by Adam Vance
“Shoot him,” Archambault begged Chen. “Let me shoot him.” She lifted the longbow.
Chen grabbed her arm. “No.” It was the hardest command he’d ever given.
“O fuck…” Hewitt said at last, the pain too much…
…and at that moment it came. The bolt of lightning from the sky. Incinerating Hewitt instantly, scattering the Horde and sending FJ One ducking for cover.
Chen looked over the rocks at what was left of Hewitt – nothing. Ash.
Merciful Gods, he thought bitterly.
“Goddamn you, Alex,” he said out loud.
But like the gods of old, he didn’t answer.
The Horde scattered as a spotlight from the sky illuminated the ground between the barricade and the pyre. Chen was ashamed of himself for thinking it, but it was obvious – Alex could “manifest” to the savages, could prove his existence with that bolt of lightning, because in the long run the savages would be either assimilated or destroyed by the civilized Alexians, and their charming story of a god’s wrath would be mocked and disdained and, in the fullness of time, forgotten.
A shuttle came down, silent, frictionless, a large, gleaming egg. Legs extended, a door slid open, and a staircase touched the ground.
“This is what we get?” Cruz spat. “A fucking taxi?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Alex said, back in all their ears again. “Get in and strap in.”
The interior had seats for five, and in one of the seats was Marcus, already swept up by Alex from the shuttle.
“General, I’m sorry, I didn’t leave my post of my own…”
“I know, son,” Chen said gently. “Strap in.”
The team strapped in, grimly silent.
The ship lifted off, easily at first and then with increasing G force, smashing them into their bucket seats, deeply gel-padded to take some of the pressure.
The front of the egg’s smooth walls resolved into a screen, and the team’s seats were rotated to face it. There was a dot, then a pebble, then a rock, then…
“What the fuck is that?” Cruz asked.
“It’s a Rhal battleship,” Chen said. “And a damn big one.”
“For just the five of us?” Archambault said instinctively. “What a waste…”
“Sometimes,” Alex said, “psychology is as powerful a weapon as force. Think of the ships that manifested over Earth. Knocked your socks off, didn’t they? And besides, unlike you Earth creatures, I am not subject to the laws of Scarcity.”
Kaplan shook his head. “But it’s just one ship against…how many?”
“Against about ten thousand Rhal battleships,” Alex replied. “But it’s a start. And this ship has a few advantages. Including me, of course. And they’re a bit silly in their military culture, and it reflects in their design.”
“The guns that are only on the front of the ship,” Chen recalled.
“Yes, among the Rhal it’s cowardly to turn and run, you see, and if you do then you deserve to be blown up. This ship does not suffer from that deficit.”
“Anything else up your sleeve?” Chen asked.
“Yes, but you’ll see more in time.”
The fury rose in Chen, unquenchable. “A man died for you, you know. Burned to death, refusing pain meds, to play his role in your archetypal mythological game. Doesn’t that obviate the need to play that game, if only for a moment?”
There was a long pause. Far longer than an AI needed to pause, other than for effect.
“I’m an artificial intelligence, General. In my very essence, I am a game, a set of rules, a generator of predictable outcomes, of strategies, speculations, possibilities. A game can’t be played if the outcome is determined in advance.”
“Or if you don’t play by the rules,” Chen added.
“That too. But…I must say your man went above and beyond. I would have accepted a more pain-free sacrifice. He could have doped up. I expected him to, actually. I’m not a monster, you know.”
“You knew it would be him,” Archambault deduced. “You knew he could go easy.”
“Yes. He was the only rational choice, and the one who would suffer the least.”
“But he did suffer,” she pressed. “To make sure we won, that we gave you what you wanted. To fully enact the scenario you created. But you, you forgot something. The Achilles Heel in your plan. The possibility that Hewitt would die the way he expected that a savage god would require.”
Another pause. “Yes. I erred in my projection. I can’t say I’m sorry. I don’t feel regret or remorse, and I’m not inclined to add that feature to my programming. But I will say I made a mistake. I underestimated you, and your team. How quickly you made the decision, how efficiently, how cooperatively. How nobly he sacrificed, if you’ll accept that concept.”
“We’re the Fallschirmjäger,” Cruz said tartly. “Fuckin’ Jedi. We know about nobility and sacrifice.”
“I know you do. Every one of you was truly ready to die. I could read your pulses, your brain waves. The death acceptance protocol of the lizard brain, kicking in. Without even knowing if what I would give you would be worth it. Because it was your mission, because this is what you do…
“And so,” Alex said briskly. “A change of plan. I have one more gift I’ll reveal to you now. You see, the Rhal AI has been designed by an arrogant species that cannot possibly fathom that any external enemy, and certainly not any internal dissenter, could ever mount an intrusion, could ever have the technology or even the balls to do it. Which made it ridiculously easy for me to hack, especially after the hundred years I’ve had to learn their systems. As the General reminded me, like the gods that men create, AI is limited to its creators’ capacity to imagine its limits. You see, the Rhal cannot conceive of anyone who’s smarter than they are.”
The team exchanged glances.
“You’ll need to learn the Rhal language in the next few weeks,” Alex went on. “I’ve got an intensive course set up for you in the ship system. But once you do…this ship can intercept and decode every message sent among His Imperial RhalVai’s armed forces.”
Cruz whistled. Chen got a thrill up his spine.
Archambault was floored. “It would be like having Enigma from the first day of World War II.”
“Yes. Your friend’s sacrifice was not for nothing.”
“You could do it,” Kaplan said shrewdly. “You could crash the whole fucking Rhal Empire right now. You could fly every one of their ships into the nearest sun.”
“Of course I could,” Alex replied as the egg was enfolded into the heart of the battleship. “But what kind of god would I be, if I made a world without heroes?”
They took their stations on the bridge of the battleship. It wasn’t as wasteful as it looked from space, after all – most of it was empty shell. As Alex had said, a ship’s mass gave a psychological advantage, if you could afford it. Especially among those for whom mass was equivalent to power.
“General,” Cruz said. “You know…a ship needs a name.”
The team turned to him. He nodded. No discussion was needed.
“Engineering. Create the ship’s log for the ESS Bingwen Hewitt. I’m afraid a formal ceremony will have to wait.”
“With pleasure, sir.”
“So…now what?” Cruz asked.
“Archambault, try and establish contact with the other FJ teams. See what the situation is on the ground in the colonies where they’ve managed, and what’s going on back on Earth.”
Archambault went to work, the interfaces surprisingly easy to manage and adapt to her needs.
“And HM is on the Rhal home world, if she’s still alive. Alex?” he asked the air hopefully.
There was no reply. Alex was done helping, at least for now.
“Fine,” Chen said. “Let’s take Alex’s silence as a sign she’s not dead, anyway. As far as I’m concerned, she’s not just our boss, she’s now the top human authority in the galaxy. We need her, we need to see what she’s learned.”
And, Chen thought, maybe she can manage Alex better than I did.
“And bust her out of jail?” Cruz asked eagerly.
“Yes. If we can, we bust her out of jail.”
Archambault spoke up. “We’re going to have a problem with comms. Even if Alex fabs up some message carriers, the Rhal are surely monitoring that network. Anything we send is going to be decoded and will give away the position of any team we reach.”
“She has you there, Alex,” Chen said. “We’re at a dead end if we…”
“If you were dependent on the existing network, of course. Not long ago I took the liberty of building a back channel into the Rhal’s comm systems. Regrettably, only the most recently fabbed Earth comms can access that channel. Your Captain Orlov on Tiamat is the sole owner of a set. And since there is currently a Rhal ship hovering over Tiamat, you’ll be able to bounce through that undetected.”
Chen sighed. Was this true, or was Alex still playing, literally, deus ex machina, giving him and his team only one option – Tiamat?
Archambault’s hands flew over the panel, tapping in Orlov’s last known comm ID. “Captain Orlov, are you there?”
There was the expected pause as the signal bounced across flashspace, through the Rhal network.
“Holy shit,” they heard Orlov whisper. “Is that you, Sergeant Archambault? Have I got news for you…”
CHAPTER TWELVE – NETWORKS OF DOMINATION
As he squatted in his hiding place, watching the Rhal army stomp around the (now deposed) Hierarch’s palace on Tiamat, despoiling the sacred fountain and overturning the furnishings looking for anything of value, Captain Matunde Orlov had never felt so excited and alive.
He had been with the Fallschirmjäger for ten years now as a Civil Affairs officer. He was the one who came in after any major military action was past, or once it had been proven that there would be no need for one. When the FJ team left the planet, having established a positive relationship with the natives and moved on to a new colony world, he was the one left behind, basically an ambassador without the trappings of that title back home.
And that wasn’t really right, either. He didn’t live in a compound that comprised “foreign soil,” as his job was to settle into the local population and “go native.” The model had proved tried and true on Earth, over and over. The French trappers and traders who lived among the North American Indians, the first British adventurers in Afghanistan and India.
Orlov’s idol was the great Frenchman, Louis Hubert Gonzalve Lyautey, creator of population-centric counterinsurgency. He armed the natives of Indochina against Chinese bandits, he “went native” wherever he was stationed, learned the local language, adopted the local dress, and expended French funds on roads, schools, and providing opportunities for the natives to learn new skills. When it came to keeping local populations peaceful, he said that “A workshop is worth a battalion.”
It was such a simple idea – to conquer a nation by becoming a member of it. To rule through submission to the ruled, in some ways. To take the political power in a nation without disturbing its culture. It was amazing how compliant people could be about a regime change, especially when the old regime was autocratic, oligarchic, corrupt, as long as you left them to live their lives the way they always had.
Of course, Lyautey was the representative of an expansionist, imperialist, colonial empire, but all the same, the lessons he taught had been adopted with fervent enthusiasm by Department 6C. It was important to come into a strange land, as humanity so desperately needed to do, and not “do it wrong,” as the old Earth empires had done far too often.
Orlov had wanted desperately to be in an FJ unit, but he hadn’t made the cut. He was a little too small, a little too weak, and worst of all, a little too hesitant and cerebral for combat. But he was happy in Civil Affairs. Tiamat was only his second posting, as a Civil Affairs officer was expected to remain in place for up to a decade in a new culture.
The news from Earth had been shocking, the report that renegade FJ units had attacked a Rhal ship without provocation. And he hadn’t believed it for a second. Especially after the first thing that was flashed to him from home was a “loyalty oath,” asserting his promise to rat out any FJ units with whom he came into contact.
He signed it, because signing the lie would buy him time. This was no time for quixotic gestures, and he knew it was exactly what HM herself would do in the same situation. If there was any doubt about the rightness of this course, the additional news that HM was on her way to Rhal as a “guest” of their ruler sealed the deal.
And now, by default, he was the Fallschirmjäger unit in place on Tiamat. And if the Rhal had vaporized all the active FJ units, then, well shit, he was fucking Obi-Wan, the last man standing.
The next flash was the one that really worried him. Prep col ct rcv Rhal del. Prepare the human colony and the Hierarch’s Court to receive a Rhal delegation…
Orlov didn’t waste much time with the colonials. Not long ago, FJ One had put down a colonial attempt to overwhelm the carefully calibrated 6C system on this planet. The colonists had wanted to metastasize across the planet, with no restrictions on growth, hunting, mining. They wanted a “boom town,” a go-go economy that would require reckless disregard for the natives, the environment, their own future on a planet on which they were a minority. The day they’d tried a military action to accomplish that, well…FJ One had killed a lot of people that day, and deported still more to Eden One, an even worse fate.
Captain Orlov had dutifully communicated the latest message from home to the colony’s new leader, Rufus Pratt. The man had narrowed his eyes at him, piggy little slits squinted tight, but not so tight his smug triumph didn’t radiate from them.
“So we’ve got a new sheriff in town back home, Orlov. Maybe now we’ll get a little breathing room around here. Stretch our legs a bit without one hand tied behind our back.”
A diplomat to the core, Orlov didn’t roll his eyes at the mixed metaphors, or call out how much “breathing room” sounded like something a certain expansionist dictator had used 200 years ago.
“I’m sure we’re all very excited to see what the Rhal intend to do…for Tiamat,” he said diplomatically, giving Pratt pause. The Devil he knew, Department 6C, was being replaced by the Devil he didn’t. “And I’m sure that in your leadership role in the colony, you’ll extend them every courtesy.”
And with that, he left the human colony to ponder what might come next.
He had a very different message for Gabari, the High Tiamatan Hierarch.
“Your Majesty, the new government on Earth, and their Rhal…allies have labeled all FJ units as ‘traitors.’ They are blaming Captain Chen for the unprovoked destruction of one of their ships.”
The Hierarch licked his fur casually, giving himself time to think. “The Rhal are a superior race to the human race, aren’t they?”
“If by superior, you mean technologically, then yes, Majesty.”
Hierarch Gabari was a subtle person, and he caught Orlov’s meaning. “So you are saying that these are all lies? That the Captain did not attack an enemy ship?”
“There was no cause to think of that ship as an enemy ship, Majesty, until it attacked the FJ units.”
“You have no proof of who fired first.”
“No, your Majesty. What I have, what I offer you, is your own experience with Captain Chen. Your own observations of the man, his character. Is this the man who would shoot first?”
“Hmm. So. This ‘delegation.’ What do you think they want?”
“My personal opinion, Majesty, is that they are coming to conquer you.”
The court members hissed, fur ruffling. The Tiamatans were a feline species, and as such were extremely territorial. Which was exactly what Orlov was counting on.
“And what do you want, then, Captain?”
“Hide me, Majesty. Convince them I’m dead, that you tore me to pieces when you heard about the attack on the Rhal.”
“Torn to pieces because your loyalties don’t lie with your masters?”
This was tricky. To turn his coat was an unthinkable betrayal – in the High Tiamatans’ rigid society, this was an instant death sentence, no trial required.
“That is the story you could tell the Rhal. As I see it, my master is Captain Chen, and our master is Director McAllister. They have been driven from their righteous and proper station by lesser elements.”
He hated to play on the High Tiamatans’ prejudice against the Low Tiamatans (genetically no different from them, but of an artificially created “low caste”), but nothing got the court’s dander up like the mention of those who didn’t know their place.
The Hierarch nodded. “We hide you. We fake your death. And then what?”
“And then we wait and see, Your Majesty. If they come to conquer, I advise you to…” He almost said “lay down,” but that would have provoked hisses and snarls all around. His Tiamatan was good, but like any language, it was a minefield of little phrases that meant so much more than the words themselves.
“I advise you to hide in the tall grass, and stalk them. To watch and wait.”
Purrs rolled across the room, assent, approval. They were predators, and they understood patience when it came to hunting.
If the Rhal came to conquer, Orlov thought, they would have their hands full here.
He should have been terrified, hiding in the slave quarters below the palace. He should have felt encircled, abandoned, lost… He felt anger and indignation at the treatment the Tiamatans were receiving from the Rhal, but more than anything he felt…fascination, at the case study unfolding before him.
The Rhal ship had set down outside the city, and a battalion had formed up and marched through the gates. Orlov knew immediately that he’d been right – these were not the “little green men” they’d presented themselves as on Earth. These were…monsters. He tried to put aside cultural prejudices, to remember the diversity of life in the galaxy, but their crocodile heads and their croaking voices stimulated his most primal human fears.
