The Borrega Test

by James Vincett

  Discipline is easy, Gavanus thought. It is knowledge and patience we lack.

  Gavanus strode across the tarmac, straight into the teeming crowds, his mane of spines waving in the hot air as he walked. The prisoners scattered before him, many kneeling and shielding their eyes, their ears flat on their heads. The plain red trousers of command that Gavanus wore demanded respect, as did his scent of dominance. The honor guard was just that, an honor, and Gavanus could have crossed the tarmac alone with no fear of attack.

  He stepped off the tarmac and onto the hard-baked ground. As far as he could see were vast pits, each hundreds of heedas in diameter, scores of heedas deep, the slopes carved with intricate terraces. Tens of thousands of prisoners worked at picking, shoveling and moving ore; the sounds of the tools filled the air with metallic sounds. After only a short time, dust covered his body, the smells assaulted his nostrils and the sounds assaulted his ears.

  What a waste!

  How many resources had the Command Authority spent to breed these Naati in the birth factories? Tens of thousands of the mighty Naati race digging in the dirt because they couldn’t see past the ends of their snouts. The planet Ovak was the only political prison in the entire Hegemony. These troublemakers had rejected the entire Naati civilization, the teachings of Maldar, and the edicts of the Command Authority. No matter how they modified the breeding database, a certain number of each generation just didn’t accept what they were told.

  He walked toward a large structure in the distance, a vast block of concrete, bars, and pipes. On top of the structure loomed a rusty-red tower reaching up into the greenish-white sky. The structure was large, and it took Gavanus much longer to reach it than he thought. He reached the building after an hour walking through the hot and dusty air. He dismissed his honor guard and mounted a wide staircase, spending most of an hour climbing to the top and then crossing the roof of the structure to the base of the tower. He continued to climb up a narrow staircase, eventually reaching the disk shaped structure perched on the tower.

  Gavanus heard a horrible scream, like the sound of an animal being butchered. Carefully, he stepped into the gloom of the chamber. The sounds changed to something like chanting, enveloped in high screeches and booms.

  Shelves crammed the walls of the room beyond, the shelves themselves crammed with tall objects, some narrow, and some fat. A number of computer screens stood on narrow stands, and more objects similar to those on the shelves covered the floor.

  Gavanus remembered the homs called them books.

  A holographic image in the middle of the chamber showed a weirdly dressed human being dragged down into the floor by horned hands. A Naati dressed in patched, loose-fitting trousers sat in a large chair on the opposite side of the room. The seated figure stared intently at the holographic image, hands and thumbs forming a triangle. Gray flecked the black hair on his hands and scars covered the broad chest. A patch covered one eye, and one ear was missing.

  With a great climax of noise and screaming, the image disappeared. Gavanus stood motionless and stared at the seated figure. Several moments passed, the distant clink of the picks hovering in the air.

  “That was a recording of Don Giovanni,” the seated figure said. “Performed for Consul Nicolas at the Imperial Palace in Montchauvet, on Earth, three nights before his death.” The figure stood and strode across the room. Gavanus noticed the Naati was taller than himself, and still moved with fluidity and confidence despite his obvious age. “Do you know what it is about, Arch-Commander?”

  “No,” Gavanus answered simply.

  “There is always something smarter, stronger, and more powerful than you.” The figure leaned forward and looked intently into Gavanus’ eyes with his one good eye. “You have been sent by the Command Authority. What is your name?”

  “Gavanus of the Jureen Bloodline, Arch-Commander, Vallia Sector.”

  “Who is your patron, Arch-Commander Gavanus of the Jureen?”

  “Lord Commissar Moosta of the Bork Primary Bloodline.”

  “Moosta is dead.”

  “His ideas still live. The Tolkists have sent me to speak with you, Fangrik of the Kolon Primary Bloodline.”

  Fangrik snorted. “I was stripped of that title, Arch-Commander, by Moosta himself. He consigned me to this prison, for the radical idea of peace.”

  “You are to be reinstated, Fangrik.”

  Fangrik started to chuckle, then laugh. He threw his head back and howled. “I have heard of your difficulties, Tolkist. The abominations from Anuvi are growing in power. Some of the Reactionaries have embraced them, while others fear them. The Tolkists are losing power. The Authority is riven with conflict.” He turned and walked back across the room and slumped in the great chair. “What does the Authority want?”

  “The Authority no longer speaks with one voice. The Reactionaries are using the…abominations…to consolidate power. We Tolkists are in disarray.” Gavanus felt the fear rise in his throat. He tried to speak, but only made a croaking noise.

  “You stink of fear, Gavanus!” Fangrik growled. “Speak!”

  “War within the Hegemony,” Gavanus whined, “such as we have not seen since before the rise of Maldar.”

  “Is this a certainty?”

  “Yes, Lord Commissar. When it occurs, it will be the destruction of the Hegemony, maybe the Naati race.”

  “Then there is nothing to be done,” Fangrik said.

  “There is one option: peace with the Hominin Union.”

  Fangrik laughed again. “You would seek peace now? When we are divided and leaderless and on the verge of destruction? You would throw yourselves at the mercy of the enemy from a position of weakness. You fools should have listened to me all those years ago. We had twice been defeated by the homs, and I argued we should have sought peace from a position of relative strength!”

  “We have already contacted them, Lord Commissar. The Tolkists have sent an emissary. The homs are expecting to speak with us.”

  “Whom did you send?”

  “Arch-Commander Noga.”

  “That whiney fool!” Fangrik stood and paced. “He knows nothing! He was but a pup when I lost power.”

  “He was the only one with the courage to go. You must know the Reactionaries resumed the raids into Hominin Space several years ago. They have re-entered the Neutral Zone and are looking for something on the hom world of Borrega. The situation deteriorates. If the Humans attack us…”

  “If they have knowledge of our difficulties that is what I would do! Fools! You have given victory to our enemies.”

  Gavanus knelt on the floor and lay his ears flat on his head. “Lord Commissar, we are not lost yet. We must offer peace to the Humans. The abominations cannot be allowed to cause the destruction of our race.”

  Fangrik picked up a small device and tapped a few keys. “Here. Look here, fool. This is the enemy with which you now want to make peace.” A holographic image appeared in the middle of the chamber. Flat and grainy, a black and white image showing scores of humans lined up behind barbed wire. “The horrors we have perpetrated on other races are exceeded only by the cruelty with which Humans have treated each other. We kill each other in battle, but the Humans kill their own as we would a krakrat!” As Gavanus watched, several human figures pulled a tangle of dead bodies out of a building, while others loaded bodies, sometimes three or four, onto long trays and pushed them into smoking ovens.

  “Even as we were slaves, no Lokkev ever treated a Naati in such a way. Humans killed millions of their own species like this. Few of the Authority know the horrors of Human history, of their world wars. The more I studied Humans, the more my fear grew. I told Moosta that we must make peace while we were still strong!” He tapped a few keys on the device and the image changed.

  It was a color image with more definition, but the scene was similar. Thousands of Humans, male, female, and young, all naked, packed tight into a small area. Most horrific, there was sound. A multitude of voices cried out. Flyin
g machines flew over, engines whining, and fired into the mass of humans, the staccato sound of the deadly fire filling the air. The image zoomed in to show a press of bodies pushing against the barbed wire, flesh torn, children crushed.

  “This took place during the so-called Unification Wars, in a place called Alabama,” Fangrik said. “Human history says it was when the Human race was first united under one government. The reality is that those who did not agree with unification were killed, slaughtered like beasts.”

  Fangrik tossed away the device and the image disappeared. “Humans traffic in lies, deception, and violence. You need to ask yourself, Gavanus of the Jureen, what do you fear most? The Anuvi abominations? Or Humans?”

  Gavanus whined. “Then perhaps we can still convince the Reactionaries their cause is dangerous. The Command Authority has scheduled a meeting. You must come with me and speak with them. We can use the threat of alliance with the homs to force them to back down.”

  “It is hopeless. They will see it as an insult.”

  “We must try to negotiate, or it will be the end of the Hegemony. There is no other way. If there is civil war among the Naati, the homs will most definitely take advantage of it. We cannot fight the homs and the Reactionaries at once.” Gavanus lay prostrate on the floor. “For all that the Hegemony once was you must try.”

  Yazdani

  “What’s happening?” He pulled on his cerametal vest as he walked into the trailer. It was a makeshift command center hitched to an old six-wheeled armored personnel carrier. Flat screens and dataglasses illuminated the dark space with shifting light. A dozen uniformed police officers sat hunched over keyboards or tablets.

  A young man looked up at him. “A group is moving toward the fusion reactor down by the river. Security there has raised the bridge and deployed riot drones with stun gas.”

  “How many?” His own question seemed to echo in his ears. When he looked at the large flatscreen with the situation display, images and text blurred in several directions, but he still could read what was on it. Memories?

  “RC has estimated around four thousand. Most are armed with simple clubs, but RC has detected slug rifles or sonic stunners. RC, the riot control AI on Kursk.

  “We’ve got reports of another mob,” he heard one of the officers say, but his voice was tinny, like he was listening to it over a radio. He looked up and the officer continued. “This one in Elysium; they’re gathering in the central square, armed with Molotovs and zip guns.” He paused. “About ten thousand of them, and there are more every second. We’ve got a visual.”

  Another large flatscreen lit up to show the aerial image of a crowd gathering amongst the trailers and prefabs of the slum. As the seconds ticked by the mob grew, and then started to move toward the south end of the plaza and the main road. Many of them brandished makeshift guns and rifles tooled out of old machine parts, barely able to fire a bullet, but harmful enough in numbers.

  Elysium, the slum north of the Capital, on the world of Kursk, where newly arrived colonists usually found themselves, scratching a living dissembling ‘bots or other machinery and selling the parts in flea markets all through the lower mainland. He remembered the first time he visited the place, the colonists a mix of the poor from the Core Worlds: white, brown, and black faces looking at him with suspicion as he drove the APC though the muddy streets between the drab plasteel prefab shelters.

  Time seemed to move forward, the images a blur.

  A third officer spoke. “The Colonial Administrator is demanding an update. He wants to know what you’ve got in mind to stop the Elysian mob from reaching the city center.”

  Good God! I don’t blame them! I’d be pissed too if I was promised a paradise and ended up in a slum!

  “I want the APCs in place with the sonic stunners,” he heard himself say. “Use them to barricade the main road into the center of the Capital.”

  His pockcomp chirped. “You must put down this riot,” his supervisor said. “The sooner the better.”

  “I’m working on that now, sir.”

  “Order in the security personnel. They are right there. There is no time to wait for the APCs.”

  “The USS personnel do not have non-lethal weaponry. We need to wait for the APCs.”

  “Put the riot down. Now.”

  “Sir …”

  “Do it now, agent.”

  “I will not use lethal weapons on the rioters!”

  His vision blurred.

  Then he heard the blaster fire again, the shots that have haunted him ever since.

  “Who’s firing, God damn it? I did not give the order to fire!”

  On the flatscreen, he saw the mob part and fall like wheat in front of the scythe. The anger rose in him like a geyser. He knew who gave the order. He knew, but he could do nothing. God damn that man! God damn him to Hell! DAMN HIM TO HELL!

  Yazdani woke and the nightmare receded. It had been twenty-five years since the incident on Kursk, his home world. The Directorate had just recruited him and he’d undergone the initial evaluation. His superiors threw him into action during the Elysium Riots, a young agent in his early twenties.

  The Directorate could conduct intelligence gathering within Union space, but not paramilitary or law-enforcement operations. However, agents could take control of a vessel, station, or settlement, if there existed an immediate threat, and other Imperial agencies, like the military or the Union Security Service, were not present in great enough force to deal with the problem.

  Yazdani’s immediate superior on Kursk liked to test the boundaries of that rule, had done so on Kursk twenty-five years ago, and thousands died at his hand. Afterwards, he had summoned Yazdani to stand before him.

  He remembered it like it was yesterday.

  “Don’t ever question my orders again.” The man was shorter than Yazdani, with sandy blonde hair and dark eyes. “If you want to serve in the Directorate, you cannot show any displeasure or contempt for the organization or its agents to anyone on the outside. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Your evaluation is interesting, Mr. Yazdani.” He looked at his pockcomp. “High degrees of intelligence, physical fitness, and manual dexterity. But you’ve got a strong streak of morality.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You must know, Mr. Yazdani, you will almost never see the complete picture of the operation of which you are a part. You will never have perfect knowledge. You will never know the full implications of your actions, or how they fit into the overall plan.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But, know this. You must carry out your orders as given. A superior may order you to do something you feel is immoral, but you do not know the overall objective of the operation. That objective, be assured, is designed to save lives. If you do not do as ordered, the overall operation will suffer, and unnecessary lives will be lost. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.” Bacchus Freedman, may you rot in Hell.

  “Agent Yazdani?” the shuttle pilot said over the intercom.

  “Yes.”

  “We’ve just entered low orbit around Earth. We’ll be landing in forty minutes.”

  “All right. Thanks.”

  The narrow two-lane roadway stood on pillars ten meters above the ground. Yazdani saw only a few other vehicles on the road, all traveling in the opposite direction, dark blurs that whizzed by in the bright sunlight. To the right snowy peaks gleamed in the early afternoon light. The sky above looked a deep blue, with fibrous wisps of cirrus clouds high above. The land to the left looked almost flat, a vast brownish-green plain stretching seemingly forever.

  “How was your flight, Agent Yazdani?” the vehicle asked him. It was a female voice, a perfect contralto. Agent Cyrus Yazdani was startled, and then remembered that some vehicle AI had “chitchat” subroutines.

  The last thing he was in the mood for was chitchat.

  “Silence,” he said, and turned to look behind him. The spaceport quickly retreated a
s the vehicle sped southward. Yazdani looked at the HUD: 240 km/hr.

  On second thought… “Query: what topographic feature is to the west?”

  “The Rocky Mountains, one of multiple mountain ranges that comprise the Pacific Cordillera, the elevated and mountainous topography covering the western part of North America. The range’s highest peak is Mt. …”

  “And to the east?”

  “The Great Plains, a broad expanse of prairie, steppe, and grassland which lie west of the Mississippi River, and comprise an area of approximately one point three million square kilometers. Both the Pacific Cordillera and the Great Plains are part of the North American Preservation District, stretching from the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains in the west to the Mississippi River in the east, the sixtieth parallel in the north to the thirtieth parallel in the south.”

  “What is the closest population center?”

  “The California Metroplex, located approximately twelve hundred kilometers west, population three hundred fifty four million. Would you like to know more? It will be seven minutes until we reach our destination.”

  “No.”

  So, this is the home world of Humanity.

  He had memories of his parents telling him about the continent of Asia, where his ancestors came from. He wished he could see that place, but the courier had come in over the Pacific Ocean, and the ports darkened as they flew over land. He didn’t even see the spaceport as he landed; ‘bots escorted him to a waiting vehicle. He had read somewhere that in excess of ninety nine percent of visitors to Earth used one of three orbital elevators anchored at the equator to travel to and from the surface.

  I guess I should feel special.

  He glanced to the left. His eyes widened. “What the hell is that?” he whispered.

  A vast, moving brown shape covered the landscape. He touched the zoom controls on the window: he saw thousands of creatures, brown and dark black, the high shoulders of the beast covered with curly hair. The heads of the creatures were massive, some with horns on either side.