Birthright: The Complete Trilogy

by Rick Partlow

  The cutter rumbled and shook as she came down on jets of plasma fire, polishing the graphite landing pad beneath us to a mirror finish. We set down on the landing struts with a gentle bump as Cowboy cut power to the engines.

  "All right." He turned in his couch after shutting down the board. "Lest any of y'all get any smart ideas while we're transferring to the dome, let me fill you in about our surroundings." He squinted at the view on the main screens, past the boxy docking tractor that was crawling toward us.

  "Now, it's a nice summer day out there, so it should be pretty near a hundred below in the sun. Air's about a tenth of an Atmosphere of chlorine, lake down there's hydrochloric acid and so's the snow, when we get it. Without a hard vacc suit, a Norm'd last about ten seconds." He smiled. "Y'all bein' special folk, I might give you up to a minute. That'd give the rest of us time to make bets on what'll get you first...suffocation, freezin' to death, or having the chlorine eat through your lung tissue."

  "How charming," Secarius commented drily. "Perhaps I'll purchase a summer home here."

  A metallic grinding echoed through the hull as the transfer tractor matched airlocks with the cutter, followed by the hiss of inrushing air. Cowboy came to his feet.

  "Time," he announced, "to meet the host."

  The dome had an unfinished air to it, with low-hanging girders and framework exposed above the walkway and workers still assembling equipment in the unfinished walls. We filed through a series of narrow walkways, passing the odd guard or maintenance worker and a host of construction 'bots, until we came to the entrance to a suite of offices.

  A pair of guards blocked the doorway with pulse carbines---a quick thermal scan revealed them as being of the same Executive Bodyguard Deke had faced at the Predecessor base---but they parted to allow us through. We strode through the outer room, past a half-dozen netriders plugged into their terminals, and into the main chamber. There, posed dramatically in front of a real wood desk, was a slim, dark-haired man of medium build. Dressed in an immaculate, hand-tailored business suit, he seemed even more elegant than his clothes, with not a hair out of place or a blemish on his perfect face.

  This, I knew, was Andre Damiani, the most powerful man in the Commonwealth.

  So caught up was I in looking him over, I almost didn't notice the huge figure hulking behind him, standing against the wall. He was a Tahni, but that wasn't so strange---there were Tahni everywhere throughout the Commonwealth, since the war and the Reconciliation. But my headcomp kept buzzing in my ear, trying to tell me something, so I ran a thermal scan on him...and almost fell over. Underneath that biological skin was a skeleton of solid alloy, dotted with the gleaming stars of isotope power packs. He was an Imperial Guard cyborg.

  Suddenly, I wasn't on Petra anymore; I was on Tahn-Skyyiah, and it was the waning weeks of the war. All of us had been sent in concurrently with the first Marine troops to disrupt the Tahni power supply, command structure and lines of communication, and to try to prevent them from doing a "scorched-earth" maneuver on us.

  I had been sent to the largest power plant in the Imperial City to disable the reactor and insure that it couldn't be set to explode if they thought it was hopeless. I got past the regular troops and technicians without a problem, but I hadn't known they had a Guard 'borg watching the place. He came out of the shadows wearing Stealth armor that masked his thermal signature, and knocked my pistol out of my hand before I got a chance to use it.

  I came closer to dying fighting that God-forsaken, soulless piece of junk than I had any other time during the war. We beat the living shit out of each other, and I only managed to get the best of him by a moment of pure luck.

  I'd heard some of them had survived, but I sure as hell never expected to see one.

  "Good afternoon, my friends," Damiani welcomed us in cordial tones. A brief frown passed over his face and he glanced at West. "It is afternoon out there, isn't it, Roger?"

  "All I know's that it's cold, sir," Cowboy said, grinning ruefully.

  "You all know who I am," Damiani went on, "so I won't bother introducing myself. This," he waved a hand back at the cyborg, "is my personal bodyguard, Trint. Trint has been most useful to me over the last few years, for which I am most thankful to Monsieur West, who brought him to me. And now he has brought you before me, who may even prove more useful.

  "I am not a wasteful man, nor am I a spiteful one. You have all cost me much in the way of time and inconvenience, not to mention," he eyed me significantly, "the destruction of property. Yet I seek no revenge. Revenge is for small minds."

  He paced closer to us, looking Mat and I over. "Yet I know that you perceive us to be on opposite sides. You may even cling to archaic notions that I and those I represent are..." he chuckled pleasantly, "evil. Let me assure you, our motives are economical rather than diabolical."

  "Tell that to those colonists on Grenada," Mat said quietly.

  "Oh, Colonel M’voba," Damiani said with a pleasant laugh, "you don't believe we really expended the time and energy to actually destroy that colony, do you? As I said, I'm not a wasteful man. It was much easier to simply synthesize a holo for the news and restrict all traffic in and out of the system."

  "If that's so," I said, slowly mulling all this over, "then the President's in on the whole thing, right?"

  "Jameson's a halfway talented actor, Mr. Mitchell," Damiani sniffed disdainfully. "He's such an automaton, I'm surprised he can perform bodily functions without guidance. You are standing before the only true president the Commonwealth has had for the last thirty years."

  "Is that supposed to make us trust you?" Kara asked him.

  "Nothing so maudlin, my dear Captain," he replied. "If you're half as intelligent as my experience has led me to believe, it will convince you of how futile it is to oppose my efforts. My father ran this government before me, and when I choose to lay down the reins of command..." He paused, chuckling to himself. "Well, my tastes run differently; but perhaps I'll use the technology we've acquired to make a genetic duplicate of myself...for posterity, as it were. In any case, even if you were fortunate enough to dispose of me, what I've built would continue in my absence. If you join me, however, we could, together, build something greater than the sum of our parts."

  "Mr. Damiani," I interrupted, "This is all very persuasive, but, if you don't mind, I'd like to see my wife."

  "Your wife is a charming woman, Mr. Mitchell. I would say that you were a fortunate man, but from what you've managed to survive in the last few weeks, it's obvious you're absolutely blessed." He smiled. "She's fine, I assure you. We'll be visiting her in just a while. But first, I think it would help impress upon all of you just what you're up against if we were to take you on a tour of our little facility. If you would lead the way, Roger..."

  "Yeah, sure," Cowboy jerked his head toward the door, looking a bit unhappy at being our tour guide. He led us out of the room, with Damiani behind and the Executive Guards bringing up the rear to assure our good behavior.

  We passed through another section of unfinished corridors before we came to what appeared to be a large lift station. West hit a control and the door to one of the cars opened for us.

  "Where's this supposed to take us?" I wanted to know. "This whole place is floating on a lake of hydrochloric acid, right?"

  "Right," Cowboy allowed as we filed into the car. "This takes us under the lake."

  "Oh, good." I rolled my eyes, wishing I hadn't asked.

  The door closed, and I felt the car begin to move downward.

  "The dome is a recent addition," Damiani explained. "Built more for comfort than anything else. The main part of this base was constructed before the war, beneath the lake, away from the prying sensors of Trint's former employers. It became a handy location for us to continue our research into genetic reconstruction.

  "Now, however, we no longer have to worry about drawing attention to our activities, and our priority has changed to creating a viable base of operations for the next stage of ou
r little venture."

  "Just what is the next stage?" Mat asked him. "We've figured out that you mean to use the contrived threat of the Skrela to put Corporate Security Forces in control of the colonies, but just how do you plan to explain to the public when their Fleet disappears?"

  "People are sheep, Colonel M’voba," Damiani declared. "You, if anyone, should know that. You give them a well-produced ViRfeed and a convincing story, and they'll believe just about anything. It's been the same for all recorded history." The Corporate executive seemed to be winding up for a boardroom speech, and he continued as the lift came to a halt. "The Egyptians believed their pharaohs were living gods. The citizens of Rome were convinced that their empire was eternal, right up to the point the Goths and Vandals stormed the Eternal City. Good Lord, the people of the old United States actually believed that John F. Kennedy was killed by a lone sociopath!" We trailed West out of the car, following him through hallways tinted an antiseptic white, technicians drifting by us dressed in labcoats of a similar color.

  "But we have no plans of 'disappearing' the Fleet, Colonel M’voba...we never did. This base, aside from its other, obvious functions, was a Judas goat. We knew once Cowboy revealed its location to you, that you would be drawn to it inexorably. Your abortive raid has effectively exposed all the disloyal elements in the upper echelons of the military, and given our puppets an excuse to depose them without undue public outcry." Our little tour group went through a wagon-wheel intersection, curving to the right past a row of large laboratories, exposed to the hallway through thick transplas. I glanced into one of them, saw the bodies of adult Resscharr floating in clear chambers of biotic fluid. An involuntary shudder ran up my back.

  "No," Damiani went on, every pore emanating satisfaction, "our fleet will achieve an impressive victory with the aid of our new allies. Not without losses, to be sure, but they will return as heroes."

  "How do you expect to pull that off?" Kara demanded. "If you mean to maintain control, you'll have to maintain the threat. Do you think you can do that indefinitely with no real enemies to show the public?"

  "Oh, we'll have enemies for them, Captain McIntire," Damiani assured her. "Enemies you'll have to see to believe."

  Cowboy paused before the door into the suite of labs, letting its security seal scan his retina. The heavy portal slid aside with a hermetic hiss, and he looked back at the rest of us.

  "In here."

  "Mother of God," Kara muttered. I didn't agree. Whatever force had spawned the creature before us, it was nothing so benevolent.

  The Skrela warrior had looked formidable on the holo we had seen, but in person it scared the living shit out of me, even contained in the transplas vat. It was a mass of chitinous armor plates and oversized pincers, bobbing thoughtlessly in the pink biotic fluid. The vat was at least three times the size of the ones in which we had seen them growing the Resscharr, and it seemed to fill the room, barely leaving enough space for us and the banks of equipment that monitored it.

  "How?" Secarius asked, speaking for the first time since we'd landed on the planet. "How could you create that without at least a DNA sample?"

  "What?" Damiani cocked an eyebrow. "You assumed the Skrela were merely an invention we created to aid our cause? Not that I blame you, mind...the things are almost too nightmarish to be real. But they were. The history that our biological creations gave on the NewsNet was essentially correct up till the contrived return of both the Ancients and their enemies. This," he gestured at the construct, "was produced from the remains of one of the creatures that the Resscharr kept preserved for study on their outpost."

  "There's the answer to your question," Cowboy told Kara, who was still staring at the thing. "The public will believe us because we'll have an enemy they can see. Hell, they'll have an enemy that'll haunt their fucking dreams."

  "Now, perhaps you can see your position," Damiani said. "If you're hoping that General Murdock or his allies will expose us, don't. He and his friends will be under arrest within a month. Their stories, should they even be heard, won't be believed once the Senate and the public get an eyeful of our new enemies.

  "They have no choice, nor could I allow them one...they are too high profile to be allowed a chance to do further harm. You, on the other hand, have a choice. You can join the winning side. You, Colonel M’voba, could replace General Murdock as the head of Fleet Intelligence. Captain McIntire, I could have you installed as the new Director of the DSI---it seems the current Director," the Corporate executive said with a thin smile, "is fated to meet with a mysterious accident."

  He looked up at Secarius thoughtfully. "Monsieur Chang, I'm not completely sure as yet what position you would fill, but one of your unique physical and technical abilities would surely prove valuable."

  "What about me, Damiani?" I asked him. "What's Mephistopheles offering me for my soul?"

  "I do admire a man with a classical education." he said, applauding appreciatively. "But I assumed you already knew what I was offering...the life of your lovely wife, Rachel. And your life, Constable Mitchell. Not just your metaphysical life, mind...you've already shown a willingness to part with that. No, I refer to the life you've so longed for, the one that you feel the Corporate Council has robbed from you."

  "What the hell are you talking about?" I frowned. This was weird...it was as if Damiani was walking inside my guts, picking out pieces to dredge up and show around.

  "If you will agree to remain in my service for the next five years as an assistant to Roger West, I will pull all the Corporate presence off of Canaan, including the mines and the orbital reflectors. Think about it, Caleb," he urged, his face becoming almost gentle. "For the rest of your life, you and your family can have that pristine little world all your own, with no outside interference. God, it's almost appealing to me."

  "And if I refuse?" I asked, stalling for time to think. I felt like I was walking through a dream, unable to separate fact from fantasy. Was what he was offering really that bad? Was he---and were the Corporates---really the murderous monsters that I had thought them to be, or were they just like any other big business conglomerate or government bureaucracy through the last few hundred years? Maybe I was just fooling myself thinking I could change the way things had always been...

  "You'll be tried for the murder of some four hundred CSF employees aboard the Canaan orbital station," he told me, "and most likely executed."

  "What about Rachel?" I rasped hoarsely, my words nearly catching in my throat. Four hundred people...

  "She'll never leave this base." He didn't have to add that implied last word: "alive."

  "I don't suppose," Kara interjected, "we have any time to consider all this."

  "Of course," the executive acquiesced easily. "I'm not an unreasonable man. At a brisk walk, it will take us about seven minutes to make it back to my office." He smiled that smooth, almost-likable smile of his. "Think fast."

  As we made our way out of the labs and back toward the lift banks, all I could hear were my words to Kara back on Inferno: "Kind of makes you not want to bother trying to stop them." She'd reminded me that if we didn't, they'd kill us. Now, perhaps, those weren't our only options.

  I'd never considered myself an idealist, not since the war. Oh, once I'd entertained thoughts of self-sacrifice and loyalty to the Commonwealth---those kind of youthful convictions had gotten me into the Academy when it would have been much easier to stay on the farm. But I'd seen enough moral compromise in the name of military or political pragmatism to realize that, however far mankind had progressed technologically, he'd hardly advanced a centimeter ethically.

  The idea of a truly representative government on an interstellar scale was a joke. Whenever more than a few million people got together and called themselves a society, one or a few of them was going to wind up bossing the others around, no matter what fancy names they gave it. So I didn't believe for a moment that I had a duty to free humanity from the yoke of its corporate tyrants and restore the rightful
rule of the duly-elected Commonwealth government. Hell, it was that duly-elected bunch of morons who'd let all this happen in the first place.

  No, the only duty I recognized was to my family, and, by extension, to the place we called home. If I could redeem that home from the depredations of the Corporate Presence, it would be worth the deal I'd be making with this particular incarnation of the Devil. The only question was if he was telling the truth. That's the shitty part about deals with the Devil---it's hard to trust somebody with that kind of track record.

  The lift doors closed us in with a sibilant hiss, appropriate to the Hellish allegory I'd built up in my mind, and I let my gaze drift to Kara. What was she going to do in the face of this temptation? Above all else, she was a pragmatist; yet, above even that, she was not one to trust the Corporates. I wished I could risk a neurolinked word with her, but I suspected that, here, even that would be detected.

  She returned my look with a calm, unreadable stare, but I saw her flex her left hand slightly, perhaps wishing she could shoot her way out of this with that little laser. Even if Cowboy hadn't drained it back on the ship, however, I doubt we could have gotten far. We all retained our Reflex Armor, and our non-powered implant weapons, but the complex was crawling with Executive Guards, and the one available starship was across too many meters of chlorine gas.

  I caught myself wishing that the two of us had met under different circumstances, but that was patently ridiculous. Under any other circumstances, I'd never have considered being with any woman but Rachel.

  What was that old saying Elder Pratt had always quoted to my father when they were both a little drunk? Oh, yeah..."Shit happens." That was it.

  The lift came to an abrupt halt, and the doors opened, putting an end to my considerations. We filed out, with Damiani in the lead and the Executive Guards bringing up the rear. Mat was in front of me and West was at my elbow, while Kara and Secarius kept pace with each other just in front of the Guards.