've toppled civilizations by provoking and encouraging barbarian invasions - from the Hittites to the Hsia, the Achaeans, the Huns, the Vikings, and the Mongols - but even worse, in some ways, is what they've done since abandoning that policy. They helped fuel the Hundred Years War, and the Thirty Years' War, and Europe's ruthless imperialism, both for enjoyment and to create power blocs that could pave the way for the scientific and industrial revolutions. And when progress wasn't rapid enough to suit them, they provoked the First World War, and the Second, and the Cold War.
"We've done what we could to mitigate their excesses, but our best efforts have been paltry. They haven't dared come into the open for fear that Dahak might remain sufficiently operational to strike at them - and, perhaps, because the sheer number of people on this planet frightens them - but they could always act more openly than we.
"Yet we've never given up, Commander MacIntyre!" The old man's voice was suddenly harsh, glittering with a strange fire, and Colin swallowed. That suddenly fiery tone was almost fanatical, and he shook free of Horus's story, making himself step back and wondering if perhaps his captors hadn't gone more than a bit mad themselves.
"No. We've never given up," Horus said more softly. "And if you'll let us, we'll prove that to you."
"How?" Colin's flat voice refused to offer any hope. Try though he might, it was hard to doubt Horus's sincerity. Yet it was his duty to doubt it. It was his responsibility - his, and his alone - to doubt everyone, question everything. Because if he made a mistake - another mistake, he thought bitterly - then all of Dahak's lonely wait would be in vain and the Achuultani would take them all.
"We'll help you against Anu," Horus said, his voice equally flat, his eyes level. "And afterward, we will surrender ourselves t
o the Imperium."
"Nay!" Jiltanith still pointed the suppresser at Colin, but her free hand rose like a claw, and her dark, vital face was fierce. "Now I say thee nay! Hast given too freely for this world, Father! Thou and all thy fellows!"
"Hush, 'Tanni," Horus said softly. He clasped the shoulders of the young woman - his daughter, which, Colin suddenly realized, made her Isis Tudor's older sister - and shook her very gently. "It's our decision. It's not even a matter for the Council, and you know it."
Jiltanith's tight face was furious with objection, and Horus sighed and gathered her close, staring into Colin's face over her shoulder.
"We ask only one thing in return, Commander," he said softly.
"What?" Colin asked quietly.
"Immunity - pardon, if you will - for those like 'Tanni." The girl stiffened in his arms, trying to thrust him away, but he held her easily with one arm. The other hand rose, covering her lips to still her furious protests.
"They were children, Commander, with no part in our crime, and many of them have died trying to undo it. Can even the Imperium punish them for that?"
The proud old face was pleading, the dark, ancient eyes almost desperate, and Colin recognized the justice of the plea.
"If - and I say if - you can convince me of your sincerity and ability to help," he said slowly, "I'll do my best. I can't promise any more than that."
"I know," Horus said. "But you will try?"
"I will," Colin replied levelly.
The old man regarded him a moment longer, then took the suppresser gently from Jiltanith. She fought him a moment, surrendering the device with manifest reluctance, and Horus hugged her gently. His eyes were understanding and sad, but a small smile played around his lips as he looked down at it.
"In that case," he said, "we'll just have to convince you. Please meet us halfway by not transmitting to Dahak, at least until we've finished talking."
And he switched off the suppresser.
For just an instant Colin sat absolutely motionless. The other Imperials on the command bridge were suddenly bright presences, glowing with their own implants, and he felt his computer feeds come on line. Nergal's computers were far brighter than those of the cutter that had returned him to Earth, and they recognized a bridge officer when they met one. After fifty millennia, they had someone to report to properly, and the surge of their data cores tingled in his brain like alien fire, feeding him information and begging for orders.
Colin's eyes met Horus's as he recognized the risk the old man had just taken, for no new security codes had been buried in Nergal's electronic brain. From the instant Colin's feeds tapped into those computers, they were his. He, not Horus, controlled the ancient battleship, external weapons and internal security systems alike.
But trust was a two-edged sword.
"I suppose that, as head of your council, you're also captain of this ship?" he said calmly, and the old man nodded.
"Then sit down, Captain, and tell me how we're going to beat Anu."
Horus nodded once more, sharply, and sat beside Isis. Colin never glanced away from his new ally's face, but he didn't have to; he could feel the gathered council's tension draining away about him.
Chapter Eleven
Colin leaned back and propped his heels on his desk. The quarters the mutineers (if that was still the proper word) had assigned him were another attempt to prove their sincerity, for this was the captain's cabin, fitted with neural relays to the old battleship's computers. He could not keep them from retaking Nergal, but, like the millennia-dead Druaga, he could insure that they would recapture only a hulk.
Which, Colin thought, was shrewd of Horus, whether he was truly sincere or not.
He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, wishing desperately that he could contact Dahak, yet he dared not. He knew where he was now - buried five kilometers under the Canadian Rockies near Churchill Peak - but the recent clash had roused Anu's vengeful search for Nergal to renewed heights, and if the southerners should detect Colin's com link, their missiles would arrive before even Dahak could do anything to stop them.
The same applied to any effort to reach Dahak physically. He was lucky he hadn't been spotted on the way in, despite his cutter's stealth systems; now that the marooned Imperials' long, hidden conflict had heated back up, there was no way anything of Imperial manufacture could head out of the planetary atmosphere without being spotted and killed.
It was maddening. He'd acquired a support team just as determined to destroy Anu as he was, yet it was pathetically weak compared to its enemies and there was no way to inform Dahak it even existed! Worse, Anshar's energy gun had reduced the suppresser to wreckage, and Nergal's repair facilities were barely sufficient to run diagnostics on what remained, much less fix it.
Colin was deeply impressed by what the northerners had achieved over the centuries, but very little of what he'd found in Nergal's memory had been good, aside from the confirmation that Horus had told him the truth about what had happened after he and his fellows boarded Nergal.
The old battleship's memory was long overdue for purging, for Nergal's builders had designed her core programming to insure that accurate combat reports came back to her mothership. No one could alter that data in any way until Nergal's master computer dumped a complete copy into Dahak's database.
For fifty thousand years, the faithful, moronic genius had carefully logged everything as it happened, and while molecular memories could store an awesome amount of data, there was so much in Nergal's that just finding it was frustratingly slow. Yet that crowded memory gave him a record that was accurate, unalterable, and readily - if not quickly - available.
There was, of course, far too much data for any human mind to assimilate, but he could skim the high points, and it had been hard to maintain his non-expression as he did. If anything, Horus had understated the war he and his fellows had fought. Direct clashes were infrequent, but there had been only two hundred and three adult northerners at the start, and age, as well as casualties, had winnowed their ranks. Fewer than seventy of them remained.
He and Horus had lingered, conferring with one another and the computers through their feeds while the rest of the Council went on about their duties. Only Horus's daughters had stayed.
Iris had interjected only an occasional word as she tried to follow their half-spoken, half-silent conversation, but Jiltanith had been a silent, sullen presence in their link. She'd neither offered nor asked anything, but her cold, bitter loathing for all he was had appalled Colin.
He'd never realized emotions could color the link, perhaps because his only previous use of it had been with Dahak, without the side-band elements involved when human met human through an electronic intermediary. Or perhaps it was simply that her bitter emotions were so strong. He'd wondered why Horus didn't ask her to withdraw, but then, he had many questions about Jiltanith and her place in the small, strange community he'd never suspected might exist.
It was fortunate Horus had been able to meet him in the computers. Some vocalization was necessary to set data in context, but the old mutineer had led him unerringly through the databanks, and his memory went back, replaying that first afternoon as if it were today…
"All right," Colin sighed finally, rubbing his temples wearily. "I don't know about you folks, but I need a break before my brain fries."
Horus nodded understandingly; Jiltanith only sniffed, and Colin suppressed an urge to snap at her.
"I've got to say, this Anu is an even nastier bastard than I expected," he went on, his voice hardening with the change of subject. "I'd wondered how he could ride herd on all his faithful followers, but I never expected this."
"I know," Horus looked down at the backs of his powerful, age-spotted hands. "But it makes sense, in a gruesome sort of way. After all, unlike us, he does have an intact medical capability."
"But to use it like that," Colin said, and his shudder was not at all affected, for "gruesome" was a terribly pale word for w
hat Anu had done. Dahak hadn't suggested such things were possible, but Colin supposed he should have known they were.
Anu's problem had been two-fold. First, how did he and his inner circle - no more than eight hundred strong - control five thousand Imperials who would, for the most part, be as horrified as Horus to learn the truth about their leader? And, secondly, how could even fully-enhanced Imperials oversee the manipulation of an entire planet without withering away from old age before they could create the technology they needed to escape it?
The medical science of the Imperium had provided a psychopathically elegant solution to both problems at once. The "unreliable" elements were simply never reawakened, and while stasis also allowed the mutineer leaders to sleep away centuries at need, Anu and his senior lieutenants had been awake a long time. By now, Horus calculated, Anu was on his tenth replacement body.
Imperial science had mastered the techniques of cloning to provide surgical transplants before the advent of reliable regeneration, but that had been so long ago cloning was almost a lost art. Only the most comprehensive medical centers retained the capability for certain carefully-delimited, individually-licensed experimental programs, and the use even of clones for this purpose was punishable by death for all concerned. Yet heinous as that would have been in the eyes of the Imperium's intricate, iron-bound code of bioscience morality, what Anu had actually done was worse. When old age overtook him, he simply selected a candidate from among the mutineers in stasis and had its brain removed for his own to displace. As long as his supply of bodies held out, he was effectively immortal.
The same was true of his lieutenants, but while only Imperial bodies were good enough for Anu and Inanna and their most trusted henchmen, others - like Anshar - were forced to make do with Terra-born bodies. There was a greater danger of tissue rejection in that, but there were compensations. The range of choices was vast, and Inanna's medical technology, though limited compared to Dahak's, was quite capable of basic enhancement of Terra-born bodies.