“Yes. Atu is most likely a NSS itself, but one that only knows what the Pathfinder alien whose mind it copied knew and thought. I have this theory, Admiral; it’s kind of crazy, so I’ve only discussed it with a few friends.”
“I would like to hear it, Colonel.”
“Well, I think Warplings, er…”
“You can call them Warplings, Foos or pink elephants for all I care, Zhang. Carry on.”
“Yes, ma’am. Warplings are sort of funhouse mirror images of any sophonts who enter warp space. It’s like they only become sentient or sapient by copying our minds, or what is in our minds. These copies, or downloads or what have you, most often disappear when the original mind leaves, but a few of them, the more powerful ones, they sort of grow up, and run with it, with the thoughts or ideas they picked up. If they are gods or demons, they are something we, every Starfarer that is, something we created. Do you see what I mean?”
“I think I do. A number of experts have come up with similar hypotheses.”
“So, for example, Atu thinks it’s a Pathfinder, and for all intents and purposes, it is a Pathfinder, so it only has the dead alien’s memories.”
Zhang paused and looked at that spot over Sondra’s shoulder, and the admiral realized that must be where the invisible friend was standing. She had to fight an urge to look around.
“Anyway, Atu tells me I’m not exactly right, but I like the idea. It means there are no ancient evil monsters living in the Starless Path, plotting to cross over and devour the galaxy, see? It’s just errant thoughts given life somehow. Our dreams made flesh, if you will.”
“And our nightmares.”
“Those too. Doesn’t say much about us, intelligent life in general, does it?”
“Your theory might explain why they prey on sophonts, too. They may derive more strength or power the more minds they copy, download or absorb.”
“Yes. Except it’s also a matter of taste. They, or some of them, they enjoy the feeling of absorbing a life. Of taking a life. Enjoy enough to become addicted to it. Sort of like a vampire.”
Of all the things Sondra had expected to hear in her Navy career, hearing the word ‘vampire’ used for something other than an enemy missile had never made the list.
If it’s crazy but it fits the available data, then it might just not be crazy after all.
“In any case, it appears not all of them are addicted to killing,” she said.
“That is correct, ma’am. You might say some ‘good thoughts’ have also taken form inside the Path. I think that was the so-called ‘angel’ that contacted Commander Genovisi. I think they might derive some strength from our prayers, as a matter of fact. Unfortunately, most Starfarers are staunchly atheistic, so prayers aren’t exactly common in null-space.”
“We are the glaring exception.”
“Yes. Last poll I read, it was like fifty-seven percent of Americans considered themselves to be ‘somewhat, very, or strongly religious.’ Very unusual among starfaring civilizations.”
And most likely only because the great secular bastions of pre-Contact America – the major cities, in other words – also happened to be the primary targets of the Snakes’ thermal bombs, Sondra thought. I don’t know if that counts as some cosmic irony, evidence of a deity with a twisted sense of humor, or both.
“A lot of ‘good Warplings’ seem to have adopted religious, and particularly Christian forms. There are friendly ghosts, angels, saints and the like. There’s always been stories about spacers being visited by Saint Patrick and what have you, and maybe there’s a Warpling out there who thinks it is Saint Patrick.”
“This is going to open numerous cans of worms,” Sondra commented. “Numerous giant cans.”
“Yes, ma’am, which is one reason I’ve kept it mostly to myself. Plus I could be wrong. Maybe warp space is where Heaven and Hell and Great Cthulhu and the Great Pumpkin live. Above my pay grade.”
“Above my pay grade as well. Go on.”
“Of course, ma’am. From the looks of it, the Kraxan civilization did a number on warp space. If my theory is right, their twisted minds created a host of malevolent entities, which they fed with billions of sophont sacrifices. Or maybe the entities already existed and they became stronger. Either way, those evil things are still out there, and when they get the chance they feed on people.”
“I wonder why it doesn’t happen more often.”
“There is an element of choice involved, ma’am. It’s sort of like the old vampire legends, the whole bit about you having to invite them in before they can come into your house. It looks like they can’t just kick the door down and eat your soul. You have to let them in. Or someone from our side has to do it for you.”
Zhang paused to let Sondra digest that bit. It all made a perverse sort of sense. It might even explain why suicide warp runs almost never worked; the hopeless, those already expecting to die, had in effect given up and given Warplings permission to devour them. She shuddered.
“What is worse is that some Warplings can cross over. They can possess people, much like demons are supposed to. I’ve seen that happen twice, the first time during training. It was pretty bad.”
“Yes, I’ve seen the footage of that and other incidents, and yes, it was all pretty damn bad.”
“And some can actually manifest here. Physically. Like the Flayer at Redoubt-Five. You don’t know how close we came to letting it loose on the galaxy. That thing blew up one planet and slaughtered every sophont in another. Once it was on this side, it didn’t need permission to do whatever it wanted. If Atu hadn’t opened a portal to send it back… Well, I wouldn’t be around to see what happened, but nobody would have liked that.”
First vampires, now demons, now monsters than can shatter planets. I’m going to need anti-psychotics after this interview is over.
“You’d think the Elders of the galaxy would frown upon this sort of thing,” she said instead. If they were going to talk about myths, might as well bring them in, since the Elders were something everyone believed in, mostly because they occasionally provided incontrovertible evidence of their existence.
“They do. After ‘reading’ a lot of Kraxan history – reliving it is a lot closer to what she does – Heather, er, Field Agent McClintock thinks that the Elders were involved in the Marauders’ downfall. At the very least, they put their finger on the scale at certain crucial moments. At some point, they decided that Kraxan and all its people needed to go away. And if we don’t stop Kerensky, they may feel the same way about us.”
I’m having a hard time thinking of a happy ending – any kind of ending that can’t be summarized with ‘and everyone died’ – for this story, Sondra thought. Except this isn’t a story, this is history in the making.
“The reason I sent my recommendations is that Commander Genovisi had a premonition indicating that time is running short. She believes Kerensky is going to initiate his attack on the Imperium soon, along with its NSS allies. Psychic visions don’t exactly provide timetables, ma’am, but her sense is that in a matter of months, things will escalate.”
“You are aware of the political considerations involved,” Sondra said.
“Yes, ma’am. Leaving the Lampreys alone isn’t an option. Not after the Days of Infamy.”
“This is what I’m going to do, Colonel. I’m going to split the difference and hope it’s enough. I’m going to sail Third Fleet into Lhan Arkh space, towards the nearest major system – that would be the Fifth Congressional District, to be specific – and depopulate it. Along the way, we will engage and destroy any Lamprey naval assets we encounter. I expect they will send everything they’ve got in the sector to protect CD-5. Once that is done, Third Fleet will return to Xanadu, conduct a quick rest and refit, and enter Imperium territory. I anticipate concluding the first phase of the campaign in no more than five weeks.
“I realize that’s nowhere near Paulus System,” Sondra went on. “But I figure we won’t have to go to Paulus, will we?
”
“No, ma’am. Wherever Kerensky has hidden himself, sooner or later he’s going to fulfill his threat and head towards the Imperium capital system. Primus System.”
“So we’ll either get there first and secure the surrender of the Imperium, or head Kerensky off somewhere in between. Either the Gimps geek and let us through, or they’ll be caught between Third Fleet and the Black Ships. Hopefully they’ll geek before Kerensky’s renegades sacrifice too many sophonts to their dark gods or embodied bad thoughts or whatever you want to call them.”
“That’s… that’s a tall order, ma’am.”
Sondra smiled at the understatement. Third Fleet would be operating largely on its own during the second phase of the operation, a long way from resupply, with a smaller force than had been considered enough for the job, and no guarantees they’d arrive to their objective in time to prevent an unthinkable disaster she’d been convinced was not only possible but highly likely. And first she had to beat the Lampreys and throw billions of them into the flames to appease the American people.
She wondered what would happen if the government put all its cards on the table and announced that a renegade American admiral was consorting with demons and plotting to sacrifice billions of aliens to them, likely precipitating Armageddon. Homeland Security’s estimate was that half of the voting public wouldn’t believe it, and the other half would probably believe it strongly enough to start rioting or going on Crusade their own damn selves. Even if they were wrong about the American people – Sondra wanted to believe they were – should the other Starfarers learn what was going on, they’d all jump on the Imperium’s side, Puppies included. No, getting humanity’s house in order had to be done in secret, at least until the job was done.
“Any comments?”
“I think that’s the best course of action under the circumstances, ma’am. I don’t know if it’s going to be a successful course of action, though.”
“Nobody ever knows until it is over, Colonel, and often not even then. Wars are chancy things.”
“Then I guess we’ll just have to roll the dice and see what happens, ma’am.”
“That we will. Dismissed.”
* * *
Coming aboard the USS James N. Mattis felt like returning home in some ways. A home that had undergone a great deal of remodeling.
Like every company and field-grade officer in the 101st Marine Expeditionary Unit, Fromm had been given a virtual tour of the changes the budding shipyards of Malta had made on the assault ship that would be ferrying some fourteen hundred Marines into harm’s way. There were a few new systems aboard that would make life even more interesting than usual, which was saying a lot. None of those modifications altered the living quarters, of course: they remained as cramped and uncomfortable as ever. Some of the ship’s volume had been sacrificed to add an extra power plant. The loss of space had primarily affected cargo areas and their assault shuttle complement: the Mattis and the other Commandant B-class ships in Third Fleet would have to make do with only twenty-eight instead of thirty-two combat-rated landers, and twelve cargo shuttles, down from the original sixteen.
That would ordinarily mean that putting the entire expeditionary unit on a planet’s surface would take three trips instead of the usual two, and the total number for ground forces on the first wave – usually two companies plus motorized and armor support – would be cut significantly; they’d probably not get full ground transport, or have to forgo some armor. Except things weren’t ordinary: the initial landing force would now warp onto the target, along with much of its equipment. All thanks to the new tech – actually the ancient tech – the USS Humboldt had unearthed in Redoubt-Five.
Heather had generated most of that intelligence, taking the knowledge contained in the t-wave data storage units they’d taken from the ruins of a lost Kraxan city and transcribing them into something standard systems could ‘read.’ A lot of that work had been done while the Humboldt spent two months navigating between warp lines, and had consumed most of her waking hours. Her efforts had paid off, provided the new systems worked as per specs, and that there were no unintended consequences. Practice runs had been positive, but no new or rediscovered tech showed its hidden flaws until it was battle-tested. Combat always provided new ways to make your gadgets fail, usually at the worst possible moment.
Fromm entered his cabin – as a company CO, he rated a single compartment; everybody else, including his platoon officers, had to bunk up – and went over the last Tactical Exercises Without Troops he and the rest of the leaders of the 101st had run through. The results had been satisfactory to Colonel Brighton, but not to Fromm. He was still being too cautious. His XO had helped pick up the slack, but that wasn’t Lieutenant Hansen’s job, and wouldn’t be until he was wearing an extra silver bar.
Even knowing it was a simulation, Fromm had hesitated to put his people in situations where he knew casualties were inevitable. Eventually, he did it, but those few seconds spent looking for alternatives started adding up after a while. Making decisions quickly was more important than finding the perfect solution for a given problem; the enemy wasn’t going to wait for you. Indecision was likely to produce more losses than getting things done quickly. He knew all of this, but the moments of hesitation and second-guessing were still happening. The cruise aboard the Humboldt hadn’t settled anything beyond revealing a death wish to add to his other issues.
Fromm would have to keep studying his mistakes and learn not to repeat them. They were going after the Lampreys, and they were nasty, tricky bastards. And they’d be on the defensive, which meant the Marines would need close to a three-to-one local advantage in numbers to overwhelm dug-in positions. And that meant taking losses; there was no way around that. The last TEWT had resulted in three percent casualties for his company, half of them fatalities. And everything had gone right, despite his moments of hesitation. Overall casualties had been closer to four percent. Bravo Company had led the assault, and its losses had been closer to six percent. If things had gone wrong, casualties would have likely doubled or tripled. If they’d gone completely FUBAR, of course, those numbers could have risen to a hundred percent.
Of the dozen or so civilizations the US had fought since it’d joined the community of Starfarers, only about half had followed such quaint customs as accepting surrenders or keeping POWs alive for any length of time, and even among those the occasional massacre wasn’t unknown. An alien military attaché, back when Fromm had been a butter bar, had once read the Geneva Convention and burst out laughing. Giving up a military advantage for the sake of compassion or even in the hopes that one’s own troops would be treated in kind was seen as amusing at best, and downright stupid or suicidal at worst. If an American unit was cut off and overwhelmed, its personnel would be lucky to be killed out of hand instead of tortured to death.
Fromm had the imp replay a critical moment in the simulation, when a spoiling attack against an enemy relief column had nearly led to his company being encircled and exterminated. Poor intelligence had led to that, and his reluctance to risk his scouting elements had been at fault. He made himself watch the whole thing.
The simulation’s sensory inputs were as close to the real thing as their designers could make it. The Corps removed the normal sensory dampers that civilian VR simulations had implemented for safety and comfort purposes: a hit with a virtual laser in a combat simulator would send pain signals to the brain that would feel as agonizing as the real thing. They also stimulated heart and breathing rates to replicate the effects of adrenaline and strenuous physical action on one’s body and mind. About the only things they never seemed to get quite right were smell and taste, which was just as well. Everybody was all too familiar with the way you stank after a few days running around in combat armor, nanite cleaners or not.
He watched again as a squad from First Platoon lost three men in as many seconds when one of the Lamprey ‘transports’ turned out to be a heavily-shielded tank destroyer. Only
luck and Lieutenant Hansen’s foresight in placing an assault team nearby had kept those three deaths from becoming ten or fifteen. Watching the all-too-familiar status icons going from green to black hit him almost as hard as the real thing.
Before he went to sleep, Fromm played through the scenario one more time. If he did it enough times, maybe he’d learn whatever he’d forgotten somewhere along the way.
Four
Lhan Arkh Ninety-Seventh Congressional District, AFC 168
Emergence.
Charlie Company’s assault element – ninety-six Marines armed to the teeth – came out of warp ready to fight, catching the Lampreys by complete surprise.
The new meds had worked like a charm. Fromm felt none of the disorientation a warp drop normally hit him with. Thanks to the new chemical concoction, all his Marines were drop-rated now, instead of the normal thirty to fifty percent expected from line units. Everyone he could see was on the move and apparently unaffected. So far, so good.
Fromm’s view was obstructed by a rocky outcrop standing between his force and its objective, but he could watch what was happening through the drones First Sergeant Goldberg had just released, as well as the eyes of the infantrymen scrambling up the steep slope towards the firing positions their pre-mission briefing had marked for them. Behind them, the assaultmen from Charlie-Three volley-fired their missile launchers over the obstacle. A few seconds later, the mortar section began to rain bomblets on the target, guided by the swarm of micro-drones that mindlessly exposed their robotic bodies to enemy fire for the privilege of finding targets for their makers.
Warp Marine Corps- The Complete Series Page 130
