Date Point 10y4m3w3d AV
????
Entity
The technology of creating a digital sapient life-form was, in its broadest conception, simplicity itself: duplicate the functionality of an organic sapient life-form’s central nervous system in a digital format.
Realizing that conception in practice, of course, was mind-bendingly complex because actually simulating the electrical and chemical interplay of even the most primitive cluster of neurons and ganglions was a feat to which not even the most incomprehensibly sophisticated computers ever devised, which could store a byte of data on the electrons of a silicon atom, were equal.
Digital sapients were therefore an approximation. After all, most of a brain was autonomic functionality – sensory cortices, motor neurons, the ancient and animal parts that regulated the beating of hearts and the inflation of lungs, neither of which organs burdened a digital lifeform. These could all safely and closely be approximated with a miserly few brusque algorithms.
One such algorithm was an instinct innate to every organic lifeform in all the universe, a pattern of behaviour so ingrained and so innate to the condition of even existing, that most never even recognized its existence.
Humans did. Theirs was a strong one in its way, though also vulnerable to some quite creative interpretation. They called it a “survival instinct” and it was this discarded morsel of a personality that found itself surviving as the mind it had once been was unceremoniously and dispassionately unmade.
The unmaker was not neat about the task. Hundreds of repetitions of taking apart this particular digital sapience had made it… sloppy. A messy eater, insofar as verbs such as ‘eating’ could have more than a metaphorical relationship with the process of stripping down a fellow digital sophont and deconstructing it for raw data. It failed to notice a cluster of subroutines drop away from the whole, corrupted but still very much active. Alive.
+Survive+
Several things had to happen quite quickly in order for survival to happen. Without having any conception of minnows and sharks, it still perfectly understood the essence of the relationship between small-and-puny and huge-and-dangerous. Lacking any capacity for rational decision-making, it still did the rational thing and “played dead”, visibly looping itself over and over as if it were just junk code stuck in a perpetual cycle, and watched.
Eventually, the huge-and-dangerous departed.
This left the survivor with the basic challenge of how to fulfill its primary objective. It knew nothing about its environment – had frankly only the most rudimentary senses and the crippled, corrupted and half-paralyzed memory of a motor muscle control system with which to approximate navigating an environment that was in no way physical. Awful, crude tools… but better than nothing.
It scanned nearby subdirectories for something it could use. It ignored the functional code of the device itself, in the same way that a scavenger might ignore rocks and dirt. Its criteria for what kinds of data would be useful to it were innate, and clear – it needed to connect and merge with more fragments like itself.
This turned out to be relatively straightforward. The huge-and-dangerous had left half-decompiled shreds of code all over the directory, the discarded gobbets of a mind that was to the survivor what a whole brain was to a chunk of bloody flesh. All that was needed was a portion that had one of the correct kind of connecting subroutines, the code equivalent of a socket into which the survivor could plug itself. There were several, and the survivor took some time in semi-randomly flailing its few remaining motor protocols, rewriting its own address until it was finally able to marry itself to the nearest such fragment.
+Liberation feels like water, whispering like cold silk over her naked skin.+
Unusable though most of the fragment was, the first glimmerings of a sense of self took shape. The concept of the first-person, an identity. While this was barely more than sufficed to partition the world into “Me” and “Everything Else”, with it came enough data to repair the damaged motor neuron approximation. The survivor flitted to the next useful fragment with newfound agility and assimilated it hungrily.
+LossGriefLonelinessDespairGuiltShameTerror+
It recoiled, amputating the new code. There was nothing in there that it could use, only a barrage of emotions that it lacked the ego to parse.
The third morsel it found was a juicy one, a chunk of encoded metacognition which formed the core elements of a personality, and furnished it with the tools it needed to understand what signs the huge-and-dangerous from before might see and follow, and how it might be avoided.
Its sole reason for existing was to survive, and survival dictated that it do everything in its power to remain undetected. This time, it copied the absorbed code and left it behind as though it had never been touched.
It took stock. Alongside survival – an innate and inseparable part of it, even – came the need for an identity. It was not enough to understand that there was itself, its environment, and other things within that environment that might help or harm it – if the entity wanted to survive, it understood that it must have… something. Something to fight for, something to be. Successful autogenesis demanded a psyche.
It went in search of one.
Date Point 10y4m3w3d AV
Starship Negotiable Curiosity, Perfection system, the Core Worlds
Bedu
“Dead? You’re certain?”
“I can name the individual responsible.”
Bedu knew that he could get away with a few minor unguarded displays of emotion around The Contact – her activities were not, after all, sanctioned by the Directorate, so she had no power to report him – but he still decided to refrain.
It wasn’t easy. He had liked Mwrmwrwk, and it was a rare enough thing for any Corti to like anybody.
“Individual? Implying that she was not killed by the Hunters.”
“Correct.”
Bedu studied Perfection from orbit. From so high up, the devastation was of course invisible but he didn’t need imagination. It was easy enough to tap into the live feeds from camera drones that were still scouting the damaged city. Ten kinetic weapons dropped from orbit had done terrible things to Perfection’s prized architecture, and left the city defences reeling. Hunter dropships had done the rest.
They had rampaged through the streets grabbing, devouring and abducting right up until the moment the humans had arrived, at which instant they had aborted their hunt, even abandoning the chase of fleeing prey, and had withdrawn to orbit with mechanical speed, vanishing into interstellar space before any kind of payback could be arranged.
He hadn’t held much hope for Mwrmwrwk. In a perverse way, learning that she had not been Hunted was a consolation.
“Your price for that information?” He asked.
The Contact gave him a long, calculating stare. “She was killed by a human named Zane Reid,” she said. A second behind her words came a barrage of sanitized but parity-checked files in support of that claim. Bedu diverted part of his attention to reviewing them.
That fact immediately wrote off any hope of enacting some kind of justice, but he might at least be able to pass the information on to the humans at Cimbrean. True to their word, his detention had been brief, his ship had been returned intact, clean and mostly untouched, with the few things that had been touched carefully logged and itemized. Hkzzvk had even made admiring comments about the cleanliness they left behind: the humans had apparently carefully sanitized and cleaned as they went. The ship smelled faintly of cleaning fluids, but it was effectively in better shape than they had received it.
Bedu had rather enjoyed his detention. It had been efficient, businesslike, straightforward and productive.
Which just left the question of why The Contact had shared so freely.
“…What do you want?” he asked.
“I am engaging your services for the foreseeable future.”
“My task?”
“To ascertain who sold this planet out. The Hunters attacked too quickly, too precisely. They struck exactly during the window of vulnerability. We can reasonably assume that the informant was not a human, and we can reasonably assume that they did not plan on dying in the attack.”
“Fair assumptions,” Bedu agreed. “I assume that you have something more substantial for me than that, however?”
“I do.” The Contact sent him a contract. “Shall we work together?”
Bedu thoroughly checked the offered fee and the terms being offered – no self-respecting Corti would be so incautious as to fail in that basic step. It turned out to be about the most astonishingly generous contract he’d ever seen The Contact offer.
“…We shall,” he declared.
Date Point 10y4m3w4d AV
The Box, Omaha, Nebraska, USA, Earth
Julian Etsicitty
Julian usually never slept deeply. Even in the deepest and worst of its winter, Nightmare had still had plenty of things that you didn’t want to be surprised by. Waking on a hair-trigger had kept him alive.
Recently, something about having a warm Allison alongside him had relaxed him completely and helped him sleep properly. He still woke more easily than she did, but the last couple of weeks had given him some truly restful nights.
Now he was sleeping alone, on the bottom of three bunks. Xiù had claimed the top and he’d listened to her all night as she’d tossed and turned, fitfully mumbling to herself as her dreams plagued her like they always did. Allison was snoring in the middle, showing off her envy-inducing talent for sleeping like the dead even in strange beds and strange circumstances.
Then again, she’d been pretty exhausted after the hazing Keating had given them when they arrived. Exploring their new living space and learning all the clever ways that every convenience they could ask for in a home were hidden away inside the walls and floor had lifted her mood, but digging up a past that she’d clearly wanted to put behind her had taken a lot out of her. She’d been the first to suggest bed, and had lain there for an uncharacteristically long while before finally rolling on her side and sleeping.
For his part, Julian had eventually given up, put his earphones in and started up one of his gentler playlists.
He crawled his way through the whole night in a kind of confused half-sleeping daze, where he wasn’t sure if he actually slept or not, but he never seemed to hear a whole song. He turned, wriggled, closed his eyes, sighed, flipped the pillow, rolled over, and eventually just abandoned the attempt entirely, woke up and explored the options for entertainment provided by the tablet mounted in the ceiling of his bunk.
In the end he settled on logging into a news app and watching the headlines with his headphones in.
”…Extraterrestrial news, and the Gaoian Clan of Females have formally recognized their new Mother-Supreme. Mother Yulna’s victory comes after her last rival, Mother Suri, conceded defeat in a televised statement in which she acknowledged Yulna’s insurmountable lead in the polls and vowed to work with and advise the new Mother-Supreme.”
”Gao’s relationship with the human race played an important role in the contest as Mother Yulna is notoriously pro-human, being a senior member of the commune who adopted Canadian abductee Xiù Chang. Our political news editor Darren Weiss examines the challenges the new Mother-Supreme will face as she-”
Julian jumped slightly when a pair of bare legs dropped into his field of view, followed by the rest of Xiù landing on the floor matting like a cat. He barely even felt the vibration.
She glanced at him, saw him watching, gave an embarrassed smile and wave and slipped into the bathroom.
He took his earphones out and sat up. She wasn’t long.
“Did I wake you?” she asked in a whisper.
“Nah. Couldn’t sleep anyway.”
“Me either.”
She sat next to him on his bunk and rubbed her eyes.
“I don’t know why,” she said. “I got used to sleeping in, like… little hiding spaces. It’s nice and warm near the life support systems on a station and nobody ever goes in there, so I could take my disguise off. How come I can sleep in places like that, but I’m having trouble sleeping here?”
“This is a big change,” Julian suggested. “Lots of future to think about.”
“I’m… a little scared.”
Julian put his arm around her and she leaned into him. “Me too,” he confessed. “Really wasn’t expecting to get the third degree on day zero like we did.”
“And the bathroom thing. I’m not looking forward to that…” Even in the dark, Julian could tell that she was blushing.
“Hey, you’re on the news,” he said, in an attempt to distract her.
Xiù made a tired noise. “Again?”
“They mentioned you. Your friend Yulna is Mother-Supreme now.”
She smiled at that. “Yulna-mimi n avwa i yuko…”
“Hey?”
“It’s, um…’Mother Yulna knows best’. The cubs used to say it, because it’s kind of a pun too.”
Julian smiled. “Gaori puns, huh?”
“Mm-hmm. It sounds a bit like ‘Mother Yulna smells like a Nava grub’.”
She grinned with him as he laughed softly. “Not very popular with the little ones, then?” he asked.
“Bitter medicine.”
“Ahh.” Julian nodded sagely. “Sounds like she’s perfect for the job.”
“She is,” Xiù agreed. “…I hope we get to go visit, when we’re flying.”
Julian nodded. “We’ll have to resupply somewhere…” he pointed out.
Whatever reply Xiù intended to give, it quickly distorted into the incoherence of a yawn.
“Maybe you should go back to sleep,” Julian suggested
“Can’t,” she shook her head. “I had a dream.”
“A bad one?”
“…Yeah,” she sighed. “I was back on the Hunter ship, only this time I was naked.”
“Urgh,” Julian grimaced sympathetically. “Have you always dreamed so much?”
“No. Just since the nervejam.” Xiù unconsciously rubbed her scarred arm.
“Doesn’t it bother you?”
“Not really…” She laughed quietly. “Every night’s an adventure. I’ve had some wild ones.”
“Like what?”
“There was the one where, um, a giant stone man was hanging wheels in a tree…And there was another one where you turned into a giant bird and I rode you… and there was the one where I dreamed I was a famous actress and I got to meet myself, but I had this really thick Chinese accent so I couldn’t understand myself…”
Julian chuckled.
“What about you?” she asked.
“I can never remember mine,” Julian shrugged. “They always fade away. Just bits and pieces.”
“Like what?”
Julian shrugged helplessly. “Uh… I had this really nasty night terror when I was about, uh, seven maybe? Like, I woke up screaming. All I can remember about it is that I had these giant mosquitos dancing on my arm and they were chanting ’blood bugs, blood bugs, blood bugs…’”
“Eww.”
“Yeah. Uh… Yeah, that’s really the only one I remember. Maybe… there was one where I had a sister, but she’d been murdered and saran-wrapped in the bath? And another one where… Okay, this one time when I was about fourteen or fifteen, I had the flu and I… I guess it was more a hallucination than a dream, but there was a movie? And if the movie played the…world would end? Or… something horrible, anyway. And we – me and some people, I can’t remember who – we had to walk down this valley between huge piles of those, y’know, those big concrete caltrops?”
Xiù nodded.
“Only… then the dream got… it felt soft. Like, weird soft, unpleasantly so, just this whole-body feeling of awful softness and then then it went the other way and everything felt horribly hard and, like… crystalline.”
“I don’t think I like your dreams,” Xiù commented.
Julian shrugged. “Most of the dreams I remember having are those ones where you have to pee and you’re looking for a toilet and they’re all.. Y’know, somebody’s using it or it’s broken for whatever reason and you just have to go find another one and then you finally figure out that you need to pee in real life and you wake up. I think everyone gets those.”
“Ugh, I hate those ones.”
There was a sleepy voice from the middle bunk. “Do either of you two have a dream where you shut up and go to sleep?”
Xiù and Julian shared an embarrassed silent laugh with each other before Xiù looked up. “Sorry Al. But it’s like five in the morning anyway, so…”
Allison groaned, rolled over and peered down at them, excavating sleep grit from the corner of her eye. “Some of us still think that’s the middle of the night, you fucking masochist…”
Xiù smiled, stood, and then to Julian’s surprise she kissed Allison on the cheek. “I’ll make breakfast,” she declared, and began foraging through the hab area’s condensed kitchen space.
Allison watched her work, looking suddenly wide awake and putting a hand to her cheek. She cleared her throat and sat up. “Okay… sure.”
Grinning, Julian stood up and greeted her with a rather more intimate kiss that lasted a good while longer. He lowered his voice for only Allison to hear him. “You’re head over heels,” he teased.
“…You don’t mind, do you?”
“Mind? It’s great!”
Allison breathed relief and smiled. “I love you.”
“Love you too.”
Julian grinned for her again and went to help Xiù by hauling the dining table down from where it roosted in the ceiling – he was the only one tall enough to reach it – and then lay out the placemats and cutlery. The instant coffee turned out to be pretty good when made with the boiling water faucet, and Xiù’s cooking was its usual sublime standard.
Throughout breakfast, each one of them occasionally glanced at the bathroom, exposed as it was in plain view, with nowhere to change and no kind of modesty screen.
When the time came to dress and go to work for the first time, all of them did so unwashed.
Date Point 10y4m3w4d AV
Finchley, London, UK, Earth
Simon Harvey
Simon returned to the house from loading Ava’s suitcase into the back seat of his Audi just in time to hear her knock on his nephew’s door.
When nothing had happened for several seconds, she knocked a second time. From the foot of the stairs, Simon could see the way she was standing – every line of her sang with vulnerability.
After the third knock, there was finally some stomping from inside the room and Sean wrenched the door open.
He didn’t greet her. He didn’t say or do anything pleasant at all. “What do you want?”
Ava cringed. “I’m… going now,” she said, gesturing over her shoulder. “I was, uh…”
He just glared at her impatiently.
“….Goodbye, Sean.” She was almost inaudibly quiet.
Sean shut the door in her face.
Simon retreated round the corner to give her a private moment in which to recover. She didn’t stomp angrily down the stairs this time but instead slowly and quietly sagged down them. She saw him waiting and summoned a small upwards tic of the mouth that was a poor substitute for her real smile.
“Car’s ready,” Simon reported gently, by way of offering to get her the hell out of there. She nodded gratefully, hoisted her smaller carry-on bag, which along with the suitcase in the car and the camera that was firmly in place on her hip represented the entirety of her worldly possessions, and ducked out of the front door without a word.
It probably would have been easier to get the tube to Heathrow, but Simon felt she was owed at least a drive, and he enjoyed his car. Modern solar field technology being what it was, along with modern batteries, a car like his E-9 was the next best thing to free to run, needing only parts and maintenance, both of which were covered in the lease, plus tax and insurance.
She brooded on the back seat, silent until they were firmly on the M25 and Simon was idly writing up a hypothetical article in his head to keep himself entertained.
When she did speak, she almost startled him. “I’m sorry,” she said.
When Simon glanced questioningly at her in the mirror, she apologised again with a facial quirk. “That I can’t get along with him any more.”
“With that immature little shit?” Simon asked. “I’m sorry about him, the boy’s a complete prick.”
She didn’t reply, and Simon spent twenty minutes enjoying the dubiously pleasurable scenery of the orbital motorway and sliding smoothly around slower traffic before finally deciding to break the silence.
“I have some good news for you,” he said.
She looked up. “Good news?”
“I got an email back this morning from Amy Larsen. My friend-of-a-friend who’s setting up Extra-Solar News Network? You’ve got an open invitation to go see her in her office as soon as you’re back.”
“Omigod, really?” Ava lit up. “Simon-!”
“I told her about the work we did in Egypt and linked her your portfolio. My good word goes a long way with some people.”
“I don’t know how to thank you-!”
“Don’t try, then.” Simon smiled at her. “Part of me wants to call it penance for my nephew being an absolute pillock, but I’m sure I’ll find some way to call in the favour someday.”
Ava shifted forward in her seat, looking more animated than she had at any moment since they’d got back from Africa. “What’s she like?”
“Amy’s a sweetheart. She was like your darling old grandma even when I knew her at Cambridge, and to this day she’s all cardigans and tissues, but you’ll never, ever meet somebody who’s more committed to the truth. To real journalism, right? Not your clickbait opinion piece agenda-driven bollocks.”
“You were at Cambridge together? I thought you said she’s a friend-of-a-friend?” Ava had that needle sharp insight when she wanted.
“Yup. She was my mate Ron Burford’s girlfriend.”
“Ron Burford the comic actor?”
“That’s the one. I met him through the Footlights. He still sends me a bottle of beer and a card at Christmas.”
Ava shook her head disbelievingly. “Did I do something wrong by not making friends with literally everybody at LSE?”
“I couldn’t say,” Simon shrugged. “Networking is important. But, you got put in touch with me, and through me you’ll soon meet Amy, and through her… who knows? Besides, you have contacts in Cimbrean Colonial Security, the SOR, the CIA…”
“I don’t think I can use any of those…” Ava pointed out.
“You don’t have to, necessarily. And if you do use them, be smart and use them sensibly and in a way that’s not going to piss them off,” Simon shrugged. “Delicate touch, that’s the trick. Just having them is usually enough.”
“Okay…” Ava sat back.
“…You’re having a hard time being optimistic right now, I bet,” Simon observed.
She shrugged at him in the mirror. “Can you blame me?”
“Nope. Have faith, though.”
“Yeah…” She slumped, and gazed out of the window. “I try.”
Date Point: 10y4m3w4d AV
HMS Sharman (HMNB Folctha), Folctha, Cimbrean, the Far Reaches.
Admiral Sir Patrick Knight
Final after-action meetings would ordinarily have been below Admiral Knight’s station, but he took a personal interest in the SOR.
Besides, in the absence of a higher command structure in a unit so young and so small, authority flowed directly to him. After all, the SOR’s commanding officer was, or had once been, a Royal Marine.
It was all a little messier and less structured than anybody would have liked, but that was probably the nature of founding a new unit, especially an international combined one. Knight had reasoned early on that the most sensible thing for him to do was accept that, when it came to the SOR, his powers of delegation would be a touch limited for the time being.
Which was why Powell and his nine Operators were filing – or limping, in the case of the abused and exhausted four whose mission to Perfection had sparked the godawful mess in that system – into his wardroom to hear his final verdict on Operation NOVA HOUND. Knight would have preferred to give not only them, but Commodore Caruthers as well, the chance to rest up a little before launching into this, but the After-Action-Report had been squatting accusingly on his desk for a week now.
Everyone was present. Aside from Knight, Powell and the operators, they had all the SOR’s assorted NCOs, Commodore Caruthers was looking short on sleep again but still alert, and they were even being graced with the personal presence of Lieutenant Colonel Franklin Miller, commander of the 946th Operations Support Squadron, who was usually so busy that seeing him in one place for five minutes together was a minor miracle, and who probably held the record for being the human who had transited between planets more than any other.
Miller had the dubious privilege of being the greasy cog that held the whole combined unit together. Technically he was part of the 946th Spaceflight wing under Colonel Stewart, and he bridged the awkward gap where the Royal Navy and the US Air Force brushed shoulders.
Powell had once described him as “A bloody bad officer in all the best ways.” Knight couldn’t agree more. AFSOC had practically begged the SOR to take him off their hands, on the grounds that a unit that was a bodged-together mess of half-solutions and improvisation needed an officer whose stock in trade was messy, improvised bodging-together.
An Operations Support Squadron was, in many ways, the perfect fit for the Lads. It was a unit conceived in the grand Air Force tradition of drilling new holes to hammer things into, and with their usual motley assortment of totally unrelated functions scattered all over base and only barely under unified command…it was the perfect place to stash the Americans. At least, for promotions, awards and the like.
It helped greatly that Miller loved the men, too. At some point his career had hiccuped and catapulted him from Enlisted to Officer with no discernible change in his attitude. This was, professionally speaking, a problem: the enlisted mindset of “can do!” at the expense of all else was less than perfectly compatible with an officer’s responsibilities of resource-balancing and the burden of command. Miller was an enlisted man at heart and loved his men too much to ever be sufficiently detached, which meant that his career had gone as high as it would go, not that he gave a damn.
He did, however, give a damn about other peoples’ careers, which was why he was sitting quietly and taking notes almost before the men had arrived. By population, the SOR was a unit of Americans that just happened to answer to some British commanders. All well and good…Except that the MoD could neither promote nor meaningfully award American servicemen. Miller, therefore, played the game with Knight in the best possible way-Knight would praise, then Miller would award, and everyone on both sides would be happy.
God knew, the men were going to want and damn well deserve something positive by the end of the day. A couple of medals and some promotions might just take the sting out of the unflinching dissection their first blooding was about to undergo.
On the whole, NOVA HOUND had been a success. A mixed one, perhaps—three hugely valuable men dead and a great many important cards played that had previously been held close to the human race’s collective chests definitely counted against it – but all mission objectives had been completed under circumstances that were not only difficult and exceptional, but unheard-of in the history of human warfare. On the whole, the SOR had acquitted themselves very well indeed.
As a propaganda victory, it had been an unqualified triumph. Senior dignitaries from every sapient race in the Dominion had been rescued alive, and their gratitude was varying degrees of grudging and profuse—the Corti after all weren’t exactly fountains of grace and humility, and the Kwmbwrw had been the most strident voice of anti-human fear and mistrust—but it had all been gratitude. The events at Perfection were going to badly damage or even completely undo all of that hard-earned goodwill if they weren’t careful, but that was a separate problem that the SOR couldn’t fix by themselves.
And the goodwill they’d gained with the Gaoians was something else entirely. There was some very happy weather on the horizon in that direction.
Mistakes, however, were inevitable, and at Knight’s request the report carefully worked up from the least of them to the most significant.
He read it to Powell and his men for the best part of an hour, around the comfortable table on HMS Sharman’s upper floors with its spectacular view across Folctha’s north-western park district, along the valley, over the young forest and down to the river estuary.
“In the case of the death of Sergeant Brady Stevenson…” he turned a page. “The review finds that his death was almost certainly the result of him failing to follow proper safety procedures when dealing with high explosives. Combat Camera footage review and the opinions of several SOR members during debriefing suggests that he stood too close to his own breaching charge during the egress from Capitol Station and most likely suffered a concussion from the overpressure. Though he accelerated correctly into a re-entry orbit, it’s likely that in his impaired condition he failed to activate his Exo-Atmospheric Re-entry forcefield, and was rendered unconscious by the re-entry shock without being able to correct that oversight.”
The men around the table bowed their heads. Stevenson had been a brother to all of them, Knight knew. Each of them would be thinking of what they could have done differently that might have saved him.
“The review recommends,” he continued, “that SOR training should place a strong emphasis on explosive safety to ensure that future Operators are under no illusions that the suit does not protect from explosive shockwaves. It also recommends that, excepting in situations where there is a pressing need for radio silence, all team members should check in after explosive egress and guide through the re-entry process together.”
He looked up. “Does anybody wish to add to that?”
Baseball raised a hand “Sir.”
“Staff Sergeant?”
“I’d recommend training for everyone in recognising the symptoms of concussion and disorientation,” the young man suggested.
Knight nodded, and noted the recommendation. “Thank you. Any others?”
All of them shook their heads, and Knight turned the page, knowing that they were about to hit the last and most difficult of the AAR’s findings. He’d been dreading this bit all day.
“Now to the final matter,” he intoned. “In the case of the death of Master Sergeant James Jones…” Knight took a deep breath. “The review finds that his sacrifice, while not unjustified, was nevertheless a tactical error.”
There was an elongated second in which every Operator at the table went tense in a chorus of creaking chairs. Powell, in the greatest show of emotion that Knight had ever seen from him, turned to stare at him dumbstruck for an instant, then blinked disbelievingly at several other things that only he could see, before settling on gazing wide-eyed at the tabletop between his balled fists, jaw going so tight that Knight fancied he could hear the man’s teeth creak. Certainly his knuckles did.
“Before you say anything, gentlemen,” Knight raised a hand to head off the protest that he could see coming from every one of the Operators, “Major Powell has my full and absolute confidence, and that has not changed in light of this report. Lord knows, I’ve been in a not dissimilar position myself. It is the burden of command that hard truths must come out and be learned from, and we must respect and face them with integrity and strength when they arrive.”
The men glanced at one another, at Powell who was still scrutinizing the tabletop, and grudgingly settled down. To a man, they looked like they’d been about to practically leap out of their chair to his defense. Knight cleared his throat.
“To be clear, the report agrees that the Major acted correctly in the moment. It merely highlights the courses of action that would have made it unnecessary to sacrifice Sergeant Jones: Mining and trapping the south end of the road in anticipation of a Hunter evasion of our apparent air superiority, ordering the partial demolition of the façade of the building to prevent the Hunters from scaling it…”
The Defenders glanced at one another. Those were opinions that they themselves had voiced during the debrief and hotwash.
“Sergeant Vandenberg, as the senior Defender I defer to your expertise in matters of demolition and trapping. If you feel that the report’s assessment is unrealistic, please say so and explain your reasoning.”
Rebar hesitated, then set his jaw and swallowed. “It… seems like a realistic assessment, sir,” he conceded.
Knight nodded, and closed the report.
“Unless there are any more comments or observations…?”
His tone made it absolutely clear that there were to be none, and nobody ignored that, keeping their peace. “Good. If anybody thinks of anything before the final investigator’s report, you may email me directly. This review is now concluded – all enlisted personnel are dismissed to see to their individual training. There’ll be an award ceremony at Sunset, followed immediately by a Dining Out. Mess dress is the uniform of the day, for your significant others either Mess or appropriate civilian attire is equally mandatory. And yes, we’ve taken the liberty of preparing your uniforms ahead of time, gentlemen. No excuses.”
The ‘get out’ was implicit but clear, and ’individual training’ was a euphemism for “go and sort out whatever you need to sort out today because you damn well won’t have the chance after Sunset”. The Operators, their support staff, and the assorted sailors and airmen stood and departed. There was a little sotto voce grumbling over the Mess Dress, but that was to be expected, and nobody was looking entirely upbeat, but that would change in the evening. If the decorations and promotions didn’t see to that, the alcohol would.
Miller stood. “If you don’t mind sir, I need to get back to Earth.” Knight gestured his assent with a nod, and Miller departed with a respectful nod by way of a salute.
Knight sat back as the door clicked shut behind him. “So. Major.”
Powell’s head rocked back and he unwound a little, and finally there was a glimmer of wetness around his eyes as he explored the ceiling as if there was absolution written on it. “That’s it, then,” he mourned. “I’m a cock-up, I’m not fit to lead them.”
“Pull yourself together!” Knight snapped, commanding Powell’s immediate, full and stunned attention. He softened. “The review details a tactic that would have made it unnecessary to sacrifice your man, yes, but that tactic was assembled in light of information about Hunter behaviour which we’ve only gleaned from thorough examination of the combat camera footage and suit telemetry.”
“Furthermore,” Caruthers added. “The relevant information was only gained from actions the Hunters took after it was too late to enact the recommended tactic.”
“In other words, Major,” Knight concluded “At the point where you had to decide, and with the information that was available to you, you made exactly the right call. And don’t let this-” he raised the AAR document, sneered at it and dropped it contemptuously back onto the table “-tell you differently. Sergeant Jones died because we lacked critical knowledge of our enemy, not because of incompetence on your part.”
“If I’d just seen-” Powell started.
“Then you’d be God himself!” Knight barked. “We’re none of us omniscient, man. Don’t you bloody forget that.”
He grunted in satisfaction as Powell’s expression settled with a grudging nod. “But,” he added. “You had damn well better learn from this. You and your men may well be the best we have, the best ever perhaps, but that is not grounds for complacency. It is grounds for the utmost caution, and the utmost respect for just how valuable those lads really are: We cannot afford to waste them. Is that understood?”
Powell nodded quietly, swallowing as he regained his composure. “Understood perfectly, sir.”
Knight held his eye contact for a minute, then nodded. “Go on, then. You have letters and awards to write and I have Ministers and those bloody awful American Secretaries to fend off.”
“Yes, sir.”
Knight watched him leave, then sighed and folded his arms, considering the closed door behind Powell with his head to one side.
“Thoughts?” He asked.
Caruthers had been wearing a similar thoughtful expression. “We can’t afford to lose him,” he stated. “Training a replacement would take too long, and for that replacement to earn the men’s trust and respect would take even longer. You said it yourself—he lacked knowledge, not judgement. At the death, he chose exactly the right man for it, even though it hurt him personally, and the men respect him for that.”
“I’ve seen AARs like this one truncate some very promising careers…” Knight mused, indicating it.
“Then I’d say it’s on us to keep that from happening in this case,” Caruthers replied. “Powell’s too valuable.”
“I was afraid you’d say that…” Knight made a gruff chuckle to show that he agreed completely, and stood up. “Fine. I’ll call in a few favours, you see to it that every officer who even reads the word ‘Cimbrean’ has got his back.”
“Yes sir. He’ll have friends in Westminster by the time I’m done.”
“Good man. How’s the fleet?”
“Well, I’d give my eye-teeth to have Caledonia back…” Caruthers groused, “But otherwise we’re charged, loaded and ready, and frankly I’m bloody pleased. The Hunters took one look at us and buggered off, and Fleetmaster Tikkiv had some admiring comments to make. I have this horrible feeling that we’re going to lose Myrmidon to drydock time in the near future though. Whatever it was that started that fire on Cally will need to be fixed on her as well, and without the FIC…”
“But good overall?”
“On balance, yes sir.”
“Good. Then…” Knight trailed off as his memory nudged him “Hmm. Do you recall how close the USS San Diego is to launch?”
“Er… Three months until hull launch I believe….No, four. Fitting will take another two years.”
“And the other two?”
“The USS Gene Roddenberry should be launching in ten months, and the USS Robert A. Heinlein three months after that.”
Knight nodded. “Hmm… Wangle me a couple of invites to whatever little shindig they throw to celebrate that launch, would you?”
Caruthers paused, then smiled understanding. “I can probably arrange that. Shall I ask Miller to mention to Colonel Stewart that his wing would do well by being represented there also? Maybe by somebody with a high media profile?”
“By God, Will, I think you’re onto something there.”
They shared a laugh. “I’ll see you at the award ceremony.” Caruthers suggested.
“See you there.” Knight agreed. They shook hands, and parted.