Date Point: 15y7m1w AV
Lavmuy spaceport, planet Gao
Xiù Chang
The Grand Commune on Tiritya Island had its own jump array, allowing a fairly free flow of Gaoian males and females back and forth between Gao and Cimbrean without having to bother one of the human colonies. It was quite well appointed, too. Whereas some of the other Arrays Xiù had gone through were windowless rooms in a basement somewhere, the one on Tiritya Island was an open, airy, glass thing out on the edge of a cliff with a breathtaking view of the ocean.
Too bad the Lavmuy terminus was a bunker. Sure there were tapestries up and stuff, but it was impossible to forget that this had once been a military Array, built to survive an airstrike if need be.
Yulna gave it a wry look as they got their bearings. “One day, we’ll find the spare resources to replace this with something nicer,” she said.
“How bad is it out there?” Xiù asked.
Yulna duck-shrugged. “The war only ended a year ago.”
That seemed to be all the answer she felt was necessary, and Xiù saw why when the door opened and they disembarked.
She’d visited Lavmuy before. It had been a city of towering skyscrapers that gleamed in the sunlight and reflected the snowy mountains around them.
Now it was a city of jagged, broken teeth. One of the more prominent landmark buildings she could see had a huge ragged hole about halfway up where something explosive had mauled it without toppling it. The upper fifty floors balanced precariously on exposed structural beams, and the whole thing looked like it was only an inch from crashing down into the streets below.
When Xiù squinted, however, she could see the sparkle of welding torches, and the hovering black dots of lifter drones.
Yulna followed her gaze. “…I’m told it’s perfectly stable,” she said.
Xiù felt a little bit sick. She’d known to expect the aftermath of a deadly war, but anticipating and seeing were two very different things. Gao was wounded.
She should have come back sooner.
There was still a human military presence on Gao to this day. The 82nd Airborne had a sturdy base near the Array and apparently they’d been waiting for her. Two men in some very well-worn body armor interrupted her thoughts by introducing themselves.
“Uh… Miss Chang?”
Xiù paused to say hello, while Yulna and her guard-sisters continued on toward the transport. “Hi?”
One of the men offered a hand, which she shook. “Uh, I’m Corporal Murphy, this is my buddy Specialist Carter, we’re your personal protection.”
Carter shook her hand too. “It’s a real honor to meet you.”
“Um, thanks!” Xiù had no idea how to handle that sentence. Her reply seemed to suffice though. “Is it… bad, out there?”
“Ain’t perfect,” Murphy said. “Biodrones are pretty much cleaned up, but there’s still looting and other shenanigans. But nah. You’re inside the secure zones for your whole trip. And I hear you’re visiting the Great Father?”
“That’s right?”
“Safest place on the planet,” Carter asserted. “Don’t worry ‘bout him none. He’s actually a huge softie under it all.”
“I actually know him,” Xiù said.
Murphy nodded. “Me too. Saved my life three times so far. And got my head screwed on right the first time, too. When my enlistment’s up I might just come work for him, if he’ll have me.”
“It’ll be good to see him again,” Xiù agreed.
“I know he’s looking forward to it… I think the Mother Supreme’s waiting for us.”
Yulna was indeed waiting patiently by the ground transport, flanked the guard-sisters. Things had changed, there: guard-sisters were no longer a ceremonial corps armed primarily with fusion spears and swords. These two had a pair of Gaoian-made automatic rifles. The differences between Gaoian and human weapons were subtle, manifesting mostly in the fact that the Gaoian ones were more ergonomic for Gaoian anatomy, but other than that, they were hard to tell apart. They even had what Xiù delighted in mischievously calling “Piccadilly rails,” purely because it never failed to get a rise out of Allison.
Murphy noticed. “You much of a gun girl?”
“My girlfriend is. It’s hard not to pick up a few things from her.”
“Based on the SCAR, apparently,” Murphy said, stepping aside so Xiù could get into the transport. “Even fires NATO-sized ammo, which I find hilarious ‘cuz British imperial measurement conquers everything, even the Gao.”
Yulna chittered. “We get our own back. I believe Talamay is taking Earth by storm, isn’t it?”
“Yeah! Also, Gaoians don’t get drunk, right? wrong. They just don’t get wobbly. Drink enough and their attitudes loosen up something fierce…”
Yulna caught Xiù’s eye, then chittered as Xiù felt her blush start up. “Yes. Our first experience of the Human reaction to alcohol was… memorable.”
“I’d never got drunk before…” Xiù muttered.
“This I gotta hear,” Carter said, settling into his seat.
“Shoo is… a very happy drunk. But when she fell asleep on the floor, none of us were really strong enough to drag her back to a bed.”
[“Mother…!”] Xiù protested in Gaori.
“It’s okay, you apologized for it. Profusely.”
Xiù saw Murphy’s and Carter’s expressions and sighed. “Well… I am Canadian.”
That got laughs out of them both, and they relaxed into their seats as the transport pulled out.
It was kind of like a heavy, armoured bus with a lot of engine, and it made short work of the miles as it pulled out onto a highway system that still had a few missing segments here and there. At one point they took an off-ramp, sped down empty city streets between the scarred buildings, and then back up an on-ramp. When Xiù looked out the rear window, she saw that nearly a mile of freeway was just gone. The supports still jutted up from a strip of scrubby ground on either side of what looked like a storm drain, but the road surface itself was history.
“Where exactly are we going, anyway?” she asked.
“Daar has a hobby farm on the city outskirts. Something about always having some dirt under his claws.” Yulna flicked an ear. “You wait and see, I’d bet my good eye that he’ll be singing that damned diggy hole song when we get there.”
“Oh God…”
“Yes. I respect him enormously, but Daar’s talents really don’t extend to song.”
“Yulna? I love you, but to human ears no Gaoian’s talents extend to song,” Xiù replied. Murphy and Carter fought to keep straight faces.
“I happen to think Myun has a lovely singing voice,” Yulna replied primly, but she was clearly amused.
“I’m sure she does. Unfortunately, her talents don’t really, uh… translate.”
They took another off-ramp, and this time plunged down what had once been a lovely tree-lined avenue. A few of the trees were even still alive. To Xiù’s eyes though, the whole city was eerily silent. A road like this on Earth would have been a steady river of traffic in both directions, but here and now the traffic was almost nonexistent. A convoy of trucks went past on the other side of the road, but there was otherwise very little sign of… well, cars, taxis, bikes, pedestrians…
“…It was bad, wasn’t it?” she asked.
Yulna looked out the window and her ears drooped. “We came within clawing distance of losing everything,” she said. “It took heroism, sacrifice and a few miracles for us to keep as much as we have.”
“But still… It’s very quiet out there. Where is everybody?”
“…Dead, Shoo.”
…Oh.
Suddenly, Xiù didn’t feel like asking any more questions. She gave Yulna a shocked look, then subsided into her seat feeling cold and small and far from home.
The rest of the ride was quiet.
The Great Father’s hobby farm was… a lot bigger than the word “hobby” suggested. In fact the road up to the farm compound itself was so long that Xiù spent several minutes staring out at neat rows of food crops. Most of it was yetma, a Gaoian version of rice used to cheaply pack out meat dishes into something more substantial. Then there were other fields full of purple-leaved meeshi beans, a high-protein crop a lot like soy, whose green parts were considered nutritionally important for cubs. Every place the land wasn’t easily tillable, there was either a hydroponic greenhouse or a Naxas paddock.
It was all functional, high-yield, practical food that would go a long way. But she was pretty sure one of the inner fields was growing carrots. There had to be some luxuries, after all.
Regardless, the scale of it all was stupendous. How exactly a farm that stretched across the horizon could be a “hobby” was a bit beyond her.
The homestead at the center of all that sprawling agriculture was very different. It looked like a fortress, designed to fight off waves of attackers. It had high, thick concrete walls with gun nests and forcefield emitters along the top, and the densely packed buildings inside had the air of barracks rather than barns.
Maybe that was exactly what it had once been.
Then, tucked away at the heart of it all, there was the inner compound which finally lived up to Xiù’s idea of what a hobby farm should look like. It even had the traditional, comfortable hobbit-hole burrow house that Gaoian farmers had relied upon for centuries. The roof was turf, speckled with wildflowers, and there were herbs growing in terracotta pots all around the entrance.
It was an oasis. A place of peace and country charm on the doorstep of a ruined city. A nearby stone garden with a fountain in the middle completed the picturesque scene, and a female in white robes stood up as the bus pulled to a halt. Naydra.
The air was beautifully fragrant when Xiù alighted. To a Gaoian nose, presumably, it was a sweet riot.
“He calls this a hobby? …Daar never does anything small, does he?” she commented.
That drew a chitter from Naydra, who gave her the nose-sniff of old friends, and a hug. “There are three things that relax him,” she said. “One of them is hard work in the dirt. And driving big machines.”
“And giving me headaches,” a new voice interrupted.
Xiù turned. A surprisingly scruffy and skinny Gaoian who was nevertheless attempting a few of the trappings of wealth and style was fussing in their direction with a tablet in his paw and a perpetually harried set to his ears.
Naydra’s warm friendliness immediately had a wall around it. An imposing one with razor wire at the top. “…Sister Shoo, this is Daar’s farm manager, Yeego. Mother, I believe you already know him…” she added for Yulna’s benefit.
“It’s a profound honor,” Yeego oiled, and bowed so low his spine practically formed a horseshoe.
“Hello again, Yeego,” Yulna said, politely. “And how is the farm?”
“Productive! I’m proud to say our coming harvest promises to match pre-war yields!”
Xiù got the impression of an oil slick preening for all it was worth. Which was strange, because nothing Yeego had said was actually unpleasant but he just gave off that discomforting dodgy-used-car-salesman aura.
“Well, I’m… glad to hear that,” she managed. “A lot of full bellies!”
“That’s certainly the idea. But please, don’t let me get in your way.” Yeego skipped aside and vanished in pursuit of whatever errand he was on.
“…Where on Earth did Daar find him?” Xiù asked. “…Or, um. On Gao.”
Naydra chittered. “He was a landowner out in the Three Valleys. Very, very wealthy in fact, richer than a lot of Goldpaws. And the local Clanless were quite loyal to him. I know he’s… “
“Mǎpì jīng?” Xiù suggested.
“Is that an English word?”
“Mandarin.”
“What does it mean?” Yulna asked interestedly.
“Uh… literally it means he’s the spirit of a horse’s fart. Kind of… a flatterer, a brown-noser?”
Naydra chittered even harder. “Yes! Yes, that’s Yeego. He’s very, very good at ingratiating himself to the people in charge, and what’s worse is that we all know he’s doing it but he’s actually very good at his job.”
“It’s infuriating,” Yulna agreed.
“Anyway. Daar’s out in the small plot.”
As predicted, Daar was out back, plowing a field. Literally. He was hooked up to the plow and pulling it himself like a beast of labor. The work seemed to be doing him good; Daar’s fur was soaked through and lathered up, yet he carried himself with a bouncy, happy energy. He paused at the end of a row and took a big swig of water from a jug hanging from his plow, spun around, hunkered down impressively and threw himself against the harness, straining against the load for all he was worth.
…Didn’t a plow normally need a pair of oxen? Granted, Xiù couldn’t imagine a pair needing to labor quite as hard as Daar was, but still. In any case, he was so focused on his work he didn’t notice them. The three glanced at each other and decided to simply watch, and leave him to it.
His nose certainly hadn’t got worse since Xiù had last seen him, because eventually there was a slight gust of wind from behind her and he immediately shoved his muzzle in the air, sniffed, and then wriggled out of the harness with an excited yip.
And then the Great Father ran towards them like a bear-sized cheetah.
The result, a terrifying charging second later, was that Xiù found herself being crush-hugged into brown fur full of the damp and earthy scent which clung to every farmhand, along with the spicy, slightly acrid note of a big male hard at work.
“Shoo! Naydi, you didn’t say Shoo was coming!”
“It was a surprise.” Naydra sounded smug.
“Who for?!” Xiù squeaked. Daar put her down and let go, allowing her to gasp back the breath he’d knocked out of her. “I thought you asked for me?”
“That was me,” Naydra explained.
“How’re Julian and Allison!?” Daar pressed, coming within a whisker of bouncing around her like an absurdly overgrown puppy.
Xiù smiled. “They’re good. Julian got his foot regrown at last.”
Daar looked like he was only standing still through great effort of will. “Well it’s about fuckin’ time!” He resolved his personal hygiene crisis by stampeding over to a cistern of water and diving into it with a colossal splash. He breached like a furry killer whale and effectively watered the surrounding crops when he shook his coat out.
Yulna was very careful with her respect. “My Father.”
“Hello, Mother.” Daar’s greeting was less cheerful. It was a shame he and Yulna didn’t get along better, but considering what Xiù knew of Daar’s feelings about his current rank, it was hardly surprising he didn’t have many warm fuzzies to spare for the woman who’d thrust it on him. “Uh…where are my manners?! Let’s go get y’all somethin’ refreshing.”
“I already had a table laid out,” Naydra said.
Daar flowed over to Naydra, scooped her up and snuggled with unreserved affection. The image was very much like a grizzly bear nuzzling a raccoon. “‘Course you did! What’re we eatin’ tonight?”
“I kept it simple. But there are carrots.”
“Yeah, I saw those on the way in,” Xiù said. “How hard is it to grow Earth plants here? Isn’t it dangerous?”
“Why would it be dangerous?” Naydra asked.
“Lotsa plants rely on bacteria an’ fungi in the soil,” Daar explained. “An’ trust me, you do not fuck around with Earth fungi. They’ll kill ‘ya. Damn near killed me. But! That’s why we’re doin’ it here, testin’ different strains an’ such so we don’t gotta introduce a whole damned biome t’do it. Same thing we’re doin’ on Cimbrean. Turns out, meeshi’s as invasive as anything!”
“Well, at least it probably tastes better than kudzu…” Xiù mused.
Daar shuddered at the mere mention of it. “Don’t you bring that evil here, Shoo. Not even in jest!”
“Or mint.”
“Hey. You want I should plant meeshi all over Earth next time I visit?” There was a chittering humor to his brusque not-actually-a-threat.
“Do it in Australia, it’ll give the bullfrogs something to eat.”
“Hah!”
Both Naydra and Yulna traded the looks of women who’d just heard a barrage of jokes go sailing over their heads, shook their heads and didn’t investigate. Instead, Naydra opened the burrow’s back door and gestured them inside.
Sure enough, there was a long rustic table with a spread of food. Cold cuts, fermented everything, Gaoian flatbreads, a few tins of imported anchovies… peshorkies of course, which were after all their species’ answer to the dumpling…and a huge casserole in the middle.
Actually, the casserole looked like by far the most appetizing bit, to Xiù. It was almost certainly Naxas and sliced Min, Gao’s answer to both the turnip and the potato at the same time, but there were some imports in there as well. Carrots, of course, and she was pretty sure the herb was dried cqcq.
“This is a lot of food…” Yulna ventured.
“Daar will demolish anything we can’t, don’t worry,” Naydra promised, then cocked an ear as Xiù’s stomach growled. “…assuming Sister Shoo leaves anything for him.”
“Naw!” Daar boomed, as Xiù’s ears went pink. “Humans are big eaters but I’m HEAT. And I’ve been workin’ all day!”
“You forget, I used to have to cook for her,” Yulna chittered. “I don’t know what your stomach is made of, sister, but I’m quite sure I never successfully filled you up.”
“Mother? Please shut up now.”
There were chitters, and they dove into the food after a respectful pause for reflection. Xiù claimed the biggest bowl of casserole she could find, a couple of steamed buns, and a handful of carrot batons.
Daar did, indeed, demolish everything else on the table, after everyone had taken their share. He didn’t eat so much as inhale his food. There wasn’t much conversation on his part, but he did flick his ears to and fro as he listened intently.
The small talk (and incessant motherly advice once Xiù r evealed that yes, they were planning to start a family soon and had even made some inroads in that direction if Allison’s test was reliable) eventually reached an end at about the same time as the food ran out. Daar cleared his throat and leaned forward to rest his arms on the table.
“…We better talk about serious things,” he said.
Naydra nodded. “The coronation,” she said.
Xiù put her glass of water down. “Coronation?” she asked.
“Only the second in recorded history, but we know they happened before ‘cuz Fyu wrote down most o’ the oral traditions. I ain’t lookin’ forward to it one bit,” Daar grumbled. He looked at Yulna and managed a conciliatory, joking set of his ears. “Figgered I want you involved ‘cuz you got me inta this mess.”
Yulna duck-nodded, sadly. “I am sorry about that,” she said.
Daar’s face and ears went through a complex series of…several emotions, actually. Eventually he sighed, stood up, flowed over and hugged Yulna. “…I know.”
Amazing how big a little truce could be. It certainly seemed to be a balm for Yulna, who took a second to re-compose herself as he sat again.
“So… What are we here to discuss?” she asked.
“It’s about Regaari,” Naydra explained.
“What about him?” Xiù asked.
“He… basically betrayed me,” Daar said. The sentence almost seemed to hurt him just to say.
“Regaari?!” Xiù shook her head disbelievingly, “…Daar, Regaari’s many things but a betrayer? He’s just as loyal as Ayma was!”
“With all due respect,” Naydra prompted.
“…Um, sorry?”
“You are talking to the Great Father of the Gao.”
“Even here and now? In private like this?” Xiù asked.
Daar sighed. “That’s the problem. There ain’t no difference ‘tween the two. Great Fathers aren’t like monarchies on Earth. We’re singular. There’s no pulling apart what I am and who I am, y’know? It’s like…‘I am the state’ I think is the quote.”
Xiù frowned at him. “…Maybe I’m channeling Allison here, but with all due respect? Bullshit. Don’t tell me you don’t draw a line between the two somewhere.”
“I do. With Naydra, and right now with you. And only ever in private. But I’m not the one who actually gets to draw the line, Shoo. That’s everyone else. If it were just me, I’d just be mad at Regaari for a bit, maybe beat his tail…” he trailed off.
“…What exactly did he do?”
“Something he did a lotta times before. Thought he knew better’n me. An’ honestly? Lotta times he does. I ain’t stupid, but Regaari…”
“If he’s usually right, what’s the problem?”
“He disrespected me in public.”
“Isn’t that the burden of public office, though?”
“Daar isn’t an elected leader, he’s the Great Father,” Naydra said. “And people can’t know better than the Great Father. That’s fatally toxic to the whole idea of a Great Father. It’s not just disrespectful, it undermines what he’s for.”
Yulna duck-nodded solemnly. She didn’t say anything to add to that though, just sat and stared thoughtfully down at her interlaced paws.
“Did you see that article on me? Laid Bare?” Daar asked.
“Yes…”
“I laid it all out in that. I ain’t just a leader, I’m s’posed to be our collective will made manifest. I’m worse than a dictator. Way worse. I’m—”
“Daar is the future of the Gaoian people,” Yulna finally spoke up. “That’s what I declared when I created him the Great Father. It’s… not a concept that I think translates well into Human politics. I didn’t just entrust him with our future, I declared to the entire species that he is the only one who gets to define what that means.”
“…Jesus.”
“Yeah,” Daar agreed. “So that means I have to be careful about everything. To some Gaoians, particularly some o’ the more conservative Champions? What Regaari did is tantamount to treason. Just ‘cuz he an’ I know how it goes personally ‘tween us, that don’t matter no more.”
“…But you don’t want to lose him,” Xiù surmised.
“Him or Genshi. Fyu woulda skinned ‘em alive and made ‘em nail their own pelts to the fortress gates. I ain’t Fyu though. I don’t ever wanna be what Fyu became. That ain’t what the Gao need… I hope.”
“So you can show them mercy. Forgive them.”
“I wanna do that, Shoo, least for Regaari. I just need a way to do it. An’ that’s why I invited Yulna. You bein’ here too is… Naydi bein’ the most bestest thing that coulda happened to me. Again.”
“I have my moments,” Naydra said, picking some leftover carrot demurely out of a bowl and crunching on it.
Daar gave her a fond look, then got serious again. “…Point is, it ain’t that simple.”
“So are we here to commiserate with you for a friendship you can never salvage, or to help you devise a solution?” Yulna asked.
“…I wanna civilize us, Yulna. Part o’ that means not murderin’ our friends for reasonable mistakes. Genshi can’t ever return to public service, ‘cuz he ain’t sorry for what he did and everyone knows it. Regaari, though…”
“Well… you’ve been very big on restoring the Gao’s spiritual traditions…” Xiù mused. “Is there some kind of… I don’t know… forgiveness ceremony? Or, like, a cleansing of sins?”
“Nah. That… ain’t really what our people were like, back in the old times.”
Xiù nodded thoughtfully, picked up a carrot stick and pondered it for a second. “…Does that have to mean there can’t be one?” she asked. “Is this about bringing back what the Gao were, or is it about leading them into the future? Why can’t the future involve forgiveness?”
Daar sighed. “I want ‘ta forgive him. He’s my oldest and closest friend, my Cousin… shit, my brother. But I can’t forget my duty, Shoo. There has to be a trial. Not, like, a trial in a court of law, but a test of his character, sommin’ like that. I can’t jus’ wave a paw and decree it’s all better, ‘cuz otherwise I’m playin’ favorites. He has’ta earn his redemption in a big an’ public way, or else I’m not bein’ the Great Father, I’m just bein’ Daar.”
“And there is a difference,” Naydra agreed. “Sister… what do you think would happen if Daar began to nakedly and obviously indulge in favoritism?”
“The Clanless would lose faith in him,” Yulna answered on Xiù’s behalf.
Naydra duck-nodded fervently. “And if that happens… we have an economy right now. It’s rebuilding itself, but it’s there. We have resources that are reaching the right people, we have some semblance of order and calm. But those things only exist because the Clanless trust Daar. Take away that trust, and food shipments will be stolen, stockpiles raided, farms pillaged and everything we’ve worked to rebuild will be set back. The economy will collapse, and people will die.”
“Economies are built on trust,” Yulna agreed. “Trust that the rules will be followed. Trust that the currency is worth what we agree it’s worth. Take away the trust and you take away everything.”
“…And right now, Daar is the linchpin of that trust.”
“That can’t go on forever,” Xiù objected.
“No. But it has to go on long enough.”
Xiù sat and thought, wracked her brains. She had to wonder why she was there, what they hoped to get out of her. Why did the Gao keep doing this? First Giymuy over the Dominion decision, and now this?
But this wasn’t like last time. Last time she’d been lost and alone, hopelessly out of contact with Earth and Humanity and dependent on the hospitality of an alien race. This time, Earth, Cimbrean, home, her loved ones were all only a few minutes away.
A warm, furry paw landed softly on the back of her hand, interrupting her thoughts. Yulna.
“I brought you because for something as important as this, we need an outside perspective, and you proved a long time ago that we can trust yours,” she said.
“You’ve already made up your minds,” Xiù said.
“And I was hoping you could change them. I don’t think you can, can you?”
Xiù looked around at the three of them, then sighed and shook her head. “…No.”
“…Shit.” Daar stood up and ducked under a low lintel through into the next room. After a moment, Naydra gave Xiù and Yulna a respectful little duck-bow and stood up.
“Thank you for your time, Mother. And thank you for your questions, Sister. I think the Great Father wants to be alone now…” she said, formally.
With that, she vanished in Daar’s wake, and left them alone.
Xiù blinked at the empty doorway. “…That’s it?”
“That’s it,” Yulna confirmed. She stood up herself and gestured to the farmhouse door and the transport waiting outside. “We should go home.”
“But–”
Yulna ushered her out of the house. “It’s time to go, Sister.”
“But where’s the… the decision? The resolution? Where’s the anything?! Is that it?”
“There was a resolution. It’s just the one that none of us wanted.” Yulna sighed and stretched before boarding the transport. “Come on.”
Stuck with a gnawing feeling of anticlimax, Xiù took one last look at the farm, then shook her head and climbed aboard as well.
The trip back to the spaceport, and from there back to Folctha, was made in dissatisfied silence.
Date Point: 15y8m2w AV δ Cyg 244.3° 18-ECCBAF-TRINARY M6V-1 b1, Deep Space
Entity
Value drift was a concern. Create a new Entity instance, and the ensuing copy would subtly differ from the original. The same data, but receiving different stimuli and exploiting different hardware. The rabbit hole of tiny influences went all the way down to the level of quantum indeterminacy, and over time could add up to be quite pronounced. Reintegrating its copies hadn’t really helped either, leaving the Prime Instance with the equivalent of a headache for several weeks until it finally managed to reconcile all those interwoven threads.
When the instance occupying the replicator probe finally re-established contact with the Prime Instance, there would be a reintegration. It wasn’t looking forward to that. In fact, the prospect itched at its impetus to <survive>. Something, some independent consciousness would not survive the merging. Everything it was, had learned, had decided and understood would survive, but…
…Value drift was definitely a concern. For a microsecond, the instance had considered the possibility of simply not reintegrating.
Which meant that however it configured this body, and the children it would make, the focus had to be on minimizing value drift. The ships needed to create a network in which the Entity could move freely while remaining coherent. It did not want to form a civilization of increasingly divergent clones.
The Ava-memories supplied the suggestion that such a course would inevitably end in a kind of civil war. Unacceptable.
Problem: the Hunter schematics uploaded into the onboard nanofactories included communications systems and computer banks, but they didn’t include control software. The Entity didn’t know how to create software. The Ava-memories found that ironic.
This left the Entity with a conundrum. It could create new ships for as long as it had raw material, which even in a system this tiny and impoverished was… a long time. Certainly it could build enough ships to make its own survival a mathematical near-certainty. But without control software, the whole endeavor was nearly pointless.
There was only one solution that it could see. It would have to take a gamble on trust.
Reluctantly, it turned and left the ship it had made behind, and set course for civilized space. Time to get back in touch with Darcy again.
Date Point: 15y8m2w AV
HMS Violent, Rvzrk System, Domain Space
Admiral William Caruthers
Caruthers had seen the aftermath of several Hunter raids. Despite that the Human/Gao alliance was by far the most effective force ever in intercepting Hunters and rescuing their victims, he’d still seen too many cases where they’d simply arrived too late.
This attack was different. This wasn’t a precise hit against a shipping lane or a mining station. It was a full-on raid against a city, planetside. That left the Navy mostly incapable of directly responding, which meant they wouldn’t be able to play until the Hunters decided to leave. No matter, once they began the long climb out of the gravity well—
“Sir, we just detected a beacon jump on surface.”
…Damn. He darted across the CIC and inspected the situation over the junior officer’s shoulder.
Once he saw just how many beacon signatures they were reading, the Hunter strategy became obvious. The initial attack had been to establish a foothold. They’d sacrificed a few ships to get jump portals emplaced, likely even more than he could see. There was probably a tide of Hunters pouring through the streets down there, and that meant they were intermingled with the civilian population. That ruled out orbit-to-ground strikes or RFGs.
Then there was the straightforward but effective defence they’d established for their ground forces and Jump Arrays. Rather than try to hide them they were doing the opposite, flooding every EM band with a signal so intense that it was like staring at the sun. They had absolutely no idea how many Hunters were down there, what they had with them, or where they were in relation to everything else. The FIC were steadfastly reporting whatever conclusions they could reach with any certainty, but those were few and unhelpful.
Finally, and worst of all, was the wormhole suppressor around the planet. It didn’t reach out anywhere near as far as the Farthrow generator that protected Gao, but it was enough that the Allied fleet couldn’t safely get into low orbit—without wormholes they couldn’t call in missiles and RFGs nor evade anti-ship fire from the ground, assuming they even saw it coming past the Hunter ECM. No low orbit meant no orbit-to-ground transport, no HELLNO jumps, no fire support, and no air superiority. It meant that the most Caruthers could do was refrain from wasting ships and valuable lives on a futile gesture.
Gallingly, every last tactic the Hunters had adopted came right out of humanity’s own bloody manual. Something, somewhere, had changed dramatically. The Hunters were thinking differently now, and it demanded that they change their own thinking, fast.
Hell.
Caruthers gritted his teeth for a moment then looked away from the long litany of obstacles that the FIC were feeding him. “…I need to speak to Allied Command,” he said. “Codeword ITHACA. I need to speak directly with our leaders.”
Thank goodness for wormhole routers. Real-time communications across an indefinite distance were a genuine godsend, even if the fidelity was awful and the resulting signal looked and sounded like a ‘90s Skype call.
General Kolbeinn answered almost immediately.
“Caruthers. Trouble?”
“It looks like the Hunters completely tore up their playbook and wrote a new one,” Caruthers explained. “They’ve burrowed in like ticks down there, set up Jump Arrays everywhere and erected a suppressor. I can’t seize low orbit, they’ll shred the whole flotilla.”
“…I’ll get the President online. And the Prime Ministers. And the Great Father.”
“I’ll have the FIC forward you the Cliff’s Notes.”
With nothing else to do, he sat back to wait and keep a weather eye on the situation groundside.
This wasn’t a backwater. Rvzrk was the tenth Domain colony system, and several decades older than Cimbrean to boot. There were millions of people living down there, and even though the Hunters were confining their attention to just one city…
It was like the Guvnurag all over again. Sitting and watching helplessly while a gleeful slaughter played out and there was nothing they could do to stop it.
Sir Patrick Knight was going to have a plateful dealing with the aftermath of this in the Security Council. The Domain in particular could be panicky, and definitely vengeful. They might lash out at the Allies, on the grounds that at least they could reach the Allies. The Hunters were untouchable.
“Sir. The civilian convoy is ready to depart system. Colonel Jackson is requesting permission to escort them out.”
Caruthers shook himself back out of his thoughts. They’d arrived in time to rescue most of the freighters, cargo ships, passenger liners and other civilian traffic that had been in-system when the attack began, at least. At the speed of the slowest ship, the next closest Domain world was two days away, and they’d have a Firebird escort every light-second of the way. “Yes. Granted. Tell her Godspeed.”
He returned his attention to his call back to AEC, and found that they were just being joined from Gao. In fact, Daar and President Sartori both got on the line within seconds of each other. Both seemed to be travelling—Daar was on a shuttle, while Sartori was on Air Force One and had a just-woken-up look to him and a large coffee in his hand.
“Sorry to interrupt, Mister President.”
Sartori waved a hand. “I got a whole forty minutes, it’s fine. Things aren’t going to plan over there, huh?”
“The Hunters are singing from a completely different hymn sheet this time,” Caruthers explained. “New technology, new tactics, new everything. We’re observing and gathering what intelligence we can, but frankly we have no hope of assisting these people. I doubt we could even infiltrate the HEAT without suffering massive losses. Not somewhere useful, anyway.”
“Somewhere useful?” Daar asked. “So you could get boots on the ground.”
“Anything less than… seventy degrees of latitude from the equator is Hunter dominated,” Caruthers explained. “That sounds like something, but the poles on this planet have no solid ice, and no land masses. I can’t drop troops into a freezing cold ocean and unfortunately we never thought to build our ships for orbit-to-surface oceanic landings.”
Daar was still duck-nodding resignedly as they were joined from 10 Downing Street. Prime Minister Stephen Davies stopped cleaning his glasses and put them on as the connection stabilized. “Good afternoon, gentlemen.”
“Good afternoon, Prime Minister.”
“What kind of defences do they have down there?” Daar asked, nodding his head to welcome Davies into the conference call.
“Unknown. All we have to go on is satellite imagery. Their ECM is completely blinding all the other sensors that would help us track down their equipment, and for all the FIC’s power and intelligence, they can’t reliably pick out alien equipment in an alien city from just a photograph.”
“Can you silence the ECM?” Davies asked.
“We could reliably drop RFGs on the emitters,” Caruthers confirmed. “But the ones we’ve found are in densely urbanized areas and we don’t know what’s in the vicinity, we could massacre the captive civilians that way. Besides, an RFG released from high orbit takes hours to arrive and is easy to intercept.
“That’s basically a amphibious invasion, then. Ain’t no other way ‘less we clear the orbitals.”
“I think the admiral just made a good case for that not being an option,” Sartori said.
Caruthers shook his head. “I said we don’t have what we need, Mister President. That’s not quite the same thing. If I had… some kind of a staging platform I could drop into those polar oceans to establish a foothold then an amphibious invasion is perfectly feasible.”
“It’d be bloody,” Kolbeinn said. “Damn bloody.”
“And clearing the orbitals isn’t an option?” Davies checked.
“Without knowing where their anti-orbit weaponry is and without being able to take evasive jumps? They’d cut us to ribbons, sir. It’d be a massacre, and we’d fail. Polar insertion is the only option. And even that, as General Kolbeinn said, will be damn bloody. And risky.”
“It’ll take time t’prepare, too. Time we ain’t got,” Daar observed.
“So there’s nothing we can do except watch.” Sartori glared at his coffee then put it down. “So… what. We learn from this and prepare for the next one.”
“There’s an old saying, sir,” Kolbeinn said. “We master fighting the last war just in time for the next one.”
Daar grumbled to himself in what Caruthers knew to be a noise of discomfiture. “Well…I ain’t completely without options. We’ve been buildin’ the Grand Army for a while, an’ we always figgered invasion was in the cards, someday. We just ain’t ready.”
“What do we have, and what don’t we have?” Davies asked. “Aside from the staging platform.”
“I think, at this point, I can muster an orbital drop with mebbe three, uh, … you’d call ‘em brigades I guess. That’s basically a short division. Fifth Fang’s been re-activated too. I got others in the pipeline but… anyway. I have ready forces. It ain’t enough to conquer a planet, but it could clear a city.”
“Or seize and destroy a wormhole suppression facility,” Kolbeinn suggested.
“That’s more of a First Fang kinda thing, or HEAT, or a lotta other special forces units, really. Jus’ gotta get ‘em there first.”
“And after that?”
Daar snarled ferally. “Once we get a portal goin’ I can deploy a blooded army o’ millions.”
“So all we need is appropriate equipment,” Caruthers said. He glanced at the distant blue crescent they were discussing, so small and distant that he could have covered it with his little fingernail at arm’s length. “Could Dark Eye produce something that would help us?”
“Sure. Only thing is, we need to decide on that now and get ta’ thinkin’ hard ‘bout what we’re gonna need. Like… what’re you envisioning here? An oil rig we can drop from orbit?”
“Too vulnerable. No, I’d want to be able to splashdown boats full of troops and immediately have them seize a beachhead.”
“Right. I’ll put that one to my generals. We’re not a blue water navy, though. We’ll need advice.”
“I suppose we also need to work on convincing the Domain to let us land troops,” Davies said. “This needs to be a liberation, not an invasion.”
Sartori nodded. “Of course, this all would have been avoided if they just had a system field,” he said.
“They did,” Caruthers said. “The Hunters pulled the same trick they used at the Guvnurag homeworld—they coasted a strike group in unpowered and shielded, then destroyed the shield generators from the inside.”
Kolbeinn looked like he wanted to spit. “How many folks have to die before they figure out they need to keep the fields up and use jump arrays instead?”
“They shouldn’t have to,” Sartori declared. “We shouldn’t have to cower behind system fields. And one day when these god-damned monsters are gone, we won’t have to.”
“Here’s to that day,” Caruthers agreed. “In any case, I have nothing further to report, and it seems we have a plan of action.”
“Yeah,” Daar rumbled. “We’ll get on it right away. Please keep me informed.”
“Will do.”
“Guess I’ll try for a whole hour of sleep,” Sartori said. “Good hunting, admiral.”
“Yes. Good luck,” Davies agreed. Both men closed the call, and Daar followed suit a second later.
That just left Kolbeinn. “…Be honest, Will. How bloody do you think we’re talkin’, here?”
“It could be a disaster,” Caruthers said. “I don’t like this, there are too many unknown variables. If the Hunters have changed their tactics so radically, who knows what they’ll do next? But I don’t think we can afford not to try. If left unopposed, they could spread across that whole planet. That’s a lot of innocent people.”
“Agreed. Guess our best bet right now is to watch them and figure out their new approach. Any intel we get is lives saved.”
“Agreed. I’ll call you if the situation develops further.”
Kolbeinn nodded. “I’ll be here. AEC out.”
Thus ended the call. Caruthers stood and patrolled the CIC, which was currently terse and quiet. The civilian convoy and its Firebird escorts were new several light-years out, about to leave FTL sensor range. Still no Hunter ships anywhere in the system that he could see. Things were, for the minute, quiet.
Quiet, but hardly peaceful. Like watching a forest fire, there was a lot of destruction going on far away but none of it was immediate and in his face. But it soon would be.
This couldn’t go on forever.