by Robert Reed
“Casualties, ninety-two percent. Swarm effectiveness diminished.”
“Escape wherever you can, however you can…”
“NOTICE: WITHIN THE LAST SHIPMENT OF PRISONERS WAS A CAMOUFLAGED FINGER OF ANTIMATTER. ALL PRISONERS MUST BE EXAMINED THOROUGHLY BEFORE EMBARKING—”
“Retreat again… with all available skimmers…!”
“They’re the Bleak, reborn! And this is our duty, and our honor, to chop them open and kill them slowly-!”
“Our last city… Wune’s Hearts… abandoned…”
“NOTICE: PASSENGERS ARE NOT SUBJECT TO THE SAME TREATMENT AS REMORAS. THEY MAY NOT BE SUMMARILY EXECUTED, REGARDLESS OF BEHAVIOR. CIVIL CODES WILL REMAIN IN EFFECT. ALWAYS. FROM THE OFFICE OF THE MASTER CAPTAIN—”
“I won’t tell you anything, Bleak! Ever!”
“They’re calling us the Bleak now. Whatever that is. I don’t know. Considering, maybe we should be insulted…”
“Press them! Run them!”
“I’m finished, and you promised.”
An EM crackle, then a solid whump.
“Good dreams, friend.”
“My swarm’s gone. No one else alive. My family, most of them, are in Happens River. Tell them—”
“All right you shits! I’m a Bleak. We’re all pretty fucking Bleak in here. Does that scare you? Does that make you want to drip your piss? Because we’re going to keep holding our positions, you fucks, and if you want to take us, you’ve got to follow your piss down into our hole-/”
“All engines secured!”
“Reactors, on-line!”
“Waywards, they keep coming… new units keep coming… there’s more Waywards than we’ve got stars…”
“Again, retreat. You know how!”
“PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT: FIGHTING SLOWS IN THE INSURRECTION’S LAST HOURS. THE SHIP’S TRAILING FACE IS SECURE. ESSENTIAL SHIP OPERATIONS HAVE NEVER BEEN IMPAIRED. PASSENGER DISTRICTS HAVE NEVER BEEN ENDANGERED. FOR YOUR SUPPORT AND YOUR BLESSINGS, THANK YOU. FROM THE OFFICE OF THE MASTER CAPTAIN—”
“So we’ve got some time. How about a slow screw?”
“Sounds nice.”
“Doesn’t it, now?”
Forty-five
One of the generals said it first, and said it badly.
“The Remoras are just about beaten,” he declared, standing over the latest strategic holomaps. When he realized that the Master had overheard his audacious words, he straightened his back and squared his shoulders, adding, “We’ve destroyed every one of their cities, imprisoned or killed most of them, and pushed their refugees out onto the ship’s bow. Without cover, and with only a fool’s hope left to them.” Then he said, “Madam,” with a minimal bow, smiling in the Master’s direction while his pale eyes kept careful track of Till.
A reprimand was in order.
Something blunt, and powerful, and lasting.
Miocene showed a narrow grin, and in a near whisper, she assured her officer, “There is nothing to celebrate here.”
“Of course, madam.” Again, the little bow. “I simply meant—”
She stopped him with a crisp wave of the hand, and said nothing.
Instead of the expected words, Miocene stared at each of her generals, and Till, then conspicuously looked at no one when she said, “When we first arrived here, I noticed a man. A human male standing outside the bridge, wearing nothing but a handwritten sign.”
Silence.
“The End Is Here,” she quoted.
The silence grew less sure of itself.
“I’m a busy person, but I still have time enough to ask simple questions.” She shook her head, telling everyone, “He was a fool, obviously. One of those poor souls whose focus narrows too much, who can’t work free of some consuming, pathetic idea. For the last six centuries, that fool wore his sign in public. Outside the Master’s station. Did you know that? Did you know that he painted those words on fresh parchment every morning, careful to never repeat the curl and color of any letter. Why that was important to him, I can’t say. Two days ago—the last time I left these quarters—I could have stopped for a moment and asked him those questions. I could have let him explain his passions to me. ‘What makes it so important, sir, that you’re willing to invest hundreds of years in what looks futile to a normal soul…?’ ”
Miocene sighed heavily, then admitted, “Even if I wanted, I couldn’t ask him any questions now. Nor could I help him, if that’s what I thought was best. Because he has vanished. More than two hundred thousand mornings of rising before dawn and painting his important pronouncement according to his difficult, choking logic… and for some reason, the fool couldn’t stand on his usual ground two mornings ago. Or yesterday morning. Or today, for that matter. I can’t see him through any of my security eyes. Quite simply, he has vanished. Now don’t you think that is odd?”
One of the Wayward generals—Blessing Gable—cleared her throat, squared her shoulders, and started to say, “Madam—”
“No. Shut up.” Miocene shook her head, then warned everyone, “I’m not interested in anyone’s reasons. Not for this or for that. And frankly, the fate of one odd soul is not particularly compelling to me. What sickens me is knowing that someone made assumptions, not asking simple questions first. What worries me is my own simple question: ‘What else are my arrogant, inexperienced generals forgetting to ask themselves and each other?’ ”
Till stepped forward. This staff meeting belonged to him. For sturdy and obvious reasons, Miocene had given her First Chair responsibility over the war. She had too many new duties of her own to embrace just now. Besides, these events were too large and much too savage to directly involve a Master. Better her son than her, yes. Not one nanogram of self-doubt gnawed at Miocene now.
“You’re right, madam,” Till allowed. Then he showed the generals how to bow, saying to the foot-worn marble floor, “It’s too soon to call anything won, madam. Victory comes at a terrible cost. And of course the Remoras may only be the first of our enemies.”
She said, “Yes. Yes. Exactly”
Because this wasn’t her meeting, she was free to leave it. A show of power was her only agenda, and she turned suddenly, strolling toward one of several hallways leading into the back of the Master’s mazelike apartment… telling her son on a private channel, nexus to nexus, “When you’re finished here, come see me…”
“Yes, madam,” said a crisp voice. While the voice on the private channel promised, “It won’t be long, Mother.”
Miocene thought to glance over her shoulder. But no, that would do little good. She knew from experience that she wouldn’t see unexpected emotions in those faces. Ask all the simple questions you want, she told herself. But don’t waste precious energy when you know that the answers, pleasing or bitter, will simply refuse to show themselves.
The apartment had always been familiar terrain, and a weaker person, infected with self-doubts, might have avoided these rather small, always comfortable, and purposely ordinary rooms. But the new Master had never considered living anywhere else. If she deserved the old Master’s chair, then why not the woman’s home? Indeed, after these first weeks, the hallways and alcoves, potted jungles and even the old expansive bed, made Miocene feel nothing but at ease.
Her bed already had an occupant.
“The meeting-?” he began.
“Everything is fine,” she replied. But to be certain, she linked herself to security eyes and ears, the constant bark and flutter of her generals interrupted by the quieter, more forceful growl of Till. After a moment of satisfied eavesdropping, she asked, “Is there progress?”
“Of a slow sort,” Virtue replied. “Yes.”
The Remoras knew how to damage the ship. It seemed that Wune’s professed love for this machine didn’t mean much, and they were attacking it with the same zest with which they fought her office and her authority. In an instant, Miocene consumed the latest damage reports and repair predictions, one of her nexuses failing to give her the data on h
er first try.
In a crisp, angry voice, Miocene said, “That problem’s surfacing again.”
“That’s what I warned you about,” he replied. Virtue regarded her with bright gray eyes, too big for his face and too open to hide anything. “What we’re doing to you… well, it’s never been done. Not to a human. Profound changes—”
“ ‘—in a profane amount of time.’ I remember what you, and everyone, has told me.” She shook her head regardless, then casually told her uniform to melt at the shoulders, the fabric collapsing onto the living rug, leaving her wide and deep and lovely body shining in the bedroom’s false sunshine.
She sat on the edge of her bed.
Virtue moved nearer, but it took him a moment to find the strength to touch her on the bare breast. Of course he didn’t like her new body, and of course she didn’t care. Nexuses needed room and energy, and her body had to increase proportionally to her responsibilities. Besides, Virtue’s timidity had a charm. A sweetness, even. She couldn’t help but smile, eyes dropping, watching those little fingers desperately caress the brown expanse of her left nipple.
“We don’t have time,” she reported. “My First Chair will be here soon.”
Virtue was thankful for that, but he had poise enough to make his hand linger for a moment longer, fingers feeling the nipple swell with blood and newer fluids.
When his hand vanished, she told her nightgown to dress her.
Afterward, speaking with a quiet concern, Virtue reported, “You look tired. Even more than usual, I think.”
“Don’t tell me to sleep.”
“I can’t tell myself to sleep,” was his reply.
Miocene began to smile again, her head turning and her mouth opening, a compliment phrased and ready to be uttered. “I wish you were as good with my nexuses as you are with my mood.” She fully intended to say those words, but an abrupt, unexpected urge became a coherent flash inside one of her working nexuses… and she hesitated after saying only, “I wish…”
Virtue waited, ready to smile when it was his turn.
She focused on something no one else could see.
After a long moment, her lover mustered the courage to ask, “What’s wrong?”
Miocene said, “Nothing.”
Then she rose from the bed, looking at her nightgown with a confused expression, as if she couldn’t remember asking for it.
Again, she said, “Nothing.”
Then Miocene told Virtue, “Wait here. Wait.” She took a step toward the room’s back wall, ordered her uniform to cover her body again, and for a third time, with barely a whisper’s force, she said, “Wait,” as a doorway appeared in what looked like polished red granite.
“But,” he sputtered, “where are you-?”
The door closed and sealed behind her.
That the Master’s apartment had secret places had been no surprise. As First Chair, Miocene realized that the complex layout of rooms and hallways left spaces for privacy, or avenues of escape. The only surprise was that these secret places were at least as ordinary as the public ones. They were blandly furnished, and more than not, without clear purpose. The largest of the hidden rooms had been improved already during her tenure, then filled with severed, slowly mummifying heads. It seemed an appropriate means of storing the disposed captains, cruelty and banality perfectly joined together. But the room behind her bedroom was much smaller, and no one, not Virtue or even Till, knew that it contained a hidden hatchway that the former Master had had installed during some recent attack of paranoia, the hatchway leading to an unregistered cap-car that had been built on-site, ready for this exact instant.
Once under way, Miocene made certain that no one was searching for her. And only then did she re-examine the message that had found its way to her on one of the oldest, most secret channels employed by captains.
“Here’s what I propose,” said the familiar voice, and the very familiar face, speaking to her from a holobooth inside a certain way-station deep in the ship.
A booth she already knew well, it turned out.
The woman smiled, her black hair short and downy, her features bright and smooth as if the flesh and nose and the rest of her had just been regrown. She smiled with a mixture of smug pleasure and vindictiveness, telling Miocene, “I know what the Great Ship is. And I really think you need to know, too.” Washen.
“Meet me,” said the dead woman. “And come alone.”
When she first saw the face and heard those unlikely words, Miocene had nearly muttered aloud, “I won’t meet you, and certainly not alone.”
But Washen had anticipated her stubbornness, shaking her head with a genuine disappointment, telling her, “Yes, you’ll meet me. You don’t have a choice.”
Miocene closed two of her eyes, letting her mind’s eye focus on the recorded message, on those deep, dark, and utterly relentless eyes.
“Meet me in the Grand Temple,” said Washen.
“In Hazz City,” she said.
“On Marrow,” she said.
Then she almost laughed, and looking at the Master’s imagined eyes, she asked, “Why are you afraid? Where in all of Creation could you possibly feel as safe, you crazy old bitch of bitches?”
Forty-six
A fleet of old skimmers and sleeks and retrofitted cap-cars fled across the endless hull, dressed to resemble the battered hyperfiber beneath, their engines masked and muted, and every vehicle surrounded by false cars—holo-echos designed to be obvious, hopefully looking dangerous or weak, the projections begging the Waywards to fire at them instead of tormenting phantoms that might or might not be.
Orleans was steering one of those phantoms.
An EM pulse had pushed its AI pilot into insanity, leaving him no choice. The same pulse had killed its main reactor, leaving them depending on an auxiliary that whispered to the driver. “I am sick. I need maintenance. Do not depend on me.”
The Remora ignored the complaints. Instead, he looked back at the passengers, a whisper-signal carrying his minimal question:
“How soon?”
“Ninety-two,” said a white-as-milk face.
Minutes, she meant. Ninety-two minutes, according to the latest projection. Which was too long, and what could be taking so much time…?
But he didn’t ask the question.
Instead, he spotted a Wayward dragonfly lifting up off the horizon behind them, trying to catch them. Too late, he whispered, “Target.” Two baby men in the back of his skimmer had seen the enemy, and they were aiming at the fly’s weakest centimeter. But their ad hoc laser needed too much time to charge up, and a burst of focused light swept away holoprojection—a column of purple-white light dancing along the hull with an eerie grace, searching for something to incinerate.
Too late, the boys cried out, “Charged. Fire-!”
But Orleans had jerked the wheel, spoiling their aim, and where they would have been was blistered with the raw energies, a trailing EM scream stunning everything electronic within a full kilometer. Every lifesuit seized up for a horrible instant. The skimmer’s controls obeyed imagined orders, ignoring real ones. With his private voice, Orleans cursed, and he regained control after everyone’s living juices had been jerked savagely by the gees, and he cursed again, sharing his feelings with the others. Again, a voice said, “Fire.”
Their weapon was tiny compared to the Wayward’s, but it had sighting elements ripped out of one of the ship’s main lasers—elements meant to find and strike dust motes at a fantastic range—and the soft narrow bolt reached up into the bright lavender sky, then reached inside the armored target, bringing it plunging down to the hull, where it belonged.
There was a little cheer.
Pure reflex.
A dozen new phantoms appeared beside them, but none looked convincing. Orleans saw that immediately, and he realized that their projectors were mangled now, failing fast, and he erased the phantoms before the Waywards noticed.
Better to depend on your own camouflage no
w. And if he could, catch up with the rest of the fleet, then get lost among their coundess phantoms and deceits.
That seemed possible, for a little while.
The woman behind him, eavesdropping on a secure channel, leaned forward and shoved him on a shoulder, his suit’s false neurons too fried to feel more than a slight pressure.But he appreciated the pressure, the touch. Orleans leaned back into it, and again, he asked, “How soon?”
“Forty,” she replied.
The sabotage teams were back on schedule. And in twenty-two minutes, they would be inside the bunker.
The woman almost spoke again, but her voice was interrupted by the complaining voice of the skimmer’s reactor. “I am failing utterly,” it declared. Then with a prickly pride, it told Orleans, “I will last another eleven minutes. I promise.”
He said, “Fuck,” to himself.
Then with a whisper, he told the others, “Sorry. No roof for us.” Then he asked, “Any ideas? Anyone?”
There was no sense of surprise. What Orleans saw in the faces and could practically taste in the ether was nothing but a weary disappointment that evaporated in another moment. Two weeks of war had done it. Emotions were as flattened and slick as new hyperfiber. Then because it was expected, the gunnery boys said, “We should turn around. Turn and charge the fuckers, and kill a few of them!
They wouldn’t kill anyone, except themselves.
Orleans turned in his seat, showing them his face. Hard radiations had blistered his flesh, leaving mutations and weird cancers that appeared as lumps and black blisters. Amber eyes dangled, and his tusks were misaligned. But his defiant mouth announced, “That’s not a choice.”
Dozens of faces closed a wide, splendid assortment of eyes—a sign of the purest Remoran respect.
