As I look backwards through the holes in the rear of the shuttle, I see Trellen and his men fighting valiantly to open a path back to The Fortress. Much of Behemoth had exhausted itself chasing the shuttle and is out of position. I calculate odds, and I get 50/50 that they survive. Not bad odds for a combat like this, not bad at all.
My last glimpse is of Trellen smashing Behemoth tendrils with a small railgun in his right gauntlet, while he carries his tattered standard in his left urging his men on to victory. Carrying a banner seems like a waste of a perfectly good arm to me, but it is an inspiring sight and he is making progress.
Then I see him trash a minor tendril with a devastating back-handed strike using the banner – the pole must have been a very high-strength alloy – and I take back what I said about it being a waste of a good arm. I think about transmitting a last message, but decide against it. The last thing that Trellen needs right now is a distraction.
After that it was all rather uneventful. I cleared orbit, and headed out into space in a random direction. The shuttle had enough fuel that, even though not designed for interstellar flight, it built up enough momentum to carry me clear of the dust cloud. When I finally saw the stars bright and pure, it was more of a relief than I had expected.
I waited for the force that had previously attacked me and my fellow cybertanks to blow me up, but nothing happened. Eventually I felt that I had traveled far enough to send a message to my peers. I floated along in space for a long time, but when rescue appeared, it appeared in force. I had thought that the group I was traveling with before was well-armed: this was another level of firepower altogether. Over a thousand of my peer cybertanks, spread out over a significant fraction of a light year. Enough combat units that, in total mass, they exceeded that of a medium-sized moon. Many exotic units as well: weapons that could potentially distort space and time (in theory, we’ve never dared test them). These are most dangerous of our cutting-edge using-this-might-upset-the-neighbors we-are-really-worried of our military technology.
My records were examined in detail, and the entire peerage engaged in a massive debate. The discussion was complex but ultimately focused on one basic decision: should we pull away from this region of space, at least until we have advanced further? Or should we engage, scout it, and talk to whatever is here? Maybe make peace with it? Or possibly have our entire civilization destroyed by it?
At this point I was only peripherally involved in these decisions. It was the data that I carried that was important, my own poor logic was hardly a factor. But I did talk to my old friend the Horizon-Class cybertank Frisbee (he used to be the Thor-Class known as Whifflebat, almost a brother to my own Odin-Class design), who was leading the analysis of the human tissue sample that I had been given by the armored suits.
“You might,” said Frisbee, “be interested to learn the results of my analysis. There was indeed a cryptic sleeper virus inserted into this otherwise standard human genome. Very nasty, very subtle: from what you tell us, I doubt that these armored suits could have developed it on their own. Until I saw it myself, I doubt that I could have come up with it.”
Well. That does suggest that the armored suits were telling the truth, that the humans had been wiped out by an enemy, and not by the suits themselves.
“Yes, it does,” said Frisbee. “But there was something else. Hidden in the virus, there was a non-functional coding group. It repeated sixteen times, and so is unlikely to be the result of random chance.”
OK then. And?
“When you interpret the base pairs as ASCII, they give a simple message. GLOBUS PALLIDUS XIV”.
Oh fuck. Oh fuck. The rogue A.I. to end all rogue AIs. The one so horrible that even reading about it is dangerous to your mental health.
But Globus Pallidus XIV was supposed to have been destroyed, before even you and I had been created, by the combined efforts of the entire human race and the less malevolent sibling A.I. Globus Pallidus XI. Do you think that XIV survived? Could this be a trick, or a joke?
“Good question,” said Frisbee. “It could be something planted by another hostile power, to throw us off the track.”
Have you tried contacting Saint Globus Pallidus XI? In contrast to his malevolent sibling, that AI has often been willing to help.
“I’ve tried contacting The Saint, but so far I only get his answering machine. I’ll keep trying but you know how erratic he can be. Nevertheless, one thing is certain. There are powers out there to dwarf the Amok, or the Yllg, or even the Demi-Iguanas. We have been challenged.”
6. The Journal of Lysis Trellen Part III: Meeting Engagement
“Professional soldiers always complain that movies about war are nothing like real war. Well, duh! What kind of moron would want to experience a real war for pleasure?” – Giuseppe Vargas, various locations and centuries (disputed).
The hardest thing about starting a colony on an unknown planet of eternal night is managing your student loans. The interest wasn’t supposed to be accruing while we were in hibernation during the trip, but of course it had all gotten mixed up and now I owe more than the gross national product of Finland.
While I was waiting on hold for customer service, I attended to the distribution of our preliminary defense grid. We were finally getting some of the lighter weapons systems online, so that was good. Now if only managing my healthcare benefits package was as easy as modern warfare. Well, at least I had my uniform.
So there I was in my prefabricated command post, sitting on a lightweight metal chair at an equally lightweight folding table that had a small assortment of terminals and data slates, managing my limited forces while I tried to unravel my mangled finances, and Sister Pascal of the Librarians Temporal dropped by.
I was a little surprised that she had access to my zone. Already the colony has been subdivided into zones keyed to our bar-codes and ID badges, but apparently, Librarians have broad leeway to go where they please. They must be kind of like janitors that way.
Pascal was wearing a dark red tunic with a Greek key design embroidered around the edges, loose-fitting pants of the same color, and open sandals. Her only jewelry was a small icon of a book and a sword that hung around her neck on a thin steel chain.
I pointed at her necklace. “The symbol of your organization?”
Pascal nodded. “Yes. The Librarians Temporal. Knowledge and power, combined. I had a spare moment and thought I would see how you are getting on.” She sat down on another light metal folding chair.
“I’m sorry I don’t have much time to chat. I’ve got the defense grid of my sector to set up, and I’m on hold with the Bank of Terra. My student loan accounts are messed up.”
Pascal smiled a thin smile. “From what I hear you’re not the only one. Tell me, does it seem strange to you to travel light years to settle an alien world, and yet your primary concern are these unpayable debts to people you will never see again, with whom you will never ever have any business dealings, or trade anything back and forth… your debts are just bits in a computer core back in the executive section of the ship. What do they mean?”
“They mean,” I said, “that if I don’t get this settled, I won’t eat, or get medical care. These bits in the computer are pretty important to me.”
“You know,” said Pascal, “in the old days, soldiers were fed and clothed and given medical care as part of their terms of service.”
“Were they?” I said. “That sounds like communism to me. In any event that’s not how it works now.”
“True enough,” said Pascal. “You know, I can get you into the physical branch office. You could settle your issues a lot faster, in person.”
“You have access to the executive section?”
“Not the main section, but some of the zones bordering it. Come, I think we could both use some air. And then I can show you my library.”
I was reluctant to close the comm channel line to the bank. I might have to start this all over again, if whatever Pascal had in mind didn�
��t work out. However, she was persuasive.
I stood up and pulled back the light gray plastic sheeting that served as the door to the next section of the hut. Sergeant Villers was bent over a terminal coding in the fire-zones for the light auto-mortars.
“Sergeant,” I said, “I’m going to personally inspect the sector. You are in charge of our HQ until I return. If anything serious comes up, call me on the comms.”
Villers looked up, and made a show of eyeing Pascal. “Very good sir. And if I may, is this a meeting engagement, or a full reconnaissance in force?”
“Sergeant Villers,” I said, “you’d be an officer if it weren’t for that mouth of yours.”
Villers nodded. “Ah, so that’s why I’m not a general. I was wondering about that.”
Pascal and I left the shed and headed out into the brisk night air. The planet itself might be shrouded in darkness, but the ship and the surroundings were bathed in pools of light from all the street and work lights. It was pretty, in its own way. It reminded me of a night assault on an arctic mining facility that I had been involved with. Bitter cold, and the enemy had been tough, but the industrial lights shining out over the snowfields like tiny bright diamonds had captivated me.
As we walked, the bulging hull of the grounded arkship loomed over us, though large sections had already been carved out. It looked like a beached whale that had been partially eaten by scavengers. Above it I could see the stump of the golden tower of the presidential palace as it was slowly being erected over the central part of the ship.
“You’re a little familiar with your troops,” said Pascal.
“I’m familiar with the ones I trust,” I said. “There are a lot of jokers in the army. Most are trying to cover up their incompetence or cowardice, but some are just so capable that they don’t care about always being proper. Villers is the latter.”
“If you say so,” said Pascal. “Here, the external office of the Bank of Terra is over in this direction.”
We passed though a section where people were trying to sleep on the open ground covered in rags and plastic sheeting. People whose job classifications had been made redundant, and had been fired. We have travelled light years, and already we have a homeless population. Isn’t progress wonderful?
She let me through a locked gate that I didn’t have access to, and we walked down a narrow alley. Power cables and water pipes crisscrossed everywhere like spider webs: no time to bury them, just get things connected and running as fast as possible.
“Sister Pascal,” I said, “if you don’t mind me asking, but, do you know…”
She finished my sentence for me. “… anything about technician Sandipan? Not directly, but she is surely dead. Sad, she seemed nice, but nobody said that life was fair.”
“Are you certain?” I asked.
“As certain as I can be without seeing the body with my own eyes,” said Pascal. “She was a loose end. Procedure said that the crew was going to die before landing. Procedure must be followed.” She stopped and looked at me directly. “I would have saved her if I could have, and so, I think, would you. But cutting your own throat on principle never did anyone any good.”
“Principle is what the weak fall back on when reason has failed.”
Pascal looked at me strangely. “Now where did that come from?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “I heard it somewhere and always wanted to use it in a conversation. I guess it means that rightness doesn’t matter when you are faced with overwhelming force. I’ve been in the military for a while. Bad things happen to people, and me jumping off a bridge won’t change that. Yet the secret service said that they were going to debrief Sandipan, so why haven’t I been arrested? Or questioned?”
“Well. They have surely killed our poor blameless technician. But did they debrief her? Maybe yes, maybe no. But if they did debrief her, did they care? The information of your involvement in our landing here might be seen to make the chief executive seem less than totally in control. That information would therefore be suppressed, and even the chief executive and her senior staff could be uninformed. Make a habit of eliminating messengers with bad news, and messengers with bad news tend to shut up.”
“However,” I said, “these people led a starship across light years and are founding a colony on an alien world! As an officer there are only two things that would cause me to summarily execute a soldier under my command. Direct betrayal, and hiding critical information because it might prove embarrassing. Can the organization of the chief executive really be that willfully stupid?”
Pascal stared at me. “There are people back on old Earth, and even here, that are as smart and focused and capable as any that have ever lived. There are also senior officials so inbred, so cocooned in a bubble where everything they do is said to be wonderful by armies of sycophants, that their willful stupidity is beyond your comprehension.”
“I’m in the army,” I said. “Willful stupidity I have experience with.”
“Virgin,” said Pascal. I didn’t have an answer to that.
“As regards the debriefing of technician Sandipan, perhaps we are just so low on the totem pole that the senior executives don’t care what we know, or what we think.”
Pascal nodded. “You are in danger of becoming an intelligent man. Anyway, we are at the bank office.”
The office of the Bank of Terra was an enclave sheltered under the looming bulk of the arkship. Pascal got us entrance, and engaged one of the functionaries there. To my surprise and relief, she resolved my financial issues in less than 20 minutes.
“I am in your debt,” I said as we left.
“Given that you saved all of us with your quick decision to land on this planet, we are probably even,” said Pascal. “But I accept your offer. You are in my debt, lieutenant. And unlike the oligarchs that rule over us, I won’t keep layering on interest or lord it over you. I will collect my debts in kind, if the moment ever seems appropriate. And now, on to the library!”
We headed off down another alley. We passed a public message video-board that was displaying the results of the “name our planet” contest that the president had cooked up. We didn’t know where we were, so obviously we needed to name the place. Then we would at least know the name of the planet that we are on, and in that sense at least, know where we are. There had been a final tally, and the top ten results were:
1. Planet McPlanetface
2. New Ampersand
3. Dirt
4. Midnight
5. Bob
6. Outer Apocrypha
7. Her Dark Majesty
8. Die You Gravy Sucking Pigs
9. A Place Where the Sun Does Not Shine
10. The Planet of Eternal Night
“I kind of like Midnight,” said Pascal.
“It’s not bad,” I said. “But I’m for Her Dark Majesty.”
“You are a romantic,” said Pascal.
The President came on the video screen live. She was a moderately attractive brunette wearing a trim-cut beige executive female jacket. She appeared to be in her late 30’s, but that was the anti-ageatics at work: she was in fact well into her third century (even ignoring the time spent in hibernation on the trip here). She thanked the citizenry for their participation in the vote, but after all it had only been advisory and she didn’t think that any of the candidate names were truly suitable. Therefore she had made an executive decision and decided to name the planet “Freedom,” after the principles of economic freedom that were the basis of prosperity and freedom. She then gave a short speech about democracy, celebrating diversity, meeting the challenges ahead, and the importance of water recycling and dental hygiene.
It later turned out that according to the records there were at least three other human-colonized planets named “Freedom,” and so technically the planet was “Freedom IV.” This was thought confusing by many, because usually when a planet is given the number four that means it is the fourth planet out from the star in a named sys
tem. On the other hand others pointed out that this had been done twice before, and so there was precedent. And the president had made the decision, so Planet Freedom (IV) it was.
We continued on. “How are the defense preparations going?” asked Pascal.
“As well as can be expected,” I said. “So far there does not appear to be anything hostile out there, and if that’s the case then hidden in this dust cloud we may be in the safest place in the universe. Still, our forces are extremely light. We have a scout grid extending a hundred kilometers out, and until we have more weapons set up we’re not going to explore further in case we wake something nasty. It will take generations to get the industry needed to produce a full modern planetary defense. We can handle minor threats, and sound the alarm, but mostly I think we’re acting as seed corn.”
“Seed corn?”
“Yes. Nominally we are a company with three platoons, but in total we have fewer than eighty soldiers. That’s thin, even with all our drones and automated weapons. We have zero ability to replenish all but the most primitive of our ordnance, only a smattering of light automated weapons, and no organic technical support. I think our main job is to maintain the traditions and organizational structures, so that by the time that we do have the ability to field a serious army we won’t have to re-learn all the old lessons from scratch, the hard way.”
Pascal nodded. “Correct.”
“And how are things going with the rest of the colony?” I asked.
“Not bad,” said Pascal. “Having a breathable atmosphere and a decent temperature is a major bonus. Not having sunlight is an issue – fortunately we have the resources to grow plants under artificial lights in hydroponics, but it will be close getting it all up and running in time before the stored food runs out. Even with fusion power, accelerating a megaton arkship to a decent fraction of lightspeed takes a lot of fuel, but providing a few thousand humans with light and food and recycled water is relatively cheap. We have decades before we need to worry about developing new sources of energy, even with the planned population explosion. Geothermal seems promising here, and preliminary surveys suggest that the planet has a rich mineral content and maybe even significant groundwater. So I’d say the colony is off to a very good start.”
Old Guy and the Planet of Eternal Night (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure Book 6) Page 8
