Those poor bastards were dead anyway.
That was true enough – even the enhanced humans who comprised his force couldn’t survive being thrown into null-space without sealed armor and an actual exit point – but it didn’t change the fact that, despite all the deals he had made with those beings, they still regarded all flesh-and-blood sophonts as nothing more than food. Treaties between sheep and wolves had a way of turning out badly for the sheep.
Is this what I’ve done? Betrayed my country just so I can provide meals for those monsters, with my own soul to serve as dessert?
“It is a little late to regret your choices, Admiral.”
Kerensky was startled by the unexpected mental voice, and by the fact that his guarded thoughts had been somehow overheard despite all his precautions. He immediately recognized the mind touching his. It was the Prophet, except this was not the man the admiral had come to know and loathe. He didn’t think Dhukai was human at all.
The mental projection that regarded him with a contemptuous expression was still that of the slender and beak-nosed former fighter pilot, but there was something larger and alien behind it. Kerensky had an impression of something massive and deep, something like the embodiment of what one feels looking down a deep chasm. That vast entity lurked behind the Prophet’s human façade but couldn’t truly hide its terrible reality. The admiral wondered if the Prophet had enjoyed his fate. He strongly doubted it.
“What do you want?” Kerensky asked, doing his best to hide his sense of growing terror from the entity. He’d been avoiding Dhukai for the weeks preceding the aborted raid into Imperium space; the transformation must have happened during that time. He found it amazing that nobody had noticed it, though. Perhaps they hadn’t cared. He had noticed that the amount of deference the Prophet commanded had increased to the point where Kerensky sometimes felt like the XO of his fleet rather than its commander.
“You seem to be having a crisis of faith,” the thing wearing Dhukai’s face said. “I wish to help you.”
“Like you helped the Chauncey’s crew? Your friends turned on my people,” he replied, not quite daring to tell the entity that he knew who he was talking to. “Thousands of them. Dead. Worse than dead.”
“If we could have saved them, we would have, Nicholas. You have been excellent providers, and we would not waste such valuable allies.”
Despite already knowing the truth, the admission that Dhukai was no longer human chilled Kerensky to the bone. The thrill of fear came from the part of him that could still experience such feelings. He wasn’t fully human himself, not since he’d allowed another, lesser Warpling to commune with him. That link had given him power, but had also changed him. The rage he felt came from both sides of him, though: his Warpling-self wanted to challenge the Prophet, but didn’t quite dare.
“But once that ship broke apart, the humans inside were doomed. We did them a favor, taking their essence and making it our own. We learned a great deal from them. They live on within us. All the things that matter, their thoughts and deeds. They are within us.”
The Prophet’s mental image changed. Kerensky found himself facing a woman he recognized. Captain Helen Zimmer, commander of the Chauncey.
“Death is not the end, Admiral. It is merely a different state of being. I’m in a better place now. We all are. I think… I think this might be Heaven.”
Kerensky shuddered. One got used to speaking to the dead while in warp, but this was something else. Even worse than confronting this ghost was the certainty that she was spouting off nothing but lies. Zimmer and her crew might still exist in some fashion, but he was positive they weren’t experiencing anything heavenly. His telepathic senses had grown stronger, thanks to his personal Warpling, and he knew there was something beneath Zimmer’s pleasant words. Something like despair. Agony. No, she wasn’t in Heaven at all.
What have I done?
“You have changed the galaxy, my darling Nikolai,” the Prophet said. He transformed into Yelizaveta Sokolov, and Kerensky recoiled from the sight as if he’d been slapped in the face. “Thanks to you, humanity will rule the stars for ten thousand years.”
“Our defeat argues otherwise,” he said, and felt a brief moment of triumph when the Prophet’s smile became a scowl. He assumed Dhukai’s shape once again.
“A minor setback. And those new weapons can be turned against our enemies. We will show you how.”
“At what price?”
The Prophet’s grin returned. “Nothing is free, Nikolai Federov. Not on either side of the Divide. We will take our due, nothing more, and nothing less. We will raise you up and give you dominion over your enemies. And you will do the same for us.”
All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.
The Prophet heard the admiral’s thoughts and nodded in agreement.
Kerensky knew he was trapped. His course was set, and he couldn’t change it. He didn’t want to change it. Even after every betrayal from those entities and the knowledge they considered him nothing but a resource to exploit, he didn’t want to give up. In the end, destroying the Imperium and shattering the galaxy’s balance of power was all that mattered. Humanity might curse his name, but he would have exacted revenge on those who would destroy his people. Beyond a certain point, hatred became its own reward.
“You know what you need to do. To grant you this power, we will need a sacrifice of commensurate value.”
Kerensky glanced at the system display. At Sokolov-Four, the bright blue jewel of the system. The life-bearing planet and its five billion sophonts. People much like those on Earth before First Contact. He understood now. If he went along with this, he wouldn’t be just sacrificing those innocents. The last of his humanity would be gone as well.
He realized everybody aboard the Black Fleet was watching him. Fifty-five thousand three hundred and six minds. Perhaps a thousand of those begged him to stop, and the others turned on them so quickly they must have been expecting this very moment. Kerensky felt the dissenters die throughout the Black Ships, torn limb from limb by the true believers around them. The bridge crew had risen to their feet, and he knew he’d share the same fate if he denied the Prophet his due.
Death held no horrors for him. Fear had nothing to do with his final choice.
Kerensky nodded.
That was all it took.
Starbase Malta, Xanadu System, 168 AFC
“I wish I had better news,” the Puppy double agent said, following the words with a short whine that conveyed sincere regret.
Heather inclined her head in a Hrauwah gesture of acceptance that absolved the agent from any blame.
“The truth is the truth, however unpalatable,” she said. “Better to follow an unpleasant but real stench than be lured away from one’s prey.”
“Thank you for your insightful understanding, Sister-Hunter. This has been a somewhat harrowing situation. I never expected to find my loyalties tested to these extremes.”
Rolls-Onto-Leaves was a middle-aged Hrauwah with unremarkable features. A roughly humanoid, furry body, with a head that bore a passing resemblance to a light-beige Dachshund’s, except for a wider brain case. His shoulders were currently slumped in a sorrowful posture as he delivered his news.
“The High King has dismissed the Master at Arms and the Chamberlain. This has yet to be made public, but will be known within the next few weeks.”
Heather maintained her outwardly calm demeanor with some effort. If that was true – and she would be able to confirm the news soon enough – the Hrauwah Privy Council had been purged of its last pro-American elements. With the Assembly of Kings firmly in control of the ‘humans-be-damned’ faction, there was no hope for a positive outcome.
Rolls whined again before continuing:
“Once their replacements are appointed, the High King will address the Assembly and call for an end to all foreign adventures for the good of the Realm. This was told to me by my third cousin Silent-In-Anger, w
ho works in the Chamberlain’s Office.”
In the Kingdom, family ties were often more important than its formal hierarchy. Rolls’ status as a trader of middling worth and equally minor rank was belied by his access to dozens of highly-placed siblings, cousins, uncles and aunts. He could have easily parlayed those connections into a title of nobility or even a lesser kingship, but he preferred to work in the shadows, banking an impressive collection of favors and information for when he chose to retire in a century or two. Very fortunately for the US, Rolls was a fervent – one might even say rabid – ally. While growing up in the Hrauwah community on Old Earth, a human friend had saved his life. Heather didn’t know the full story, only that the incident had created a familial bond that transcended politics and species. Rolls-In-Leaves was a friend, a trustworthy one.
Heather had gone through a great deal of trouble to arrange a private meeting aboard one of transshipment stations orbiting Starbase Malta. This information was ears-only, knowledge that had not been recorded by any device and was stored only inside Rolls’ head, safe from monitoring.
At least, until t-wave implants become commonplace, although that is growing increasingly unlikely. Telepathy had turned out to be both harder and more laden with side effects than anybody had expected.
“My cousin was able to skim through the tentative proposals,” Rolls went on. “They include a full trade embargo against the US and the Pan-Asians, the withdrawal of all volunteer forces in human space, and travel restrictions into Hrauwah space, as well as the tightening of residency requirements within the Kingdom.”
At the start of the conflict, there had been some fifteen million humans living in the Kingdom: spacers, traders and their families, students, and tourists. The new policies would likely result in their expulsion. Not a severe problem in itself, but just another sign that the times were changing. Humans had always been welcome at the Doghouse. The loss of military support had been expected ever since Grace-Under-Pressure’s flotilla had gone home bearing news of Kerensky’s mutiny. The trade embargo just added one extra fly on the ointment.
“How long?” she asked the agent.
“Humans still have friends, even if they no longer stand in the Privy Council. The Assembly of Kings will hold debates before approving the High King’s decision, causing some delay. My personal estimate is that four to six months will elapse before the embargo is enacted. Current contracts will be honored until that time, but no Trading Guild will accept new ones.”
That is just wonderful. For the first time in its history, the US was flush with hard currency, but it was having trouble finding sellers willing to do business with any human organization. The Puppies had been America’s largest trading partner. This embargo would hurt.
We still control a major trade nexus, though. Traffic through Xanadu System was down, but it was still three times heavier than anywhere else in the US; too many Starfarers depended on those warp lines to abandon them completely, which meant that they couldn’t stop trading with humans, much as they wanted to. The Puppies would pay a stiff financial price for their decision: a good fifteen percent of their trade passed through Xanadu, and using alternate routes would be fairly expensive.
A lot could happen in four to six months, too. The Puppies might find themselves forced to reverse course before they could implement their new policies. If the Galactic Imperium threw in the towel, for example. Second-hand reports of Third Fleet’s victories were trickling in, shared by passing neutral ships. The Gimps claimed the American force had suffered ‘devastating losses,’ but the battles where those losses occurred kept happening deeper and deeper into Imperium space. Maybe the Puppies wouldn’t have time to do something that would taint their relationship with humanity. She fervently hoped so.
“Thank you, Rolls-Onto-Leaves,” she said formally.
A couple of hours later, she was back in Malta, just in time to get another info package from a different source, this time from a passing Biryam freighter. The Butterfly ships had brought news from Lhan Arkh space. It appeared that the Lampreys’ new allies had turned on them.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of guys.
The aftermath of the Battle of CD-5 had been as disastrous for the Lampreys as if Third Fleet had proceeded further into Congressional territory and blasted all their major worlds into cinders. The Circle – a.k.a. the Jellies – had begun attacking Lamprey worlds. Considering the Lhan Arkh’s penchant for treachery, the war might have been their fault, although the Jellies themselves didn’t sound like the most trustworthy species, either. Whatever the cause, a new war was breaking out, and for once it was happening nowhere near American space.
The was good news, at least for the short term. The Lampreys were reeling and unable to carry on their attack on humanity, and having an invasion force to deal with would remove them from the threat board for a good while. The only problem was, if the Jellies won, their new borders would bump against the US, and nobody knew their capabilities or intentions.
Something to worry about down the line, perhaps, but her current concerns were a lot more immediate. Heather spared a few more moments wishing good luck on the men and women of Third Fleet. One man in particular, of course. But they would all need it.
She went back to work.
Imperial Star Province Kezz, 169 AFC
I’m dreaming.
Russell usually didn’t remember his dreams. Probably just was well; there was enough bad shit bouncing around the inside of his head to drive most people crazy, and he saw enough of that during warp transits. He figured whatever ran through his mind while he slept wasn’t the sort of thing that brought joy to one’s life.
This was different, though. He knew he was dreaming, for one. And he remembered the place he was dreaming about very well, and in a good way. He was standing outside the witch’s house on Parthenon-Three. That was where he’d met Deborah, not that he’d gotten her name that night. It’d been one of the weirdest times of his life, but also among the best. If he could pick a time to dream about, this would be it.
The front door swung open. Russell smiled and stepped in.
She was there, wearing the plush bathrobe she’d had on, her hair tightly wound up in a bun. Back then, he’d found her unsettling. Now all he felt was a rush of heat like some alien fever.
“Good evening,” she said. Her smile was softer than it’d been then.
“Evening, ma’am.”
“Are you here for a reading, or just some screwing?”
His grin got bigger. That hadn’t been in the original script.
“Yes, ma’am. We were told you did that sort of thing.”
The asshole bartender who’d steered Russell and Gonzo that way had been trying to teach the two horny Marines a lesson. If things had gone off differently, he and his buddy would have landed in a heap of trouble. Luckily it hadn’t worked out that way.
“I could tell,” Deborah said, getting to her feet. The robe slid down, and this time she was wearing nothing beneath. “The bartender was also hoping you might teach me a lesson. It was a mean, petty thing to do, telling two dangerous strangers that the local fortuneteller was a prostitute on the side.”
“Deborah?”
This had to be a dream, but it felt too real.
“More than a dream, but less than real,” she said, in that witchy way that both pissed him off and turned him on. “I saw both of us were sharing the same down time for a change, and decided to visit you.”
They were on two different ships, and nobody was going to allow a Navy officer to grab a shuttle and pay a call to an enlisted jarhead, not in this universe. But she was a witch. She’d helped spot over a thousand stealth fighters, if half the stories he’d heard were true. A dream visit wouldn’t make it to her top twenty on her miracle list. Maybe not even the top fifty.
“Are you going to gape in wonder all night, Marine?”
“No, ma’am, I’m not.”
They lunged at each other.
They talked shop at first. He told her about Grampa and Gonzo. She told him about her squadron. There was something she wasn’t telling him about, and it hung between them for a bit. He knew she’d done some crazy impossible shit, and that along the way she’d seen something big. Something that had changed her. She was setting that aside and being her old self with him, though, and it wasn’t bullshit. That part of her was still there, and he didn’t care what the other stuff was.
Being in that house with her, even knowing it was a dream, it felt like being home, and that was the weirdest thing of all. He’d never had a home before the Corps. Not growing up in the Zoo, where he’d been a street rat living in some abandoned property or another until a bigger gang or the cops threw him out. Home had been wherever he got sent, or back to New Parris when he wasn’t on deployment. He’d figured that after he put his fifty years in, he’d finally settle down somewhere. And now he knew who he wanted to settle down with.
“Listen,” he began to say.
“I know. Me too.”
Best thing about being with a witch was, she knew what he meant.
“But let’s wait until after, okay?”
It was sensible. They needed to survive this cruise before they could start thinking about the future. And something about her tone made him think she wasn’t sure there would be an after.
“It’s going to be bad, isn’t it?”
She nodded, and the way she held him, tightly and shuddering, scared him more than anything ever had.
“That bad, uh?”
“Afraid so, Marine. It’s going to go hard on all of us.”
Warp Marine Corps- The Complete Series Page 142
