Moving Earth

by Dean C. Moore

  Veritas gave a final nod of concession and the other oligarchs bowed respectfully and returned to their aircraft. He watched the air conveyances fly off like so many wasps determined to bury their eggs in another lifeform’s body.

  Down to the last analogy, thought but not spoken, the psychic amplifiers had conveyed the nature of their handiwork to Sopos and his gathering.

  Sopos’s hecklers didn’t take long to pounce. “I’m with Veritas on this,” said one. “This sounds more like a coup for Helldros, not something that will ingratiate us with Leon, or communicate the value of Mentas to the rest of the cosmos, provided we do escape The Collectors.”

  “I can explain,” Sopos said with a reckless smile. “Sonny gifted Mentas with these psychic amplifiers so we can spread enlightenment throughout the cosmos all the more easily, sure, but we know his kind. His real motive was to use Mentas as a peace offering to Leon to calm him, once Leon realizes all that Sonny has been up to, undermining him in every other way. You can bet Sonny has a hundred or more psychic amplifier moons for every one he gave us. So the war to enlighten humanoids across space-time is bound to fail.

  “But we can use the children of the mindrite rich worlds to infect any world Sonny has gotten a foothold on, checking his power at every turn. Buying us and Leon the time we both need to genuinely uplift humanoid-kind throughout the heavens.”

  More to the point, Sopos thought, not only would the children subjected to the mindrite crystals be closely mentored by the Mentas five-brain intellectuals, but it was Sopos’s hope, his people would be the first adults which the mindrite crystals actually affected. As far as Sopos was concerned, the children themselves were ultimately expendable, valuable only for long enough to study and run experiments on in order to upgrade Mentas five-brainers to god-like status, with Sopos the most powerful of all the gods. Their reign over any and all universes thus may well be eternal.

  “And that, ladies and gentlemen, will not only ingratiate Leon to us, but assure our ascension to our rightful place as the true leaders of the cosmos.” Sopos made sure to punctuate that sermon with hands held up and head held high.

  In truth, were it not for the crystals he was wearing to make it all the easier for the psychic amplifying moons surrounding Cerebra to affect the senate, this debate would have gone on for days. But he was already being greeted with a standing ovation.

  All Sopos could think was, let the masters of the universe games begin, and let the best man—me—win. He laughed inside his head, while maintaining an expression of humility before his peers, bowing as if almost embarrassed at all the praise and attention.

  ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SIX

  PAN-GALACTICA

  Senator Raz, ostensibly representing the planet Stiffros of the Mentas Galaxy, stepped out of the circular meeting hall where Sopos had pulled off an undeniable coup. Only for who? Raz figured he’d let Sonny decide.

  He beamed out of the hallway surrounding the infamous debatar—the round chamber where the debates ensued, pronounced deh-bah-tar, with equal emphasis on each syllable. For all anybody knew, he was heading back to Stiffros.

  ***

  SONNY’S SPACE STATION AND CASINO

  THE LUCKY STREAK

  Raz materialized beside Sonny inside his casino, the Lucky Streak. So long as Raz had his tracker on him, he could be beamed from any location within the Menagerie to any other, a plus of having one’s hands on Dead Zone legacy tech.

  The joint was jumping, as they say. The Lucky Streak never closed for gambling. Sonny had absolutely no objections to the powers that be coming to him, moreover, to drink and per chance to loosen their tongues more than they should, to gamble more than they could afford, and perhaps offer up choice information for getting out of the hole. Even oligarchs, it seemed, didn’t have bottomless pockets, not when it came to maintaining their edge versus their competition.

  Raz interrupted Sonny’s gaze, currently on a RamRadden high general, who Sonny was letting win to help mitigate any military losses he and his people might take during Sonny’s next little coup, even if he’d withdrawn with a little arm twisting by Farsi from this one. One never knew, after all, when one would need another coup.

  Whispering in Sonny’s ear, in their private language unhackable to anyone and anything short of supersentient AIs, whose presence Sonny’s scanners would have alerted him too, Raz said, “Sopos has his hands on the mindrite-rich worlds. And he’s hand-delivering them to Leon.”

  “Well, well. That is a game changer, isn’t it?”

  “But for who?” Raz asked, his speech pressured.

  “Excellent question. I’m sure Leon will be asking himself the same question when the time comes.”

  “The crystals are said to allow the children to walk with the gods. Unless the meaning of that word has changed recently, gods does not mean devils.” Raz punctuated his pronouncement with a cough, as if the mere idea was sticking in his throat.

  Sonny chuckled, while keeping his eyes on the RamRadden general, gauging when his goose had been fattened enough for the slaughter. But the general’s greed was great, so more fattening was in store.

  “These mindrite crystals—if they’re anything like the Zalics crystals—could be playing a long game, beyond our capacity to fathom,” Sonny explained. “Of one thing we can be certain, passing the children off as little angels might be something I might do to get my fangs into Leon.”

  “These Guardian races, the ancient ones, if they’re picking sides against one another for some coming battle, how can we know that opposing Leon is even in our best interests? He could be the devil’s tool, and we…”

  “God shall make the devil, too, do his bidding? Is that it? Don’t think I haven’t given the matter some thought. But for our purposes, I’m afraid it’s far too soon to have this debate. First we must attend the short game, and that means getting free of The Collectors, and nabbing control of Leon’s war machine from him, then we worry about the long game.”

  “And that means? Keeping in mind that the mindrite worlds might affect the short-term game as well?” Raz refused to be placated so easily.

  Sonny sighed. “I can’t see Leon being quick to use those children as pawns in his own game, doesn’t quite fit with his nice guy image. And if through them or any other means he manages to wrest control from our grip, well, it’s not like we’re not playing both sides from the middle. One thing I suspect the Guardian races and I have in common: a distinct tendency to make the march of history work for us, whatever direction it’s heading in.”

  “I would still feel better if we have some way of neutralizing the children, should your predictions prove wrong, at least as regards the coup underway,” Raz said.

  “We’ve unleashed so many adversaries on Leon at once, put so many variables in play, that neither psychics nor supersentient AIs nor God-children are about to see through that fog of war. What we do know is that without Leon’s legacy tech in play, he’s outnumbered, outgunned, and this time possibly outplayed as well. He’s one genius general fighting against how many? All we can do now is work the odds, which, as you know, are always in the House’s favor. From the perspective of the Lucky Streak, this is just one more game to bet on for gullible fools who don’t realize the fix is in.” Sonny laughed for his own amusement.

  ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE JARDARIAN GALAXY

  GALACTIC SECTOR 1313-XYXY-7

  THE PLANET PHRONOS

  UNDER EMPEROR STEMOS’S RULE

  What a shithole, Cussler thought. And these people never stop fighting to protect their few square meters of it. Cussler Grey knew what it meant to serve among Sonny’s Shadow Warriors: a lifetime spent in shitholes just like this one, the hairy-ass ones where the flecks of fecal matter got stuck at the rim. He was to pass himself off as said fecal fleck. But honestly…

  He’d declined to be stationed on Venus on account of its hellish atmosphere, consisting mainly of carbon dioxide with clouds of sulfuric acid. The heav
ier atmosphere led to a surface pressure ninety times what was on earth. To say nothing of the surface covered with little but craters, volcanoes, mountains, and lava plains—flowing with hot molten lava. And average temperatures of 864 degrees Fahrenheit/462 degrees Celsius, with very little variation no matter how high up in the atmosphere you climbed, or how low you sank. Lead melted on the surface of the planet where the temperatures averaged 864 degrees Fahrenheit.

  Venus would have been a veritable garden spot compared to this place.

  He should have taken the job.

  Cussler wasn’t like the other freaks in Sonny’s inner circle. He wasn’t a dog-person, with anywhere from a third to a fifth of his genes, canine. Mother, in her early days, had made freaks of all kinds, splicing together genes that should never have come face to face. And now all these freaks were at Sonny’s disposal, loyal to him.

  Just Cussler’s luck his particular freakishness suited worlds like this.

  In a pinch he could pass himself off as a rather large chunk of meteor rock, the heavy-metal-saturated kind. He had just the right mix of compounds to resist a planet like this whose atmosphere was largely corrosive to metals, and tended to melt them. If he sat completely still, and you were right up close against him, you might think him an unfinished carving of the Buddha—as carved by Giacometti. Not that the Earth analogies would do him any good here, or on any world he’d be likely to be stationed on soon.

  One of the soldiers going and coming, using him as a blind to avoid incoming fire, said, “I could use a sonic disruptor. Think you can procure one of those for me? These bastards can withstand the nonstop sounds of Phronos’s endless bombardment until the end of time, but find the right frequency…”

  Cussler had long range scanners operating around his entire surface, and had been closely tracking the ongoing battle in this area—part of his value add. So he didn’t need further cueing as to what frequencies this sound emitter would have to produce. He adjusted the nanite enzymatic mix inside his body, creating new hive minds on the fly with a new assignment, procuring the desired weapon. He shit it out a moment later.

  The soldier grabbed it. “You’re a true friend in need, pal.” But Cussler wouldn’t let go. “Hey, what’s up?”

  “Is your job merely to hold on until relief arrives?” Cussler asked in the series of venting noises common to a planet whose surface was so volatile—even before you added war to the mix. These people had been fighting here so long they’d learned to cloak their communications within the canopy of sounds indigenous to the region, from spewing sulfur geysers, to erupting volcanos, to simply rumbling volcanoes threatening to evolve a worsening disposition in the coming days.

  “Relief? You must be new to Phronos. There’s no relief, pal. You expand your territory, subjugate your captives, get them to do your fighting for you; that’s your relief.”

  “But your territory is shrinking?”

  “Yeah, no shit. I’m the leader for this sector, but my ability to out-strategize the leaders attacking me from all sides so far has been less than promising. Technically, the sooner I and my people die or get captured, subjugated, and tortured out of existence, the better it is for everyone. It’s all part of the Jardarian evolutionary agenda.”

  “What if I can help you win?” Cussler asked. “What’s it worth to you?”

  “Life over death; that’s what. And a cushier gig away from the front lines where I can just send other people to do my dying for me. So everything. You can do that?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “What’s your price?”

  “I want to know everything about everyone who’s anyone on this planet, in this solar system, in this galaxy. I want to know logistics of how these wars are sustained, supply lines, well-protected military secrets.”

  “What are you, some kind of spy?”

  Cussler saw no reason to lie to him. “Yes.”

  The soldier took a couple deep breaths which only led to hacking up a storm, considering the atmospheric mix of gases. His own body had evolved to supply just enough oxygen to his lungs, provided largely by symbiotic and parasitic bacteria lining his nasal cavities, his bronchi, and the alveoli of his lungs—all analogous to your more typical humanoid body, despite being made largely of alloys that doubled as flexible armoring strong enough to hold up to direct hits from grenade launchers. But if he took in more air than his bacteria could convert in time, breathed too deeply or panted too fast, yeah, coughing was the result.

  “Yeah, sure, I’ll play along, he said. They train us to make use of any asset, to respect no rules, do whatever it takes to win. So screw’em, all they can do is give me a medal for cheating. What, are you working for one of the other emperors on the other worlds, or does this go higher up the food chain, one of the other galactic sectors, or, the gods forbid, an emperor city on Enoquin?”

  “See, this relationship is paying off already, since I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “Shit, this is going to be easier than I thought. I’m Vestos, by the way. And you are?”

  “Just a damn rock if anyone asks.”

  Vestos chuckled, always a bad move on Phronos. It caused him to hack some more. “All right, I got a weapon in hand that might actually be worth a damn against these bastards for a change, now what? What’s my winning play here?”

  “You know you’re taking advice from a rock, right?”

  “Shit, pal, in case you haven’t noticed, we’re getting our asses kicked out there. I’d take advice from my dick right now, if it started talking to me.”

  “Divide your people into six groups, to focus on the six front lines pressing in on you.”

  “Already done.”

  “Assign a team lead to each group and hand them these.” Cussler spit out six headsets. “They’re keyed to the six different frequencies the six enemy front lines are using to communicate with one another.”

  “And all this time, we’ve been using hand signals, in an atmosphere so murky you can barely see twenty feet,” Vestos berated himself. “That’s gotta be a new kind of stupid.” Vestos snatched up the headsets.

  He was about to dash off when Cussler blurted, “Wait. What you’re going to do now is get up close to their front lines and show your backs to the enemy.”

  “You may not have noticed, but we don’t have eyes out the backs of our heads.”

  “You’re going to use your headsets and gesture to them to advance, even as you allegedly shoot at your own people.”

  “Who technically aren’t there anymore. They’ll think we’re just seeking relief so we can replenish our depleted arsenal, get fresh magazines, before relieving them in turn to continue the advance, wave after wave, until the perimeter looks like it’s closing around our necks.”

  “Except each wave that closes in on your backs to fill the void,” Cussler explained, “which you then direct into the trap…”

  “Becomes prisoners who technically have to fight for us, according to the rules. And there are no bonus points assigned for being tortured to death before complying. All our emperor cares about is advancing strategy games.”

  “You can’t just congregate all the captives inside your existing territory,” Cussler continued to coach. “You have to…”

  “Expand our territory, repeat the game, until we collapse the other honeycombed sectors about us. All without firing a shot. By the gods, it’s such an incredibly simple, stupid plan, I’m definitely the guy for this.”

  “Come back,” Cussler said, “when the enemy catches on, and you have to mix things up.”

  “Will do.” Vestos panted out with excitement, and he was off, disappearing into the mist.

  To be honest, Cussler didn’t just show up in this sector by chance. He was looking for the dumbest, most inept would-be strategist of all the team leads on the planet. While for most people that would be like looking for a needle in a haystack, for Cussler his long range scanners and mind-readers made the task all too
easy. And Vestos was right; he definitely fit the bill.

  It was an easy job for the hive mind nanites Cussler readily sweated out in this heat to continuously track the team leads across the entire planet. For some squads, they were the only ones with headsets, and the only ones allowed to give orders over the COMMS.

  For other teams, all the players had headsets, so the soldiers in the field could relay intel gathered to the team leads to bolster their strategizing. But it was easy enough to identify the ones giving the orders.

  Some groups were more fluid; everyone had headsets, and individual soldiers could show initiative, take the lead of the soldiers about them when they saw a chance to spring at the enemy, catch them with their guards down.

  Needless to say, the latter groups were commanded by superior strategists.

  The very last type ran the risk that individual soldiers in their division might well overtake the assigned team lead for ability to generate more strategically effective initiatives in less time. At that point, it was like two queens in a hive; one had to die. The one doing the dying was usually the last to turn on the other one, or the last to anticipate reprisal.

  But all Cussler’s nanite hive minds needed was the vocalizations of any soldier so they could track and then infiltrate the minds of the soldiers with the COMMS headsets.

  Cussler’s massive body and composition made it easy for him to process all this intelligence being generated across the planet.

  Whereas the emperor had to wait for news to bubble up to him as to who his up and coming competitors were, delivered by a number of trusted envoys, the kiss-ass types that would never challenge the Emperor’s authority, Cussler got his information in real time, without delay.

  The weaknesses in the Jardarian evolutionary war system were already becoming painfully apparent to Cussler.