Guardian of Night

by Tony Daniel

  Ricimer turned to Frazil. “What is going on? Was one of these officers in contact with the crew on the way over here?”

  “No, Captain, not to my knowledge,” Frazil answered back. He looked frightened. Good.

  “I’m going to get to the bottom of this. Leave that port open, Frazil,” Ricimer said. “We may have more to send over.”

  “Aye, Captain!”

  Ricimer cut the video feed and turned to Talid on the bridge beside him.

  “What have we got, XO?”

  “One of the officers was out and made a circuit of the vessel before returning to quarters. He wiped his trace from primary records, but we pulled it up on a secondary log.”

  “Where was—never mind,” Ricimer said. “It’s a false liaison, isn’t it, Talid?”

  “Seems so, Captain.”

  The dirty little secret of the Sporata. Officers could and did have sex with rates while those crew members were under the control of Governess. There was a backdoor into the program that allowed the computer monitoring to overlook such transgressions—

  Or call them what they are, Ricimer thought: rapes.

  —a backdoor that Sporata technology division was always planning to close but somehow never got around to. The excuse was that the crew members usually had no idea what was happening. Governess kept them believing that they were sleeping or at some other minor duty and usually supplied them with a pleasant daydream while the liaison was going on to explain away their elevated bodily reactions: the intense tingle in the hands for females, the uncoiling of the corkscrew-shaped positor in males. Both sexes of officers engaged in the liaisons, with the females choosing a multitude of partners and the males usually sticking to one crew member they had their eye on.

  It was true that most crew members didn’t remember a liaison. Except, that is, when females suddenly turned up pregnant while on shore leave. Or males must explain where they acquired a venereal disease to an incredulous lover or mate. Everyone knew it went on, and on which vessels it was out of control. Ricimer had always run a tight vessel in that regard and kept his officers on the straight and narrow as much as possible, but only the computer could be everywhere at once—and the computer was programmed not to care.

  “Who was the officer?” Ricimer asked.

  “Ensign Bronin, sir,” said Talid.

  “Female. Damn. Multiple partners.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How much of the craft has been compromised?”

  “That’s just it, sir. She took the main accessway. Governess was ignoring her excursion. So all of it.”

  “Most unfortunate.”

  Another spraying, flashing alarm. “Alert. Point five ppm churn compromise. Vessel contaminated. Repeat: vessel contaminated. Strain isolated as MGC-250575. Melt-away risk imminent!”

  The automated systems had made the announcement. Now it was up to him to make the decision.

  Ricimer did not hesitate. With a tap on the small COM control patch on his uniform sleeve, he switched to a craft-wide channel.

  “Abandon vessel,” he said. “All hands, abandon vessel. Crew first. Officer assist with head counts. All report to Cargo B. Do it now!”

  He deactivated the communications channel and turned to Talid.

  “Over five hundred people, Captain,” she said. “Are we absolutely sure the Colonizer can handle that many?”

  He’d examined the specs of the Colonizer and well knew she was capable of taking on his crew and the “infected” officers. But Talid hadn’t been in on that stage of the planning. Compartmentalize and survive—the motto of all covert operations.

  “It will be crowded,” Ricimer said, “but they’ll manage. We’ll set a rescue beacon to activate as soon as the Guardian of Night is well clear. They shouldn’t have to wait out here too long.”

  The evacuation took an atentia, about one and a half human hours. The crew, suddenly released from their links to the computer, were dazed and in a near-dreamlike state. Ricimer had counted on this. They followed their officers’ orders as would a herd animal its shepherd. There was one snag when a cook’s mate was certain that she’d been contaminated by a broth she’d been working on in the galley. She fell and began writhing on the floor, clutching at her arms and tearing away skin in her attempt to scratch out the churn.

  It turned out she had a neglected case of Scropjur’s itch, a lichen-based disease that was easily cured once it presented. She was lifted up and taken into the waiting cargo bay. Unfortunately, that meant that the entire group of evacuees was now at risk for catching the itch. Another indignity imposed on those doomed to live, Ricimer thought with a small smiling curl to his muzzle.

  And then the vessel was clear of crew. The remaining officers gathered near the cargo atmosphere lock in a pretense of waiting to go through.

  Now for the real convincer.

  “Lamella, it’s time for the churn.” He spoke with a soft whiff.

  Churn began to flow from the public-address nozzles that had previously sprayed forth words.

  And Cargo B began to melt. It was quite dramatic. The churn he’d chosen gave the bulkheads a sickly rose-colored glow that soon intensified to garish, throbbing red. Meanwhile, the metal and ceramic material of the deck, ceiling, and bulkhead began to flow like glass. This particular churn—used for cleaning the tanks of hazardous-materials transports, and very similar to actual military ordinance—would cut down to within a hairsbreadth of the underlying force-field containment bottle.

  For added effect, Lamella provided an atmospheric leak into space. The hiss was terrifying, even if the amount was not particularly life threatening.

  The remaining crew was now on one side of the bay while the “tainted” crew and other officers were looking out the open docking collar of the Colonizer. Between them lay churn madness—instant death for anyone who ventured there. Or so it appeared.

  Ricimer flailed his arms in the griever’s gesture of great sorrow and sadness. He opened a communication channel into the Colonizer. “The vessel is lost, and we who remain on her!” he said. “Save yourselves, my brave officers and crew. Don’t look back. Uphold the memory of us in your gids. Tell all we died bravely and while performing our duties!”

  He then ordered the Colonizer cargo door closed. The door slid down over horrified, grief-stricken faces. He really did hate to put his crew through this. They had not earned such treatment. But the alternative would have been to kill them all—never a real option in Ricimer’s mind.

  He turned to Talid. “So, they’re away.”

  This was it. This was really it. Absolutely no turning back. No way out but ahead. To Sol and beyond.

  “All right, Talid,” he finally said. “Open up a portal with the second commodity bottle on the merchantman.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Talid ordered the craft turned a quarter degree on its axis. The connection was made with the other cargo bottle.

  The door opened.

  Inside were the refugees. Nearly one thousand tired, bedraggled Guardians. Some single, some together in entire families. All looking stunned and wild-eyed, half suspecting they were about to meet their death. They’d been holding position for three tagona—the equivalent of four and a half Earth days—and had not taken in sustenance, only fluids, during that time. There was no light in the commodities bottle, and precious little ventilation. Talk could not dissipate but hung in the air in clouds of meaningless vapors. After a day or so, all but the most basic communication had ceased.

  And all of them had been victims of the Agaric Pogrom long before that. Most had been driven from their homes, their friends and relatives slaughtered. They’d been hidden for many molts in some of the most vile cracks and interstices of the Shiro.

  It was that or be hunted down and murdered.

  It had taken more time to get the word out that a possibility of escape existed. Time to convince them that this escape was not itself another trap waiting to destroy them.

&n
bsp; They were the Shiro’s Mutualist remnant.

  They had been without hope. Doomed to extermination.

  Until now.

  Here they stood, silently waiting for rescue.

  Before, they’d been the funny cult to which Del, his wife, belonged. Mutualism had been a bit of a household joke. A second thought to their family, their love.

  Now these believers were all he had left of Del.

  “Let’s get them aboard and settled as quickly as possible, Lieutenant Frazil,” Ricimer said via the craft-communication channel. “Take out the crew replacements and get them plugged in. Lamella will begin scenario training immediately. Hurry now. We’ve got our work cut out for us.”

  Ricimer considered. He was about to go on a wild run with an untrained, amateur crew. So much depended on his computer program and the new artificial intelligence component he’d added from Sol system. If Lamella could knit these strangers together, they might stand a chance. He must avoid confrontation, however. A trained Sporata rate was, in many ways, redundant until the time for combat came.

  And then he or she became essential, for no Guardian computer program was sophisticated enough to react to the extreme variability of battle conditions.

  Of course, he did possess one trump card: the Kilcher artifact. The problem was, it had never been used in combat before, but only on the pacific Kilcher.

  No, for the moment stealth, propaganda, and subterfuge were essential. This was the only strategy he could count on. He must remain hidden. He must trust to the devices he had put into motion semata, sometimes molts ago, to work in his favor. The Poet’s broadcasts.

  His own letter to the Civitas Council.

  He knew one thing his officers did not. That message had been sent. There was no way to recall it now. And because of that fact, he and they were committed. There was no going back. There was nothing but death behind them. He had seen to that.

  Had he chosen the correct words? It no longer mattered. What was done was done.

  He had cut his ties with his customary ruthless effectiveness.

  24 December 2075

  The Shiro

  Administrative Coombs

  Office of Civitas Special Counselor to the Chair

  Dear Companion Gergen,

  I trust this message finds you in good health. It is my pleasure to inform you that I have taken command of the newly forged Sporata vessel Guardian of Night and the recently gleaned artifact she mounts. It is clear that the artifact will be the perfect weapon to use against the remainder of your hated Mutualist opposition.

  Opposition, thought Gergen. Strange way to categorize such scum. But let it pass.

  I hesitate to call the Mutualists the “resistance,” because that would imply that the authority against which they are striving held some sort of legitimacy, however tenuous.

  What was this?

  It is my contention that, by its many actions, some recent, some in the past, all most terrible and unforgiveable war crimes, the Administration and you upon the Civitas Council have abrogated any legitimacy to govern that you might once have held. I am afraid that I cannot in good conscience, and with a clear and untroubled gid, permit you to employ this artifact to commit the same genocidal crime against the Agaric Mutualists and any others who remain, that you committed against the Kilcher species.

  Gergen felt his hand begin to shake. He steadied it.

  Captain, you have just ended your life. You must know this.

  Read on.

  I must therefore inform you that I am taking the Guardian of Night, and the artifact, out of Administration hands.

  Curse it. Curse the no-good Sporata stinker. This was not good. Not good at all.

  It is my intention to seek political asylum with the next species against which this weapon will likely be used and prevent its genocidal deployment against them.

  What operations were currently underway? The Ilex Omega mop-up? No. There was no longer any resistance there.

  Sol, thought Gergen. He’s talking about the humans.

  Furthermore, I intend to suggest myself as a diplomatic conduit between the humans and the Mutualist enclaves. It is my hope to enable an alliance to be forged between these disparate forces. I intend to rendezvous with a Mutualist envoy for that very purpose before turning the artifact over the the humans.

  It was too much.

  Gergen crumpled the paper in his hand. For a long moment, he did not move. But then the hand that held the paper began to tremble. Then the other hand. The trembling propagated to his shoulders, his torso, until he was shaking with the purest fury he’d ever known in his life. Finally, Gergen allowed himself to release a concentrated cloud of the peppered aroma of rage.

  Only then did he unfold the paper and continue reading.

  By the time this message arrives, you will be unable to stop me from carrying out this plan. You may ask yourself why I should inform you at all of my intentions. It should be clear that I deliberately mean to provoke a response from the Administration. I deliberately mean to provoke you, Companion Gergen, since you hold the Sporata within your command portfolio.

  I have a simple motive driving my actions, one which I do expect you will never understand.

  I have no political motivation.

  I do this for my family’s honor. For the sake of my line.

  My purpose is not to flee, but to confront, to incite, to instigate further resistance.

  You are guilty of species genocide and the pogrom of innocents.

  I intend to make you pay the price for the curse you have brought upon our once proud species.

  Although my final destination is Sol system, I’m sure you understand that seeking me out would be akin to seeking a crystal of carbon in a basalt plain flow. Yet I certainly expect you to try.

  As a final point: I have no pretentions to power. I do not expect you to believe this, Companion Gergen, being who you are, although it is the case. My decision rests upon honor. As an officer and a person of conscience, I can bear no more from this Administration and am compelled to take action in order to live with myself and with my memories.

  Good-bye.

  Arid Ricimer

  Captain, Guardian of Night

  Companion Gergen! I’ll show you companionship, my captain.

  Gergen turned to Vlamish, his secretary, who had remained standing near the door while Gergen went through his morning messages.

  “Get me the DDCM Director. Do not let him make any excuses. He is to report to me immediately.” Gergen considered. “And prepare a message capsule for that idiot Blawfus. I’ll have its contents ready shortly.”

  “It shall be done, Counselor.”

  Gergen breathed in. Calm. You arrived at this post through the regulation of emotions. Regulation is always the path to success. So regulate yourself. He breathed out.

  The insurrection crushed. The Sol invasion newly resourced and restarted. More territorial expansions and species gleanings in the planning stages.

  He should have known. Things had been going too well. For the first time in many cycles, he had begun to feel almost—dare he say it?—safe in his work. His position. His life.

  Now this.

  Vlamish was still standing before his worktable.

  “Thrive the Administration,” Gergen said, dismissing him.

  “Thrive the Administration.”

  Vlamish went to make his communications.

  And Gergen sat considering a certain button on the upper left edge of his work table. It was a special communication channel over quantum-encrypted optical fiber. And that fiber led to the inner chamber of the Council. To the office of the chair herself.

  The defection, as outrageous and unprecedented as it was, would be only a nuisance if the vessel had contained any other weapon. But the Kilcher artifact. Unreproduced and—as far as his researchers could determine—unreproduceable. No known defense.

  Of course, the Administration would find a way to destroy the traitors
and their weapon in the end.

  We are the power, we are the marked and necessary path to success and rule, sang the ancestral voices within Gergen’s gid.

  So naïve, those ancestors. They did not truly understand how power was accumulated, nursed. How fragile it was behind the façade of invulnerability.

  How tenuous Gergen’s own position was, when it really came down to it.

  The calm Gergen had established began to leak away. His mind quickly worked out the personal implications of Ricimer’s letter.

  The chair would not be pleased. She would want someone’s gid. He must give her one, many. The amount did not matter, so long as one of those gids wasn’t his.

  And then, as was often the case before springing into action, Gergen felt a moment of immense lassitude sweep over him. Of pity for himself, for the situations he must deal with in the name of the Administration, of Regulation.

  What had he done to deserve this? He’d been a good regulator. He’d risen from a decent hypha, a pure line but a decidedly obscure one. He served his time on countless committees of regulation. He’d been a good party member in every way. His quotas were always filled and on time. He had forged coalitions, formed alliances where need be, to always keep the upward momentum in place. He had rewarded regulated loyalty when he must, dropped those who were no longer useful when he could.

  And along the way, he’d met and allied with a political operative even more ruthless and cunning than he. Together, no one had been able to stand in their way.

  The reward was power. Of course, the perquisites of office were pleasant—and it was necessary to put on a certain appearance, to project the power to the people so that they would understand who it was they were to look to, to obey. One needed the extra servants, the personal vessels, the regulated and empty corridors set aside for Council use only, if one were to govern effectively. He was ashamed of none of these offerings of a grateful populace that he and his family enjoyed.