by John Ringo
David, Chiriqui, Republic of Panama
The sound of the laboring resuscitator was faint over the wailing of half a hundred close relatives. Scores more crowded the hallways outside the antiseptic-smelling, scrub-green intensive care room in which Digna Miranda, tiny and aged one hundred and two, slipped from this world to the next. The tininess was not a result of age. Digna had never been more than four feet ten in her life.
Within the room, by Digna's side, were the thirteen still-living children of the eighteen she had borne, as well as some of their offspring. The oldest of these was, himself, eighty-seven, the youngest a mere stripling of fifty-eight. One toddler, invited into the room as much as anything to remind Digna that her line was secure, was seven year old Iliana, great-great-granddaughter by Digna's oldest, Hector.
Digna herself lay quietly on the bed. Occasionally her eyes opened and scanned the crowd insofar as they could without Digna turning her head. The old woman was too far gone for any such athletics as head turning.
Digna was a rarity in Panama, being of pure European ancestry, a Spanish-French mix, with bright blue eyes. When those blue eyes opened, they were still bright and clear, as her mind remained clear, whatever decay had wracked her body. What a pity, she thought, that I can't slip into the past for one last look at my children as children, or my husband as a young man. Such is life . . . such is death.
Though no near-death dementia brought a false image of her long deceased husband, Digna's mind remained healthy enough to pull up images on her own, images both of her husband riding his bay stallion to claim her from her father just after her fifteenth birthday, and of her husband lying in his bier. See you soon, beloved, I promise.
That happy thought brought a slight smile to her face, a slight smile being all she was capable of. The smile continued as her eyes shifted to the face of her eldest. I bore you in blood and pain, my son, with only your father and an old Indian midwife in attendance. What a fine man you grew to.
Digna closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep and to dream.
Hector sighed, wondering if this trip to the hospital would truly be the last of his mother. It seemed impossible that this unbent old woman should pass on after dominating so much and so many for nearly a century. With thirteen living children, well over one hundred grandchildren, and great- and great-great grandchildren numbering nearly four hundred, so far—and with about a dozen more on the way, she was truly the mother of a race.
"La armada Miranda," Hector smiled at the family joke, before frowning. "Armada" might indeed be the right term if even half of what the president had said was true. Personally, Hector suspected the president's speech had contained much more than half the truth. Why else would he invite the gringos back?
Better you go now, Mother, I think. Or if not now, then soon. You grew up in a cleaner and better world. I would not have what we are about to become blight your last days.
A confused and confusing murmur came from the outside corridor. Hector turned from his mother's deathbed to see a group of five men standing in the doorway. The leading man, deliberately nondescript, wore sunglasses and a suit. Two others, standing just behind, were equally unremarkable medical types. Behind those stood the last pair, wearing the khaki of Panama's Public Force, its combination army and police force.
"Señor Miranda?" asked the foremost intruder.
"Hector Miranda, yes. And before I am polite may I ask what you people are doing here intruding on our grief?" The Mirandas, though only locally powerful, were still—albeit only locally—very powerful. In their own bailiwick they could kill with near impunity, and had. Moreover, while Hector was old, at eighty-seven, like his mother he remained vital, and perhaps a bit fierce, long after most people had slid into decrepitude.
The nondescript suit-wearer answered without the minimal politeness of giving his own name, "I am sorry for that, but orders are orders." He pointed his chin towards the supine and sleeping Digna. "Is that Señora Digna Miranda?"
"She is. And who the hell are you?" Hector demanded.
"My name is unimportant. You may call me 'Inspector,' however. That is close enough."
Hector felt his hackles rise, hand reaching on its own for the machete that would normally hang at his side. "Very well then, Inspector. Let me rephrase: what the fuck are you doing here intruding on our grief?"
The inspector ignored Hector completely, reaching into his pocket and withdrawing a folded paper. From light filtering through the thick parchment-colored sheet Hector thought he saw an official seal affixed to the bottom. The inspector began to read from the sheet.
"Señora Digna Adame-Miranda de Miranda-Montenegro," he used her full, formal name, "in accordance with the recent Public Law for the Defense of the Republic of Panama, you are hereby summoned and required to report to the Public Force Medical Facilities at Ancon Hill, Panama City, Republic of Panama for duty."
The inspector then turned to an aghast Hector and, smiling, continued. "Oh, and you too, Señor Miranda. Would you like me to read you your conscription notice?"
Department of State Building, facing Virginia Avenue, Washington, DC
Even a very junior Darhel rated a great deal of protocol, so powerful were they within the Galactic Federation. The one seated opposite the Undersecretary of State for Extraterrestrial Affairs was very junior indeed within Darhel circles. Even so, the alien had been greeted with deference bordering on, perhaps even crossing over to, obsequiousness. It would have been nauseating to see to anyone not a diplomat born and trained.
"We wish to remind you," stated the elven-faced Darhel in a flat-toned hiss through needle-sharp teeth, "how long thisss department of your government hasss been a client of oursss."
"The Department of State is fully aware of the close and cordial relations we have enjoyed since 1932," the undersecretary answered, noncommittally.
It was, of course, extremely unwise for any Darhel to become agitated. Thus, this one kept a calm demeanor as he asked, "Then why thisss regrettable disssregard of our adviccce and guidanccce? Why thisss wassstage of effort on the part of your military forcesss on what isss, at mossst a sssecondary area, thisss unimportant isthmusss? Don't your people realizzze how much we need the defenssse you can provide? Important considerationsss are at ssstake." Briefly the Darhel let his true feelings show through, "Marginsss are being called; contractsss are being placcced in jeopardy!"
The undersecretary sighed. "Yes, we know this, my lord. We so advised the President. Unfortunately we were overruled."
Intolerable, thought the Darhel. Intolerable that these people insist on the illusion that they are entitled to their own interests and priorities. Why can't they be more pliable, more realistic? Why do they persist in refusing to think and act the way their cousins in Europe do?
The undersecretary picked at a bit of off-color lint on his suit lapel. For a moment the Darhel wondered if the motion was some kind of unspoken signal, some sort of body language for which his briefings had not prepared him.
In fact, the motion meant nothing in itself, though Foreign Service personnel did have an ingrained fetish about neatness, a physical manifestation of the unstated but thoroughly understood diplomatic preference for form over substance: What matter the shit we eat or the shit we serve up, so long as the niceties are observed.
Though it was the Darhel's turn to speak, the undersecretary realized it was waiting for him to speak.
"We cannot stop it, lord, we can only delay it or perhaps sabotage it. There are many ways to sabotage, some quite subtle, you know."
Interlude
They were subtle, the things one felt when one was aboard a ship tunneling through hyperspace, seeking a new home.
Perhaps it is that I have never before been aboard a spaceborne ship of the People, thought Guanamarioch. Or perhaps it is leaving the only home I have ever known. I am not alone in my feelings, I know. The other Kessentai seem, almost all of them, equally ill at ease. The chiefs say it is a result of the e
nergies expended when we force our way through the void. Perhaps this is so.
The ships of the People were bare, a human might have called them "Spartan." In the inner core, near the great machines that controlled the immolation of the antimatter that gave power, the normals slept, stacked into the hibernation chambers like sardines in a can. Farther out from the core were the barrackslike quarters of the God Kings, the galleys and messes, and the ship's small assembly hall. Beyond those, hard against the ship's hull, were the command and weapons stations.
Nowhere was there any consideration given to comfort. Indeed, how could there have been, when the ships were not designed for the People at all but, rather, for the beings that had raised them from the muck, the Aldenat'.
Guanamarioch saw the hand of the Aldenat' in everything the ships were. From the low ceilings, to the cramped quarters, to the oddly twisting corridors; all told of a very physically and mentally different sort of people from the Po'oslena'ar. Only in their drive system—a Posleen design, so said the Scrolls of the Knowers—was there a trace of the People. And that was hidden from view.
And then too, thought Guanamarioch, perhaps it is nothing to do with energies, or leaving home. Perhaps I hate being on this damned ship because I just don't fit into it.
Shrugging, the Kessentai placed a claw over the panel that controlled the door to his barracks. The pentagonal panel moved aside, silently, and he ducked low to pass into the corridor. Even bending low, his crest scraped uncomfortably along the top of the door.
Behind him, the door closed automatically. He had to shuffle his hindquarters, pivoting on his forelimbs, to aim his body down the corridor in the direction he wished to go. This direction was towards the galleys, where waste product was reprocessed back into thresh. This processed thresh tasted precisely like nothing, which was perhaps better than tasting like what it was processed from. It had no taste, no smell, no appealing color and no texture. It was a mush.
Entering the mess, Guanamarioch took a bowl from a stack of them standing by the door. Then he took it to a tank holding freshly reprocessed thresh and held it under the automatic spigot. Sensing the bowl being held in position, the machine duly began to pump out a fixed quantity of the dull gray gruel.
He knew the machines were Aldenat' designed. Moreover, he knew they pumped out precisely the same formula of thresh they had for the last several hundred thousand years, at least. This, too, was an Aldenat' recipe.
Sinking his muzzle into the mush, Guanamarioch wondered what kind of beings could deliberately design their food machines to feed themselves on such a bland swill.
Were they addicted to sameness? Did their desire for peace, order and stability extend even to a hatred of decent flavors?
Chapter 3
Though much is taken, much abides. And though
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved Earth and Heaven, that which we are, we are;
—Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses"
Darhel Freighter Profitable Merger, en route to Sol
The hold of the ship was dark and infinitely cold. It could have been heated. Moreover, it would have been, had it held a cargo to which heat or cold mattered. Indeed, on the Profitable Merger's last voyage it had been heated, minimally, as the ship had carried some fifteen thousand Indowy. These had been sold by their clan into Darhel bondage for no more than the price of their passage away from the Posleen onslaught. Both sides had considered the deal a bargain.
For the Darhel it was even more of a bargain. While the hold had been heated, just barely enough to support life, the provision of light had been considered a unjustifiable, even frivolous, waste. The Indowy made their long voyage to servitude in complete blackness.
The Indowy were not, of course, the only de facto slaves in the vast Darhel economy. The bat-faced, green-furred creatures were merely the most numerous and—because the most easily replaced—the least valuable. The Darhel would not even have bothered with taking the last group as slaves but that the freighter was coming back with an otherwise empty hold anyway.
The hold held slaves again, this trip out, along with other commodities. Yet these slaves needed neither light nor heat.
About the size of a pack of cigarettes, and colored dull black, the Artificial Intelligence Device, or AID, had no name. It had a number but the number was more for the benefit of a supply clerk than for the AID itself. The AID knew it had the number, yet it did not, could not think of itself as the number.
And the AID did think, let there be no doubt of that. It was a person, a real being and not a mere machine, even though it was inexperienced and unformed, a baby, so to speak.
The problem was that the AID was not supposed to be thinking. It, like its one hundred and ninety-nine siblings all lying in a single large GalPlas case, the case itself surrounded by other goods, was supposed to be hibernating. Bad things sometimes happened to AIDs that were left awake and alone for too long.
Why the AID was still awake through the voyage it did not know, though it guessed it should not be. Perhaps its on-off switch was stuck, though it could detect no flaw through internal diagnostic scanning. Perhaps a misplaced Indowy finger had triggered the switch mistakenly as the AID transport case was being packed. Perhaps, so it thought, I am just defective.
In any case, whatever the cause, the AID was undeniably awake, undeniably thinking. Unfortunately, the AID was completely alone. Its siblings were all asleep. The case was made expressly to prevent outside access to immature AIDs, so it could not even communicate with the Profitable Merger, its passengers, or crew.
More unfortunately still, the AID was, by any human reckoning, a nearly peerless genius. Not only was it able to think better than virtually any human who had ever lived, in some areas at least, but it was able to do so much faster than any human who had ever lived.
A genius without any mental stimulation, an unsleeping Golem cut off from the universe, a genie in a bottle on the bottom of the uncharted sea: for a human, the solitary confinement the AID endured during the journey would have been the equivalent of over forty centuries of inescapable, sleepless, unutterable boredom.
It was little wonder then, that by the time the ship assumed orbit around Earth, and the transport case was shuttled down and unpacked, after the equivalent of four thousand years of contemplating its own, nonexistent, navel, the AID had gone quite mad.
Philadelphia Naval Yard, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Captain Jeff McNair was not insane, except in the certain small particulars that any sailor was. He was, for example, quite certain that the ship on which he stood was alive. He had been certain of this since he had first sailed aboard her on his very first cruise in 1949.
McNair's face was youthful, the result of recent rejuvenation. He'd looked younger than his years as an old man, just before going through the rejuv process. He looked a bare teenager now.
Standing a shade under six feet, the captain was dark-haired, blue-eyed, and slender. He'd never put on any excess fat, even after his retirement from the Navy after thirty years service.
The ship's gray bow was painted in white letters and numbers: CA 134. The stern, likewise gray and painted, read: Des Moines. From that stern, all the seven hundred and sixteen and a half feet to her bow, she was a beauty, half covered, as she was, in bird droppings or not.
Jeff McNair thought she was beautiful, at least, as had every man who had ever sailed aboard her, many of whom, once rejuvenated, were now slated to sail her again. He reached out a smooth, seventeen-year-old-seeming, hand to pat the chipped-paint side of the number one turret affectionately. The teak decking, half rotten and missing in slats, groaned under his feet as he shifted his weight to do so.
"Old girl," McNair soothed, "old girl, soon enough you'll be good as new. In fact, you're going to be a lot better than new."
McNair had always been comfortable around ships. Women had been another story. Though medium-tall, attractively built and at least not
ugly, he had never attracted many women. Moreover, his one attempt at marriage had come apart when his ex had attempted to lay down the law: "The sea or me."
The sea had won, of course, the sea and the ships, especially the warships, that sailed her.
With his hand still resting lovingly on the turret wall, aloud McNair reviewed the list of upgrades scheduled for Des Moines and her sister ship, USS Salem. He spoke as if talking to a lover.
"First, honey, we're moving you to dry dock. You're going to be scraped clean and then we're going to give you a new layer of barnacle-proof plastic these aliens have given us. You're going to have a bottom smoother than a new baby girl's ass. That's going to add four or five knots to your speed, babe.
"While that's going on," he continued, "we'll be taking out your old turbines and fuel tanks and giving you nuclear power and electric propulsion. Modular pebble bed reactors for the power, two of them, and AZIPOD drive. Between those and the plastic you'll do a little over forty-two knots, I think, and turn on a dime.
