by Lee Bond
A missing planet possibly full of Bruush had Politoyov’s short and curlies in a twist because that absence meant one of two things, one of them good, one of them supremely and seriously awful.
One, the planet was gone. It was entirely possible that when Nickels had panicked and sacrificed the lives of everybody aboard Shoemacher in his desperate attempt to shoot through the bizarre protective shield surrounding that world, he’d been successful without knowing it.
That was the ‘good’ outcome. Trinity’s Black Files concerning the Bruush –which Aleksander swore he would never read again, not even if his life depended on it- read like something out of a horror story. Wherever they came from, Aleksander sorely wished they had never found Trinityspace.
Two, the planet was somewhere else. And that was just about the worst thing Aleksander could imagine. One of the theories –put out there by Garth himself- was that the Bruush came from an alternate dimension. Which, if the grizzled commander understood properly, meant that they’d somehow opened a portal similar to a Quantum Tunnel to arrive on the planet’s surface without anyone detecting their arrival until it was too late. At which point they’d turned the world into a smorgasbord of fleshly nightmares.
Alternate dimensional theories was at the upper limit of Aleks’ pay grade, but he could just about wrap his head around the physics behind things like Quantum Tunnels and black hole engines, so lumping ‘alternate dimensional travel’ into the same category as the former didn’t derail his brain.
Aleksander wanted that world and the monsters on it to be gone. Forever. Because if sacrificing Shoemacher hadn’t been successful?
The resources of an entire planet could very easily be turned to something magnificent, something like, say, a world-sized alternate dimension traveling device. Aleksander rolled his eyes at his own thoughts. If Nickels was here … well, actually, if Nickels was here, it would’ve taken him all of one second to come up with something catchier than ‘alternate dimension traveling device’.
Either way, no matter how the Bruush may have done it, the merest possibility of a third Bruush Incursion happening anywhere at all, whether it was in Trinityspace or across The Cordon … no. Aleksander needed to know.
Was the planet destroyed, or was it gone?
If it was gone, where had it gotten to? How?
And most pressingly, could they blow it up with a thousand Hand of Glory missiles when they found it?
Thus, the witchy Tendreel Salingh and her prescient insight.
Tendreel tapped the screen lovingly, then awkwardly wiped some spores off the reflective surface. “This actually happened, sir?” she asked quietly. “An entire galaxy at war? With … with all these … men? These … things?”
Aleksander blinked and brought himself fully into the conversation. “Yes, PFC Salingh.”
Tendreel tried to imagine that. Tried to envision an entire galaxy … all those solar systems, all those people … it was too much. Her inner voices tried to grasp the edges, but she pushed the thoughts away. It was too much. “There is missing or corrupt data.”
“No, there isn’t.” Aleksander said this perhaps too firmly, because Salingh flinched. He continued. “Everything that Trinity has, you have.”
“I did not mean to imply that you have not provided me with all the data you have, commander.” Tendreel moved to the next page in the document. “I mean to say that accounts and reports made by the survivors and observations made by Trinity Itself are … incomplete. Altered somehow.”
The blood drained from Aleksander’s face. “What?”
“It is common, I am finding.” Tendreel accessed data on one Garth Nickels and threw the data up so that the commanding officer might see it. His skin had gone the most interesting shade of pale orange. “This man’s career is at best, multifarious, sir. There is a common element of deceit and/or obfuscation to nearly every single one of his reports, above and beyond even what is permitted under the aegis of Special Services.”
“I asked you to find a missing world, PFC Salingh, not to use the access I gave you to pry into matters that are, dare I say it, even more clandestine than Shoemacher’s Grave and Tannhauser’s Gate combined.” Outwardly, Aleksander did his best to seem angry. What Salingh had done was in complete violation of the request he’d made of her.
Inwardly, though, he was thrilled. Thrilled. The little mushroom woman had taken the invisible bait without even pausing for thought. Though he hadn’t been to a mosque since he’d left his homeworld to join the great and mighty Trinity’s Army, Aleksander Politoyov still spared a word every now and then to the gods of his faith. He muttered them now, quickly, and with the practiced ease of someone used to efficiency.
It was safe to say that there was no one in the entire universe that could think like Garth Nickels, but Tendreel, with her relaxing smell and blinking eyes, might be the one to get closest.
And if that were true, then his gods, silent and absent as they had been since the beginning of time, were speaking quite loudly at the moment.
“I … I am sorry, sir. I … I shall … I will leave.” Tendreel Salingh unwrapped her toes from the desk and pushed away. It was always the case. She’d made such a mistake in seeking to join the Army. Romantic visions of sailing to distant stars, to curl her toes into the earth and dirt of strange worlds had been just that. Romantic. She should’ve done as her brothers and sisters had done, should’ve just picked a single world and gone to it.
“Not just yet, PFC Salingh.” Aleksander rose from his chair and moved to the other side of the desk. Salingh turned to look at him, though he rightly supposed it wasn’t entirely necessary; with all those eyes crowning her head, every direction was the same. “I … have a confession to make.”
“Sir?” Tendreel blinked. “You are a commanding officer. You have no need to confess anything. It goes from your mouth to God’s ears.”
“Enough of that Army bullshit, PFC.” Aleksander could not believe that Army brass had resurrected that particular line of crap. They’d used it and others during his time in the Army to outline their infallibility, and he’d worked doggedly to cleanse his men of that line of thinking. Ownership of mistakes led to growth and perfection. Pretending you didn’t fuck up and explode a civilian city just led to more exploding cities.
“Sir, yes sir.” Tendreel saluted, the fronds that were her fingers trembling. No brass spoke like this. Then again, no brass had ever told her a story where an entire galaxy of people went to war against reptilian nightmare monsters that could rewrite carbon based lifeforms into anything they desired. No brass had shown her top secret footage of a man identified as Kelvin the Sick, whispering and breathing malady into the minds of men and women until they turned into puppets dancing on a string. No brass had revealed the true nature of The Cordon’s machinery.
“The matter I asked you here to investigate. Any theories?” The room was uncommonly silent. Aleksander shrugged mentally. There was every chance that Trinity knew what was going on and was listening in. Equally possible, the systemic AI had no clue what was being said. There was an awful lot going on everywhere inside Trinityspace and –naturally- Its expansion plans across The Cordon were continuing apace.
If they were all supremely lucky, Trinity Itself was too goddamn busy to pay attention.
Tendreel nodded. “Just one.”
“One.” Aleksander said the word flatly. “Just one.”
“Yes.” Tendreel stood there, nodding again like a fool, waiting for the commanding officer to tell her what to do next. It took a few seconds longer for her to realize that Commander Politoyov, was, in fact, going to stare at her until she volunteered the information of her own free will. “Sir. If we are given to believe that Mercenary Captain …”
“Ex. Ex-Mercenary Captain.”
“But his files indicate…”
“I know what the files indicate, PFC Salingh. I wrote them. Continue.”
Stammering out a hasty apology in her native tongue, Te
ndreel resumed. “If we are to believe Garth Nickels’ hypothesis that the Bruush are either from an alternate dimension or a previous version of Reality –in this case, both points are the same in terms of their mode of travel- then the method of that travel suggests to me quite strongly that the unnamed world occupied by the Bruush prior to Tannhauser’s Gate was, ah, pulled from its position at the site labeled Shoemacher’s Grave to the galaxy presently sealed behind a Cordon barrier. Because, you see, from the Bruush side, it’s … it’s the same place. Places. It’s like one of your rooms, sir, with doors everywhere, with these reptiles in the middle. I can …”
Aleksander raised a hand and the refreshingly intuitive Mycogene fell silent. “I apprehend the analogy, PFC Salingh. When the Bruush decided to devote all their resources and energies into breaching our Universe, their original incursion point was pulled back through the doorway and funneled into their other endeavors.”
It was as Garth said. ‘If it’d been a snake, it’d’ve bit me’. When you were working with galactic-sized invasion points and next-level technologies, it was so bloody easy to miss simple explanations, and now that he thought about it, Aleksander had to admit that Salingh’s solution was the only one that made any sense.
“Well done, Salingh.” Aleksander licked his teeth nervously.
Where before he’d violated Trinity’s tacit rules concerning top secret files, now … now he was going to do something that would not only get them all killed, but would probably turn Trinity incandescent with rage. But it had to be done. This … ‘war’ against Latelyspace … it needed to end.
There were other things they could all be doing, and quite frankly, the Five Horsemen and their antics were getting boring. Even those men and women in the assembled ships who’d been terrified and prone to screaming incoherently at the most random moments had gotten over it.
“Sir? There is something else you would like me to do?” Tendreel’s inner voices, which Trinity science said were impossible but which Mycogene-Alzant tech said were real and true things, started singing. There very definitely was, and it would be the hunt of a lifetime.
“Yes, Tech Expert Tendreel Salingh, there is absolutely something else I want for you to do.” Aleksander waited for Tendreel Salingh to realize she’d been scooped out from the rotten embrace of the Army and planted somewhere she belonged, then continued when the room filled with the soft but powerful scent of freshly turned earth.
“I want two things. One, I need to know for certain that he is where I believe he is.” Politoyov fixed the excited Mycogene with a look. “But most importantly, I want for you to find out what Garth Nickels is up to.”
A thrill stole through her. The song of the inner voices grew to a crescendo. “I … I … I will need data concerning this ship … this … Alpha. And more information on missing data file labeled ‘TCB’.”
“Of course you do.” Aleksander was proud of himself. He barely even flinched. He’d left Gorensworld out of it because … well, because. He felt responsible, somehow, for the mess in that system. After everything had fallen out the way it had, Aleksander had spent nearly a whole year trying to come up with some other way that Tynedale/Fujihara could’ve been handled, tried and failed.
The mess at Gorensworld, at least from Aleks’ perspective, had been destined to happen that way and only that way.
“Of course you do.” Aleksander repeated himself, holding a hand up to quell a very excited and freshly promoted SpecSer Tech Specialist. “You are not to mention this to anyone. Not any friends, not any colleagues. No one. I will have to assign you regular duties that cannot under any circumstances, be ignored or avoided. The hunt for Garth Nickels must be done on off-hours and using non-AI systems only.”
“To prevent Trinity from discovering Garth Nickels’ location.” Tendreel nodded.
A shock of horror lanced through Aleksander so quickly he considered himself damn lucky he didn’t fall down. “Are all Myco’s as insightful as you?”
“Sir,” Tendreel smiled as best she could, “Insightful Ones aren’t permitted to leave our homeworlds, sir. I am barely even a spore. My own ultimate great-grandspore, who is big as a mountain … he could take one look at you, and if you were to live long enough to wait for his answer, tell you everything there was to know about your life. Then he could tell you which planet you will find your death, or your true love, or anything.”
“Then why is it,” Aleksander asked as they both walked towards the door, “your worlds aren’t bombarded by people seeking truth?”
“It is simple, Commander Politoyov, sir. Trinity does not allow it, to the point where those who hunger for answers never leave the Tunnel. And, in this humble spore’s experience, people do not want truths. Truths, sir, make people uncomfortable.”
Aleksander reached out to put a hand on Salingh’s shoulder, gasping awkwardly when he poked his newest Tech Expert in one of her mushroomy eyes. “I am … I am …”
“It is all right, Commander Politoyov. I have no nerve endings. I feel no pain. Now, sir, if you will excuse me, I will locate my immediate supervisor and present myself for duty. I will contact you when I have information concerning my other duties, and only then, yes?” Tendreel saluted once, then shoved on down the hallway.
Aleksander Politoyov watched the Myco until she took a left. Then he looked down at the deck plates. He was going to have to assign a cleaning ‘bot to follow his newest acquisition around, for while the men under his command developed all manner of learning disabilities when it came to questions surrounding hygiene and water, they went all sorts of squirrelly when their ships got dirty. A thin trail of harmless mushroom spores would have them apeshit within the hour.
Commander Aleksander Politoyov inhaled deeply. Egads, he was also going to have to implore the Offworlder to come stand in his private offices every few days. The smell of fresh earth –he assumed it was the Myco equivalent of body odor- was insanely refreshing.
Aleks took one more deep breath then went back to his desk. Until Nickels was found, until he was confronted, until he was begged, the War That Wasn’t a War with the Latelians would continue.
5. What’s All This, Then?
King Barnabas Blake the One and Only, him they called Mad Goth King on the outside but who was in truth the Dark Iron King and make no mind about how you said it, sat on his throne of gears and gently hissing pneumatic tubes and all and looked broodingly at a monitor, pensively wondering what was going on in the world that such a strange thing should come to pass.
Upon it, his Son, him who called himself Chadsik al-Taryin these days. What a laugh that was, that strange sounding name, weren’t it?
King Barnabas Blake looked upon his Son, and fretted and raged and felt as though he could punch through The Dome itself to visit revenge upon the fools who’d done as they had to poor Chad! How dare they? And with such comically poor results, to boot?
“Any change yet, Mistress?” King Barnabas asked.
Taint’s odd face, all whirling gewgaws and spinning disks and meshed gears forming a broad and unhandsome mug appeared on the screen, superimposing itself atop Chad’s pale, sweat-wreathed and all too-gaunt noble features. “No, my Lord. He is the same. Won’t talk to me, won’t talk about what he’s seen, won’t do nothing but sit and stew. He nutted himself quite fiercely. All manner of darkness bubbled up out of him when he finally woke.”
“Damn them.” Barnabas curled a fist and slammed it into the arm of his heavy throne. Bad enough Chad had managed to find a way out of Arcade City in first place, worse still that he’d experienced anything at all of the outside world and worse still beyond all that and then some was the miserable and rotten luck that’d brought him to the attentions of the CyberPriests, hey? “Well, we do know all he’s been through, hey? Quite a bit of awfulness, down through the long years. Aught to be done about the damage to his melon, then?”
Taint turned her unthinking eyes on Chad’s frame for a long second before turning back to the K
ing. “Oh, that as he did to himself healed up straightaway as always, but … they did spend considerable time attempting to reforge him, milord. They sought to take his unique nature and turn it to their own purposes, but failed to crack the locks, as it were. In the end, from the looks of his mind, they did instead implant one of their own within, who then took every liberty to convince him they were his creators. Sought to use him in their own, ah, ventures.”
“Damn them!” Barnabas howled again, slamming both his fists down atop the arms of his mighty throne. The very air rippled and shivered under the onslaught of the raging King’s power. “Were it not for the fact that soon enough I shall visit upon them the most awful and dire punishment for their foul crimes against one, the last of, Arcadia’s true nobility, I would do all I could to make it happen anyways!”
Taint dipped her head low. “And how does that go?”
Barnabas tilted his head off to one side, surprised at the probing question. He’d not spoken to Taint in Chad’s absence for obvious reasons. For all that, he’d been well surprised Old Tainty had been ready for proper activation after a hundred years. Either way, since he’d not involved the Mistresses of Arcadia from the very moment he’d … left in a hurry … it would possibly do him some good to speak of the progress being made aloud.
“That buffoon Erg1 is back on Earth, Taint.” Barnabas flicked a hand and a rickety monitor wrapped in crude metal girders and random hissing steam valves pulled itself together before his very eyes, a huge monstrosity formed by Will alone, a thing that would never cease to give him the greatest pleasure.
On screen, Erg1, once known as Kant Ingrams, flew the oceans like a latter-day superhero, though it were highly unlikely that superheroes of any flavor would be chased by Trinity’s own Enforcers, day in and day out. The much-changed CyberPriest did battle with them on a regular basis, and had done since he’d mysteriously reappeared in the thick of things after being gone for so long.
