Date Point: 14y2d AV
Farthrow Facility, Lavmuy City, Planet Gao
Lieutenant Anthony “Abbott” Costello
Costello had no idea how Warhorse had managed to hold up. He hadn’t taken off his Mass, ran his shifts like absolute clockwork, hustled around the base treating wounded, eating and keeping himself limber and loose via calisthenics when there was nothing else to do. The man was like a machine.
A quiet, monotone, unemotional machine.
Protectors conditioned to wear the Mass harder and longer than anybody else. It was one of the essential differences between them and the other two classes of HEAT operator—Aggressors killed, Defenders labored, Protectors turned the EV-MASS into a second skin, to the point where it seemed to liberate rather than encumber them.
But the best body in the world was no good in some circumstances. Adam was supposed to be a happy man. Even on-mission he had an essential positivity to him that couldn’t be suppressed, and seeing the liveliness drained out of him was almost too much to bear.
Fortunately, it might just come back.
Costello found him doing effortless one-armed handstand push-ups in the yard round the back of the facility where a ring of Hescos had been laid down to create a free space. He’d been at them for some time, judging by the puddle of sweat in the dirt and the small divot where he repeatedly touched his nose. A handful of servicemen who apparently had nothing more important to be doing right then were watching the show with totally awestruck expressions.
Costello glared at them, projecting a Powell-esque certainty that their continued presence would see him exercise the full extent of his power to make their lives difficult, and they promptly remembered their important duties elsewhere.
Adam noticed Costello approach and, in one fluid motion, pressed himself up so hard he practically flipped upright and straight into the position of attention. The man moved like the Mass weighed nothing at all.
Costello waved at him to relax. “Stand easy, ‘Horse. Got some good news for you: Kovač is alive and well.”
His monster Protector practically fell apart on the spot, relief causing all the tension and emotional lockdown to visibly slide off his body like a shed coat. He muttered something in Spanish that Costello didn’t catch, glanced skywards, and then gave Costello a grateful look that was hungry for more information.
“She made it out?”
*“Cally*’s lifeboats are a couple thousand klicks east of here, but she did indeed make it out,” Costello confirmed. “Unfortunately, none of the officers did. Powell’s promoted her to second lieutenant. She’s in charge out there until we can establish superiority in the region and bring them home.”
Warhorse nodded and, for the first time since he’d learned about the Caledonia, bounced on the balls of his feet. No smile yet, but that was okay.
“Of course, we now have a problem of fraternization…” Costello joked, and there was the smile, chased by a Muttley snicker of a laugh that lasted just until Arés could get his expression under control again. He cleared his throat and straightened up.
They didn’t in fact have any such problem, the regs having predicted and accounted for this particular scenario, but morale was everything in Costello’s book and unlike Powell he had the luxury of teasing his men to build them up. He was damn well going to use that tool until it was taken from him.
Arés definitely wasn’t averse to returning the joke. “I wouldn’t worry sir. She wouldn’t want me until I get a shower anyway.”
Costello took a sniff. “I don’t blame her,” He agreed, putting on his best sardonic snark before sobering. “Now, I should note she’s not out of the woods yet, but she’s got Corporal Wilde and his team with her.”
“He’s good. They’re good.” Arés’ face was finally starting to warm up again. “I’m glad.”
“Thought you would be…how’s Dexter holding up?”
Costello admitted to a weakness here—He wasn’t as familiar with the Gaoians as he’d like to be. The Whitecrests’ whole raison d’etre was being a closed book, and being an officer was always a barrier anyway. They only truly opened up to their fellow “Brothers,” of whom Arés and Firth were about their closest and most trusted.
Arés paused for a bit. “Gaoians…they’re funny sometimes about this kind of thing. He’s…lookin’ to kill a lot of biodrones, sir.”
“Motivated.”
“Yeah. Grief isn’t really the same for them. They’re all about honoring a memory more than, I dunno.” Arés shrugged expansively. “He’ll be okay as long as he’s busy.”
“Well,” Costello nodded. “I think I can indulge him there. Go find him for me and point him my way. We need his expert eye on some planning to bring the Champions together for a strategic meeting.”
“Will do sir, was just about to make my rounds. I was gettin’ bored anyway.”
“‘Horse, the day you get bored of exercise will be marked in my calendar for sure,” Costello told him.
“Oh no, it was too light, you see. I miss my grav plating…”
Some things couldn’t ever change, thank God.
“I doubt you’ll lose any of your gainz,” Costello interrupted him indulgently. “Now go: The sooner you find him, sooner you can get back to intimidating the airborne troopers.”
Arés grinned cheesily. “Will do! One thing sir, a medical issue—how’s your head?”
Costello rubbed his skull, where the memory of a sniper’s bullet was still making it tender. An EV-MASS helmet was sturdy beyond belief, but all the energy still had to go somewhere, and it had chosen the path of least resistance—his scalp. “Seems fine to me.”
“Can’t be too careful. Crude may be spacemagic but that don’t mean I completely trust it. Any dizziness? Spots in your vision? Forgetfulness?”
“Not that I noticed.”
Arés had an unique way of practicing tactical medicine—gentle, but inexorable. Before Costello knew what was going on, his head was firmly grasped in one paw while the other paw shone a light into his eyes. Costello went limp and let him tilt his head back and forth, interrogating his eyes for signs of trauma with practiced suspicion.
He’d never had the balls to refuse ‘Horse’s attentions. Nobody did, not even Firth, who’d given his only fuck long ago.
Finally, Arés seemed satisfied. “…Seems okay,” he grunted, dubiously. “We’re gonna do memory tests later though.”
“Fine, fine. Are you gonna go find Dex now?”
Arés smiled, “Yessir.” He nodded—there was no saluting “downrange,” especially not with known sniper activity in the area—grabbed a bag of his stomach-turning high-energy food ‘slurry,’ bounced off and left Costello alone with his thoughts.
There was a thump felt through the soles of his feet rather than heard, and the sound of yet another Weaver firing up its thrusters to lift itself out of the jump array. They were up to four arrays now, each fed by a fusion plant that alone could have kept a small rural county powered back on Earth, and each one was bringing through trucks, men, planes, food, medicine, ammunition, beds, and latrines.
The latrines were important. There was a small corps of engineers doing the rounds being reminded every two minutes by a passionate and inventively descriptive NCO that their efforts were all that stood between Gao and another Cimbrean skidmark, and they’d jury-rigged a device that combined all the features of a max-strength biofilter forcefield and an incinerator to handle the waste.
Every new pair of boots through the Arrays was getting a similarly descriptive lecture about the important relationship between Gao’s class nine biosphere and a human’s class twelve effluent: Namely that they must never, ever, under any circumstances, be allowed to come into contact.
Every boot through was also getting a shot, followed by an emergency Frontline implant, followed by three mandatory days of “theatre acclimatization” and light duty while they…well, acclimatized.
This time, the reason for that acclimatization was effectively reversed. It wasn’t to contain the spread of sickness among the troops, it was to prevent the spread of sickness from the troops to the locals. Gao would hardly be saved if the Common Cold got loose and finished off what the Hierarchy had started.
That meant three days of waiting with an effectively wide-open sky over their head before the campaign to secure the planet could really get started, but it was a horribly necessary gamble. Gaoians may have been tough and hardy but no chances could be taken, not now, not in such a dynamic situation. All of this was necessary to protect the cubs and the elderly, both of whom would be essential to recovering the population and preserving Gaoian culture.
Costello didn’t like to think about it, but Gao was fucked. Even in the best-case scenario where they successfully defended it and it remained the hub of Gaoian civilization…Their infrastructure was smashed, and from what could be gathered, there were now several massive ecological disasters either ongoing or imminent: nuclear, chemical and otherwise. Their great institutions were either shattered or operating in the most dire of emergency modes. Farms were abandoned as the clanless fled them and Stoneback consolidated its forces, roads were choked with wreckage and corpses, as soon as the power went the drinking water would go with it, and worst of all, most Gaoians had absolutely no idea why so many of their number had suddenly betrayed their fellows.
And that was just the practical stuff, saying nothing of the culture, the shell-shock, the long-term repercussions to Gaoian psyche and society. It was every man for himself out there, and Gaoians naturally formed fiercely loyal groups—As the old Clans collapsed, the Clanless formed their own without any of the tradition and restraint that came from age. There were gang wars raging out there between groups of perfectly unimplanted Clanless, Straightshield was running ragged since most of their Judge-Fathers had been sequestered or worse, and Emberpelt simply could not keep up with the emergency. Openpaw’s hospitals were either overrun or burning, and the female communes had been either evacuated or massacred.
The only safe bubble was around the Humans and around Stoneback. That, somehow, h ad been noticed by the civilians, and that all by itself was the only tenuous thread keeping things from descending into complete chaos. The Females did what they could for the cubs, and Costello knew that problem was even now being heatedly discussed by men and Gaoians far above his paygrade.
His tour of the base took him past the Array field, where a number of MPs—many of them women, an old tactic to calm frightened civilians—were shepherding refugees into the field boundary for evacuation to Cimbrean. Cimbrean itself was still reeling from the implication of potentially millions of refugees…it was completely untenable.
Noah had been granted ample warning to build his Ark. The Allied military were building theirs in the space of hours, drawing from scenarios gamed only in the imaginations of the most feverishly paranoid analysts.
Those same analysts had worried about a possible hack on Frontline implants as well. Those fears, blessedly, had been swiftly put to bed by AEC’s resident Corti expert on advanced biochemistry, Nofl, who had ‘patiently’ explained at length that the implant was purely chemical in function and had no electronics by design.
Too many questions for one man to handle. Too big a problem for a whole army to solve. And the war had only just begun.
He watched the MPs step back. There was a black blink, another boot-tickling thump and the Gaoian evacuees were gone, replaced by a pair of armored personnel carriers that carefully backed out of the marked area and drove towards their mustering area.
Aware that he had better sleep while he had the chance, he turned toward the Mayor Cell to find out where the hell his bed was, and resolved to shut out all those problems, just for a few hours.
There would be plenty more when he woke up.
Date Point: 14y2d AV
Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Father Gyotin of Clan Starmind
So much despair. The air reeked of it. Of fatigue, and fear, and unwashed fur; of blood, smoke and concrete dust. It smelled like the end of the world.
Hope, meanwhile, smelled like warm stew and fresh blankets. It sounded like an acoustic guitar, like Human children teaching Gaoian cubs how to play soccer, and people calmly calling out orders and organizing themselves. It looked like the population of Cimbrean, turning out their pantries and their closets to bring something like comfort back into the lives of so many numbed refugees.
And it felt like the warmth that settled in Gyotin’s belly as he watched a pack of cubs who hadn’t eaten in two days dive nose-first into a warm meal with endless enthusiasm and an equally endless lack of manners.
The young Mother watching them wasn’t touching hers, however. She was just staring into the bowl and through it, watching something only she could see.
“May I sit here?”
Gyotin managed to ask so softly that the female didn’t even jump. She simply emerged from whatever horrible reverie she’d been stuck in, glanced at him, and her ears parted sideways in a mix of relief and welcome. Gyotin could guess that right now, the sight of somebody who looked even vaguely positive was probably an anchor.
He gathered his robes and sat down beside her. His seat was an upturned agricultural feed bucket next to a “table” that consisted of a couple of planks held up by more buckets. Amazing that somebody had donated what was essentially just trash to the cause only for it to become among the most useful stuff there.
“You should eat,” he prompted gently.
“I feel sick,” the female replied. “I’m so hungry it hurts, but every time I try to eat, I…”
She trailed off despairingly. Gyotin duck-nodded and laid his satchel on the table.
“Gyotin,” he introduced himself, opening it.
“Seema.”
“It’s bad, back home?”
She duck-nodded slowly and solemnly, watching while Gyotin produced a brushed steel thermal flask from his satchel, along with a small teapot, a couple of cups and his favorite loose-leaf green tea. He’d tried the powerful dark black stuff in little porous bags that the British Humans seemed to prefer, and found it bitter and cloying.
Seema watched him without comment.
“The locals seem to believe that tea can make anything seem better,” Gyotin told her as he laid out the rest of his utensils.
“And…does it?”
“So far.” Gyotin gave her an amused flick of the ear, and got a weak, faint chitter for it. “But if you can’t eat, you can perhaps drink.”
The point, in fact, was less to have a drink and more to focus her mind on something unimportant. He’d studied tea ceremonies from several human cultures, from the precise, neat ones favored by the Japanese and Koreans, to the Chinese one where more of the water was spent cleaning everything and being poured away rather than making a drink, and the fussy ornamental British one with the milk and the silver spoon.
He’d invented a Gaoian one, on the basis that he was intent on rediscovering and reinventing Gaoian spirituality, not wholesale converting to another species’ traditions. The important elements were simple enough – ensure that the water was pure, the utensils were clean before used and cleaned afterwards, that the cups were warm and that the resulting tea was perfectly brewed at the correct temperature.
Everything else was about precision. Place the items just so, fold the cloths like this, dampen one of them with exactly so much hot water, hold the utensils thus. In troubled times, simply focusing on doing something simple in a perfectly precise way was…cleansing.
It certainly got Seema’s attention. She watched him work with her ears first at a puzzled angle, then slowly to an interested angle, then finally a relaxed one. She accepted the cup he handed over with a whispered thank-you and took a deep cleansing breath of the beverage’s steam with her eyes closed before sipping it.
“…Interesting,” she commented politely after a second.
“I usually add honey to sweeten it,” Gyotin confessed. “But I’m lucky that I’m not allergic to it. Not every Gaoian is so lucky.”
“I think I like it as it is,” Seema mused. She sipped again, and duck-nodded thoughtfully. Plainly, the restorative powers of tea were working their magic yet again.
“I’ll be sure to make you some more, sometime,” Gyotin replied. He drank his own tea with her in comfortable silence before packing his equipment away, accepting her cup last and cleaning it with the damp cloth. “You’ll be okay?”
“I feel…better, now.”
“Good.” Gyotin tucked the last of his tea set into its satchel and stood. “I’d better go see if somebody else needs a drink.”
She duck-nodded gratefully. “Thank you.”
“Be well.”
Gyotin bowed, shouldered his bag and turned away, heading for a knot of bewildered-looking new arrivals who clearly needed to be found somewhere to sit down and process matters.
He glanced over his shoulder after a few seconds. Seema had picked up her stew. As he watched she sniffed it, then grabbed her spoon and ate.
Another soul, helped.
A whole species still to go.
Date Point: 14y2d AV
Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Gabriel Arés
“I don’t care if we have to bribe them, threaten them…whatever. The point is if they have land to put up some refugees, they’re going to put up some refugees. One big central camp is just inviting a disaster, we need to spread them out into manageable units.”
“At this rate it won’t matter how manageable we make them, Chief. Sheer numbers will overwhelm us.”
Not so long ago, Gabe wouldn’t have been able to cope with today at all. The chronic pain and lingering weakness in his back and leg would have made being on the field the next best thing to impossible.
Today, he was striding about the place absorbing everything. The latest refugee count, the statistics on how much had been volunteered and by whom, and he was doing it all on the ground where the numbers were real, rather than marching abstractly across his desk from far away.
They were big numbers. The Allied operation on Gao was sending civilians—especially cubs, females and elders—through the array practically as fast as they could be marshalled into it. Folctha was suffering brown-outs trying to keep the Array powered, never mind charging the vehicles to transport those refugees from the Array to the staging area in Quarterside Park.
If Folctha’s citizens hadn’t stood up like heroes, it would all have been an order of magnitude more difficult. As it was, a lot of families were going to bed hungry tonight.
Gabe’s map, meanwhile, was covered in little bright flags made from toothpicks and post-it notes. The farms out around New Belfast and Sellers Lake that were making their barns and sheds available; the businesses in Folctha that were donating their services, and the public buildings that were donating their rooms; the farms, buildings and businesses that weren’t doing those things; a whole color-coded political web trying to make sense of who could go where so as to minimize the risk of fights and friction.
Then there were the progress reports. How the tents and other disaster relief from Earth was faring as it passed through decontamination for alien use. How big the vehicle fleet was grown, how many volunteers they had in the soup kitchen…
…How many rank rot-in-Hell festering sons of shit they’d had to arrest for trying to exploit the situation. A small number, that one, but Gabe was resolved that he’d later crawl across red-hot metal if it would ensure that those few individuals served as a powerful deterrent to the rest and if he had to bring back the public stocks and pillories then so be it.
They were a minor thorn in his sock though. Disproportionately irritating. The fact was that Folctha’s community were showing their character to an inspiring degree, and that character was tough, empathetic, charitable and industriously honest.
But even they could only handle so much. Cimbrean Colonial Security was already stretched to the point of twanging, the hospital’s alien-safe wing was bursting at the seams, and God only knew how they were going to cope while the aid workers coming from Earth went through a mandatory three-day quarantine as their new Frontline implants made them alien-safe.
Interstellar war was a bitch.
“What about the livestock farmers?” he asked, skimming the food supply reports. There, Cimbrean was ahead of the game—The colony’s most prolific and profitable industry by far was agriculture. Even with thousands of refugees flooding them they had a vast food surplus.
“The colony negotiated emergency powers years ago to seize and slaughter their herds so long as they’re reimbursed and their breeding stock is left intact.”
“Do we need to do that yet?”
“Not yet…”
“But we should begin preparations,” Gabe decided. “Write up the recommendation to the First Minister and stick it in front of me to sign when it’s needed.”
“Yes Chief.”
Another CCS officer arrived to replace the one he’d just dismissed. “Coffee, Chief.”
Gabe accepted it gratefully. “Thanks. Who made this?”
“Your missus, Chief. Made enough for everyone, and sandwiches.”
“She’s an angel.” Gabe sipped it. Strong and rich, just how he liked it. An anchor to saner times.
“Okay,” he said. “Next.”
Date Point: 14y2d AV
Camp Farthrow, Lavmuy City, Planet Gao
Champion and Stud-Prime Daar of Clan Stoneback
Gao didn’t smell like home. It smelled like death. A lot of death, that punched Daar right in the nostrils the second the jump field collapsed and deposited him back on his home planet.
One more little thing to add to his pile of rage. He’d had to work at keeping himself under control as it was. Every second of his trip back had been agony.
Lieutenant Costello was waiting for him off the Array. Daar was inclined to like Costello—the lieutenant was friendly and relatable in a way Powell and Knight couldn’t be, and he never made the same mistake twice, if he made it at all.
He stood at a respectful distance, did a not-very-discreet look-over of Daar, and decided to keep back. Daar couldn’t blame him.
“Good to have you back in the fight, Tigger.”
Daar barely managed to suppress a flash of anger at having been reminded of what he’d just lost. “That’s Champion Daar from now on. I’m not in SOR anymore.”
“…Right. Yes, Champion.” Costello fell in alongside him, gesturing toward the large aircraft-hangar-lookin’ building that seemed to be a centerpiece for the human base. “Stainless and Templar are bringing things together for a full briefing soon. The short version is that orbital space is mostly secure, though we’re being probed by Hierarchy fleets coming in from further afield, mostly from out-system and the colonies. They’ve made it impossible to secure air superiority.”
“You need to fix that.”
“We are aware, Champion. This way.”
Costello led him smartly into the building, where a trio of biofilter fields made absolutely certain he was free of any lingering diseases from Akyawentuo and Earth, and a pair of guards made certain his head was still 100% biology.
Daar practiced his calming thoughts while he waited.
Farthrow facility. He’d heard about it, of course, by unofficial Champion means. Allied Clans were careful to let each other know just enough about each other’s big projects to allay suspicions, and Daar had initially been suspicious of the Farthrow project. It was ambitious, and if successful could radically alter the Gao’s prospects. A lot of Clan Stoneback scoffed at the idea that the Longear ‘geeks’ might ever pose a threat to the established economic order, but Daar knew better than to sneer at geeks. They tended to come up with the nastiest ploys.
Fortunately, Meereo was an even more savvy political animal than he was an engineer. Daar had once invited Meereo over for freshly-killed game and a friendly and competitive game of chaseball between Clans, which then inevitably devolved into a massacre of boisterous wrestling. Meereo knew how to fight but he was tiny and the result was…satisfyingly predictable. He’d politely put up just enough of a fight before capitulating, both physically and metaphorically, and once everyone was happy and trusting and the pecking order had been sorted out…he shared the details.
The actual Farthrow generator was buried in a sub-basement somewhere, Daar knew. The humans had commandeered the facility’s ground floor and converted it into a thrumming command center. Intel analysts were bustling around like worker insects, assorted officers and NCOs were shuttling in and out like Goldpaw auctioneers at a livestock market, and there was a constrained quality to the susurrus of people hard at work. Not quiet, but not loud either. Just intensely industrious.
The nexus of it all was a spread of tables toward the back of the room, layered in maps, tablets and the paraphernalia of command. Powell was leaning on them, measuring and taking notes and turning to say something to a man who nodded and departed, only to be replaced.
There was quite an entourage around him. Mother Yulna, Champion Meereo, Regaari…he felt a sick lurch when he spotted Myun standing behind the mother-supreme sporting an ugly injury up one side of her mouth that had twisted her pretty features into a permanent feral sneer. It looked recent.
Rebar was standing toward the back, alongside a human Daar didn’t recognize who managed to look important even while standing in the background. There was something…weighty, about the case he was carrying.
First things first. Even in the fall of everything, Daar attended to protocol.
“Mother.”
Yulna ducked and bowed primly. “Champion.”
That was as much as she was going to get from Daar. “Your guardian…”
“Myun saved my life,” Yulna glanced back at the huge sister behind her. “Two of my personal staff were biodrones.”
Yulna was smart, Daar knew. Smart enough to catch a very blunt power play. “She’s good. That’s why we placed her on your entourage.”
Yulna duck-nodded sagely. If she was remotely upset at such a show of political force, she didn’t let on. “…My thanks,” she said, and left it at that. She was definitely a little better at playing the game than the last time Daar had spoken with her.
He turned to Myun, now. She had been so beautiful… Though in fact she still was, in a new way. “I am…very proud of you, daughter. You reflect well on our ancestors.”
A younger Myun would have probably bounced off the walls at the compliment. He could see that the events of the last two days had aged and sobered her, however. Myun simply duck-nodded respectfully, with a grateful set of her ears, but declined to speak. Possibly, speaking was painful.
Innocence, murdered. And hers was but one tiny drop in the ocean of tragedy.
It was time to fight back. He turned to the group, found a good place to stand, and looked about at the people gathered.
“Brief me.”
The man standing next to Rebar shifted a little, as if he’d been expecting a continuation of the formalities, but everybody else at the table knew Daar well. Powell just nodded grimly and gestured to the map.
“For now, the bulk of the fighting is in the cities. We estimate…somewhere between one point two and one point four billion Gaoians with implants have been ‘droned. Most were city dwellers, where network infrastructure was dense enough to enable it.”
That was a number too large to really get. “So many? And so quickly?”
Meereo spoke up. “Our analysis of captured Ghosts suggests that they can, well, simply embed a controlling application in a person and turn them into robotic agents. It isn’t perfect control, but it’s enough for their purposes.”
“Is there any hope for them? Can we, I dunno, do some network magic or somethin’?”
Powell shook his head. “Maybe if we had time,” he said. “Maybe. But we don’t. Hunter scout elements were already watching the system when we arrived, and they sunk HMS Caledonia in a surprise attack. We’re still tryin’ to figure out the rationale behind that, as far as Templar can tell it looks like a tactical blunder on their part. But one consequence is that we’re a ship and its Bulldogs down. That’s made the difference between bein’ able to claim orbital superiority an’ not. ”
Daar looked towards Regaari. “What is the composition of this billion? Clanless? Clan? Talents? Do we know?”
“Sixty-one percent Clan, Twenty-seven percent Talents,” Regaari reported promptly. Something was badly off with him, Daar could tell even through the sharp professionalism that was his Cousin’s trademark, but now wasn’t the time to delve into it. “Ten percent Clanless, two percent Females.”
Instead of commenting on Regaari’s off-ness, Daar nodded respectfully and made his esteem known. “Excellent as always, Father Regaari. On the Females…and cubs. What is their disposition?”
“Stoneback prevented a massacre at Wi Kao and several other major Communes, though there were still…” Regaari paused for a painful fraction of a second, “…losses. Most of the remaining large Communes with augmented Sisters and Mothers suffered severe losses or were massacred outright. The smaller Communes fared much better, and we’ve devoted our efforts to evacuating them to Cimbrean. The Humans have been…most generous. And understanding.”
…Oh, balls.
Daar clamped down on his feelings and pressed on. “Understood, Cousin. Do we…I hate to ask, but I must know. What does our future look like?”
“Evacuating the Females and Cubs is paramount. If we don’t…and regardless, we can at the very least expect severe depopulation in the near- to mid-term future.”
“Understood. Stainless,” he turned to Powell. “How much can Cimbrean handle? And for how long?”
Powell picked up a document. “In the long term, there’s no reason the planet Cimbrean couldn’t accommodate the entire Clan of Females,” he read. “In the short term…the bottleneck is how quickly Folctha can power its jump arrays. And each jump from here needs a matching jump of aid supplies from Earth, which we can’t provide indefinitely. Our humanitarian resources are already workin’ overtime as it is.”
Daar thought hard about that for a moment. “Stoneback has emergency reserves that can help to a degree. Laid in against livestock failure and all that…some of it is quite old but it’s been stasis-preserved. I will make them available to you immediately. Where is my Grandfather?”
“Garl and Champion-In-Stead Fiin are returning from a mission. They’ve been focusing on rescuing females…We expect them shortly.”
“Good.” Daar gave in to his nervous habit, dropped to all fours and started pacing. “You didn’t give me hard numbers, Stainless. How many?”
“Right now?…Twenty thousand, realistically. More over the comin’ months, but for now that’s already pushin’ Cimbrean to the breakin’ point.”
“…” Daar could only pause and contemplate that. It was…
“How…how many Females do we anticipate surviving this, Father Regaari?”
Regaari stiffened, the way he did whenever he was delivering bad news. “Optimistically, sixty percent. That assumes we can contain this quickly.”
“…Realistically?”
Yulna spoke up. “Champion, we will be extremely lucky if a billion survive this, and that assumes the survivors don’t starve to death in the countryside. Biodrones are specifically targeting Females and the only ones that stand any chance of survival are those near Stoneback installations or other well-protected places. Most are not. And many of those that were lucky enough to be near such a redoubt are…under duress, as the Females are quickly becoming a…*currency*…between the surviving Clanless.”
Yulna spat that line out with particular fire, and Daar found himself growling along in agreement. Still. “Mother, I need hard numbers. How many do we expect to live?”
“Realistically…five hundred million, at most. I expect far less.”
Daar almost chittered to himself from the sheer crushing weight of it. Perversely, Mad Max came immediately to mind, and the more he thought about what was coming, the more he understood why.
“So…what we’re facing, then, is a huge population of survivor males in competition for breeding rights and basic necessities. They’re already Clanning up and fighting turf wars. They have nowhere to go, no cause to unite them, and therefore have no incentive to cooperate. And in thirty years time, assuming optimistic projections and assuming we survive this…our population will drop by billions almost overnight. Do I have the right of it?”
The room nodded in a long, uncomfortable silence.
“The mere fact of this happening is a potential extinction event,” Meereo said quietly. “Even if we win.”
“Not extinction,” Costello said. “We already evacuated enough females to ensure the Gaoian species will carry on.”
“Think, Costello.” Daar didn’t have time to be friendly. “A people is more than their blood. How will the Gao survive this? Twenty thousand females is not a culture. That’s hardly describable as healthy livestock.”
“To be perfectly bloody frank, you won’t,” Powell said. “This is the end of Gaoian civilization as was. We intend to ensure there’s enough left to pick up the pieces.”
“I know that. And…I am thankful. Just…” Daar decided he need to pause for a moment and breathe. It was so very, very much worse than he’d dared to imagine.
And he knew what he had to do.
Powell swept a hand at the map again. “The fight in orbit is our priority,” he said. “Our ground forces are focused entirely on supporting that, and until we have secured total control of this planet’s airspace we cannot devote any resources elsewhere. If we do, the Swarm of Swarms will come an’ finish what the Hierarchy started. The fight to save the Gaoians from what’s already here is on your back, Champion.”
He gave Daar a sympathetic look. “God help you,” he added.