Exultant dc-2

by Stephen Baxter

  Pirius tapped his chest control panel, and he heard massed voices. “…Named for a victory / Over Ghosts, a vanquished enemy / Our Rock, as firm as our resolve / Is dedicated to our duty…” Now he saw the faces of the ranks of troops, their moving mouths. They were singing, he realized, all thousand of them, singing a song of welcome to their visitors. They even sang harmonies.

  “The lyrics are none too tactful in the circumstances,” Pila murmured through his helmet.

  Pirius glanced surreptitiously at the Ghost, but it showed no reaction to this song of triumph about its kind’s most terrible defeat.

  The song went on and on. By now Nilis had coached Pirius in the need to be diplomatic, but by the fourth verse he had had enough. He switched to the squadron loop and ordered his crews to fall out. Then he confronted Captain Boote the Forty-Third. “Sir. Thanks for the song. Where’s the refectory?”

  Kimmer glowered; Nilis looked mortified. Pila laughed.

  Once he’d got his skinsuit stripped off, Pirius went straight to work.

  In theory, so he’d been told, the base was fully equipped with all they needed to operate the squadron. He told Pila his target for resuming training flights was twenty-four hours. Again she laughed.

  Captain Boote led Pirius and Nilis through the guts of the complex that had been dug into Orion Rock.

  Boote wore a robe that trailed to the floor in languid, elegant drapes. His face and scalp had been shaved of every scrap of hair, even eyebrows and nostril hair.

  If Boote was magnificent, so was the base he commanded. But like him, it was odd, too. In its layout it was essentially the same as every other Rock Pirius had visited, with the usual barracks, refectories, dispensaries, science labs, training facilities from classrooms to sim chambers, and technical facilities from environment systems to huge subsurface hangars.

  But every other Rock had an air of shabbiness; a Rock always looked lived-in, because it was, by a bunch of squabbling, randy trainees and troopers who cared a lot more about sack time than about hygiene and neatness — and because, by Coalition policy, every military facility was cut to the bone in resources anyhow. A base was a place you left to go fight, not a place you longed to get back to.

  Orion was different. Pirius had never seen a base so neat. In the barracks there wasn’t a blanket out of place. When they passed, all the troops sprang to attention and lined up neatly by their bunks, eerie grins plastered over their faces. Even the walls were smooth to the touch — worn at shoulder height by the passage of millions of young bodies.

  Neat it might have been, but everywhere was dark, lit by only a few hovering globes. Pirius thought the air was a little cold, though it tasted fresh enough. Not only that, everybody — even the youngest children in the junior cadres — crept about quietly, treading softly and murmuring. Boote said it was always like this.

  “Ah,” Nilis said. “Silent running.”

  “What’s that?” They were both whispering; it was contagious.

  “This is a covert base, remember. The crew are sailing toward the Xeelee, who must not suspect they are here. And they strive to keep everything below the level of the background noise of the Baby Spiral — their energy expenditure, their signaling. As for the whispering and creeping about, I don’t imagine it makes much practical difference, but, though I’m no expert on motivation, I should think it is good psychology — a constant reminder to keep your head down.”

  Pirius peered around curiously at the wide-eyed children who smiled hopefully at him. He tried to imagine how it must be to have grown up in this claustrophobic environment of darkened corridors and whispers. But these kids had never known anything different; to them this was normal.

  As they walked on, Boote proudly explained the origin of his name.

  Of course there were no true families here, no heredity; that would be far too non-Doctrinal. This was a place of birthing tanks and cadres, like most military bases. But a tradition had grown up even so. The first Boote, centuries back, had been a fine Captain who had inspired loyalty and affection from all. When her successor had taken her name on his accession, to become Boote the Second, it had seemed the most natural thing in the world, a tribute that had become a badge of honor to the Captains who had followed, right down to this fine fellow, Boote the Forty-Third. Similarly there were “dynasties” among the engineers and medics, comm officers and pilots, and other specialist corps.

  Nilis raised his eyebrows at Pirius, but said nothing. Wherever you went, a little deviance was inevitable, it seemed.

  They were taken out onto the surface in a covered walkway. Nilis cringed from the crowded sky, but after that gloomy enclosure Pirius was relieved to be out under the healthy glow of the Core.

  They surveyed earthworks dug into the ground. Teams of troopers in skinsuits were working in the trenches. They weren’t digging so much as refurbishing, Pirius saw. He had never seen earthworks so regular and neat — their walls were precisely vertical, their edges geometrically straight and dead neat. And he couldn’t see a trace of stray dust anywhere. The troops smiled as they worked, in precise formation.

  In one part of the works the troops suddenly lunged out of their trenches and flopped onto the surface, across which they began to wriggle.

  “They’re maneuvering,” said Pirius. “But it’s not an exercise. It’s more like a game.”

  “Yes,” said Nilis. “And these earthworks are an ornamental garden. These folk have been isolated too long, Pirius. A trench is a place to fight and die. They have domesticated these trenches.”

  Pirius slowly pieced together an understanding of this place.

  Rocks were an essential element in most attacks on Xeelee concentrations; they provided cover, resources, and soaked up enemy firepower. But while most Rocks were purposefully deflected onto their required trajectories, Orion Rock, and a number of others, had natural orbits that took them into useful positions in the Core without deflection. So they could be used as cover, to mount covert operations.

  But as the Core’s geography spanned light-years, travel times were painfully slow. The planners behind this place had been forced to think ahead, across no less than a thousand years — for that was how long Orion Rock would have to travel before it was in a position to be useful.

  Nilis said gravely, “This is the scale of this war, Pirius. Orion Rock is like a generation starship sent to war: forty, perhaps fifty generations doomed to these dark tunnels, all the possibilities of their lives sacrificed to one goal, a strike on the Xeelee, a single assault that might be carried out in their children’s time, or their children’s children.

  “A thousand years, though. On pre-Occupation Earth, a thousand years was a long time: time enough for empires to rise and fall, time enough for history. To us it is just a checkmark on a war planner’s chart!”

  As the troops dug and marched and played at maneuvers, their mouths moved in unison, Pirius saw. They were singing again. But, thanks to some fault in the systems, he couldn’t hear their song.

  They had been assigned a hangar, a huge one, beneath that paved-over crater where they had landed. Pirius went to inspect it. The hangar was big enough for a hundred greenships, let alone fifteen, and it was fully equipped with repair and maintenance facilities. Crisscrossed by walkways, full of hovering bots, the hangar was fully pressurized, although sections could be opened to vacuum when necessary. The working areas had been kept at microgravity — greenships were built for lightness, and were too frail to support their own weight under full gravity — but the floor and walkways were laced with inertial adjustors. Brightly lit by hovering globe lamps, it was a stunning facility by any standards.

  But it didn’t have the feel of a workplace. It was too clean, too orderly. It didn’t even smell right; there was no electric ozone stink, or tang of lubricants, or the hot burning smell of metal that had been exposed to vacuum. It was like a museum; a place where you looked at greenships, rather than where you got your hands dirty working on them.<
br />
  Pirius joined Enduring Hope, his ground crew leader. But Hope was accompanied everywhere by Eliun of the Guild of Engineers and a couple of that worthy’s aides. Since he had been outmaneuvered back on Arches, Eliun had barely let Hope out of his sight.

  The party watched as their precious greenships, crudely modified, nestled into their graving docks.

  Eliun punched Pirius in the shoulder, none too gently. “Look at that!” he said. “Pilot, these docks were built more than a thousand years ago. These greenships, on the other hand, are barely five years old — some of them younger than that. And yet dock and ship fit together hand in glove, every surface contoured to match, every interface locking, just as these ships could be lodged in any similar dock across the Galaxy. And why? Because of the Guild: I am talking about uniformity, sir, uniformity on galactic scales of space and time. How do you imagine such a war can be fought without this epic sameness?

  Pirius was short on sleep and overstressed. “Engineer Eliun, I don’t know anything about procurement policy. You’ll have to talk to Commissary Nilis.” The Engineer wasn’t satisfied with that, but Pirius turned deliberately to Enduring Hope. “So what do you think?”

  Hope shrugged. “Technically, the hangar’s perfect. But look at this.” He led Pirius to one of the graving docks, where the battered hulk of an Exultant greenship now rested. He ran his bare hand over the massive cradle of fused asteroid rock, metal, and polymer. “It’s worn,” Hope said, wondering. “It’s the same everywhere. Every bit of equipment in this place is worn smooth, until you can see your face in it. For a thousand years they’ve done nothing but polish everything in sight.” Hope grinned nervously. “This is the strangest place I’ve ever seen.”

  Pirius grunted. “Well, I don’t care about the last thousand years. All I care about is the next twenty- four hours, because at the end of it I want this place set up for our operations. Now. What about the cannon gear? Do you think you’ll have to cut through that roof to get it in here?…”

  They walked on, talking and planning. Engineer Eliun tailed them for a while, but Pirius didn’t acknowledge him further, and after a time Eliun gave up and stomped away.

  After the first twenty-four hours, they had achieved only a fraction of what Pirius had demanded. He called a crisis meeting in Nilis’s office.

  Bootes staff were an uninspiring bunch, soft, flabby-looking administrators and clerks who seemed to have no ambition save to replace the Captain one day. Boote at bay, though, had a glint in his eye, and Pirius had the feeling that he had a bit of steel in him, and would put up a fight.

  It was yet another obstruction, just as they had encountered all the way from Earth. Pirius was hugely weary, impatient to get back to his ships, and he felt like biting somebody’s head off. The only thing he wanted, he kept reminding himself, was to get the job done.

  He turned to Enduring Hope. “Engineer, why don’t you sum up how far we’ve got in twenty-four hours?”

  Hope consulted a data desk. He looked as ticked off as Pirius felt. “The priorities are, one, setting up a manufactory on the far side of the Rock for producing the point black holes we will need for the cannon; two, modifying the hangar for our upgraded greenships.” He snapped the data desk down on the tabletop. “So far we’ve argued a lot, and we’ve laid down the foundations for the manufactory. And that’s it.”

  Pirius said, “I wanted to be flying by” — he checked the Virtual chronometer that hovered over Pila’s head — “two hours ago. You all committed to that yesterday. What’s gone wrong?”

  Hope took the bait. He jabbed a finger at Captain Boote. “It’s those people. They block everything we propose. Or they defer it for discussion further up the chain of command.” His tone, dripping with sarcasm, was deeply insolent. “They’re blocking us, Pirius.”

  Captain Boote sputtered. “I won’t be spoken to like that!”

  “Quite right,” Nilis murmured. “Why don’t you tell us your perception of the problem here, Captain?”

  The Captain turned his magnificent hairless head to Pirius. “Squadron Leader, we support your project. That’s our function. But you must recognize the practical difficulties. For a thousand years — a thousand years, sir! — we have worked and polished and honed this base until it is perfectly fit for its purpose, which is to strike a great blow against the enemy. Now you are asking us to change all that. To rip holes in our walls — to install equipment so new it won’t even interface to our kit!” He held up his hands. “Of course we must accept the challenge of the new. But all I’m asking for is time; while recognizing the pressure of your schedule, a measured and thoughtful response…”

  He talked smoothly, liquidly, one sentence blending into another so seamlessly that Pirius couldn’t see a way to cut into the flow. And he was so plausible that after a while Pirius found himself helplessly agreeing. Of course these new things couldn’t be done here; what other point of view was possible?

  In the end Nilis managed to break into the monologue. “If I may say so, Captain, I think there is a failure of imagination here. You and your antecedents have been here so long, loyally following the dictates laid down long ago, that I don’t think any of you quite grasp that some day all this must end.”

  Boote’s mouth dropped open. But then he shook his head. “If it is my generation that has the privilege of fulfilling the mission of Orion Rock, I will grasp the opportunity with both hands…” Once again he talked on. But it sounded like another rehearsed speech, and Pirius saw that he himself didn’t believe a word he was saying.

  With a smooth motion, Captain Marta produced a handgun. Darc made a grab for the weapon, but Marta fired off her shot. Boote was hit in the arm. It was a projectile weapon, and the impact threw him backward off his chair and against the wall. For a moment his spindly legs waved comically in the air, while his aides flapped around him.

  When they had him upright and back on his chair again, he had his hand clamped over a spreading patch of blood on his upper right arm. His face was florid with anger and fear.

  Nilis was shocked into pallid silence. Pila hadn’t so much as flinched when the shot was fired; looking faintly annoyed, she brushed blood spots off her sleeve. Hope and Torec were trying hard not to laugh.

  Boote pointed a shaking finger at Marta. “You shot me!”

  “A flesh wound,” she said. “A half hour in sick bay will fix that.”

  “I’ll have the hide flogged off your back for this.”

  “That’s your privilege, sir,” Marta said evenly. “But I thought I should introduce a little reality into the discussion. This is real, Captain. The sky really is falling.”

  Pirius stared at her. Then, as the silence lengthened, he realized it was his cue. He turned to Boote. “Captain, I’m not in a position to adjourn the meeting. Time is too short. I’ll ensure Captain Marta answers any charges you care to raise later. Commander Darc, would you accept her custody for now?”

  Darc inclined his head ironically.

  “Captain Boote, you need to be excused to get that graze seen to. In the meantime, who would you nominate to represent you in the continuing negotiations?”

  After that, things went much better.

  Chapter 49

  The trouble started in the most innocuous, most mundane of ways: problems with waste.

  For many quagmite kinds, eliminated waste was in the form of compressed matter, quarks and gluons wadded together into baryons — protons and neutrons. You could even find a few simple nuclei, if you dug around in there. But the universe was still too hot for such structures to be stable long, and the waste decayed quickly, returning its substance to the wider quagma bath.

  Now, as the universe cooled, things changed. The mess of sticky proton-neutron cack simply wouldn’t dissolve as readily as it once had. Great clumps of it clung together, stubbornly resistant, and had to be broken up to release their constituent quarks. But the energy expenditure was huge.

  Soon this grew to be an over
whelming burden, the primary task of civilizations. Citizens voiced concerns; autocrats issued commands; angry votes were taken on councils. There were even wars over waste dumping. But the problem only got worse.

  And, gradually, the dread truth was revealed.

  The cooling universe was approaching another transition point, another phase change. The ambient temperature, steadily falling, would soon be too low to force the baryons to break up — and the process of combination would be one way. Soon all the quarks and gluons, the fundamental building blocks of life, would be locked up inside baryons.

  The trend was inescapable, its conclusion staggering: this extraordinary implosion would wither the most bright, the most beautiful of the quagmite ecologies, and nobody would be left even to mourn.

  As the news spread across the inhabited worlds, a cosmic unity developed. Love and hate, war and peace were put aside in favor of an immense research effort to find ways of surviving the impending baryogenetic catastrophe.

  A solution was found. Arks were devised: immense artificial worlds, some as much as a meter across, their structures robust enough to withstand the collapse. It was unsatisfactory; the baryogenesis could not be prevented, and almost everything would be lost in the process. But these ships of quagma would sail beyond the end of time, as the quagmites saw it, and in their artificial minds they would store the poetry of a million worlds. It was better than nothing.

  As time ran out, as dead baryons filled up the universe and civilizations crumbled, the quagma arks sailed away. But mere survival wasn’t enough for the last quagmites. They wanted to be remembered.

  Chapter 50

  On Orion Rock, time flowed strangely for Pirius Red.

  The days seemed to last forever, but his nights seemed very short. And the sum of those long days, as they accumulated into weeks, amounted to no time at all.