Date Point: 16y AV
Yukon–Koyukuk, Alaska, USA, Earth
Zane Reid
The cold didn’t hurt anymore.
At first, it had been like forcing his way through a wall made of knives that cut through his clothes. Zane’s every breath had blinded him as it billowed and steamed in the air, and when he’d experimentally licked his teeth, his tongue had briefly stuck to the ice it found there.
He’d realized what he was doing was stupid pretty much immediately. He’d barely made it to the treeline before his resolve faltered. He should have gone back, turned himself in, given up on freedom. At least he’d be alive.
But every time the shadow of that thought flicked its tail below the surface, it made him feel sick and disgusted with himself. He wasn’t some dog! He wasn’t gonna spend the rest of his life in a cage, too weak to get out.
He’d escape, or he’d die. Both were better than the cage.
And now he didn’t feel cold anymore. He felt warm. Hot, even. He wasn’t sweating, but suddenly it was almost like being back in Kingston, scratching odd jobs out here and there. Like the time he’d spent working in his uncle Dejuan’s garage, fixing the cars of richer men. That had been a sweltering hell: the door was always open, and Dejuan was too poor for air conditioning. There’d been a dusty old ceiling fan, spinning too slowly to do anything, and a battered desk fan from like the 1950s or something that needed a stick wedged under it in the right spot or it shorted out.
Dejuan had been a lion. Never a man to raise his voice, or get angry. Polite, quiet… the kind of person Zane usually hated. He acted like one of the sheep. But when wolves came to his door looking for Zane’s help with something, he’d shown his real fire then. He’d chased them out, and to Zane’s surprise they’d never come back.
He was one of the few people Zane genuinely respected… and missed.
But how could a freezing forest in an Alaskan winter blizzard be as hot as his workshop? It didn’t make sense. Zane wanted to strip off his shirt, to get some relief from the stifling sensation of heat. But some part of his brain knew that was a bad idea.
Just keep going. Push on, no matter what. Get as far away from the fence and the guards and the dogs as possible.
Suddenly, the ground wasn’t there in front of him anymore. He put his foot down and fell, tumbled painfully… landed on what felt like ice under a deep blanket of snow. A stream. Completely frozen right down to its bed, probably. With a groan, he picked himself up and clambered up the far bank. That wasn’t easy: it was steep, almost vertical, and several feet of snow had settled at the top. He collapsed on his belly when he reached the top.
So… tired…
…
He gasped, and pushed himself up. Stumbled forward maybe a dozen paces. Fell again. Stood and stumbled forward, fell again. And again. He couldn’t feel his fingers, or his feet. He couldn’t feel anything. Couldn’t see anything. He bounced off a tree and after that he couldn’t get up at all. His arms and legs just refused to work.
That… that was okay…
He’d just… he’d just rest a bit. Recover his strength.
…move on when…
…when he woke up…
Date Point: 16y1w AV
Cabal unlogged communications session, dataspace
++Asymptote++: I don’t understand. Why not simply talk to them, first?
++Cynosure++: Without leverage? And without tipping my hand?
++Asymptote++: Why not talk to us?
++Cynosure++: Because I wasn’t sure it would work and I wanted you to remain focused on your own projects.
++Asymptote++: And what if we’re not even sure that it was a good idea?
++Metastasis++: In your own words, the Humans seem to be the only extant deathworld species we can reasonably have a conversation with. The Gao are too vengeful, and the Ten’Gewek are too primitive.
++Asymptote++: At the very least, the possibility of explaining the dangers of replicator technology should have been explored. From everything you’ve previously said, the Humans would have listened.
++Metastasis++: Provoke them too much, however…
++Cynosure++: That… thing, the dataphage. It has a self-replicating hardware body now. Thanks to them and their research.
++Metastasis++: <Alarm> That does change things.
++Asymptote++: Then it’s too late, surely?
++Cynosure++: Maybe. And if it is… well, I won’t let the galaxy burn without visiting some justice on its destroyers. But if we are very, very lucky then we still have time to act.
++Asymptote++: Humans are entrenched on multiple worlds now, and our biodrone infiltration is effectively zero. Even containing and limiting them is going to be an almost insurmountable problem.
++Cynosure++: Not zero. We have one viable drone on Earth.
++Metastasis++: Since when?
++Cynosure++: It escaped confinement and is currently… dormant.
++Metastasis++: Dormant?
++Cynosure++: Its implant last reported ambient temperatures of approximately 200 absolute degrees.
++Asymptote++: …That’s not dormant. It froze to death.
++Cynosure++: This particular drone is exceptional.
++Metastasis++: Temperatures on Earth actually get that low?
++Cynosure++: Quite routinely, in some places.
++Metastasis++: <vague awe> Right. Deathworld.
++Asymptote++: I don’t care how “exceptional” your drone is. It’s a block of ice now, and that means it’s dead. Organic cells and ice crystals do not mix.
++Cynosure++: If it doesn’t survive then that will complicate matters, it’s true. But I think it will probably surprise you.
++Asymptote++: I am beginning to not like your surprises.
++Cynosure++: Noted. But are you with me?
++Asymptote++: <reluctant> …Provisionally. Subject to my consistent future inclusion in your decision-making process.
++Metastasis++: <agreement>
++Cynosure++: You are right. Forgive me.
++Metastasis++: So what happens now?
++Cynosure++: Now, we wait. Sol is locked down to a genuinely impressive degree. We wait for that to die down. Then we wait longer. Then we wait even longer still, and let this incident fade into memory.
++Asymptote++: I thought we had the urgent matter of a dataphage with a replicator body to worry about?
++Cynosure++: As you said: it may already be too late. This infiltration will be challenging, difficult and has a low probability of success. Thus, our only option is to be slow and careful.
++Metastasis++: And after the infiltration succeeds?
++Cynosure++: Too many variables, not enough information. We’ll formulate a concrete plan once we know enough.
++Metastasis++: Reasonable. Very well. But let’s start on rebuilding our trust that we are included in the decisions, shall we? What exactly is it that makes this biodrone of yours special to the point it can possibly survive freezing to death?
++Cynosure++: <File attachment>
++Asymptote++: …Oh.
++Metastasis++: I see!
++Cynosure++: Sadly it wasn’t quite as effective as I’d hoped. Human biology is already impressive and there’s little that technology can do to improve on it. But in this one small area, it made a difference. I hope.
++Asymptote++: <Pleased> Yes. I can see how it would.
++Metastasis++: Why, though? What do you gain from a single biodrone? Why not just bomb the planet to ashes?
++Cynosure++: This has to work. It has to be certain to work. The Humans are entrenched in off-world colonies and those require infiltration as well. If I just strike at Earth then Cimbrean and the others will lock down completely and we will not get another opportunity. We need to scout, and plan, and determine what exactly is the best course of action… and if nothing else, biodrones keep our options open in the face of unexpected developments. It may be that I won’t need them, but if I do need biodrones then I would rather have biodrones.
++Asymptote++: Reasonable. Very well. Shall I oversee the infiltration of Cimbrean?
++Cynosure++: <Gratitude> I was hoping you would volunteer. Be warned: you will not have direct control over your infiltrator as you would over a conventional biodrone. They are more… free-willed.
++Asymptote++: <Alarmed> Only to an illusory degree, I hope?
++Cynosure++: The Human brain is very sensitive to the correct stimuli. You can reliably influence their behaviour along the correct lines. It is like persuading an extremely impressionable agent.
++Metastasis++: <dry sarcasm> What could possibly go wrong?
++Cynosure++: <humorless; unamused> A lot. If we don’t win here…
++Metastasis++: Understood. I will talk to the right people.
++Asymptote++: As for me… I have a biodrone to acquire.
++Cynosure++: Thank you both. And… good luck.
SESSION ENDS
DELETING LOGS
Date Point: 16y1w1d AV
The White House, Washington DC, USA, Earth
President Arthur Sartori
So much for taking a vacation.
AEC had developed an extraplanetary version of the defense Readiness Condition system to handle space-based military threats to the USA in particular and by extension the Earth as a whole. The SOLCON levels ran from the minimum alert status of SOLCON 6, in which the Sol system was believed to be completely secure and peaceful, up to SOLCON 1 – hostile presence in near-Earth orbits.
Now, Sartori was facing the difficult decision of whether to step down from SOLCON 2. And he was reluctant to do so.
Level 2 suspended all non-military jump traffic from, to, and across Earth, and raised the dozen or so inner-system defense shields that partitioned the solar system into a series of increasingly tight concentric zones around Earth.
The innermost of those shields was intended to protect the GPS satellites, and orbited only a few hundred kilometers above them. There were hundreds of satellites on highly elliptical orbits that were in danger of smashing into that shield once raised, and each one represented millions of dollars, never mind the disruption their loss would cause. Communications, weather monitoring, surveillance… Each one was valuable. Each one’s loss would do long-term damage.
Likewise, millions of dollars in suspended commerce between cities on Earth, not to mention contact with the Cimbrean colonies, were mounting up every hour and Sartori was burning through his limited supply of political goodwill with the Chinese and Russians fast over the lost contact with their colonies on Lucent.
In the twenty-four hours since they’d first gone on high alert, those costs had piled up considerably. Now it was time to decide whether it was worth incurring further costs.
The US Navy, the Royal Navy, the 96th, US Space Force and NASA were all thoroughly scouring the system looking for anything out of place, but as the director of NASA had reminded him: ‘finding anything in space that doesn’t want to be found is orders of magnitude more impossible than looking for a needle in a haystack.’
A Weaver carrying astronauts and specialists from Scotch Creek had inspected the Sol Containment Field emitter and found it undamaged and still operating as intended, at least so far as they could tell. Local spacetime distortions in and around Sol had spiked enormously at the moment the laser struck the field, but after that…
Nothing. Just background noise. All was quiet.
Sartori didn’t like it one bit. Nor did Kolbeinn, nor did the Joint Chiefs, the Secretary of defense, nor the Prime Ministers of Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Folctha.
“I hate to break out the cliché, but it’s too quiet,” Kolbeinn observed. They were poring over the latest return from a Firebird squadron that had slow-dragged themselves all the way around the Earth/Mars orbital gap, pinging their warp drives like a kind of future-tech sonar. Such a sweep would have illuminated absolutely everything that was generating a spacetime distortion… and it had found nothing.
“We’re about to make the same mistake the Domain did,” Sartori agreed, shaking his head. He kept staring at the report as though it might suddenly change and reveal the evidence he needed to stay locked down.
“We have… ten minutes until we owe China another comsat, Mister President.”
“…Anything from Scotch Creek?”
Kolbeinn shook his head. “Brigadier-General Bartlett says they’ll need weeks of supercomputer time to properly simulate the attack, and even then he’s not convinced their model of how system shields work is accurate.”
“And even if it is, it might show that the attack failed and that all this was a waste of time and resources,” Margaret White added. “If it does… China and Russia won’t be happy.”
“With all due respect, Ms. White, I could give a damn what China and Russia think,” Kolbeinn said.
“Unfortunately, the rest of us have to.”
Sartori groaned and ran both hands backwards over his scalp.
“…Right. Drop the shields. Keep us at high readiness, and… Chris, we need to go over our doomsday plans. I do not like this. We have Hierarchy in system again, you know it, I know it…”
Margaret nodded glumly. “But unless we can prove it…”
Sartori sighed and sat up straighter as a few of the slightly less senior officers in the room set to carrying out his orders. “…What matters is keeping the peace, and that depends on trade,” he said. “Hungry and desperate people are how the worst wars start.”
Kolbeinn made a ‘hmm’ noise and turned away to make a phone call. There was coffee available in the corner of the room, set there by an aide who absolutely deserved high recognition if only Sartori knew who they were, and he stood up to grab a cup.
It helped. It gave him a moment to stop focusing on the futile facts in front of him and instead turn his attention to what could be done.
Doomsday scenarios. Sartori was just old enough that ‘doomsday’ had once meant the Soviets finally losing it and launching their ICBMs. The legacy of that standoff was still with them: even after several space battles and despite Sartori’s status as easily the most prolific launcher of wartime nukes ever, the USA’s reserve of nuclear weapons was still deep enough to hit every major city on the planet a few dozen times over. Still enough to reduce Humanity from substantially more than eight billion souls, to barely eight million, if not less.
The full extent of the Hierarchy’s resources was unquestionably enough to make that arsenal look like the fireworks display at a high school ball game. But at least he could plan for it.
Start with what he knew. The Gaoians had gigaton-scale weapons, and considering how deeply infiltrated they had been prior to the war on Gao it was a certainty that the Hierarchy had that technology as well.
Even one of those was a catastrophe on a global scale. He’d asked for an estimate on what such a bomb would do if it went off in, say, Washington and been told flatly that they didn’t really know, beyond that most of the people who lived between the Atlantic coast and the Rockies would be killed.
That obviously hadn’t happened. Which meant that the Hierarchy either didn’t intend to do it, or hadn’t yet had the chance.
Assume the latter first. What could they do to make sure the chance never arose? Well, step one was to ensure they never got to Earth itself, so naturally that meant the Luna shield had to stay up indefinitely. But assume it was too late. What else could be done?
Sartori sagged and wished briefly for something a lot stronger than coffee. The truthful answer to that question was… nothing. Sure, there were wormhole suppressors, but Human technology couldn’t even begin to match the Gaoians there. The very best they had could cover a few hundred miles, maybe, and they drank power like a large town. If the Hierarchy was on Earth, they’d have no trouble at all finding a gap in the suppressor coverage and summoning whatever weapons or materiel they desired… There was nothing more to be done today.
So. May as well deal with the backlog of nonsense that had accumulated over the last twenty-four hours.
He turned around and returned to the Resolute desk, where he sat down and rubbed his forehead for a second. He was going to pay for all the hours of stress and work with a badly disrupted sleep schedule and plenty of fatigue in the near future. Better work while he still could.
“Alright,” he said. “Let’s get back to business as usual.”
…Whatever that meant now.
Date Point: 16y1w2d AV
Multi-Faith Center, Folctha, Cimbrean, the Far Reaches
Rachel “Ray” Wheeler
Ray had never been particularly religious. She still wasn’t, she supposed, though seeing how Holly Chase’s faith had got her through their shared experience on Hell had maybe softened her views a little. She’d stopped seeing faith as a crutch, and started seeing a font of strength at least.
When they’d first got back, Holly had spoken of taking vows and becoming a nun. That had been more than six months ago, and so far she hadn’t committed to taking vows or however it worked. Instead she’d become one of the Multi-Faith Center’s more dedicated volunteers. She didn’t have any formal responsibilities as far as Ray could tell, she just… kept the place clean and tidy, made hot drinks, kept up a steady supply of baked goods…
And listened to people.
It was a very healing kind of listening, too. Ray struggled to keep her cool when people tried to get her tangled in their personal problems. After all, what the hell was a bad day at work next to a decade in Hell? The temptation was always there to snap, to let them know how good they had it, to inform them that they hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface of just how evil life could get.
If Holly ever felt that temptation, she never acted on it. She just listened, and didn’t judge, and people walked away feeling better.
Ray had to admit: she seemed to have her life kinda-sorta figured out and on track now.
Ray had stayed on with MBG, on a zero-hour consultancy contract. Moses Byron had paid the whole crew compensation, negotiated out-of-court. Legally, MBG accepted no blame for what had happened to BGEV-03 Dauntless and her crew.
Privately… The unspoken motto among the architects of MBG’s spaceship program, not least of whom was Moses Byron himself, seemed to be “Do Better.”
She’d taken the compensation money, invested most of it, and bought a house in Folctha south of the river in the Delaney Row district on a cul-de-sac with the charming name of Apple Grove. It was a good start at putting her life back together, at least. Her own house, which she kept scrupulously neat. A job, sporadic and tentative though it was. After six months of rehabilitation under the attention of MBG’s fitness instructor Dane Brown, she was actually in great shape. Better shape even than when she’d left Earth, thanks to an alien surgeon who’d gone above and beyond when putting her back together.
She was doing better than most of her crew, anyway.
Cook was still in an institution, medicated and not allowed access to sharp objects or anything that could be turned into a rope. Jamie had sent a brief message at Christmas to wish her a merry one but was otherwise not in contact, and the last she’d heard of Spears had been a teary-eyed drunken video message recorded at the wrong end of the clock. He’d looked wild-haired and unshaven, with what might have been vomit on his shirt.
He was back on Earth, and hopefully not on a one-way slide into alcoholism and an early grave but… it was hard to tell. And Ray wasn’t sure she could face him, either.
But Holly? Holly seemed to have devoted herself wholly and completely, if a little desperately, to Doing Good. And she was making it work. She shared inspiring stories and vegetarian recipes on social media like she might drown if she didn’t, but other than that… she seemed to be mostly keeping her head above water.
And she was about the only person on the planet that Ray felt really able to relate to.
She’d met the crew of Misfit. Nice kids. Kinda terrifying, but nice. Allison in particular was a pineapple: covered in spikes, but sweet as anything on the inside. Xiù was almost the opposite of that: outwardly cute and friendly, but Ray could see cold sharp steel lurking in there, exposed by the scars.
It was a good thing she was so captivating, to be honest. Their partner Julian was…distracting. And friendly! And oblivious. But mostly distracting. Those three understood true hardship, but they hadn’t been to Hell. Nightmare, maybe, but not Hell. They were healed. They had each other.
She got on well with Dane, but that was a purely professional relationship founded on him doing his best to rebuild her neglected and malnourished body. He certainly couldn’t relate to what she’d been through.
The only people who could were… well, the only one available was Holly. So, Ray made a point of visiting her often.
She’d even tried meditating a few times. Apparently the Gaoian in the black robes who showed up at the Faith Center sometimes was some kind of bigwig, and Holly had talked her into taking one of his meditation classes. It had helped, but he’d done much more good for her with a mug of ovaltine and a joke.
But she’d come to like the Faith Center. It was peaceful, and she had a friend there.
A friend who always smiled to see her, and dropped whatever she’d been doing to trot over and give her a hug.
“Ray!”
Ray smiled and reminded herself that she could actually hug properly now. Holly’s own nutrition and exercise program had repaired a lot of the fragility that their exile had inflicted on her. Of the whole crew, she’d been most averse to the Hot—for which Ray didn’t blame her for a second—and had suffered the most from malnutrition as a result.
But she wasn’t made of porcelain any longer. Hell, her hug was firm enough to knock the wind out of the unprepared.
Ray returned it, and kissed her friend’s cheek. “You know, that hug never gets old.”
“Yeah-huh! You brought cookies, I see?”
Ray brandished the bag self-consciously. She’d taken up various creative hobbies as a kind of therapy, with baking coming in slightly behind oil painting and woodworking. She gave all her creations away as gifts, and the nice thing about baking was that she could make little gifts regularly, whereas the woodwork and paintings had to be saved for special occasions.
“White chocolate and raspberry,” she said.
Holly beamed and took the bag. Most of the cookies would wind up with the coffee and other hot drinks, over by the beanbags, armchairs and couches that were the Faith Center’s nexus. But she took one for herself and Ray congratulated herself on her expression when she took a bite.
“Mmm… How’s Thor?”
Ray had also adopted a kitten, a gorgeous fluffy Maine Coon who turned every stereotype about the aloof, disinterested cat upside-down and loved nothing more than to curl up and purr on her lap.
“He’s good. Settling in just fine. You were right about the cardboard box, though. Saved me a lot of money.”
“I told you!” Holly giggled, and guided Ray over toward the couches and bookshelves. She paused to wave at somebody who’d just come out of the Christian prayer room. “Hi Ava!”
Ray recognized the young woman immediately. It was hard not to, Ava Ríos was a prominent face on the news, being ESNN’s alien affairs correspondent. Everything to do with anyone non-human, be they Gaoians, the local ET residents in the Alien Quarter, or the far-flung politics of the Dominion, was inevitably reported by her.
She was taller in real life than on TV, and though her resting expression had been a little troubled she absolutely lit up and gave Holly a hug. “Holly! Sorry, I was miles away…”
“It’s alright. Are you okay?”
Ava sighed. “Just… I had a bad night last night. It’s okay.”
“Do you need to talk about it?”
Ava shook her head. “No, no…. We got a bunch of footage from Rvzrk yesterday. It kinda reminded me of…” She cleared her throat and then smiled apologetically at Ray. “You’ve got your friend here anyway.”
In addition to meat, Holly also eschewed swear words nowadays. That hadn’t stopped her from coming up with some remarkably virulent ways to use otherwise perfectly benign language when she was feeling annoyed with herself, however.
“Oh… puppies. Ava, this is Ray Wheeler. Ray, Ava Ríos.”
“Oh, wow!” Ava straightened up. “Uh… it’s nice to meet you. Holly’s told me a lot about you.”
“I bet,” Ray smiled, and they shook hands. “It’s nice to meet you too, I’m enjoying ‘Laid Bare.’ Especially Miss Patel’s.”
“Thank you!” Ava smiled, and allowed Holly to fuss her and Ray both over in the direction of drinks. She absently accepted one of Ray’s cookies as Holly bustled into action, and settled in on a couch. “At this rate it’s gonna become a regular feature of the magazine. I’ve got no shortage of models…”
“They’re good. I don’t think I’d want to model for one myself, but… reading them has helped me with what happened to us,” Ray gestured to Holly and herself.
Ava nodded solemnly. “She told me all about it.”
“Really?” Ray was genuinely surprised. “She’s… I didn’t know she’d spoken about it with anyone. I thought she was mostly trying to leave it in the past.”
With a light tilt of her head and looking away, Ava managed to convey something that wasn’t quite so crass as a shrug but carried pretty much the same sentiment: Whatever Holly’s reasons had been for opening up to her were Holly’s, not hers to comment on.
“I don’t want to drag it up if it makes you uncomfortable,” she said.
Ray shrugged. “I’m still here,” she said. “You’re more… discreet than I’d expected a journalist to be.”
Ava smiled, though Ray could see immediately she’d managed to be a little hurtful. “I’m not a journalist right now.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I get that a lot. I don’t know who started the meme of the headline-hungry journalist who never takes off the press badge, but I’d like to give them some strong words sometime.”
“It’s just a job, huh?”
“Yeah! I mean, I love my job. But you can’t spend your whole life stuck in one mode, can you?”
Ray nodded. That made a lot of sense.
Ava smiled, however, as Holly returned with the drinks. “Don’t get me wrong… Ava the journalist would absolutely love to interview you. When she’s on the job.”
“Hmm… thanks Holly.” Ray accepted a coffee, then nodded at Ava. “…I might go for it, so long as I get to keep my clothes on.”
“Sure. But I like to leave my work at the door when I’m here…” Ava finally sampled her cookie and then promptly took a second, much larger sample. Ray grinned as she watched her demolish it, pleased with her own handiwork. It was truly nice to see something she’d made be enjoyed with such undisguised pleasure.
“Like it?”
“Mm!” Ava swallowed. “You made them?” When Ray nodded that she had, she grinned. “Can I have another?”
Another was duly produced, and savored with a little more patience than the first.
“So is today a day off work, or…?” Ray asked.
Ava shook her head. “Oh, no. I work afternoons and evenings, and it’s a big one this evening. We’ve still got more fallout from Rvzrk to cover.” She pronounced the alien word fluently, if not accurately. “Some Members of the Thing are arguing that we’re not doing enough to send humanitarian aid. I’ve got an interview with some New Whig backbenchers this afternoon.”
“Sounds like… fun…?” Ray suggested. Holly giggled into her drink. Ava shrugged, finished hers and set it down.
“Not really, but, well, a job’s a job. It was lovely to meet you…” She dug in her purse and handed Ray a business card. “Just in case you were serious about that interview.”
Ray nodded, and watched her go, then turned back to Holly, who was giving her a curious look.
“…What?”
“Nothing,” Holly said. “You just surprised me when you said you’re game for an interview.”
“Have you read her articles? I trust her.”
“Still…”
Ray shrugged. “Maybe I surprised myself,” she confessed. She pocketed the business card and sat back to sip her drink. “Anyway… did you talk to that Nofl guy like I suggested?”
“Not yet…” Holly said. She sighed, and opened up into the kind of long-winded fretting that was her way of working through stuff, and Ray smiled as she sat back to listen.
Things were working out pretty good.
Date Point: 16y1w2d AV
High Mountain Fortress, the Northern Plains, Gao
Champion Thurrsto of Whitecrest
“They let us know about it, of course. Very promptly, in fact. The official messages came in on the same synchronization as the unofficial ones.”
The Great Father duck-nodded solemnly. Thurrsto was briefing him in his official office, a relatively humble affair if one ignored the wooden desk which was a collective gift from the leaders of several Human nations, and had come with an enormous matching chair.
To a Gaoian, such a large amount of wood was an enormous display of wealth. Humans didn’t quite have the same relationship with wood, but the craftsmanship still made it a lavish gesture of esteem.
“That’s good. Nice ‘ta be right.”
“My Father?”
“Vindicated, I mean. Some of my Champions fret maybe the Humans ain’t totally open with us,” Daar clarified.
Thurrsto twisted his head back and forth in a gesture that was neither duck-nod nor shrug, but a little of both. “They take the strategic alliance seriously, of that I’m in no doubt. But vindicated or not, the implications for Sol aren’t great. It’s possible that the Hierarchy failed in whatever they were doing, but we’d have to be fools to assume as much.”
“What’s our best guess what they were doin’?”
“Highmountain and Longear both think they were striking at the containment field in some way, trying to weaken it. It’s still standing, but they can’t rule out the possibility that it was momentarily disrupted. That opinion is shared by the Human researchers at Scotch Creek.”
Daar grumbled low in his chest and moved a tablet around listlessly with a claw. “…How much damage could a Hierarchy ship do if it got to Earth?”
“The worst case scenario is… apocalyptic. If it’s loaded with jump arrays and the means to make more…”
“It only needs one,” Daar sighed and shook out his thickening pelt. “We made gigaton-class warheads a hunnerd years ago, after all.”
“And the Hierarchy definitely have them,” Thurrsto duck-nodded grimly. Even if, by some miracle, the enemy hadn’t developed such technology for themselves, they’d been so heavily embedded in Gaoian civilization that they’d definitely have copied the plans.
“So I s’pose the only thing that matters is how much time they need.”
“If their objective was to deploy a gigaton weapon on Earth and they managed to reach Earth before the system lockdown, then it would already have detonated.”
“Yeah. That means… balls. Fuckin’ Keeda’s burnt balls. They can’t never drop the inner shields, can they?”
“They already had to drop the innermost ones, otherwise much of their satellite network would have been ruined and several key orbits would be permanently unavailable. The current inner shield now encompasses both Earth and its moon.”
“…Damn. Plenty’a hidin’ spots on a moon that big.” The Great Father seemed frustrated and, as was his way, slunk from behind his desk and padded over to his ‘thinking rock,’ which he kept on a cushion atop a sturdy side table.
“Yes,” Thurrsto agreed.
“…What happens if they deploy a gigaton device on Luna?”
“Earth gets a ring system instead of a moon. I couldn’t comment on what happens on the ground exactly, but it’d be… unpleasant, I imagine.”
Daar picked up the rock and hefted it between his paws, passing it back and forth as he spoke. “No shit. Prol’ly ought’a avoid that.”
“I have a suggestion,” Thurrsto ventured. “It’ll be expensive, but… not as much so as losing Earth.”
The rock twirled high in the air for a second before landing heavily in Daar’s paws. It was an interestingly shaped smooth thing he’d apparently dug up in a field one time, and shot through with quartz veins. Probably some ancient glacier had bowled and rolled it for thousands of miles in the ancient past, before depositing it in the bottom of a valley. Some of the cubs undergoing their first rites had decided to polish the thing to a high gloss as a birthday gift, which apparently involved a teensy bit of petty larceny to steal it away for a week.
He’d probably sniffed them out immediately of course…but said nothing for several days. Mischief was its own reward, sometimes.
“…Let’s hear it,” he said.