In fact, he had to wonder whether, if something didn’t kill her quickly, anything could kill her.
He hoped they’d never have to find out. Satisfied he’d patched up all the visible injuries, he kissed her forehead and stepped back. “Mesme, what do you know about the Machim’s plan? It’s time for details.”
Being aware of one hidden entrance to the Mosaic—the one in the Fylliot stellar system—the Directorate correctly assumes there are additional hidden entrances. Since they do not possess a way to locate them, however, their intent is for the fleet to traverse the Provision Network Gateway and destroy all spaces they find, save the Provision Enisles themselves.
“Really? Why not simply drop a massive bomb inside the Mosaic and call it a day?”
Several reasons. First, they perceive—again, correctly—that this course of action would risk leaving some unrevealed malfeasance to survive, and they strive to be thorough in their Eradications.
Second, they need the Provision Enisles’ production output. The service we provide is both unique and necessary, and for all its butchery, the Directorate can be pragmatic when pressured. Thus they will attempt to wrest oversight control of the Provision Enisles from us and enslave the Katasketousya required to continue the operation.
“Will they? Your colleagues—will they agree to run the Provision Enisles under the Directorate’s thumb?”
I believe so.
Right. Not brave. “What if they don’t? Can the Directorate keep the resources flowing?”
For a time, with diminished efficiency. Outside of collection and transport, the systems are largely self-sustaining. However, absent tending, eventually they will begin to fail. Admittedly, ‘eventually’ is measured in centuries if not millennia, so it is in the Directorate’s interest to preserve the Enisles for the present.
Alex started to pace around the cabin, but it soon morphed into limping, and she paused to brace against the couch wearing an annoyed scowl.
Caleb went over to her and grasped her gently by the shoulders. “Sit. Rest.”
“We don’t have time to rest.”
“You have time to rest your body. Sit while we plan. Give yourself what chance you can to recover.”
Her nose scrunched up in displeasure, but she limped around to perch on the edge of the couch cushion, then reached up and urged him down beside her. “What about you? You’ve been taking care of me, but you got dosed pretty heavily in there, didn’t you? Are you handling it okay?”
“Well…am I still glowing?”
“A little bit.”
“Right.” He squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. “The Inquisitor who interrogated me wielded more power than the one I killed on Seneca. A lot more—and I took it all. Later, I ran into a couple of Watchmen, and what diati they had leapt to me without effort.”
When he opened his eyes, he found her gazing at him in concern and reassurance, but not fear. Never fear. So he didn’t hide his own fear from her. “I feel like I’m in danger of bursting from the inside…like I can’t possibly contain all the power, much less control it. But I will. It’s already better than it was, so all I need is some time to adapt.”
She touched his cheek and smiled softly. “I believe you will. Let me know what I can do.”
He placed a kiss on her palm and nodded, and she nudged him away. “Now up with you. I’ll sit if I have to, but you strategize better when you pace.”
“Then I’ll pace for both us.” But he’d hardly made it around the couch when she dove in to the strategizing. It seemed she’d been thinking for both of them.
“All right. I’d assumed they were going to blow the Gateway. But if that’s not their plan…I think we can use this. Mesme, can you change the wave configuration to activate the portals?”
No. The TLF wave system is built into their structure.
“Shit. You can move them, though, can’t you? Not the main portal, but the ones that are hidden—you can move the location where they open into Amaranthe. The Mosaic, while absurdly complex, is also strictly ordered and symmetrical, but the portals don’t open at evenly spaced locations here. They open where they’re needed, or into empty sectors. So you can move them.”
It is feasible to do so, yes.
“How feasible?”
Perhaps if you shared your idea.
She made to stand, then presumably remembered she was supposed to be sitting and sank back down. But she was on a roll, and he was frankly grateful she insisted on taking the lead. As soon as he’d stopped touching her, the buzzing in his ears and trembling in his hands had reappeared, and he could not make them stop.
“Our first and highest goal is to keep the Machim fleet—or any Anaden vessel for that matter—out of the Mosaic.”
Given the size of the military force and the scope of the Machim—
“I know. We’ll get to that problem in a minute, but for now let’s assume we can stop them at the Provision Network Gateway today. We—or you, or other Kats—need to be able to get enough provision convoys through so people in Amaranthe don’t start starving. Also, people and ships from Aurora may need to be able to move back and forth.”
Caleb stopped his ineffectual pacing to stare at her, impressed. “You want to route ships through the other hidden portals, then move the portals after they’re used so the enemy won’t be able to track them down.”
She shrugged. “Well, Mesme? Will it work? Is this a remotely viable plan?”
Such actions will require a great deal of planning and careful effort, but within reason, yes. Do you imagine the Directorate will turn a blind eye to Provision vessels docking and delivering their loads while under an Eradication order?
“It’s not like Kats are piloting the vessels—they’re operated by shackled AIs. Plus, you said it yourself. They need the provisions. Anyway, we can worry about the finer points later. For the moment we just need to try to maintain the ability to do it. Priorities.
“Oh, and you’d better contact Lakhes, because somebody needs to move the Fylliot portal straightaway.”
She ran her hand through her hair, tugging it out of the haphazard knot she’d wound it into as she talked. “Now, about the cataclysm speeding headlong for the Mosaic, and how we can give my mother and AEGIS a fighting chance to defeat it.”
55
CENTAURI E
MILKY WAY SECTOR 22
* * *
CASMIR WATCHED FROM THE HANGAR OVERLOOK as the Igni missiles were loaded onto his Imperium and select battlecruisers. It was taking time, and his orders were to make haste. At this rate, it seemed the haste would have to be found elsewhere in the schedule.
The missiles consisted of two matter/antimatter cores surrounded by a shell of gas that, when subjected to an electromagnetic field, became highly ionized plasma. In order to guarantee the cores remained separated and the shell dormant until called into service, the procedure for loading and securing the missiles was rather more involved than simply rolling them into the ships’ weapons bays.
An unsettling tickle danced along his skin to forewarn him the promised Inquisitor approached. A second later a man in a midnight blue cloak over dark gunmetal tactical gear appeared beside him at the viewport.
Casmir gave him an aloof once-over. “You’re late.”
“I had to make a detour. Ziton elasson-Praesidis. Now, turn around, as we’re about to have an audience.”
“What—?” He pivoted just as representations of his Primor and the Praesidis Primor materialized in the room with them. He instinctively squared his posture. “Sirs. This is—”
“There’s no time for formalities, Casmir. Your mission is being modified slightly. You will be carrying one additional weapon into the Provision Network, to be used on one specific portal realm within.”
Praesidis jumped in then. “Ziton possesses the information needed to locate the correct portal.”
Casmir didn’t care for being the odd man out here, but Machims were not ones t
o throw petulant fits. “Are there special precautions I should institute with respect to this weapon?”
“So long as it remains safeguarded in the casing you will receive it in, the weapon will pose no threat to your fleet. A scientist, Dr. Fisik elasson-Erevna, will also accompany you to ensure its proper activation and delivery.”
He bristled at the thought of having two elassons on board his ship to ‘oversee’ matters, but he was more concerned about the increasingly bizarre turn the mission was taking. “Sir—sirs—what sort of weapon is this?”
There had been many names for this manner of weapon throughout history. Armageddon Machine. Ragnarok. The Final Solution. Doomsday Device.
The Directorate had elected to call this one the Tartarus Trigger.
It looked peaceful enough encased in a thirty-meter-long chrome cylinder, though the cage and braces surrounding the cylinder were a touch ominous.
“And this…device, what’s inside all this casing…creates a black hole?”
Fisik wore the perpetually condescending scowl of all elite scientists. “Not an ordinary black hole, Navarchos. The Tartarus creates a black hole that is not only self-sustaining but inflationary. If left unattended—if not countered—it will continue to grow in size.”
“For how long?”
“Forever. Or until it runs out of fuel, whichever comes first.”
Casmir was not a scientist, so it took him a few seconds to piece together the fact that the fuel was space and to run out meant….
If Fisik were a Machim, or anything less than an elasson, Casmir would wipe the smirk off his face in a most unpleasant manner—slowly, so the man suffered at some length before being allowed to die and be reborn.
But he did not indulge the desire. He had important orders from his Primor to execute on, and the timetable left no room for vengeful torture. “Dangerous weapon. I assume we do have a method for shutting it down?”
“We do. It is not an immaculate process, and there is, shall we say, slag. But, yes, we can halt the black hole’s growth.”
“Well, that’s a relief. How many of them have you made?”
“Only the one.”
“I see. Will you excuse me a moment?” Casmir looked around for the Inquisitor and urged him toward a secluded corner. “What is so special about this little petri dish the Katasketousya are experimenting in? What is so nefarious the Directorate is willing to deploy…” he glanced over his shoulder “…that to destroy it?”
Ziton stared at him coldly, but an Inquisitor’s stare was always cold. “I will tell you, because I’ve been authorized to do so, but first a word of caution. If we weren’t needed to carry out this mission, no one outside the Primors themselves would ever learn this information.”
“We both deal in secrets, Inquisitor. I know the rules.”
“You’ve been briefed on the reasons for the larger mission, correct? You know what the Katasketousya are doing in these secret portal spaces?”
“Of course.”
“In the portal the Tartarus Trigger is destined for, they recreated us.”
“I don’t—”
“They bred primitive Anadens and allowed them to evolve. They groomed them for war. Unable and unwilling to do the fighting themselves, they intend to use a bastardized knock-off of our ancestors as their weapons in a traitorous ploy to destroy the Directorate, the Primors and all of us.”
Casmir almost choked on the revulsion. Of all the vile, reprehensible tactics! If it were up to him, he’d fire the Tartarus into the Provision Network Gateway and bury the whole construct in darkness.
But this was why he was not Primor; the Directorate proved wiser and shrewder than he. The citizens required the food, goods and materials the Provision Network provided, and they should not be punished for the Katasketousya’s betrayal.
“You understand now, yes? The Igni missiles will sever the realms attached to the other portals from Amaranthe for eternity, but this abomination cannot be allowed to continue to exist. In any form. In any universe.”
Casmir nodded solemnly. “I understand. Let us see to it the device is loaded posthaste. I believe we should be on our way.”
56
ANARCH POST SATUS
LOCATION UNKNOWN
* * *
EREN AWOKE WITH FAR MORE sluggishness than usual. The transition was definitely getting worse. His consciousness had hardly had the chance to accept and settle into the last body properly before he was shoving it into a new one.
He was using regenesis too frequently; this much was becoming painfully obvious. The process had been designed to compensate for freak accidents and other untimely deaths, not three null outs in hardly a month.
Honestly, he was surprised to find he had a new body to inhabit so soon after the last one had been called into service—or had his essence been frozen in limbo until a new one was ready? How long? What had he missed?
Then he remembered he had a cybernetic clock, checked it, and dialed down the panic on seeing the gap was measured in hours, not years.
Regardless, he couldn’t worry about the ramifications of too many body swaps right now. It was necessary, dammit. And now he needed to shake off the lethargy and crawl out of this capsule and get to work. He believed his friends had escaped the Helix Retention facility, but in doing so they had surely set off a cosmic furor of epic proportions, one which stood a decent chance of shaking Amaranthe to its very core.
No way was he missing the show.
So he worked to force his eyes open, struggling against the compelling desire to sink back into restful sleep. The capsule felt softer than usual. And roomier. He started to attribute it to his addled state…but thanks to his frequent capsule visits he knew what they felt like, and this one felt different.
He wasn’t in the recovery ward at Post Alpha. He’d been returned to life somewhere else. Somewhere new.
That realization got his eyes to pop open quite spryly.
Instead of the usual Curative unit, he found a man hovering above the capsule. Dressed in a modest but well-appointed jacket over a silken shirt, the man’s irises were a raven black that hinted at indigo and even a brighter sapphire in the shifting light. His features were hard, guarded, yet somehow kind.
The cover retracted, and the man smiled at him. “Hello, Eren. I am Sator Danilo Nisi. You must tell me everything.”
57
KATOIKIA
TRIANGULUM GALAXY
LGG REGION VI
* * *
THE MACHIM FORMATION ECLIPSED Katoikia’s sun to cast a shadow across the world.
The warships wasted no time engaging in the formalities of warnings or pronouncements. They simply opened fire.
There would be no Cultivation Unit to follow behind and scavenge for resources—Katoikia was to serve both as an example and an as implicit threat—and the weapons cut through the land like rampaging tempests.
Hours earlier, the pronouncement had resounded across the cosmos for all to hear: the Katasketousya’s status as an Accepted Species was hereby revoked. And since there were only three categories, Accepted, Slave and Eradicated, it didn’t need to be stated what happened next—but the Directorate had stated it nonetheless. Members of the species were ‘kill on sight’ by anyone, anywhere, free of repercussions.
The reality that the sole way to kill a Katasketousya was to disable their stasis chamber meant the decree had little practical impact, but the psychological one was tragic in its significance.
Now the footage of this desecration of their homeworld would be blared across every feed, projection and marquee as a demonstration of the Directorate’s power and authority. A reminder to all to never cross it.
The disruptions in the crust from the powerful weapons soon generated earthquakes. The land split apart in ragged fissures; the towers crumbled and fell into the fissures to be swallowed up by the earth. Volcanoes erupted as magma surged upward from the planet’s mantle to bathe the land in lava. The oceans boiled and
tsunamis crashed forth to drown the lava.
In an hour Katoikia had been ravaged from pole to pole. Not a particle of soil remained undisturbed. Not a structure remained intact.
In time, its orbit would falter and it would either fall into its sun, drift away or break apart entirely. For now it hung brutally in the sky, beaten and broken.
Lakhes watched on from above, safely hidden inside a ship and behind shields and barriers, having left Mnemosyne to fulfill its own urgent mission.
It seemed as if aeons had slipped by, second by meticulous second—then abruptly time and events rushed headlong forward so rapidly everything appeared to happen at once. The hurricane could not be tamed, yet someone must attempt to do so.
Lakhes accepted its role as that individual. But first, a moment to linger here. As a witness, and a chronicler.
Had the Katasketousya once shed tears, when they were tied to their bodies and to the ground? Lakhes had lived longer than most, but it could not say. The soulful ache the scene evoked felt as if it were too much to bear without some release, some physical assertion of the sorrow.
Yet there was great relief to be found in the scene as well, for the towers had been empty. If lives had been lost, they numbered in the dozens, or possibly hundreds. But not millions.
Lakhes’ attention followed the warships as they withdrew from orbit and vanished. They had not stopped to check and confirm the towers were occupied before wreaking their destruction. Perhaps their arrogance led them to assume the Katasketousya were both helpless and uninformed, or to believe the notion of attempting to flee the Directorate’s wrath a ludicrous one.
Even so, given this was supposed to be an Eradication, they probably should have thought to do that.
MOSAIC
IDRYMA
Hyperion brooded through the halls of an ancillary wing of the Idryma. This had been Hyperion’s primary activity since being banned from Amaranthe, which was why Lakhes had no difficulty finding the Analystae.
Relativity: Aurora Resonant Book One (Aurora Rhapsody 7) Page 34
