“Then disobey the bastards.”
Tanaka blinked. “Unthinkable.”
“Not at all. I can think about it all day. So can you.” He sighed. How to shake this guy loose from a position wedged in by training, obedience, and duty? “Chujosan, are the orders for you alone? Your people? Or do they extend to the Confederation force as well?”
“The wording could be considered ambiguous,” Tanaka replied, “but I take it to mean all vessels and personnel currently under my command. That would include you and your people as well. I am in command of this force.”
“Of course.Tenno Kyuden doesn’t want a Confederation warfleet bouncing around loose.” Vic carefully scrutinized his fingernails, not meeting Tanaka’s level gaze. “Sir, I have a different interpretation of my orders. I tell you now, honestly and directly, that if you order me to return to human space, I will disobey those orders. You cannot attack us here without having your ships released by their DalRiss carriers, obviously. Long before your ships were free, my ships and my DalRiss transporters would be long gone.”
“You could not face the Web by yourself. It would be suicide!”
“At least we can try.” He nodded toward the viewall. “The enemy’s out there, Chujosan. The Web. I am taking my people to meet it, and every human in the Shichiju who can link onto the I2C-Net is going to be watching what happens out there. I wonder what the citizens of the Empire are going to say when they see their Imperial defenders leaving their defense to a handful of Confederation warships. If we win, we will be the saviors of all mankind. If we lose, you will be perceived as the villain who cut and ran and abandoned us to death, no matter what your orders might say. There’s something more to it that you might consider, too. Have you discussed with the DalRiss the idea of returning to the Shichiju? Have you asked if they’ll even take you?”
Tanaka’s eyes widened. “The… DalRiss? No. That did not occur to me. Why wouldn’t they?”
“Mmm. You might give it a try. Link in and talk to the DalRiss bossing this cityship, the one piggybacking the Shinryu. You could find that they have something else in mind besides retreating to human space. Remember, they have a stake in the expedition, too. Ten billion murdered fellow-dancers.” Vic crossed his arms as he leaned back in the chair. In fact, when Vic had tried talking to them a short time ago, he hadn’t been able to ascertain what the DalRiss thought about the news from home. They certainly didn’t think in terms of vengeance. The closest human emotion he could attribute to them now was one of stunned disbelief… and just possibly a sense of urgency about the need to complete the mission before more worlds died. Obviously, though, Tanaka hadn’t questioned them closely yet. It gave Vic a very slight edge in the bloodless war of words and position being waged now between them. “Right now, Chujosan, we’re about two thousand light years from home. Do you think you have supplies enough laid in for a trek back the long way, through K-T space? At a light year per day, that’s a five-and-a-half year trip. That’s a long time. A lot could happen in five years.”
The admiral’s expression went stony, an indifference masking whatever he was truly feeling. “Are you threatening me, Shoshosan?”
“Not at all.” A direct threat, a blatant challenge of Tanaka’s authority, would make him lose face and would force him into a corner where his only option might be to harden his stance, whatever the consequences. “I just want to be certain that you see all options, and all positions. I point out that, should you decide that I’m right, that our common goal should be to defeat the Web at Nova Aquila, rather than playing catchup with them across human space. You have options that would allow you to… let’s say reinterpret your superiors’ orders. You could continue to Nova Aquila because the DalRiss refused to take you back. That could be humiliating, I know, admitting that you’d been carried off by a gaijin, but I doubt that Admiral Munimori is willing to link personally with a DalRiss to hear it himself. If you prefer, tell them that we refused to go back with you, and that you felt it necessary to keep an eye on us.”
Tanaka stared at Vic for a long time, his face completely impassive. Finally, though, he rocked back on his heels and gave the Confederation general a small, tight-lipped smile. “You are very good at this.”
A direct answer, yes or no, would have been out of place. Vic bowed his head slightly in reply, neither affirming nor denying.
“It will be… difficult,” Tanaka continued. “This electronic gathering I have called, it is to be transferred to Earth. To the Tenno Kyuden. I expect that Gensui Munimori himself will attend. To refuse such a person to his face—”
“He is two thousand light years away, Chujosan. If necessary, do what we do when our superiors are breathing down our necks.”
“What is that?”
Vic smiled. “Feign communications difficulties.”
The admiral smiled in reply. “I will consider that.”
The interview was ended. Vic stood, bowed, and turned toward the door.
“General,” Tanaka said as Vic reached out to palm the door open.
“Sir?”
“I think you should know… for your own information only. I had a son. Age twenty-eight. He was a lieutenant in command of an Imperial Marine company, stationed at Syria Planum, on Kasei. A few months ago, he was aboard one of four transports over the Marineris Sea, responding with his unit to an attack by raiders. Confederation raiders. All four transports were destroyed. Every man aboard them was killed.”
“Why are you telling me this, Chujosan?”
“I have reason to hate your people, General. I have reason to hate the military service you represent. But I believe in what we have been sent out here to do. I believe in it so much, that I have disregarded what happened on Kasei. At least for now. I thought you should know.”
“I already knew, Admiral. I picked up as much from your dossier, before we left New America.”
“And you agreed to accept service under my command despite this?”
“Of all of the Imperial senior officers who might have been chosen to command, you were by far the best. That is not flattery, Admiral, but a simple statement of fact. And I will tell you, sir, that my wife, my son, and my daughter are all serving with the Confederation contingent of this fleet. And I intend to take that contingent to Nova Aquila, whether I have your ships at my back or not.”
Tanaka considered this a moment, then gave a curt nod. “Wakarimasu,” he said. “I understand. It is an honor to have officers such as yourself in my command.”
Kara and Ran lay close together on the top of a sand dune, watching the tide churn and froth as it swirled inland across the mud flats to the south. The ViRsimulation they shared was of a beach on a rugged portion of the coastline northwest of Jefferson, back in New America. Flickets and dragonbugs sang in the vegetation nearby. A shimmering, gold-flashing cloud of morninglories chirped and chorused at the edge of the forest. Columbia bulked huge and orange-smudged ocher in the sky.
“It is really strange,” Kara said, “having the Imperials on our side.”
“And what’s your evaluation, Lieutenant?” Ran Ferris asked with a lazy grin. Kara was nestled close to him inside the curve of his arm; his hand gently massaged her shoulder, her upper arm, then slid over to cup her breast.
She slapped the moving hand, playful. “Beast. Call me Lieutenant again and you’ll end up in the brig.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
They kissed.
“Seriously, though,” he said after a time. “I’ve been hearing some bizarre who-was about them.” Who-was was military slang for rumors, drawn from the Nihongo uwasu.
“Such as?”
“Such as how the Imperial fleet that was sent out here to help us is going to provide permanent help, if you know what I mean.”
“Hmm. I’ve heard some of the same stories.”
“Do you believe them?”
“I… I don’t know. It’s hard to just stop hating, you know?” She pulled back from him a little, rollin
g onto her back.
“Well, you don’t hate all of them, do you?” His tone was bantering. “Or is the only good Imp a dead Imp?” When she didn’t answer immediately, he grew more serious. “What about that scientist your brother’s been seeing? Doctor—”
“Dr. Oe.”
“What about her?”
“What about her?” Kara asked sharply. “She’s Nihonjin, even if she was born on New America.”
“Come on. Your brother wouldn’t—”
“My brother,” Kara said with a sigh, “is capable of almost anything. Total myopia. Can’t see a thing beyond what he, personally, wants.”
“Well, I’d have thought that a doctor of xenosophontology would have a certain maturity about him.”
“Daren? Mature?” She snorted. “Don’t get me wrong. I love the guy. But one thing a university download doesn’t give you, even at the doctorate level, is maturity. Or experience.”
“So… you think we’re being tricked? Maybe led into a trap?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. I think, probably, whatever the Imperials have planned, when they meet this thing at Nova Aquila, well, maybe our differences won’t seem as important. Or our hatreds. I hope so.” She stirred against his arm. “We shouldn’t have come here.”
“Of course we should have.”
“It’s all such a question mark, what’s going to happen at Nova Aquila.”
“I know.” He drew her closer. “Sometimes you need people. Need just being close.”
“Yes…”
“I’m afraid we don’t have much more time. Our hour’s almost up.”
“I know. We were damned lucky to get our schedules swapped around so we could share our downtimes here.” She rubbed his chest lightly. “You know, it’s funny to think we could go back to New America for real, riding the I2C.”
“For real? You mean for virtual real.”
She laughed. “You know what I mean. This new tech is going to change things an awful lot. In society. In us, in the way we do and think about things. Out here, even the Japanese don’t seem so… so alien anymore.”
He seemed to understand that she wasn’t talking about the New American ViRsim when she said “out here.” One reason they’d chosen a familiar setting for their rendezvous was the strangeness of the sky beyond Gauss’s bulkheads. The nebula was a constant reminder of just how far they were from home.
“Still seems strange,” he said, “being this far away from Newamie, yet being able to zip back and talk to your folks whenever you want.”
“My folks are here.”
“I know.”
“FTL commo could prove to be a curse, you know. With the brass always looking over your shoulder. My fa— General Hagan is back on Earth right now. At an Imperial staff meeting, no less.”
“No kidding! Straight hont?” The soldier’s slang meant truth.
“Straight hont.”
“What’s the word gonna be?”
“Oh, we’re going. I don’t know what the Impies are going to do, but we’re going. I know that look in his eye.” She consulted her inner clock. “Gok! We don’t have much time. Ten more minutes…”
His caress grew rougher, more insistent. “There’s time for once more.”
“Yes. Yes…”
* * *
Dev was riding the Net.
It was a heady experience. Normally, during his past years with the DalRiss, the program sustaining his memory and awareness of self had resided within one or another of the DalRiss cityships, a tiny, software parasite riding the far vaster, labyrinthine worlds within worlds of his hosts. Occasionally, especially when there was some particular danger, or some object of interest that demanded his full attention, he would distribute his program across several nodes, riding, in effect, a number of different DalRiss ships.
Now, however, he resided not only within the DalRiss fleet, but inside all of the nodes of all of the computer systems of all of the human vessels of the fleet. Human computer nets tended to be tightly compartmentalized by subject and use, in sharp opposition to the Naga communications and memory storage, which had a loose and open-ended structure; the blend of the two, however, was something completely new, seemingly infinite vistas and variety and information, unfolding in layer upon layer of sight and sound, color and texture, a literal cyberworld corresponding in idea, if not precisely in space, with the real world.
He could sense… something about that Net as well, the other minds—AI, human, DalRiss, and Naga—that rode the Net with him, interacting, branching, floating, merging. He’d sampled the computer net girdling Jefferson on his return from Nova Aquila, finding it tightly ordered and compartmentalized… and with the University of Jefferson’s AI system as the largest and most complex of the network’s nodes.
Now, however, world after world, system after system was coming on-line, tied together by the comm mod feeds and data links connecting planet after planet and ship after ship across interstellar distances. He could feel it as more and more people were linking in throughout the Shichiju. He felt it when, with the suddenness of a thrown switch, the entire Juanyekundu Net came on-line; suddenly, he could hear new voices, Swahili voices of Juanyekundu’s underground population on UV Ceti I, mingling with the resonant tones and murmurs and echoing reverberations of uncounted multitudes of other tongues and thoughts riding the Net with him, adding their own rich counterpoint to the swelling, choral multitude.
Power. He could feel it, swelling, mounting, as people linked in by the billions.
How many were joining in the Net? Not everyone was watching the AEF by any means. Business was still being conducted on seventy-eight colonized worlds and hundreds of outposts, bases, ships, and remote facilities. There seemed to be a kind of morbid curiosity about the coming encounter, however, and that interest was building; the medes had spread the story on all of the major print, vid, and ViRnews services, describing what was known about the Web and what the Aquila Expeditionary Force hoped to accomplish. Whatever the result of the coming contact, it would have a profound effect on everyone; peaceful contact with the Web would bring for all humanity the literally unimaginable benefits of contact with a race, a collective of civilization and knowledge, literally billions of years old. The medes had been touting the wonders for weeks already. The Web made magic, such as turning energy into matter and back again, seem like child’s play; interaction with such a technology would usher in a new, golden age of plenty for all humans.
And if communication was not possible, if war was the result…
Dev didn’t like thinking about that possibility, for the odds against humankind were very long indeed. Despite the long discussions with various planning staffs about how human flexibility and the possession of faster-than-light communication conferred tremendous advantages on the human-DalRiss side, the Web had one advantage that no level of superior communication could really match.
The Web could still be using crossbows and gunpowder, yet win the coming battle through sheer weight of numbers. There was no way Dev could use the strength of those billions of watchers, none that he knew of, anyway.
But the surge of power in and around him as he surveyed this new domain filled him with the sort of elation he’d once known only through a physical surge of adrenaline. It was like… nothing else that Dev had ever directly experienced, save possibly the glory-thrill of riding the Kamisama no Taiyo, the fiery Ocean of God within the K-T plenum interface while jacking a starship at faster-than-light. That experience had always been for Dev something transcendent. There’d been times, too, during the revolution, when he’d tapped into a power far greater than anything his mind or body could possibly muster.
This was like that. No… better, this was the real experience. The others, jacking a starship through K-T space, or hurling one-ton boulders into the sky and tearing down great ryu-class ships, those were the pale and dim reflections of reality.
Interesting.As the Combined Fleet prepared for the final leg of i
ts journey to Nova Aquila, he could sense individuals as well as entire populations. With a relatively gentle focus of will and effort, he could hear Katya’s thoughts as she linked in through an observer channel aboard the Gauss. There was Kara now jacking into her warflyer, preparing for combat There was Daren, his son, also on the Gauss, linked into a system on the Net designed to let the members of all of the science teams watch the final jump and the approach toward the Device. Vic’s body was aboard the Karyu, in a comm module on Deck Five; his mind, however, was attending a gathering of admirals and generals and senior politicians in the Tenno Kyuden complex in Earth synchorbit. Dev could hear those voices as well… arguments over the threat posed by the Web, over orders disobeyed, over threatened repercussions.
He had no doubt about the outcome, however. He’d been able to—taste was the closest word he could find—taste Tanaka’s thoughts and mind as he’d linked into the Net earlier and allowed his consciousness to ride the I2C back to Earth. The Imperial contingent would stay at least long enough to check out the Nova Aquila system. If there was no sign of Web activity there, Tanaka would consider a return to the Shichiju… but to return now, with nothing accomplished, that would be futile. Worse, it was to allow himself and his people to become political pawns, trapped between Imperial superiors and gaijin subordinates.
Tanaka would stay.
A voice, a DalRiss voice, rumbled behind his thoughts. “We return, »DEVCAMERON«, to the place where we first encountered the Web.” The voice carried overtones of emotions, many of which Dev could not read. One emotion carried clearly through the Net, however: grief—for lost life, for lost opportunities, for lost circles in the great Dance—was foremost in the creature’s mind.
“We’ll be facing the Web again. How do you feel about that?”
He sensed the mental and alien equivalent of a shrug. “The Web is not life,” the voice said. “We will end it, before it removes others from the Dance. Or the Great Dance will end with us.”
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