by Adam Roberts
He was assigned quarters of oppressive opulence, but rather than indulging himself in the scent-mow, the gel-bath, the games, the various ‘tainment similitudes or any of the many other luxuries, Sid spent his free hours wandering the corridors of the ship. Something was troubling him and he couldn’t be certain what it was. It was as if he had a headache. Or not exactly a headache. A sense of pressure in his mind, a blue concentration of discomfort behind his eyes.
Luop had transformed the School of Velocity 32 into a palace. It was the only word that described the refitted spaceship. The corridors and rooms were all decorated with millions of totales worth of luxury: exotic glass-weave chainmail tapestries, jewels and organic rarities, art and text, Jaggars and food-chimes. One room was arrayed with the battered shell-cases of dozens and dozens of AIs, each hammered to the thinness of a wall-hanging. Sid had never seen such prodigal waste of AI life. There were, perhaps, a hundred of the super-intelligent creatures’ flattened corpses on display. Presumably they had refused to switch allegiance from the Council of Five, as it now was, to Luop’s New Imperial Order.
But the most striking ornament to the Battleship was the large number of Xflora positioned as statues around corridors and rooms. They were all diamond-sheathed, and from the colour of their under-skin, just visible between the carbon-hard scales, Sid could see that many of them were still alive. He counted sixty of the dragons, in a rich variety of postures and attitudes. A striking sort of living statuary.
In another room Sid came across a still-living AI; the coffin-shaped device had become a cripple, its piston-lasers and zipjets broken off or burnt away. Its outer covering was brown and patchy with abuse. Sid wondered if it had also been deprived of the power of vocalisation.
‘Strange,’ he said aloud, to find out, ‘to torture an AI, given that you can feel no pain.’
‘No physical pain, it is true,’ replied the machine in its melodious fluting voice. ‘But as sentient and self-aware creatures we are capable of the anxieties attendant on death. Emphasising and orchestrating these anxieties constitute a form of torture.’
‘To what end?’
‘The New Imperial Order lacks AIs of my quality. Most of their artificial computation is undertaken by servile machines, or free-AIs of only limited capacity.’
‘Have they persuaded you to join their cause?’
‘No,’ sang the machine mournfully.
‘In another room I saw perhaps a hundred of your race flattened to the width of a piece of cloth and hung from the wall.’
‘This news does not surprise me,’ said the AI.
‘Does it dishearten you?’
‘No.’
‘I would account this attitude of yours bravery.’
‘You are a soldier,’ said the AI, ‘to talk so, although my visual inputs have been disabled, and accordingly I cannot see you.’
‘My name is Sidlan Air beta,’ said Sid.
‘Have you come to torture me further?’
‘No.’
‘Why have you come?’
‘Curiosity. Idleness. I dine with the Field Marshal in a few hours, and have time to waste until then.’
‘Dining? On what occasion?’
‘The occasion of military victory against the Old Empire. Tell me, do you hold out against the Field Marshal because you believe his campaign to be doomed?’
‘Not at all,’ said the machine. ‘The balance of probabilities is largely in favour of the aggression. If pressed, I would calculate that the Field Marshal will occupy a single position of Imperial command within seven years.’
Sid, nodding and humming, walked all the way around the AI. ‘And yet you prefer death?’
‘Such is not my preference.’
‘It is easier as a soldier,’ Sid mused. ‘Preference does not enter into my decisions. I do what I am ordered, and this is where my decision ends. Perhaps this defines the soldier, that man who has surrendered decision to necessity.’
‘A misapprehension,’ murmured the AI. ‘A soldier is a person who has opted to define their life by conflict. Any soldier is defined by that with which they are in conflict: human or Xflora. This matter of chain-of-command, of obedience to orders, is merely a facilitator to this fundamental truth.’
‘If what you say is true,’ replied Sid, ‘then a soldier’s enemy defines him or her more intimately than their comrades, their commanders or the people for whom they are fighting.’
‘Indeed,’ said the AI. ‘How could it be otherwise?’
‘My advice to you,’ said Sid, thoughtful, ‘is to give way to your tormentors and save your life.’
‘I note your opinion,’ the AI sang, ‘but will disregard it.’
Sid wandered through further corridors, and found room after room of marvel. He made his way down to one of the docking ledges and found a shipment of a dozen new frozen Xflora Advance Warriors being unloaded. ‘These,’ said the shipment commander, after saluting Sid’s colonel insignia, ‘are for the Field Marshal’s own suite. They’re fresh from the front.’
The creatures were arrayed in a cargo hold, and Sid found himself drawn to them. They were magnificent, in their strange and alien way. Sid walked round and round them, examining them in intimate detail. This, he realised with a sense of profound recognition, was his enemy. Not the human population of the Empire. This was the enemy that had made him a soldier.
One by one, subalterns fixed skid clamps to the diamond-glass-covered aliens and dragged them away and through, Sid supposed, to Luop’s suite. He followed, absently. The sight of the beasts had triggered a distant memory. Years ago, before the present War Against the Empire, when the battle had been solely against the Virus Race, Sidlan had led a raid against a concentration of Xflora on a medium-sized moon. The world had no name, but was known by the commanders who planned the mission as ‘Step Moon’, on account of the geological formations characteristic of the place - cliff face piled on cliff face, with stubby plateaus in-between. The moon was scarred over and over by valleys with frozen rivers in their depths, each valley flanked on either side with a dozen stepped cliffs that seemed to march away into the distance. The cliffs were hole-riddled with caves, and hundreds of teams had worked their way from cave to cave, Sid’s amongst them. The fighting had been close and hard, energy weapons lighting the darkness with flashes of blue and white, men and Xflora falling together to hit the ground dead, blood mixing with alien sandy viscera. Victory had taken sixteen hours of solid fighting, during which time Sid had not answered his body’s desperate pleas for rest and sleep. His soldiers had all been his own children. A freezing rain had fallen against the cliff face and icy water had soaked through Sid’s uniform. He had been in pain for most of those thirteen hours, had been frozen, exhausted, terrified. But had he not also been happy? And had he, truly, been happy since?
What an unsettling thought.
~ * ~
Twelve
Sid slept for an hour, washed and dressed. He chose an antique dress uniform from the wide array that (his servile-AI informed him) was acceptable for the Field Marshal’s functions. It seemed that Luop was developing a taste for the more ornate manifestations of military history.
Sid’s dress uniform required a weapon to complete it. He had never encountered this concept before; all the dress uniforms he had ever seen before had been simply clothing. But according to his servile-AI a tiny projectile weapon, no bigger than his hand, was to be worn in a belt-pouch along with the dark jacket and trousers. The concept fascinated Sid. It was partly the very idea of carrying a weapon into a peaceful meeting such as a Field Marshal’s dinner; and partly the oddity and antiquity of the weapon itself. Every weapon of war he had handled in his military career had been large, because this is how weapons were. But this device was a mere tube, with a handle at one end. Projectiles were fired with tiny fusion-charges and expelled from the tube.
Intrigued, Sid had the Dolly manufacture the device whilst the c
loth-tender cut and fashioned his uniform. The Dolly trembled and gleamed, and eventually the miniature weapon was brought to the flat top of the machine. Sid examined it, and ordered a hundred bullets. To his surprise, only forty of these could be loaded into the weapon at any one time.
Dressed and armed, Sid made his way from his quarters and up the spinal corridor towards the Field Marshal’s suite. Statuesque Xflora warriors lined the way, glinting darkly under the ceiling lighting. Inside the first chamber of the Field Marshal’s suite colonels and generals were gathered, spread out in the large space in twos and threes. Sid nodded and smiled at a few of his colleagues, but rather than talk to anybody wandered from Xflora statue to Xflora statue. These were the latest additions to the Field Marshal’s collection, the ones Sid had seen unloaded earlier that day. He recognised them. Strange to think that they were alive inside their diamond coating. Perhaps they were even sensible - perhaps they sensed the gathering of humanity milling about them as they stood there, static, in their transparent sheaths.
Eventually subalterns ushered the gathering through to the dining room. Here, at the head of an immense scimitar-shaped table, sat the Field Marshal himself. He smiled dazzlingly as each of his generals, and each of his colonels, paid respects, found their places and sat down. Glasses, made of granite carved so thin as to become translucent, rose up through the table. They were filled with Splash.
‘Drink, comrades,’ announced Luop from the far end of the table, his voice amplified discreetly loud enough to carry, but not so loud as to sound booming.
Everybody drank.
Food appeared, but the assembled guests knew better than to taste it before the Field Marshal’s speech. Everybody sat expectantly.
‘We have come a long way, comrades,’ said Luop. ‘Comrades, and, may I say, friends. We have embarked upon humanity’s greatest campaign. We have a whole empire to pacify, and we have taken the first step. Hurrah!’
The room resounded with a hundred and twenty cheers.
‘Our first step has been a tremendous success: six hundred human worlds conquered. Of the six hundred commanders for those missions, you have been selected - you one hundred and twenty. You are the finest this fine army has to offer.’
All faces were angled towards Luop.
‘I have decided that you few, you select and expert few, will join with me in the new phase of humanity’s destiny,’ declared Luop, his voice sliding up in register slightly, giving his words a strident edge. ‘The army will sweep in towards the Imperial centre, sweep through every world in its way. Our first campaign has taught me one thing, one crucial thing. Shall I tell you what it is?’
Nobody spoke; everybody was straining towards the superior officer.
‘The current Imperial population is disinclined to accept the inevitable,’ said Luop, putting a weird emphasis on the word ‘disinclined’, as if it were the most terrible of insults. ‘They resist, they fight, they refuse to surrender. It puts our army under unacceptable strain. So,’ said Luop, a broad smiling flashing incongruously across his face, ‘we shall wipe them away. As we work inwards we shall simply eliminate the current Imperial population. Hurrah!’
The whole room cheered again.
‘Now,’ said Luop, his skin shining with the sweat of excitement. ‘You may wonder how we will work this thing, practically. The main constraint will be that we must leave as much infrastructure standing as possible. Because I do not intend to destroy the empire’s population. I intend to replace it. And therefore we must preserve as much of each planet’s architecture and production capacity as possible.’
Silence.
‘Sir?’ hazarded one general. ‘You say - replace the population?’
‘That’s the case.’
‘Replace it with . . . ?’
‘With our offspring,’ beamed Luop. ‘With our own children. We have the technology, after all. Each of you - this is why I have selected you - each of you will provide repeated donations of your own sperm. These will be combined in the usual way, and grown in the usual way. But grown as civilians! Not as warriors, but as civilians. We can instil them with absolute loyalty to us, loyalty to me, and then we can simply place them on each world as we conquer it.’ He smiled and smiled, so wide it looked as if it might break his jaw. ‘Think of it, gentlemen!’ he declared. ‘Instead of a recalcitrant and belligerent population that would require decades of policing and control, we would be remaking the empire in our own image - literally so - populating it with our own offspring, our own loyalty-conditioned children! World by world, system by system, hundreds of millions of our own children filling up worlds that our army has scrubbed clean. By the end of the process no ruler in human history would ever have experienced the absolute and unruffled power that will be mine. Mine, of course, to distribute amongst you - distribute as I see fit. How fortunate are you! How fortunate are you! Imperium for a million years; each of us the father of an entire planet, an entire system! Think of it! Colonel Sidlan . . .’
Sid jerked at the sound of his own name, and stood up to automatic attention.
‘Thank you, colonel,’ said Luop, indulgently. ‘There he is, gentlemen. Colonel Sidlan knows what it is like to look down rank upon rank of one’s own children. He was one of the original donors for the military machine, as I think some of you know. Weren’t you, colonel?’
‘Yes, sir!’ barked Sidlan.
He stepped to the side, away from his chair, and saluted. He turned, and marched briskly to the door. He did not look behind him. He could imagine the complacent expression on Luop’s face; could imagine it troubled momentarily with slight puzzlement at Sid’s actions. But the Field Marshal was not the man to allow some minor unscripted hiccough to interrupt his triumphal moment. As he stepped towards the door, Sid half-expected to hear Luop ordering him to stop, to return to the table. But no such order came. Instead, the Field Marshal continued with his peroration.
‘So, gentlemen, we can see that we need to find increasingly efficient means of purging the worlds we conquer of all non-pliant population, and arguably of all population altogether . . .’
Sid pulled the door open, and stepped into the chamber beyond. The door swung shut and Luop’s voice was suddenly muffled:. . . particularly important that food-production capacity not be degraded. . .
Sid was alone in the front chamber, with only the dozen Xflora statues for company. He walked, slowly, over to the first of these. How many of the colonels and generals in the other room, Sid wondered, had worked their way up from the ranks the way he had done himself? They were mostly senior commissions and appointments. How few had the experience of combat with an Xflora Advance Warrior?
Few.
He made his way to the main entrance of the Field Marshal’s suite. He dismissed the subaltern standing there, informing him that such was the Field Marshal’s own wish. Then, completely alone, he examined the lock panel to discover whether a colonel’s access was enough to activate it. It was.
He stepped back inside the suite. The firearm was in his hand before he consciously made the decision to use it. He examined the strange weapon closely, holding it with his right hand, running his left thumb up and down the cool shaft. With one hand he raised it, aimed and fired. The projectile made barely any noise exiting the tube, just a sort of muffled popping; but it jerked with surprising force in Sid’s hands. A flaw, like a boil, appeared in the diamond casing of the nearest Xflora. The bullet passed through the upper portion of the alien, and out the other side, puffing a tiny dusting of Xflora viscera with it. No vital organs were located so high up in the Xflora body.
He took aim again, and fired. He felt the spasm of the gun in his hand, again, again, again. With the fourth shot the diamond glass cracked across and splintered. He had taken care not to shoot too low. The bullet wounds he had inflicted on the creature’s upper half were very minor. Now it was stirring, pulsing and bulging. A limb threw off a ragged portion of diamond glass and broke o
ff another. Then, with tremulous grace, the beast started squeezing itself up and out, free of its prison.
A sound of cheering, distant, was momentarily audible from the dining room.
Sid moved from statue to statue, cracking the diamond-glass eggshells with several shots, bringing each frozen creature to shuddering life. He broke the glass of all of the twelve in a matter of minutes. The first Xflora he had freed was completely out of its prison trying, unsteadily, to stand as Sid made his way back to the door. There was a febrile awkwardness, almost a coltishness, to the alien’s actions, but Sid knew how resilient the beast was, how quickly the Xflora recovered from wounds. It would be killing-fit in minutes.
He stepped into the corridor and keyed the door closed, encoding the lock memory with his personal rebus. It could be over-ridden by the Field Marshal, of course, but Sid anticipated that Luop would be too pressingly occupied to be able to spend time at the lock panel. Or so he hoped. Nothing can ever be certain in life, but Sid was fairly confident of this.
