by Wil McCarthy
He paused for several seconds, and then raised a hand sideways, pointing toward something outside the view of the holie. “We'll have a few words, now, from Vin Ravin, our Chaplain General.”
GovGen Tindaros stepped aside, and another man moved into the holie. His face was vaguely familiar, his uniform gray, standard except for the stripes of his rank, which were white instead of black.
“Citizens,” said the man, nodding once, his face stern and grandfatherly. “The contribution of my office to the war effort has been to answer one fundamental question: Is God on our side? I regret to inform you that the answer is no.”
He paused, like Tindaros had, to let human minds assimilate his words.
“The Systematic Search for Miraculous Occurrences, now in its three hundred and sixty eighth year, has probed the heavens with every known instrument, and performed rigorous statistical analysis on the data thus provided. At no time has evidence been uncovered to suggest that any divine forces have interfered with the operation of the physical universe.
“Therefore, it is the position of the Chaplain General's office that God will not, in fact, assist us, no matter how piteously we beg.”
Another pause.
“At the end of the Clementine Monarchy, Pascal Giovanni, then embroiled in legal and political difficulties, set out to prove his innocence on the grounds that human free will does not exist. In his ingenious and widely-publicized experiments, he in fact managed to prove the reverse. His legacy informs us that we are truly conscious entities, responsible for our own actions, our own destiny. If we are to survive, we must recognize this fact.
“By acting in concert, the human race functioning in effect as a single entity, we gain the benefit of gestalt, of synergy, of a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. These phenomena have been studied, and quantified. Their effects are well understood.”
He glared out of the holie in an almost threatening manner.
“We must, all of us, obey our commanders, if these mechanisms are to function as intended. Interpreting the will of God is difficult, and often unwise. Nonetheless, it is my personal opinion, and that of my colleagues, that we can earn God's favor only by coordinating our efforts and performing, under stress, as well as we are physically and mentally able. To do any less would be a betrayal of the evolutionary forces which created us.
“To contemplate these facts, and to give us all a chance to make peace with God, and with ourselves, we will now enjoy thirty seconds of silence. Please bow your heads.”
The Chaplain General looked downward, closed his eyes. Marshe, uncomfortably reminded of her childhood Religion And Cosmology classes, found herself imitating the gesture.
Are you there, God? She asked mentally. It felt strange. She hadn't done this in a long time. Is it really true that you won't help us?
No reply.
Well damn you, then.
Her mind wandered back to the battles of Lalande, the cauterizing force of the Waister armada. Coming here. Soon, Bratsilasice would sublimate away as disintegration beams walked across it...
The Chaplain General raised his head.
“Thank you. I return you now to GovGen Tindaros.”
He stepped aside, to the edge of the holie, allowing the foil-clad Governor General to move back into view.
“Thank you, General Ravin. We all have something to think about. And now, it is my... grim pleasure to perform the final duty of any politician: that of resignation. This star system has no further need of civilian government. Your senators have already left Council station, returning home to perform their military duties. My family was on Eros during the Waister scouting raid, and is already dead. Therefore, I have been assigned the task of damage control in the inner chambers of Council station. This is not a symbolic act but a simple necessity.
“I wish you good fortune, my friends. Fight well, and never give in. That is all.”
The holie screens went gray again.
“Sludging hell,” Josev said. “Throw your bodies on the flames, Citizens! It's part of God's plan!”
“Shut up, Josev,” Marshe said. She bloody well didn't want to hear it.
~~~
The cafeteria was unnaturally quiet. Ken would have expected a frenzied atmosphere, an increased exchange of chatter across the tables. In fact, the opposite seemed to be occurring. The soldiers seemed lost in private thoughts, their attention, when directed outward, on little besides the mechanical process of spooning, chewing, and swallowing.
That was probably best, Ken mused. For the past two days, he'd been wearing his voder mask at meals, and it had been attracting unwelcome stares. Marshe had teased him about it, saying he was like a child with a favorite toy. But she'd never asked him to remove it. In fact, she'd been wearing her own voder a lot, lately.
“You want your rice cake?” Josev asked him quietly, sopping up beans with his own square of the spongy stuff.
“#Yes#” Ken replied.
The woman next to him turned and looked briefly, then turned away again, her expression disinterested. She had a flatscreen out, Ken saw, and was quietly tracing characters on it with her index finger. Writing a letter? If so, it must be for her own peace of mind; the system-wide state of alert forbade nonmilitary transmissions of any kind. No tearful goodbyes to friends and relatives were permitted. Not even... Could the woman be married? Ken checked her left hand. There was no wedding ring there, but hadn't that been mainly an Earth thing?
The woman wore the uniform of a lieutenant. Her face was pretty, in a simple and nondescript way.
Marriage. Before the war, the custom had been widely practiced throughout Sol system. Even in Albuquerque. Shiele Tomas' parents had been married, hadn't they?
That thought was not a happy one for Ken. With a stab of sympathy, he looked away from the woman. Like Ken, she would never see her loved ones again. The state of alert would never be lifted.
He dumped a spoonful of beans into his mouth through the opening under the voder mask.
He lifted his rice cake, munched on it.
He moved the mask aside, then replaced it after rubbing a hand across his lips, removing crumbs.
How, he wondered, did Waisters eat? Their mouths were so... complicated. Did they use utensils? Did they gather together in cafeterias like this, or was eating a secretive ritual for them, as private as the human act of excretion?
He supposed it didn't matter.
Josev was quite right; the Governor General had been nakedly lying despite his protests to the contrary. The Barnardean victory, for which the inhabitants of Sol system had been asked to throw away their lives, was vanishingly improbable. Was Carlos Tindaros insane? Misinformed? Perhaps he thought a show of ultimate defiance here in the cradle of humanity would deter the Waisters, even frighten them away. Ken didn't think so.
Why hadn't the Waisters accepted the human surrender at Wolf? Why couldn't new attempts be made here at Sol?
“Pfah,” Josev said, getting to his feet. “Not hungry. I'm going to go talk to a... friend of mine.”
“#I/We acknowledge you/your departure#” Ken said absently.
Actually, he wasn't all that hungry himself. He could find a better way to spend his break than force-feeding himself, couldn't he? Maybe the spectrum-spreading goggles were ready for pickup. Colonel Jhee had been furious about those, but he'd been too late to intercept the order.
Yes, Ken would stop by Supply and check on it.
Why the fuck not?
~~~
The supply clerk behind the counter was an aging sergeant, his uniform straining at the waist. Hairline receding. Ken felt a vague sympathy for him. He could remember a time, not so long ago, when old people didn't go bald, didn't get wrinkles or liver spots on their skin. You could change your colors back then, too, selecting skin and eyes and hair to suit any momentary whim. With a little work you could be taller, or shorter, or huskier, or anything else you chose. And nobody went unhealthy. People used to remain fit and be
autiful for a century or more, right up until their stop-timer lives ran out and their cellular machinery ground to a halt. A peaceful end to a long and untroubled existence.
But the war had changed all that. How cheated this man must feel, to belong to the first generation since the end of the Monarchy to face physical decrepitude! To watch his body grow old and withered and weak...
No. No, it wouldn't happen that way. What had Ken been thinking? This man would never grow old. The Waisters would see to that.
The man looked up with sullen eyes as Ken approached. His gaze ticked back and forth across Ken as if noting his features, his rank. Ken's face seemed to be of particular interest. “Help you?” The man asked.
Ken passed him a screen which displayed the goggle requisition.
“Ah. Couple minutes.”
The sergeant turned away from the little window that framed him, and moved back into the rows of shelves. His lips counted silently, his finger tracing rack-labels as he walked. After searching briefly he stopped, glanced at the screen in his hand, glanced up at the label again. He reached up and pulled a metal basket off the shelf.
“Spectrum spreaders, huh?” He called out to Ken.
Ken made no reply, and the man walked back to the counter and laid the basket down.
“You Aggressor team?” He asked, leaning forward, peering skeptically at Ken's face.
Ken realized suddenly that he hadn't removed his voder. How strange he must look, how buglike and cold! Belatedly, he nodded.
“Try 'em on,” the sergeant suggested, pulling one of the plastic-wrapped bundles from the basket. He unwrapped it, and handed Ken a pair of brown goggles.
Eyes, like little brown chase-me balls, swiveling independently atop a twisted crustacean head. Screams like tearing metal.
Ken took the goggles and placed them over his eyes, pulling the rubber strap behind his head to secure them. The world went... strange.
He blinked. Colors has shifted subtly. The walls and counter seemed dull, light-absorbing. And scratched! He looked to his left, to his right, down at the floor. Everything was scuffed, ancient-looking. This fortress, AGT-311 or whatever Marshe had called it, suddenly looked every hour of its 300-year age.
“They working?” The sergeant asked.
Ken paused, then nodded. Sure. This was exactly how Waisters saw things, right? Why not.
“We had to adjust 'em to cut off at a hundred and eighteen micrometers, like Captain what's-her-name said. Is this what your colonel got so upset about?”
Ken shrugged. The matter was more complicated than that, but he sensed the supply clerk didn't really want to hear about it.
Everything went dark.
Ken grunted in surprise, then again when the lights came back on, glowing bright orange. A buzzer sounded twice, and then there was a slamming noise, distant but loud, as if a great metal door had been shut in another corridor somewhere. The slamming repeated, further away this time. Then again, father still. Faint echoes chased through the corridor.
“Combat drill!” The sergeant said, sounding both excited and annoyed.
Ken started to key the voder, caught himself. “What happened to the lights?” He asked carefully.
“It's a combat drill. They—oh, take your goggles off.”
Ken reached up and pulled the round lenses down off his eyes. The lights were battle-red, a shade designed both to alarm and to soothe. The color of bright arterial blood, the lights were strong enough to read by but would not interfere with a soldier's dark-vision.
“Get in here,” the sergeant ordered Ken. “I need to batten down.”
“I have to get back,” Ken protested, forcing his mouth to form the words in Standard.
“You can't,” the sergeant said. “All the bulkheads are sealed.”
Ah. The door beside the supply counter opened, and when the sergeant came out Ken allowed himself to be led inside the room. After all, the bulkheads were sealed, just as they always were in the combat drills aboard the Marine transport Nob Witan. He hadn't spent much time aboard stations, had certainly never experienced a drill on board one, but it seemed much the same.
“You're a war hero, aren't you, Corporal?” The sergeant asked, his tone almost accusatory. “You should know about this stuff.”
The man hit a lighted square on the wall panel, and the supply room's door and window-shutter slid down, locking in place with deep clanging sounds.
“Get comfortable. We unbutton in about twenty minutes.”
Twenty minutes, Ken mused, sitting himself down in the corner, his back against the cool metal wall. On Nob Witan there was little work for the drills to interrupt, at least for the ship's Marine cargo. But here there must be all kinds of disruptions. How much labor would be lost? He imagined the face of Colonel Jhee, livid in the blood-red lights, waiting with barely-contained fury while his projects sat idle.
The thought was enough to make Ken smile, almost.
He felt the pressure of the goggles against his cheekbones. Uncomfortable. He moved them up to cover his eyes again. The view went orange-gray, and suddenly he felt much, much better.
Chapter Twelve
The tactical holie made Ken want to puke. He'd watched a trio of picket boats leave their lonely Oort patrols to place themselves in the path of the armada. Two of them had vaporized while the Waisters were still light-seconds away. The third had slipped aside, smashing its crew with a series of brutal, five-gee maneuvers. For minutes it evaded the enemy drive-beams. Then, roaring sunward at .1C, the Waisters had swarmed past, a single ship peeling away to engage the wayward picket.
Unfair! Ken's mind protested as the boat vanished from the screen. The Waister ship, unconstrained by the laws of Newtonian mechanics, pulled right-angle turns as if bouncing from invisible walls. It never came within a million kilometers of the picket. Presently, it sped up, sustaining an eighty-gee acceleration as it fought to catch up with its fellows.
“Josev!” Marshe snapped. “How far to Sol at present speed?”
“Forty-nine hours,” Josev replied without hesitation. Not that the Waisters were heading for Sol itself. Not that Marshe and her team could actually do anything in any case. This fortress, locked in its orbit high above Saturn, was not going anywhere.
“They're still decelerating,” Josev added. “Point one cee is their penetration velocity. It's much less when they get in among the planets.”
“Project it,” Marshe said. “Keep on them. Tell me where they're going.”
Ken found all the chatter distracting. It was the holies that demanded his attention, with their bitter news of the fighting in the Oort cloud, of the fall of Astaroth. The last dregs of the Lalandean fleet had made a very brave and very ineffectual stand, Waisters ships smashing through their defenses like shotgun pellets through glass, and then in a few hours it had all been over. Disintegration beams had swept back and forth across the planet's face, chewing mountains and coastlines, sowing storms of fire throughout the atmosphere. The planet's tiny oceans had, according to reports, shrunk by an additional thirty percent during the attack. Four billion people had died.
How strange that the death of the three picket-boat crews should frighten him more! Astaroth had been doomed from the very start, and of course it had never been really real to Ken in the first place. Pictures on the holie screen, that was what Lalande system truly represented. Only the one Colony ship, now centuries gone, had ever traveled that lonely route, to be dismantled at journey's end like a fat insect devoured by its offspring. A one-way trip, lifetimes long. No, Lalande was not a place Ken could feel and bleed for.
Sol had its own armada to face, its own deaths to prepare for. Forty-nine hours. That one number seemed more real than all the lives of Astaroth.
“...probably stop just past Uranus orbit,” Josev was saying.
“Near the planet?” Marshe asked.
“No. Planet's on the other side of the sun. Will you look at the God-damned tactical? I'm not a... Hold it!
Look at that! Who are they fighting?”
Ken followed Josev's gaze, saw flashes on the holie. The cloud of red trails began to twitch oddly, as if agitated.
“Look at the hull temperatures!” Marshe cried.
“They're dispersing,” Josev said. “Something's happening, they're hitting something. Slower, slower... Yes!”
One of the Waister ships pulled out from the group. No, Ken amended, it moved in a straight line, while the group pulled slowly away from it.
The captain grunted. “Is it dust?”
“No.” Josev stood, quickly, and jabbed a finger at one of the screens. “We're facing backwards, see, and the spread pattern on the propulsion beams covers this whole cone.”
“Dust coming in from the sides?” Marshe suggested.
“No, it has to come from somewhere. There's nobody there.”
“What about the picket boats?”
“No, they were never... Oh! God's names, that's it! It's smart dust!”
Marshe's voder produced the sound Waisters used to express irritation. Or its nearest equivalent, Ken thought.
“No, I mean it,” Josev said. “Not dust, um... Projectiles. Missiles. Look at these little flashes, here. These are antimatter explosions!”
“Roland?” Marshe said, sharply. Don't you DARE not answer me, her tone commanded.
“#No I/I do-think#” Roland shot back, in Waister.
“Yes?”
“#I/I do-think Not-so Not-so#” Roland stopped, looking frustrated. He pulled the voder off his face and continued, in Standard: “Can't produce antimatter in industrial quantities. Been a long time since we could do that.”
“They are explosions,” Josev insisted. “I'm sure of it. Disintegrator hits have a totally different signature.”
“Could they be fusion bombs?” Sipho Yeng asked.
“No,” Josev said. “Yes. No. Too bulky. If I'm right about this, we're watching pipe-shooters coming in at the sides of the Armada. Yeah. Waisters could track the gravitational signature, but there are a lot of targets, and they could be having speed-of-light problems in aiming the—”
