Date Point: 12y7m1w AV
Clearwater County, Minnesota, USA, Earth
Kevin Jenkins
♪♫”-I got a Pro-Keds box full of layman’s terms, it goes hey: Peace. Pray for the plagued. Major relief and capacious rains, but just ‘cuz I don’t want to war with you it don’t mean go warm up the barbecue. I’m like-”♪♫
Long drives—say, the nine hour journey from Omaha to Minnesota—were Kevin’s chance to get his mental filing sorted out. There was a lot more of it nowadays than there had once been. Straight roads, intricate music that he wasn’t really listening to, and a head full of government secrets and corporate power.
There was a rhythm to the drive, too, and he found that things started to come together after he left I-29 at Fargo.
It wasn’t just the Misfits and the People. Byron was spitting out moon laser ideas by the hour nowadays as new revelations from the survey flight’s data came through. Extraterrestrial oil drilling? Easy, and Lucent had all the right kinds of geology, in the right kinds of places. The biggest obstacle was the law. The few precedents anybody had were all rooted in Cimbrean, or in the original colonization of the American continents way back in the day.
Lucent, at least, didn’t have the confounding presence of natives to worry about. Unless the giant slime-spitting termites were sapient, which the biologists had so far refused to rule out.
Then there was his role in the Group’s more Earthly concerns. The Group’s solid foundation of high-tech manufacturing, providing advanced forcefield-based technology to industry sectors all over America and the rest of the world, involved the employment of tens of thousands of people. Unionized people. Kevin was all in favour of unions but he hadn’t appreciated that one day he’d be sitting opposite their representatives at a boardroom table, watching and weighing in while they haggled with the executives over the details of the company’s already-generous paid vacations and health insurance package.
Nine hours by himself with nothing but his thoughts was a genuine relief, even if he was technically on the clock. Hell. Nine hours of getting paid to just sit, think and drive. He’d sure as hell had worse jobs.
He was just north of Roy Lake when his phone went, automatically silencing the music. He glanced at the car’s dash screen, saw the caller ID, and pulled over while answering.
“…Darcy? This a personal call?”
There was a sigh from the other end of the line. “Yeah. I owe you an apology, and Byron too. Won’t salvage the train wreck I made of my career by threatening him, but…”
Kevin finished pulling over, put on the parking brake and pushed his seat back to stretch his legs out. “No, you owe them an apology. But, honest advice? Don’t. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man hate like Julian can, God damn!”
”Yeah, well. Irrelevant now, I guess. I still work for the Company, but if I work at it until I’m seventy I might just repair my credibility. I’m a desk analyst now.”
“…I’m sorry to hear that.”
”Don’t be. My fault.” Darcy chuckled, which was a sound Kevin wasn’t sure he’d ever heard her make before. ”Honestly? It’s almost a relief.”
“Less responsibility?”
“Less…” There was a long and thoughtful pause punctuated only by Darcy’s long exhalation before she gave up. ”I’m proud of what I already achieved. But you can’t keep doing what I was doing forever, it’s more than anybody can take. I was always gonna burn out and make a mistake in the end. As mistakes go… I coulda made a lot worse.”
“Seems like a shitty way to run a thing like that.”
”I’m not in a pretty business, Kevin. I’ve warned some good people away from this career for that exact reason. Some real talent.”
“You’re not gonna quit entirely?” Kevin asked.
“Nah, I’m an addict. This job will kill me eventually…”
Kevin nodded, even though she couldn’t see him. Some part of his soul believed that nods carried just fine through a phone call, even hands-free. “But leaving would kill you sooner.”
“That’s about the shape of it.”
“Well. Don’t be a stranger, hear?”
“I might have to be. So if I do have to sever contact, just… take care of yourself, okay? And look after those three misfits of yours, too.”
The request sounded surprisingly heartfelt.
“…You too.”
“Goodbye, Kevin. Thanks for all the coffee.”
The call ended and the music came back up. Kevin stared at his steering wheel thoughtfully until the song ended, then yanked the seat forward again and put the car back in drive. He didn’t bother turning the radio back up and drove in silence the last half hour.
Allison Buehler was up a ladder cleaning out the gutters when his car pulled into the yard in front of the trio’s house. She always seemed to find the dirtiest jobs to do, and this one had left her blackish-brown and mossy to the armpits.
“Kevin!” She picked her way down the ladder as he got out of the car. “You work fast, we weren’t…Have you been crying?”
“No,” Kevin grunted truthfully. He’d been close, but… “Ain’t nothin’. Just…” he cleared his throat. “The other two?”
Allison grabbed the hose and rinsed off her arms. “Julian’s checking on the beavers up in the back woods, Xiù’s probably on Skype with her family right now.”
“Place all okay?”
“Yeah. Caretaker kept it good for us…We thought we might redecorate while we’re here.”
“A lick of paint wouldn’t go wrong,” Kevin agreed. The house had good sturdy wood siding, but it had gone a long time since it last saw a paintbrush. Some of those irregular curled patches of color looked like they might come loose in a stiff breeze. Mister Williams had asked him to talk about a few security additions too, but right now didn’t really seem like the time.
“I’m guessing you’re here ‘cause you’ve got a plan?”
“…I… Sorta. Maybe. I was right, Byron ain’t happy at all. He’s real worried about his public image, and he’s got it in his head that trying to develop or protect this planet of yours is gonna turn him into the modern East India Company or some shit.”
“So…does he expect the world is gonna, what? Get swept under the rug?”
“There is a half-decent man under there,” Kevin promi sed. “You just gotta know how to push his buttons.
Allison didn’t have the patience. “Look, none of us are Byron-whisperers, that’s on you. All we care about is stopping a genocide.”
“Right. And that’s the angle,” Kevin smiled. “But not for Byron. That angle works better on people way more important than Byron is.”
“Like who?”
Kevin grinned. “You ever heard of General Martin Tremblay?” he asked.
Date Point: 12y7m1w AV
High Mountain Fortress, The Northern Plains, Planet Gao
Champion Genshi
Something had stood at the site of High Mountain Fortress for so long that even the oldest of the Stoneback oral tradition didn’t hint at an actual first, so far as Genshi knew. And he knew enough of that history that the Stonebacks would have been deeply upset.
He valued Daar’s friendship too much to betray that and so kept those thoughts to himself. There was no possibility of lying to a fully-trained Stoneback Brother except by omission, their noses were too good.
The modern Fortress itself was a mere thousand or so Gaoian years old, having been built from the rubble of its predecessor by Great Father Fyu. Which in turn had probably been built from the rubble of its predecessor. The stones were ten times as ancient as the walls, and a few of them here and there bore the marks and scars of battles that had never touched this fortress. Or a shred of archaeological mortar, a stain of primordial paint… little details that hinted at history so deep as to chill the spine.
It was almost traditional for powerful Clan figures to meet there, especially when there were important topics to discuss.
Genshi had entertained the thought that maybe the Fortress and its surrounding area could have been the equivalent of the Human city of Akkad. The Fortress may even have been the very first of the Gao’s civilization, but if it was, that knowledge was lost in the whiteout of badly-curated time.
Of course, Clan Highmountain were rather better at guarding their secrets than Clan Stoneback. Possibly—probably—they curated the time very well indeed and kept most of it a secret. Possibly that was a deliberate arrangement between the two ancient Clans. They had, after all, once been one and the same.
Neither, Genshi knew, suspected that his own clan was an indirect offshoot of that same tree.
The modern fortress was a museum and a library, where the latest in holographic technology brushed strangely against the tapestries and banners of the ancient clan hall. It was a university, a conclave, a theatre of ideas and, in keeping with some of the oldest and least civilized of Gaoian traditions, it was an arena. A lot of blood had been mopped from those stones over the centuries.
Soon, there might be more. Not today… but soon. Maybe.
A lot depended on Daar.
“They’re at war. And it ain’t just any war, this is one fer survival. The claws are out.”
Daar was a fascinating study in deceptive contrast. Most people were distracted by his brash personality and his immense…everything. Few noticed his mind and it was amongst the keenest Genshi had ever known, if a blunt instrument could be keen.
In any other company, Daar would have been the smartest person in the room. This room, however, was populated exclusively by his peers.
Peers like Grandfather Talo, a Highmountain so venerable that he was almost white from nose to tail and who had worn his fur long and shaggy as protection against the chill air for most of his life. His sight was going, which meant that the Highmountains would soon need a new Grandfather, but there was nothing wrong with Talo’s fierce brain.
Or his voice, which had that penetrating quality that a level, soft voice only gained with experience. “They can’t possibly expect to win. The basic rule of logistics is against them, if nothing else.”
“I dunno,” offered Daar with uncharacteristic deference. “They’ve got some pretty sneaky capability. Their ‘HEAT’ is like if First Fang and Whitecrest were the same fighting Claw. Better, though.”
Father Kureya was being groomed as Talo’s replacement. He was a different creature to Talo—browner of fur, and more animated in his energy. He prowled around the hall poking at his tablet while he listened, and shifted his weight from paw to paw as he spoke as though every follicle on his body itched if he wasn’t moving.
“They could win every battle they fight and still lose the war. You know that.”
Daar didn’t spare his annoyance with Kureya, and he paused in his own incessant prowling of the room to flash the barest hint of his teeth before resuming his patrol. It was striking how the two were so at odds in opinion and attitude yet shared the same intrinsically kinetic demeanor.
It was also striking how well they got along in any other context. Daar liked pretty much everybody on principle but the list of Gaoians he respected was much shorter and consisted solely of the people who would hold their ground against him.
“Of course I know that,” he barked, “I knew that before you were a Father. But logistics ain’t the only thing that matters in a war. The battlefield matters too.”
“The Hunters have ably shown that they can control the battlefield,” Kureya retorted.
“Can,” Daar growled. “That ain’t the same as ‘do’ or ‘will.’ And in any case, what else are the humans gonna do? There was a million fucking ships on that battlefield. Asymmetric warfare is their only option and they know it.”
“Exactly,” Kureya replied, “my point. Historically, asymmetric warfare is a means of staying alive long enough to bring aboard an ally. It doesn’t win a war by itself.”
Daar bared his fangs in a not entirely angry manner. “Funny you should say that…”
Talo spoke up again. “Champion Genshi. You’re being characteristically silent…”
“Watching Daar and Kureya spar is always entertaining,” Genshi commented, and immediately got a howl of mirth from Grandfather Garl.
“Young Daar’s been sparring with everyone since his ears were still floppy!”
Daar immediately cringed but gamely defended himself. “And I was winning, too! Got my first big scar when I was five!”
Kureya chittered as did everyone else in the room, and some of the… intensity drained away. Garl was as coarse as coarse got but he could fill any room with pure raucous charm.
“I was still trying to reach the highest bookshelf in the crèche, I think…”
“You’ll never get a good scar from a papercut, Kureya,” Daar said, and draped himself affectionately around the much smaller male’s shoulders. Kureya grimaced as he gamely tried to hold up the weight. “Besides,” he added. “The humans have more’n just Hunters to fight.”
So. Daar knew, or at least suspected. Genshi shifted his weight and gave the Stoneback champion a thoughtful, ears-forward stare. He knew that Daar wasn’t briefed on the fancifully-named DEEP RELIC secret yet, but…
“…True, I suppose…” he mused aloud, while calculating furiously. Technically, he had the authority to brief and indoctrinate others on the human document, but the request specifically not to brief Daar wasn’t one to be ignored lightly. It could put a fatal crack in a burgeoning relationship built on mutual trust. “The Hunters didn’t blow up that city of theirs, did they? And the humans don’t have antimatter weapons yet.”
Daar earned a prize. He stopped wrestling Kureya and carefully approached Genshi on fourpaw, sniffing suspiciously in his direction. For the third time in as many moments the energy in the room changed; when somebody as big and as dangerously physical as Daar got tense, everybody else did too.
“…I wonder how much you know that you aren’t letting on, Champion Genshi?” he half-asked, half-accused.
“I’m sworn to secrecy on a great many things, Champion Daar.”
“Hrrm.” Daar flashed an annoyed look but let it go, and everyone subtly relaxed.
“I was thinking about that myself,” Kureya remarked, respectfully putting a little distance between himself and Daar. “Do you know how much antimatter we have?”
Genshi did. It was another secret. “Do tell?” he asked instead.
“As far as I know, the combined reserves of all the Clans would release only half the energy of the weapon that destroyed San Diego,” Kureya said, and Genshi internally applauded him. The estimate was perfectly in line with Whitecrest’s own. “We have several hundred fusion weapons that large, but not enough antimatter.”
“Why use antimatter at all, then?” Garl queried. “If it’s so expensive to make and we have that many fusion weapons…?”
“A mystery,” Talo agreed. “I have a hypothesis, but…”
“Because they can,” growled Daar. “Whoever it was, that much antimatter is just a stupid display of raw power. And it’s even more stupider, ‘cuz ain’t nobody got that much antimatter to spare. Not even the Gao, ‘cuz yer forgettin’ that almost all that antimatter you talked up is all tied up in power cells and industry and stuff. Really we’ve got maybe a hundredth of a San Diego to waste.”
“…I think I disagree with that hypothesis, Champion Daar,” Talo mused. “A display of raw power only works when being… well, displayed. Whoever was responsible for that human city’s destruction has never claimed credit, and therefore the raw power on display has gone to waste.”
“Makes sense,” Garl rumbled, scratching at one of his ears. “No point flexin’ yer claws at somebody unless he sees you do it.”
Daar considered. “Well…that depends on your goal, I guess. I mean, this is basically a terrorist attack done on huge scale, right? Maybe the goal was just to terrorize.”
“And yet no party has come forward to claim it.”
“Right,” Daar maintained. “Which means the goal was just to terrorize. But then…why?”
Genshi raised a claw. “I’m with Talo on this. An unclaimed terrorist attack is a job half done, especially if it is not repeated. If a city is destroyed and no credit is taken, to me that implies that somebody felt the city needed to be destroyed, but wished not to be identified.”
Daar nodded, “Sure, that’s valid. But terrorists ain’t always gotta have credit. Sometimes all you wanna do is paralyze an enemy and these kinda mysteries can be the worst for that. Besides, that don’t change that it’s what they did, so we ain’t got a lot to go on. All we got is they spent an impossible amount of antimatter and wiped out a city, and I think so far only the humans have any idea what it’s all about.” He grumbled, “And they ain’t telling, either.”
Genshi tilted his ears quizzically. “How long would it take us to manufacture that much?”
Daar paused dead in his pacing. “…not quick. Years?”
“To make as much as destroyed San Diego would take us seven years,” Kureya reported. “And we monitor antimatter quite closely. Nobody has that kind of capacity unaccounted-for.”
“We do not have perfect understanding of every species’ industrial capability,” Genshi pointed out. “All we know therefore is that the antimatter wasn’t made by Gaoians.”
“Okay,” Daar insisted, “So what’s the advantage? It’s clean but it’s expensive, it’s obvious, there’s not many species that have the ability in the first place—it’s a major export of Ironclaw. It can be tricky to handle…I mean, as a weapon? It ain’t that great.”
Talo stood up quite abruptly with a groan and an audible arthritic popping. He strolled around the room, stretching himself out. “I can think of one strategic advantage to antimatter that might make it worthwhile as a weapon.”
“And that is?” Kureya inquired.
“…Champon Genshi.” Talo ran his claws through the fur around his jaw and whiskers. “What is the operational lifetime of a fusion warhead?”
“…Most of the military clans retire theirs after twenty years,” Genshi admitted. “Usually, they are recycled into new warheads.”
“Why are they retired and recycled?”
“Reliability. Maintenance. Radioactive decay. Nothing survives neglect…”
Talo duck-nodded thoughtfully. “Kureya. Volume of a twelve-mass pellet of, oh… anti-iron?”
“About… this big.” Kureya held his paws surprisingly close together.
“So, if I were to, say, set such a pellet adrift in interstellar space, how long would it take to degrade from contact with the interstellar medium?”
Kureya considered the problem. “…Centuries to erode any significant proportion of its mass,” he reported. “Geological epochs to erode the whole pellet.”
Talo duck-nodded again. “So for all intents and purposes, you have a bomb which requires effectively zero maintenance. At least, not within plausible time spans.”
“Why not just shove a fusion bomb into a stasis box?” Daar asked.
“Because the stasis box would need maintaining.”
“So maintain it,” Garl growled. Daar duck-nodded emphatically.
“A good point,” Kureya pointed out. “What kind of enemy would have the infrastructure to make an antimatter pellet, but not to maintain an arsenal of bombs?”
Daar shook his head fiercely. “But they still had ‘ta jump it!” he pointed out. “That antimatter still needs a jump array to get from wherever it was to San Diego, an’ that array is gonna need maintaining.”
“A jump array doesn’t require constant power like a stasis box would,” Genshi pointed out. “Slower maintenance cycle again.”
“Yeah, but we’ve gone from geological epochs back down to decades. So again, why not just fusion warheads?” Daar insisted. “It don’t make sense.”
“So to summarize,” Talo concluded, “the humans are fighting an enemy with breathtaking resources that uses those resources in strange and apparently wasteful ways for no clear or obvious end.”
“We can’t account for alien psychology,” Genshi suggested.
“Alien psychology is one thing, but ain’t nobody puts two plus two together and gets seven,” Daar grumbled.
Genshi saw his moment. “Nobody that we know of,” he inserted.
Talo scratched thoughtful at an ear and frowned.
“You’re proposing the existence of… some kind of third party?” He asked. “An agent not known to us?”
Genshi wobbled his head. “Daar’s right. Any faction with the resources and competence to generate antimatter in those quantities would be smart enough not to waste it. Nobody we know of would view it as economical to spend antimatter that way… and yet somebody plainly did.”
“Well…see, that’s more troublin’ than basically anything else.” Daar resumed his frenetic pacing. “It means we’re playin’ in a big game of Ta Shen here and there’s somebody at the table we hadn’t even noticed. That’s a deep hole to be in, intel-wise.” He eyed Genshi again. “Well, fer Stoneback, anyway…and we still don’t know why but I think that don’t matter no more.”
“How so?” growled Garl.
“Well, look at all the random Naxas shit we’ve been rolling in lately! There’s all sorts of weird things going on all sudden-like. The ‘Gurvy-rag’ or however you say it—”
“Guvnurag.”
“Yeah, them. Why did their homeworld get attacked? I mean, I’d normally say it was just Hunters being Hunters but how in the name of Keeda’s balls did they get a million ships?”
“Perhaps we didn’t notice?”
Daar wobbled his head vigorously. “Nah, that don’t fit their previous tactics. And antimatter don’t either. They’d rather eat the city if they could, and if they were involved they’d have used that jump to get ships in. So it wasn’t the Hunters, but…a million ships. Tell me that ain’t a little help from someone just stupid powerful.”
“We’ve never known how powerful the Hunters truly are,” Kureya reminded him. “Their territory is big enough to contain at least ten temperate worlds, statistically, and the galactic community has historically treated them as a force of nature.
“A million divided by ten is still a hundred-thousand. That’s a lot of ships around a pawful of worlds.”
“By and large, temperate worlds don’t build spaceships. They feed crews.” Kureya’s ears were grim. “A single world turned over to whatever the…” He licked his teeth nervously, “…whatever the Hunter equivalent of agriculture is would easily feed the crews of a million ships. The ships themselves, we suspect, would be built at orbitals.”
Daar growled, “That makes me hate ‘em even more.” His pace grew more agitated. “But yeah. That’s still not their style, which means they got help suddenly. And recently, I bet. I think that still leaves us with a big player we don’t know about and for some reason they’re going after the humans. Which…I dunno, that makes me nervous.”
“It should,” Garl grunted. “Anything goes after the humans, comes after us before long.”
“If there’s anything I learned is we’re…” Daar paused and flicked his ears reluctantly.
“Go on.”
“…I think Garl’s right. I think that, whatever this Big Keeda thing is? The only reason they’re going after the humans, it’s either ‘cuz they’re a threat or they just hate something about ‘em. And we’ve got a lot in common with the humans. A lot more than I realized, really.”
“Sister Shoo taught us as much,” Genshi pointed out. “The females wouldn’t have named her a Sister unless she fit. They never did it for… for any other species. The very idea is just… I mean, who would fit?”
“Nobody,” said Daar definitively. “I think there’s prol’ly a lotta wisdom there to think about.”
The room reflected on that with appreciative duck-nodding.
“Well said,” intoned Talo. “All of that leaves us much to contemplate. What shall our next step be?”
Daar was the first to respond after a glance at Garl. “I wanna get my Fangs fully staffed and maybe reactivate all the rest.”
“Daar, the budget—”
“Fuck the budget. You ain’t gonna tell me we don’t need ‘em after all this!”
“The Females will not be pleased,” Kureya pointed out.
“Yeah, they won’t. I’ll hafta deal with that too.”
“A military buildup will be noticed, Daar.” Genshi calculated. “Not even we could spin up without being noticed.”
“Don’t matter, we gotta do it. And…I’ll see if I can get an appointment with the Mother-Supreme and talk it out. I think we can argue a good case.”
Garl shook out the thick fur around his neck and chittered in contrabass. “Leave that to me. I’ll take any excuse to visit Yulna.”
“…You have your nose on someone, don’t’cha? You’re so obvious Garl. Teach me!”
“Pure balls, young’n.” Garl’s teeth gleamed. “It works.”
Good humor was probably the best way to end the meeting, and Genshi seized on it. “Garl’s social life aside, we’re all in agreement that we should begin a build-up? If so, I think we adjourn and reconvene when we know more. Objections?”
“None whatsoever.” Talo stood up from his cushion with a series of audible arthritic pops. “Though… Champion Genshi, a young rite-Brother of ours managed to uncover something you may find personally intriguing. Shall we talk and walk?”
“….By all means, Grandfather.”
Date Point: 12y7m1w AV
HMS Viscount, New Enewetak system, deep space
Lt. Col. Claude Nadeau
“Six more?”
The bridge of a V-class destroyer was a dense, crowded thing that in some ways had more in common with the flight deck of an airliner or the cockpit of a plane than a bridge as Nadeau had always envisioned them. His mind’s eye had always been informed by Star Trek, and had placed the captain in the exact middle of an open, airy space full of consoles and needless expanses of floor where he could prowl as though on a Shakespearian stage, addressing a giant floor-to-ceiling screen.
The captain did have a chair: It was a bucket seat with a five-point safety harness for use during hard maneuvers, and it was bolted firmly to the aft bulkhead. And the bridge did have a screen, in the form of a 21-inch monitor tucked away on a bracket high in one corner and largely ignored. There were no windows, no sweeping view of the stars: the bridge was an armored bunker deep in the ship’s structure, and the helmsmen occupied a cavity in the forward wall which surrounded them in readouts and displays. They flew exclusively by instrument: There would have been no point in having windows on a ship designed for engagement ranges measured in terms of the speed of light.
The only concession to leg room was a narrow, shoulder-wide strip of open deck just behind the helmsmen. The rest of the space was taken up by somebody’s station. It wasn’t actually cramped or uncomfortable, but it was no USS Enterprise.
There was enough room for a visitor to stand and watch over it all, though, and to chat with the *Viscount*‘s captain, Nigel Arlott.
“Authorized last week. They posted the names this morning: Vanguard, Vanquisher, Venture, Valkyrie, Valorous and Vancouver.”
“Twelve destroyers. I’d say that’s a big fleet, but after seeing what hit the Guvnurag…”
“It’s not even a big fleet by human standards,” Arlott disagreed. “There were… eighty or so destroyers at the battle of Jutland, I think.” He shrugged, and put on a dark little smile. “The technological advantage counts for a lot. If we fell backwards in time right now then Viscount could sink every ship in both fleets all by herself, and we have the same kind of an edge over the Hunters… for now.”
“You think it’ll come down to tonnage, in the end?” Nadeau asked. Arlott shook his head.
“No. They leech off our ideas, but we’re always a step ahead. They’ll narrow the gap, but never beat us.”
“Tonnage counts for a lot.”
Arlott nodded, grimly. “We were there. We saw. That’s why our governments are sinking so much into this coltainer project. We need to correct the manufacturing shortfall and fast.”
“Hang the economic consequences. Live first, pay later, eh?” Nadeau agreed.
“Precisely.” Arlott checked his instruments. “How long is this survey going to take, anyway? Not that I’m impatient, but…”
Nadeau nodded. The Coltainer they were escorting had hauled itself into a polar orbit over New Enewetak and was methodically sweeping the whole planet’s surface, looking for potential test sites.
Those sites needed to meet several criteria. The whole idea after all was that the colonists should be able to self-sustain without the constant delivery of basic necessities from Earth or anywhere else. They needed to be able to farm their own food, clean their own water and mine their own raw materials. The survey was exhaustive.
Fortunately, the actual colony assembly process should be relatively straightforward. Viable colony sites had everything needed to make concrete right there, or at least close and accessible enough for the coltainer’s automated quarrying and delivery systems to retrieve, and the coltainer could use several different concretes if needed.
Lewis had been full of grand schemes to have the machines excavate bunkers and basements and maybe even a subway station with an in-situ TBM ready and waiting for future expansion. Reality had got in the way, and the actual construction process was much less interesting. The actual colony blueprint was little more than a fully-equipped dormitory with a walk-in freezer attached to a small but sturdy warehouse.
It was fully plumbed, well lit, well drained, fully wired up with forcefield solar power. There was air conditioning and rooms appropriate for medical or scientific use. There was an office for colony management and a machine shop with its own small nanofactory and plenty of room for the colonists to install more conventional CAD/CAM tools… and all of it was assembled automatically by robots with no human supervision. In theory.
It would be a landmark moment in cutting-edge automation if it worked, but Lewis hadn’t been happy. He’d wanted so much more. Nadeau meanwhile would be giggling with joy if the system built so much as a single straight wall in the right place on its first outing, let alone a whole compound.
But, it had to find a suitable site first.
“We’ll be here for several days,” he predicted. “And we’ll probably keep coming back.”
Arlott didn’t look happy. “This isn’t a research ship. I know we’re acting in support of an important operation, but…”
“Just be glad we didn’t bring the SOR along for this,” Nadeau joked. “Not only would they take up all the space and eat all the food, but what’s worse is they’d probably have some useful insights.”
“I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting them,” Arlott replied.
“You’re lucky. They’re…overwhelming. Sergeant Vandenberg could do a couple of hundred squats with us sitting on his shoulders while giving a lecture on variable-gravity metallurgical processes. And he’s neither the strongest man in the SOR, nor the most intelligent.”
“…I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Don’t get me wrong, they’re great guys. Friendly and charming, but…humbling.” Nadeau sniffed. “But we live in humbling times, I guess. I mean, you’re a starship captain.”
Arlott chuckled. “And just ten years ago, I was watching Jackson test the warp engine you designed.”
Nadeau shook his head and waved a hand to fend off the compliment. “It was just a reverse-engineered Hunter design,” he said. “Besides, Ted Bartlett cracked spacetime distortion. I was the forcefield guy.”
“And I’m just a ship captain. The ship just sails on different tides.” Arlott considered the coltainer probe again. “Someday, people are going to live on that planet. Someday soon, I hope. And their definition of ‘normal’ is going to humble somebody else. And maybe in three hundred years’ time, it’ll be humbling and strange to meet somebody who actually lives on Earth.”
“Maybe.” Nadeau agreed.
He was spared from having to think of what to say next by the Coltainer probe, which chose that moment to send them an update.
He reviewed it on his tablet. “It’s found… seventy-four potential sites, and is relocating for the high-detail survey,” he announced.
“Well. To Hell with that,” Arlott decided. “I have paperwork to do. As nice as this conversation is…”
“Yeah, I should get back to work too. We need to review these survey results.”
“Have…fun?” Arlott joked. Nadeau grinned.
“Actually…yeah. I think I will,” he said.
The probe was, after all, already exceeding his expectations.
Date Point: 12y7m1w AV
High Mountain Fortress, Gao
Champion Genshi
“…And this is a recent find?”
The archives beneath High Mountain Fortress were very different to the fortress itself. They had been excavated during Gao’s information age, and designed with future upgrades in mind, meaning that there wasn’t an inch of the stacks that couldn’t be disassembled and replaced easily and quickly.
That was just the information layer, of course. The physical vaults and archives plunged deep into ancient, stable bedrock, and there was a constant stream of artifacts in and out: Archaeological curios destined for Highmountain museums all over Gao, and new items inbound for storage and historically important documents for archiving in the Clan’s great library.
Over the centuries, sometimes, the filing had been occasionally less than perfect. Sometimes, an enterprising young Highmountain might go digging in the archives for an obscure fossil, and turn up something…different.
Something like an ancient Gaoian skull.
“Technically, no. It’s been in the archives for generations. Anyway, look: The attached notes made special mention of the signs of osteoporosis around the left sphenoid ridge. You’ll see the significance of course.”
Genshi had no idea what a sphenoid ridge even was, and said so with his usual tact. “Please, grandfather. Assume that I have neglected my studies in the field of… well, skulls.”
Talo chittered, and ran a claw along the feature in question, not actually touching it. “Here,” he said, and then tapped the side of his own head for emphasis.
“…That’s where a translator implant would go!” Genshi realized, and reevaluated the skull.
“Indeed. And the alleged osteoporosis, on close inspection, is more consistent with nanofilament infiltration.”
Genshi set the skull down carefully in its box. “…Who was he?”
“She. Unfortunately we don’t know, but we do know that she was a silverfur like yourself, and most likely hailed from the ancient city-state of Yem Sha. She was slightly older than I am now when she died.”
“A good long life, then!” Genshi said admiringly.
“Oh yes. Especially considering she was a contemporary of Tiritya and Fyu. Probably even a peer or companion…but she didn’t die of old age, sadly. There are…you see the tool marks?”
Genshi shook his head again, and bent down to study the long-deceased Mother’s bone again.
“The Wi Kaoians fought a bloody war,” Talo sighed sadly. “You remember your history? The … condition…in which Tiritya and her Sisters were returned to this fortress after their failed infiltration of the city?”
“I remember.” It was a grim and uncivilized epoch in Gaoian history. ”Skinning a female? Barbaric.”
“If it makes you feel better,” Talo said, “This one was was dead before they began. Tiritya herself was not so fortunate…but I am digressing.”
“Into horrific territory,” Genshi commented.
“Yes,” Talo agreed. “But of course, this raises the question…”
“Just what the hell was a cybernetic doing in the head of one of Tiritya’s sisterhood?” Genshi finished.
“Quietly self-destructing on the event of her death, it seems.” Talo drummed his claws thoughtfully on the edge of the steel table. “It’s a strange feeling, watching a war on the horizon that I probably won’t live to see the beginning of. Indeed, I hope I don’t.”
“We could do with your experience…” Genshi told him.
“Maybe.” Talo allowed. “But if the war starts, in whatever form it takes, while I’m still around then we shall be woefully unprepared. Except that now it seems we may have been obliviously fighting it for at least a thousand years.”
“What happened to the young Brother who found this?”
“Ah. A small deception on my part. I never actually said whether the find was a recent one, did I?” Talo ducked his head apologetically. “You are, I’m afraid, speaking with him.”
“…And you have kept this secret?”
“It would be…Young Genshi, you and I are at opposite ends of the information spectrum,” Talo said, slowly. “To conceal information and keep secrets goes against everything my Clan stands for…” he glanced at the skull again. “In most cases. But knowledge is a responsibility.”
“This is possibly one of the most profound findings in our history, surely you agree!”
“Exactly.” Talo duck-nodded. ”Not, therefore, the sort of thing a self-respecting academic waves around without due consideration. And when I began to consider the ramifications of alien meddling during the most important chapter of our history…”
Genshi held his peace with great effort.
Talo did not take his eyes off the skull. “So. We have a faction in the game that could do this undetected while we were still fighting with spears and crossbows… and I doubt we can meaningfully combat them. Not yet. But unless I miss my guess, you’re hard at work on that problem, yes?”
“Do you really expect me to answer that question, Grandfather?”
Talo shook his head solemnly, though he seemed pleased. “No.”
He stepped around the table and picked up the ancient Mother’s skull to contemplate it. “Encroaching death has its way of adjusting your priorities. Not so long ago, I would have chipped away for a scrap of knowledge from you, or some assurance. Now…I have learned to trust. Gao will have to do without me from now on. It’s…liberating, really.”
“You will be missed,” Genshi offered. “You’re held in high esteem by my Clan.”
Talo’s ears flattened slightly at the compliment, just for a moment as though he’d been patted on the head. It was an almost cublike gesture of genuine pleasure. “And I hold your Clan in high esteem. Especially its Champion. Leaving the future to young males of your caliber makes this all a little easier. I’m…scared, but I’m not afraid. I know that even if our species is doomed, we’ll claw out a few eyes on the way. The galaxy will remember Gao, one way or another.”
He put the skull down again and shook himself. “The past must trust the future. Don’t forget that on the day when it’s your turn to move into the past, young Genshi. You will have to, eventually. It’s worth planning well ahead.”
Genshi gave him a long, thoughtful stare, then turned and stooped into a low Gaoian bow. “Thank you for your kind advice, honored Grandfather,” he said, formally. He decided not to mention that he had already been making such plans. Talo didn’t need to know. Nobody did.
Only the Champion should know when a Clan was about to die.