Date Point: 14y1d AV
The White House, Washington DC, USA, Earth
President Arthur Sartori
“My fellow Americans.”
Just speaking the words sent a chill down Sartori’s back. They weren’t complex or difficult words, but in the mouths of Presidents they carried the weight of history. On an occasion like this, they heralded the changing of the world.
“My fellow Humans,” he added, “and all our friends and partners of every nationality and nature. Good afternoon. This address is going out simultaneously to an announcement by His Majesty King George in his role as sovereign to our several allied nations, including the colony of Cimbrean.”
That was the diplomatic necessity out of the way. On to the substance.
“Over the last four years,” he said, “our government has sought strong ties with the people of the planet Gao, and have committed to a strategic alliance which has strengthened both our species in the face of a tumultuous interstellar climate. We have pooled our knowledge, our expertise, our potential and our ambitions, and already we have achieved together what neither of us could have done alone.”
He paused for effect and adjusted his glasses, just for a second.
“Yesterday, our Gaoian allies came under attack,” he announced, looking directly into the camera. “Even now, their cities are in flames, their population is being massacred, and their ships are burning in orbit. As their friends and allies, we are duty-bound to come to their aid, and I have already recalled the XVIIIth Airborne Corps, the Twentieth Air Force along with the 946th Spaceflight Wing, combat engineers and support from all our uniformed services, and the USS San Diego. Our strategic partners through Allied Extrasolar Command have done the same, and Human boots are already on the ground, saving Gaoian lives.”
He glanced down at his notes, again for effect and to allow his words to stick rather than because he needed them.
“The time has come, however, for us to discuss the nature of our enemy. For years now, not only our government but governments across the world have faced pressure from medical firms and other well-intentioned industries who wish to bring the life-improving technologies of human augmentation to market, and we have denied them. We have been asked repeatedly to explain this embargo, and have refused.
“The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, that cybernetic implants can be used to influence a person’s behavior or, in extreme cases, to enslave them.”
He pushed a folder forward on the desk. “I have already authorized a full disclosure of this document, codenamed DEEP RELIC, which will be released shortly after this address. It details the history of our enemy, their nature and their agenda but the short version is this: Their name is the Igraen Hierarchy. They have existed since long before our written history, and their primary goal is to suppress the rise of deathworld civilizations such as our own.
“They have already rendered countless species extinct, and their intended victims include the natives of the planet Akyawentuo and now, in retaliation for their friendship with us, the Gaoians. Their operations on Earth led to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Global War on Terror, and the destruction of the city of San Diego.”
On that note he took his reading glasses off and set them on the desk. He sat tall in his seat and abandoned his notes. “They have tried to provoke us into destroying ourselves at least three times so far,” he noted, “and they have failed. So they attack our allies, and they will fail. This is an act of desperation on their part because they have finally met an effective opponent, and they don’t know how to handle us. They are panicking: We shall not.”
A speech was all about rhythm. Ebb and flow, stop and start. Nobody was gripped by a monotone drone, which was why he raised and then calmed his voice, paused for effect, played with props. Leadership was as much about the theatre of strong leadership as the science of good decisions, and Sartori prided himself on being a peerless actor. In some sense it didn’t matter if the words were mediocre or exceptional—their weight was carried by the delivery.
“The Spaceborne Operations Regiment was created specifically to fight this enemy, and has been a success: The enemy’s operations on Earth have been completely shut down. Without that victory, it was only a matter of time before they secured a wormhole beacon and brought in their most terrible weapon: The Hunters.”
He raised a hand. “Now, I know, we all remember Vancouver. We all know that an ordinary human is physically far more than a match for an ordinary Hunter. But the Hunters number a million warships, whereas our own spaceborne military including unmanned spacecraft numbers fewer than two hundred. If they ever made it past the shield we once considered a prison, then our days would be numbered. Humanity, in fact, is only still alive because of the heroic efforts of the SOR and of their many sacrifices, HEAT, JETS, and their army of support staff. Every member of SOR is the absolute best of us, and we owe them our honor.”
That was important. Recruitment into the SOR was going to soar after this, and it was imperative for both to be seen as the heroes. Under no circumstances could JETS be the little brother that failed HEAT candidates dropped out into, nor could their technical backbone be neglected.
“Yet even they could not have succeeded without the efforts of other heroes; one operation in particular some years back was saved by a fighter pilot and a combat controller, both of whom are now prominent members of the SOR, and one of whom was instrumental in founding the JETS team even now working against the Hierarchy’s interests. It would take too long to mention the literally thousands of men and women—some of whom aren’t even human—involved in this heretofore secret fight across literally every dimension of defense and security. That makes this an almost fruitless gesture, but: thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”
One last pause. Into the home straight.
“As I said to the Global Representative Assembly some months ago: We are at war. We have been for years, and matters have now escalated to the point where there is no longer anything to be gained by secrecy. The Hierarchy don’t just threaten our way of life, they threaten our whole species. Right, Left, Centrist, Communist, Capitalist, Christian, Muslim, Atheist…none of that matters. Their goal is not political or religious, it is survival. They have deemed us a threat to their existence…and they are correct. The tragedy is, we are only a threat to them at their own instigation.”
He sat back in his seat. “There will be a press conference in twenty minutes’ time. Every question the press and the public could have will be answered. And once that is done, we will return to the business of saving our friends, and our future. Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.”
The lights blinked off. The moment was over, and Sartori made perfectly sure he was given the thumbs-up by the director before he allowed himself to relax, massage his face, and swear quietly to himself.
He had just changed the world.
Date Point: 14y1d AV
Lavmuy spaceport, Gao
Mother-Supreme Yulna
Yulna was well-disposed to like Humans, but they could be terrifying. Seeing Shoo accidentally break a Locayl in two had been one thing, but Shoo as it transpired was far from being the best her species had to offer.
The spaceport perfectly demonstrated why being scared of them, even if one liked them, was a perfectly sane response: it was unrecognizable. Its open expanse of concrete looked more like a whole town being slapped down in rough but functional fashion, in mere hours. From the air she could even make out its districts as her plane circled slowly overhead, slowed to a hover, and then kissed down onto the landing pad.
She wasn’t in any position to really appreciate it, though—She was too exhausted, too emotionally and physically numb. She and the plane were both running on their last reserves, and had barely made it to the camp at all. They’d been forced to land elsewhere, been searched by a grim Claw of Stonebacks. Their heads had been scanned, and that alone made Yulna’s imagination turn anxious circles as she slotted it into the sickening history unfolding all around her and found that it could be made to explain much.
The shorter hop to Lavmuy had been a silent one. Myun had relaxed once she knew the other Sisters were “clean” and had finally acknowledged that she was in pain. The ugly injury up one side of her face might never heal properly even with the very best in Gaoian medicine, especially not after leaving it untreated for so long. It was a shame, too—she’d been so unconsciously pretty that Yulna had had to flatten her ears and shake her head in frustration sometimes.
Human and Gaoian medics met her on the landing pad but quickly declared that there wasn’t much they could do besides dress the wound as a safeguard against infection. Getting her to a hospital with the equipment and expertise she needed simply wasn’t an option for now. There would be surgery and dentistry later, but those resources simply weren’t available for the moment, and so Myun remained at the Mother-Supreme’s side where she belonged.
Yulna herself was given a clean bill of health, and finally got to meet somebody important and begin to learn what was happening.
She recognized Colonel Powell. It was hard to forget the HEAT, they had a habit of…sticking…in one’s memory. They were almost, to an average Human, what a Human was to an average Gaoian. And if nothing else, the nose would never forget a musk that potent. Even across the impenetrable barrier between species, the biggest of them smelled male in a way that not even Daar could match.
And blood. They smelled of blood. Less so on Powell himself, but if he hadn’t been soaked in gore himself recently then he’d been spending time in the company of someone who had, and not even the potent scent of antibacterial soap could disguise that.
“Mother-Supreme. Welcome to Camp Farthrow.”
Exhausted as Yulna was, there were more pressing matters than her relentless need to just curl up and sleep. “I require answers,” she said, not deigning to acknowledge the welcome.
“You’ll have them,” Powell promised composedly. “All of them.”
“At the moment, I see Sisters held against their will, the Champion of Stoneback missing, the Stonebacks themselves covered in the blood and entrails of my fellow Gao, and what looks like an aggressive occupation by an alien power, all in less than a single day. Your answers had better be good.”
“Mother-Supreme…Honestly, the answers are all terrible to know, an’ that’s the truth.” Powell sighed, and relaxed from his formal posture slightly. “An’ I’m afraid I have some personal bad news to deliver. I understand some of your guard-sisters attacked you in flight?”
Yulna glanced at Myun, then duck-nodded. “Yes…?”
“I’m afraid they also attacked at Wi Kao. I’m very sorry, Mother. It was a slaughter.”
Myun keened sharply. “…Mama Ayma?” she asked, reverting to the cublike form of address. Powell shook his head solemnly.
“She’s here. If you’d like to see her,” he said. “We didn’t know what sort of funeral would be appropriate.”
Yulna reached out with a shaking hand and gripped Myun’s fur, trying to steady both herself and her Sister-Daughter-Bodyguard. The news just didn’t…fit. It refused to enter her head. She’d heard the words and knew what they meant but they wouldn’t sit still in her brain.
“She…I was speaking to her. When the first bombs went off,” she said.
“Aye,” Powell nodded. His voice—naturally deep and earthy anyway—was so full of sympathy that it was almost subsonic. “I have a full briefing prepared for you. But it can wait, if you want to pay your respects first…”
In fact, Yulna didn’t need long. The Humans had refrigerated a room to the point where her breath made small clouds, and had obviously done their best to be respectful. Even so, there were a lot of bodies in the relatively small space.
Myun keened and whined bitterly, grieving like a Sister should. Yulna…
She ought to be a wreck, she thought. Her world was burning down around her whiskers, her protector had been wounded in saving an attempt on Yulna’s own life, the air stank of blood, smoke and death and she was staring forlornly at her best friend’s face, wishing fervently to see even a hint of water vapor around the nostrils, just a twitch in her chest…
But aside from that unlikely hope, there was nothing. Or, if there was an emotion at all, it could be summed up in very few words.
She laid a paw on Ayma’s forehead and keened gently, softly, and quietly, only for a moment.
“Somebody is going to pay for this,” she promised.
It absolutely was not a happy thing to say. There were no happy things to say. But it scooped out all the fatigue and confusion and lost sense of direction from her chest and put a kind of arctic fire in there instead. She marched to the command center feeling more like herself than she had in months, setting a pace that both Myun and her Stoneback escort had to scuttle to match.
Powell, other Humans she didn’t recognize, and a young, smaller-than-average Stoneback who was nevertheless carrying himself with the bearing of a leader turned her way and straightened up as she swept regally into the room and fixed them all with a glare.
“…Very well, Colonel,” she said. “Let’s hear your terrible answers.”
Date Point: 14y2d AV
Planet Akyawentuo, Unclaimed Space, Near 3Kpc Arm
Yan Given-Man
Pain was proving to be everywhere, this morning. It was on Vemik’s face, in the Singer’s eyes, crawling up Yan’s aching back and it swirled around Jooyun like a storm on the horizon, heavy with anger and desperation. He couldn’t sit still, hadn’t slept, had started to lose some of his weight like a Given-Man in winter, and even though his face was gaunt and dark around the eyes from fatigue, the Sky-Hunter just prowled aimlessly around the camp, pitching in on whatever needed doing.
Nothing did. So he fetched tinder for fires that didn’t need lighting, topped up water skins after the first sip, went back to check on jerky that wouldn’t be properly smoked until tomorrow and which had been just as clean of flies the last time he checked.
Yan normally knew how to handle a man in that mood: he needed his women. Unfortunately, all the women had gone—Shyow and Awisun away through the sky to get help, and the People’s women to the east with Professor Daniel, maybe to put enough ground between themselves and the enemy that they might live.
In their absence…he had no idea what to do for his friend, or for Vemik. He’d contemplated just taking charge and forcing Jooyun to sleep or something, but somehow Yan knew that wouldn’t help. He’d learned to trust those feelings many seasons ago and they were never wrong.
Jooyun didn’t seem to want help, anyway…and neither did Vemik.
Poor Vemik. The young man took death hard, harder than anybody else Yan had ever known. The moment when he’d seen his father’s body had been painful to watch. All the life and color of their victory had drained out of him and he’d just…slumped.
It was hard, watching him learn life’s cruellest lessons. But he had the Singer, and his son—he’d see them again and he would heal, in time. Strange as Vemik might be, Yan had total faith in his strength. There was nothing to do for him now except let him do what he did best, and think.
He gave the younger man an understanding pat on the shoulder as he went past, though, and got a miserable nod of acknowledgement. That was all he could do and all Vemik needed, so Yan instead tended to Daar.
The Gaoian was plainly suffering terribly, but Yan couldn’t blame him. From what he could gather, Daar had been closest to the ‘nuke’ that had lit the whole sky and made a thunder that would surely roll around the whole world. Then he had run all day, climbed a mountain, climbed down a mountain, run some more, climbed a cliff, been thrown around and crushed and heaved about…but he was alive. Sick, subdued and sore but very much in one huge furry piece.
He was curled up under a tree with his nose buried under his tail, trying to sleep when Yan joined him with the biggest shank of roasted Werne he could find. He saw the ‘nose’ twitch, an ear flick, and Daar opened his eyes and raised his head.
“Food,” Yan told him simply. There was probably a words-stone nearby but they both spoke the Human language well enough to understand each other. “No good sit all day. Not bring strength back. Eat.”
Daar did that strange nod of his, the one that involved his shoulders and upper back too, and accepted the meat. He made a bleary groaning sound and tore off a chunk of meat which he bolted down without chewing.
The meat didn’t last long. Neither did the bone. He crunched it open with relish and his enormous tongue scooped deep into the marrow. Yan nodded approvingly and settled in beside him.
“You feel better?” he asked.
“Like a mountain fell on me,” Daar told him. It sounded more like the simple truth than a complaint. “But hey. We won. It cost us, but we won.”
Yan huffed sadly, and decided that he could give voice to his own pain around Daar. “Vemet was good man. Friend,” he said. “Hoped I die before him. Tribes weaker without him.”
“Yeah, I hear ya. Seemed like he stood about halfway between you an’ Vemik, right? Kept the balance?”
Yan nodded, sadly. He was trying not to give himself completely to his grief—his friend had died fighting and a man who died that way, Yan hoped, got the best of whatever death had to offer—but he mourned the quiet conversations they would never have again, and the fact that his burdens were his alone again, now. He no longer had somebody to share them with.
Or maybe not. He looked Daar up and down.
“Tribes weaker, but alive. Better alive and hurting,” he observed.
Daar duck-nodded again, and took a long drink of water to wash down the last of his meat.
“Hope I never have to do somethin’ like that again,” he confided. “You want some advice? Never try an’ keep up with a human on foot. They ain’t slow and they Just. Keep. Going.”
His words made Yan trill, and Daar watched him with his head tilted to one side quizzically. Yan decided he was owed an explanation.
“I journey far every year, for Given-Man things.” he said. “For me, take many-many days. A moon, maybe. I tire, I hurt, am smaller and weak and hungry from winter, maybe freeze. Remind me that trees, mountains, sky, gods…all bigger than Yan…You? Never see man run so far in one day. And climb cliff, twice. And fight. And win!” Yan clapped Daar affectionately on the shoulder which earned him one of Daar’s open-mouthed and strange expressions of happiness.
“Thank you,” the Gaoian said with a head-and-shoulder nod. “But don’t [undersell] yourself. You’re a Deathworlder. ‘Yer a foot shorter than me and so much stronger it’s scary. You hauled me and my gear up and down and across that cliff like it was nothin’! What am I next to that? I’m the very best of my Tribe, most strongest and most athletic and all that. But here, I’m really just a [liability]. I’m nothing compared to your People. Especially you. You’re more like a slab of steel and wood than flesh, you’re fast and clever and see as well as the Humans, you’re a better climber…”
Yan nodded graciously. “Maybe true. Am biggest, strongest, fall from high place and only small hurt, maybe no hurt. I break any man easy, pull apart like young Werne. But that thing you do? I cannot do. You do. Leave you weak and sick, but you still do…Coombes do, and he sleep once, eat tiny food, and back to work. Hard work too, like Vemik. But! You strong like Given-Man, only Den and Arsh stronger. Fast, sharp claws, teeth, ears. Nose! Nobody have magic like you! So gods not have favorite, yes?”
For the first time that day, Daar finally moved more than just his ears for something other than food. He lifted his head off his paws and adjusted how he lay for comfort.
“…D’you wanna know what the worst thing the enemy did to us Gaoians was?” he asked.
“…What?” Yan asked.
“They took our gods from us. Made us forget ‘em.”
Yan hissed between his teeth. “Take the gods?” he asked, incredulously. The very idea of magic like that made this whole war seem like a doomed cause.
Of course, it had been. They hadn’t even known they were fighting until the Sky-People showed up.
“More like…took our words for them. Took our…Iunno.” Daar rested his chin on his paws again. “It all happened a long time ago an’ I’m just a muck-shoveler an’ a stud. I ain’t a sky-thinkin’ kinda Gaoian.”
[“Asshole stew!”] Yan barked, dismissively. He’d heard the humans use ‘bullshit’ to mean the same thing, but he preferred his own words. They were his, and they were more colorful. They certainly made Daar’s ears move in fascinating ways before he figured out their meaning. “Every man can think. And if I learn one thing from young Sky-Thinker, is strongest men are strong here and here.” He slapped his arm and his head for emphasis. “You are strong, Daar Stone-Back. Strong in head too, I think.”
Daar growled or perhaps groaned to himself and sat up on his haunches, then twisted around to scratch an itch somewhere under his fur.
“…The old Champion, the one who was Champion when I was a cub?” he asked, through his own fur. “He told me three rules. ‘Backs don’t lie, ‘Backs work hard, and ‘Backs honor the work of others. So I was gonna share somethin’ that ain’t my idea, it’s my friends’ an’ I don’t wanna chew up their thoughts an’ spit ‘em out wrong, you know?”
Yan nodded. He could respect that. “What friends?” he asked instead.
“They’re both big ol’ Sky-Thinkin’ types, from Sky-Thinkin’ Clans. The first’a them, Gyotin? He thinks we lost our gods a long time ago and it made us weaker. We ain’t told him about the Enemy, but he figgered it out from lookin’ an’ thinkin’. My other friend, Kureya? He says Gyotin’s right but that we didn’t lose them; the Enemy took ‘em from us. He said…” He sniffed, his ear flicked and he tilted his head back to stare up at a tree in thought as he remembered. “He said we’ll never know what we lost. For all we know, they’re the ones who, uh…”
Yan gave him a moment to think before nudging him. “Who…?”
“…You an’ the humans, you both have about as many women as men. One for one. Right?”
“More old women than old men, but…yes,” Yan agreed.
“Us Gaoians, we have lots of men, not many women. Kureya says the sun did somethin’ weird long, long ago an’ changed us that way.”
“You think Enemy did that?”
Daar shrugged in that ducking, head-wobbling way of his. “We’ll never know,” he said. “An’ that’s maybe the worst part.”
“Daar!”
Coombes was half-jogging toward them. In truth, the dark-skinned Human wasn’t back to his full strength, and he was definitely limping a little…but he looked much fresher than Daar, and far stronger than Yan would have after running so far so quickly.
But the look on his face, if Yan had him right, said that he was in a place where pain and tiredness were just going to have to wait, because there were more important things on his mind.
Daar heaved himself up onto his four paws with a long-suffering groan. “Boss?” Coombes slowed and delivered the bad news.
“…The rest of the Abrogators are coming,” he said.
Date Point: 14y2d AV
Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Allison Buehler
“So you can’t do anything?”
Kevin Jenkins shook his head. He wasn’t bothering to keep up his usual I-could-give-a-fuck facade right now, and that all by itself told Allison that he was just as stonewalled as they were. He wasn’t the kind of man who gave up easily.
He’d managed to get himself up to Armstrong while the whole planet was on lockdown at least, and that was no small feat. Allison and Xiù had been confined to Misfit, allegedly for their own safety. Allison wasn’t fooled—they were effectively under house arrest. Not because they’d done anything wrong, but because the last thing the military needed right now was actors outside of their control.
She didn’t know how Kevin had navigated that problem, she didn’t want to and he probably wouldn’t have told her anyway. He looked stressed and dishevelled, he wasn’t wearing his jacket and his sleeves were rolled up which put that tattoo of his on show. A sure sign that right now he was completely out of fucks to give for anything but the job at hand.
“Allison, things’re locked down tighter’n a fat guy’s jock strap down there,” he said, and waved his hand vaguely out the viewing cupola on the chance that Cimbrean might be somewhere in that direction. All they could see through it was the inside of the Armstrong docking bay. “They ain’t playin’ around. Shit, if I hadn’t been at Chiune when they declared martial law we wouldn’t be havin’ this conversation at all, I’d be stuck on Earth.”
“I thought you said General Tremblay is a personal friend?”
“He is. And as his friend I know perfectly fuckin’ well that my friendship counts for squat when it comes to strategic shit, which is exactly how it should be.” Kevin’s expression was firm.
“So you can’t do anything,” Allison repeated.
“If I could get Julian’s ass pulled outta the fire I’d already have done it. I can’t. I can’t even suggest it right now, unless I feel like settin’ fire to some hard-built an’ important bridges. You remember how that turned out for Darcy, right?”
Allison and Xiù both nodded grimly, so he forged on. “It ain’t completely hopeless, though. Martial law don’t take away your constitutional rights.”
“Aren’t we in British sovereign territory?” Xiù asked. “They don’t have a constitution.”
“But Folctha does.” Kevin pointed out. “And it lays down free speech as an inviolable right. And now that the prez just dumped DEEP RELIC on the whole world…”
“…You’re saying we can go public,” Xiù summarized.
“Ex-fuckin’-xactly. And I know just the person to talk with.”
“Who?”
“Her name’s Ava Ríos. She’s a journalist for ESNN.”
“We know her,” Allison said, coolly. “She’s…pushy. She ambushed us at the jump array after the attack in Omaha.”
“Yup. That means she’ a good journalist,” Kevin said. “It’s a dirty job.”
“Why her?” Xiù asked him. “Why not Byron Media?”
“Three reasons. One, she’s one’a the few journalists in the world nowadays who gives more of a shit about the truth than her paycheck, and BM is all about the paycheck. Two, me an’ her father go way back. And three, she was in on DEEP RELIC herself. Use each other—you got somethin’ she wants, she has somethin’ you want. Make a trade.”
“…Okay. So we exercise our free speech whatever and give this gal an interview…” Allison said. “…Then what? What does it change?”
Kevin shrugged.
“Maybe nothin’, but it’s the best we got,” he said. “It’s something. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?”
Allison made a tired noise and turned away from him to make some work for herself refilling their coffees. She felt Xiù press a palm to her back and rub softly.
“Guys…you gotta consider that maybe leaving him behind was the right call,” Kevin suggested after a moment.
“It was,” Allison said, turning to face him again. “We know it was.”
“But it was meant to be a stop-gap,” XIù continued. “We were supposed to run and get help, not…this.”
“You ran and got help, and the help turned out to be busy with somethin’ more important.” Kevin scratched at his arm. “Honestly? How the shit aren’t you two climbin’ the walls and breakin’ stuff by now?”
“Would it get us what we want?” Xiù asked.
“No, but it’d be cathartic.”
Xiù shook her head wearily. “Fuck cathartic,” she said.
Allison gave her an impressed look, and smiled for the first time in days. Xiù liked to disguise the iron in her bones behind layers of cuddle-fluff when she could; it was always satisfying when she let it out unfiltered.
Kevin laughed as well. “Okay, fair,” he said. “But you gotta have a release if nothin’ else. Shit, if all that talkin’ to the press gets you is you feel a little better then at least you’ll feel better, right?”
“Hey, we’re on board.” Allison placed a fresh coffee in front of him. “It’s the only idea we’ve heard. May as well give it our all.”
“Anything’s better than just…rolling the bandages and waiting,” Xiù agreed.
“Right.” Kevin nodded and picked up the coffee. He took a cautious sip, savored the aroma for a moment, then set it down and picked up his tablet.
“So,” he said. “Let’s figure out what kind of an interview you’re gonna give…”
Date Point: 14y2d AV
HMS Myrmidon, Orbiting Planet Gao
Admiral Sir Patrick Knight
“The ground deployment is on schedule, thanks to Stoneback. The first three targets are already under our control, but we’re meeting stiff resistance. Air superiority continues to be the limiting factor—we have it established over Lavmuy and its surrounding towns but we don’t know what half the stuff in the air on Gao is right now. We know a lot of it is Clanless, and they don’t trust us.”
“Not such a disorganized rabble after all then,” Knight observed, reading the report for himself while the lead analyst went over its points.
“Hardly. They’re a civilization to themselves in a lot of ways, and arguably the most powerful economic force in Gaoian society.”
“They must have air traffic control…” Knight pointed out.
“A lot of which is patchwork and unofficial. The Clans—especially Longear—control and take responsibility for the data infrastructure but like any economy there are competitors. There are some things that have to be done centrally though, like frequency allocation and so forth, so we’re working on identifying where those are based. Once that’s done, we can secure them and start clearing the skies properly.”
“And if we don’t?”
“One way or another, those planes will have to come down eventually.”
“Make it a priority. So long as we don’t have a system forcefield up, we’re vulnerable, we can’t deploy one until the network is disabled, and we can’t achieve that without air superiority. If I have to order the destruction of every last aircraft in Gao’s skies, I will. See to it that I don’t.”
“Aye aye.”
Knight carefully made sure that nobody could see his hands as he detached his magnetic spill-proof thermal mug full of tea from the desk and took a sip. It was still excellently hot, and steadied his nerves somewhat, but those nerves were dancing worse than they had in his life.
He was an old man. It was a thought that crossed his mind every now and again when his back ached or his fingers weren’t quite so flexible as they once had been. His hearing and eyesight were both still perfectly fine and there was nothing at all wrong with his faculties of reason…but he kept his hands out of sight because they were shaking. It wouldn’t do for the men to see the admiral’s hands shaking.
He gripped the mug and let its heat soak into his bones as he considered the next report, which was a track of *Caledonia*’s tumbling hull and an analysis of the so-called ‘objects’ it had shed into Gao’s atmosphere. Some of those had to be lifeboats…didn’t they?
And yet there had been no word. Weather analysis said the upper atmosphere and low orbit were awash with radioactive particles from the hundreds of ships they had destroyed today, the nukes, the EWAR, the arcane ripples in the very structure of space itself coming from Farthrow…
Plenty of plausible reasons why none of the lifeboats had checked in yet.
He reluctantly set the report aside, focused on another: A political analysis regarding the Clanless, the Mother-Supreme, and the Stonebacks. He’d long ago mastered the trick of reading text a whole page at a time—Scan, assimilate, swipe; Scan, assimilate, swipe—and he set it down seconds after lifting it and turned to issue an order. Its content presented a problem, but one with a mercifully clear solution. He craved clear solutions right now.
“Get me Brigadier Stewart and Colonel Jackson,” he said.
Date Point: 14y2d AV
Clan Straightshield Grand Precinct, Lavmuy City, Gao
Cytosis
The Gaoians certainly knew how to build a jail cell. The reinforced concrete was seamless and unblemished, coated with a dark gray lacquer that wouldn’t hold a stain, graffiti or a claw mark. The door was a door, a steel obstacle that could probably handle explosives or a team of determined deathworlders with a battering ram. The best a relatively ordinary Gaoian might achieve would be to break their claws trying to scrabble at the scarcely-visible gap between the door and its frame.
Cytosis hadn’t bothered to try. The cell was overkill, designed to intimidate and he coped with the intimidation by…
Well, there was the problem. He was quite sure that he was going to die soon, one way or the other. Either the Straightshields would rush in and claw his throat out, or a bomb would smash the building down around his whiskers, or he’d be abandoned to croak his last days from now without water or food.
Maybe he should just go into hibernation and let the end happen without him.
It came as a huge surprise, therefore, when they fed him. It wasn’t much—just a standard flavorless ration ball dropped through a dispenser in the front and followed moments after by a water ration wrapped up in a soft spherical gel-based membrane that couldn’t possibly be converted into a weapon or escape tool by even the most feverishly inventive inmate—but they fed him.
He ate them. Straightshields weren’t the type to poison their prisoners and it boded good things for his future at least insofar as whether his death would be quick and relatively merciful.
It was the only event of note in a day that was otherwise punctuated by tracking the faint sounds through the walls and the tiny vibrations through the floor. A rumble here, an explosion there, something extremely fast tearing the sky in half with a sound like ripping paper…and the march of feet.
The door had the kind of lock that made a heavy slamming sound, but its hinges were silent, and Champion Reeko filled the frame like a black-furred avatar of anger. Cytosis stood without prompting and turned away, presenting his borrowed body’s paws behind his back for restraint. There was nothing gained by being an awkward prisoner, Six had made that point clear often enough.
The restraints were applied firmly and without regard for his comfort, but professionally. Maybe survival was still in the probability space after all. As soon as they were applied, he was hoisted around and encouraged through the door out into the hallway, then turned left. Reeko wasn’t alone—two Straightshield Brothers armed with weapons that looked significantly more serious than a pulse rifle were waiting to escort them.
“Go,” Reeko instructed. Cytosis obeyed.
It wasn’t a long walk. End of the hall, through a guard checkpoint with a pair of gates, up three flights of steps, through another pair of sturdy steel doors, out into a processing area. A potent scent struck Cytosis in the nose the second the doors opened. Blood, burnt explosive chemicals, mineral oil and a powerful alien musk.
Three humans were waiting in the processing area. Cytosis had never seen one in person before, and this first meeting definitely sold the legends: Despite being slightly smaller than the Straightshields around them, the humans radiated implacable strength just by the sheer amount of equipment they had layered on top of a thick suit of armor in assorted shades of gray. Dark glasses made their expressions unreadable, but hostile.
“Here.” Reeko pushed Cytosis forward. “This…thing is your responsibility now.”
The foremost human nodded and smartly turned Cytosis around to control his wrists, and aimed him for the door. Another got on a communicator of some kind and issued a perfunctory report. “Detainee in transit.”
Cytosis was promptly bundled out into the Grand Precinct’s open lot, where a convoy of light armored vehicles had obviously only just piled in and fully intended to pile out again very soon. He was steered toward one, and the human controlling his hands spoke to him for the first time.
“Watch your head.”
This was the only warning he gave before the vehicle’s door was popped open and Cytosis was thrust firmly but not roughly inside. He heeded the warning and managed to avoid hitting his head on the doorframe, and quickly found himself sitting between two armed and armored deathworlders both of whom were making it clear by posture alone that attempting to escape would be desperately stupid move on Cytosis’ part.
No matter. This was a definite step up on being detained by the Gaoians—Gaoian justice had a nasty habit of ending in evisceration whereas Humans, according to Six, constrained themselves to a strict code of ethics and a robust legal framework: He had no reason to run.
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat as the convoy pulled out, but didn’t speak up. As awkward as his restraints were, he doubted that a request for a little more freedom would go well. Instead, he settled in and took in the outside world for the first time since he’d first been thrust unceremoniously into his cell.
What he saw was not encouraging. There were a lot of burnt-out vehicles, and the streets were coated with broken glass, not to mention the occasional sad pile of fur that could be either biodrones or their victims. There was smoke, scorch marks, craters and the skyline was definitely missing at least one iconic skyscraper.
The Straightshields had built layer after layer of barricades around their Grand Precinct, and these had obviously come under assault but held.
Now, the road between the precinct and the starport were pretty well clear. Human troops had set up checkpoints along its length via the rough but functional approach of packing some big sacks full of rubble. And thus building a wall.
The vehicle picked up speed along the straight, jinking left and right to steer around any debris on the road. The open path gave way to a serpentine series of obstacles, which in turn became an even sturdier checkpoint, and finally a killbox.
The doors opened, the Humans slid out easily, then turned back into the vehicle.
“Out.”
Cytosis complied. They were still some distance from the spaceport, he realized. Presumably at some kind of a forward position far from the sensitive nerve center of the Human operation but still well under their umbrella of protection and security. They’d commandeered a building, boarded the windows, laid more of those rubble bags around it and it was bristling with weapons.
He was guided relentlessly indoors, down some stairs into a bare basement with only a diode light strip for illumination and some bare, basic furniture. He was pushed firmly onto one of the chairs, and his restraints were adjusted. Rather than being locked behind him his arms were now in front of him, but shackled to a sturdy steel staple anchored in the concrete floor.
In its way, that was an even more effective prison than the Straightshields had given him—He wasn’t getting out of this one unless he managed to pull off his own arm.
A new Human, this one not wearing dark glasses, sat down opposite him. He made a show of comparing Cytosis’ borrowed face with something on the screen of a tablet, nodded, and set the tablet aside.
“Cytosis,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Also known as Thirteen. Agent of the Igraen Hierarchy, member of Six’s Cabal within that Hierarchy. Correct?”
Cytosis permitted his host body to duck-nod an affirmative. “All correct. Though for the record, Six goes by ‘Cynosure’ when conducting Cabal business.”
The Human inclined his head. “You’re very free with that information,” he observed.
“I intend to comply with your interrogation and answer all of your questions in full to the best of my ability,” Cytosis replied. “From what I understand, it will save both of us a lot of time. And in any case…it might just stop this madness before it dooms my entire species.”
HIs interrogator stared at him for some time, then nodded, sat back, and picked up his tablet again.
“Very well,” he said. “Let’s begin.”