by Ian Douglas
Externally, he wore the shimmering black-silver serpent-form of a Naga traveler, rearing high atop the man-made mountain of the pyramidal atmosphere generator on the plains north of New Argos; his mind, while it included all that Dev Cameron once had been, was now far more than human, with a scope and a depth and an unhumanly cold precision that felt more machinelike than anything alive. Effortlessly, he traced the threadlike lines of radio communications webbing the battlefield spread out below him like a cluttered playroom floor, penetrated the artificial intelligences of the Imperial warstriders moving across that floor, reprogramming them, ordering them to shut down.
And in synchronous orbit thirty-two-thousand kilometers overhead, the Imperial fleet hovered like carrion crows. His mind reached . . . stretched . . . focused . . . and found linkage with an Imperial cruiser. Another reprogramming, and the magnetic fields containing the furiously orbiting pair of power-generating microsingularities within the quantum power tap of the cruiser Mogami shut down.
One of the microscopic black holes evaporated in a flood of radiation; the other, loosed like a pebble from a slingshot, tunneled through the ship's length, devouring everything in its path in a frenzy of gravitational feeding. To Dev, it was as though he'd reached out a hand and squeezed . . . feeling the bulk of Mogami crumpling within his grasp. . . .
The Imperial ships shut down their radio communications circuits, cutting his link with them like the snapping of a thread. Around him, meanwhile, the bulk of the Naga was spilling from the mountain, its tar-black surface alive with newly shaped eyeballs . . . a trick learned, he knew, from its first encounter with a human—him.
The thrill of vision was as heady as the sense of uncoiling, unstoppable power. Thrilling, too, was the thundering gallop of thought. Creativity and intuition both were a function of the interconnectivity between the two hemispheres of the human cerebrum, the left and right halves of the brain. Part of the change in himself, Dev could sense, lay in the myriad nanotechnic connections still growing through the corpus callosum that bound the two together. He was thinking faster, and more clearly, despite the bewildering flood of alien thoughts and perceptions.
* I/we see . . .
** You/we can generate powerful magnetic fields.
* Yes. For movement, for . . .
** . . . navigation, for . . .
* . . .for launching the Will-be-Selves into . . .
** . . . the Void, yes. That is what we will do.
* The Will-be-Selves are not . . .
** . . . ready, of course. I have other missiles.
* What?
** These. . . .
* Rock . . .
With a shriek of tortured steel, a chunk of iron and ferrocrete, part of the outer shell of the artificial mountain on which he stood, shuddered, then wrenched free from the framework beneath as the human/Naga symbiont generated a magnetic flux. Lightning flared, as storm winds swirled about Dev's being. Clouds blackened the sky, but Dev could still sense the Imperial ships, fleeing now on searing cones of fusion fire.
With a thought, the chunk of iron and rock flickered into the sky, accelerated in a blink to ten percent of the speed of light. In space, the cruiser Zintu vanished in a flare momentarily brighter than the sun, and over a thousand men died. . . .
He did it again . . . and again . . . and yet again. Ship after ship flared and died.
* Is this what you/we call war?
The godlike feeling of power vanished, wiped away by that single thought. In an instant, Dev—the human part of Dev—became aware of those motes of light in the sky as frail shells enclosing thousands of human beings, and he had been hunting them down, swatting them with a ruthless and appallingly precisionist efficiency.
My God, what am I doing? What have I become?
"Dev! . . ."
** No. This is not war.
"Dev, please! . . ."
** It's slaughter. Useless slaughter.
"Dev, wake up! You're hurting me!"
His eyes snapped open. Katya's eyes stared back into his from centimeters away, wide and terrified, her wide-mouthed scream dwindling to a gurgle as Dev's fingers tightened about her throat, his thumbs pressing home beneath the soft-skinned angle of her jaw. He gasped and released her, and the sudden motion sent the two of them drifting apart. The back of his head impacted sharply on a store's canister, a ringing crack that blurred his vision.
"Oh, kuso! Katya. . . ." Reaching out, he snagged a handhold, arresting his motion.
She braced herself against the canisters at her back with one hand and massaged her throat with the other. "I guess you were dreaming. . . ."
"Kat, I'm so sorry. I . . . I . . ."
"S'okay." She moved her head back and forth experimentally, then managed a smile. "I'm okay, Dev, really. I was just . . . scared. I was afraid if I hit you or anything, you might just fight harder. So I went limp and screamed to wake you up."
"That . . . that was good thinking. Katya, I didn't want to hurt you. . . ." He was trembling now, partly from the fast-evaporating emotions of the nightmare, partly with the terror of what he'd almost done. "God, Kat, I could have killed you! . . ."
"It was just a dream. Really, Dev, it's okay. You told me you'd been having bad dreams. Was it the Xenolink again?"
Jerkily, he nodded. "I've been consulting a monitor, but—"
"Dev, after what you went through, I'm astonished your head's still in one piece. It's going to take you some time, that's all."
"I've had four months. I'm terrified that I'm, I'm changed, somehow. That my mind has changed."
"You're still Dev, the Dev I know. Believe me. It'll just take a little more time."
But it seemed to him that she looked away after that, as though unwilling to meet his gaze. Hastily, she reached out and snagged her uniform slacks out of the air nearby and let them mold themselves to her legs.
For Dev, the nightmare had left him numb with shock. God, what was wrong with him? The encounter with the Heraklean Naga had transformed him into something inhuman. He'd thought, hoped that when the Naga had withdrawn from his body, it had left him as it had found him. No matter how he tried to deny it, though, the experience had altered him in ways that he still couldn't wholly define or measure.
Suppressing a shudder, he reached for his own clothing and began to dress.
Chapter 10
The genius of the ideal subordinate officer in war lies in his ability to receive orders from his superiors and execute them according to his own interpretation of the actual situation and his understanding of his superior's intent and purpose—in short, to read his mind.
The genius of the ideal superior officer lies in his ability to choose those subordinates who read his mind most clearly.
—Kokorodo: Discipline of Warriors
Ieyasu Sutsumi
C.E. 2529
Hours later, Dev was jacked into Eagle's psych monitor program when Commander Lisa Canady's voice reached him through the ship's ICS. "Sir? General Sinclair is coming aboard."
"Eh? Why wasn't I told he was coming? I should have met him at the lock!"
"Sorry, sir, but no one knew. His ascraft was listed as a scheduled cargo run from Rogue to Eagle, all very mysterious and secret. I had no idea."
"Never mind, Lisa. I'm coming." He began downloading the commands to terminate his link with the ship's AI. "Have him escorted to the main lounge."
In preparation for their departure, Eagle's spin-grav habs had been deployed and set rotating. Most of the living areas—crew quarters, recreation decks, crew's and officers' mess—were located in these pods that had unfolded from Eagle's central core and were now turning with speed enough to create a half G of out-is-down simulated gravity on their outer decks. The main lounge was actually part of Eagle's recreation suite, a place for crew and officers to mingle, with plenty of AI interface screens for access to the ship's library and comm modules lining the bulkheads for those who needed a complete linkage.
Dev was de
layed by a junior ship's staff officer who needed a list of consumables checked and palmed for. Dev used the implant in his left hand to download the data, checked it against a master list stored in his RAM, then fed his electronic approval to the lieutenant's compad. By the time he reached the ship's lounge, Sinclair had already arrived. There was an unusual touch in evidence, however—four Confederation soldiers in full armor and carrying PCR-28 high-velocity rifles at port arms standing guard in the passageway outside. The entryway dissolved and the guards ushered him through.
It was not roomy inside; large as a destroyer was, there were few places aboard the ship accessible by humans that were, especially now that she was fully loaded with provisions for the long voyage to Alya. Still, the compartment had comfortable couches and a large viewall set to show a nonrotating scene gazing aft from Eagle at the now-full gold, white, and violet disk of Herakles. The deck was carpeted, and soundproofing panels on bulkheads and overhead muffled the steady throb and murmur of noise from the rest of the ship.
Sinclair was waiting for them, along with Brenda Ortiz. Katya was also present, the accidental attack in the ascraft apparently forgotten, though the memory made Dev inwardly cringe. To his considerable surprise, another man was waiting there as well, the slim, dapper, and silver-haired Grant Morton, the current President of Congress.
Like Sinclair, Morton was one of the original delegates to the Confederation Congress, and like both Sinclair and Katya, he was a native of New America. From what Dev had heard about the man, he was as politically conservative as Sinclair, but more willing to compromise than his more famous compatriot. It was largely due to Morton's influence that the genie slavery issue had not already fragmented the delicate coalition of colony worlds after initially being polarized by Liberty and Rainbow.
"Well, don't stand there like a damned newbie recruit," Sinclair said, rising from the couch he was sharing with Morton. "Come in and drag up a seat for yourself."
"Thank you, sir," Dev said. "Sorry I'm late. I wasn't told either of you was coming."
"You weren't supposed to know, Dev," Sinclair said with a wink. "In fact, as far as you're concerned, neither of us is here."
"If you say so." He turned to face President Morton. "Mr. President, this is an unexpected honor."
"Hardly that," Morton told him. "An honor, that is, though I'll allow you that it's unexpected. Actually, I came over to download some more problems on you."
Dev blinked at that. If the President of Congress had made a special trip across from the Rogue to the Eagle, it could only be because he feared that a ViRcom module communication might be somehow monitored.
"What can we do for you, sir?"
"Palm me."
Puzzled, Dev held out his left hand, palm up, the intricate network of gold and silver wires embedded in the skin winking in the compartment's overhead lighting. The president stepped forward and laid his own palm implant across Dev's, and he felt the tiny thrill of incoming data.
"What's . . . this?" Dev blinked, trying to read the file as it loaded itself into his personal RAM.
"A promotion, of course. We've created a whole new rank for you. Dug it up out of the archives, actually. You're a commodore, now. Basically, that means you're still a taisa, a captain, I mean, but with the authority of a flag officer to command a squadron." He glanced at Katya, then back at Dev. "This expedition needs a single, clear-cut leader. We've decided you're it. You'll notice that the packet I just gave you includes a promotion for your ship's XO. We're giving the Eagle to Captain Canady, to free you up for your duties as commander of this squadron."
"I . . . see." In the flurry of preparations for Farstar, Dev had given little thought to the expedition's command structure. Both he and Katya had held ranks corresponding to the taisa of both Hegemony and Empire. In the Confederation's new rank structure, which had been drawn from that of the Frontier militias, he was a captain, she a colonel, which meant basically that he was in charge of the spacecraft involved, while Katya ran the regiment-sized ground contingent. Morton's promotion took things a step farther, placing him in definite command of the entire expedition. "Sir, I'm not so sure this is a good—"
"Can it. Sinclair and I decided this last night. We don't have time to change things now, especially over an attack of modesty."
Dev could hear the worry in Morton's voice, could read the sense of urgency.
"You're moving the schedule up," Dev said bluntly. "There's a problem. What is it?"
Morton and Sinclair exchanged glances. "Told you he was quick," Sinclair said dryly.
"Commodore, Colonel Alessandro . . . you're not supposed to know this and you didn't hear it from me, but Lauer and his clique have forced a new vote on the agenda tomorrow. That he did so can only mean he thinks he has a chance of winning a two-thirds majority."
"A vote? On what?" Dev was confused. Ronal Lauer, he knew, was a delegate from Rainbow, and a representative of the population of one of the largest of that world's genie farms. As such, he was among the most outspoken of those in Congress supporting the institution of genie slavery. Dev had heard more than one of the man's speeches . . . undeniably brilliant, but how could anyone reasonably claim that gene-tailored workers had any less right to life or liberty than the full humans already fighting for independence from Imperial tyranny?
"About whether or not you, Commodore, should be permitted to go with this expedition."
"Dev not go?" Katya asked. "That's crazy! Why not?"
"It's the Xenolink," Sinclair told her. "There's considerable concern around here that Dev here is the only one with the, ah, experience necessary for linking with the Heraklean Xenophobe. And the Xenophobe . . . or rather, Dev and the Xenophobe together, are all that's keeping the Imperials from moving in and grabbing us all."
"That doesn't make sense," Dev said. "I was just gone for four months. Why didn't they oppose that?"
"Some of them did, at least privately," Sinclair said. "I felt you needed some time away, so I arranged for your raiding expedition without, um, consulting with some members of the War Council. Could be they remember that and are trying to steal a march on me this time."
"And now you're getting ready to go again," Morton added. "When it's almost a sure bet that the Imperials will be attacking soon. Lauer's faction wants to keep you here to link with the Naga again, if it becomes necessary."
"But the Naga hasn't even been seen," Katya protested. "Even if Dev stayed, there's no guarantee that he could link with it again."
"Agreed," Sinclair said. "And we do have volunteers ready to try linking with the Naga again if the Imperials return. When they return, I should say. Dev's description of what happened during his debriefing strongly suggests that it will know how to initiate a full link with a human, even if we don't."
"It must," Dev said. "I sure as hell don't know how to do it. I was unconscious when it happened to me last time."
"Logic doesn't necessarily work with some people," Morton said. "Sometimes I suspect that my distinguished colleague from Rainbow is less susceptible to its lures than others. Even so, I can understand their reluctance to lose you, young man. You saved us, all of us, in your one-man stand atop that terraforming pyramid. Another man might not have done so well."
Dev tried to suppress an inner shudder, and failed. For the briefest of instants, the nightmare was back. He had reached out with his mind, and lightnings had stabbed and crackled in the sky about him, fiery gestures in a cascade of raw, searing power. He caught Katya's hard gaze, and the memory crumbled. He felt embarrassed, even ashamed.
"Sir, I really don't think I'm the one for this job."
"Eh?" Morton snapped. "Nonsense."
"What's the problem, Dev?"
"I . . . I have reason to doubt my, my mental stability. . . ."
"He's had some nightmares," Katya said, quietly interrupting. "Bad ones, just since the Xenolink four months ago. We've talked about it, and he's been using Eagle's psych monitor program. In my opinion, sir
, he's fully able to carry out this mission. In fact, I can't think of anyone else in the whole Confederation fleet who could carry it out better than him."
Dev blinked at Katya, trying to see behind the calm of her eyes.
"All the more reason not to stay here and link with the damned Naga," Morton said, trying to make it sound like a joke.
"Dev, I've known you since Eridu," Sinclair said. "I have complete faith in you, in your tactical grasp of things, in your ability to handle yourself and your people. Now, has anything measurable changed in your psych profiles, anything that should disqualify you as a military officer?"
"Nothing . . . measurable. The monitor says I need rest."
Sinclair gave a wry grin. "Unfortunately, I can't let you go on vacation. I need you too much."
"I . . . I kind of assumed that was the case, sir."
"You'll have another three- or four-month trip en route to Alya. Think that'll take care of your problem?"
Dev frowned. The more he thought about it, the sillier disqualifying himself for a tendency to have nightmares seemed. Of course he was fit to command . . . and forcing Sinclair and Morton to rearrange their planning now would prove nothing, would do nothing, for him or for the expedition.
Besides, if he stayed, he would be expected to join with the monster again if the Imperials attacked. To become the monster.
He couldn't face that.
"General Sinclair," Dev said, drawing himself up straighter. "Mr. President. I'm fully ready and able to accept command. Under whatever command structure you care to name."
"That's settled then,". Sinclair said. He smiled. "So. How quickly can you leave?"
Dev turned inward for a moment, consulting records stored within his RAM. "We could leave in twenty hours," he said. "Eagle is about ready for boost now except for loading the last of her OP stores. But none of the other ships have reported readiness for boost yet. As of six hours ago, they had anywhere from ten to another fifty hours' work remaining."
The squadron readying for the Alyan mission was an odd patchwork of a fleet. Eagle would be flagship, of course, while the two twenty-five-thousand–ton Commerce-class freighters Vindemiatrix and Mirach carried the bulk of Katya's 1st Confederation Rangers, complete with warstriders and other heavy equipment. Tarazed had started off as a New American cryo-H tanker, but she'd been converted into a carrier; packed into the hangar deck in what had been the forwardmost of five huge containment spheres were eighty-two warflyers, the equivalent of an entire Imperial dragonship fighter wing. There were also several unarmed merchantmen devoted to carrying military stores and equipment.
