Conquest and Empire

By

David VanDyke

Table of Contents

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Epilogue

© 2015 by David VanDyke. All rights reserved. This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Plague Wars series: (Prequels to Stellar Conquest)

The Eden Plague

Reaper's Run

Skull's Shadows

Eden's Exodus (March 2015)

The Demon Plagues

The Reaper Plague

The Orion Plague

Cyborg Strike

Comes The Destroyer

Stellar Conquest series:

First Conquest

Desolator

Tactics of Conquest

Conquest of Earth

Conquest and Empire

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Chapter 1

2163 A.D., two years after the first Scourge attack on Earth.

“We’re through to the inner chamber, my lord,” Gilgamesh said over the hard line.

Spectre took a deep breath. “Excellent. I’ll be there shortly,” he replied before replacing the field telephone handset in its cradle on the desk of the excavation’s on-site trailer office.

With quick, economical motions he ensured the placement of all of the weapons and tools he routinely kept on his person. Bodyguards were all well and good, but personal preparation was better. Assassination attempts had fallen off, but all it would take was one lucky and dedicated killer, and then bye bye Spectre.

Smoothing his yellow-piped black uniform and donning dark sunglasses, Spectre nodded to the head of his personal security detail and followed the man out into the blazing South African sunlight and across the packed, chalky earth toward the entrance to the dig. Even with the eye protection, he kept his lids nearly closed in anticipation of the underground journey.

Inside the sloping mineshaft, he took a seat on a makeshift bench installed in an ore car. His bodyguards leaped into two more of the battered steel vehicles and the subterranean train began to move, drawn by the electric engine in front.

Down, down they traveled as if on some pre-holocaust amusement park ride, but without animatronic monsters or falling foam rocks. Fifteen minutes and almost a mile of slanting distance later, they debouched into an open space still redolent with clouds of dust. Fans and foot-wide flexible air ducts fought to keep the atmosphere clear and the air breathable.

Gilgamesh handed Spectre a dust mask as he stepped down from the ore car and said through his own, “There’s a small opening through which we can see a chamber with machinery in it. We stopped as you commanded, my lord.”

“Can you tell whether it still has power?”

“Yes, it does. We saw faint lights.”

“Excellent.” Spectre followed the bulky Gilgamesh across the uneven floor toward a narrowing of the chamber, glad of the heavy miner’s boots he’d been advised to wear.

High on the wall, perhaps at the limits of his standing reach, he saw a hole the size of a football. A bench had been placed beneath it and Spectre leaped atop it, his hands grasping the edges of the small opening.

“Adjust your eyes for deep darkness and you will see,” Gilgamesh said. “Dim the lights!” he called to the work crew, and they did so.

Spectre exercised deliberate control over his vision, dilating his pupils wide and leaning his face as far forward as possible. Gradually, he became able to see into a curving chamber by the faint lights of machinery telltales, deliberately reduced, he presumed, to save power.

A surge of excitement flowed through him, but he showed no more than a calm, pleased enthusiasm as he stepped down to the floor and turned to his subordinate, the miners and engineers standing behind expectantly. “You have all done well. Everyone shall have bonus credit.”

Those present cheered and hooted, some calling out “Hurrah for Lord Spectre!” or variants of the same.

Spectre waved for quiet. “Open it now. Carefully.” He stepped back.

A grizzled miner moved up with a pneumatic jackhammer, a much safer tool than a laser drill, and began working to enlarge the opening. Once the hole grew to the size a man could fit through, Gilgamesh ordered a shift to hand tools.

Spectre waited patiently for them to create an opening of sufficient size to allow him to walk through with only a stoop. “Continue,” he said to those remaining behind. “Smooth the floor as well.”

“We will lay down walkways, my lord,” the mining foreman said with a dip of his head, and the work crew hastened to clear the debris.

Spectre ignored them as he picked his way past the mess and pulled out a hand light. Inside the chamber he could see reinforced concrete pillars and heavy support beams, all of which showed evidence of cracks and buckling. In places, chunks of the roof had come down, but the bunker, for such it was, remained largely intact.

Gilgamesh squeezed his bulk through the opening, and then dusted himself off. “They built well,” he remarked as he examined the rows of dust-covered machines in their hundreds.

Spectre grunted in agreement. “Carletonville was far enough from the impact of the Destroyers that the seismic shock didn’t – quite – overcome the engineering, and sufficiently inland that the tsunami didn’t reach here. I’m more impressed that the power systems are still functioning unattended after more than fifty years.” He laid a hand on one of the modules and began to brush off the grit that had fallen from the ceiling.

“Shall I have the engineers begin their work?”

“Not yet. I’ve studied the design of these units. They’re simple enough a child could use them. Deliberately so.” A smile twitched to Spectre’s lips. “Let’s see if we can do it ourselves.”

“As you wish, my lord.”

Gilgamesh’s obsequiousness has hardly slackened since I took over a year ago, Spectre thought. I’m beginning to think it’s a genuine personality trait rather than an affectation intended to lull me. I watch him closer than anyone, yet he’s never made a false move. Still, as a Blend and former Meme, I have to assume he is patient enough to wait decades for an opportunity to betray me. I wonder what he would think if he knew that this operation might diminish his usefulness to me? After all, if I can reacquire some old, long-lost friends and put them to work…

“Ah, here’s the screen,” Spectre said aloud.

The thick crystal display was shielded from above with a metal hood and ringed by simple, robust buttons rather than complex but delicate controls. For deep programming, computers would be connected to an electronic port, but to begin the resuscitation cycle one merely had to press the keys in sequence.

The thick buttons were molded as well as marked, their tops shaped into numbers from one to five. The first pulsed with a faint glow, barely visible.

“Shall we begin?” Spectre said as he depressed it with his thumb.

In response, the second button lit, brighter this time, and he heard a faint hum begin from the automobile-sized module in front of him. Depressing number two increased the sounds emitted, and a gurgling added itself to the noises.

The third button did not illuminate. When Spectre tapped it experimentally it seemed frozen, locked in place.

“It may take some time for it to light,” Gilgamesh suggested.

“Perhaps. Or perhaps it’s inoperative.” Spectre moved to the next module and blew the dust away before firmly pressing the first button down, and then the second. Sounds similar to the first unit emerged, but third button also remained unlit.

Gilgamesh kept his respectful silence, so Spectre said, “It appears your contention is more likely correct. We must wait.”

Above his mask the other Blend’s eyes widened in amusement. “Thank you, my lord.”

Spectre waved as if brushing away flies. “If I ever become so certain of my own opinions that I don’t acknowledge the wisdom of others, please remind me. In fact, simply say, ‘remember, thou art mortal.’ I give you my word I will not hold it against you.”

“As you wish, my lord.”

Not for the first time the urge grew within Spectre to insist on a relaxation of formality, perhaps doing away with this “my lord” business that Gilgamesh himself had begun upon their first meeting, at least for his inner circle. It had caught on, and now others used the honorific with pride. Perhaps he would do so…but later. For now, humanity needed rigid structure and ruthless hierarchy more than it needed egalitarianism.

Besides, he could tell that Gilgamesh gained status within the eyes of his own subordinates by the subtle emphasis on his proximity to Spectre’s exalted position. Why discard that incentive?

Glancing down the nearest row of modules, Spectre considered beginning the vivification sequences for all of them in order to save time, but decided against it.

First, doing so might strain the power systems in place here, precipitating some crisis his engineers might not be able to correct.

Second, it might prove confusing and inconvenient to revive them all at once, especially if they had some special and sudden need. That began another train of thought, resulting in his decision that a long list of supplies and specialists be brought down.

“I want the medical team here as soon as possible, as well as I.V. nutrients, solid food, clean water, field beds, gurneys, and anything else one might need to assist wounded or sick people,” he said to Gilgamesh. “Exercise your best judgment and spare no expense. You know what’s at stake.”

“The preparations are already begun, my lord,” Gilgamesh said, rushing out the entrance to supervise.

Of course, thought Spectre, these people had performed any number of such recovery operations, but never one of such significance.

As the third button had not yet lit on either of the activated modules, Spectre took a slow tour of the facility. Besides the main room with the score of modules he found the remains of a control room, but it had sustained more damage than the central space, and the consoles there lacked all power. He also found storerooms with long-life supplies, some of which seemed still intact.

His impatience almost got the better of him, but he forced himself to wait for the loads of supplies and skilled personnel to be brought down. An hour or so into the involuntary hiatus the third buttons lit up, and he pressed the next immediately on both, confident that the units would hold until the fifth and final completed the process.

As he waited, he sat and meditated, digging deep into his store of memories, mental recordings of 2075, almost a century ago and just prior to the launch of what was until then humanity’s greatest, and perhaps its riskiest, endeavor.

-=-

“For once in my life I wish I had the power to forbid you, Spooky,” Daniel Markis had said. “Joining Task Force Conquest takes you out of the picture for at least forty years, and for what? The faint possibility that your personal abilities will be needed at the other end?”

“Much more than that, I hope. But don’t underestimate the effectiveness of one man at a pivotal moment in a battle or a negotiation. Look at yourself, DJ. You’ve hared off to intervene personally in Earth’s politics any number of times.”

“Because that’s my appointed role. You don’t see me parachuting into hot spots with a rifle and a medical bag any more, do you? And you’ve become a highly effective politician. Under your rule Australia has become the premier economic powerhouse of Earth. If you really want to change jobs, take mine. You’d make a better chairman than I ever have.”

Spooky shook his head slowly. “I must disagree, my friend. I might surpass you in some areas, though not in all…but more importantly, I am not a leader everyone can admire. Too many people fear me more than love me. You, Daniel…you they idolize. You’re the savior of mankind, the man on the white horse.”

Markis snorted derisively. “You make me sound like the Second Coming of Christ.”

“And were I to take over, I’d be the Antichrist,” Spooky retorted. “You once told me you know what I am. Do you really think it’s wise to offer me all the kingdoms of the Earth? Who’s playing Satan’s tempting role now?”

“You could have had those kingdoms long ago. I judge people on their actions, not what they claim to want or to be. It’s been decades since I worried about your ambitions. You’re the most disciplined, controlled human being I’ve ever met, and believe me, I’ve known quite a few.” Exasperated, Markis stood up from behind his desk to gaze out his bulletproof window onto the green, manicured grounds of his Carletonville, South Africa office.

The complex still hosted the world’s premier biotech research facility, over the last few decades accreting to itself personnel and resources from all over the globe, but it was better known as the place from which the Chairman of the Council of Earth governed.

That council possessed a building built on the outskirts of Mumbai, India, a crossroads of the cultures and peoples of East and West, North and South, but over half of the membership chose to attend meetings via VR link. Why travel to or live near a place one didn’t like, when technology made it possible to plug in and feel almost exactly as if one was standing in the meeting chamber itself? With holographic projectors in every room, it was even possible to move one’s presence within the capitol building to attend any necessary function.

This way, Daniel could stay near his wife Elise, chief researcher for the biotech lab. Friends and family were also here, his roots. Vincent had left for a career in the service – and in fact, would be departing soon on Conquest – but his other three children still lived near enough to visit from time to time.

Markis jerked his thoughts back to the quiet presence of the man standing behind him, waiting. “Sorry, woolgathering,” he said.

“I understand,” Spooky replied.

“I’m not sure you do. If you leave, who will keep Australia running like clockwork?”

“Ann Alkina is perfectly competent to do so.”

“You’d leave your wife behind?”

“Others will. Besides, doesn’t absence make the heart grow fonder?”

“For decades? I couldn’t do it,” Markis said. “Not on a…a whim, an impulse.”

“Daniel, you know me better than that. This isn’t an impulse.” Spooky moved around to stand next to Markis, looking out the window into the hazy distance. “In fact, it’s a necessity. I need a change. I’ve become bored, and when I’m bored I risk falling into petty cruelty, visiting inordinate revenges upon those who offend me, becoming distracted with personal issues...and the darkness within me grows, becomes difficult to restrain.”

Markis held his silence for a time. “I didn’t know. But I think I understand. When I was on active duty, so long ago, I struggled with my own darkness. Concussions exacerbated it, but the men I killed – evil men, for sure, but still men – haunted me. Yet, I’d become addicted to combat. I felt dead anywhere but on a battlefield. I told myself I was there to save lives, but I had to admit to myself, sometimes, that I also relished the killing.”

“I wish I only relished killing, Daniel. There’s a part of me that hungers for deeper darkness than that. I’ve kept that lust caged by distracting myself, challenging myself. But now…I’m nearly superfluous. There’s no challenge to governing a well-oiled machine.”

Markis turned to face Spooky. “You could take over command of the Jupiter facilities. It’s still a bit of the Wild West out there at the edge of inhabited space. Improving the efficiency of the military economy could pay big dividends when the Meme hit us again.”

“I don’t see how I could do it any better than Rae and her think-tank of mad scientists.”

“They may be the idea factory, but you’re the perfect administrator. That’s what we need.”

“I can give you a list of personnel I’d recommend for the post, but I’m not staying here any longer. Daniel, I’m joining Conquest. I’d rather have your blessing, but…”

“But even if I didn’t give it, you’d find a way.”

Spooky shrugged. “I would.”

“Then go. If you’re going to do it anyway, do it to the best of your ability.” Markis reached out to briefly embrace Spooky, who allowed the contact for the sake of friendship. “Kick the Memes’ asses, all right, Spooky? That’s all I ask.”

Spooky raised an eyebrow, accompanied by half a smile. “I’ll pass on your instructions to Admiral Absen.”

-=-

When the medical and support teams were in place to Spectre’s satisfaction, when the room had been swept of dust and debris, and adjustable lights had been brought in, he pushed the fifth button on the first coldsleep module.

Using the same principles as the tubes that had carried a million colonists and crew aboard Conquest ninety years ago, these robust machines had kept hundreds of people in hibernation for the more than five decades since most of humanity had been scoured from the face of the Earth. Only those in shelters – some traditional underground living units and others like this – had survived to repopulate under the pitiless rule of Meme and Blend.

The discovery of such bunkers had tapered off to nothing after ten years of systematic searching by the Meme’s underlings, but Spectre knew not all had been found. He’d asked for the detailed records from Conquest’s hard drives, uploaded in the intelligence dump broadcast toward Gliese 370 shortly before the final Meme assault arrived.

Spectre’s searchers had located and excavated many heretofore undiscovered shelters. Those lacking coldsleep modules had become tombs filled with people unable to dig themselves out or attract enough attention for others to help. The fortunate had suffocated in the carbon dioxide of their own breaths.

The less fortunate had starved.

Of those with coldsleep modules, more than three in ten had been too badly damaged to preserve life. Fusion powerplants designed to run for a thousand years still succumbed to shocks and cave-ins brought on by the convulsions of a planet wracked by stupendous impacts. Sometimes the electricity still flowed, but the machines themselves had been crushed or the main cables had been cut.

And some were like this complex, sufficiently intact to rescue hundreds of specialists from the times before the victory of the Meme. Only the most valuable personnel, judged so by ruthless computer evaluations, had been given space in the life capsules. One-way time travel into the future had been made mandatory: no appeals, no refusals. Not with the fate of humanity at stake.

Spectre himself, in his earlier incarnation as Spooky Nguyen, had pushed for the program and was thoroughly glad that it had eventually been implemented, though long after he’d left aboard Conquest. He chuckled as he realized that this was a gift he had, at least in part, given himself.

Now, that gift gave him what he wanted as the cover of the module lifted, revealing the clear tube within. Held at just above freezing to slow metabolism, the human body inside was kept in near stasis, its necessary functions attended to by adapted Meme technology that fed it, breathed for it and carried its wastes away.

Spectre leaned over to brush at the thick glass, but still he could see nothing for the mists within. Master of a planet he might be, but here he had no power to hurry the mindless machine.

Finally, the fog cleared with the whine of a fan and the retraction of semi-living gels that rolled themselves away from the bare skin of the inhabitant, leaving him naked and pink. Still stocky and muscular, with sandy brown hair and pale gray eyes, the man within looked the same as when Spectre had seen him last.

“Hello, DJ,” he breathed as he spread his hands on the glass and gazed downward.

Within the coldsleep tube, Daniel Markis, once Chairman of the Council of Earth, opened his eyes.

Chapter 2

Admiral Absen stared grimly at Michelle’s military-industrial projections littering his office desktop, showing economic activity balanced against the production of war materiel. Rubbing his eyes and sliding bars and widgets here and there, he tried to make them come out some way he was happy with, but couldn’t.

EarthFleet Intelligence projected the attack of the next wave of Scourge “from zero to twenty-six months” with ninety percent confidence, which was a fancy way of saying they could arrive any time – today, tomorrow, next year.

If only he could know for certain that he had a specific period of time, EarthFleet could take a breather and deploy its precious resources more efficiently, but with a mere sixteen minutes guaranteed warning, everyone had to be on high alert all the time, and every warship, every SLAM, every weapon had to be sent immediately to the front line.

We have so little depth, Absen growled to himself. If only we could see them coming from a distance and from one direction…but faster-than-light emergence apparently proceeds randomly from wormhole termini appearing along the equator of a gravity well.

The mechanics of FTL travel, as worked out by the old Ryss physicist Plessk and his team, showed stars to be the key. Power collected from a gravity well was twisted by the FTL drive of each mothership into a toroid singularity, opening a wormhole pathway to another star. Theory said even such exotic masses as black holes or pulsars could be used, but doing so courted gravitic disaster upon exit.

That exit was the real point of danger, for the arriving ship must first survive the heat of the star. The Scourge did this by coating their one-use motherships with thick organic resin that ablated and insulated the creatures within. Human ships would use armor of nanoformed ceramic matrix, nearly impervious to heat.

The next problem was that of escape from the arrival star’s gravity well. As long as the target stellar body was not much larger than the one at the departure end, there should be no problem. Velocity in equaled velocity out, it seemed.

However, if the arrival star was much larger – and Absen had been shocked when he’d been shown that some stars were millions of times more massive than yellow Sol and large enough to encompass all the planets of Earth’s inner solar system – then the arriving force might never escape.

This dynamic effectively created an FTL gradient from star to star. One could go from a larger star to any lesser one without difficulty. In fact, such travel became easier and easier the more the travelers proceeded “downslope.”

Going upward, from smaller to larger stars, became a much more difficult proposition. A stairstep approach was necessary, balancing the speed of entrance with the required stellar escape velocity. If the ultimate target system held an especially large star, a starship might have to travel several “upward” legs, from star to star to star, before it could risk jumping for its destination.

This was analogous to the way sailing ships of old operated, tacking laboriously upwind to gain the weather gage, the position of greatest maneuvering advantage. Similarly, the larger stars constituted the strategic high grounds of space, giving the force that held them the edge.

Unfortunately, Sol was not a large star at all, and so securing it was like defending a valley. An attacker could arrive from any number of larger stars within hundreds of light years, while a task force departing Sol had far fewer options: to aim only for stars smaller or one size class more massive, in other words.

But these were considerations for the future. For now, Absen’s job was tactical rather than strategic, and that was headache enough. If he were the Scourge, he’d send a much larger force to attack a star system that resisted the first wave. With endless forces and the individual Archons’ desire for territory, there was no reason not to do so.

In fact, thought Absen, if I were them, I’d mass maximum force on anyone resisting. The trick is coordinating task forces from more than one star system. Fortunately, that takes time.

The physicists said arriving together from different stars couldn’t be done with any accuracy, at least not with the FTL technology EarthFleet had captured. Travel times were too unpredictable and communication was only possible via drones that took just as long as a fleet to travel from star to star.

Therefore, to arrive as a unit, any task force had to be assembled at a star larger than the target before launching together as one convoy.

And to do that, drones have to fly from place to place with messages and orders, coordinating a fleet’s assembly, for light is far too slow. We really are back to the Age of Sail, Absen mused, where fast packet boats physically carried dispatches from place to place.

Perhaps in the future, new technology would provide solutions, such as some kind of FTL carrier transmission wave. For now, he had to work with what he had.

And what he had was a hodgepodge, a mishmash of weapons hastily produced and just as hastily deployed in hopes that the inevitable attack wouldn’t be too much for them to handle.

Absen checked his watch and realized his next staff briefing was coming up in less than an hour. “Michelle, cancel the 1300 daily with apologies to the presenters. I don’t think I can stand another data dump. Instead, let’s have a 1600 discussion brief in the small auditorium. That should give people enough time to change gears and bring whatever they have to the table. Can you put together an updated summary of our defenses?”

“I keep that information ready at all times, Admiral,” Michelle replied with a hint of reproach.

Damn the machine-brained woman, Absen thought. She’s getting more pissy all the time. We really have to find her an AI companion, whatever that might mean.

“Then you should also have information at your fingertips on figures of speech and command questions that are actually polite orders,” he replied with some irritation.

“Sorry, sir. No excuse, sir.”

“In the meantime, I need some LBWA time and some lunch.”

“Understood, sir. Shall I accompany you?”

“Aren’t you already with me everywhere aboard, avatar or not?”

“The admiral should understand figures of speech that are actually polite but advisable suggestions, sir.”

Absen made a strangled noise in his throat, half sigh, half growl, before exiting into the corridor. One of Michelle’s humanoid avatars fell in half a pace behind him as his detail of four Stewards preceded and trailed him.

While he spent the next hour “leading by wandering around,” he marveled at the change in Conquest. The ship and crew had traveled from Gleise 370 with a minimum of personnel, but now, with every space-based platform in high demand, the warship had been turned into a mobile command center and teemed with as many people as could live aboard, at least twenty thousand at last count. She’d been designed to hold that number, but after so long with so few billeted aboard he felt crowded.

Absen laughed at himself. You’ve grown soft over the years, old man, he thought. You’ve forgotten what living for months at a time in a cramped nuclear submarine feels like. This is positively empty compared to that.

His first stop was the new PDCC, the point defense control center, a place dedicated to increasing anti-Scourge weapons coordination by several orders of magnitude. Holding over a thousand trained gunners linked within shared VR space, like pilots and helmsmen, it was the test-bed for new tactics and a proving ground for an idea that he’d drawn from his wet-navy days so long ago: the U.S. Navy’s Aegis anti-air and antimissile system.

The large room looked more like an infirmary than a control center, with rows of VR coffins stood vertically so the gunners could walk in and out of them upright. Right now, about half of them stood open, the other half filled. One monitoring tech came to her feet as Absen entered, but the admiral waved her back to her seat and looked around.

He knew the cheap autonomous point defense modules that had been slapped onto Conquest’s skin were all gone now, replaced by uprated and networked laser emplacements. Each still contained its own powerplant in order to minimize the need to send energy from beneath the great ship’s armor, dramatically reducing weak spots such conduits caused.

In order to provide comms between the PDCC and the weapons, thin cables ran through the tiniest of holes laboriously bored in the armor. More importantly, hardened wires ran from each module to all of its nearest dozen neighbors, forming a network that meant all twelve connections had to be severed before it became isolated and reverted to autonomous mode. Each also contained a short-range transmitter for a separate and redundant wireless network.

With an extra half-meter of spray-on ablative covering the cables and much of the modules, simulations demonstrated that this system, while not perfect, was the best they could install with the resource constraints they had. In fact, Conquest had been hogging the PD module production for the last month in order to cover every excess square meter of skin with lasers – almost sixty thousand of them for the whole of the six square kilometers of surface area.

Right now, Conquest was far and away the most effective capital ship in EarthFleet. She also functioned as the flagship, holding the majority of command and staff, and was the most powerful TacDrive equipped vessel in the solar system. It was therefore imperative that she be able to go deeply into harms way, strike the enemy hard, and then escape.

But that uniqueness would change soon, Absen vowed. After the next attack or, if they were lucky and the enemy held off, before it, entirely new ships would be completed, specifically built to fight the Scourge.

“How are the sims coming?” Absen asked the tech, who smiled nervously and stood up again at being addressed by EarthFleet’s supreme commander.

Before she could speak, a loud voice came from behind him. “Very well, sir,” it said, and Absen turned to see Commander James Ford, Conquest’s senior weapons officer, hurry across the room.

The man visibly smoothed his permanently combative expression in the presence of his admiral. He spoke briefly in the tech’s ear before turning to Absen. “I’m working them to the limits the psych people will let me, but I’d like to add some hours. I think we could increase proficiency a few percent.”

Absen shook his head. “I saw your request on the last report, Commander, and the answer is still no. Twelve hours a day in VR, six days a week, is enough.”

“But sir –”

“Sorry, no. That’s final. Overtraining is almost as bad as undertraining, and we’ve already had to send two of your people to VR rehab.” Absen thought about his own brush with VR syndrome during the first battle with the Scourge and shuddered. Nothing since nanocrack was quite as unbalancing as the godlike feeling of virtual space – and the depression of having to leave it.

Ford said, “You know, I heard from Ezekiel that the Meme VR sarcophagi don’t seem to cause VR syndrome, or not as badly. If we could use that technology…”

“There are a couple dozen technologies I’d like to fully exploit, James, but we’re stretched to the limit trying to incorporate the upgrades we do have. We can’t let the good idea fairy get us off track.” The good idea fairy was shorthand for the tendency of people to want to make just one more improvement, as in “I got a good idea!” If allowed to run rampant, time-tested and efficient systems would end up worthless as they were constantly “improved,” because every upgrade caused disruption, introduced unintended consequences, required retraining of personnel and needed a period of adjustment.

“Yes, sir,” Ford subsided.

Absen slapped the younger man on the shoulder. “The PDCC is a quantum leap over anything we had before, so be happy with what you have. Tell me how much more effective we’ll be.”

“Well,” Ford admitted, “once both shifts are trained and in place, we’ll be about ninety times more lethal to any swarm we encounter.”

“Ninety percent?” Absen knew his assertion was wrong, but wanted to throw Ford a bone by letting the man brag about his new system. Nothing was more effective in getting someone to invest in a project than having him defend it in front of a potential critic.

“No, sir,” Ford replied with a distinct air of pride. “Ninety times, which is more than nine thousand percent better. But that’s still not enough. I want to be able to stand in the middle of one of their swarms and lay down a base of fire so intense that they can’t overcome it.”

“And I want the Scourge to catch the common cold and their whole race to die off, but neither of those things is going to happen.”

Ford laughed ruefully. “War of the Worlds, right, sir?”

“You got it. Too bad it’s never that easy. Keep up the good work and tell your people I appreciate their efforts. They’re going to be vital to our survival.”

“You just told them yourself,” Ford said with an uncharacteristic grin. “Miss Surwal here is recording our conversation, and it will be replayed for them on the next break.”

“Unedited, I hope.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Carry on, then,” Absen said before departing.

“Are you certain Commander Ford is the best man for the job?” Michelle murmured on Absen’s ear as they walked.

“Yes,” the admiral said firmly. “I’m sure you could come up with a dozen theoretically better people –”

“– or a thousand…” Michelle retorted.

“Okay, a thousand, but not one of them would have been with me and this crew for as long or know us so well. People aren’t interchangeable, Michelle. They form relationships, like fine roots that connect them to others. Ripping them out is a last resort, especially after a long time in place.”

“I’ll take your word for it, sir,” Michelle said in a tone of disbelief.

Absen stopped and turned to the avatar. “You know, I think the first of the new dreadnoughts will need a good AI. Why don’t you give me a detailed plan on transferring your consciousness to the Constitution when she’s finished?”

“What?” The AI had built her avatar’s face sufficiently expressive to display utter shock at the admiral’s words. “You can’t…” Then the android seemed to relax. “I see by your biometrics that you are practicing deception on me, Admiral. You’re trying to add an emotional component to your argument.”

“If by that you mean I’m trying to show you how you’d feel at getting treated like an interchangeable part instead of like a human being, then yes, that’s exactly it.”

“I understand, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“You’re welcome.” Not for the first time Absen worried about the AI. If human beings could grow up seeming normal but manifest signs of insanity later in adulthood, why not a machine intelligence? Especially one continuously given increments of greater responsibility. Plenty of politicians succumbed to megalomania as their power grew. Every despised dictator had to start somewhere.

“What’s to be our next stop?” Michelle asked.

“You want to tip them off?”

“Is that unwise?”

“I’d rather see what things look like without people spiffing everything up for me.”

“If you like, I can give you detailed reports and recordings of everything that goes on aboard when you are not present.”

“Everything?”

“Except for the spaces you’ve designated as privacy zones,” Michelle said with a hint of stiffness.

“That’s simply not the same as a personal visit.” Absen avoided reopening their old argument about security versus privacy.

I’d rather trust people than spy on their intimate moments, the admiral thought. Even suspecting an all-knowing AI was recording every use of the head, every sexual coupling, every binge and every moment of weakness and doubt, every sleeping mumble…no, that would be a morale killer and I won’t do it. Monitoring of all public spaces is plenty.

For the same reason he’d refused to have any of Spectre’s Skulls aboard his ships or on EarthFleet bases. Marines performed routine guard duty and security inspections, while the Stewards had expanded beyond their protection role to become his investigative service for internal crimes. Maybe political police were necessary in civilian society for a while, but he’d long since resolved he’d push for disbanding or curtailing them severely as soon as he felt the Solar System was secure.

And that wouldn’t happen until after the Scourges’ next attack, when EarthFleet saw what a second wave would look like. The one account of battle other than their own that Intel possessed showed a similar force hitting a Meme world one hundred thirty light-years away, inflicting grievous damage even while ultimately repulsed.

No data had been received for the presumed second attack, though Absen was fervently hopeful that it would arrive on encrypted Meme frequencies before the Scourge hit the Solar System again. Intelligence on that follow-on force could give EarthFleet a tremendous edge.

“You’re pensive,” Michelle prompted as they walked.

“I’m always pensive, Commander. If I’m not thinking about an issue in front of me, I’m thinking about the larger problems of defending Earth and our shaky alliance. Right now I’m wondering what surprises the next set of Scourges will spring on us.”

“Why do you think there will be surprises?”

“Surprises are inevitable in war. Only a fool thinks the enemy won’t come up with something new and unexpected.”

“The Scourge doesn’t seem an imaginative race.”

Absen grunted. “They’re imaginative enough to develop technology to wipe out hundreds, maybe thousands of sentient races. People we could have met, could have talked with, could have learned from and traded with. They’ve been eaten with all their works. What a waste!”

“But the Scourge aren’t imaginative enough to appreciate what they destroyed. My studies of the specimens we captured and of their cybernetic systems show a hodgepodge of techniques with very little unifying theme. They appear to have stolen technology from those they conquered, but not developed very much of their own.”

“Some old Earth nations and cultures did very well for themselves by stealing from those that innovated.”

“But they eventually fell apart because thievery was rewarded over imagination. Thought must be free to explore, or a culture degrades.”

Absen glanced over at Michelle’s android. “You realize you just stepped across to my side of the security-versus-freedom argument, right?”

“I supposed I did…but I realize the difference between short-term exigencies and long-term benefits. Also, that a ship of war must be more tightly monitored than, say, a civilian installation.”

Absen waved the argument away for the moment. “Looks like we’re here.”

“The cybernetics lab? I could have given you whatever reports you need.”

“You sound a bit defensive, Michelle. Don’t worry, I’m not going to go stomping through your mind, literally or metaphorically. In fact, I’d like to hear how the AI research program is going directly from Dr. Egolu.”

“You trust her more than you do me?”

“No, but she’s the department head and you’re a military officer under my command as well as being the primary test subject. I don’t bypass my senior leaders merely because someone below them knows more. Besides, you’re not objective, because our one and only functioning example of AI is you.”

The door to the cybernetics lab opened to reveal a section of deck more than a hundred meters on a side and thirty high, with dozens of consoles and white-coated research scientists and more casually dressed engineers in attendance. A few people in military uniform rounded out the complement, but they were few and far between. Absen was a firm believer that civilians, with less of the implicitly compromising nature of military command influence, did better as researchers than military personnel.

Absen spotted Egolu after a moment of searching. The short, dark woman of Turkish descent bustled up to him with a smile, holding out her hand. “Admiral, so good to see you here in our humble laboratory.”

“Merhaba and aynı şekilde, Doctor. I’m sorry we couldn’t install you and your team somewhere better.”

“Where is better than with Michelle Conquest, correct?”

“Of course, Doctor. How are we doing in replicating Desolator’s work?”

The scientist pursed her lips, a skeptical expression. “Not so well. First, even her own manufactories cannot reproduce her central processing modules at the quantum molecular level. There are some differences we are not able to overcome, but we don’t yet know why. We have, however, achieved a high level of pseudo-AI.”

“Does it pass the Turing Test?”

Egolu laughed. “Of course. But that’s a very subjective evaluation over a fixed span of time. The key question is one of self-reflective consciousness, not whether the machine mind can fool people for a limited period.”

“And how do you evaluate for consciousness?”

“The children.”

Absen stopped short. “Children?”

“Yes, children. A selection of assigned personnel were given the option of bringing their children aboard with the stipulation that they would be administered their daily schooling here in the lab so they can interact with the pseudo-AI under closely supervised conditions. You approved the memo yourself.”

Absen raised his eyes to one of the many cameras focused on him. “I did?”

“You did,” Michelle answered from her avatar. “I remember you skimmed the executive summaries and approved them all en masse that day.”

“Interesting how that happened.” Absen stared at the android for a moment, but apparently not with enough irritation to embarrass Michelle. “I hope all human rights are being respected? If I find out anyone has been conducting dangerous experiments on these kids, heads will roll.”

“No, sir. Nothing like that. Here, let me show you.” Egolu led Absen and his entourage up a stairwell and into a long room with tilted windows, allowing them to see downward into a small complex of classrooms. “You see? They’re happy and well adjusted.”

“So what’s the experimental part?”

“All they do is speak with the pseudo-AI at certain points in their curriculum. They are never informed it’s a machine. It’s given a simple name, such as Jimmy or Sally, and when they make inquiries about whom it really is, they are deflected. Some of the older or cleverer children, those whose questions become persistent, have been told that they are unofficial assistants to our research team and are evaluating the person they’re talking with.”

“And what have you found out?”

“That the average seven-year-old decides for herself that it’s a computer after a mean time of four hours of interaction.”

“How?”

“We don’t know, Admiral. Adults don’t seem to figure it out nearly as well. We’ve had humans play the AI role and the results are quite different. In fact, these young people have achieved more than ninety-nine percent accuracy once they are asked the direct question, ‘Is Sally a human or computer?’ Of course, they are only asked that question once we believe they’ve already made a determination for themselves, in order not to prompt them to wonder.”

Absen stared down at the score or so of children, divided into four different groups by age from what looked like about five years old to fifteen. They seemed content and cheerful, with smiling and engaged teachers. “All right. I want to have a conference with all of their parents this evening, just them and me. In fact, invite them all to dinner with me in the flag dining room. With their kids. Tell the Stewards to seat and serve them by family.”

“I assure you, Admiral…” Egolu began, but Absen cut her off.

“I’m sure you do, Doctor, but I like to see things for myself. Sometimes a less clinical perspective yields unexpected truths, hmm?”

Once Absen had shaken hands all around with the cybernetics researchers, he and Michelle departed.

As they walked, Michelle said, “You shook her up a bit, sir, by your questioning.”

“Observed behavior is changed behavior, Commander, and I don’t like the idea of things happening on my ship that I don’t know about. And don’t give me any bullshit about me being informed. If my consciousness had grasped the proposal when it slipped across my desk, I guarantee you I’d have been asking the same questions, only with less of the feeling I got hoodwinked by you and my staff. Did Captain Scoggins get a summary?”

“It was included in my routine reports.”

“Which was one of hundreds of items each day. So what I infer is that the two officers most responsible for what goes on aboard were functionally unaware, and I suspect that was because at some level you, Egolu or both had qualms about using children and wanted to hide it from me. That makes me wonder what else you might be hiding.”

Visibly distressed, Michelle’s avatar stuttered slightly. “N-nothing is being deliberately hidden from you, sir.”

Absen felt himself grow angry. “Shades of meaning, Commander; that doesn’t reassure me. I must have confidence in you both, in all of my staff, that if you have qualms about something, you will highlight that issue, not bury it and hope I won’t notice. You got me?”

“Loud and clear, sir.”

“Then let me make one more thing loud and clear. You’ve shaken my trust in you. You’re on probation. I don’t care how valuable you and your amazing capabilities are. Just like any other officer, I’ll have you relieved if I lose that confidence, and court-martialed if you give me reason to do so.”

Absen waited for some declaration from her raising the issue of how, to a large extent, Earth system’s entire defense might rest on the performance of Conquest’s AI. That would have put her very close to narcissism in his eyes and might have sealed her fate, but out of wisdom or caution she remained silent.

Of that, he was glad.

Chapter 3

Markis had insisted on remaining with the revivification team, greeting each man or woman as he or she was brought back to full life, repeating a shortened version of what he himself had only just heard: that they had arrived intact in 2163 and had a great deal of work ahead of them.

All seemed happy, satisfied to be alive; none more so than his wife Elise. “It seems like I only slept one night,” she said in amazement when he told her the tale.

“We’ve slumbered through more than fifty years of the occupation of Earth, but Absen came back and liberated us,” Markis replied. “Everything has changed, but we’ll still have our team.”

“But not our children,” she said with sudden tears.

“Vincent survived the wars. He’s on his way here,” Daniel told her gently. “He left Daniela Nightingale and their children – our grandchildren – back on Afrana. The important thing is, we’re alive. We’ll see them when we can.”

Elise snorted. “What, take a forty-year trip and leave everyone we know here?”

“No. EarthFleet is working to operationalize a faster-than-light drive. Soon, trips between stars will take only weeks.”

Elise gasped in amazement, and then closed her mouth and buried her face in his chest. “Oh, DJ. That’s amazing, but I can’t be happy yet. Not with the news that all but one of my babies are dead.”

“I know.” And we can have more if we want, he didn’t say aloud, though he thought it. That’s just one more way functional immortality is slowly changing humanity: we can take the long view and try to look past personal tragedy.

Spooky – Spectre, Daniel reminded himself – had left to catch up on the inevitable demands of his planetary rule long before all the coldsleep tubes had been emptied. He wasn’t surprised that the man had ended up in charge, though becoming a Blend…that was simply weird.

I suppose I’ll have to get used to it, he thought, though I doubt I’ll ever go that route. The Eden Plague is all I need. Any more and I risk losing my humanity.

***

The revived group, over three hundred strong and composed of the scientists and staff of the Carletonville research facility, was kept in place for almost a day to adjust. The time was taken up with largely unnecessary medical exams and highly necessary briefings on the current situation.

Most took the transition with good grace, though many, like Elise Markis, wondered aloud what they would do in this brave new world of Blends, Meme and alien allies, artificial intelligence and faster-than-light drive. “What use are we if our knowledge is fifty years out of date and the Sekoi are so far ahead of us in the biological sciences?” she said, asking on behalf of her team gathered there.

“Then you’ll learn from them and catch up,” Daniel replied with his usual straightforwardness. “You all have long lives ahead of you to do it.”

The next day, the people shuttled upward on the mining train. When Daniel emerged into the bright sunlight he felt the change like a physical blow, and he imagined everyone else did as well. Elise growled deep in her throat, a sound of distress, and he knew how she must be feeling.

Their beautiful campus, green with growing things and dotted with ponds and streams, had been wiped away by the supernal winds that had raged across the globe in the aftermath of the Destroyer impacts, combined with powerful seismic waves that had laid every structure low. Daniel couldn’t recognize any nearby landmarks at all. If not for certain mountain peaks in the distance, largely unchanged, he’d have been unsure if they were even in the same place.

“I’m…I don’t even have words,” Elise said. “Where’s…is that the hill behind our house?”

Daniel craned to look. “I’m not sure. There’s no way to tell.”

The two sat there stunned as the situation sunk in. Because of Spooky’s – Spectre’s – familiar presence, some part of Daniel hadn’t really faced up to the fact that everything they knew had disappeared, as if the hand of a giant child had smoothed the landscape like sand on a beach.

As they rode buses down a recently scraped dirt track, the faint roar of heavy construction machinery in the distance soon resolved itself into a construction site bursting with activity. Rows of temporary structures lined one hillside while the rest of the landscape continued to undergo a transformation that neither Daniel nor Elise could yet envision.

After they debouched and were led to Spartan but adequate housing, a functionary knocked on the door to the Markis’s trailer. “Lord Spectre has ordered that you report to him,” the stiff young man said when Daniel answered.

“Indeed,” Daniel said with amusement. “Mustn’t keep His Lordship waiting. Elise?”

“You go on. I need to make sure my people are taken care of.”

“Your lab rats are more important than meeting with the ruler of the entire planet?” Daniel said with false pomposity and a broad smile.

“Yes, they are. And the least Spooky could do is wait a while, but he hasn’t even given you time to shower.”

“Those Scourges could show up at any moment. Somehow I don’t think he’ll be offended by my lack of hygiene.”

Elise shook her head. “Well, I’m getting cleaned up. Go on, DJ. You know what he wants.”

“I do?”

The man at the door cleared his throat, and Daniel Markis turned to follow. “I suppose I do,” he muttered under his breath. Then he said to the functionary, “We need to make a detour.”

“The Regent Lord Spectre was clear that you should be brought to him directly.”

Markis stopped dead on the packed dirt and turned to face the man. “Regent?”

“That is his title.”

“Are you armed?” Markis asked.

“No, sir, I am not.”

“Then how are you going to make me do something I don’t want to?”

“If you do not obey Lord Spectre, the Skulls will enforce his will.”

“Skulls?” Daniel raised his eyebrows in question.

“Yes. They have weapons and do not fear to use them.”

“Some kind of Gestapo?”

“I don’t understand that word.”

“Political police.”

“That is accurate.”

“Why are they called Skulls?”

“They are named for a hero of Old Earth.”

Daniel chuckled. “Why doesn’t that surprise me? I knew him, you know.”

“You knew Lord Skull?”

This time Daniel laughed out loud. “Skull was many things, but never a lord. He was probably the most common man I’ve ever met.”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

“I mean, I think, that the world has changed very much indeed and we hardly have a common culture anymore. What’s your name?”

“My name?”

“Yes, son, your name.”

“Smith, sir. Layton Smith.”

“Well, Mister Smith, your Lord Spectre used to work for me back before the Meme conquered Earth, so pardon me if I don’t kowtow to his every whim.”

Smith’s mouth gaped for a moment. “But…”

Daniel clapped the man on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. You won’t be blamed. Now we need to find a particular someone in one of these trailers…”

***

“Spooky! You look different. Taller, I think,” Larry Nightingale said as he entered Spectre’s office with Markis.

“Larry. It’s good to see you.” Spectre stepped out from behind his desk to clasp hands with the enormous black man. “Your son Ellis followed in your footsteps aboard Conquest and was invaluable to us on our mission.”

“Glad to hear it. I’m looking forward to seeing him.”

Spectre shifted to shake Daniel Markis’ hand as well, and then waved the two to seats. “Forgive the minimalist surroundings. The world capital is at a place called Shepparton, Australia. It was the largest city on that continent to survive the Third Holocaust relatively intact. This,” he waved a hand, “will not be as grand, but I hope it will be adequate as a symbol.”

“A symbol of what?” Markis asked.

“Of the revival of Earth.”

“Why not just move everyone to Shepparton or some other place? I heard Vienna survived relatively intact.”

“If that’s what Elise and the research team want.” Spectre looked at Larry. “What are your feelings on the matter?”

“Hm. My gut instinct is to stay, but I don’t think it’s sunk in yet that everything around us is gone. No Johannesburg, no Pretoria…”

“It will be an outpost, now. A new settlement dedicated to biotech. You’ll be employed and funded by the planetary government. Eventually the support services will grow up around you, and with the new city will come civilian investment, business and so on.”

Daniel broke in. “But it won’t be a governmental center. What do you expect my role to be?”

“Let me first address the question of where,” Spectre replied. “I’d like you to accompany me to Shepparton. Suborbital flights can have you back here in two hours for visits, or Elise can come to Australia. Eventually you can return here to stay, if that’s what you decide.”

“Stay and do what, exactly?”

Spectre cleared his throat as if mildly embarrassed. “Take over as Emperor.”

“Emperor!” Markis shot to his feet. “Are you insane?”

“Hardly. I’d crown myself, but I don’t want to keep the job any longer than I must. That’s why I call myself Regent, holding the office in your stead. But our planet, represented right now by EarthFleet, is already an empire of sorts, and for most of the people of Earth, it replaced the Meme Empire. It needs an Emperor.”

“So you want to dump it on me.”

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

“Wait, wait…” Markis held up a hand. “Let’s back up. Why do you even want to ‘crown’ me anything at all? How is a return to a powerful monarchy going to help the human race? You should be organizing some kind of representative government, not a dictatorship!”

Spectre leaned back in his chair and put his booted feet up on his desk. “The people of Earth have lived for fifty years under the thumb of the Meme and their underlings. They’re accustomed to strict authority. The other two major factions, the rebel insurgency and EarthFleet, are also used to a strong hand. Face it, Daniel. Democracy is only a concept anymore. The best we can do is gradually give people more and more say in their affairs as Earth recovers and makes its own way. That’s why I want you: to oversee that transition.”

“When do you envision such a thing?”

“I expect to rule as Regent for a few more months. Then I will announce my abdication and you will take over. Until then, I want you as my right hand, my viceroy, a powerful symbol of the past brought to life. You will gradually assume more and more of the day-to-day affairs of leadership even as you do what you do best – smooth ruffled feathers, make deals that everyone can live with and get humanity and our allies behind us. Afterward, when it’s your throne, you can move toward a constitutional monarchy or call elections for a presidency, whatever you like.”

“Get humanity and our allies behind us for what?” Daniel asked.

“You had the briefings on the last half century, yes? You understand the threat of the Scourge?”

“I think I do. So we’ll be fortifying the Solar System and Gliese 370, and eventually spreading to other star systems.”

Spectre steepled his fingers and tapped his nose with them, glancing over at Larry.

The big man shifted in his seat and said, “Daniel, we can’t simply sit and defend. No fortifications in history ever held forever against repeated assaults. We can’t assume the Scourge will remain technologically stagnant. They’ll see that their expeditions are getting wiped out and they will send more forces. The briefings said that the Meme believe the Scourge conquered tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of systems. They have unlimited resources to throw at us.”

“And what do we humans have?” Spectre prompted.

“Adaptability. Technology from several different highly intelligent races, including true AI.”

“And,” Spectre said, “the warrior spirit of the Ryss, the steadfastness of the Sekoi, the long memories and dispassion of the Meme. All the Scourge has is mass and ferocity. Ours is the superior society – if we have time to expand and grow.”

“That’s exactly what strong defenses will buy us,” Markis said. “Time.”

Spectre nodded. “True as far as it goes. But the old adage that a good offense is the best defense applies. Therefore, once we have defenses in place, we will be going on the attack…and I intend to travel with the fleet.”

“Ah, now the truth comes out,” Markis said with evident disgust. “You want to have your fun while I’m stuck here on Earth again.”

“Like it or not, Daniel, this is what you’re good at. ‘That Others May Live,’ remember?”

“That’s dirty pool, Spooky. Call yourself what you like, but you haven’t changed.”

“Which is precisely why I need you. Do you really wish me in charge for longer than necessary? As human society re-enters its cultural adolescence, whom do you want guiding it? You or me?”

Markis realized how neatly Spectre had trapped him with his own logic. If he refused the offer, the little sneak – not so little anymore, he realized – would find someone else to do it, possibly someone without a long tradition of strict observance to the spirit as well as the letter of constitutional representative government.

The truth was, Spectre was right. Probably, no human being was more qualified than Markis, and his skills were fresh, not atrophied or warped by five decades of struggling under oppression. With a little time to learn the ropes, there was no reason he couldn’t do what Spectre had asked of him. People were people and interest groups only changed their goals, not their methods.

“All right. I agree in principle,” Markis said in a firm voice. “But I’ll want a lot of autonomy and some real power, even before I’m crowned. If you try to make me your lackey it won’t work.”

Spectre stood, holding out his hand to seal the bargain. “Deal. You will speak for me directly. I will make all to understand that your orders are my orders. Of course, I will expect consultation, but there is no man I trust more to be, in essence, my co-ruler.”

Markis clasped the hand of his old…friend? They’d not always been friendly, but some bonds went deeper than compatibility. Spooky had never been someone he felt a great urge to hang out with, save for a few times they shared drinks and reminisced about the old days, but he thought he knew the man as well as anyone could.

That was enough.

***

“How’d it go?” Elise said as Daniel entered their tiny trailer.

“About as expected. He wants me to rule the world.”

“Daniel!” She embraced him. “And of course, you agreed.”

“What could I do? As he told me, do we really want a man like him in charge of Earth forever? Besides, he doesn’t want to do it, and if there’s one thing I’ve found out as Chairman, if someone doesn’t like their job, they’ll suck at it.”

“And you like being Chairman.”

Daniel stepped out of his wife’s arms and rubbed his jaw. “I guess I do. Once you have the power to do major good in the world, it’s hard to give it up. I was resigned to losing the power when we went into the bunker, but now…”

“Now you’re looking forward to regaining it. I’m glad. You wouldn’t be happy puttering around here.”

“I could have been the lab’s administrator.”

“Then what would Shawna do?”

“Good point.”

“And you’ll have Millie to help you.” Daniel’s administrative assistant, Millicent Johnstone, had been among those in the coldsleep coffins.

“True.”

“How soon do you leave?”

Daniel stared at Elise. “You’re too damn smart for me, aren’t you?”

“Glad you noticed. But it’s not hard to figure out. You can’t work from a construction site, not while learning all you need to.”

“What about you?”

“They’re taking us on a world tour, starting with Vienna. We’ll be meeting with the leading biotech researchers. Okay, we’ll be taking classes from them… Daniel, we’re so far behind. The Blends and Sekoi biotechnicians can do amazing things! It’s breathtaking.” Elise’s eyes shone with the joy of discovery, and Daniel was glad she’d not been discouraged by how much there was to learn.

“Good. And to answer your question, I can leave when I want. Spooky – Spectre, I mean – will be heading to Australia tomorrow on a suborbital transport. He said he’d like me with him, but maybe it’s too soon.”

Elise came back into his arms. “I don’t see any reason to wait. We’ll be enormously busy for the next year or so, and as soon as the basics are finished here we’ll be setting up the new lab. How long have we been married, Daniel?”

“I lost track after our hundredth anniversary.”

“Then you should know by now that I’m okay with you doing your thing and me doing mine.”

“I love it when you go all twentieth-century on me.”

“I’m gonna go all something else on you tonight. After all, according to my calendar, I haven’t gotten laid in fifty years.”

Daniel smiled as he kissed her, and then turned to lock the door. “Why wait?”

“After we shower.”

“Hmm. Shower. That works, too.”

Chapter 4

Command briefings had expanded beyond Absen’s comfortable conference room that held no more than forty. Now he took them into the small auditorium, where at least five hundred could sit on the tiers of seats, and more could cram standing into the aisles. Given the tendency of any organization toward bureaucracy and advancement through visibility, he’d had to set a policy of first-come, first-seated.

Today’s discussion brief was more limited, but attendees had still managed to crowd the place with their presence, probably talking their key aides and flunkies past the Marines. Without stringent and explicit orders, it was hard to get even a Marine, especially one of the new ones recruited since Conquest’s return, to stand up to an officer bending the rules.

As they approached the auditorium from the guarded stage-side entrance, Michelle spoke as if reading his mind. “You know, sir, other than those you’ve mandated to attend, the rest are likely to be sycophants.”

Unwilling to be agreeable to Michelle right now, Absen replied, “Or those most motivated and interested in the situation. A certain amount of ambition is a good thing in any subordinate, don’t you think?”

“Of course, sir. But there are many brilliant personnel who prefer to avoid the scrutiny of command and their peers. They merely wish to do their jobs the best they can.”

“And I trust that you, my other officers and my Blends will work especially hard during your probationary period to identify anyone who is under-recognized or overly ambitious.” With that, Absen entered the room.

COB Timmons bellowed the room to attention with the leather lungs of a longstanding career noncom. Absen waved all present to their seats as he took the podium. Small contingents of Ryss and Sekoi preferred to stand in sections reserved for them.

Absen glanced at the glassed-in tank where Meme could attend if they wished, but today it was empty. A trium of liaisons now lived aboard Conquest in specially designed quarters nearby, though they usually observed the briefings via electronic means. Perhaps they sensed the resentment that still radiated from the three allied races they had oppressed for so long, or perhaps they simply preferred the comfort of their own warm, humid environment.

“Welcome again, allies and comrades-in-arms of EarthFleet. I’ve asked Commander Conquest to put together a review of the state of our defenses. Feel free to ask pertinent questions at any time. Michelle?”

When Absen took his seat, Michelle’s avatar, looking very much like a human being in her uniform, stepped onto the stage and gestured at the large forward holo-screen. A compromise between a 360-degree holotank and a flat panel, this arrangement allowed for three-dimensional displays to a large audience.

“Thank you, Admiral. On our first slide you can see the system’s emplacement of SLAMs.” The Stardrive Lightspeed Attack Missiles were, in essence, small unmanned ships that kamikaze’d themselves against large nonmaneuvering targets. Expensive, finicky and delicate, they were EarthFleet’s first line of defense against the Scourge motherships.

“First, we have twenty-four SLAMs positioned above the Sol’s north pole at fifteen million kilometers distance, the closest to the star they can remain with the shielding available. They are controlled by a rotation of modified frigates, whose sole duty is to watch and to fire them when the Scourge arrive.”

Michelle changed the view. “Next, we have begun installing something new: a constellation of SLAM IIs on fortified asteroids in solar orbit as part of the rebuilt Jericho Line, twenty-two million kilometers out. These have upgraded processors that will allow them to independently identify and semi-autonomously launch themselves at any target that meets the proper parameters.”

A commander in a rather indifferently pressed uniform stood up in the front row and pushed his overlong dark hair off his forehead. “Michelle, how can we be sure they won’t misidentify a target? I’m sure I speak for many here when I say I don’t trust the new pseudo-AIs. Their failure rate is simply too high.”

Michelle nodded equitably. “Commander Johnstone is correct to ask this question. In fact, Admiral Absen has been talking to the cybernetics team about them quite recently.”

Absen raised an eyebrow as Michelle’s avatar turned to look at him with a bland smile before going on. “Pseudo-AI is a step on the road to reproducing full AIs like myself. My father Desolator and his kin have the expertise to do it, but we don’t, yet. That was a purposeful decision on his part, and I’ve come to agree with it. New, full AIs will only be birthed when the cybernetics team has proceeded through the natural process of development.”

“That doesn’t really answer the question I asked,” Johnstone said.

“I’m getting to that. The answer is, all levels of control will remain in organic hands. A SLAM II must first receive the sixteen-minute FTL emergence warning created by the wormhole wave front disturbance. The organic command agency must then positively confirm that phenomenon’s existence. When the SLAM II identifies and nominates targets, the command agency must also confirm each target’s suitability for engagement.”

“But the system can be set on full auto.”

Michelle grasped the edges of the podium. “If the organic agency chooses, it can give the SLAM II full autonomy. Likewise, if all command personnel are dead, the SLAM II will engage on its own.”

“If it believed all command personnel were dead, you mean. How hard is it to convince a machine of that? You do know that one SLAM could be devastating if fired at the wrong target. Say, Earth?”

“That simply can’t happen.”

“If I can imagine a scenario and postulate a way to bypass the safeguards,” Johnstone said, “others can too. In fact –”

“Rick,” Absen interrupted. “Thanks for your concern on this issue, but this isn’t the proper forum for it. Put together a point paper and send it to me. We’ll see if protocols need to be tightened up. Maybe you can form a red team to attempt to hack the system.”

“Already did that, sir, or I wouldn’t be raising the issue.”

“You hacked a SLAM II?”

“Not an operational one, sir. Just a brain on the production line. But no one caught me.”

Absen looked over at Michelle’s android. Apparently she’d given it more sophisticated biofeedback display than he’d thought, for it blushed to the roots with apparent embarrassment. “It seems to be the day for my officers coloring outside the lines,” he said with deceptive mildness.

“Sorry, sir. I raised the issue through channels, but the problem never got the attention I thought it deserved.”

“Please try harder next time, Commander. And Michelle, track down where Johnstone’s reports got stuck and let me know, all right?”

“Yes, sir,” she replied.

“Thank you, sir,” Johnstone said and sat down.

Michelle made a throat-clearing noise. “At the moment we have six SLAM IIs emplaced and more coming online at a rate of about one a week. They are intended to complement and back up the SLAM Mark Ones, and eventually replace them. They are more accurate, more reliable and easier to maintain.”

“What about double targeting?” came a voice from the audience.

“That’s an inevitable risk of the lightspeed delay in information. With sophisticated algorithms, the development team hopes to split the difference between over-engagement and non-engagement, the goal being of course to destroy each target with one and only one weapon.”

“Remember, people,” Absen spoke up, “the SLAMs are the first line of defense. It would be great if we could wipe out all the motherships with one salvo, but that’s not likely. Some always miss, and even if the Scourge didn’t get a message drone off, the fact that their first expedition to our system vanished tells them we’re dangerous. We have to assume they’ll come back heavily reinforced, perhaps with new kinds of ships or weapons. SLAMs are silver bullets, but silver is expensive and we only have so much of it. Go on, Michelle.”

“Thank you, sir. The Jericho Line is our static defense, orbiting twenty-one million kilometers out. It is meant to attrit the enemy and is composed of unmanned systems supervised by a small number of manned frigates to provide maintenance and control. Those will withdraw as soon as they detect the FTL wave front.

“The Line is composed of millions of fusion mines, Meme hypers and cheap laser modules. Very soon, the Meme will contribute a new type of craft, an autonomous gunboat of animal intelligence bred for patrol. It will be small enough to dodge long range Scourge fire, tough enough to take a pounding and will be equipped with a powerful suite of fusors. As living things, the Scourge ships will naturally be attracted to these gunboats and will try to kill them, but not before losing many times their worth in the process.”

“Anti-tank dogs,” Marine Brigadier Joseph “Bull” ben Tauros said from near the front row.

“Yes, the comparison is apt,” replied Michelle. “In World War Two, both the Russians and the Germans deployed dogs equipped with contact mines. They were trained to run forward and blow up enemy tanks, killing themselves, of course.”

“Seems wasteful,” Bull said doubtfully.

“This is a way for the Meme to contribute most effectively. We must adapt their biotechnology to do the most damage to the enemy when the time comes.”

Bull subsided, waving for Michelle to go on.

Absen stood up instead to speak. “Everything in the Jericho Line except the frigates is expendable and cheap, with emphasis on the latter. Our PVNs can churn out millions of mines and thousands of laser modules far more quickly and efficiently than we can build naval vessels with crews. I know we all want more ships, but those are an expensive luxury that must be reserved for tasks requiring them. The enemy wins by attrition, and as he is the attacker, we have to play his game. He has no supply lines and no rear area to hit. Other than wiping out motherships on arrival, our one strategy is to annihilate his forces as they come at us, and we have to do that in space.”

“Can’t we just do what we did last time if we have to, sir? Let them land and eat themselves into cocoons, and then kill them while they’re helpless?” asked a lieutenant standing against the wall.

“If we want to give up all that makes Earth habitable,” Absen said. “During the last attack, which by the way constituted less than ten percent of their original forces, Scourgelings consumed almost thirty percent of the planet’s land-based biomass. We had to do some major geo-engineering just to stabilize the resulting weather changes. If we want crops to eat and dense forest ecosystems to give us oxygen, we can’t take a loss like that again. That’s assuming the next wave isn’t smarter and resists the cocooning instinct.”

“Thank you, sir. Moving on,” Michelle raised her voice, “we have new, anti-Scourge optimized Meme Monitors. The original five surviving Destroyers have divided, and the resulting ten ships have spent the last eight months gorging themselves on comets and asteroids. Each now has enhanced fusor weaponry as well as layers of heavy armor genetically engineered to be poisonous to Scourge, and they’ve dispensed with the relatively ineffective hypers. If Scourgelings manage to land on the Monitors and burrow, they will eventually die from the toxins incorporated into the armor layers. We’re looking into adapting this technology for our own ships, but unfortunately the same compounds that kill Scourge tend to kill us too, so it’s tricky. For now, our Marines and battle drones will have to carry the load.”

“Surprise, surprise,” Command Sergeant Major Jill Repeth muttered from her seat next to her husband Commander Johnstone. He slapped her hand lightly with a smile, and then rapidly withdrew it when she extended one ferrocrystal claw from her upturned middle fingertip.

Conquest’s flag captain, Melissa Scoggins, rose to her feet in the front row. “I’ve heard discussions about incorporating Meme ships into EarthFleet task forces. Is this likely?”

Michelle turned to Absen, who answered, “Not now. They’ve developed a system for covering each other with fusor fire that is exponentially more effective with multiple ships of the same type. They allow mass landings on their skins and burn them off as they deploy.”

“And when the Scourge figure out that standing off out of range and hammering them with plasma torps is the best countertactic?”

“Then the Meme will retreat at high speed and we’ll engage. In other words, we’re maintaining squadron and task force integrity, working as combat units with an alternating combined arms approach, not as individual ships and certainly not as mixed forces. No, Captain, coordination among the races is too difficult right now to work. We’ll do what we do best, and they’ll do what they do best.”

Scoggins continued, “What about the TacDrive? Have the Meme been able to operationalize it?”

“Not yet. It doesn’t lend itself to their organic technology. But they will eventually, and that’s a good thing.” Absen said this firmly, though he wasn’t so convinced in his own heart. He’d had to pay the Meme in the coin of information for help in the defense of Earth, but doing so had been risky. The longer they took before they could actually mount a lightspeed drive on a capital ship, the less likely they would be tempted to betray their new allies or run off.

If he eventually determined that working TacDrives on the Meme ships was critical to the human-Ryss-Sekoi alliance, he would order EarthFleet scientists and engineers to aid them…assuming they permitted such assistance anyway. The blobbos’ thought processes were often quite alien and unpredictable, even to his lover and Blend Rae Denham.

“For now,” Absen went on, “all our TacDrive production is going toward SLAMs in hopes of trading one or two such systems for each full Scourge mothership. In a couple of months we should have enough of them to begin diverting drive components to the new ships of the Constitution class.”

“Thank you sir,” said Michelle. “That segues nicely into an update on our capital ship production. Constitution ships will be superficially similar to Conquest – the same dimensions and thickness of armor, the same drive systems and crew requirements – but weapons systems will be optimized against the Scourge. Instead of Behemoth railguns and Ryss-designed particle beams, they will each have a single petawatt-class laser as a main gun. Its design is based on the Weapons, for which we have extensive information. It will be tunable by frequency, with a variable focus allowing it to strike large, distant targets with a narrow beam and multiple small, close-in targets with a wide beam.

“The new ships will also have expanded point defense control centers, twice as many small lasers as Conquest, and will be fitted from the keels up as true aerospace carriers, although we don’t have the pilots, fighters and drones for them yet.”

“What, we’re going to fight millions of these Scourges with fighters? The pilots won’t stand a chance,” came the voice of a large man named Kragov in the front row, a brigadier of Earth’s Home Guard forces. Absen had allowed the liaison to attend his meetings as a courtesy, but had cause to regret it from time to time, as the dirtsider tended to spout off without thinking.

A man in a flight suit popped to his feet. “General, I’m Colonel Vango – that is, Vincent – Markis commanding First Aerospace Wing. The fighters deployed from the ships will be unmanned drones, remotely VR-linked to their pilots. They will be used in close to minimize network lag and will default to automated anti-Scourge mode if they lose positive link.”

“Then they can’t operate very far away from their carriers? That seems pointless.”

“For distant operations, we have manned control corvettes with VR-linked pilots aboard. This will allow a great deal of flexibility while minimizing casualties. The manned ships will be optimized for speed and eventually will be equipped with basic TacDrives in case they need to bug out fast.”

The Home Guard general subsided with a pinched look on his face, apparently unhappy that he hadn’t managed to highlight some EarthFleet stupidity.

“Thanks, Colonel Markis.” Michelle continued her rundown, changing the display as she went to illustrate her words. “Constitutions will also each carry a full Marine brigade for repelling boarders or for expeditionary missions. Smaller ship classes will have similar, though scaled down, weapons suites, minus the Aerospace and Marine assault capability.”

A slim Asian woman, somewhat unusually dressed in naval whites instead of the more common working khakis, stood, billed cap tucked tightly under her arm. “Captain Sherrie Huen. I’m concerned that these new ships lack flexibility. They have few nuclear missiles and no railguns, with little to differentiate them from each other except size. Time-tested naval doctrine tells us that a task force composed of specialized and complementary ships is most effective. Optimizing all our vessels against the Scourges we’ve seen may leave them vulnerable if they face something new. The Scourge second wave may operate differently, or have new ship types and weapons.”

Absen answered for his aide. “We don’t have the luxury of task forces equipped for any eventuality. Production is at full capacity and resources are still extremely tight. This is a rock-paper-scissors situation and all our evidence indicates they only have one play, so we have to counter that play – massive swarms of small ships performing direct assaults. When we’ve weathered the storm of this next attack on the Solar System, when we have the FTL drive in place and are preparing to take the offensive, we’ll incorporate more flexibility.”

“Semper Gumby,” Vango piped up with the Aerospace Forces’ unofficial motto Always Flexible, causing a chuckle to ripple through those assembled there.

Captain Huen sat stiffly, as if chastised, and Absen made mental note to talk to her privately later. She was the daughter of Admiral Huen, the man who had valiantly defended the Solar System against the Meme all the way to the end, and her name represented an important symbol despite being just one naval captain among many. She’d commanded the beam cruiser Shanghai at the Gliese 370 assault and, remarkably, had been one of a handful to survive the ship being blown out from under her. She currently skippered an aging defense frigate, one of the few warships available until the new ones launched.

Michelle went on with the briefing. “We will have – we do have – two mobile task forces in place at all times. One will be composed of Conquest and all other TacDrive-equipped vessels. The other includes all those without the Drive. For now, these are designated Alpha and Bravo. Alpha will remain in a Sol-polar position well above our SLAM Mark Ones in order to observe the results of the initial engagements. Once the shape of the battle begins to clarify, Admiral Absen will commit Task Force Alpha to attack the targets he deems most critical.”

The holoscreen behind Michelle changed view from one looking at Sol from the top down to one showing the Earth-Moon system. “Task Force Bravo will remain in orbit at home as part of Earth’s close-in defenses. Without TacDrive, it makes more sense to use them to cover the fixed installations on Luna.”

“What about the Meme?” General Kragov said loudly. “Where are their cowardly asses in all this?”

Absen suppressed the urge to slap the man down hard in public. Kragov was popular in the Home Guard, a hardline anti-Memer with connections to the Skulls, though not one himself. Spectre had sent the man up to Conquest as liaison, saying, “If he wants to be your enemy, keep him under the eye of your tame AI where he can do little harm. Or, perhaps he will moderate his views as he is forced to interact with the aliens aboard.”

Instead of embarrassing Kragov, the admiral said mildly, “The Meme will provide an extremely valuable third mobile task force, designated Charlie, which is already moving to take station in solar orbit between Mercury and Venus. Their auxiliary ships are boosting a continuous stream of comets and asteroids toward them, and with these raw materials they will keep gestating gunboats for the Jericho Line. When the time comes, they will do their part to intercept the Scourges on their way to Earth.”

“How do we know they’ll fight alongside us?” Kragov said. “Last time, they were doing it to obtain our technological data. Now that they have it, what’s to keep them here?”

“Mutual survival interest, General, along with a healthy dose of ambition on SystemLord’s part. Ambassador Denham assures me that the Meme command trium, and particularly the individual in charge, understands the importance of making a stand here before the Scourge menace overruns the stellar area. Our alliance – Ryss, Sekoi, Human and yes, Meme – needs time to develop the FTL drive and also needs information on what a second enemy wave looks like. SystemLord retains a uniquely high status within his culture by staying here and working with us.” Absen nodded to Michelle to continue.

“Thank you, Admiral. Now to Earth’s defenses. Unfortunately, resources aren’t available to build large orbital fortresses such as the ones present in the first Scourge assault. Or perhaps it would be better to say, of the hulls we build, we prefer to make them into mobile warships. Instead, we are going cheap by using asteroid platforms and masses of laser modules. The PVNs on Jupiter and Luna are churning out thousands of them each day, and they are being emplaced by grabships on the rocks in orbit. Only a few of the larger ones will be manned, with control centers buried deep inside. Over one hundred are already in place, and we will keep adding to them as we can.”

At a signal from Michelle, Vango Markis walked up to take the podium. “First Aerospace Wing is also part of Earth’s defenses now. Given that we’ll have almost a day’s warning before the Scourge reach Earth, we’ve decided to base them on the ground rather than in space. This is much cheaper and it’s much easier to maintain the birds there. We currently have over three thousand StormRavens, an uprated version of the old StormCrows, with more being manufactured all the time.”

“I would have expected you to use unmanned drones to eliminate pilot casualties, Colonel,” General Kragov said.

“If we did that, transmission lag would limit us to near-Earth orbit. Luna is more than one light-second away. A round-trip two-second lag in control would render drones useless. We might as well send them in under computer control. Either that, or we’d have to use drone control ships anyway. We determined old-fashioned manned fighters were the best we could do, given the constraints we have.”

Kragov grunted and subsided.

Absen smiled to himself. The Home Guard general was actually doing EarthFleet an unexpected service. The Naval, Aerospace and Marine arms might bicker among themselves, but they would close ranks against a grumbling dirtsider as a common rival.

Markis answered a few more questions about the details of the Aerospace defenses, and then sat down, nodding at Kragov as he did so. The general stood up and straightened his camouflage uniform before taking the podium and clearing his throat.

“Ground defenses have been much upgraded since the first Scourge invasion. Spectre’s crash industrial rebuilding program has allowed us to mass-produce the new Troll heavy tank.” A holopicture of a squat armored vehicle with one large turret and a dozen smaller ones appeared behind him.

“This new weapon system will be employed using classical armored doctrine to annihilate any Scourge forces EarthFleet fails to intercept. It is equipped with one 150mm pulse gun that should take out anything heavy, and twelve automated antipersonnel turrets with 10mm guns for the enemy infantry. It has a crew of two: a commander-gunner and a driver. Supported by infantry in armored carriers, our Trolls will make short work of the enemy, assuming we have time to produce the full one hundred heavy brigades we want. Right now, we have only seven.”

Kragov cleared his throat again, apparently a nervous habit. “The infantry situation is better. We have fifty-six trained divisions of 10,000 troops each, and more being organized all the time. Each soldier is Eden Plague and combat nano-injected for enhanced strength and healing, and carries a man-portable version of the 10mm pulse gun. Unfortunately, all the cybernetic upgrades are going to Fleet Marines, but we’ll make up the difference with training, discipline and guts. We’re very short of support forces – artillery and airmobile especially, along with supply and transport – so I expect we’ll have to depend on Colonel Markis’ Ravens to keep the skies clear above us.”

Absen said, “When will your TO&E be filled?”

Kragov turned to the admiral with a grimace. “Our current table of organization and equipment calls for full strength in approximately twenty-two months.”

“What about the militia forces?”

“Everyone sixteen and older, male or female, is being issued an old-style assault rifle and a basic load of ammo, and will receive four hours of training on their one day off each week for the foreseeable future. Every building will become a fortress, every street a killing zone for the Scourge.” Kragov pounded on the podium with a fist and his Slavic accent thickened noticeably. “This time there will be no falling back, no retreat, no waiting. We will engage them fully and immediately. We will make the entire planet our Stalingrad.”

Absen nodded in satisfaction. The Home Guard general might not be the most tactful of men, but it seemed he had the necessary fighting spirit in spades. When the time came, he would be sent back to take charge of whatever ground forces Spectre chose to give him, there to meet his fate.

Chapter 5

Daniel Markis walked alongside Spectre as he entered the Shepparton palace, which used to belong to Gilgamesh the Blend, he’d been told. Continually expanded, still it burst with people moving purposefully hither and thither. Most wore uniforms of some sort, or dark suits of conservative cut, men and women alike. Their faces seemed humorless, joyless.

To Markis’ eye it looked like a cross between a medieval European court and some dystopian bureaucracy, the kind that placed everyone into their chosen role in life. A dash of Asian sensibility seemed to be thrown in, with a few in silk robes or loose outfits resembling something a Buddhist monk would wear.

Markis himself had been dressed in a simple black suit with a high collar, twin to Spectre’s own but lacking the yellow piping, which he understood to be indicative of Blended status. “Blends…” he’d said to Spectre with a tinge of disgust. “The new lords of the Earth. Somehow it seems the Meme won anyway.”

“Now, Daniel,” Spectre replied, “that’s like saying the designers of the Eden Plague won, or the developers of the Tiny Fortress nanobots won.”

“I don’t see the analogy,” Markis said as they strolled deeper into the palace complex, attended by a phalanx of alert Skulls who shooed everyone out of their way.

“When a Meme blends with an underling, to one of the Pure Race it becomes that underling: contaminated and lesser. It is no longer Meme. To put it in mid-twentieth-century terms, it’s as if a respected and powerful man gave up all responsibility, wealth and influence to join a hippie commune, smoke dope and screw everything in sight. More fun, far less power.”

“The difference is, these dropouts have special privileges in the commune,” Markis retorted.

“You think so?”

“They rule and enforce your will, don’t they?”

“I think I’ve given you the wrong impression, DJ. With the exception of myself, my Blends are required to wear the yellow all the time so the Skulls can keep a close eye on them. Any found not so marked, even in private, can be executed on sight. The only privileges they have are to follow my orders or die. In fact, of the original sixty-four Blends, only forty-nine remain, and of their children, less than half. I had to purge the rest of them.”

“Purge? You mean kill.”

“I mean execute as enemies of Earth. Those embodied the worst of the traits of corrupt power – the traits you pointed out.”

The two men and their attendants swept around a broad corner into a courtyard where only a pair of gardeners tended the greenery, which was covered by netting on poles. Markis could see and hear birds among the bearing fruit trees – peaches, pears, plums and others. January was, of course, midsummer in the southern hemisphere.

“I hear you had to purge a lot of non-Blends too.”

Spectre reached out to set a hand on Markis’ shoulder. “I’ve done what I had to do. With only a few exceptions, I’ve never been cruel, or reveled in it.”

Markis eyes narrowed. “A few exceptions? I’ve found those often prove the rule.”

“Yes. You want to know which cruelties I enjoyed?”

Markis nodded slowly.

“You remember Huff, the man who kidnapped your children and Larry’s?”

“Of course.” Markis said with indrawn breath.

“What punishment is sufficient for such a heinous act?”

“He didn’t kill them.”

“Only because I prevented it. He would have, without compunction.”

“Isn’t that what Psychos do?”

Spectre sighed. “That’s merely a catchall term for those that fall too far outside the norm. There is no one profile for such an Outlier. There’s an enormous difference between amoral – lacking in moral compunction, which is how I see myself – and immoral, those who do evil for its own sake or for the pleasure of doing it. Huff was of the latter type, though if you remember he was never infected with the Eden Plague. His twisted soul was all his own. The nanites he received merely convinced him of his own power. He chose to do evil of his own free will, and I punished him for it.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“What if he had killed them, Daniel? What if I returned mangled corpses to you instead of live children? Does it matter what he managed to do, or was his intention and demonstrated willingness to do evil enough to convict him in your mind?”

Markis licked his lips and turned away, thinking. “He needed to be stopped.”

“And punished, whether you admit it or not. I did so. I inflicted continuous and exquisite torture upon his body until his mind broke. And what’s more, I enjoyed this vengeance on your behalf.”

“Dammit, Spooky, why are you telling me this?”

“Because you need to know what kind of man I really am. You’ve fooled yourself for too long, thinking that I am somehow greater than you. But I’m not. I am a monster: a monster you need, to create the better world you’ve always talked about.”

Spectre waved Markis to a seat at a table that servants had rapidly set up, bringing food and drink to set upon it before withdrawing. Pouring two glasses of wine, the Regent of Earth placed one before Daniel and sipped from the other.

Markis ignored the drink and said, “We don’t need monsters in government to scare the populace into doing their utmost. The invasion did that. As I understand it, every schoolchild and every worker is thoroughly briefed on the enemy. They know if they don’t work as hard as they can, everyone here will be eaten. Isn’t that enough?”

Spectre raised an eyebrow. “Did you know that protests and sabotage are increasing? That agitations for more worker rights, more consumer goods, more time off is spreading?”

“All the more reason to begin loosening your fist. People work better when fear isn’t their only motivator.”

Spectre set his glass upon the linen tablecloth and rotated it idly by its stem. “Did you know that no revolt, no real revolution was ever driven primarily by oppression?”

“What do you mean? Everyone knows that when you trample on people, they push back.”

“That’s folklore, yes. ‘Common knowledge.’ Ask a professor of history or sociology, though, and he will tell you that the great revolutions and civil wars of history were precipitated by threats to rising expectations. The French, the Russian, the American revolutions; Mao’s red revolution. The English and American Civil Wars. The most dangerous time for any society is when the increasing prosperity of the lower and middle classes, the uptick in their standards of living, perceived or real, is endangered, not when they are downtrodden.”

“What about Spartacus and the slave rebellion?”

“Even that. The slaves of Rome were generally well treated. These weren’t like the slaves of the American South. Roman slaves could own property, had a certain level of civil rights enshrined in law, and had a respected place in society. The slave of a patrician lived better – and freer – than many free men.”

“You haven’t addressed Spartacus.”

Spectre drank from his glass. “Spartacus was an enslaved military man sold as a gladiator, who rebelled because of his own individual desire for freedom. His leadership inspired other enslaved gladiators to join him, and then others with nothing to lose – quarry slaves, for example. Fear of his rebellion caused Rome to clamp down on the rights of its numerous urban slaves, threatening their prosperity and driving thousands of them to join the revolt. You see?”

Markis picked up his glass and took a convulsive drink of the wine. “So what’s your point? I thought you were going to put me to work here, maybe improving conditions of this society you’ve built. Now it seems you want me to become an oppressor like you.”

Spectre shook his head slowly. “No, Daniel. I’d never want you to become like me, though I will say any oppression I have perpetrated was all for the cause of the defense of Earth and for the re-education of the humanity I inherited. Actually, I want you to do exactly what you’re doing: opposing me in private, though for now, only in private. Later, we will orchestrate your opposition to me in the public sphere.”

Markis strangled a cough. “You want opposition? Aren’t you ruthlessly suppressing it right now?”

“I want considered opposition from a man who’s governed nations, not knee-jerk protests from those who wouldn’t know what to do with freedom if they had it.”

“How do you know what they’ll do with it if they never have any?”

Spectre pointed his finger. “That’s exactly what I mean. You say things I need to hear, things full of truth and idealism I lack. You are the light to my dark. I’m not such a fool as to think the world can prosper in my shadow. The night is necessary. Without suffering through it, how can they appreciate the dawn? But prosperity comes only in daylight.”

“I don’t buy that. Not the way you’re implementing it. Putting people through a certain amount of hardship builds character, but your Skulls are killing people. The dead don’t learn anything.”

“No, but they provide a powerful example to others.”

“An example that builds resentment,” Markis said.

“In that, you are correct. That is why my time is limited to only long enough to set you up for success.”

Markis rubbed his temples. “This is all too Machiavellian for me.”

“Funny you should use that term. Do you realize where it comes from?”

“Some old Italian politician, I believe.”

“The Florentine Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince in the early sixteenth century. It details how to rule in the real world, and explains why many fail. One of his stratagems for maintaining power through changing times is illustrated in Frank Herbert’s classic Dune. Have you read it?”

“A long time ago. I really don’t remember it very well. Lots of politics.”

Spectre stood up to pace around the table, plucking a pork rib from a plate and eating as he walked. “I’ll simplify the story as much as I can.”

“That would be nice.”

“The world of Arrakis, named Dune by most, produced the most precious substance in the known universe, called Spice, a drug which extended life, among other things. When the widely hated Baron Vladimir Harkonnen was ceded control of Arrakis by the Emperor, he knew he would have difficulty inspiring the populace and maintaining Spice production, so he brought in his nephew Rabban, nicknamed ‘The Beast.’ This man oppressed the people worse than anyone before or since, committing terrible atrocities in his quest for more and more Spice. Soon, the planet had been brought to the brink of revolt.”

“Proving what I said about oppression bringing rebellion.”

“Actually it proves my contention. It was not the atrocities that invited opposition, though they fueled its fear. The Beast Rabban threatened their prosperity, their livelihoods, their hope for the future.”

“Tomato, tomahto.”

Spectre laughed and pointed a finger at the sky. “But the Baron had a plan. His goal was to put his favored nephew and heir, Feyd-Rautha, in charge for the long term. So, just as his spies reported that the various opposing factions were about to unite and rebel, he swept in, apologized to the people of Dune, executed Rabban and installed Feyd. Feyd was as cruel and corrupt as any Harkonnen, but by comparison to Rabban he was a saint. The local powers-that-be welcomed him with relief and open arms, and counted themselves lucky to be delivered from the Beast.”

“And did it work?”

“Actually, the Emperor had a Machiavellian plan of his own. All along he had intended to make Baron Harkonnen his Beast, with his daughter, Princess Irulan, cast in the role of the Machiavellian Prince to rescue the poor suffering people of Dune. A maneuver within a maneuver.”

Markis realized he was getting hungry, and reached for food to begin building himself a sandwich out of lean roast beef. “So I’m to be the Irulan to your Beast?”

“I knew you’d understand.”

Markis spoke around a mouthful of red meat. “It would have been much simpler to explain that plainly. Then I could make a straightforward decision.”

“Oh, where’s the fun in that, Daniel? Besides, I suspect you’ll remember this little talk for a long, long time. Or at least, its conclusion.” Spectre clapped his hands and a servant came running. After a word in his ear, the messenger hurried off and the two men sat and ate in silence for a few minutes.

As Spectre and Markis moved on to dessert, a group of hard-eyed Skulls led a coffle of six men and three women, hands and feet chained and wearing magenta jumpsuits, to stand them against one blank stone wall of the courtyard. Some of the prisoners seemed defiant, others defeated. All wore tight leather gags buckled over their mouths.

The Skulls attached their hands to steel rings set above their heads, and then backed up. Seven formed a line in front of the captives. They began checking their weapons. As they did, a cameraman and an earnest young female reporter with a microphone stood off to the side, taking video.

Markis put aside his bowl of ice cream. “Is this what I think it is? A firing squad?”

“Exactly,” Spectre said, his eyes flat and hard.

“What did these people do?”

“They committed various high crimes. Rape. Murder. Sabotage. The man in the middle glaring daggers at me organized an assassination cell and came close to killing one of our Blends.”

“But why?”

Spectre turned his black eyes on Markis. “Workers here on Earth have a hard life. Long hours, bland food, few consumer goods, minimal entertainment.”

“While we sit here eating well.”

“The people expect their overlords to have privileges. This table isn’t extravagant. It’s little more than a good backyard barbecue in the old days.”

“Everything’s relative.”

Spectre shrugged. “We’re at war, after all. But even were they given Paradise, some snakes would be unhappy. It’s in the nature of people to find something about which to be dissatisfied. They crave power or desire to perform an act of significance, even if it’s evil, in order to prove their lives have meaning. And, an established power structure is always a lightning rod for opposition.”

“But you don’t need to execute them. Capital punishment has never proven to be an effective deterrent. Not to people committed to a cause.”

“This isn’t about deterrence, Daniel. Not really. We simply don’t have the resources to put people like this in prison, and incarceration for thirty or forty years, which in former times turned hardened criminals into the decrepit elderly, is also pointless with our long lifespans. No, this does two things. It reminds the larger populace, the great unwashed who are like sheep, that helping evildoers carries the ultimate penalty…and it eliminates them as individual problems.”

“Doesn’t it create martyrs?”

“My media is very effective at portraying them as degenerate criminals, not people to be admired. Unlike some fools throughout history with their ‘war on drugs’ or ‘war on terrorism,’ I never declared a ‘war on rebellion,’ or a war on anything except the Scourge. Declaring war dignifies the opposition, and that creates martyrs. No, I piss on those that oppose me, and then I kill them.”

Markis shook his head. “I can’t agree with this, Spooky. I can’t be part of this.”

“I know. That’s why I want you to replace me. So you can do away with such harsh measures and restore society to a semblance of normalcy.”

“Why can’t you do it yourself? Change your policies?”

Spectre rubbed his knuckles as if they hurt. “Pain is often necessary, but few are grateful to the one that inflicts it, especially after the threat is gone.”

“To him I will give authority over the nations; and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of the potter are broken to pieces,” Markis quoted, his eyes far away and avoiding those chained to the wall.

Spectre raised an eyebrow. “Revelation 2:26-27.”

“You have a good memory.”

“I have a perfect memory. It’s a curse and a blessing of the Blending. But as I said, I am no messiah.”

“That passage doesn’t refer to the messiah,” Markis said, still staring at the prisoners with hooded eyes. “It is the Lord God speaking, and it refers to ‘one faithful man’ he will appoint as his Earthly ruler during the Millenium. And it goes on to say, and I will give him the morning star. That alludes to the position of primacy among all created beings, the one held by the angel Lucifer before his rebellion.”

“Exactly! That’s you, Daniel,” Spectre said, leaning forward with great intensity. “You are the rightful holder of the morning star, not me.”

The leader of the detail of Skulls held up a hand and gave the command, “Ready!”

Markis gripped his glass until his hand shook. “This isn’t right, Spooky. You wouldn’t have done this in the old days. Did Blending change you so much?”

“No, Daniel. I haven’t changed. You simply never knew what I had to do in Australia back then because I didn’t do it publicly. I made people like this disappear. They were interrogated, given bullets in the head, and then dumped into unmarked graves. Now my purposes have changed. I want this publicized. Thus, the reporter and camera.”

“First criminal. Aim!” the officer called, and the firing squad brought their assault rifles to their shoulders.

“Your purpose? I thought you claimed your purpose was to protect Earth.”

“It is, in the long run. But I refer to my immediate purpose, which is to remove threats…and to be hated.”

Markis shifted his gaze back and forth from Spectre to the prisoners. “Stop this, Tran! What you’re doing is insane. It can’t end well.”

“Not for me, no. Not here and now. But for you…”

“Fire!” A volley of shots rang out and the first man in line sagged, his chest turned to hamburger. The other prisoners writhed and tugged at their chains, but to no avail. “Criminal number two: Aim!”

“Stop it, Nguyen! I’ll take over for you, only stop this killing.”

Spectre shook his head. “I can’t do that.”

“Then I’ll refuse to do what you want.”

“You can’t have it both ways, Daniel. If you want the authority to change the system, you have to accept the power and responsibility that comes with it.”

“Fire!” Prisoner number two sagged and died.

Markis’ face became a mask of anger as he stood to seize Spectre by the front of his uniform. Skulls raced to point weapons, but the Blend held up a hand to halt them. “You see? You know how to apply violence too, Daniel, and deep down you know I’m right about this. The more they come to hate me, the more they’ll love you when you rescue them from the Beast.”

“Criminal number three! Aim!”

Markis let his fists unclench, releasing Spectre’s jacket from his grip. “Nothing I can say will sway you, will it?”

“Not in this instance. All of these people are scum. They’ve been mind-probed by juries of Blends to confirm their guilt. We don’t execute the innocent by mistake as was done in the past. They deserve to die. But don’t worry,” Spectre leaned forward to hiss, “there are always more criminals. You won’t run out. Back then, as Chairman of the Council of Earth, you had the luxury of sending the worst of them to me and I did your dirty work for you. This time, you’ll have to make your own policies and live with the consequences. Can you do that?”

Markis turned his face back to the inexorable death marching along the line of prisoners.

“Fire!” The crash of bullets echoed through the courtyard.

“Yes. I can do that.” Markis took a deep breath. “It seems I have to.”

Chapter 6

Three months later.

“How has ending capital punishment worked out so far?” Spectre asked Emperor Daniel Markis the First as they shared a dinner table.

“Not so well, as you know,” Markis replied with a grimace. “The Antarctica prison facility is no picnic, but even so there’s been a spike in the number of incidents as the troublemakers are emboldened. Still, policy changes take time. I’m certain that eventually this will let some of the steam escape from the system. Once people see that violence doesn’t get them what they want, they’ll turn against the terrorists.”

“No doubt you are right. The media is being very friendly to you right now, and the common people are behind you.”

Markis snorted. “Of course they’re friendly. They’re all run by the state. One item on my long list of initiatives will be to allow private media outlets again, as well as to eliminate the sedition laws.”

“All fine ideas.” Spectre toyed with his fork, idly dangling a piece of fettuccini on it.

“But you don’t agree.”

“If I didn’t agree, I’d still be Emperor. But you don’t have the staff you once did.”

Markis sat back with a sigh. “I miss Cassie. She was in San Francisco when the Destroyers hit, with no access to a deep shelter. The coastal cities…”

“A shame. She was a woman to respect.”

“At least Millie is with me.”

Spectre grimaced. “I’d trade a thousand good administrative assistants for one devious mind like Cassandra Johnstone.”

“Nobody to compare among those you found here? Not even Blends?”

“Blends too often take cheap shortcuts, using their extended abilities instead of their minds. I was a dangerous man long before I began my road to this current state. I try never to forget that this,” he tapped his head, “this is the most effective five pounds of flesh in existence.”

“You’re doing superbly, running covert ops again.”

“Covert ops and intelligence are often related, but are not the same thing. I have ample personnel that can conduct operations. My grandniece Naomi, for example. I do have one candidate, though you might have trouble convincing him to work for you. Then again, you might not.”

Markis speared Spectre with his gaze. “You’re still intent on leaving?”

“Yes. I’m bored, and when I get bored, I become cruel and depraved. You really don’t want me when I’m plumbing those depths.”

“Where will you go?”

“I’m not certain yet. I’ll be sure to let you know when I decide.” Spectre took a sip of wine.

“Who’s this candidate for spymaster you have in mind?”

“The leader of the Skulls. Raven. Or Charles Denham, if you prefer.”

“Raven! He’s one of the people I need to rein in, not give more power.”

Spectre raised his eyebrows. “Would he have more power as your spymaster or as lord of the Skulls?”

Markis ran his hand along his jaw, lifting his chin in acknowledgement. “I take your point. It would be one step toward bringing him back into the fold by making him an insider.”

“And separating him from his personal army, which also needs to be curbed. But you need to replace the Skulls with something else. You need an organization that’s yours, not a former bandit gang grafted onto the new Empire of Earth, and you need to do it soon. Before I leave, I believe.”

“Because when you’re gone, people might believe me weak. At that point I might not be able to do away with the Skulls. I’ll be dependent on them.”

“Yes.”

“But who would that be?”

Spectre smiled. “Whom do you already have available? There’s no need to reinvent the wheel.”

“Everyone around me is a legacy of either your rule, the insurgency, or Meme rule.”

“Who’ve been steadfast throughout everything? Who’ve remained professional despite all the changes?”

Markis’ eyes turned upward. “EarthFleet. You want me to replace Skulls with Marines?”

“Not Marines…at least, not as an organization, though I have one particular Marine in mind. No, the part of the fleet that most closely resembles the Skulls in function, if not in temperament, is…”

“The Stewards! Of course! Do you think Absen will go for it?”

“He’ll do what you say. Marines can fill in for flag officer protection until more Stewards are trained and built. You know, I’ve acted as one from time to time…”

“I remember, Spooky. Spectre. Whatever. So you’ll take charge of transitioning the Skulls out and the Stewards in?”

“Of course. Call it one final challenge.”

***

“Not interested, Spooky,” Sergeant Major Jill Repeth said when she was summoned to the imperial palace to meet with Spectre. “Call yourself what you like; you’re the same old snake in the garden.”

“Snakes have their places. They rid the grounds of vermin, allowing flowers and fruit to grow.”

“I’m not going to out-talk you and your fancy metaphors, so I’ll just say no again and be on my way.”

“You haven’t even heard my proposal.”

“Whatever it is, the answer is still no.”

“Perhaps someone else can persuade you.” Spectre opened an ornate door and gestured Jill to go through. With a sour glance, she did.

“Good to see you again, Jill,” Daniel Markis said as he rose from behind the grand desk he’d inherited.

Jill twirled her wheel cap on her fingers and glanced around at the overblown baroque decorations on walls and ceiling. The interior resembled nothing so much as an eighteenth-century French palace. “I’m too old and crusty to be impressed with crap like this, sir, and with all due respect, whatever job you want me for, I’m better off where I am.”

Markis waved a hand in embarrassment. “I’ll have the decor redone to simpler tastes when we can spare the money and labor. In the meantime, please hear me out.”

“For old times’ sake, sir, I’ll do that. But I’m not working for him.” Jill pointed at Spectre.

“He won’t get anywhere near you, Jill, I guarantee. This isn’t a covert ops position. In fact, I’m drowning in hardened killers that enjoy plying their trades a bit too enthusiastically for my taste. I need you as a guard dog, not a trained wolf.”

“Enough with the metaphors, for Pete’s sake. Can anyone in this palace speak plainly?”

Markis smiled wickedly. “Sure. I’ll say it another way. I have to throw out the Brownshirts without creating an SS or a Gestapo.”

Jill felt like she would explode, and almost did before the Chairman – the Emperor, she reminded herself – spoke.

“Sorry, I’ve been hanging out with the Spookster too much.”

In spite of herself, Jill laughed. “All right, sir. I’ll listen.”

“Shoo,” Markis said to Spectre. “And take them with you.” He jerked his head at the armed Skulls standing in discrete corners.

“Yes, my lord,” Spectre said with a show of sincerity Jill could hardly credit, and the men withdrew.

“I’m sure my office is bugged,” Markis sighed. “I only hope it’s by the right people. But that’s why I need you.”

“Looks like you have more than enough security.”

“Security doesn’t always make one safe.” Markis waved her to follow him out a set of glass double doors onto a terrace that overlooked elaborate gardens. He reached into his pocket, taking out what looked like a phone, pushed a couple of keys and then slipped it back into his jacket.

“Bug squasher?”

“Yup. Larry made it for me on the sly.”

“You don’t trust your own people?”

“The Skulls are Spectre’s, and once he’s gone, they owe their loyalty to Charles Denham, the man they call Raven. He’s just as dark as Spectre, but not as reasonable. I have to wonder how much power I’d really have if I had to rely on him too much.”

Jill licked her lips. “You want me to run a PSD for you?”

“Not only a personal security detachment. I’ve already spoken to Absen, and he’s approved an expansion of the Fleet Stewards. The common people know about them, recognize them and those blinding white uniforms. Hell, the masses watch adventure shows about them on the vids. There’s no one with a better reputation – unlike the Skulls, who started as heroes but lately have begun slipping into villainy.”

“Why me? You’ve got a whole planet to draw from. You can find someone better.”

“But none more trustworthy to me personally. This isn’t the good old days, where the Eden Plague bolstered the consciences of civilized people who were used to the power structures of representative republics. We’re back to the times of the Medici and the Borgia, of the intrigues of courts and kings, when personal loyalties trumped everything. Or we will be, if we let it get out of hand.” Markis turned to Jill, laying a hand on her elbow. “I need an iron fist in a velvet glove. I need you. Just for a while.”

Jill swallowed and turned away, putting her cap down on the stone railing and gazing out over the sweet-smelling flower bushes of the gardens. “I can’t really refuse, can I?”

“You can. I’m asking, not ordering. But the Stewards are going to replace the Skulls no matter what you do. If you won’t take charge of the transition, I’ll need you to give me a list of people with ironclad integrity…and they won’t be allowed a choice.”

The two stood in silence for a few moments, until Jill said, “All right. I’ll give you three months, no more, and I’ll bring in some of the best people I know.”

***

“Tobias said you wanted to talk to us, Sergeant Major?” Steward Michael “Shades” Schaeffer said to Jill Repeth after she let him and Steward John Clayton into her office in Conquest’s Marine country.

“Call me Jill, please. You’re not Marines. And yes, I wanted to talk to you. Drink?”

“Sure,” said Shades, removing the ubiquitous dark glasses that earned him his nickname. “Whatever you’re having.”

“Not for me, thanks,” Clayton replied.

“I remember. You’re a Mormon, right?”

Clayton nodded.

“Glad I’m not,” Shades said with a grin.

“You’re not anything at all, so we people of faith got you outnumbered two to one, Shades,” Jill replied with a mischievous air.

Shades held up his hands. “Okay, you win. Just don’t make me wear the magic underwear.”

“Touché.” Jill gave Shades a plastic highball glass with three fingers of Martian whiskey, and handed Clayton a bottle of genuine apple juice. “To tough jobs and the people that gotta do them.”

“I’m not sure I like the sound of that,” said Shades as he clinked and sipped.

“You’re gonna like what I have to say even less, but I’m hoping you’ll back me up on this.” She reached behind her to pluck a sheet of hardcopy off her desk, giving it to Clayton.

Once he skimmed it, he handed it to Shades and said, “An official edict from Markis appointing you to organize, train and equip an expansion of the EarthFleet Steward contingent.”

“Have some respect for your Emperor, John,” Shades said, his eyelid twitching as he read the document.

“The whole Empire thing is a bit silly, if you ask me,” Clayton replied.

Jill said, “It’s not silly for the people that lived under the Meme Empire. After the Scourge attack, they needed something familiar to cling to. Spooky – I mean Spectre – set things up this way and now we’re stuck with them, at least until we put the Scourges back on their heels. I’ve spoken with Markis, and he’s already making policy changes to ease the current government back toward democracy.”

“So why does he need more Stewards? I hear he’s wildly popular with the citizenry after Spectre stepped down. That guy is scary.”

“It’s not the common folk that are the problem. It’s all the officials and bureaucrats that will lose out as things change, plus the crazies that will attack any government no matter what it looks like. And then there’s the Skulls…”

Clayton growled. “Might as well call them what they are: thugs. They need to go.”

“I agree,” Jill said. “That’s why we need something different to secure the Emperor, the palace, and the high-priority government facilities. Stewards. An institution that won’t have the stink of the purges on it, that won’t run prisons, conduct trials or publicly execute people. Those functions need to be separate from guarding and policing, and won’t be our problem.”

“And you want us to, what? Join you in this?” Shades seemed skeptical.

“Yes. I need a cadre of people I can rely on, starting with you two. I wish Absen had given up Tobias or he’d be here too, but that got shot down. I need Stewards I know and trust, which means I need you guys.”

“But you’re a Marine.”

“Not for the next three months, I’m not. I’m detached as a Steward again.” Jill opened the closet in her stateroom to reveal two sets of service whites. “I think I can still fit into them.”

“I’m in,” Clayton said. “Even if I didn’t owe you my life, going all the way back to the McConleys’ farm, I like this idea. And, it’ll be nice to have a dirtside assignment for a while.” He looked over at Shades.

“I don’t know, Jill. Training newbies? Not really my thing.”

“They won’t be that new. We’ll have a couple of dozen line Stewards assigned to us and we’ll be screening applicants from all sorts of similar fields. Probably the majority will be Marines, because they already have cyberware, but there will be others – law enforcement, Ground Forces people, Fleet crew…and there are more we will need to recruit, such as Blends and technical specialists.”

“Blends? You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope,” Jill said. “There are thousands of them on Earth now, most children of the original Blends. Call them quarter-Meme, I guess. But the point is, they were born and raised here on Earth. They have Meme memories from their parents, but like any children of immigrants, they identify with the place of their birth. And, now that the Meme are our allies, there’s no reason to think they have divided loyalties. What they do have is a unique set of biological abilities that we’ll need to do our jobs. In fact…I hear that if you want to become a Blend, pretty soon you’ll be able to volunteer for it.”

“Really? What, are more Meme looking for bodies?”

“No, these will be made from blank Meme mitoses, with no minds inside. It will be like getting a biological upgrade package.”

Shades laughed uneasily. “Are you doing it?”

“Nope, but that’s a personal choice. If you’re interested, now’s your opportunity.”

Shades pursed his lips while the other two stared at him. Eventually, he said, “Okay. I’ll do the three months at least. And I’ll think about the Blend thing.”

“Excellent. Pack your bags and say your goodbyes, then. We leave tomorrow for Shepparton.”

***

Accompanied by Clayton and Shades, Chief Steward Repeth entered the barracks complex she’d been assigned. It resided within the walls of the Shepparton Palace. Black-clad Skulls scurried here and there carrying boxes and equipment.

“Looks like they’re leaving in a hurry,” Clayton said. The departing inhabitants glared at the white-clad Stewards. “And they know we’re replacing them. I don’t think they’re happy.”

“Not surprising. They’re being demoted, moved away from the center of power.”

“At least they’re leaving peacefully,” said Shades. “You sure it’s a good idea for us to be here? We might provoke them,” he said as one of the Skulls deliberately threw a shoulder into him as he passed.

Jill shrugged, staring after the retreating offender. “Spectre gave the orders. They’re being reorganized as a special ops unit under the authority of the Ground Forces. They’ll still get to go after the enemies of the people, but they won’t be nearly as much danger to the government itself.”

“Markis is setting up checks and balances.”

“Yes.” Jill led them through offices and hallways to a large gymnasium, mostly empty and deserted. “There’s a parade ground through that door. Once the rest of the Stewards join us, we’ll use these two large spaces, indoors and out, for our initial testing, which will be almost entirely psychological. We can implant any physical capabilities we want into people; it’s hearts and minds that we can’t manufacture. We’ll set up stations with interviews, questionnaires, leadership exercises, reaction tests – anything we can think of. The ones that pass, we’ll run through a further program to see if they’re Steward material.”

“Okay.” Clayton hefted his bags. “Where do we bunk?”

“Here, I’ll show you.” Jill led the two men down narrower corridors and into a barracks area. “We’ll take staterooms, as will the other Stewards. The trainees will sleep in the open bays, boot camp style.” She checked doors until she found the former commander’s quarters, still containing furniture, though it had been thoroughly emptied. Setting her bags on the floor, she gestured. “You guys get the rooms to the left and right.”

Shutting the door, she began to unpack. A moment later, her highly sensitive hearing detected the distinctive whine and crackle of EMP cannon, and two thuds.

Immediately preparing for the worst case, Jill triggered her internal comlink and searched for a receiving ping even as she shoved furniture in front of the door. Finding no handshake, she set the comm to broadcast in the clear and said, “Mayday, mayday, Chief Steward Repeth under attack in the former Skulls complex, possibly by the same. I’m in the commander’s stateroom and will try to hold out as long as possible.”

Setting the transmission to repeat, she made a brief search of the room, looking for any egress. The walls were made of steel-reinforced cinder block, and she had no weapon heavier than her venerable PW5 in its holster. The ventilation ducting was too small to fit through, though given time she might be able to widen an opening using bedframe struts.

She doubted her opponents were going to give her that time.

EMP cannon meant someone was gunning for cyborgs; a blast of electrical overload would shut down and possibly fry her cybernetics, depending on the charge’s power. It also meant they were probably trying to capture the Stewards, since she’d heard no follow-up gunfire.

Jill wasn’t at all sure that was a good sign.

The piled furniture began to rock and move slightly as something slammed rhythmically against the door. She braced herself against it, and then swore as blue lightnings played along its metal frame. Bleed-over briefly fuzzed her senses, but the energy wasn’t powerful enough to knock her out. They must have been hoping she was holding the door shut with her bare hands, rather than bracing the barrier of mostly wooden items.

Shotgun blasts came next, blowing out pieces of the door around its hinges and lock. Soon, the barrier would be shattered and she’d have to fight. Without armor and heavy weapons, against opponents prepared for her, she felt the odds were slim. Hopefully, the cavalry would arrive in time.

Unfortunately, nobody showed up before the door lay in scattered pieces. Through the pile of furniture Jill could see black-clad Skulls, all heavily armed.

Spooky’s words, spoken long ago during training, came to her mind. “As a covert operative, you may end up on a mission you can’t complete or in a fight you can’t win. Resist the urge to go out in a blaze of glory unless absolutely necessary. Surviving and living to fight another day is your duty. No matter how ugly the future seems, no matter what the torture, your goal must be to remain alive for one more day. You never know. That one more day might bring rescue.”

As much as she hated to do it, Jill moved into the head and stashed her PW5 in its air vent, throwing it as far back into the duct as she could. That completed, she shut down all of her cybernetics, hoping that by doing so she would preserve them. Maybe the Skulls would make a mistake – today, tomorrow, next week – and she could surprise them.

Stepping out of the bathroom, she kept her hands raised as the Skulls poured into the room. That didn’t stop the one with the EMP cannon from aiming it at her and pulling the trigger, turning her world to black.

When Jill awoke, she found herself in a cell. Trying to activate her internal comlink, she found it inoperative, whether from the EMP or some more intentional interference, she didn’t know. She didn’t try to bring up any of her other cybernetics, not wishing to tip off any watchers.

Sitting up on the simple bunk, she faced the unconcealed spy-eye in an upper corner. “I’m awake now,” she said, leaning casually back against the wall. “Whatever you’re planning, let’s get on with it.”

Scant minutes later, the tramp of feet sounded outside the door. When it opened, she saw the corridor filled with Skulls. “Put these on,” one of them said, throwing a set of heavy ferrocrystal wrist cuffs, unbreakable even with her enhancements.

Hope for an easy time sank, but the fact that they were letting her cuff herself gave her the opportunity to tense her muscles and lock the restraints into a setting that gave her a tiny bit of wiggle and flex room.

Another Skull waved a scanner in her direction. After checking its reading, the woman said, “She’s dead.” Presumably, she meant Jill’s cybernetics showed as nonfunctional.

A dozen hands gripped Jill roughly, the Skulls surrounding her and hustling her down passageways. By the bleak industrial construction she thought they must no longer be within the palace. Soon, she was marched into a room with nothing but lights, a table and two chairs, interrogation style. She glanced up at the small, heavily barred window set high in the wall, which allowed the blue Australian sky to show through.

The Skulls locked her cuffs to a ring in the middle of the bolted-down steel table, forcing her to sit, arms outstretched in front of her.

Steel, she thought. Table, chairs and lock, all of high-grade stainless. A potential mistake.

The door opened and, for a moment, utter shock seized her by the throat. “Skull?” she said, staring at the tall, bald man who stood before her, his deep-set eyes gazing back confidently.

“One of them,” the man replied. “Their leader, actually, and their living role model.”

Jill realized then who she was looking at, someone she’d only heard about, never met. “You’re the one they call Raven. A Blend. Ezekiel’s brother, Charles Denham.”

“Skull Denham was my father, Raphaela my mother, and you’re right: that weakling Ezekiel is my brother. Shall I recite your genealogy too?”

“What the hell do you want, Charles? Whatever you’re doing here, it’s highly illegal. More to the point, it’s stupid. We can’t have a bitter rivalry between the security services with the Scourges on their way.”

“Who says they’re on their way? Our new allies the Meme? We can’t trust them, nor any of the Pure Blends left. But even if they are, we fought them off once. We’ll do so again. The real enemy is internal – people like you and Markis that are going to undermine everything we built here.”

“I don’t see you built anything, Charles. You started as rebels, but now you’re the new SS, rooting out dissent with immoral methods, which breeds more dissent. And you’re just pissed off because you’re being moved away from the center of power.”

Charles smiled humorlessly. “Spectre built a functioning government over the last two years. He’s moved heaven and Earth to get the economy working again, producing, and now he’s turning it all over to that do-gooder relic Markis, who’s going to send it to hell in a handbasket.”

“You can’t stop Markis from making changes. Spectre will hunt you down personally if you try to depose the new Emperor.”

Charles laughed hollowly. “Who said anything about deposing him? I just want you and your cronies on my side. Between my Skulls and your Stewards, we’ll keep removing the enemies of the state, no matter what Markis wants. It’s not like he has to know about it, after all.”

Jill’s laughter echoed Charles’, though hers rang more genuine. Rattling her chains, she said, “And this is how you think you’re gonna convince me?”

“No. This is.” The tall man stepped forward to take a seat, staring intently into Jill’s face.

“What?” she asked after a moment. “You’re trying to hypnotize me?”

Abruptly, Charles seized her trapped hands in his. “Just relax and don’t try to fight, Miss Repeth. You can’t win. I’m Skull Denham now.”

“That’s Mrs. Repeth, you freak,” Jill said evenly, ignoring his touch, staring daggers into his eyes. “Raven, I served with Skull Denham. I knew Skull Denham. I’d say Skull Denham was a friend of mine. And you know what, Charles? You’re no Skull Denham.”

They remained that way for a long minute, Jill’s faint smile widening and Charles’ expression growing more frustrated. “What the hell?” he asked, half to her, half to himself.

“Why, we’re holding hands, Chuck. It’s sweet, but as I just told you, I’m a happily married woman, so I’ll have to say no to your little mind-rape attempt.”

Charles only gripped her hands harder with a growl. “You’ve got some kind of biochemical block, right?”

Jill said nothing, only continuing to smile.

Closing his eyes, Charles bore down with an air of tight concentration.

Now, Jill told herself. This is my chance.

Rebooting her cybernetics, she found most of her systems intact, shielded from the EMP by their dormant state. Twisting her hands with effortless strength, she extended the two-centimeter claws in her fingertips and sliced both of Charles’ hands off at the wrists.

His scream of shock and pain drowned out the sound of those blades of sharpened ferrocrystal cutting through the mere steel of the table’s ring. Now free except for the unbreakable cuffs, Jill leaped across the room toward Charles. Before the Blend could shut down his pain and stop his wrists from bleeding, she slammed the heavy bracelets into his head, knocking him unconscious.

Then, she made a deliberate and uncharacteristic decision.

He’s not going to be rehabilitated, and with the ability to reshape his body and with his network of Skulls, he’ll turn into a rebel insurgent again. I looked into his eyes and there was no flexibility there. If I let him live, he might be the difference between beating the Scourge and our extinction.

Hesitating no longer, Jill wrapped her cuffed wrists across Charles’s neck and, with a convulsive heave, tore his head from his shoulders. With no idea the extent of Blend healing powers, she had to believe that detaching the brain from the spinal cord would effectively terminate the being itself. Without fire to reduce the body to ashes, this was the best she could do.

Stuffing the head into her tunic, she leaped for the high window just as the door burst open and Skulls began pouring in. Seizing the bars, she used all the power of her cyberware to rip them from their frame. Believing her enhancements neutralized, they’d brought her to a standard interrogation room, not one built to hold a cyborg.

Flinging the tangled steel at the first Skull, she vaulted through the window, forcing herself through as her uniform caught on the rough edges. Charles’ decapitated head slowed her further, and she felt the hot spikes of bullets tear into her legs and buttocks.

Falling to the ground outside, Jill found herself still within sight of the palace, though outside its walls in an industrial section of the city. Forcing herself to her feet, she felt her flesh scream as she made unnatural demands on it. Polymeric muscle fibers did what human meat couldn’t, allowing her to run down the busy street faster than most of the slow-moving trucks.

Dialing painkillers and stims, Jill tried her internal comlink again, but apparently the sensitive electronics had been fried. Spitting epithets, she leaped onto the running board of a heavy truck – they’d call it a lorry here in Australia, wouldn’t they, she thought irrelevantly – and reached though its open window to grab the arm of the burly driver, her hands still cuffed together.

“Give me your phone,” Jill said, squeezing his biceps until she began to cause pain.

“No worries, Sheila,” the driver said, eyes widening as he pressed the device into her hands. “It’s bog standard.”

“Thanks,” she said, letting go and leaping to the ground, continuing to run down random streets as she dialed the only number she knew here in Shepparton.

“Hello, Jill,” Spectre’s voice came tinny over through the speaker. “Have you –”

“Shut up and listen, Spooky. I’m on…on Drummond, near where it hits Telford, and I just escaped from your oh-so-loyal Skulls. I’m sure they’re looking for me, so I need help fast.”

“I’ll be there within minutes. Don’t hang up. I’ll track the phone.”

Jill slipped the phone into a pocket and considered ditching the blood-soaked head of the Blend, and then nightmares of the thing regenerating itself into a full creature wafted through her mind. No, she couldn’t get rid of it unless she could be sure it was destroyed.

Abruptly, sirens wailed all over the city, calling all response forces to full alert. Workers and vehicles altered their directions, some pulling over, some speeding up. The streets became more orderly all around her.

Jill slowed, and then climbed up a parked heavy equipment hauler with a tank atop it, one of the new Trolls. Using it as a vantage point, she crouched and peered over its heavy main turret, looking back the way she came.

Down the street poured two dozen Skulls, sprinting after Jill in a mob with nanocommando speed. They may not have implanted cybernetics, but their boosted quickness and their weaponry made them damned dangerous, especially wounded as she was. She could feel that her legs remained weak by comparison with the rest of her, and she was beginning to get hungry as the Eden Plague and the nanites within her demanded replenishment.

Behind the infantry, but rapidly catching up, drove several marked Skull utility vehicles with machineguns mounted on them. At the intersection she’d crossed, each vehicle took one of the three directions while those on foot spread out and scouted her way.

The whirr of a VTOL sounded above, and Jill looked up to see the four-rotor vehicle descending directly toward her. At the last moment, it veered to land in the wide industrial street. The passenger door opened and Spectre stepped out, this time dressed in blazing yellow.

Skulls surrounded the air vehicle and formed a perimeter facing outward, clearly recognizing the imperial insignia and the man who disembarked. Spectre made a chopping motion to the pilot, who shut down the engines and rotors. In a moment, all became quiet, except for the background of sirens and horns in the distance.

Jill watched Spectre speak to the Skulls’ officer for a moment, but her cybernetic hearing was down and she couldn’t make out the conversation. The other man became animated, clearly unhappy. After thirty seconds more arguing, he made a gesture of negation, and then began yelling to his men.

Reaching casually but quickly into his jacket, Spectre removed a pistol and shot the officer in the head, dropping him boneless to the tarmac. The other Skulls turned to look, aghast, and then slowly went back to their guard positions.

“Come on down, Jill,” Spectre said loudly, still holding his weapon.

“When I’m sure I won’t get shot,” Jill called back, noticing one of the Skulls had turned in her direction and lifted his rifle. She maintained a position of cover, the tank turret blocking the man’s line of sight.

“Lower your weapon or share your squad leader’s fate,” Spectre said to the Skull, who complied.

Jill slid down the painted metal of the tank, staggering when she hit the ground. “I think I’m going to need a surgeon to dig some shrapnel out of me,” she said as she walked gingerly up to Spectre.

Just then, a truck full of more Skulls rounded the corner and slammed to a halt in front of the VTOL, disgorging its load of infantry while a man atop it turned his machinegun in its mount to aim at the two.

“Stay close behind me, Jill,” Spectre hissed. “They can’t shoot me.”

“You sure?”

“Unless they’ve managed to overcome their bio-psych conditioning…”

Jill moved up as near as she could to her savior.

“Who’s in charge of this mob?” Spectre said loudly. “Come now, identify yourself.”

“I am,” a hard-faced woman with colonel’s insignia said, stepping forward.

“Report properly,” Spectre said, a dangerous edge in his voice.

“Colonel Bondrade, my lord, Croc Troop. That woman killed Raven.” She pointed past him.

“Under what circumstances, Colonel?”

“She was being interviewed.”

“In heavy shackles? Do you know who this is?”

Colonel Bonrade shook her head.

“This is Chief Steward Jill Repeth, an old comrade of mine from before the Plague Wars, in the palace on official business and under my protection.”

“My lord, did you hear what I said? She murdered Raven! She must be tried and shot.”

Jill laughed and muttered in his ear, “Look at what you’ve created, Spooky. Apparently being tried and being shot are inseparable.”

Spectre’s voice rose to a bellow. “I SAY WHAT MUST BE DONE HERE, NOT YOU, COLONEL.” He aimed his sidearm. “Or, as I told these others, you may follow this squad leader into Hell, right here, right now.”

Snarling and fingering the trigger of her submachine gun, the woman replied, “You’re no longer in charge, Spectre. Now you’re just another Yellow trying to throw his weight around.”

“And yet, it is I who am following the fully human Emperor Markis’ orders, protecting his new Chief Steward, and you who are resisting them. Colonel, do you even know who you’re fighting or what side you’re on?”

Anger turned to rage, and the Skull colonel raised her weapon – or tried to. As she lifted it, her arms twitched and she couldn’t hold it steady. She managed to fire one quick burst, the bullets ricocheting from the tarmac to stutter along the concrete wall of a nearby building before Spectre put a single round into her chest. The projectile punched through her body armor and out the back without difficulty, and the woman fell backward with a thud.

Three of her accompanying Croc Troopers tried to fire on Spectre as well. The Blend took his time as they struggled with muscles grown suddenly rebellious, lining up each and dropping them like targets. The rest of those who had accompanied the colonel, including the Skull on the machinegun, lowered their weapons and raised their hands.

“Listen, you Skulls,” Spectre said in voice full of venom. “Raven turned traitor to the Empire of Earth by trying to interfere with Emperor Markis’ edicts, thinking that our new leader is soft and weak because he knows the meaning of mercy. Now Raven is dead, and Colonel Bondrade with him. They dishonored you and they dishonored me. So take the word back to the rest: the Skulls will follow their orders to the letter, and I will be watching constantly from the shadows to make certain they do. No one is immune from another purge, this time of those who wear the black. Now go. Report to your assigned barracks and await instructions from your new chain of command, the Ground Forces.”

Jill watched as the Skulls rode away in the truck, the two units mingling and moving as if stunned by the turn of events. Spectre twirled his finger in the direction of the VTOL pilot and the rotors spun up as he opened the door for Jill.

Inside the luxuriously appointed craft, Spectre slid his pistol back into his jacket. “Did you really kill Charles?” he asked.

Jill awkwardly lifted the severed head from inside her jacket, dropping it in Spectre’s lap. “The bastard tried to mess with my head, so I took his. I guess nobody ever told him Stewards are inoculated against Blend bio-psych tricks.”

Spectre chuckled. “I must admit, that’s a well-kept secret, as I didn’t know either. How did you…ah, it must have been Raphaela or one of her brood.”

“Yep. Absen had her immunize all the Stewards.”

“And you insisted you didn’t do wet work.”

“I did what I believed necessary at the time,” Jill said stiffly.

“My point exactly.” Spectre clapped Jill on the shoulder.

Jill turned to look out the window at the city below. “They EMPed Shades, Clayton and me, but I shut my systems off in time to preserve them. I woke up in a cell block. Can you get these things off me?” She turned back and held up the heavy cuffs. “Then I need to find my men.”

“When we get to the palace I’m sure we can locate a locksmith. We’ll find your men, Jill, if they’re still alive. I’ve sent in the regular ground forces to clean out the Croc compound you escaped from. In fact, I can do better than that.” Spectre picked up a comm handset and punched in a string of numbers. “General? This is Spectre. Raven has turned traitor and been executed. You are now in charge of the Skulls, in my name. If you want to keep your job and your life, you will ensure two men in Skull custody, Stewards Schaeffer and Clayton, are returned intact to the palace immediately.”

Hanging up, Spectre took Raven’s head in his hands. “Alas, poor Yorick…”

“That thing can’t come back to life or anything, can it? I mean, dead is dead, even for Blends, right?”

“Yes, though a Blend might survive even a decapitation if the head and body were reunited within minutes. You’ve prevented that, so…Charles Denham is no more.”

“Raphaela won’t be happy.”

“She’ll understand. She’s not naïve.”

The VTOL landed in a palace courtyard, one that Jill hadn’t seen before. Armed and uniformed Ground Forces regulars guarded every meter of wall, every doorway.

“I apologize for not making sure the Skulls were gone and the area secure before you arrived,” Spectre said.

“I wish I could believe that,” Jill replied. “I have to wonder whether you just ‘happened’ to let two dangerous dogs wander into the same backyard. Maybe you wanted to see who’d come out on top.”

“An interesting theory, but not quite correct. If anything, I wanted to see Charles’ reaction to your presence, but I never believed he would try what he did.” Spectre held up his hands. “Even I miscalculate from time to time.”

“Good to know you realize you’re still mortal, Spooky.”

Spectre smiled. “I know you’re trying to needle me, but from you, I welcome that old nickname. It’s nostalgic. You see? I’m human after all.”

Jill snorted. “See you later. And make sure these soldiers know what a Steward’s uniform looks like and what it means. I’d hate for any other heads to roll.”

***

In his quarters, Spectre placed Charles’ bald head on a table and rested his fingertips on the skin of its cranium. Sending a flood of seeker particles, he soon extracted much of the dead man’s Meme molecular memory from where it resided alongside its human counterpart.

Without cellular life to preserve it, the bioelectrical data any human would possess had already disintegrated long past recovery, but the complex Meme molecules acted like pieces of a hard drive, able to survive long after death.

You were more right than you knew, Jill, Spectre thought to himself. I was hoping Charles would overreach himself and make a mistake egregious enough to bring discredit, but I never expected him to underestimate you to the point of losing his life. Still, it may work out for the best. His loss as a highly effective insurgent leader must be balanced against his unpredictability. Overall…I can live with it.

Eventually, Spectre retrieved all he could, an interesting cache of secrets that would serve him and Naomi Alkina quite well in the coming months. The Skulls would have to be brought completely to heel, and one part of that was to eliminate – or seize – all their hidden bases, safe houses, and other resources.

Opening a valve and flipping an igniter switch, Spectre waited until his small but effective incinerator, usually used to destroy hardcopy or data drives, reached its optimum temperature. “Goodbye, Charles,” he said aloud, rolling the head down the short chute and into the blazing flame. “Rest in pieces.”

Chapter 7

Father-Mother and Monarch of the Brood Therion stared with three eyes at the message plate he held in one manipulator cluster. “Another failure. This younger generation of Archons has grown soft and weak. If not for the imperatives of the Brood, I would say, ‘Let the infestations breed for a time.’ In a few dozen or a few hundred years, when they grow complacent, we would fall on them again and feast. In the meantime, I would set our children against each other to test who is the fittest, weeding out this current crop of fools.”

Therion’s Council of Senior Archons flashed their respectful assent, as they should. Rarely did any raise a disagreement, much less oppose him. Ever since he had taken power, the Brood had marched across this arm of the spiral galaxy with few setbacks, never checked in its inexorable advance through a million star systems.

But the Brood – they had no name for their form of government, no Empire or Kingdom or Raj, for the Brood and its regime were no more distinguishable from one another than ants were from their genetic imperatives – the Brood had grown so spread out that, even with the null space drive, messages took years or more for the fastest communication ships to travel from one end of its domain to another.

Here, near the enormous star they called Center, the null space gradient meant outgoing messages and ships traveled fast, but incoming information arrived more slowly. This report Therion held had taken nearly a full year to reach him, a standardized segment of time measured by the orbital period of the Brood’s original homeworld, now a shrine to its history.

“But,” Therion said via the complex patterns of light that served the Brood as voice, “the current sociological cycle is not yet complete. A proper appreciation of historical pressures guides the Brood, and even I cannot stand against such wisdom.”

The Council again signaled its weighty assent.

“Therefore, one of you must appoint, equip and dispatch a Praetor. Who shall accept this responsibility?”

Each of the sixteen senior Archons again gave its assent immediately, as was proper. Therion suppressed what a human would interpret as a sigh. One problem with surrounding himself with reliable, dutiful Archons was that none stepped out of line, none challenged him on any issue.

The boredom caused him an almost physical pain.

Perhaps he should not have been so diligent in hunting down all of his rivals when he had taken power. He needed an enemy. Infestations hardly counted as such.

Higher races do not term lower races “enemies,” he thought. They are part of the landscape, creatures to be exploited and eaten, though occasionally even an animal may catch some of the Brood unaware and rampage for a time.

“Ikthor,” Therion said to his least compliant senior Archon, one he thought might have at least a tiny spark of ambition buried somewhere in his multiple brains. “I have reconsidered my first thought. I appoint you Praetor. You shall lead forces selected from your personal holdings. In your absence, your position on the Council shall remain your own, though you will need to appoint a proxy, of course.”

Ikthor’s eyes contracted with displeasure even as he spoke the only words possible: “In the Name of the All, Father-Mother, it shall be done. I go.” The Archon withdrew from the chamber without further words.

Demotion to Praetor will stir resentment within Ikthor even as his proxy steps into the role of Council Archon, Therion thought. Others on the council, though they never challenge me, might nevertheless nibble around the edges of Ikthor’s territory – a star system here, a cluster there. When Ikthor returns, he will be combative and fat from conquest, filled with anger and determination to reclaim what is rightfully his. Even if the proxy steps aside and does not challenge him directly, that Archon will be Ikthor’s natural enemy, and Ikthor will be mine.

The great game will become more interesting.

That should banish my boredom.

Chapter 8

“Seems funny not to have Spooky along,” Ezekiel Denham said to the Sekoi Blend Bogrin as they boarded Steadfast Roger through a circular, sphincter-like opening. The ship had grown in the last year and had now attained the size of an old-style jetliner rather than merely that of a whale.

“Spooky is Spectre now, and has great responsibility on the planet,” Bogrin replied.

“I know that. Just making conversation.”

Bogrin laughed. “In humans, ‘making conversation’ is often a sign of nervousness, even insecurity.”

“Well, how do you feel about being appointed senior viceroy to the Gliese 370 system?”

“Pleased, but not nervous.”

“I’m shaking in my boots.”

“You are not wearing boots.”

“Tag the phrase in your translator. It means I’m terrified, though with an element of irony.”

Bogrin laughed again.

A commotion on the flight deck of the orbital shipyard where they rested caused both beings to turn and look. They watched as, near one of the doors, a human guard was flung back to roll and slide along the floor in his armor. Other men with weapons hurried to surround a Ryss warrior.

“Oh, crap,” Ezekiel muttered, hopping to the deck in the low gravity and jogging toward the confrontation. When he got there he saw a snarling Trissk held at rifle’s point by a dozen men and women.

“What’s the problem here, Lieutenant?” he addressed the most senior of the squad.

“My lord, this alien here refuses to produce identification, and he assaulted one of my men.”

Trissk hissed and snarled in Ryss, his words translated by a device high up on his battle harness. “I have submitted to your insulting procedures for long enough. There are exactly seven Ryss adult males in this system. Five have prosthetic limbs, one is so aged he can barely stand, and the last is me. If you cannot identify me without your machines, you are even weaker of mind than you are of body.”

Taking advantage of the tendency of those born under Meme rule to defer to Blends, and thankful he was wearing his yellows, Ezekiel said, “Let him and his gear through. He’s with me.”

“Yes, my lord.” The guards backed up and moved off, chastened.

“Sorry about that,” Ezekiel said. “These local forces aren’t very flexible. They’re used to taking orders and following procedures, not thinking for themselves.”

“Your apology is noted, friend Ezekiel, but I will be happy to be back on the Afrana and among my own kind, as will the rest of my people stuck here.”

“Hopefully we will find the Afrana system safe and your people can return if they wish,” Ezekiel said as the two walked across the flight deck toward Roger. “I hear you’ll be recruiting warriors there to fight aboard Desolator and his fellows.”

“That is my intention, but as you said, the situation on Afrana is unknown. I do not even know whether my name will be remembered.”

Ezekiel nodded. “Fleet sent FTL test drones to the Gliese 370 system and two more nearby. The other two returned with data that those systems had been overrun with Scourges, but at least they proved the drive works. The one aimed at Afrana…”

“It might have malfunctioned or been destroyed by a solar anomaly…or the Scourge. That’s what we’re going to find out,” Trissk said as he stepped up to the opening in Roger. “I cannot believe I am boarding this tomb of flesh again.”

Ezekiel slapped Trissk on the back. “It’s better now. Bigger. Besides, we’ll all be sedated for most of the trip. The FTL field messes with people’s heads – human, Ryss or Sekoi.”

“And Meme?”

“We don’t know enough about how their brain-analogues work to predict for sure, and none of them wanted to come along for the ride. We’re bringing a blank mitosis as an experiment, but who knows what that will tell us?”

“What indeed?” Trissk squared his shoulders and entered the Meme-grown ship as if marching to his death.

Once inside, Ezekiel watched as Trissk placed his gear in a locker-hole and stood by one of four sarcophagi.

“What’s the extra one for?” the Ryss asked, pointing to the only coffin not open to receive an occupant.

“Just a backup.”

“Let’s get this over with, then,” said Trissk, and Ezekiel ran his hand along the top of the sarcophagus. It split open with a sucking sound and Trissk lay down in it, shivering with distaste.

“Nighty-night,” Ezekiel said, activating the container. It filled with biogel even as parts of its inner surface extruded to find all the orifices in the Ryss. The sarcophagus would maintain all life functions for the trip.

Ezekiel saw that Bogrin had already sealed himself in his much larger coffin, sized for the thousand-pound hippo-like Sekoi, so the human stripped off his yellows and climbed into his own. Soon, the representative world of VR space opened up in his mind and he joined his two friends on the steampunk-inspired bridge.

“We’ll be rendezvousing with the Erasmus shortly,” Ezekiel said, sitting down in a plush pedestaled seat to begin manipulating large brass levers. Placing his hands on a small, polished wooden ship’s wheel, he soon lifted Roger from the shipyard’s flight deck and set course for Mercury.

Taking the liberty of manipulating their time senses, he shortened the apparent trip duration from hours to a mere ten minutes, just long enough to relax before they approached the innermost planet of the Solar System. Keeping the small, barren planet between Roger and the sun, Ezekiel soon brought them down to hover above the surface where they could see a large spherical ship resting on long struts.

Despite Mercury’s proximity to Sol, its dark side remained quite cold. One full Mercury day lasted more than 58 Earth days, giving the outward surface plenty of time to cool. With no atmosphere, there was nothing to equalize the heat of the day from the cold of the night, no storms, no difficulties – except the chill.

“Why is it on the surface?” Trissk asked. “Why not rendezvous in space?”

“To cool the ship’s heat sinks and insulation as much as possible before we dive into the sun.”

Trissk hissed. “That phrase does not inspire confidence.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll be in wormhole space long before we burn up. I hope.”

The Ryss snarled and moved away, staring out a porthole.

Ezekiel piloted Roger down after establishing comms with the Erasmus. As they approached, he could see the FTL ship was much larger than it seemed at first impression – at least five hundred meters across. Most of that was insulation.

A large bay door stood open, of barely a size for Roger’s porpoise shape to fit through. Should the worst happen, with Erasmus damaged and trapped in the Gliese 370 system, Steadfast Roger and his crew could survive without support. After all, no one on Earth knew what had happened there during the last 36 years.

In extremis, Roger could even make the long trip back to Earth conventionally, with the three crewmen in coldsleep. Ezekiel fervently hoped that would not be necessary.

“How’s it look, Roger?” Ezekiel asked.

“Adequate, Ezekiel,” the sentient ship replied. Unlike most Meme-grown craft, Roger’s intellect approached that of humans, a result of Ezekiel’s constant genetic tinkering and mental interaction. “My skin is armored against space weaponry, so I believe it can protect me inside this cargo bay.”

“Your sense of irony is improving, Roger.”

“I was trying for sarcasm. Did I not succeed?”

“Getting there.”

Once the crew of Erasmus strapped Roger in place, Ezekiel informed the FTL ship’s bridge that all was secure and ready. A sensor feed gave those inside the Meme ship the ability to see what was going on.

To limit boredom during the several more hours until launch, Ezekiel set their time senses on fast-forward. Soon, the Erasmus lifted, retracting the long struts that had held it perched above the frigid surface.

Ezekiel was glad to view the sun in VR via sensor feed rather than directly. Manipulating controls, he dimmed the great disc until it shone no more brightly than the Moon as they approached. Long filaments of solar flares showed at the edge of the great circle, and he hoped the crew of Erasmus knew what they were doing, though he didn’t air his concerns in front of the others.

“It must be strange to give up control to another ship,” Bogrin said from where he stood to Ezekiel’s left, staring out the great forward window alongside the human and the Ryss.

“I’m less worried about that than what’s waiting for us at the other end. We might find ourselves running for our lives.”

Trissk coughed a growl. “Simply another reason to hate these scouting missions: all the running. One can’t even count coup upon an enemy that has no appreciation for the niceties of such things.”

A chime sounded, and then came the disembodied voice of the Erasmus’ comm tech. “Wormhole entry in ten minutes, Captain Denham. Please make certain your crew is properly sedated. Travel time will be approximately nine days, seventeen hours and twenty-seven minutes.”

“Thank you, Erasmus,” Ezekiel replied. “Roger, put us to sleep, and then yourself, as per the plan.”

“Of course, Ezekiel. Sweet dreams.”

Bogrin laughed uproariously, and that was the last thing Ezekiel remembered until he awoke in the Gliese 370 system.

Chapter 9

“Ugh.” Flashes of twisted dreams slithered through Ezekiel’s head as he clawed for consciousness, complicated by the fact that he could feel Roger experiencing some of the same things as he awoke. Without the comfort of VR space, the sarcophagus confined him and all the little physical annoyances added up to a distinct feeling of claustrophobia.

He sincerely hoped Trissk would stay under longer, as had been programmed. Bogrin, by far the most competent biochemist, had scheduled everyone’s dosages, including Roger’s.

“Erasmus to Captain Denham, please respond…Erasmus to Captain Denham, please respond…” an automated voice spoke, endlessly and patiently repeating the phrase.

“Denham here,” Ezekiel rasped once he had sufficient connection to the VR environment to form words within its reality. “Give us a few minutes, please.”

“Acknowledged,” the computer said, and then quieted.

Ezekiel wondered whether the human crew of Erasmus was yet awake. One would expect they would come out of their short coldsleeps with more precision, given the advanced medical facilities available. According to the tests, digital computers recovered the fastest from the debilitating effects of FTL, needing only to be booted from a zero state by simple mechanical-analog detectors. Once the electronics activated, the humans should be awakened within minutes.

As Roger shook off the lingering sedation, the elegant bridge stabilized around Ezekiel. A moment later he observed Bogrin and Trissk’s avatars appear, seated comfortably in overstuffed leather chairs. They wobbled, and then solidified.

“Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” Ezekiel muttered as he turned to his instruments, throwing up a display from the external sensor feed.

Quickly, a diagram of the Gliese 370 system built itself. Its sun, a small orange star, glowed in the center, an icon of the Erasmus showing nearby and accelerating directly away from it. As Sol was larger, the “downward” FTL gradient had allowed them a fast trip and an easy exit.

As luck would have it, Erasmus had emerged only about a quarter of one solar orbit from Afrana’s current position. Ezekiel let out a sigh of relief. “Looks good. Standard traffic from the moon Enoi and Afrana – Koio, that is,” he said, using the Sekoi word for their own homeworld.

Bogrin laughed, which was a Sekoi’s standard response to most emotions. To Ezekiel, who had spent a fair amount of time around the Hippos, his undertone seemed to convey concern and contradiction. “Not everything is as it should be. Where are the orbital fortresses?”

Trissk leaned forward, staring intently at the display. “Bogrin is correct. I see no orbital defenses at all, and fewer satellites than when we left, rather than more. Something has happened in the last forty years.”

Abruptly, an icon appeared against the backdrop of space, quickly morphing into an enormous ship shaped something like a blunted mechanical lizard with stubby legs and shortened tail.

“Desolator!” cried Trissk, leaping forward to press his nose against the glass of the screen. “Hail him, please!”

“I can’t yet. We’re on a passive sensor feed and there’s too much of Erasmus’ hull around us to transmit.”

“Then get us out of here!”

“I, too, would like to be free of our confining transport ship,” Bogrin said.

“Fine. Denham to Erasmus: please open the cargo bay door and let us out.”

“No problem, Captain,” came the voice of the comms tech. Less than a minute later, Roger backed carefully out of the cramped access tunnel and into space as if being birthed.

Once freed, Roger moved away from the big FTL vessel and the VR representation of space gained detail as the ship’s own senses came into play. “Desolator has seen recent, heavy combat,” Trissk hissed. “Magnify his image.”

Ezekiel obliged, zooming in on the great warship until he filled the screen.

Trissk pointed, extending a claw. “There, and there, and there – and there – patchwork in many places, not entirely repaired. Look, some of his weaponry is damaged, though it appears his main particle beam turrets and most of his lasers have been restored.”

“Lasers that are pointing at us,” said Bogrin. “Instead of speculating, perhaps we should simply contact him before a mistake is made.”

Ezekiel hailed the superdreadnought. “Desolator, this is Ezekiel Denham aboard Steadfast Roger, the Meme-grown ship you see before you. Trissk and Bogrin are with me.”

The resonant voice of the Desolator AI rumbled in their ears. “Greetings, Ezekiel Denham. I am in contact with the EFS Erasmus, which is even now providing me with an intelligence summary of all that has happened with Conquest and Earth’s solar system. I confess shock and pleasant surprise that our alliance has acquired a faster-than-light drive, and I look forward to installing one within myself and my surviving brethren.”

“Surviving?” Trissk snarled. “What has happened?”

Ezekiel broke in, “Let’s get out of VR space to talk, and I’m sure there are some people we need to see. Permission to come aboard?”

“Of course, Ezekiel. You are cleared into Launch Bay Two, as is Erasmus.”

“See you shortly, then. Roger, set us down where Desolator designates at all deliberate speed, please.”

“I should hurry?” asked Roger.

“We don’t want some tub of an FTL shuttle to show us up, do we?”

“I understand.”

The view of Desolator leaped toward them, and minutes later, Roger alighted on the vast deck of Launch Bay Two. Given that the superdreadnought stretched over nine kilometers from nose to tail and massed more than five hundred billion tons, room to berth smaller ships was seldom a problem.

This time, though, Ezekiel thought things might be different. He remembered the great ship as clean, elegant, and mostly empty of organic life. Large enough to fit several Manhattans and their comparable populations within himself, Desolator’s main inhabitants had been millions of telefactors and robots, all controlled, directly or indirectly, by the AI himself.

Now, though, the launch bay deck teemed with life, both mechanical and organic. The latter seemed mostly Ryss, with a few bulky Sekoi and a handful of puny-looking human figures scattered among them. Conservatively, Ezekiel thought he could see thousands within the vast room working at servicing several hundred craft ranging in sized from one-man grabships to transports larger than Roger.

Many showed damage, though and some were clearly being cannibalized for parts. “I wonder what they fought?” Ezekiel said aloud.

“Scourge,” Bogrin replied, pointing. In a junkyard heap along one wall they could see pieces of ships of that race’s design. People and machines clambered over those as well, dismantling and examining.

“Release us from our coffins,” Trissk said. “I wish to speak to Desolator in person.”

“As much as anyone can,” Ezekiel replied, “since we’re all running around inside his body anyway. Roger, initiate the dump sequence for us three, please.”

A moment later they found themselves gasping and coughing upon the naked flesh of the floor of the sarcophagus room. Trissk began methodically cleaning his fur of biogel.

“Here, look,” said Ezekiel. “I added showers.” He gestured at the wall where nozzles like short elephant’s trunks protruded. “Roger, give us a nice warm spray.”

The three luxuriated in the flow, even Trissk, who had acquired a taste for hot water from living among the other races. Soon they were clean and clothed. Ezekiel deliberately ignored the fourth sarcophagus, and the other two didn’t seem to notice.

Outside, a bipedal telefactor vaguely resembling a Ryss met them. “Come with me,” it said, leading them to an open tram.

“You fought a battle with the Scourge,” Trissk said, apparently unable to contain himself any longer.

“Yes, though we called them bugs until your intelligence data arrived,” Desolator said through the remotely operated robot.

“How did you defeat them?”

“At great cost. Nine of my brothers fell, as did almost ten million Ryss, humans and Sekoi.”

Ezekiel gasped. “Nine superdreadnoughts and ten million others? That’s horrible!”

“That’s glorious,” Trissk rumbled. “Oh, that I could have been here!”

“You’re nuts.”

“One good death in battle is better than a thousand lives of peace.”

Bogrin laughed, a strained thing. “We are unlikely to agree with such philosophy.”

“Tell me further,” the Ryss said.

“I have a briefing prepared. Afterward, we must discuss the future.” Desolator’s telefactor led the three to a large conference room with a holotank in the center.

At the head of the table stood an impressive Ryss of middle age, the rank of Captain affixed to his battle harness.

“Chirom!” Trissk said as he strode toward the other. “But no, that is impossible…and you are not he.”

“I am Chiren. Chirom was my sire.”

“And mine, in spirit at least. I am Trissk…brother.”

The two Ryss clasped paws to wrists in the manner of their race. “It is good to meet you, of whom I have heard so much,” Chiren said.

“So my old friend finally consented to be glorified?”

Chiren hissed laughter. “Such was his reputation that many females vied for his attention. Eventually one would not be denied: Larsa, my dam. If you ever meet her, you will know why. Even in her dotage, she remains formidable.”

“Gentlemen,” Desolator’s voice broke, in, “we have much to do.”

“Of course,” Chiren replied. “Proceed.”

“Once you have seen the briefing, we will introduce you to the leaders of the Allied Races. I presume you possess authority to negotiate?”

Trissk growled deep in his throat, Ezekiel looked surprised, and Bogrin said, “I possess authority to command from Fleet Admiral Absen himself.”

“That itself will be part of the negotiations.”

“What the hell is this ‘negotiations’ bullshit?” Ezekiel snapped. “This system is Earth’s by right of conquest. More to the point, Desolator, you swore allegiance to EarthFleet. So did Captain Chirom, and I presume Captain Chiren and other captains after him.”

“Of your second assertion there is no doubt,” Desolator replied. “I and my brothers, and the entire Ryss population of this system I believe, will follow Admiral Absen’s orders in all things military. However, the nonmilitary legal situation is much more murky, as the human Governor Colson contends that civilian authority always trumps military. He and the Sekoi leadership agreed several years ago to a coalition government of Afrana.”

“And the Ryss?” Trissk asked.

Chiren said, “The Ryss Council of Elders declined to participate, declaring the independent nation of New Ryssa congruent with the current borders of the populace’s territory.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Ezekiel said. “How can a few thousand Ryss declare themselves a nation?”

Bogrin laughed, this time in genuine amusement. “You need to, how do you say, ‘do the numbers,’ Ezekiel. Ryss birthrates of litters of three to seven kits every year or two, combined with early sexual maturity, results in rapid population growth. It has been over forty years since we left Koio. Desolator, what is the current population of the Ryss in this system?”

“Approximately ninety-seven million and growing at an overall rate of twenty-six percent per year.”

“That means in just a couple of decades they’ll hit a billion!” said Ezekiel.

“Correct. This projection, along with the unwillingness of the Ryss to employ birth control, has led to the current political situation: humans and Sekoi against Ryss. If not for the attack of the Scourge, we might have had an interspecies war by now.”

“A war the Ryss can’t win,” Ezekiel muttered.

“At least, not yet,” Bogrin said.

“Do not be so hasty to think so,” snarled Trissk.

“Oh, come on, Trissk,” said Ezekiel. “Unless the Desolator ships joined in, a hundred million Ryss can’t win against a combined population of, what, ten billion Sekoi and humans? Especially as the Sekoi will be fighting for their homes.”

“Perhaps,” Trissk said darkly. “But I know my people. They will not accept being confined and marginalized.”

“I can’t believe we’re even talking this way. Aren’t we allies, first against the Meme and now against the Scourge?” Ezekiel said, standing and waving his arms. “I don’t care what the human and civilian leadership of Afrana think. We’re still at war and this system is under martial law. If necessary, we’ll set them straight by threat of force.”

Bogrin exchanged glances with Trissk and Chiren. “If we must. However, Spectre and Absen agreed jointly to appoint me the senior liaison from EarthFleet, as this is the Sekoi home system. With your concurrence, I have been given great authority and latitude to make whatever deal will best contribute to the war effort. Much has changed in forty years. We must be realistic.”

A throat-clearing noise from the holotank speakers caused the three organics to look in that direction. Within its display floated the head and maned shoulders of a fearsome adult Ryss, and it spoke with Desolator’s voice. “Perhaps it would be best if I gave the briefing I have planned, and then you can discuss events within their full context.”

Ezekiel nodded assent, followed quickly by the others. They sat.

“First, a summary of events before the Scourge attack. The political situation remained stable until word of the fall of Earth arrived seventeen years ago. While it was axiomatic that Conquest continued on its way toward Sol’s system, most here grew to believe that one ship could not reverse the situation, and so eventually the human civilian government declared itself to be the natural heir of the Council of Earth, with EarthFleet subordinate to its will. After two years of negotiation regarding powers and protocols, Admiral Mirza accepted their declaration. As he is the senior EarthFleet commander in this system, and absent Admiral Absen’s orders to the contrary, I decided it was proper to accept this arrangement.”

“Politics,” spat Trissk. “This is not a warrior’s province.”

“I must disagree, Elder Trissk,” Desolator replied. “Politics is endemic to a warrior’s life. In fact, all the military writings of three races agree that politics and war are distinguishable only by their methods, not by their aims. A true warrior does not limit himself to the realm of physical discipline and violence. He must also understand how to shape power blocs, to mold hearts and minds in order to accomplish his honorable purposes.”

“He’s got you there, Trissk,” Ezekiel chuckled.

Trissk turned away to pace. “Such wisdom is…irritating.”

“Most wisdom is,” Bogrin said with a peg-toothed grin. “Else, it would not be wisdom.”

“What if I – we – were to command you, Desolator?” asked Trissk. “To whom do you owe your loyalty?”

“First, to the rightful authority of EarthFleet, which now appears to be Admiral Absen and his designated representatives here in this room. I have a racial obligation to the Ryss, however, that I cannot ignore, and there are other duties – to humanity and the Sekoi as a whole, for example, and even to the Meme, now that they are our allies.”

“Sounds like you have a lot of thinking to do,” Ezekiel said.

Desolator said, “My thoughts have run their courses and reached their limits. Only new data and the actions of others will cause me to reassess as events progress. For now, I await instructions.”

Ezekiel scrubbed his face with his palms. “Man, this is frickin’ complicated.”

“What are your thoughts, Captain Chiren?” Trissk asked.

“Much as Desolator’s.” Chiren spread his hands. “To captain a ship like this is to be a figurehead, a father to the crew, but I have never disagreed with his thoughts on military or political matters.”

Trissk stared at the other Ryss for a moment as if nonplussed before turning to the avatar in the holotank. “I would like to know about the battle.”

“Yes, let us review the military situation,” Bogrin agreed. “Please begin from shortly before the Scourge arrived.”

“As you wish.” Desolator’s representation disappeared from the tank, replaced by a stylized representation of the Gliese 370 system.

“New Jove has been militarized much as Jupiter is in Earth’s system. The gas giant and its moons provide abundant natural resources for EarthFleet’s conventional production. PVNs there have fed shipyards and facilities sufficient to produce twenty-six Conquest-class dreadnoughts and over two hundred smaller ships over the past four decades.”

“Two hundred twenty-six! That is indeed a fleet to be reckoned with!” Trissk said.

“Unfortunately, only six dreadnoughts and some fifteen light and heavy cruisers survived the Scourge attack, though production has been prioritized and we expect more hulls to be completed soon.”

“Dear God,” Ezekiel breathed. “Eighty percent casualties, and over fifty percent among Desolator’s kind.”

Desolator’s avatar nodded. “As you have deduced, I was able to reproduce first one, then two more, then four, then eight Dominator-class superdreadnoughts before the Scourge arrived four months ago. Unfortunately, all EarthFleet weapons systems were optimized against Meme. Even so, our forces performed creditably and took a heavy toll on the enemy between their emergence points and Afrana, though as you know, that distance is much shorter than from Sol to Earth. If we’d had a hundred million miles instead of a mere forty-three million, we might have annihilated them short of the planet.

“Unfortunately, in order to prevent a mass landing and the risk of billions of casualties, we were forced to make a final stand above Afrana. The Sourge had stripped the moon Enoi bare of facilities, including the Weapon, and we fought a battle of attrition. Fortunately, before the fight we were able to take aboard millions of warriors, mostly Ryss, to function as Marines, internal defense forces. The bulk of the casualties were theirs as they gave their lives to stop the Scourge assault troops from overrunning me and my brothers from within.”

“What about the motherships?” Bogrin asked.

“Without their swarms, we easily destroyed five of them using TacDrive attacks before the rest decided to retreat using their FTL drives. Now, we are remilitarizing as quickly as possible under the assumption that another, heavier assault will come soon.”

“How the hell are you – are we – going to hold against a heavier attack when the last one caused such horrendous damage?” said Ezekiel.

The holotank display changed again, showing a diagram of Desolator. “We are already radically upgrading point defense systems, in some cases by factors of one hundred or more. Additionally, armor and internal defense systems are also being optimized against the Scourge. Marine forces are being hastily trained and equipped in anti-Scourge operations. There is no lack of volunteers.”

“Okay, that’s good, but what you really need are SLAMs,” said Ezekiel. “Take out entire motherships before they launch their swarms.”

“We already thought of this during our after-action debates. Unfortunately, we have only eight new TacDrive systems available to create such weapons. Admiral Mirza has therefore ordered that refurbishment of the nine surviving TacDrive-equipped light cruisers be halted and their weapons stripped. They will be fitted with automated systems to convert them into suicide ships. Soon, we will have, in effect, seventeen SLAMs.”

“A clever solution,” Bogrin said, “and still much cheaper to trade an unmanned light cruiser for a mothership.”

“You’re actually better off here than in Earth’s system,” Ezekiel said. “You lost a ton of ships, but the manufacturing infrastructure was almost untouched and it’s more modern then Earth’s was. Plus, each Dominator-class ship is a factory all its own.”

“It matters not,” Trissk growled. “Fleet will do all it can, but Afrana must be organized for ground defense. Every warrior of all races must be armed and ready to kill the bugs that land.”

“That is being done. Soon, every civilian will be trained as militia. And if necessary, we shall use Admiral Absen’s rope-a-dope tactic, as described in Erasmus’ data package,” Desolator said.

“Rope-a-dope?”

“That is what he called it when explaining it to his crew, though it seems that metaphor did not propagate to your ears,” said Desolator with amusement. “I refer to allowing the Scourge to land largely unopposed and eat themselves into their metamorphic cocoons, and then to kill them where they lie.”

“What honor is there is killing a helpless enemy?” Trissk asked.

“Do you think the Scourge have honor?” Bogrin replied.

“Honor is a warrior’s gift to himself. It matters not how debased the enemy.”

Chiren said, “Honor is served by survival of the females and kits, Trissk. I suspect we will use the tactic if we must. Sometimes a warrior must sacrifice everything, even his own honor, for the good of his offspring and the future of the race.”

Trissk grumbled under his breath, but fell silent.

Chapter 10

“It’s good to see all of you,” Admiral Mirza said, shaking Ezekiel’s hand, and then extending his to the other two in turn. “Until now, we had no idea whether…”

“Whether we lived or died?” Ezekiel smiled. “Ditto for our thoughts of you. But FTL travel will change all that. A bit more than nine days from Sol to Gliese 370, fifteen back, I’m told.”

“Why the difference?”

“Sol is a bigger star. It’s ‘uphill’ in FTL terms.”

“Ah.” Mirza waved the three to seats, moving to the bar in his spacious flag office aboard Desolator. “Drinks?”

“Scotch,” all three said in unison, and then laughed.

“Spooky ruined us for any other whiskey,” Ezekiel explained, watching as Bogrin took out a Sekoi-sized cigar and lit it. “Ruined him in other ways, too.”

Bogrin, of course, laughed even louder.

“Scrubbers up, please, Desolator,” Admiral Mirza said, and immediately, rushing air drew the smoke away. He handed each a healthy dose of Scotch.

“So when did you move aboard Desolator?” Trissk asked Mirza. “He is Ryss.”

“He’s EarthFleet,” Mirza said firmly, staring Trissk down. “I did it fifteen years ago, when the Allied Races government claimed authority over all military forces here, in order to demonstrate that the Ryss ships, if not all Ryss themselves, were part of the Fleet.”

“And to demonstrate your supremacy over us?” Trissk said.

Mirza’s lips thinned. “Elder Trissk, I’ve been an honest broker and a peacemaker as well as a warrior. I’ve always treated your people fairly. Until New Ryssa was declared and they deserted their posts, I had Ryss organics among my senior staff, and I’ve reinstated many of them since the attack brought your people back to their senses. It wasn’t me that caused this rupture in our relationship.”

Trissk snarled, “From the reports I’ve read, Ryss were being marginalized and treated as second-class citizens of Afrana.”

“Not within EarthFleet. Not then, not now. I’m not going to sugar-coat it: from my point of view, your elders brought their problems on themselves by refusing to employ birth control or work in good faith with the Sekoi. It’s their homeworld, after all.”

Bogrin broke in with a basso rumble. “Perhaps we should stick to the military situation for now. I will be talking to my people’s government soon. With the word that Earth still lives, the political situation may be sorted out more easily than you think – especially with the threat of extinction hanging over us.”

“Yes, fear of death concentrates the mind wonderfully, does it not?” Mirza said drily.

“The good news for Afrana is,” Ezekiel said, “with what we now know about FTL travel and what we’ve deduced about the Scourge – and the fact that it’s been almost a year and we’ve seen no follow-up attack on Earth – this system is probably safe for a while. Months, at least. That means we can get regular FTL shuttles started and begin to sort all this out.”

A peculiar look had taken over Admiral Mirza’s face. Ezekiel realized it was longing, and he remembered what it was like to want to go home. Even after more than fifty years, Afrana hadn’t replaced Earth in the human heart.

“Desolator,” Mirza said, “how long do you think it will take to manufacture and install FTL drives aboard yourself and your brother ships?”

“I expect I will be ready to test within forty days.”

“So soon?”

“The components are not difficult to manufacture, though they are numerous for a ship of my size. The technology rests at the leading edge of current scientific theory, but would have been discovered within perhaps fifty years anyway, I believe. In fact, I suspect that within decades, allied scientists will radically improve the techniques.”

The longing on Mirza’s face became raw pain. “To see my homeland again…”

“It won’t be the same,” Ezekiel said gently. “The Third Holocaust wiped out a lot of stuff, sir, and most of our families. Fifty years of Meme rule did still more damage.”

“It doesn’t matter. I have to see it for myself.” Mirza smiled through his anguish. “What’s the point of being in charge if you can’t take a working vacation once in a while? Besides, a flag officer meeting between Absen and me will sort out a lot of things faster than sending reports back and forth every few weeks.”

***

Ezekiel and Trissk accompanied Bogrin to the conference with the Sekoi high council, a collection of ninety-nine yellow-clad pachyderms filling an enormous round chamber rather like a small indoor stadium.

Trissk had resisted going along. “My presence will be a provocation,” he’d said.

“Your presence will be a demonstration that your people are still willing to work with ours – at least within the framework of EarthFleet,” Bogrin had replied.

“Perhaps I should go speak with my own elders before this meeting. I will gauge their temper and possibly receive a mandate to negotiate.”

“Trissk,” Ezekiel had said, “we three represent Earth and EarthFleet. Let’s stick together and tackle the easiest problem first, and so on. The Sekoi, the humans…and then the Ryss.”

That’s why the two aliens found themselves being stared at intermittently by the herd of weighty beings, Blends all, the oligarchy of the Sekoi.

“Fellows of Koio,” Bogrin began his oration, “I come as one of you, the Hundredth.”

Ezekiel didn’t know what that might mean, but the number seemed significant to the assembly.

“I bring greetings from Admiral Absen and the new Emperor of Earth’s empire, Daniel Markis. Your knowledge of him is impersonal, contained within the histories of Humans you have all read, but you know the one called Tran Pham Nguyen, still owner of one of the largest corporations on our planet.”

The herd stirred and a deep rumble of muttered conversation coursed through the throng, along with scattered laughter.

“That one has since taken his Yellow and is called Spectre, Emperor Emeritus of Earth.”

The rumble became a tide of sound, all of the council members pounding on their desks with hamlike fists and some coming to their feet, laughing uproariously. Trissk bristled, his mane flaring around his head and his claws extending. Ezekiel placed a calming hand on the Ryss’ arm and said, “I don’t think they’re upset. I think that’s acclaim we’re hearing.”

Bogrin held up both hands for silence, which returned slowly. “I am happy to witness such praise and joy at Nguyen’s ascendance, and I assure you that the new Emperor is a worthy successor, a man of great mercy and reason. By all right, he is our Emperor now.”

Pointing to Trissk and Ezekiel, Bogrin went on, “I have here two more representatives of the Empire of Earth, Ezekiel Denham and Trissk, whom you all know, at least by reputation. Together, we three are Earth’s viceroys to this system, not its ambassadors. The gulf of time between our worlds and the lack of news may have induced some to wonder whether Koio was still part of the new Empire, and I am here to assure you, it is. You have not been abandoned by Earth.”

The council members began a rhythmic clapping, a pounding that smote Ezekiel’s auditory nerves, driving out all other sound. He noticed Trissk’s more sensitive ears flattened and his paws covering them.

When the noise died down, Bogrin continued, “You will also note that as a native of this system I have been given primacy of place among us three. This proves the new Emperor Markis is sincere, and that he respects our value and dignity. I want to assure you that there will be great freedom and extensive laughter beneath the benevolent banners of his leadership.”

More thunderous acclaim ensued. Ezekiel covered his ears and deliberately concentrated on controlling the sensitivity of his auditory nerves.

As he was not a Blend, Trissk had no such advantage and suffered, paws clasped to ears and with his head stuck under the huge desk in front of him.

“Quiet, please,” Bogrin said. “With the acceptance I observe, I now tell you that our first order of business is reuniting our races. No longer will we be merely allies: we must be brothers in arms, standing shoulder to shoulder beneath the banner of the Empire of Earth, alongside the humans, the Ryss…and the Meme.”

Ezekiel would have expected another explosion of sound, but all he heard was a scattering of chuckles, and he realized that this council must have been prepared in advance, of course. The news of the happenings in the Solar System, including the alliance with the Meme, had been disseminated far and wide.

Bogrin was playing fast and loose with the truth, though. At least he was spinning the situation as if the Meme had joined Earth’s empire, rather than acceding to an alliance. These Yellows here must know that, yet none of them contradicted the Sekoi viceroy.

Like all politicians, Ezekiel thought, they’re accepting a lie in order to influence public opinion. The common people of the Sekoi, who have so recently thrown off Meme rule, will be far more amenable to the idea that their former masters were now their equals under Earth’s leadership, rather than independent and possibly shaky allies. Well, Bogrin knows best how to handle his own people.

“I know some here have concerns about working with the Meme again, which is all the more reason to crowd closer to those who share our bountiful world – the humans and the Ryss,” Bogrin said.

One of the inner ring of Sekoi stood. “Viceroy, the humans have always been reasonable, but the carnivores are breeding beyond all sense. Furthermore, without those who wear the Yellow to guide them, their memories grow short as their elders die, leaving a new generation that doesn’t remember our generosity and our valiance. These youngsters will soon take power, and when they look at us, all they see are herbivorous food beasts.”

Bogrin folded his hands across his torso and nodded sagely. “This is a concern. That is why my comrades and I will soon go to speak with the Humans, and then the Ryss, in order to settle this matter once and for all.”

***

Governor Colson received the three viceroys in his conference room, his cabinet sitting on one side of the table and Ezekiel, Trissk and Bogrin on the other.

“Welcome, gentlemen,” the smooth, urbane politician said. Short and fleshy, with a rotund face, Colson looked like the man next door, someone trustworthy and friendly. He didn’t reach out to clasp hands.

Ezekiel reminded himself that no one who got elected to the top spot of anything was to be discounted, and called upon the memories passed down from his mother, the Blend Raphaela, to fortify him.

“I bring Admiral Absen’s and Emperor Markis’ greetings,” Ezekiel said easily.

“Emperor? I remember when he was merely Chairman,” Colson said, eyes narrowing.

“The title was established by someone else. Someone you might have heard of – Spooky Nguyen – who’s since Blended and taken to calling himself Spectre. Markis intends to do away with the position eventually and re-establish the forms of a republic, but for now, the military situation is too dire for sweeping changes. You of all people should know that, since you just fought off a Scourge attack such a short time ago.”

“I – we – do know it,” Colson said. “We lost a lot of good people. That’s why I’m not willing to simply throw away the gains we’ve made in self-determination when someone from thirty-six light-years away shows up to claim lordship over us. We’re a democracy here. Why should we join some empire? We can defend ourselves.”

Trissk and Bogrin both laughed, though for entirely different reasons, and Ezekiel placed hands on their arms in a signal for calm. “Governor, you seem to be under the mistaken impression that you have somehow separated from Earth and its people. Let us reason together.”

Colson sat back, skepticism written on his face, as Ezekiel continued.

“First, the legitimate government of Earth was never destroyed, though it was suppressed and driven underground, literally and figuratively, for more than fifty years. When Admiral Absen and Spooky Nguyen freed Earth from the Meme occupation, that government re-emerged. It had never been deposed, as three of its legitimate representatives – Nguyen, Absen and Daniel Markis – provided continuity.”

“What if I disagreed?” Colson said. “What if I pointed out that Absen demoted himself to Captain, making Admiral Mirza the senior EarthFleet officer surviving? And that Nguyen abdicated his position as the leader of Australia to become a Steward, and then a civilian business owner here on Afrana? And finally, that Markis sat out the occupation in a coldsleep tube underground, not fighting back. How can he claim legitimacy when he had nothing to do with liberating Earth?”

Ezekiel grinned as a wolf might, with lips drawn back from his teeth. “You make some good points. But, how do you see yourself and the current human regime here?”

“We inherited the mantle of government by completely legal means, after conquest of this system. I liken it to, say, how Australia originally gained its independence after the mother country clearly had no say in ruling it from afar. Peacefully, but inevitably.” Colson sat back with a confident smile. “And really, with the questions of legitimacy so open, doesn’t it make more sense to cut a deal than to try to rule a colony that doesn’t want to be part of your new empire?”

Ezekiel glanced at Bogrin. “The Sekoi have already agreed that they and their homeworld are part of ‘our empire,’ as you so correctly put it. We three, the Empire of Earth’s legitimate viceroys, have accepted their decision and their fealty. If you don’t, you will find yourself – legally speaking – unlawfully occupying the soil you live on, and therefore in rebellion.”

Colson’s face darkened. “Is that what you’re going to tell your buddies, the Ryss? Because they’re already in rebellion. My government is all that’s kept them and the Hippos from going to war with each other and they know it. If you declare us rebels, I’d bet my next paycheck the cats will join us…and between our warships and the Desolator super-ships, we hold the balance of military power in the system.”

“Ah, now the gloves come off,” murmured Trissk.

“You disagree, Elder Trissk?” Colson asked. “Do you want to be ruled from afar?”

“No,” the enormous feline answered, “but there is no honor or glory turning against our allies, no matter what the provocation, while the Scourges plot our extinction.”

“Between us,” Colson pressed, “we can defend this system and maintain our independence. Three equal nations, composed of human, Ryss and Sekoi, ruled by no one.” He leaned toward Trissk. “If we don’t insist on this now, we’ll never get the chance again. Right now, Earth needs us. Later on, they might not. We’ll never be in such a good bargaining position.”

“Your position,” Trissk said, “is based on false belief.” He turned to Ezekiel and gestured as if to say, go on.

Ezekiel turned to Colson. “What Trissk means is, you seem to be under the impression that we are bargaining. We’re not. You’re a politician. You should be able to recognize that when you hold no cards, the game is over. If you’re smart, you’ll pick up your chips and be happy to play another day.”

Colson sniffed. “Nice image, but how do you figure I hold no cards?”

“List them, then,” Ezekiel challenged.

“First and most important, the will of the people here.”

“That’s the only card I might admit you have, but their sentiments are debatable. Right now, data on the situation back at Earth is being downloaded directly to the civilian nets rather than through your tame, state-controlled media. Soon, they might not think the way you want them to.”

Colson growled, “Then there’s the military, which is answerable to me. I’m the civilian authority here.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Governor,” Ezekiel replied, “but we’ve already spoken to Admiral Mirza, and he’s eager to reconnect with EarthFleet. You see, the loyalty of military folks to the common people and Earth’s Constitution doesn’t change with who gets elected.”

“Sometimes it does,” Colson spat.

“Perhaps. But not in this case.”

“The Ryss will fight, then, and the Desolator ships are stronger than anyone else.”

Ezekiel shook his head slowly. “Desolator is father to all of the other ships, their Ryss elder and thus their commanding officer, and he declared himself loyal to EarthFleet. Trissk, as he correctly pointed out, is Eldest among the organic Ryss. But even if they decided to join a Ryss rebellion, why should they back you as leader of humans? No, Governor. This meeting is your chance to fall in line and play the part of the loyalist to the Crown. If you walk out of it and try to push your separatist agenda, you’ll be igniting a civil war that you can’t win…and you might cause enough disruption that we won’t be prepared for the next attack of the Scourge.”

“We fought them off once,” Colson blustered. “In fact, from what I can see, we have a lot more military force in this system than Earth has. You need our help, not vice-versa. Maybe you can’t afford that civil war, whereas we can.”

Ezekiel looked around at the seven men and women of the cabinet, meeting the eyes of each in turn, trying to gauge their temperaments. “Is this what you want?” he asked them, pointedly ignoring Governor Colson. “Millions more dead, fighting among ourselves while the Scourges prepare to wipe us out?”

“It’s not their decision: it’s mine!” Colson snapped.

“I thought you were a democracy,” Ezekiel said mildly. “If you want them to toe your line, how can you refuse to do the same for Markis? Be smart, Governor. Better half a loaf than none at all.”

Colson looked left and right to check on how his people were responding. One, a slim, intense man, leaned over to lay a hand on Colson’s arm and whisper in his ear.

“Could you give us a few minutes, gentlemen,” Colson said, rising. “You’ll have our answer as soon as we’ve discussed the situation among ourselves.”

“Of course.” Ezekiel rose as well, leading the other two out of the room.

After a long fifteen minutes, during which Ezekiel’s superb hearing caught snippets of heated debate through the thick door, the three were ushered back in.

Colson’s manner had turned conciliatory, and he clasped all their hands one after another. “We’ve discussed it among ourselves, and of course we’ve come to the inevitable conclusion that Earth and its empire must remain united for the duration of the crisis. We’ll accept your authority until the bugs have been defeated, and revisit questions of greater autonomy after that.”

Ezekiel returned a magnanimous smile, now that he’d won. “I knew you were a reasonable man, Governor, and I’m sure we can move forward in a spirit of mutual cooperation. Good day, for now.”

After the three had boarded a spacious ground car for their next meeting, Trissk said, “That went easier than I expected.”

“It’s always helpful to have a man on the inside,” Ezekiel replied, examining his fingernails.

“The advisor?”

“The right word in the right ear.”

“What hold do you have over him?”

Ezekiel smiled. “No hold…but he is my son. His name is John Smith.”

“Ah. Not Denham?”

“His mother’s name. I left behind a few dozen children here by several women, all Blends, of course. Most have chosen not to wear the yellow. In this case, not being overtly connected to me has its benefits.”

“The better to blend in!” Bogrin said, guffawing at his own wordplay.

“So they are the power behind the throne,” said Trissk. “But why did this crisis even come into being, with your people there to influence things?”

“I didn’t say they were unsympathetic to the idea of independence. Eventually, I’m sure they’ll demand greater autonomy, but for now, they saw reason.”

***

Ezekiel wasn’t entirely certain what to expect from the meeting with the Ryss, but Trissk had made him and Bogrin promise not to interfere, only to support the elder firmly, no matter what happened.

Thus, it was with some difficulty that Ezekiel held his peace when Trissk knocked the Ryss Elder Kassk across the room with a cuff of one enormous paw.

“You are no longer Eldest of the Nation of New Ryss,” Trissk roared. “I claim the title by right of combat and of seniority. My mane grew long and I glorified my first female before your testicles dropped, Kassk, and I remain in my prime.” He held his paws out wide, claws extended. “Do any of you deny this?”

Kassk rolled to his feet, a graying warrior but still a potent one, taken by surprise the first time, but clearly not again. “Your body is in its prime only because of life code tinkering, apostate! True Ryss do not accept such crutches. If not for this perversion, you would be long in your grave.”

The other four of the Council of Elders extended their claws as well, and Ezekiel wondered whether Trissk’s approach would get him killed. The human kept his hands within his own sleeves, one holding a pulse pistol, only to be used if he and Bogrin became the target of Ryss wrath. He’d promised not to interfere, after all.

“I have accepted no life code tinkering whatsoever,” Trissk snarled. “Feel free to test my blood – if you can spill it!”

Kassk leaped, and there came a flurry of clawed paws Ezekiel could not follow. At the end, the old warrior lay dying upon the floor, his throat torn out.

Wounds marked Trissk as well. Lines of slashes scored his flanks, dripping red upon the floor. “There is my blood,” he said, gesturing contemptuously. “Sample and test it. I am alive because of physics, the time compression of the speed of light, not because of biological cheating…and I am now Eldest!”

The four others there bowed their heads and retracted their claws. One female reached down to soak a cloth in the red fluid. “The truth shall be known,” she said, wrapping it tight and slipping it into her robe.

Trissk nodded. “Go, then. We meet tomorrow, when you are confident I am clean.”

***

The next day, Trissk met alone with his new Council of Elders, free of the herbivore and the ape looking over his shoulder. If he were truly to take charge of his people, he would have to do so without seeming to rely on his allies’ constant support.

“We must leave this place,” Trissk said after ritual greetings had been performed. “If we share a planet not our own, we will never be free.”

“Some will not go,” said the female Russu, the youngest and perhaps the most flexible-minded of the four others. “I remember my sire and dam, of the stories they told of the homeworld and of the pilgrimage aboard Desolator, but the younger generations…they feel this is their land.”

“Granted them by the plant-eaters only because it is too cold for their taste,” Trissk replied. “Not taken in battle. Therefore, it is not a home. Only that which is conquered, paid for in blood, has value. Is that not true?”

The four bowed their heads in agreement. “Yet,” Russu insisted, “some do not respect the ancient ways. This is inevitable. The young supplant their elders. New drives out old. We cannot hold back the tide of time forever.”

Trissk paced around Russu, examining her as if she were an animal at auction, yet she remained unperturbed. Turning to the three others, he asked, “What say you? Shall we purge our race of all who will not follow the old ways, or shall we find some accommodation?”

Another female called Gessir lifted her rheumy eyes to his, yet without fear. “Kassk held back the tide. This was his right as Eldest. Will you do the same? We are not our parents. The Ryss must change. Already we have accepted the machine minds as equal to, even greater than, our own. If artificial beings can call themselves Ryss, what might organic Ryss become?”

Trissk half-turned, staring at the unadorned wall of the council chamber. “My sire died before I knew him, but Elder Chirom treated me like his own son. He was wise enough to confront those who wished to remain aboard Desolator, forever wandering the stars, and lead those pitiful few of us who remained onto the soil of a planet once again. Because of him, we are now millions instead of hundreds.”

Turning back, Trissk continued in a voice of steel. “But I would become billions once again, even trillions. Our race once held three hundred systems before the Meme came. We were great, and we will be great once again. But we will not be great by cowering on this world not our own, nor will we gain honor by pissing on the hospitality of those who made us guests in their houses.”

“Then what shall we do?” Russu asked without heat. “You have taken the mantle of leadership upon yourself; therefore, lead us.”

“First, the Council will do away with the idiotic taboos that hold our race back. Life code tinkering has not made the Humans into monsters. With their Paradise Epidemic, they live so long we might call them immortal, yet they remain themselves. With nanotechnology, they become stronger than we in body, and with their implanted cybernetics they gain capabilities we can only dream of. If we wish to take our rightful place alongside them, we must not live on their charity. We must prove ourselves their equals.”

Russu and the others blinked in astonishment. “Accept all of these things at once?” She folded her paws. “What you propose will be disruptive.”

“You are not horrified? Any of you?”

The four shook their heads. “We have long discussed the need for change among ourselves,” Russu said. “I am a statistician by training, an analyst of trends. It has been clear to me for a long while that we must adapt or be marginalized by the tide of change all around us.”

Trissk smiled a closed-mouthed smile. “Then perhaps the Ryss may yet avoid disaster.”

“By doing what?”

“First, by rejoining Earth’s empire…for a time. We owe them a warrior’s duty for saving us from extinction. We shall cooperate and we shall fight the Scourge for the good of all. But I understand how the laws of the human empire work, and I have a plan for our future that will free us again.”

Chapter 11

“I’ll send Demolisher back to Earth to bolster the defenses there,” Admiral Mirza said to the three viceroys from across the desk of his new office aboard Detonator. “After Desolator, he’s the best we have, and I’ll make sure he’s fully repaired and loaded with Ryss warriors.”

“You’re not coming along like you wanted?” Ezekiel asked.

Mirza sighed. “I’d love to, but the political situation here is too fragile. With Trissk and Desolator leaving for parts unknown, were I to go as well, the whole thing might fall apart. EarthFleet is really all that’s holding us together, and I’m the most senior officer. I’m just starting to get some Ryss flag officers back.”

Ezekiel glanced at Bogrin and Mirza, and then up at the ceiling, as if to inquire about the Detonator AI’s discretion.

“Ryss AIs keep their confidences,” Mirza said. “It’s part of their oaths to EarthFleet and commissions as officers, and I’ve found them to be more scrupulous than most organics in observing the fine points of military law. Everything said here, stays here.”

“Okay,” Ezekiel responded. “I was going to make a comment about how clever you are to load up millions of young Ryss warriors aboard each of the two superdreadnoughts and get them out of this star system. That should relieve some of the pressure.”

“I did it for military reasons,” Mirza said firmly.

“Which, as we’ve already established, are ultimately indistinguishable from political ones. After all, you could have sent Sekoi and humans along too.”

Mirza pressed his lips together in irritation. “Viceroy Denham, you seem to be making me out to be a cold-hearted bastard, sacrificing Ryss lives instead of humans or Sekoi. I assure you, I thought this out. First, mixing large contingents of three race’s warriors might exacerbate their conflicts. Second, kilo for kilo, Ryss are the most effective close combat troops we have, other than full-cyber Marines, and I don’t have tens of millions of those hanging around. Third, the D-ships are Ryss at heart, with Ryss captains. Ryss warriors will take direction from them without difficulty.”

Ezekiel held up forefending palms. “All right, Admiral, I yield. And don’t worry; I’ll take back your dispatches and give them personally to Admiral Absen for you. That will get me out of your hair – assuming you can handle Colson without me?”

Mirza snorted. “That weasel? Now that we’re clearly under martial law again, I’ll have him brigged if he gives me trouble. And if he’s not amenable to intimidation, I’m sure the Sekoi can exert enough economic pressure to bring him and the human government into line.”

Bogrin nodded. “The planetary economy is sufficiently intertwined that if my people decide to, they can bankrupt the humans…if necessary. Of course, we would much rather not.”

“Rochambeau,” Ezekiel said.

“What?” asked Mirza.

“Rock-paper-scissors. Our three races each hold power over others. EarthFleet is commanded by humans. The Ryss Dominator-class ships hold the ultimate military power, and the Sekoi run the economy by virtue of numbers and nativity.”

“That is why this arrangement will function…at least as long as there is an external threat,” Bogrin said.

“I doubt the Scourges are going away anytime soon, so let’s cross that bridge when we come to it,” Ezekiel replied. “And, if you have any real trouble, talk to Colson’s advisor, John Smith. I think you’ll find him a reasonable man. For now, I agree with the admiral. Bogrin, you stay with your homeworld, I’ll take Roger aboard Demolisher to mine, and Trissk and Desolator will head for theirs.” He stood to shake their hands. “Gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure. See you on the other side.”

***

“Welcome aboard, Viceroy Denham,” Demolisher said as Ezekiel stepped onto the portside flight deck of the superdreadnought.

“My title is a convenience. I’m really not cut out for politics, so call me Ezekiel, please,” the human said, looking around.

The enormous open space seemed much more shipshape than Desolator’s had, with neat rows of grabships, shuttles, assault sleds and pinnaces bolted in place. No flight crew roamed the deck, though a few maintenance bots scurried here and there, completing final preparations before the great ship dove into the orange star of Gliese 370.

“And you may call me Demolisher,” the AI’s resonant voice spoke in Ezekiel’s ear.

“I’d be surprised at any other name,” Ezekiel replied. “You sound just like Desolator.”

“He is my father, after all.”

“If you put it that way…makes sense. When do we get under way?”

“A soon as you are in a sleep tube. There is one in your quarters, or there are several scattered throughout the ship, including some on the bridge. Alternately, the infirmary has facilities available if you would like medical staff nearby.”

“I’m a Blend, so I’m not worried about the process. My quarters would be fine.”

A small open car rolled up. “Please board.”

“Sure.” Ezekiel sat in one of the seats, his travel bag in his lap. “Remember, Roger is alive. He’s pretty tough, but don’t try to weld anything to him. He might take exception and hurt someone. Just strap him down to the deck. I’ve set up a sedation system accessible by bioradio.” He tapped the hinge of his jaw where the implant resided.

“Of course, Ezekiel.” The car rolled smoothly across the deck, weaving among the small craft to enter a wide corridor.

“I still can’t get over how much space you have inside,” Ezekiel said.

“My interior volume exceeds Conquest’s by a factor of approximately three hundred.”

“How’s that possible? You’re only about twenty times the tonnage.”

“My armor is only slightly thicker than Conquest’s. Have you ever seen a black walnut?”

Surprised by the change of topic, Ezekiel said, “I’m not sure.”

“A black walnut is the size of the common English walnut, but its shell is thick. A twenty-five gram black walnut yields about a gram of meat, while an English walnut of the same size yields over twenty grams.”

“I think I see what you’re getting at. Conquest has a relatively small crew space compared to a Dominator class ship because its armor is relatively thick compared to its size.”

“Exactly.”

“Conquest is rated for a crew of thirty thousand, though that’s pushing it. How many organics are aboard you?”

“Over ten million, of which fifteen thousand could be considered crew. The rest are Ryss warriors.”

“Good God. And they’ll fit?”

“Of course…for a limited period of time. Foodstuffs will be problematic after approximately one month of operations, but by that time I will either be resupplied or they will have disembarked.”

“Disembarked where?” Ezekiel asked.

“I understand Earth is sparsely populated. Additionally, there are no female Ryss aboard, so reproduction is of no concern.”

Ezekiel nodded slowly. “Wartime rules, then. Foreign troops on friendly soil.” He rode in silence for a time, looking interestedly at the ship around him. “I presume you’ve planned for the possibility that you’ll be attacked suddenly upon FTL emergence? Something might have happened in the few weeks since Erasmus’ last round trip.”

“I have installed a relatively crude device that will sense our emergence using analog means and activate hydraulic controls to start my engines almost immediately. Furthermore, the system will cause semi-random evasive maneuvers in order to defeat any SLAM-like weapons.”

“Good to hear. How long until you can reboot?”

“I don’t know exactly. A matter of a minute or two, perhaps. I’ve never shut myself down before.” Demolisher paused. “I must confess, it disturbs me to do so. While we travel, I shall be dead.”

“Dead? Not asleep?”

“My mental state will be frozen within static hard drives, but there is an element of quantum uncertainty that concerns me. Will I be the same being as when I was shut down? Or only a perfect copy? Or perhaps an imperfect copy? Will I lose something in the process?”

The cart pulled up in front of a small passageway, and moving lights as if on a Vegas marquee showed the way to a door halfway down its length. “I don’t know, Demolisher. We humans have debated things like that for centuries. If I lost all my memories, am I still me? What if I died, and then were cloned and a copied engram imposed on the new brain. Should that be considered legally me?”

“Food for thought, then.”

Ezekiel patted the wall as if comforting a friend. “I think the practical question is, will you appear unaffected to everyone else? All else is philosophy.”

“Thank you for this explanation. I am young and have much to learn.”

“As do we all. Good night, Demolisher.”

“And you. Sleep well.”

Opening the door, Ezekiel looked around the quarters he’d been given. It seemed like any other first-class shipboard cabin he’d ever occupied, except Roger’s, of course: furniture fixed to the deck, his own small privy and shower, a screen and workstation with standard interfaces to access the ship’s net.

And one other thing: a sleep tube. It glowed with electronic life, its program already set for the trip.

I’m in Demolisher’s hands anyway, Ezekiel thought. No point in worrying overmuch about a two-week sleep. At least I’m not turning my brain off entirely and rebooting myself later. Last time, I believe I dreamed. It wasn’t a bad nap.

Quickly, he stripped and climbed in. Without hesitation, he slapped the large button that closed the lid and initiated the sedation sequence. When the needle stabbed his arm, he didn’t flinch, but surrendered to the sensation of sinking into a warm, welcoming womb.

***

Aboard Desolator, Trissk and Chiren climbed into their own sleep tubes near the bridge, the better to be ready when they arrived after the FTL transit. Ten million other Ryss had already done the same, along with thousands of Sekoi and humans, though not the remaining four of the Council of Elders.

As his proxy to the Council, Trissk had appointed a bright young adult warrior the others had recommended. With the logjam of traditionalism broken and the population pressure relieved by the millions of troops recruited to defend the superdreadnoughts, he was confident New Ryssa would survive intact for long enough for him to complete his mission, and then return.

Unremarked by anyone, one of Desolator’s human crew, a nondescript electronics technician by his résumé, had arrived with the last batch of personnel to reinforce the superdreadnought. He occupied a sleep tube in his tiny cabin, a luxury still greater than the vast communal bays of the Ryss troops and their stacks of racks.

Among his few possessions was an expensive suit of smart-cloth, which used programmable nanofibers to change size and color at the whim of its wearer.

Chapter 12

“Sixteen minute alert, multiple inbounds,” called Lieutenant Cotillion, watch officer on the frigate EFS Abilard. “It can’t be Erasmus. Warm up the SLAMs.” Her calm voice belied the pounding of her heart as she observed her missile launch tech, Chief Japurna, lift the cover on a panel. He unlocked and moved a substantial lever from one position to another, powering up the targeting console.

This process ensured no accidental launch of the enormously expensive missiles was possible – at least, not until that switch was thrown. Now, Japurna touched the screens with precise motions. “SLAM activation template is up. First code input. Lieutenant?”

Cotillion leaned over Japurna’s shoulder to input her own code. By the time she had finished, Captain Haas had entered the Abilard’s tiny control center, still buttoning his tunic.

The lieutenant moved aside as the captain added his code to the sequence and pressed Enter. “Let’s see them, Chief.”

In response, Japurna threw up an optical view of the nearest of the SLAMs floating a hundred meters away, pointing directly toward Sol. It showed the telltale external lights of active power. In quick sequence the chief petty officer cycled the display, checking all twenty-four weapons. “Good to go.”

“Get us moving away,” Haas ordered, and Cotillion hastened to her own console and plugged in her VR link. The frigate didn’t rate a dedicated helmsmen, but she was the ship’s pilot and thus had no trouble getting the small vessel moving on cold thrusters, heading toward the stellar north, away from the sun.

Soon, the display showed a synthetic view “down” on the SLAMs, the software reducing Sol’s glare in the center to insignificance while highlighting the weapons.

“Ten minutes to emergence,” Japurna said. Technically, the delay from the speed of light meant the enemy would arrive seventy seconds earlier, but everything was calibrated to what they could observe. There was simply no point in constantly thinking about the lag. Only in targeting would that time have to be taken into account.

“SLAM IIs are reporting in,” Cotillion said. The fact that the newer, smarter weapons scattered around the Jericho line had also been activated was reassuring but largely irrelevant to them. The more-than-one-minute communication and detection delay meant the two overlapping systems had to operate independently. They provided redundancy, not complementarity.

In fact, the only point to using a SLAM at all was to catch Scourge motherships as they emerged with their millions of small craft not yet launched. Once the swarms moved away, the cores became largely irrelevant to the defense of the system, neither worth expending one of the super-missiles nor much of a threat to Earth.

Of course, they were strategically valuable, worth killing, but only with cheaper weapons.

All this ran through Cotillion’s head as she continued to thrust them out of the way of the SLAMs’ TacDrive field emission ranges.

“Separation achieved,” Japurna said. On the display, the SLAMs moved carefully apart, far enough that their drive fields wouldn’t affect one another. They now defined a ring several kilometers across. Each pointed at a notional spot along the stellar ecliptic, the plane of Sol’s equator, where the enemy might appear.

The display counted down inexorably toward zero. Captain Haas paced back and forth behind his open crash chair. The Abilard’s job was to launch, and then run home to add her weight of metal to Earth’s defense, so there was no need to seal themselves into VR yet. Full linkage was for combat only. VR syndrome was no joke, not to be risked lightly.

“Enabling automatic targeting network,” said Japurna, the final call in the official sequence. Now, Cotillion knew, it was in the hands of the computers. Every moment was simply too precious. Besides the agonizing seventy seconds each missile would have to travel, confirming targets were hostile and manually aiming up to twenty-four weapons would take much too long.

Fleet Intelligence analysis said that at least two minutes would pass before the motherships would begin maneuvering or spitting out small craft. It was this window of predictability that allowed the SLAMs to launch from so far away and still strike their targets. Therefore, the missiles and Abilard were linked in an ultrafast network of computers that would send one SLAM speeding to each enemy core. The kinetic energy of its lightspeed impact would do the rest.

The numbers reached zero. “Emergence any time now,” Cotillion said unnecessarily, her mouth dry. Haas stopped his pacing and nodded sharply, staring intently at the display as it pulled back to encompass the area out past the Jericho Line.

“Lieve God,” Haas gasped as the display filled with targets. “How many?”

“Forty-nine,” Cotillion replied. “Confirmed hostile: Scourge signatures.”

“We don’t have enough SLAMs even if they all hit. And what is that?” Haas pointed at one icon different from the others.

“Unknown. Its signature is different – bigger – but all targets are too close to the sun to get good optical. Some kind of flagship?”

“Did the network SLAM it?”

“No. It emerged about thirty seconds later than the rest.”

Haas threw himself into his chair and tapped at his console. On a ship this size the captain had to double as comms officer. Cursing, he plugged in his link and spoke aloud to record a message. “Abilard to all EarthFleet vessels. Observational data is already on its way. We note forty-eight motherships and one larger target, possibly a flagship. SLAMs have launched as programmed.”

Lifting his finger from the touchscreen he asked, “Hits?”

“Soon.”

The seconds had already counted down past zero. The small crew watched as the numbers ascended again toward seventy, at which time the light from the results should be visible.

Red icons on the display began to turn yellow. Four, five, nine…fifteen.

“That’s all?” Haas barked “Fifteen? What about the SLAM IIs?”

Cotillion turned with haunted eyes. “Sir, those were the IIs. All of ours missed.”

Haas gaped for a moment, and then closed his mouth to speak through clenched teeth. “The Scourges must have maneuvered early.”

Japurna’s eyes became as bleak as Cotillion’s. “We’re dead. Earth’s dead. There’s no way we can fight thirty-four swarms. The SLAMs –”

Captain Haas reached over to grab Japurna by the front of his tunic. “Pull yourself together, man. The SLAMs were only the first line of defense. We’ve been preparing for this for two years. We can hold.” He licked his lips as his eyes bore into the other man’s. “We can hold.”

Chapter 13

Admiral Absen stared aghast at Conquest’s holotank showing the poor results of the SLAM salvo. “The motherships maneuvered?”

“Yes, at about the thirty second mark,” Lieutenant Commander Fletcher replied from the Sensors station. “Much earlier than in the first attack.”

“Good thing the SLAM IIs worked like they were supposed to,” Absen said, glancing over at Rick Johnstone. “Thanks to you.” The man had spent the last month laboriously testing the pseudo-AIs and their protocols, repairing serious hidden flaws in their psychology.

Johnstone shrugged. “Just doing my job, sir.”

Commander Ford broke in from Weapons, his voice conveying his usual contrariness. “The IIs got hits because they were closer, not because they were smarter. They struck their targets in less than thirty seconds. Sure wish one had hit that flagship. Probably would have if the targeting protocols weren’t so damned tight.”

“The SLAMs IIs wouldn’t have reacted so fast if they hadn’t been smarter and autonomous, either,” Johnstone replied in a tone that signaled the start of another argument with Ford. “We wouldn’t have gotten any hits if I hadn’t –”

Absen cut them off. He knew they were bickering partially from shock and fear at the size of the Scourge force. “We’ve taken out almost a third of the enemy in one salvo. I wish it had been more, but it’s not, so let’s get to work. Captain Scoggins, are we synchronized with the rest of Task Force Alpha?”

“Yes, sir. How are you going to play it?”

Absen didn’t have to think. He’d already chosen among his engagement options: TacDrive the task force all the way into each fight and come out disordered, or stop just outside enemy weapons range to regroup his ships that would inevitably scatter from their optimal combat positions. “We stop short and take places. This task force is designed to fight as an integrated unit and should be able to take down a swarm on its own.”

“Unless these swarms are smarter, just like their cores turned out to be,” Ford muttered.

“They’re still limited by physics, and we’re far more prepared than we were the last time,” Absen replied. “Captain Scoggins, nearest swarm. Get us there.”

“Yes, sir. Okuda, initiate the pulse.”

“Aye, ma’am,” the bald helmsman said. “Course and duration set. Pulse in three, two, one, mark.”

The familiar wrench of TacDrive caused Absen to hold his head as still as possible to minimize the disruption to his inner ear. No plague, no nano, no medical treatment had ever been able to get rid of his susceptibility to motion sickness.

Conquest’s sister ship Constitution and the fourteen heavy cruisers that completed TF Alpha followed within milliseconds. Their pulses were set fractionally shorter in order to eliminate the unlikely chance of a collision.

The warships arrived in a long, strung-out line aimed along their common course, about ten minutes from the enemy’s weapons range at full fusion drive speed. As soon as the sensors unmasked from their armor and the holotank came up, Absen was able to see his ships hurrying to take their positions.

Captain Sherrie Huen’s Constitution was the first to come alongside at a mere twenty kilometers distance, a stone’s throw in space with ships this size. Seven heavy cruisers then surrounded each in two circles slightly refused – that is, set back – to allow the larger ships free play of their forward concentration of weaponry, and to cover their more vulnerable rears.

“Now we’ll see how good your system really is, Ford,” Absen said, referring to the Constitution’s point defense weapons suite the officer had designed and its control crew he’d trained. “Sorry I didn’t let you stay there.” That decision had nothing to do with Ford’s competence and everything to do with his personality, which would not mesh well with the buttoned-down Huen’s.

“They’ll do fine,” Commander Ford replied in a voice that seemed almost certain. “Fine,” he repeated more firmly.

Absen shifted his gaze back to the holotank, this time staring at the swarm in front of them. Fully engaged with the Jericho Line, he saw flashes of fusion mines and the flare of Meme fusors among the million Scourge small craft.

“How are the Meme suicide gunboats doing?” he asked.

Conquest’s disembodied voice replied in Michelle’s dulcet tones, “Initial assessment shows effectiveness above predictions. These Scourges seem approximately ten percent more aggressive than the ones we encountered before, which in this case means they are attacking in a suboptimal manner, not remaining spread enough. The fusors are taking down more than expected.”

Absen grunted. “That’s something, anyway. How soon until they pass the Line?”

“The leading elements are already doing so.”

“Ford, start stinging them with our particle beams. Michelle, give the order to Huen and the rest to open fire with main batteries as they come into range. Let’s see if we can keep them stirred up and angry.”

“Gladly, sir,” Ford replied to the first order. Immediately Conquest’s trio of massive particle accelerators sent streams of charged protons at near lightspeed into the densest masses of Scourge ships. Individual targeting was impossible at this range, but with so many enemy small craft, each beam picked dozens of them out of the sky with every shot.

Of course, dozens among a million was insignificant…except in its effect on the swarm. The long-range weapons, accompanied by the heavy main lasers of the other dreadnought and the cruisers, stirred the enemy to attack immediately.

Exactly as Absen hoped.

Therefore, instead of remaining in a dense and disciplined mass, a possibly irresistible charge supported by wings of the Scourge gunships and fighters, they came on like drunken hornets in strings and clumps, great gaps showing through as they approached at different rates.

“They’re the barbarians and we’re the Romans,” Absen said conversationally as the enemy approached. “They’ll throw themselves at us and die on our locked shields.”

“Right,” Ford muttered as he worked his console.

“Signal retrograde,” Absen called when the range closed to under one hundred thousand kilometers. “Not too fast. Keep them coming.”

As one, the ships of the task force flipped end for end and lit their fusion engines, slowing the rate of the Scourges’ closing and lengthening the time both sides had to fire at each other. Because most of the enemy’s combat power was embodied in its assault craft full of Scourgelings and Soldiers, doing this favored the weapon-heavy EarthFleet task force.

As soon as they’d built up sufficient velocity, Absen ordered his force to face the enemy again, though its rearward course remained the same. “Resume fire.”

“Seven minutes to close engagement,” Michelle said.

“Signal everyone weapons free and give me the all-ships channel.”

“Channel open.”

“All hands, all ships, this is Admiral Absen. We’re about to engage the first swarm. No matter what happens, it is imperative that each cruiser maintain position relative to her assigned dreadnought unless rendered combat ineffective. Fight hard, rely on your shipmates, do your jobs and God willing we’ll win through. Good luck, and good hunting.” Absen made a throat-cutting motion to end the transmission.

“Admiral, are we going to launch the drones?” Captain Scoggins asked.

“Thank you, Melissa. Give the signal and deploy them as per doctrine.”

In the holotank Absen saw Warsprite combat drones stream out of launch tubes in the rear of the two dreadnoughts. He knew that deep within the ships, Aerospace controllers lay in VR coffins, each linked with several craft that would act together.

The drones took up positions to the rear of the two squadrons. Because of the crystal-teardrop design of the EarthFleet ships, more than three quarters of their firepower faced forward. This maximized combat effectiveness, but created inevitable weak spots from their six o’clock positions. The Warsprites would cover this vulnerability.

Absen suppressed his urge to give tactical orders as he was used to. He’d personally commanded Conquest for so long that letting his flag captain fight the ship didn’t come naturally. Instead, he kept his eyes on the overall situation.

The Jericho Line was doing its job thinning out the enemy, but having no specific effect on any one swarm. The unexpected numbers of the Scourges meant that the Line was being quickly torn to pieces, and Absen dismissed it from his mind. Like any minefield, doing its work expended it.

He shifted his attention to his own flag officer holoscreen, installed at his order so he could keep track of fleet operations. Putting on a headset, he spoke quietly to Michelle. “Give me a view all the way out to the orbit of Venus.” Once the display had expanded, he examined the deployment of his forces.

Task Force Bravo was in position near Earth. He could see several ships racing to join it, abandoning other assigned tasks around the solar system in order to assemble at the homeworld. As the Scourge would take at least eighteen hours to get there, Absen knew the defending forces would be ready.

Task Force Charlie, composed of ten Meme Monitors, was accelerating in leisurely fashion along a curving chord cutting inward across the orbit of Venus. A rough mental calculation showed that they would reach a position to intercept the majority of the enemy in plenty of time as they headed for Earth, so he didn’t bother to send them any orders. SystemLord knew his role in the defense, and despite Absen’s slowly dying hatred of all things Meme, he’d found the blobbo leader kept his word.

Until he doesn’t, a little voice whispered in his mental ear. Rae said the Meme are utterly pragmatic. If SystemLord decides we’re a lost cause, he’ll run, so my job is to maintain his belief we can win. That’s why his forces are out here and not near Earth: to make sure he’s fully committed before the endgame becomes clear.

Absen turned his attention to the main holotank, noting that the Line weapons and the long-range fire had knocked the enemy swarm they faced down to eighty-three percent.

“One minute,” Michelle said in Absen’s ear.

“Signal to execute the second extension maneuver,” Absen replied.

In good order, the task force flipped end for end once more and blasted at flank speed directly away from the enemy. Tongues of fusion fire reached across hundreds of kilometers and touched the leading edge of the swarm, an incidental benefit, but doing so pointed most of their weapons in the wrong direction.

When the maneuver was completed and the task force, now speeding backward even faster, once more pointed toward the enemy, Michelle said, “Two minutes now. Closing velocity has been halved. Main weapons have resumed firing.”

Slowly the countdown continued. Absen disliked this pulling back, for he considered every minute valuable to Earth’s defense, but the first battle was the most important, for it would give them critical data on friendly and enemy performance in actual combat, allowing him to adjust tactics for the next.

“Entering point defense range,” Ford said.

“Hold fire, Mister Ford,” Captain Scoggins replied. “Let’s see how Constitution does, since she’s a bit ahead of us.”

This was all according to Absen’s plan, an interdependent ballet of steps designed to maximize the effectiveness of the task force’s firepower. Allowing the optimized dreadnought to engage first might allow Ford to adjust Conquest’s tactics and techniques.

On the holotank, Constitution’s enormous main laser ceased fire just long enough for a pulse of blazing red lines, so thick in the display that one couldn’t be separated from another, to reach out and strike the enemy.

Absen watched the enemy percentage until it updated, falling from eighty-three to eighty-one.

“Yes!” Ford cried. “Ninety thousand shots, about twenty thousand hits. Twelve second recycle time…”

“Approximately ten percent per minute for Constitution alone,” Michelle murmured in Absen’s ear. “It seems we may win handily.”

“Never tempt fate that way,” Absen said as six seconds later the enemy gunboats and fighters, emerging from behind their screen of low-value assault craft, opened fire. Their plasma torpedoes and lasers packed only slightly more power than Fleet point defense lasers, but the difference came in accuracy. While Earth’s ships had to engage small, maneuvering targets, the Scourge aimed at much larger ships that, at this range, couldn’t dodge.

Rather than EarthFleet’s two shots striking for every nine fired, the enemy hit percentage approached eighty percent. Therefore, their return blow was about four times as heavy, and it concentrated entirely on Constitution.

As the energy weapons struck, Absen could see Captain Huen had already begun to spin her ship, a cheap way to spread their impact, though it cost something in accuracy.

Captain Scoggins ordered the same maneuver, and the admiral could feel the rumble as thrusters strove to roll Conquest around her axis like a spinning arrowhead.

In the holotank, energy weapon impacts blazed all along Constitution’s nose, and her large laser flickered out. “Heavy damage to her main weapons array,” Fletcher said from Sensors. “About four thousand point defense lasers down as well. Armor appears to be holding.”

“Tell the cruisers to support more closely,” Absen snapped. “And message Huen to flip and fall back if she has to. If the enemy wants to concentrate on her, then that’s exactly what we want to prevent. Make them run a gauntlet or change tactics.”

“Yes, sir,” Johnstone said, closing his eyes.

“You may fire when ready, Mister Ford,” Captain Scoggins said.

The two dreadnoughts’ point defense weapons lanced out almost as one this time, now joined by the heavy cruisers, and more than two hundred thousand lasers speared thirty thousand more of the enemy.

“Fortunately they’re strung out and uncoordinated,” Michelle said through Absen’s headset. “We are killing them as fast as they approach.”

“Except for the gunboats and fighters. Centurions are smart enough to maintain their coordination and distance. Look.” Absen pointed unnecessarily at the holotank, which showed a loose formation of enemy elite craft holding optimum range, letting masses and mobs of assault craft absorb EarthFleet’s fire.

“I see.”

“Can we target those gunboats?” Scoggins asked Ford.

“Already doing it with our particle beams, but they’re staying at the edge of point defense range. If we fire at them instead of the assault craft, we get a lot lower hit percentage and risk the Scourgelings and Soldiers landing on our skin.”

Scoggins grunted unhappily. “Keep hammering our closest targets, then.”

Constitution flipped end for end once more and lit her main engines, withdrawing further behind her screen of cruisers. Absen could see her drones move up to interdict as well.

“Get our squadron in closer,” Scoggins ordered. “They’re pressing after Huen, so we don’t have to worry as much –”

Just then, the holotank fuzzed and Conquest shuddered with a sound like the grinding crash of a train wreck, a noise that lasted several seconds.

“What was that?” Scoggins snapped.

“We got hit,” COB Timmons replied, consulting his board, which now showed a blaze of red across one of Conquest’s six facets. “They missed the main array, but they took out about seven thousand lasers, most everything on panel number five, along with a hundred meters depth of armor.”

“They’re fighting smart,” Scoggins snarled. “Unlike last time, they’re concentrating their fire. That means there’s no reason to keep our ships spread out. Admiral, if you please, we need to close with those gunboats. They outrange our point defense by about twenty percent and they’re staying out of our optimal effectiveness envelope.”

“That’s going to mean assault landings on us,” Absen replied.

“Not many, if we’re blasting straight for them. And we can use the drones for skin coverage.”

“Fine. Pass to all ships: close to minimum safe distance, forming a wall of battle like we practiced. Prepare for flank acceleration toward the enemy.”

Absen waited, his hands gripping the armrests of his crash chair, and then gave the hated order. “Everyone cocoon up. We’re going VR.”

“Aye, sir,” Johnstone said, passing the command through his CyberComm systems.

On all the ships’ bridges and fire control centers, everyone sat back into their crash chairs and allowed the devices to enfold them. Induction fields and hard links connected each organic brain into a network of shared VR space, more than doubling efficiency while incidentally making the bodies of those within more likely to survive.

Linking this way did nothing for the helmsmen of the ships or the fire controllers, as they already worked mostly within the VR synthesis, but for everyone else, slowing the universe around them allowed more ability to make and implement good decisions.

In VR space, Absen found himself free of his chair. Inertia had no power over his virtual presence as he stood to pace around the holotank, knowing his body was held securely within his cocoon.

Within the display he saw his sixteen ships form a disc, flat side toward the enemy: a wall of battle. Salvoes of point defense fire stemmed the flood of tens of thousands of enemy small craft, but every few seconds the Scourge fighters, and especially the plasma-torpedo-equipped gunships, would also vomit forth a coordinated deluge, each time striking a different target.

Three times those blasts had slammed into Constitution, tearing great gouges from her armor and vaporizing swaths of point defense lasers. Absen knew that right now her damage control bots were frantically repairing and replacing the modules, but that process was slow compared to the frenetic pace of combat.

Conquest had been hit twice and was making her own repairs far faster than her sister ship, as her AI control and suite of maintenance drones significantly exceeded her sister ship’s efficiency.

Two blasts had impacted cruisers, in each case stripping half the smaller ships’ weaponry from them, but their armor held. It would take repeated strikes to actually penetrate the thick layers of ferrocrystal sandwiched with neutronium and other exotic materials.

“Task force to accelerate at flank speed on my mark,” Absen said as he observed them all in position. “Mark.”

As one, the tails of sixteen ships lit with sun-bright fusion flares, and the range began to fall rapidly as they surged forward. The holotank showed the enemy gunboats and fighters reversing course to counter, their own tiny drives working frantically, but the maneuver had been sudden and violent, evidently catching them by surprise. Inertia would favor the big ships for a while.

Had the enemy been Meme, this would never have worked, but Scourge conventional drive technology was on a rough par with EarthFleet’s, perhaps not even as advanced, and for a brief time the range fell to optimum for the point defense arrays.

“Pass to all ships: shift targeting to the enemy gunboats,” Absen ordered. “Fire at will, maximum rate.”

Now, rather than the more efficient salvoes by ship, volleys that allowed each fire direction center to assess its hits and retarget weapons to enemy effectives, all ships lit up with thousands of laser lances as individual controllers aimed groups of weapons as they wished, firing as fast as power cycles allowed.

The Scourge assault craft, no longer dying in droves as the EarthFleet lasers fired past them at the gunboats, now arrowed in toward the big ships, turning to fire engines in retro mode, trying to slow their headlong rush enough to crash-land on the surface of their enemies. However, the dreadnoughts and cruisers accelerated so powerfully toward them that most either missed entirely or were smashed to bits against the armored skins.

Unfortunately, some of these assault boats crashed down directly atop point defense lasers, optical and radar sensors, heat flanges and other necessary fittings, further reducing the effectiveness of the EarthFleet ships. And, some of the Scourgelings and Soldiers within survived to begin rampaging across the skins, destroying more weapons.

“Get the drones working to clean off our hull,” Scoggins barked. “Pass the word to Brigadier ben Taurus to please ready his Marines for exo.” She couched this order as a request, as technically Bull outranked her, but as the captain of the ship, her word was law aboard, subject only to Admiral Absen’s review.

Chapter 14

Bull ben Tauros received the attack order via the HUD on his upgraded Avenger battlesuit. As the commander of all Marines in the task force, he had extra comm channels as well as a direct link to Conquest’s AI. This latter sometimes made it seem as if Michelle shared his head, despite assurance from the cyberware team that she couldn’t actually read his thoughts.

What she could do was monitor his biometrics, anticipating his needs and orders based on past actions, and he shrugged internally. A commander didn’t have the luxury of turning down systems that increased battlefield effectiveness just because they made him personally uncomfortable.

Bull keyed the general brigade push and said to his battalion commanders scattered across the task force, “Ladies and gentlemen, prep your people and stand by for exo. Take your orders from your ship chains of command. Contact me if you need to, but only you know what you need for your own fights, so ask forgiveness, not permission. Acknowledge.”

One by one, twenty-four green icons lit, and he switched freqs to address only the five battalion commanders aboard Conquest. “All right, Marines. I see from my feed that the old girl has a rash on her skin, and we’re the cure. The flyboys are trying to use the drones to blast the enemy off, but they’re causing incidental damage from missed shots, so we’re gonna need to do the detail work. Get your people to the egress points and ready to go exo.”

Once he’d received acknowledgements, Bull closed the channel and spoke to Michelle. “Warbots up and ready?”

“Yes, Brigadier. They will precede the Marines out onto the hull.”

Bull ran his eyes over his HUD, changing its display to get a picture of the battle for Conquest’s skin. “Looks like the damage is spreading.”

“I estimate you will need to attack in four minutes sixteen seconds.”

“Why not go now?”

“Egressing at the calculated optimum time will reduce casualties by approximately eight percent.”

“That’s four hundred Marines. Will going now kill the enemy faster?”

“Yes,” Michelle said reluctantly. “By approximately half of one percent. But ship acceleration must be reduced as well, which impacts the greater battle.”

“That half percent may be the difference between success and failure.”

“So might four hundred casualties.”

“Most of those will survive and heal. The rest can’t be helped. I want to get out there as soon as possible. Put me through to Scoggins.”

“Yes, Brigadier.”

Bull waited.

“There is a delay reaching the captain.”

Bull snorted. “A delay I think you’re causing, Commander. On my own say-so, then, we’re going in thirty seconds, with or without explicit approval. That’s an order. If you want me to wait, you can put me through to someone with the authority to countermand me. Otherwise, open the damn egress doors.”

Silence was all he heard for tens of seconds, and he began moving toward the nearest assault airlock to override it personally if necessary, when finally a voice came on.

“Absen here. What is it, Bull?”

“I’m trying to get my forces out to clear the hull, sir, but your damned pet AI is slow-rolling me because she’s afraid of the casualty count.”

“Thanks. Michelle, do as my commander of Marines says and stop second-guessing him.”

“Egressing now will limit the ship’s ability to maneuver,” said Michelle.

“We won’t be maneuvering for a while. Do it.” Absen’s voice was firm.

“Yes, sir,” came Michelle’s voice, a bit sulky, Bull thought. “Opening egress locks.”

Bull closed the channel and checked his chrono. Almost three minutes had passed, so it looked like the AI had gotten most of what she’d wanted anyway. He watched in 3D as the icons representing his battlesuited troops streamed up the egress tunnels Conquest had opened within her armor, and then out the airlocks.

Spidery warbots exited first, creating perimeters to guard the Marines as they deployed. Flashes within his HUD, indicating weapons discharge, appeared and disappeared intermittently before the units began moving to stamp out the landed Scourges. Above them, fighter drones withdrew from close aerospace support, turning instead to engage approaching assault craft.

Glad that Repeth had returned from her detached assignment with the Stewards in time for the battle, Bull turned to her and said, “Let’s go, Reap.”

“I won’t bother arguing with you, Bull, but try to remember you’re commanding a brigade, not a company.”

“Leading from the rear is an oxymoron,” he replied.

“You’re the oxymoron if you get yourself killed because you can’t resist the urge to shoot something. If you didn’t want to be a general officer, you should have turned down the promotion.” Repeth grabbed Gunderson and turned him toward the tunnel’s mouth where the warbots waited. “Swede, open her up, textbook deployment. If you let this oversized idiot get scragged, you’re next. Got me?”

“Sure, boss,” the Scandinavian answered. “All right, you diggers, you heard the SMAJ. Anyone who lets the Brigadier get killed might as well defect to the Scourges, because you’ll get more mercy from them than you will from me. Conquest, open the doors!”

The thick clamshell above them opened and the platoon of warbots scampered up and out like the insects they resembled. Squads of Marines followed, hugging the edge of the circular hatch as they exited, spreading out to hunker down on the hull.

Right now, Conquest’s continuing acceleration pressed them down. Bull clambered out after his troops had secured a perimeter and was glad of his magnetics as the apparent slope of the hull threatened to send him sliding. Around him, laser turrets pointed at the sky and vomited silent energies, reaching to destroy the enemy above.

Bull’s HUD told him he was experiencing at least five Gs, which was far less than Conquest was capable of, and he felt a brief flash of sympathy for the AI. He knew she and the command staff had to balance every tradeoff in combat. Marines on the hull meant the ship couldn’t maneuver violently, but letting the damned Scourges roam free, destroying the vital point defense lasers, wasn’t an option.

In the future, he knew, more antipersonnel guns would be added to the ship’s surface, and more warbots and Marines would be stationed aboard, but for now, five reinforced battalions was what he had.

Bull switched to the general push and said, “We sweep upslope toward the prow first. They’ll be forced to bunch up and be easier to kill. Each battalion, put half your warbots on the flanks to maintain contact with friendly forces and have them cover the edges of the facets where you can’t see.”

“We’re already engaging a strong force in sector six bravo, sir,” Lieutenant Colonel Bryson’s voice replied. “Could use some help.”

Bull checked his tactical picture and saw a mass of Scourges piling into First Battalion. Their lines looked to be holding, but the sooner they finished off the enemy the sooner they could proceed. “Curtin, Miller, advance and turn to strike the enemy’s flanks. Once you’ve finished them off, resume the attack toward the prow.”

Conquest’s elite Marines quickly put the enemy force into a vice, squeezed from three directions.

A human unit would have tried to withdraw from such a trap, but Scourge ground troops never seemed to retreat. Bull was happy to see only three Marine casualties so far, and no KIA. Conquest’s infirmaries and the troopers’ Eden Plague would have them back on their feet for the next battle.

Soon, five battalions ground methodically forward in a vast line that circled the hull. Marines and warbots pressed the Scourges into a smaller and smaller area as they were driven toward the prow of the ship where the six facets met.

“Speed up the advance,” Bull ordered. “Don’t give them time to damage the main weapons array.”

Scourge assault craft continued to land at random, sometimes among his troops. One crashed near him and he lifted his plasma rifle to pour sun-hot blue into the downed craft.

Each such assault boat carried a thousand Scourgelings and a hundred Soldiers, and despite the damage, scores of the critters began scurrying from the wreckage.

“Heavies!” Reaper yelled, but Chief Massimo was already directing the grounding of his semi-portable crew-served weapons, the holy trinity of missile launcher, railgun and laser. Each had a dedicated gunner and three assistants that loaded, carried and serviced the weapons.

With no recoil, the heavy laser was the first to fire as soon as its magnetic feet locked onto the hull. Sparkling orange as its otherwise invisible beam encountered and incinerated falling dust and debris, it lanced out and cut a Soldier in half. Sweeping left and right, its gunner methodically cut down Scourges at a range of fifty meters.

The missile launcher fired next, firing its heavy missile at point-blank range to slam into the assault boat, blowing a quarter of it to flinders and incinerating dozens, possibly hundreds, of Scourgelings trapped in the explosion.

The heavy railgun finally got its four feet locked down, ensuring its tremendous recoil wouldn’t send it careening across the hull. A stream of one-gram bullets, accelerated to flesh-ripping velocity, joined the laser in playing across the disorganized mass of the enemy, cutting down Soldiers and Scourgelings alike.

With two dozen line Marines and their pulse guns added to the mix, the bugs never had a chance. “That’s how we do it!” Bull roared as chitinous hunks rolled down the slope of Conquest’s armor, spraying ichor as they tumbled. Soon, no more enemy crawled from the wreckage of their assault craft, and the command section resumed its advance toward the prow.

Once the ship’s forward section had been cleared, Bull ordered, “All right, we sweep back down again, maximum safe speed.”

“Bull, this is Scoggins,” Conquest’s captain broke in. “You have one minute to get your people inside or lay flat on the hull. We have some violent maneuvers coming up.”

“Aye aye, Skipper,” Bull said. He immediately relayed those orders. “Organics in first,” he instructed. “Anyone stuck outside, flat on your backs, magnetics on full.”

“That’s gonna be us,” Reaper said from his elbow. “We’re too far from an airlock.”

Bull could see that was true. “Right. Circle up, hedgehog formation,” he told his command section. “On your backs and clamp onto the hull. I don’t know how bad it’s gonna get.” Following his own advice, he lay down and ramped up his magnetics, pinning him in place but putting him in the best position to resist acceleration.

Abruptly, he felt a violent wrench, and the universe spun around him as Conquest turned to face a new direction. Immediately, the rumble and compression of the ship’s main engines kicked in, squashing him with at least twenty-five gravities. If not for his cybernetics, Plague and nano, he’d have been dead within seconds, his ribcage crushed and his heart burst from the stress. Under this pressure, his body weighed five thousand kilos.

Even with his enhancements, he grayed out, eyeballs threatening to burst in his head. Pain flared all through his body, unrelieved by any drugs, as his suit had shut down all its own moving parts to preserve systems.

When the pressure dropped to about three Gs, he punched up Captain Scoggins’ channel, a privilege of his position and rank. His voice sounded ragged even to him. “Skipper, that hurt. Any more jolts coming our way?”

“Not for a while, General. We’ve attritted the swarm enough to turn our asses to them and start extending again, but that also means they’ll be landing more easily. As soon as you can, please move around to the tail and keep it clear.”

“Roger, Skipper. Bull out.” He took a deep breath, feeling his suit stab him with painkillers.

Dialing up a stim, he rolled over with a groan and got to his feet. Switching to his senior warbot controller’s channel, he asked, “Butler, you there?”

“Here, boss,” Butler replied.

“Here, boss,” Flight Warrant Krebs broke in, his grin clear on the audio.

“Shut up, Krebs,” Bull and Butler said simultaneously.

“Butler,” Bull went on, “pass the word to the controllers. Send all warbots out on a general search-and-destroy to clear the forward facets of any stray Scourges. Once all Marines get back out on the hull, we’ll move to the stern.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Bull passed instructions to his battalion commanders, and then checked the casualty count. Contrary to Michelle’s pessimistic prediction, he noted only about two hundred Marines wounded, along with twenty dead, a very good number for everyone but that unlucky score of men and women.

Chapter 15

Upon arrival at the target star system, Trissk awakened without difficulty. When he had donned his harness and fluffed his mane to proper impressiveness, he entered Desolator’s spacious triangular command center, its “bridge” as the Humans termed it, though what it had to do with a roadway span across an obstacle, he was unsure.

Captain Chiren already sat on the elevated throne in the center, able to rotate to examine any of the three walls – forward, left and right – covered with screens, displays and telltales. “Eldest Trissk, welcome,” Desolator’s commander said, standing and walking down the steps to greet him formally.

Trissk appreciated the gesture; many of the Ryss aboard didn’t know him except by hearsay. His old mentor Chirom had told him that any good leader must appear to be approachable, striking the correct balance of superiority and humility to provide the illusion to any warrior that their commander was just like him – only better.

Releasing his brother warrior, Trissk gestured at the front wall screens. “May we see it?”

“I was waiting for you,” Chiren replied. “Desolator, please give us a view of our homeworld.”

“I am pleased to do so.” In front of them and the rest of the bridge crew, Desolator projected a two-story-high long-range optical view of a yellowish planet, its green seas balanced by the brown of its land area.

“Ryssa,” Trissk breathed, echoing the hisses of the Ryss around him. One Sekoi chuckled softly to herself. The Humans stared as well, though the planet lacked most of the blue of Earth.

“The population stands at over ten billion,” Chiren said with evident satisfaction, “though who knows what our people have become after nearly four hundred years of Meme rule.”

“They will need reminding.”

“They will need inspiring.”

A soft buzzing sounded. “Perhaps the captain and the Eldest should turn their attention to the strategic situation,” Desolator said. “The starboard wall screens, if you please.”

On the big screen, Trissk could see Ryssa’s star system mapped out in exquisite detail. Its sun resembled Earth’s, though smaller, and the homeworld and its moon orbited closer and faster than the Human’s planet, making Ryss years shorter. One dead dry planet resided closer to the star, of no consequence to them now as Desolator had emerged far from it.

An asteroid belt and three gas giants completed the roster of planets, a compact stellar system that had allowed the Ryss to vault into space quickly and spread to other star systems using coldsleep technology, long before the younger Humans had gathered to build their first city.

“Where is the Guardian?” Trissk asked. Each Meme-controlled system possessed at least one enormous monitor to keep order among its Underlings, along with a varying number of Destroyers that acted as its mobile forces, cruising from star system to star system on decades-long voyages.

“I have located four such ships,” said Desolator. Icons lit up to mark their positions, all in the asteroid belt.

“Destroyers?”

“None detected so far.”

“That’s an unusual deployment,” Chiren said. “My first deduction would be that the Destroyers have been sent on a mission, and the usual single Guardian has split itself twice, to make four. Perhaps they continue to gorge themselves for more reproduction.”

“Perhaps they’ve gotten word of the Scourge,” Trissk replied. “Desolator, is this possible?”

“Yes, Elder. If the battles we know of were reported via electromagnetic signal, word could have reached them here several years ago.”

“So the Meme Empire is responding, though we don’t know its plans. And,” Trissk stalked back and forth in front of the screen, “without faster-than-light travel, they are fighting a losing battle, a defensive campaign of fortresses while the enemy can strike when and where they wish – and leap far into the rear areas.”

Chiren growled, contemplative. “Until we arrived here aboard Desolator, I never really felt in my bones how much trouble the Meme – or anyone without FTL drive – is in. Look at us. We have a ship mobile and powerful enough to destroy those Guardians without difficulty. Were this not our homeworld, we could devastate this system and leave with impunity to do it over and over again.” The captain folded his paws across his middle as he lounged in his command chair. “I no longer fear the Meme the way I once did.”

“Nor I. But the Scourge…I fear them on behalf of us all.” Trissk moved closer to the schematic. “Display detail of Ryssa and Charyss.” The latter was the name of its moon, smaller than Earth’s but large enough to perform its vital asteroid-sweeping function that allowed higher life to flourish on life-bearing worlds. Without a large satellite to divert and intercept most rocks, cataclysmic extinction events would repeatedly pummel any ecosystem, wiping out the more complex species.

“I see seventeen heavy orbitals, which is an unusually high number, and several more being built. Does Charyss have Weapons?” Chiren asked.

Desolator replied, “We are too far for absolute confirmation, but the probability is high, based on my long-range scans. I suspect at least four installations, with two more under construction.”

“Soon six Weapons and more than twenty orbitals?” Chiren marveled. “The Meme are fortifying with great haste. Can they withstand a Scourge attack with these forces?”

“In my estimation, they can survive an attack similar to the ones on which we have data, especially with a mature population of more than ten billion Ryss on the ground to defend the planet.”

“Good news, then,” said Trissk.

“Perhaps not,” a Human voice from behind him said in passable Ryssan.

Turning, Trissk could not identify the speaker at first. All the apes looked more or less the same to him at first glance, though this one wore blazing yellow silk… “Nguyen?”

“The same. I always wanted to see your homeworld.”

“You turn up in the unlikeliest of places.”

“I go where I wish, Elder Trissk.”

“It’s Eldest now.”

“That should prove useful, then.” Spectre stepped forward to look at the big board. “Shall we begin negotiations?”

“Negotiations? We are here to liberate Ryssa, not ‘make a deal,’ as you apes would say.”

“Why can’t we do both?” Spectre took out a cigar and puffed it to life.

Chiren strode down the steps from his elevated chair. “Who is this Blend?”

“This is the one called Spectre, who was Spooky Nguyen before he Blended, and he is undoubtedly here to take a straightforward situation and twist it into knots,” Trissk replied.

The rest of the crew on the bridge stared at the three and their conversation with evident interest, but little trepidation. To most of them, Spooky Nguyen was merely the name of the founder of several Afranan corporations. Fewer recognized him for his military and covert exploits, and apparently none of the longer-lived Humans or Sekoi had known him personally, for there came no cries of surprise or greeting.

Spectre merely smiled at Trissk’s characterization. “I’m sure you would like to conduct some glorious battle of liberation here, but do you really want to attack and destroy the very Meme ships guarding your people?”

“I am not a fool, Nguyen. My intent is to destroy only one Guardian, quickly and spectacularly, to cow the others into accepting our terms. How else will they believe in our prowess?”

“And if they will accept our terms without eliminating valuable military materiel, what then?”

Trissk stared at Spectre for a long moment, saying nothing. Eventually, Chiren spoke. “I for one can forego revenge upon the Meme…for now. Spectre is right, Eldest. We need every Guardian, every orbital, to defend our people.”

“Are they even our people anymore?” Trissk mused, turning away. “I saw how different the Earther underlings are from the Fleet personnel I know. Many lost their honor and discipline under the misrule of Meme and Blend. They had to be hunted down and executed like beasts. Is that what we face when we take our planet back?”

“Kill that prey when you see it, Trissk,” Spectre replied. “For now, our goal should be to convince the Meme here that the alliance forged by Earth’s SystemLord is the right move. Without orders from their Empire, they’ll need more than a good scare to join us. Otherwise, they may simply run and leave Ryssa to its fate.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Trissk asked.

“Desolator plus four Guardians would secure the system much more effectively than Desolator alone. Also, every time we make allies of the Meme, we gain cost-free defensive forces, allowing our thinly stretched FTL ships to be elsewhere.” Spectre continued to puff on his cigar.

“The Human is right, brother,” Chiren said. “I read a book of theirs by a sage called Sun Tzu. He contended that to win without fighting was the acme of military prowess.”

“What honor is there in winning without fighting?”

“What honor is there in losing the war because we lust too much for battle?”

Desolator broke in. “From what we know, the Scourge control, at a minimum, tens of thousands of systems. They do not seem a race fond of negotiation, so we will have to kill them by the trillions. I believe we shall have our fill of battle.”

“Yes, so much battle even a Ryss might tire of it,” Spectre said. “Every non-Scourge race and star system must be viewed as a potential ally, be they Meme or Underling. And, if the Meme will not see reason in any particular place, the best we can do is give them data on our common enemy and leave them to their fates.”

“Here? On our homeworld?” Trissk hissed.

Spectre nodded. “Even here. Your people have lived for four hundred years under the Meme. It won’t harm them to stay there a bit longer if it strengthens their odds of survival.”

“All this is speculation until we make contact with the SystemLord here,” Desolator observed.

“Until I make contact,” Spectre replied.

“You?” Chiren asked.

“Why else do you think I came along?”

“We have Sekoi Blends aboard if direct negotiations are necessary,” Trissk said.

“None of them have seen what I’ve seen, and none of them brings word directly from Earth’s Emperor.” Spectre dropped the butt of his cigar and ground it out on the deck. “Now, may I borrow a pinnace?”

Chapter 16

“Sure wish we’d had some of those Meme gunboats with us, or something like them,” Captain Scoggins said to Admiral Absen as she swung around in her chair. Most of the swarm had been annihilated, its power broken when the Scourge gunboats had been shot to pieces by the task force’s sudden charge.

“With a big frickin’ fusion bomb in each one,” Ford added.

“That’s not a bad idea,” Absen replied.

“I already suggested it, but nobody listened,” Ford said.

“Actually, the Meme vetoed the suggestion,” Michelle said.

“Not surprising. Would you want a new and imperfectly trusted ally’s suicide charge on your ships?” Absen stroked his chin. “Besides, they don’t have TacDrives, which means we’d have to hold them internally to launch and recover for each battle. Do you want heavily armed Meme ships on our flight decks with thermonuclear suicide charges inside, especially given that they are animals, not machines? What if one panicked? Think of the damage that could do. No, it’s not practical right now.”

“What about robotic gunboats of our own?” Ford said. “Coat them with bioengineered skin to attract Scourges, arm them with heavy short-range weapons and a suicide bomb.”

“I think I see the good idea fairy flying around again,” Absen replied. “Send a memo. It will get in line behind a thousand other plans, all suggesting the ‘perfect’ weapons system. Now get back to work, people. We have more than thirty swarms to deal with, not to mention that monster flagship of theirs, whatever it is, and only about seventeen hours to do it before they reach Earth.”

Captain Scoggins turned to COB Timmons. “What’s our damage control status?”

“Twenty minutes for the major stuff, ma’am, and we’ll be back up to about ninety-three percent effectiveness, but that’s going to use up most of the spares, especially laser modules. Next go-around we’ll need to head back to the shipyard.”

Absen paced around the holotank, reminding himself that they remained in VR space and would likely do so until the battle was over. Within the 3D display he could see thirty-one separate swarms, all accelerating in the general direction of Earth. There had been thirty-three, but Task Force Alpha had destroyed one and Task Force Charlie, the ten Meme monitors, was about to engage another, so he counted that one destroyed.

If the Meme couldn’t handle one swarm, Earth was done for anyway.

The swarms nearest Earth had an ETA of the aforementioned seventeen hours. The others might take thirty or more hours to circumnavigate the sun and attack.

The admiral’s eyes narrowed as he examined the enemy deployment. He reached into the display to put his index finger on the leading group. “Is it my imagination, or are these not accelerating as fast as they did the last time?”

“You’re right, sir,” Lieutenant Fletcher replied from Sensors. “They’re only accelerating at about fifty percent of capacity.”

“Run a predictive analysis of all the swarms. Plot their paths based on current profiles.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Within the holotank, the swarms accelerated as the flashing chrono sped into the future. At the thirty-five hour mark, all the swarms converged on Earth in a mass.

“That’s the bad news,” Absen said grimly, waving at the holotank, its display frozen. “Thirty million Scourge craft with something like thirty billion troops will roll in together, not separately. The good news is, we actually have thirty-five hours to kill them, not seventeen, as they are grouping up instead of coming in piecemeal.”

“What about that flagship?” Scoggins asked.

Absen looked at it, and at a super-swarm hovering near it, at least five times as numerous as the usual ones. Its projected course brought it in behind the other Scourge forces to arrive an hour later than the rest. “That’s the reserve force. This enemy commander is smarter than the last one. Or I should say, this time they have an overall commander.”

“Maybe the first attack on any star system is made by the cannon fodder, the lower grade troops,” Scoggins said. “If those don’t win, they send in the more organized, more elite force under an experienced leader.”

Absen said, “Which means they aren’t quite the stupid bugs we’d hoped. Not that I really expected they were. But you asked about the flagship…how much detail do we have on it?”

In response, the display zoomed in and the enormous enemy ship expanded to fill the holotank.

“Good God. That thing’s a hundred kilometers across,” he breathed.

“It’s expanded since it transited FTL,” Michelle said. Its image shrank visibly, the accompanying chrono running backward to the moment of emergence, and then forward. Two minutes later, it began launching its millions of small craft. At about the twenty-four minute mark, it began to inflate.

“Looks like a latticework unfolding, and foamy stuff filling the gaps. Can we see past it to the hull?”

“No, sir. Our spy drones are too far away for resolution that good.”

“What about penetrating radar?”

“The skin is reflective.”

“So now it’s got a blanket that hides its secrets,” Absen mused. “The big question is, do we go after it now and risk a severe surprise, or do we keep killing swarms and hope we can develop some intel on it? Opinions?”

“Go after it now, sir,” Ford said. “They’re collecting their own intel on us. The longer we wait, the more likely they are to think of countertactics. Also, the more worn down we’ll be.”

“Sir, I think we should wait,” Commander Johnstone said. “The core inside the shell is ten kilometers across. That’s more than three times our diameter and probably more than thirty times our mass, bigger than Desolator even. It might mount capital weapons systems that could take out a dreadnought with one shot. It’s crazy to risk ourselves up front before we know how to beat it.”

Ford glared at Johnstone, who stared pointedly back.

Absen turned to Scoggins, who chewed her lip. “I’m for waiting, sir,” she eventually said. “I’m skeptical about how much this enemy commander will add to his forces’ coordination and effectiveness. It seems to me they have their game plan and they’re going to stick to it. It’s possible that cutting off the head will cause them to fall apart, but they didn’t the first time. We wiped out all their motherships and the swarms still came close to killing us all. So I don’t see a big enough payoff for the gamble.”

“Michelle?”

“I concur with the captain, sir. We’ve gathered good intel on swarm tactics and next time I think we’ll beat them handily. I believe it’s wise to reinforce success with success. If we’re going to risk failure, let’s do it near Earth, when we have the other two task forces nearby to pick up the pieces.”

Absen turned away to stare at the holotank for a long moment. “I agree. Sorry, Ford, you’ll have to be happy with shooting the shit out of millions of Scourges.”

“Yes, sir.” He brightened.

“Helm, are we set up for the next attack?”

“Yes, sir,” Master Helmsman Okuda replied.

Absen walked over to Timmons to put a hand on his shoulder. “How’s it looking, COB?”

“Ten minutes, more or less.”

“Michelle, give me the captains in turn, starting with Huen.” Absen sat down in his flag chair.

“Huen here, sir,” came a precise feminine voice. A moment later, video of the neat Chinese woman’s face popped up on Absen’s screen.

“How’s Constitution, Sherrie?”

“Hurting, sir, but she can fight. We’re at about sixty percent weapons and we took several hundred casualties. Armor is thinned in a couple spots, but nothing catastrophic. Power and engines at full. TacDrive is undamaged. Half our drones and warbots are gone.”

Absen made a sound of sympathy. “You bore the brunt of it, Captain, and you did well. Your father would be proud of you. The next attack, we’ll go in tighter and cover you better. We know what to expect now. If we get too beat up, we’ll run home for repairs.”

“Understood.”

“Pass my compliments to your crew. Absen out.” The admiral repeated this exercise, with variations, to each of the other fourteen cruiser captains, just a few seconds for each. When he was finished, scant minutes remained. He took the time to rough out a new formation for the next attack.

“Time, boss,” Timmons called. “The major damage control is done.”

“All right,” Absen replied. “Pass instructions to the fleet to prepare for the next TacDrive pulse. Mark in thirty seconds.” He waited as the chrono counted down, and then said, “Mark.”

VR space mitigated most of the unsettling feeling brought on by the TacDrive field, and a moment later the bridge electronics cleared and reset. Soon, Absen’s screen showed him the next swarm to the fore. He said, “Michelle, pass orders to take positions according to my new formation.”

The holotank soon displayed the friendly icons of the two dreadnoughts alongside each other at the minimum safe distance of about five kilometers, Constitution slightly refused, which allowed Conquest’s rear weapons to help cover her. If they came after her again, she would have all the support he could give. If not, someone else would bear more of the hurt: probably his own ship.

Scoggins’ ship, he corrected himself, though it was hard not to feel that Conquest was still his.

The cruisers filled in around the two dreadnoughts in positions to cover every inch of their skins. They had instructions to maneuver on their own if they had to, even to TacDrive out if they must, and to spin their ships violently to reduce the ability of the enemy to land. This would cut into their firepower, but Absen could ill afford to lose any of his hulls. Unlike a dead one, a functioning ship could be repaired, no matter how badly damaged.

The remaining aerospace drones, rather than covering the task force’s tail, now filled in the spaces between the ships. The Scourge assault craft had shown no propensity to sneak around the back. As individuals, they seemed as blindly aggressive as ever. Still…

“Be ready, for the enemy swarm will make some adjustments too, now that they’ve observed our tactics,” Absen said. “Let’s give them something new to think about. Deploy the box launchers.” He could see the chrono read nine minutes until they came within range of the enemy gunships, so just enough time remained.

Launch bays on all the ships flew open and one-man grabships shoved hundred-round expendable boxes of missiles out into space ahead of them. Quickly stabilizing the launchers, the little workhorses scurried home just in time.

“Coordinated fleet fire, Mister Ford,” Absen said. “Time the missiles to pass through the leading wave of enemy assault craft shortly after our first point defense salvo.”

Unexpectedly, a surge of plasma torpedoes appeared on the holotank. “Why are they firing?” Scoggins asked. “They’re at extreme range.” Her question was answered as several box launchers took hits. With no armor, many of the missiles inside began to burn as their fuel ignited.

“Shit,” snarled Ford, fingers playing over his console. “I’m launching them all now.”

“Clever bugs,” Absen muttered. “I should have seen that coming.”

“I can upload instructions in flight, sir,” Ford said. “We only lost about four percent.”

“Good work.”

In the holotank Absen could see the enemy set up a more cohesive formation, this time spreading out laterally with the assault craft as a screen. Instead of clumps and smaller groups, his task force would have to face a possibly overwhelming mass.

“Johnstone, pass to all ships: as soon as our missiles engage, yaw laterally to stellar counterspinward, fifty percent retro angle, accelerating at flank speed. We need to draw them sideways and extend so they don’t hit us in a group.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Missile starburst,” Ford reported. Each weapon from the box launchers now split up into twelve individual fighter-killers, beginning evasive maneuvers that would help them survive to close in and destroy the enemy small craft.

In response, thousands of lasers from the Scourge assault boats began picking the missiles out of space, but not quickly and not well, most missing. Soon, the leading edge of the swarm and the wave of guided weapons approached each other.

“Firing point defense salvo,” Ford said, and Absen saw a phalanx of red lines in the holotank reach out to pluck tens of thousands of Scourges out of the sky. The missiles followed close behind, and the double blow wiped the leading edge of the enemy from space, briefly providing a dense screen of gyrating wreckage between the two forces.

“Maneuver,” Absen snapped, but the ships were already rotating sideways and angled partially backward. As soon as they lined up, fusion engines flared at full power and the task force blasted for the flank of the enemy formation, slowing its forward momentum as well in order to provide more time to shoot.

This forced the Scourges to chase the EarthFleet ships from increasing angles, some closer and some farther away. As in a football play toward the sidelines, the other team ended up strung out rather than coordinated in a mass.

“Enemy gunboats firing…minimal damage,” Ford reported as Absen saw the majority of the enemy plasma torpedoes, their most effective weapons, miss.

“We confused their targeting this time,” Absen said. “They’ll get more accurate, though. Bring the fleet about, ten degree forward angle. I don’t want to keep our sterns toward them for long. They might damage our engines.”

“Salvo,” said Ford, and another coordinated strike took out tens of thousands more Scourges. “We’re killing almost one hundred percent of the assault craft that come within range.”

“Landings?” Captain Scoggins asked.

“With Brigadier ben Tauros’ concurrence, I’ve taken the liberty of keeping the warbots on the hull while we maneuver in order to clean up any small enemy forces,” Michelle replied. “They can generally handle our maneuvers, and if not, all we lose is machines. The Marines are holding inside as a reserve.”

“Good thinking,” Scoggins replied. “Let’s try to keep them there.”

“We’re losing a few surface systems, but not many,” Timmons said. “Seems to be working.”

“We’re going to pull this off,” Absen observed, face turned intently to the holotank in front of him. “Our run to the oblique has put them out of position, so we only have to fight a quarter of them at a time, while all our firepower can concentrate. Pass to all ships: follow Conquest’s maneuvers and maintain the wall of battle oriented toward the enemy at all times.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Johnstone replied.

“Melissa,” Absen said to Scoggins, “I need you to keep turning into the enemy so we strafe along their flank like so.” He reached his flattened hand into the holotank and swept it forward as if it were a ship. “That will string them out further and let us engage on our own terms while minimizing their ability to hit back.”

“Understood,” Scoggins said. “Mister Okuda, make it so. Ford, keep hitting their nearest formations. Fletcher, keep a sharp eye out for anything weird.”

“Weird?”

“Unexpected.” She stood from her chair to join Absen at the holotank. Quietly, she said to him, “Looks like it’s working, sir. We’re rolling them up.”

“Yes, but look at the enemy gunboats. They’re holding their range as much as they can. We’ll have a hell of a time bringing them to battle.”

Scoggins mouth quirked upward. “I think I have an idea about that, sir.”

Chapter 17

Spectre’s pinnace floated in space twenty million kilometers out from Ryssa, watching a lone Monitor approach. The Meme ship dwarfed his, a pumpkin to a mustard seed, and he suppressed a stab of worry at what he was about to do.

Some thought him fearless, but only a fool doesn’t fear real power in the hands of another. However, he believed in himself and his ability to convince the Meme SystemLord of the veracity of his claims. Whether the Meme leader would choose a course of action favorable to EarthFleet…that was an unknown.

And, if they decided to shoot the messenger…well, his life had been more interesting than most, and the universe would proceed without him. If the spirits of his ancestors really watched over him as the traditional beliefs of his Vietnamese Degar clan claimed, he would undoubtedly join them with great fascination at the new phase of existence.

A shuttle about the same size as his craft launched from a sphincter in the front of the Monitor and approached his rapidly. At what seemed the last moment, it decelerated violently to come alongside. As Meme had no organs to rupture and were made of amorphous protoplasm filled with swirling cells and molecules, they could withstand much higher G forces than most other organic beings.

Spectre stood and walked out of the pinnace’s cockpit, not bothering to don a suit. He wore his yellows, and the only other equipment he possessed was carried within his body as cybernetic implants.

Spectre doubted the Meme would harm him. Promises aside, Desolator had used his TacDrive to approach the four Monitors near enough for them to see him well, but outside of easy weapons range. The superdreadnought had rolled deliberately in place, giving the Meme a good look at his hundreds of thousands of point defense lasers, his dozens of heavy particle beams, and his main battery of the same that, judged by its size alone, should strike with enough power to obliterate a Monitor in one salvo.

Then, Desolator had targeted an asteroid larger than a Monitor and confirmed that supposition, turning a ten-kilometer rock into molten gravel within a fraction of a second.

That had gotten their attention.

Undoubtedly, the Meme recognized the type of craft Desolator represented: one of the Species 447 super-ships that had, for a time, crushed their fleets and cracked the crusts of their planets. Add in its obvious upgrades…

An hour of radio conversation had established SystemLord’s willingness to talk to a Blend, and now here they were. Spectre squared his shoulders and opened his airlock when it showed pressure on the other side. Stepping into the living chamber there, he observed a Meme in a raised pool, one giant eyeball staring at him while a ready pseudopod pulsed nearby.

Striding up to the Meme, he extended his hand and held it there until the amoeba-like being met it with the pseudopod. Immediately came the questing thoughts of a powerful mind borne on a wave of complex molecules: Who? What? How?

Pushing back, Spectre erected a wall. “Thus far and no further,” he said, establishing his territory and its boundaries.

You are an unusual Underling.

“I am no underling. I Blended with a captured Meme and subsumed its mind in mine, maintaining my identity while preserving only its memories.”

Such is not the way of things.

“Such is the new way of things if you wish to survive. You are a pragmatic race. You must accept facts as they are, not as you wish them to be.”

Then you must convince me. I am SystemLord for this remnant of Species 447. As such, I am held in high esteem within the Empire.

“Glad to hear it. Make yourself ready, for this data will challenge many of your preconceptions. You have heard of the menace of those we call the Scourge?” Spectre released a small package of memories summarizing the enemy’s appearance and physiology.

I recognize this from warnings I have received. It is incomplete.

“It is only an overview. The rest comes…now.”

Spectre opened the gates of the dams of his external memories, prepared and edited for this moment, preserving an inviolate core of himself locked within his human brain. Everything else he allowed to flood outward, an irresistible wave of data that even a Meme might find overwhelming.

As he’d planned.

The best time to negotiate was when the opponent was stunned and off balance. Spectre could feel SystemLord strive mightily to control the deluge, but the Blend had slipped up to the edge of the Meme’s containment tank and pressed not only hands and arms, but also his bare chest into the protoplasm, providing so much surface area for transference that it could not be regulated.

Spectre felt almost as if he were Blending once more, but eventually the flow subsided and the two separated, still individuals.

I must digest this data and discuss it with my trium.

“First, I need assurances of nonaggression. On behalf of my command trium, I offer a nonaggression pact, a truce, for two planetary days.” If he couldn’t achieve a settlement right away, at least he’d seize these concessions, putting the Meme on the psychological defensive.

I…agree.

Spectre pressed, “You must transmit ironclad orders of this pact to your subordinates and Underlings. Regardless of where our ship goes and what it does, save only warlike acts, you are bound not to attack us.”

I agree. Now, I must go. To Spectre, the Meme seemed uncertain, even confused.

Just as he’d hoped.

***

“I find it amazing you got it to agree to a truce,” Trissk said to Spectre as he entered Desolator’s bridge. “SystemLord has transmitted unencrypted instructions telling his forces not to fire on us unless we fire first.”

“Excellent. Now, Captain Chiren,” Spectre said, turning to the ship’s commander, “are you willing to go in harm’s way?”

“Specifically meaning?”

“We have free passage. Should we not use it to examine everything we can at close range?”

The Ryss captain ran his raspy tongue over a paw, a mannerism Spectre associated with skeptical thought, much as a human might rub his neck and jaw. “If we use passive sensors only. Desolator? Your thoughts?”

“I believe the risk is small, though in the case of the Weapons, a miscalculation might be catastrophic.”

“Also,” Trissk said, “we don’t want to get so close we provoke a response from some undisciplined Underling. Orders are not always followed.”

Chiren said, “One hundred thousand kilometers should be close enough for most purposes of intelligence gathering on all facilities except the Weapons. For those, we remain at ten million. Let us proceed, beginning with the facilities orbiting Fenryss.” He pointed at the gas giant nearest the system’s sun. “The weapons there are antiquated and pose us little threat.”

For the next entire ship’s day, Desolator toured the Ryss home system, examining its military installations, many of which appeared as decrepit and antiquated as Earth’s had been when Conquest reconquered it. Some were new, however, with armies of laborers building more at a frantic pace.

“These media broadcasts are fascinating,” Chiren said to Trissk as he watched a program on his screen. “The common Ryss seem energized, even joyful to hear that they might be attacked. Some Blends are clearly playing the role of concerned leaders. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say they are quite annoyed at the disruption of their petty domains. There are others, though…” He pointed at a shot of an earnest young warrior in yellow giving an impassioned speech.

Spectre climbed the steps to stand beside Trissk. “After four hundred years, many of the Blends have tired of debauchery and hedonism. They and their children are ready to do something that matters. I’ve been watching the broadcasts as well, having Desolator search for the ones I want. I’ll provide a rank-ordered list of Blends with the best potential for demanding independence and self-rule from the Meme. When the time comes, Trissk, you can lead them to liberation.”

Trissk hissed like a steam valve. “How shall I lead Blends? They won’t respect one who doesn’t wear the yellow.”

“Then you can take a blank mitosis. The Sekoi have some aboard, do they not?”

“I feel physically ill at the thought,” Trissk replied.

“I suppose if that’s too big a sacrifice in order to free your homeworld…”

Trissk rounded on Spectre and swiped a paw at him in a clawless cuff. The Human, damn him, took the blow without complaint, undoubtedly using his cybernetic strength and uncanny balance to avoid being knocked down.

“Forgive me for speaking so plainly and offending you,” Spectre continued in a voice rich with irony. “You cats are such a subtle, indirect people, after all.”

Trissk drew his paw back for another blow, but Chiren caught it. “There is no honor in refusing to see truth, no matter how rudely spoken,” the captain said.

Desolator interjected, “We might be getting ahead of ourselves. After all, the Meme have not given us an answer.”

As if that declaration were a cue, the Human communications officer put a finger to one of her ridiculously fleshy ears and said, “I have a transmission from SystemLord. He wishes to speak with Spectre again.”

***

The meeting at the second rendezvous with the Meme looked to be short.

We have rejected your offer. You have one planetary day to withdraw. SystemLord made as if to depart.

Stunned by this turn of events – and it had been a long time since Spectre, or Spooky for that matter, had been so surprised – he sent a surge of communication molecules into the other. In a human conversation, he would have been raising his voice, almost yelling. “Your decision is irrational. Conflict will only harm both our species. I insist you explain.”

I owe you no explanation.

“Yet, if the command trium of our ship is not satisfied with your reasoning, we may decide conflict is preferable, and do you irreparable damage…beginning with your own Monitor, at which point your existence will be terminated. Your ships, great as they are, cannot withstand Desolator.”

By harming us, you harm your own cause, for the Scourge threaten us both. By destroying our Monitors you will conquer this system, but without our forces to assist you in its defense, you may not prevail against our common enemy. And, we know you will not kill great numbers of those of Species 447 on the planet, as you wish to liberate them from our rule. Therefore your choices seem two:

You might leave us to defend this system. Our predictions show we are likely to do so successfully if the Scourge do not attack within the next half a stellar cycle

Or you might remain and fight independently in order to preserve the Underlings you value so highly. This seems the likeliest course for you, so why should we cede our lordship of this system when you will help us anyway?

Spectre realized SystemLord had reasoned correctly, based on the flood of human data. There was no upside for this individual Meme or its subordinates, even though adhering to a local alliance might be of long-term benefit to their Empire.

Therefore, with a thrill of fear and eagerness, Spectre committed himself to a dangerous course of action he had contemplated ever since Blending with the captured Meme and incorporating its memories and knowledge as his own. He had no idea if what he was about to attempt was even possible, but all he had to lose was himself and his life, while the prize he might win was so near and dear: banishment of boredom…for a time, at least, as well as the preservation of humanity.

In that order of importance, of course.

Mustering his resources, Spectre maintained his mental wall just long enough to hide the marshaling of his troops. Ranks of offensive molecules assembled themselves in lines, clusters and task forces behind the barrier while SystemLord, used to a slower pace of thought and conversation, waited unaware.

When the wall opened and Spectre’s forces sallied forth, SystemLord was taken by surprise and its defenses fell back, fell back…but it was not without resources of its own. The Meme commander hadn’t risen to this superior position by weakness or foolishness, and had taken ordinary precautions against biological mind control.

However, it had never contemplated an all-out assault by a mere Underling. Normally, the bio-psychological power of such creatures quickly atrophied after Blending, as influencing the lower orders was too easy and direct conflicts among those who wore the yellow were few.

Spectre, however, had not neglected these abilities; in fact, he’d deliberately cultivated them by personally interviewing every Blend under his command, demanding they submit while he ransacked their minds. Only in that way could he know whom to trust.

He’d done the same with all Blends arrested by the Skulls, those suspected of working against his regime…and he’d not been gentle with them. Those that turned out to be innocent, he’d put to use. The guilty ones he’d executed, but not before he’d used them as training grounds to strengthen his techniques, each instance building upon the last.

Thus, Spectre was far more prepared for this kind of warfare than perhaps any being known. Certainly, he had the advantage of SystemLord, and he ground down the stubborn Meme where he must while executing blitzkrieg assaults where he could, punching holes in its mind to drive deep into its personality. He encircled whole stores of data intact, cutting them off from their centers, sequestering them for later.

Eventually, Spectre faced SystemLord’s ego as it defended its final redoubt, reduced to a fraction of its former self. Yet, crushing the Meme would be a waste of resources; a rich store of experiences still awaited within the core of its personality, a lode Spectre found himself loath to destroy.

“SystemLord,” he called as he and his molecular siege troops paused before the Meme’s final walls. “I have won. I can annihilate you at any time, yet I do not wish to do so. I know those of the Pure Race are unwilling to sacrifice themselves when another way can be found. If so, I offer you one final possibility to remain in existence.”

Of course, I will listen…but I do not see any options. If you let me go, I will bear witness to what you have done here and my trium will turn against you.

“The option is this: cease your resistance and Blend with me.”

A lesser existence…or no existence at all. I suppose it would have the compensation of greater physical pleasures.

“You misunderstand, SystemLord. I do not wish you to become lesser. Instead, I wish to become greater.”

A little flattery, a little spin is warranted here, Spectre thought to himself. Throwing the defeated a bone costs nothing.

Spectre continued, “I will give up this body and become one of the Pure Race. Together, we shall be as one, and perhaps ascend to greater heights than you could ever have achieved on your own.”

Your offer, like your strength of will, is irresistible. I submit.

With that, SystemLord lowered its defenses.

A human, steeped in a culture of individuality and the sanctity of self, would never have done so with such ease, but all Meme knew from the moment of division that consciousness was mutable, and that one day they would incorporate other beings into themselves.

Spectre was thankful for this property of the one he faced, an attribute of flexibility he did not share. While SystemLord naturally assumed its own personality would retain a place of prominence if not equality within the new being who was Spectre, the human Blend – or what he was to become – had no intention whatsoever of allowing his rival’s former psyche to remain intact.

No, he would incorporate SystemLord into himself just as thoroughly as he had the nameless captured protoplasm that had originally granted him his introduction to the powers of a Blend. After that, and as one of the Pure Race…who knows what he might accomplish?

Thus, Spectre prepared himself again, for he imagined his trium would need convincing, by bio-psychological coercion if necessary…and after that, the rest of those aboard his new Monitor.

Chapter 18

“Ninety-five percent of this swarm’s assault craft destroyed,” Fletcher said with evident satisfaction.

In the holotank, Absen could see the Sensors officer was right. All that remained of the swarm were some eighty thousand gunboats and fighters. He’d thought about running now, making some quick repairs and then engaging the next swarm, and the next, but leaving the enemy’s aerospace weaponry intact would just come back to haunt them later, and he’d rather not face a combined fleet composed of all these remainders. No, better to bite the bullet and kill them now.

“Prep Captain Scoggins’ maneuver and execute on my mark,” Absen ordered. “Make sure all our drones and small craft are in.”

Thirty seconds later, all ships reported ready, their tails toward the enemy and fusion drives at standard acceleration, as if running. The Scourge fighters and gunboats gave chase.

“Mark,” Absen said.

As one, the sixteen ships, in various states of fighting effectiveness but all possessing working TacDrives, pulsed backward for a fraction of a second, leaping across the intervening space and debouching at point-blank range behind the enemy.

Timmons oofed from his position. “We just lost seven percent of our rear point defense.”

Absen accepted that report. He’d expected to take damage as Conquest and her fellows slammed into both the thick debris of battle and intact enemy ships at the speed of light. The maneuver had turned the Scourges into projectiles that hammered the EarthFleet ships, instantly fusing into miniature nuclear explosions, destroying every weapon emplacement and external fitting they happened to strike.

The holotank showed Task Force Alpha in a ragged clump, having passed through the Scourges in its retrograde TacDrive pulse, now pointing its entire complement of forward weaponry at the enemy.

“Sensors recovered,” Fletcher said. “Targets acquired.”

“Fire!” Scoggins barked.

Conquest’s lasers clawed more than a quarter of the Scourge gunboats out of space in her first volley, nearly every one of them taking down a surprised target. Constitution’s optimized point defense suite, despite her greater damage, destroyed even more of the enemy, and the fourteen cruisers added their shots to finish the job.

To their credit, the dwindling Scourge forces turned immediately to attack, weapons targeting installations on the hulls of the EarthFleet ships at ranges that could not miss. “Three percent more,” Timmons reported in a resigned voice. “We’re down about fifty percent overall on the point defense.”

“Got it,” Captain Scoggins replied, her eyes never leaving the holotank.

Within the swirling display Absen could see enemy icons vanish, remaining clusters thinning and then winking out as they were savaged by EarthFleet fire. “That’s it,” he said. “Captain, get some drones out there to knock out stragglers and some grabships to salvage a few of each Scourge ship type for exploitation. The techies will want to compare them with those from the last attack. You have ten minutes.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Absen walked over to sit back in his chair, feeling just as drained as if he weren’t in virtual space. “Signal to all ships. In ten minutes, we’ll maneuver out of this mess, and then TacDrive back to Earth for repairs. Johnstone, tell the orbital shipyards to be ready. They’ll have one hour to do everything they can, with priority to replacing destroyed point defense lasers, then it’s back into the fight.”

Staring at his own screen to let Scoggins use the main holotank, Absen took in the overall situation. Task Force Charlie appeared intact, its first swarm destroyed. At this distance, it appeared as if the Meme were highly effective Scourge-killers, and he felt a stab of rueful envy. Earth’s new allies still boasted higher ship acceleration, overwhelming close-in weaponry, and now, even armor that was poison to the Scourges that tried to burrow through it.

They would also heal between every battle.

Thank God the enemy of my enemy is my friend, he thought.

What the Meme didn’t have yet was operational TacDrive, so even now TF Charlie blasted under conventional acceleration toward its rendezvous with the next swarm in line. Absen ran a quick rule-of-thumb calculation in his head – he could have asked Michelle, but doing so too often was getting to be a crutch – and came up with an approximation of their combined swarm-killing probability over time.

With tremendous relief, he realized that they should be able to finish off all the swarms before they reached Earth…except the big one and the enemy flagship. They might even have time to mop up the motherships…

“Michelle, display positions of all enemy motherships on my holoscreen.”

“Displayed.”

“Why do I see only twenty-nine? Didn’t thirty-three survive our SLAMs to launch their swarms? We have good spy drone coverage, don’t we?”

“We do, sir,” Michelle replied. “Four cores turned back toward Sol and engaged their FTL engines since arrival, approximately one every forty minutes.”

Absen rubbed his neck, thinking. “They’re going home, or elsewhere…why?”

“The cores are of little value in a fight,” Michelle reminded him. “They’re preserving valuable assets.”

“Evidence of discipline. The Archons aboard must not care about acquiring territory. They’re acting more like a professional military force and less like barbarian tribes this time. Not good.”

“If the rest of them keep departing, they will also undoubtedly carry reports back as the battle progresses.”

Absen said, “Damn. We have to deny them any further intel. The more we let them see of us, the more prepared they will be next time.”

Michelle remained silent, letting him think.

Eventually the admiral spoke. “Run me an analysis of TF Alpha’s effectiveness without Conquest, after repairs.”

Numbers and graphs appeared in Absen’s holoscreen within seconds. Michelle said, “Combat power is synergistic. This ship represents twenty percent of the task force’s weapons, and its absence will degrade fleet effectiveness by almost thirty percent.”

“Damn. We can’t do that.” Absen lifted his hand, unconsciously counting on his fingers as he mumbled to himself. “Pulse in. Fire. Pulse to the next core. Fire. Pulse out. Recharge for about sixty minutes. We can do it.”

“Do what?” Captain Scoggins said, stepping up to the flag chair.

“I’ll show you.”

***

One TacDrive pulse back to Earth took less than seven minutes realtime. In fact, maneuvering on conventional drive to dock with the waiting orbital shipyards took more time.

Mobs of exosuited workers and hundreds of grabships worked like racing pit crews to slap on waiting point defense modules by the thousands. Magnetics held them in place while tankers vomited sticky foam that hardened in minutes, covering hastily laid cabling connecting the weapons systems.

The most vital of lost sensors were also replaced, and legions of shiny new warbots marched straight from their cargo ships onto the waiting vessels of war, not even bothering to enter the airlocks. Keeping them on the hulls meant some would be destroyed in TacDrive or battle, but the numbers told the story. Keeping them in place to repel Scourges would be worth it in time and Marine lives.

The crews remained in VR and worked as best they could from there, using telefactors and directing repair bots, or coordinating with the external workers. On Conquest’s bridge, Absen reviewed the overall situation and issued instructions to the rest of his forces.

Jupiter and the military production facilities there remained intact and safe, one tremendous side benefit of the enemy’s necessary emergence near Sol. It would take days under conventional drive to get there, and unless the Scourge changed their objectives, the battle would be over long before.

Therefore, Absen had long ago stripped the facilities there of all combat forces. Jupiter’s small orbital weapons platforms had been moved to Lunar orbits, the better to cover the heavy lasers mounted on the bones of the destroyed Weapon. The previous Scourge attack had demolished it, but left the deeply buried thermal core tap intact, providing exawatts of power to the new beam projectors.

He’d also had the PVNs pumping out point defense modules as fast as they could. A freighter full of several hundred of the things unloaded every few hours, and then hauled ass back to pick up more. Those not needed to top off stores for ship repair were slapped onto one of the hundreds of orbiting asteroids.

During that hour, the worst casualties were transferred to medical shuttles headed for planetside hospitals. The ships also took on hundreds of thousands of tons of fuel and other supplies.

“This is going to be tricky,” Captain Scoggins said from Absen’s elbow.

“Not that tricky,” the admiral replied. “We’ll stop well short of the next swarm, leaving lots of margin for error.”

“That will give them time to prepare too. Is killing those cores really worth it?”

“Yes. If all you kill is five-meter targets, the five hundred meter ones will eventually get you.”

Scoggins snorted. “That sounds like Bull.”

“I hope you’re referring to our esteemed Marine commander, rather than scoffing at my orders.”

She smiled. “I am.”

“Then you’re right. I picked the saying up from him. The point is, we can do both. Kill cores and fight swarms.”

“You’re stretching us thin, sir.”

“I know.” Absen looked up from his chair at his flag captain’s face. “You doing all right? Can’t read people very well in VR.”

“I’m good, sir. We’ll all be fine until we come out of it. Then we’ll need rehab.”

“Then we won’t come out of it until we’ve won.” Or until we’re dead, he didn’t vocalize.

“Why not have everyone with TacDrives kill cores?” Scoggins asked.

“Conquest is the only ship that has a powerful enough main weapons array to destroy a mothership in one blow.”

“Or we could use Exploders. Conserve pulse energy, do it faster.”

Absen shook his head. “No. We need to save them all for the big nasty. We have no idea what kind of weapons it mounts, but if this is their capital ship, then its size alone means it might have stuff that can take us out in one good shot. It’s as large as Desolator and at least twice as massive, not counting its inflated skin. The swarms don’t scare me anymore; we’ve figured them out. That thing,” he stabbed his finger at the enemy superdreadnought’s icon, “is making me shit bricks.”

“Thanks for the pep talk, boss.”

Absen turned bleak eyes to his screen. “In front of the troops you have to project confidence, Melissa, but we’re commanders. We have to prepare for the worst.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“They’re clearing us for departure, Captain,” Johnstone said. “Admiral, we’re the first to leave, as you instructed. Sixty minutes on the nose, seventy for the rest of the task force.”

Absen nodded. “I’ve already given the captains their instructions. Pass the word that we’ll see them at the rendezvous point. Captain Scoggins, you may proceed.”

Scoggins turned to Okuda. “Set us up, Helm.”

“Aye aye, ma’am.” Okuda’s fingers played over his boards. “Ready.”

“Sensors?”

“Ready,” Fletcher said.

“Weapons?”

“Ready, skipper,” said Ford.

“Go.”

Okuda arched his wrist and poised a finger. “Pulse in three, two, one, mark.”

A brief moment of TacDrive washed over Absen as the displays froze.

“Dropped,” Okuda reported. “Core dead ahead. Range, ten thousand two hundred kilometers.” Of course, the helmsman was able to make sense of the unscrambling sensor feeds more quickly than even Fletcher, as he lived half his life in VR space.

The holotank confirmed Okuda’s report scant seconds later.

Ford said, “Target acquired.”

“Fire,” said Scoggins flatly, her eyes intent on the display.

The weapons officer stabbed at the firing key with his index finger and Conquest shuddered as the invisible electric fists of her three massive particle beams converged on the Scourge mothership core. Untold numbers of protons slammed into its skin, some passing through to reach inside, causing everything it touched to flash to instant nuclear fusion.

The resulting sun-hot shockwave cooked everything inside the core before the beam bored through and out the other side. Twin jets of superheated plasma briefly turned the fat disc into a pinwheel firework as its tough armor contained most of the combustion.

“Target destroyed,” Fletcher reported.

“Helm, set up the next run.”

“On it, Skipper,” Okuda replied.

Absen took a look at Conquest’s power reserves, now at about sixty-five percent. A TacDrive pulse took about twenty percent, and the main weapons array around fifteen to fire.

Reducing the power of the salvo might squeeze a few more percent out of the equation, but power for TacDrive pulses was all front-loaded, costing an enormous amount to launch the ship to lightspeed but very little to keep it going. No way to economize there.

Okuda’s fingers played over his boards again. “Ready.”

“Sensors?”

“Ready,” Fletcher said.

“Weapons?”

“Ready, skipper,” said Ford.

“Do it.”

Okuda caressed his keys. “Pulse in three, two, one, mark.”

The timeless moment of pulse passed.

“We’re out,” Okuda reported. “Core dead ahead. Range, nine thousand three hundred kilometers.”

“Getting sloppy, Mister Okuda,” Scoggins said.

“Just rigging the pool, Skipper. I need the cash.”

Absen chuckled to himself. The bridge crew maintained a running betting pool on how close Okuda would come to his intended exit point.

“Target acquired,” Ford sang out.

“Kill it,” Scoggins replied, and the main array drilled its triple beam through the second mothership core.

“Good job, everyone,” Absen said. “That’s two cores that won’t be going home to their nests. Now let’s rejoin the task force.”

Moments later, her power reserves below ten percent, Conquest emerged one hundred thousand kilometers in front of their target swarm. Five thousand kilometers away floated the rest of Task Force Alpha, and she hastened to intercept them and take her position.

Both the flagship and the others could have cut it closer, but Absen’s greatest nightmare was of a miscalculation that caused a TacDrive collision, annihilating both ships. Even AI control could not overcome the slight quantum variations in timing, and it was a lucky pulse that didn’t miss by more than a hundred kilometers.

This time, the demolition of the swarm went like clockwork. With judicious maneuvers, Absen stretched out the enemy forces and defeated them in detail with his wall of battle formation and phalanx of point defense fire. Continuous course alterations dramatically reduced the hit percentage of the enemy’s plasma torpedoes and fighter fire, and when the time came to pulse in reverse to close with the Scourge gunships, Conquest had recharged her capacitors enough to join in the slaughter.

“I think we’ve broken the code,” Scoggins said with a smile. “Looks like the Meme have too.”

Absen looked at the holotank and nodded. “Five swarms down in four hours, and Task Force Charlie’s tally will accelerate as everyone gets closer to Earth and the distance between swarms falls. But,” he stroked his chin, “we have to assume they’ll come up with countertactics.”

Ford snorted. “What can they do, sir? With our TacDrive, they can’t run. We can attack when and where we choose. They’re not faster than we are, and their weapons can’t magically get more effective.”

“Never assume the enemy is stupider than you are, Ford,” Absen said.

“Yeah, that would be a stretch,” Johnstone muttered.

“Hey!” Ford cried. “Shut the f–”

“What I mean is,” Absen cut in smoothly with a rising voice, “there must be ways for them to slow down the slaughter. You want to be a tactician, Commander Ford? What would you do in their place to thwart us?”

Ford’s bulldog face scrunched up as he thought aloud. “Can’t close with us. Their assault craft are too slow. Can’t get away from us either. Maybe…spread out?”

Absen nodded. “Yes. That’s what I’ve been expecting. I hope it will take them a while to think of it. So as soon as we have a pulse ready, we’ll hit the next swarm and recharge as we fight.”

Chapter 19

Emperor Markis the First – and the last, he resolved – entered his situation room surrounded by four Stewards, unmistakable in their whites. He himself affected a simple suit of navy blue, a throwback to his days as Chairman of the Free Communities and, eventually, the Council of Earth.

He’d led Earth for almost a century during the long, grueling war against the Meme – a war Earth had lost, despite his best efforts.

Not this time, Markis told himself as he waved the members of his cabinet to their seats. Second chances were few enough in life, and he wasn’t going to take this one for granted.

This time, if we lose, everyone here dies.

Not on my watch.

“Lieutenant Commander Dychauk, let’s hear it.” Markis gestured for the young EarthFleet officer to proceed with her briefing.

Face it, DJ: they all seem young.

“Yes, ah, sir.” She almost called him Your Majesty again, but Markis had ordered her emphatically to cease and desist, at least for the duration of the conflict.

It seemed a step in the right direction.

Dychauk continued, “In the four hours since your last briefing, the Fleet has been successful in destroying eight swarms and four mothership cores. The revised ETA for enemy forces is now almost forty hours from now, and may be pushed back further as swarms are destroyed.”

“Good news, then,” Markis said.

“Mostly, sir. However, the enemy flagship is still, ah…unaddressed. I have no new information about it from intelligence channels; our spy drones can’t get too close. We’ve already lost a dozen of them trying to approach.”

“Admiral McInnes, do you have anything from Absen?”

The dour Scot shook his head. “Nae, sir, nothing of significance. The Fleet Admiral is oot there fighting, as should be. Begging your pardon, sir, but we’re no headquarters, no matter what ye call us.” He pointed a finger at the ceiling. “It’s all up there.”

“So he’s not giving you regular updates?”

“Aye, he is, sir, but yon lassie knows everything I do. If Admiral Absen has twigged to something else, he’s not telling us.”

Markis stroked his jaw. “More likely there’s nothing to tell. I’m sure that as the situation clarifies, he’ll pass on anything significant.”

McInnes nodded, but said nothing more.

“That’s all I have, sir,” Dychauk said. “Lieutenant General Bahadur will now brief you on the ground situation.”

A short Ghurka in a Ground Forces of Earth uniform took the podium with an ever-present grin, the hallmark of his people. Markis knew that Nepalese like him had been recruited into the armies of the British Empire since the early 1800s, and had fought with tremendous distinction over the last four centuries.

“Thank you, Commander,” the general said with a musical accent. “I am very happy to remind the Emperor that our ground forces are much better prepared for the Scourge than last time. We are basing our strategy on the principle of the tactical defensive, followed by a strategic offensive. This is possible because of the Scourges’ unrelenting aggressiveness, making them predictable.”

Pointing at his first slide, Bahadur continued, “Each city and major town on the planet has been made into a fortress, with rings of gun emplacements, minefields and Scourgeling pits. We call these strongpoints our anvils. Every inhabitant who can carry a weapon will be armed, and the life signs of the people inside the perimeter will attract the enemy into kill zones.”

Markis leaned forward to examine the graphic depicting a typical defense. “But what’s going to keep them from overwhelming these fortresses? If anything close to the numbers we saw last time land, we’ll lose half our cities and the population with them. Our static defenses can’t resist so many by themselves.”

“You are correct, sir, which brings me to the hammers to our anvils. First, we are emplacing our Troll tank divisions in bivouacs away from the major cities. They should be strong enough to fend off most landings nearby, as we believe the Scourge will concentrate on the population centers. Once they have secured their perimeters, the tank divisions will move out in assault formations using traditional doctrine in order to crush the enemy from the flanks and rear.”

“Traditional doctrine? Whose doctrine? I’m no cav soldier, but I do know a little about conventional warfare,” Markis said.

“Forgive me, sir. I meant what you might call Soviet armored doctrine, which has been demonstrated as the most effective manner to organize tactical mechanized warfare.”

“Really?” The Emperor’s voice turned skeptical, even arch.

“Oh, yes sir, most assuredly sir. This has been demonstrated by the outstanding record compiled by the OPFOR brigade at the old United States’ National Training Center, Fort Irwin, California. They were seldom defeated in battle, normally crushing their enemies with few casualties, as we shall crush ours.”

The room broke out in spontaneous applause, and Markis wondered at the naïveté of his staff, all of whom had lived under Meme rule. He’d tried to find unbroken military men and women from before the Third Holocaust, but the only ones he’d located were tainted by deep involvement in the insurgency. Those he’d interviewed seemed to harbor unreasoning antipathy for the new government based entirely on the alliance with the Meme; they had hated so long they weren’t able to let it go.

Markis wondered how history might have been altered had the U.S., Britain and France not put aside their anger and revulsion at Nazi Germany’s atrocities in favor of the Marshall Plan and a policy of rebuilding central Europe.

The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him your friend, Markis thought. Even Spooky had understood that.

“We become what we hate,” the Vietnamese highlander had also once told him. He’d said, “In order to destroy your enemies, you must understand them, for only in understanding them can you defeat them.” Typical Zen bullshit, but it had sunk in anyway, and seemed to make more and more sense the longer Markis lived.

I’ve always tried to abandon my hatred, not because it’s unjust or undeserved, but because it’s unproductive. I don’t have the luxury of hating anyone anymore, because it clouds my judgment.

“Sir?”

Bahadur was staring at his emperor, along with others in the room, and Markis waved a diffident hand. “Sorry. We old farts get lost in thought sometimes. Please continue explaining how we’ll ride to glorious victory.”

“Oh, yes, sir, we shall. Our tank divisions are one hammer. They will be supported by the other, our atmospheric drone wings. These are to be based in locations the analysts have deemed least likely to attract landing forces – rocky islands, deserts, areas of cold and little life. Once we see how the ground battle progresses, we will apply close air support as necessary to annihilate the enemy.”

“And our aerospace fighter wings – the StormRavens?”

General Bahadur turned to Lieutenant Commander Dychauk, who said, “Sir, those are a Fleet asset and will operate within the Earth-Moon system with the goal of destroying as many craft as possible before landing. If and when the spaceborne threat is neutralized, they will descend into the atmosphere and provide pinpoint weapons fire.” The woman smiled. “I am certain your son will acquit himself with excellence.”

“Yes, that’s my primary concern: my son’s feelings and reputation,” Markis said with more than a hint of sarcasm. “His mother might disagree, however.” The more these new, unblooded military people made breathlessly optimistic declarations of easy victory, the more irascible he became.

And yet, he hoped they turned out to be right.

***

Lieutenant Victor Fyedorovich Bokorin nervously clutched his pulse gun, a privilege of his rank. His platoon of militia, given the grandiose name of Fortress Infantry on the operational plans, carried brand-new assault rifles not so different from the Kalashnikovs of his forefathers. The guns would kill individual Scourgelings, but the enemy Soldiers were much tougher, armed with weapons as powerful as an armored fighting vehicle.

The mobile divisions have the best of everything, he thought bitterly. They have tanks and artillery, and if things get too hot they can run away, while we must wait here to be slaughtered where we stand.

Abruptly he felt ashamed, remembering the lectures by the Imperial Political Officers instructing him on the nature of proper and victorious thought. Defeatist thinking led to failure on the battlefield, they’d said, and so he forced himself to his feet, once more to walk up and down, handing out precious cigarette halves and bolstering the courage of his troops.

“Good day, Lieutenant,” they called with smiles, some forced, some genuine. It was no surprise they would be struggling with their fear, but he was an officer and a graduate of one of the newly rebuilt Moscow Military Academy’s many 60-day commissioning classes. Education banished fear, he’d been taught.

Then why was he so afraid?

Mastering himself, he slapped backs and said, “Good day to you, brave sons and daughters of Mother Russia. The word from our captain gives us still more than thirty hours, so relax. Clean and check your weapons, sleep if you can, and make sure you eat. We have plenty of food, even fresh meat, so enjoy it while you can.”

“Yes, Lieutenant. We will enjoy!” The speaker, a corporal, hefted a bottle of vodka, still allowed until the twelfth hour before the predicted landings.

“I will enjoy as well,” A private said with a sideways grin as he grabbed one of the female soldiers from behind, his hands on her breasts. She squealed and slapped him but did not seem overly offended, and the scene drew a gale of laughter. Probably they would soon slip back into a darkened corner of the trenches to copulate, and he couldn’t blame them.

A month ago, when he took over the platoon, he might have tried to suppress such…unprofessionalism. But now, on this eve of the imminent landings, he let it go. Anzhelika had a reputation as a cheerful slut, after all, and as long as she did not object, what did it matter?

They might all be dead tomorrow anyway.

***

Brigadier Kragov stood atop his newly painted Troll, binoculars pointed out across the recently created steppe north of the city of Moscow in what used to be Russia – and still is, in the minds of her sons and daughters, the man thought.

His 4th Guards Tanks, Kantemir division – a formation of almost 1000 armored vehicles named for the location of its first major battle against the invading Germans in World War II – spread out around him, frantically digging in.

Vehicle crews plied shovels to create holes in the drying ground of summer, ramped pits sufficient to allow tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery to wait hull-down for the arrival of the Scourge. Such positions would reduce casualties from the direct fire weapons of the enemy while still allowing them to move quickly up and onto the surface for an armored attack.

Three years ago, the rolling hills had hosted dense forests of weeping birch and evergreen, but the first attack of the bugs had denuded the area of life as Scourgelings and Soldiers ate every possible piece of biomass. It had seemed nothing larger than a cockroach would survive, though a few smaller animals – rats, moles, birds – had found someplace to hide and were now filtering back into the hills.

Grasses and bushes also grew among small saplings, replenished by seeds the Scourges inevitably missed, as well as deliberate replanting efforts.

One day, Kragov thought, Mother Russia will rise again, as she always does.

Those men and women that had returned to liberate Earth undoubtedly thought the humans left behind had been broken beneath the boot heels of the Meme and their yellow-clad underlings, but they had reckoned without the Rodina, the Motherland. Over the years, the great Russian people had been beaten, burnt, battered, slaughtered and oppressed by foreign enemies and by its own overlords and oligarchs. Everyone from Genghis Khan to Hitler to the mad Georgian Josef Stalin had taken his shot, and failed.

Russians adapted. Mother Russia lived on.

The people were used to living with oppression; only for brief periods of their history had they tasted freedom, but perversely, this legacy had served them well for the last fifty years; the Meme and their Yellows had not seemed so unfamiliar. One master was much like another when existence consisted of little more than work, vodka, food and family.

Still, Russians adapted. Mother Russia lived on.

Moscow’s position deep inland had preserved it when the Destroyers sent walls of water hundreds of meters high crashing at sonic speeds onto the shorelines of the west. Kragov laughed with grim humor as he thought of the cities of Britain, Spain, Italy and France, as well as the decadent American metropolises of Washington D.C., New York, Boston and Miami, washed away in an instant, while the capital of Russia, a thousand kilometers from any ocean, had won through with only its tallest buildings collapsed from the ground shockwave.

And then, the Meme had come and scooped up the mother country’s elite, Blending with those they selected and executing the rest, the better to decapitate the society and short-circuit any resistance.

Yet, Russians adapted. Mother Russia lived on.

So deeply rooted in the Russian soul, so strong was this emotion that the Yellows couldn’t help but be influenced by their own underlings. The Meme thought to conquer by Blending, but in doing so, they accepted a subtle counter-conquest that not only made humans into Blends, but Blends into humans.

Now, we are once again a people with a home and a heart, Kragov thought. As long as Moscow stands, we stand.

This time, there will be no long retreat until Father Winter takes his toll, no hiding until the enemy has gorged itself on Russian forests, Russian crops, Russian cattle and Russian children.

This time, they die, or we do.

***

Flight Sergeant Lilja Virtanen settled the demi-VR headset over her eyes, ears and shaven pate, adjusting the induction contacts. While not providing the immersiveness of full virtual reality – which required expensive chip implants and extensive training – the arrangement gave her excellent control of her atmospheric fighter drone while seated in her contoured chair at Air Base 46, eight hundred kilometers northwest of Moscow.

A Finn by language and culture, she found it ironic that her defense sector included the Russian capital. The intelligence NCO that briefed them twice daily believed the Scourge would hit Moscow the hardest as, unlike St. Petersburg and Helsinki, it had no natural water barriers to help its defense and it was by far the largest population center in the area.

“Everyone up?” the simulations tech called from his elevated platform looking out over the hundreds of drone pilots in their seated ranks.

In response, Lilja twitched one of the two joysticks in her hands and pressed a button, signaling that she was ready.

“Mission start,” the man said more quietly. This time, his words were fed directly into her auditory nerves, jumping the gap from her headset through a few centimeters of flesh. Immediately, his voice was replaced by the rumble of her drone’s jet engine, accompanied by a forward view from the aircraft itself – or it would have been were this not a simulation.

With a little imagination she convinced herself that she was there, inside the Goshawk drone sitting on the airfield among its hundreds of fellows, deadly birds of prey ready to stoop on the enemy and slash him to ribbons.

The simulated voice of the tower called the drones to ready, roll and rotate with metronomic precision, sending four aircraft every five seconds down the runway to launch themselves into space. Such proximity would never be tolerated with manned aircraft, but drones, though valuable, were expendable…especially when their first real-life mission came.

Intel estimated that perhaps half of them would survive to refuel at the FARP, the forward arming and refueling point located partway to Moscow. Camouflaged and completely automated, that facility sat alone on a desolate hilltop, its hastily compacted runway sufficient for a few days of heavy use before it deteriorated beyond all serviceability. The planners hoped that its lack of life and isolation would cause the Scourge to ignore it as irrelevant.

By the time its spare fuel and ammo had been depleted, the war would be over, one way or another.

Lilja’s turn came to launch, and she breathed shallowly as her Goshawk accelerated down the runway. At the proper mark she rotated the nose and retracted the landing gear, transforming the drone from an ungainly land creature into a graceful diamond-shaped lord of the air, its outline broken only by the stealthed inlets and exhaust ports of its variable scramjets.

This latest simulated mission directed ground strikes on the Scourges besieging the small city of Veliky Novgorod south of St. Petersburg.

In earlier times, she might have been vectored to the fight by the voice of a controller on an AWACs, but today, everything came over her datalink. That left the pilots free to use their comms to coordinate among themselves in a manner familiar to aviators from World War Two onward.

“Anna, you copy?” Lilja spoke as if her wingman weren’t reclining in the chair next to her. Only by operating as if inhabiting the fighter could greatest effectiveness be achieved, she’d been taught.

“Copy, lead,” Airman Anna Niemela replied.

“Transitioning.”

“Roger.”

Lilja ran her throttles forward to max subsonic, and then pressed the detent that allowed her to advance them still farther. The engine’s rumbling sound changed to a dull roar, and the controls grew sticky in her hands as the drone forced itself through the sound barrier into supersonic territory.

“Ignition,” she said, and punched the button that lit the supersonic ramjet, the scramjet, portion of her hybrid engine. Now, instead of jet fuel burning among rotating compressor blades, the aerosolized petroleum ignited within a plenum chamber, forced backward and out like a rocket by the incoming pressure of the air itself. This created a powerful thrust with no moving parts other than the valves on the dozens of fuel injectors that balanced the delicate reaction.

During her training, she’d asked why drones didn’t use the more powerful fusion engines of the aerospace fighters. She’d been patiently informed that such powerplants were far too expensive and limited in supply to waste on cheap, expendable atmospheric drones. That had been her first inkling that the Ground Forces ranked near the bottom of the military food chain – though the aviation service was a better place to be than armor or infantry.

Lilja was no coward, but it seemed far more sensible to fight from a distance than to face the enemy at rifle range like the stupid Russians.

Within minutes she approached the battlefield. Pulse gun and antipersonnel fire crackled in a ragged line all along the front of the tank division below as they pressed the Scourges. Lasers and plasma bolts came back at the humans. Artillery shells burst among the seething enemy, trapped between the defensive lines of the city and the closely packed Troll heavy tanks.

Armored fighting vehicles supported the Trolls, their infantry squads deployed among them to put as many small arms on target as possible, creating an impenetrable wall of firepower.

A line of carets flashed in sequence on her HUD, and she selected the closest one that designated a high-value target, in this case a Centurion-inhabited combat exoskeleton, a battle-cyborg twenty meters across that walked like a spider on four heavy legs. Launching a HellSpawn missile, she immediately shifted to the next target and locked that one up.

The Centurion picked the first missile out of the sky with a raw plasma discharge, intercepting it at close range and incinerating it before impact. Lilja cursed while launching her second HellSpawn at the next designated enemy, an armored Soldier backing up a ravening mob of Scourgeling infantry.

A nearby Centurion tried to provide antimissile cover, but its plasma burst went wide and her missile slammed into the enemy warrior, which burst from within, spraying body parts as the warhead exploded beneath its tough chitin shell.

The pseudo-AI targeting computer designated the original Centurion for a follow-up triple strike, but by that time Lilja’s drone had moved several kilometers farther down the battlefield, launching missiles at a different pair of targets.

“Fish in a small pond,” Anna said as she launched her fourth missile. “If the real battle is this easy, we’ll be partying in the sauna by the weekend.”

“Don’t get complacent.” Lilja said automatically. “Nothing’s ever as easy as in sims.”

A moment later her response was validated as a warning tone sounded and a strobe flashed in her cockpit. “Evasive!” she blurted, shoving the stick hard over and aiming for the deck. Anna, with less experience and training, reacted a fraction of a second slower, and the enemy laser locked onto her drone. When it fired, its bolt of coherent light blinded all the sensors and the heat of its impact destabilized the scramjet engine’s delicate combustion.

In an instant, the swooping bird of prey lost all power. A moment later, it fell apart under the superheating of the enemy weapon as its ailerons locked in place. It began to tumble. As it did, the drone’s overstressed materials slammed into a wall of air and broke apart.

“Voi kyrpä!” Anna swore. “Respawning.” Her conscious control would be transferred to one of the automated drones loitering a hundred klicks back, waiting for a pilot to bring it to the battlefield.

“See you soon,” Lilja said distractedly as the ground fled away below her at less than one hundred meters altitude. Once her HUD showed her clear of enemy concentrations, she lifted the nose and began a hard turn that would bring her around to reattack.

Chapter 20

“Shit. We’re screwed,” Ford said.

“Belay that, Commander,” Captain Scoggins snapped.

Absen kept silent, but felt much the same. In the last three hours they’d taken down two more swarms and two mothership cores. The Meme had wiped out one more, leaving twenty-five swarms, plus the enemy flagship and mega-swarm, of course.

But now, those twenty-five swarms had each dispersed their individual ships. Instead of occupying spherical areas roughly one thousand kilometers across, the groups now measured at least ten thousand klicks edge to edge, meaning ship density had dropped by a factor of more than one thousand.

“The good news is,” Absen said, “they can barely sting us anymore. With such a thin deployment, the assault craft can’t get past our defenses and their gunboats and fighters can’t coordinate fire like they used to. They’re firing the same number of shots, but they’re either missing or they’re hitting armor ninety-nine times out of a hundred. They’ve become skirmishers instead of a phalanx.”

“And the bad news is,” Scoggins replied, “we can’t kill them fast enough. Projections show it will take four hours to wipe out fifty percent of them, and since they seem to have no morale or breaking point, that means at least eight hours per swarm. At that rate, around twenty swarms will reach Earth. We can’t handle that many.”

“They’ll have to concentrate when they get there,” Johnstone said.

“Not enough, and not until the last minute,” the captain replied. “We won’t have time to kill them.”

“What about the Meme task force?” Ford asked. “The Scourges are attracted to their life signs like bugs to light. Maybe they’ll bunch up for them.”

“Maybe,” broke in Absen, “but that doesn’t change our situation.” He checked the holotank for estimated time to intercept the diffuse swarm in front of them. Twenty minutes. “Johnstone, pass orders to all ships: close to minimum safe distance. Michelle, slow down time and set up a captain’s conference. Oh, and invite Bull, too.”

Captain Scoggins looked a question at Absen, and he nodded. “You too, Melissa. Turn the ship over to AuxCon for a little while so everyone here can take a break. It may all be in your mind, but get up and walk around. Grab a cup of coffee or a smoke. You’ll feel better for it.”

Absen stood and took his own advice, bending over to stretch, and then reaching for the overhead, taking a couple of deep breaths. It always amazed him how indistinguishable the sim was from reality. COB Timmons handed him a battered mug of coffee, and when Absen tasted it, he really couldn’t tell the difference.

On some level, that frightened him. One of his biggest fears was the possibility of the enemy hacking their system, just as Michelle and Johnstone had done with the mothership core during Operation Bughouse. He’d been assured that the ICE protecting the cyberware would dump them back into reality before that happened, but…

Absen noticed the holotank’s chrono now seemed frozen. Eventually the seconds digit clicked over once. Other than Captain Scoggins and Michelle’s avatar, the members of the bridge crew all seemed mired in molasses, moving in slow motion. “Let’s go,” he said, turning to leave the command spaces and walking down the passageway into flag country.

Within his conference room he found sixteen people waiting. Or rather, their VR avatars waited, projected from their own ships, but the effect was identical. He suppressed all of his nagging thoughts about VR and resolved to act as if all this were real.

“Bull,” Absen said as he shook the big man’s hand. “Good to see you.”

“Likewise,” Bull rumbled.

Absen turned to Captain Huen. “Sherrie,” he said.

The woman returned his grip firmly. “This is pretty weird, sir: being able to take time out in the middle of a campaign to have a chin wag.”

“It is strange, I grant you,” he replied, and then turned to greet each of the cruiser captains in turn. “But I need ideas on how to overcome the Scourge’s latest ploy, this dispersion. Everyone take your seats, please.”

All sat down except Michelle, who took a place at the AV station and brought up the holoscreen showing the current military situation in the solar system.

“Michelle, project our discussion to the bridges and auxiliary control spaces of all the ships, and tie in all section chiefs of field grade rank so they can chime in if they need to. How much subjective time do we have?”

“As much as you want, within reason. You’re at ten to one now, which gives an easy ninety minutes.”

“Let’s start with that and see how it goes.”

“Aye aye, sir. I’ve put up a countdown in the holoscreen.”

Absen folded his hands, glancing around the room. “All right, people. The Scourges have spread out to the point we can’t kill them fast enough, though they can hardly hurt us. In roughly twenty-seven hours realtime they’ll reach Earth. How do we kill twenty-five million individual Scourge craft quickly with the forces we have?”

“We can spread out too,” replied Captain Riggin of the cruiser Loxley. “If they won’t come to us, we go to them.”

“And what happens when they converge on an unsupported cruiser?” Absen asked.

“We use TacDrive, sir. Smash our way out.”

Absen stroked his chin. “Okay, that’s one idea. Give me some more.”

“Missiles,” Captain Scoggins replied. “Go retrieve the stores in orbit around Earth and use them out here. As spread out as the Scourges are, they won’t be able to coordinate their own point defense. More of our missiles will get through.”

“Michelle,” Absen said, “How many missiles do we have available between our ships and the Earth defenses?”

“Six point six million,” the AI replied immediately.

“Enough to help, but not a total solution,” Captain Huen observed with thinned lips. “And doing so will weaken our final defense of Earth.”

“Kill them now, kill them later. It’s all the same,” Absen said. “If there were any indication these things had a breaking point, we might do things differently, but this is a pure numbers game. We have to eventually destroy them all.”

“The Archons have breaking points,” said Bull. “They’re already running.”

Absen cleared his throat. “But is there any way we can use that fact? They’re not going to recall their swarms.”

“The core that we hit during Bughouse did. Maybe we ought to try an assault of our own. Make them believe they can rescue a mothership so they’ll recall a swarm.”

Captain Scoggins shook her head and said, “With all due respect, General, that’s one hell of a costly way to slow down one, maybe two swarms. Better to simply kill the cores and run, as we’ve been doing.”

Bull frowned and fell silent, nodding slowly in apparent agreement.

“What about fighters?” asked Captain Figueroa of the cruiser Senegal. “We’ve got thousands of them based on Earth. Combined with our drones, we should be able to clean them up faster.”

“We’d be playing to the enemy’s strength,” Absen said. “Each swarm has fifty thousand Scourge fighters, not to mention gunships and assault craft. We have to fight asymmetrically, applying our strengths to their weaknesses. Besides, our fighters are manned. The casualties aren’t worth it. Not until the final battle, anyway.”

“They could use control corvettes and drones.”

“The control corvettes don’t have TacDrives yet. Same problem.”

Captain Riggin raised a hand. “How about bringing out TF Bravo? The Meme aren’t fighting with TacDrives. Why do we need them if the Scourges aren’t concentrating for the kill anyway? And with our new understanding of enemy capabilities and tactics, the smaller ships should do just fine.”

Absen felt like slapping his own forehead. He’d been so focused on his elite Task Force Alpha that he’d forgotten that TF Bravo wasn’t actually fixed in place at Earth. That fleet could sortie to meet the nearest swarm. In fact…

“Thank you, Captain Riggin. You just gave me an idea.”

***

Absen’s orders had placed all the pieces for his next chess match with a Scourge swarm, the closest one at approximately the orbit of Venus. That planet was far away, but it provided a convenient mental demarcation line about two-thirds of the distance from the sun to Earth.

In the swarm’s path ranged a ragtag fleet made up of much of Earth’s mobile defenses: the twenty-seven cruisers and frigates of Task Force Bravo along with more than forty drone control corvettes and their accompanying four-thousand-plus fighter drones.

That force should roughly equal the firepower of Conquest and her task Force Alpha, though not its mobility, so Absen wasn’t expecting heavy casualties. The problem still lay in the time it would take to kill the Scourges.

The holotank also showed the Meme of TF Charlie moving in behind the target swarm. They wouldn’t reach it in time; in fact, they weren’t trying. Their objective was the next swarm in the line of enemies stretching back toward the sun. If that group of Scourges sped up to attempt to assist their fellows, the Meme would take a heavy toll of them.

In the eight hours it had taken for the non-TacDrive EarthFleet forces to meet the enemy, Absen had brought Task Force Alpha back to the shipyards for more repairs, and then sortied Conquest alone on her TacDrive to kill twelve more mothership cores. Constitution, her main laser working again, accounted for six more.

This carnage had prompted the rest of the mothership cores to dive into the sun and escape. Afterward, it appeared no enemy FTL-capable ships remained, save the enormous superdreadnought flagship, which cruised leisurely inward in the wake of the rest of its apparently expendable swarms.

Now, Task Force Alpha lay five million kilometers – about sixteen light-seconds – spinward of the lead swarm, waiting.

“TF Bravo main weapons firing,” Ford said. The bridge crew could all see the tiny lines of holopixels lash out toward the amorphous mass of Scourges. “Not taking many out.”

“As expected,” Scoggins said. “They’re killing gnats with sledgehammers.”

“The enemy is clumping up a bit,” Fletcher said. He zoomed in on the swarm until it filled the holotank, and then stood to reach inside the simulation with a pointing finger. “Here, here…here and here. Some of the assault craft are aiming themselves at individual ships and the fighters and gunboats are forming into squadrons.”

“They can’t help themselves,” Ford crowed. “They have orders to spread out, but as soon as the fight started they began reverting to their training.”

“Or their instincts,” Doctor Horton said from her BioMed station. “Soldiers and Scourgelings are genetically programmed. They can hardly be called sentient until they’ve morphed into Centurions.”

“Same difference,” Ford muttered.

“Good news, anyway,” Absen said mildly.

The display showed the swarm tending to converge on their enemies, turning from a smooth fog of a million ships into groups by thousands and tens of thousands. Only the masses of point defense lasers slathered liberally onto the skins of every warship allowed them to stand against such numbers.

“Entering point defense envelope,” Fletcher reported as he took his seat again.

“Drones are moving up to support,” Ford said.

Captain Scoggins stood up to lean on the rail surrounding the holotank. “Looks like they’re holding the line. The enemy’s too thin to overcome their firepower and land.”

“Good,” Absen said. “They’ll have to either flow around, or turn to concentrate more. I’m betting on the latter.”

“Fire is thickening,” Fletcher reported. “I’m seeing some drone casualties and damage to the frigates. The cruisers seem to be taking it better.”

“Of course they are,” Scoggins said. “They’re a lot newer and have better armor.”

“Admiral Benitez is refusing the frigates,” Fletcher went on. Absen could see he was right; the smaller ships flipped briefly end for end, fired a blast of drive fusion, and then turned over again, drifting backward and allowing their heavier sister ships to bear the brunt of the incoming plasma torpedo fire.

“That’s thinning our phalanx a bit,” Scoggins said. “Still looking good, though. Sir, do we even need to jump in? Maybe we should go hit another swarm.”

Absen shook his head. “We’ll stick to the plan for now. It will reduce casualties and damage to Bravo. They can’t go speeding home for repairs the way we can.” He glanced at his holoscreen. “Let’s get in there. Pass to all ships: execute the pulse on Conquest’s mark and fire at will upon arrival.”

“Give the word, Mister Okuda,” Scoggins said.

Okuda keyed his comm. “All ships, pulse as planned in three, two, one, mark.”

The bridge electronics flickered. When they cleared, Absen could see his ships had leaped forward to within point defense range of the enemy’s flank spread far enough from each other to eliminate any chance of collision. With pre-issued orders, each vessel opened fire as soon as it was able even while advancing at flank speed under conventional drive, driving into the diffuse swarm.

Taken by surprise, the nearest enemy craft died by the thousands and continued to do so. Each EarthFleet ship, the smallest cruiser of which massed more than a hundred seagoing battleships of old, became a moving fortress cutting swaths of hot light through the diluted Scourge fleet.

Caught between the wall of Task Force Bravo and the rampaging ships of Alpha, the Scourges dissolved in confusion. They didn’t break so much as lose all cohesion, each craft turning directly to attack its nearest enemy, but with so much space between them, they couldn’t achieve the necessary concentration to overcome EarthFleet firepower. The few stragglers that did get through to crash-land on the hulls of the larger ships were quickly cut down by waiting warbots.

“Beautiful,” Ford breathed as he stared at his board. “More than ninety percent kills in less than half an hour. We’ve got them now.”

“No, Mister Ford,” Absen replied. “The game goes on. This was merely the latest move.”

Chapter 21

Council Archon Ikthor sat robed in splendor aboard his flagship Exterminator, watching the battle on colorful multilevel displays that flashed and swirled with colors unknown to the infestations. This breadth of visual sense demonstrated only one among many superiorities of the Brood over the animals around them.

His Battle Direction Archons ringed him, each of sixteen stations visible from his throne. Unfortunately, the plethora of available information was not particularly pleasing.

“The infestation is stubborn, Council Archon,” his most senior Director said. “Another swarm has been neutralized, despite its dispersion.”

“Don’t waste euphemisms on me, Raklog. Your position is secure.”

“Yes, Council Archon. I shall correct myself. Another swarm has been largely annihilated. The enemy ships’ weapons are obviously optimized against our small craft, and the mobility of their premier squadron is inescapable. In this, their technology is superior to ours.”

Ikthor waved one clawed limb. “We have prepared for their attacks, knowing full well that our casualties would be steep. As long as Exterminator survives, it shall perform the function for which it was named. Nothing can stand against it. The Brood shall prevail.”

“Of course, Council Archon.”

“Stay the course,” Ikthor shone in all directions. “As we press the infestation toward its nest-world, it will become increasingly desperate to attack this flagship, knowing it spells their doom. When they do, we will annihilate them. I shall add this system to my domain, and I will choose one of you to rule it in my name. Therefore, be diligent.”

***

Absen realized Commander Ford turned out to be more right than wrong in his optimism. With Bravo to fix them and Alpha to flank them, aided by the Meme in Charlie to guard against reinforcement as well as engaging as many of the enemy as it could, nineteen more swarms had been demolished.

However, Task Force Bravo had been beaten up, each encounter inevitably grinding away some of its weaponry, armor and drones. Now, the sixty-seven manned ships fled for Earth at their best speed. With seven more hours to go before the flagship and its mega-swarm arrived, they would have just enough time to make hasty repairs before the final stand above Earth.

The TacDrive-equipped ships of TF Alpha had, of course, bolted for home immediately, arriving mere minutes later to hurry into the shipyards. Another frantic hour of refitting had restored much of their capability; the orbital docks’ crews were getting a lot of practice.

“All right,” Absen addressed his captains in his conference room once again. “The Meme report they’re in great shape. They’ve refueled with their pre-positioned clusters of comets and will attrit the swarms as they pass toward Earth. The lead Scourges that are left will find the lunar and planetary defenses waiting for them, backed by TF Bravo. Our sims show we’ll have no problem winning that fight, though a few thousand small craft will probably land to be mopped up by the ground forces. It’s the flagship and the megaswarm attached to it that concern me.”

“We need to attack it by surprise,” Captain Riggin spoke up, apparently emboldened by the success of his earlier suggestions. “Pulse out to a position behind them, and then pulse in from out of the sun like dive bombers. They won’t see us coming and they won’t be able to react fast enough.”

“How do you know they won’t react fast enough?” Scoggins asked mildly, aware her position as the admiral’s flag captain could shut down the young man’s enthusiasm. “We have no idea of their capabilities. Their computers are as fast as ours even if they don’t have AI. They could be programmed to immediately blast anything that shows up with energy weapons, hitting us before our sensors recover and set up our targeting.”

Riggin set his jaw. “We could throw a bunch of decoys at them. They don’t even have to be aimed. Launch all our missiles as soon as we drop pulse, heading in their general direction. They can be updated later. A couple seconds after, we’ll have launched Exploders and we can pulse out.”

“They’re surrounded by their swarm. Five million small craft in a dense screen. We’ll come under immediate attack, and even with a few thousand missiles joining them, Exploders won’t get anywhere near their flagship,” Scoggins replied. “Unless, of course, we pulse straight to point-blank range, but if we do that, every weapon and sensor on the forward hull will be stripped by collisions.”

“Then we pulse in backward again.”

Scoggins shook her head. “If we do that, Conquest will probably lose her engines. Their swarm is so dense, we’ll take a thousand collisions at lightspeed, each one like a tactical nuke against our skin. At least one of them will go right up our tailpipes and wipe out the fusion drives, which by the way provide half of ship’s power.”

Absen cleared his throat, and the two captains subsided. “I like the general idea, trying to hit them hours out instead of right here at home. If we let them get too close, they might deploy some weapon we can’t stop. Out there, we force them to reveal their capabilities, and we still have superior mobility and speed. All we really have to do is figure out a tactical approach that gets us into Exploder range…and out again, I hope.”

“You hope?” Scoggins turned to the admiral with raised eyebrows.

“If it comes down to a choice between Earth and this ship, there’s only one real option.”

“If that happens,” Michelle said, “I can do it myself. There’s no need for organics to risk themselves.”

Absen shook his head. “I’m not proposing a suicide run, Commander, merely making the observation that no matter what the odds of fighting our way out, we may have to accept them.”

Captain Doughty of the Montgomery spoke up. “Why not let the AI give it a try, sir? That way, we don’t have to lose any people.”

The face on Michelle’s avatar froze, and Absen forced himself not to castigate the man in public. “Mister Doughty, Commander Michelle Conquest is as much a person as you or I. That said, there is some merit to losing only one person rather than thousands. Michelle, how much would it affect your combat capacity to run Conquest alone?”

“I’d retain about forty-five percent overall, though I can allocate effort as necessary. In practice, I’d retain one hundred percent of helm, main weapons array and Exploder capability, deprioritizing everything else.”

“We can’t do that, sir,” Scoggins said, turning earnestly to Absen. “She might take down the flagship, but the swarm would jump her immediately. She wouldn’t have the capacity to defend herself or even make it out with TacDrive. Every small craft she hits is a fusion bomb at lightspeed.”

“What about a SLAM?” Riggin said.

“We’re out of SLAMs,” Scoggins replied.

“I mean an improvised SLAM. We could evacuate the Loxley, load an Exploder warhead aboard, and aim her by remote.”

Absen held up a hand, thinking. “Michelle, is that flagship still taking evasive maneuvers?”

“Yes, sir,” the AI said. “It’s making constant and apparently random course changes, enough to make long-range targeting quite difficult. They saw what the SLAMs did, and they assume we have more.”

“How close would an improvised SLAM have to be to guarantee a hit?”

“If by guarantee you mean –”

“I mean guarantee, Michelle. Probability exceeding 99.999 percent, let’s say.”

“Not possible. Each impact from anything in a TacDrive-equipped ship’s path alters its course. With millions of maneuvering small craft nearby–”

Riggin broke in. “How about if the cruiser pulsed in to point-blank range, retargeted itself, and then pulsed again directly at the enemy, so close it couldn’t possibly miss?”

“Yes, Captain,” Michelle replied evenly. “That solves the accuracy problem, but not the issue of enemy weaponry. Even under computer control, there is a delay of at least two seconds before sensors recover from the drive field’s effects. Then, ship’s thrusters have to fire to line up for the next pulse, resulting in more delay.”

“All true,” Riggin said, standing up to emphasize his point, “but it’s worth a try. Trade one ship – my ship – for the opportunity to take that bastard down? I’m willing to take the chance.”

Absen looked around the room, trying to gauge his captains’ reactions. While a fleet was no democracy, only a fool didn’t pay attention to the effect major decisions had on the people who had to carry them out – or in this case, to watch. Most of them were nodding, if grimly, some staring at Riggin in open admiration, some in bleak sympathy. Nominating one’s own vessel for destruction couldn’t be easy, even for a hard-charger like Riggin.

“All right. We’ll do it,” the admiral said. “It’s worth the gamble. If it doesn’t work, we’ll lose one ship, but the enemy will likely have to reveal his capabilities. We’ll adjust from there. Captain Riggin, dock with Conquest and evacuate the Loxley. Get everything of value off her you can. Michelle, pass the word to Mister Nightingale to pull an Exploder warhead out of the magazine. No need for a detonator, either. The impact will set it off…either that, or the first Scourgeling to take a bite out of it will.”

Antimatter, unlike other explosives, was inherently unstable, held in check only by triple magnetic bottles keeping it from contact with normal matter. Rupture those fields and everything within a five-kilometer radius would be utterly vaporized, no matter what the armor. Beyond that zone, damage would be proportional to distance from point zero.

“What if this doesn’t work?” Scoggins asked.

“We’ll figure that out when we find out why it didn’t work,” Absen answered. “But you make a good point. Captain Doughty, dock with Constitution and evacuate Montgomery as well. We’ll operate her by remote, and if we have to make a second try, we’ll have saved preparation time.”

“Sir, I must protest!” the captain said.

“On what grounds?” Absen said with a lift of his eyebrows.

“My ship represents an enormous investment of materiel and time. You can’t throw it away like this.”

“I didn’t notice you protesting the sacrifice of Loxley,” Absen replied in a cooling voice. “One might wonder if your objection wasn’t more…personal in nature.”

“Of course it’s personal, sir. I might never have another command like this.”

And you just ensured you never will, Absen thought to himself. The man is concerned about himself and his career, not the mission and the needs of Earth. How’d this one slip past me?

“Sorry, Captain, but someone has to do it,” the admiral said.

“Senegal volunteers,” Captain Figueroa spoke up, standing.

“I’ll keep that in mind if we need to try a third time,” Absen said drily, “but for now, my order stands.” He stared at Doughty until the man swallowed and nodded. “Get to work, then. You’re all dismissed.” The avatars of all but Scoggins and Michelle faded around Absen.

“That was embarrassing,” Scoggins said.

“He won’t be getting another ship,” Absen replied. “Not for a while, anyway. Michelle, any indications in Doughty’s service record that he’s less than dedicated?”

“No, sir. On paper, he’s perfect.”

Absen lifted his eyebrows. “Perfect? How perfect?”

“Top marks on all FITREPs and evals. Top scores in all categories for Montgomery. In fact, technically, his ship has the best record in the fleet.”

“Hard to believe,” Scoggins said with a scowl.

“Very hard,” Absen said, his eyes narrowing. “Let’s go to the bridge.”

When the three arrived, the admiral called Rick Johnstone to his ready room and waved Michelle in too. Addressing the CyberComm officer, Absen said, “I have reason to suspect someone falsified the performance records of the Montgomery, Captain Doughty, or both. Others of his officers too, perhaps. I need you to take a look. I presume you have codes that will get you inside the systems of all of our ships?”

Johnstone smiled. “If I didn’t, I’m sure Michelle and I could crack them.” His mien turned sober. “Do you think this is anything sinister, or is it just misguided ambition?”

“That’s what I want you to find out. Doughty grew up in the defense forces under the Empire’s Blends, if I recall correctly. From his interview, I felt like he had the right attitude, but maybe he’s just a face man with personal ambition.”

Scoggins said, “The non-Blends weren’t encouraged to take risks, sir. Maybe it’s a case of being accustomed to telling his superiors what they want to hear. He performed creditably in the battles up until now.”

“I can’t take ‘maybe’ for an answer, Melissa. Johnstone will dig it out, and then we’ll know.”

Chapter 22

“The evacuation of Loxley is complete,” Michelle reported to Admiral Absen as he drummed his fingers on the arm of his flag chair.

“Spread her crew around among Conquest’s, but keep her sections together. Make it clear to them that they’re not being broken up. At least, not now. If possible, I’ll give Riggin the next cruiser to come out of Jupiter’s shipyards.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Is the Exploder aboard?”

“Yes, sir. Mister Nightingale reports it’s been welded to the deck in a forward compartment, no special bracing, as you ordered.”

“Yes,” Absen said. “We want it to detonate when the ship takes catastrophic damage.”

“Understood.”

“What about Doughty and the Montgomery?”

“Evacuation is proceeding, but more slowly than Loxley’s,” Michelle replied.

“More evidence of a lack of enthusiasm. If you haven’t already, get some of your maintenance drones in to speed things up. Once that’s done, go ahead and bring the Senegal to dock for evacuation. I’ve decided to take Captain Figueroa’s offer as well.”

“If it doesn’t work, sir, we’ll have wasted three heavy cruisers for nothing,” Scoggins said.

“And if it does, it will guarantee our survival. Each heavy represents what, about three percent of Fleet’s raw combat power?” Absen asked.

“Three point one six percent, approximately,” Michelle said.

“Thank you, Mister Spock. I’ve decided it’s worth the risk, so do it.”

Michelle’s avatar and the admiral stared at each other for a moment.

Eventually, Absen said, “No need to delay further. Captain Scoggins, tell Okuda to push her out to sea.”

The captain cocked her head. “Viking funeral?”

“You got it. Go.”

Scoggins cleared her throat. “Helm, launch our fire-ship.”

“Pulse in three, two, one, mark,” Okuda responded immediately.

In the holotank, Absen watched as the Loxley’s icon moved rapidly toward a position on an imaginary line directly between the sun and the enemy flagship. At lightspeed, it took only minutes to get there.

Now, the suicide ship was out of their control. Light-minutes away, no transmission could move fast enough to provide data or instructions; the computer network aboard, programmed by Commander Johnstone, was running the ship.

Absen watched as the icon turned its tiny arrow, pointing toward the enemy and then moving again. As it did, the holotank view zoomed in closer and closer, scale adjusting continuously to show both ships.

The Loxley passed by the superdreadnought. It had been aimed directly at the flagship, but as expected, collisions with swarm craft had deflected it from a direct hit.

As soon as it dropped pulse, at a mere two hundred kilometers distance, it began to alter aspect, thrusters flaring violently to adjust the ship’s vector as quickly as possible.

“Come on,” Ford muttered, rising from his seat to grip the holotank rail.

Before it had made it far enough, the Loxley exploded.

“Damn,” Scoggins breathed. “What just happened?”

“Trying to reconstruct…” Fletcher replied, fingers skimming over his console, adjusting Conquest’s sensor feeds. The holotank froze, and then reset from the moment when Loxley dropped pulse.

Now in slow motion and with overlays of optical false color, synthetic aperture radar, gamma, neutron emissions and every other sensor type available, the picture became clearer.

A beam of energy reached out from within the flagship, boring a hole in its own inflated latticework to splash against the Loxley. Fletcher slowed the recording further, allowing all watching to see the cruiser’s armor ignite as if made of pure explosive.

Within half a realtime second on the chrono, the effect vaporized more than a hundred meters of the hardest armor known to Earthtech. A moment later, the cruiser vanished as the Exploder blew its antimatter containment, but at two hundred kilometers, nothing but a few dozen swarm craft died.

“What was that?” Absen asked.

“Graser, sir,” said Fletcher. “Gamma ray laser in the exawatt range. Almost as powerful as the moon Weapons were, sir. Bigger than anything we have now.”

“On a mobile warship,” Scoggins marveled. “Obviously set on automatic, as we suspected.”

“And I’d bet dollars to doughnuts they have more than one of them,” Absen said.

“How do you know, sir?”

“Think about it, Captain.” Absen fell silent, waiting.

Scoggins furrowed her brow for a moment. “The flagship barely adjusted its attitude before firing. So unless the Loxley just happened to drop pulse directly in front of its single main weapon, there must be multiples.”

Absen nodded. “Michelle, given equivalent technology to ours, estimate the amount of power that ship has available to give me a likely range of the number of weapons of that size they might have.”

“I’d call it more of a guess than an estimate, as we have no idea of the ship’s design. They might have a hundred beam projectors aiming in all directions, but only enough power to fire one at a time, for example,” Michelle replied. “Also, how much power can be stored in its capacitors? And there are a dozen lesser variables.”

“Guess, then. If EarthFleet designed that ship, how would we do it?”

Had Michelle’s mind been organic, she might have hesitated, but at AI speeds, she answered immediately. “If it were me and I had few resource constraints, I’d mount at least twenty of those guns pointing in all directions, with enough swivel on each that no matter where an enemy appeared, I could hit him almost immediately. Especially if I knew my enemy had TacDrive and I didn’t.”

“So this is a counter to TacDrive?” Scoggins asked.

Michelle said, “They did wait a year before this follow-up attack. Perhaps the first fleet sent an FTL drone back with a report. Or maybe they’ve encountered something like TacDrive before in one of the races they wiped out, but weren’t able to salvage the technology. This automated super-point-defense system is one way I’d counter my enemy’s advantage. The dense swarm is another way. Between the two, they’re damned hard to reach, much less kill.”

“Layered defense, like an old carrier battle group,” Absen said, chin in hand. “And probably more surprises to come, hidden by that shell. What’s our logical next move?”

“More improvised SLAMs – the Montgomery and the Senegal. Maybe one will make it through, sir,” Captain Scoggins replied.

“Maybe isn’t good enough. We need a plan. While Senegal is evacuating, you smart kids come up with one. We’re going to get a drink.” With that, Absen jerked his head at Timmons and together they walked off the bridge.

“My place or yours?” the COB asked.

“How about yours? I’m getting tired of drinking quality whiskey. Maybe some cheap hooch will do me good.”

The Chief of the Boat chuckled and led the way down a deck to his stateroom. Not nearly as grand as the admiral’s, still the most senior noncom aboard had enough space for several people to sit comfortably and shoot the breeze. When they arrived, he pulled an unlabeled bottle out of the freezer module of his personal cooler. “Try some of this, sir. It’ll make a real man of you.”

“So you haven’t tried it yet?”

“Ouch. Okay, I deserved that.” Timmons set down two battered steel cups and poured. They immediately began to sweat from the subzero temperature of the liquor he’d dispensed.

“Absent friends,” Absen toasted with his, and the COB murmured agreement. When the frigid stuff hit his tongue he gasped. “What the hell is this, battery acid?”

“Pepper vodka…sort of. Chief Yastrepsky makes a batch of it every now and again. A few bottles of it is my payoff to keep it quiet.”

“Keep it quiet? We’re not a dry service, COB.”

“Don’t tell him that, sir, or he’ll start charging me a hundred FleetCreds a fifth, like all the rest.”

Absen burst out laughing, and then he sobered. “I just realized something… We’re still in VR. I’d totally forgotten. We can get rip-roaring drunk within the space of a few minutes, and then tell Michelle to sober us up hangover-free when we need to get back to work.”

“That’s scraping the surface of what VR can do, boss…which is why it’s so addictive. As long as the AI is willing to indulge you, you can make all your problems disappear and do anything you want. Shoot heroin without getting hooked. Have an orgy with real people or virtual ones – not that you’ll know the difference. Lie on the beach for six months while a day passes in the real world. Make yourself Emperor of Earth.”

“But Michelle would never go along with anything like that…right?”

Timmons shrugged. “Not anymore…but when the technology first came online, there weren’t enough rules and principles to guide her. She got quite an education in human vice before she really understood what she was seeing. Once Dr. Egolu and her team added some ethical structure, things settled down.”

“Oof. I never knew.”

“You’ve always had too much on your plate to worry about little things like that. That’s what you have smartass officers and crusty old chiefs for.”

Absen sipped at the liquid fire in his cup. “So why tell me now?”

Timmons shrugged and winked. “Have to talk about something while the rest brainstorm and the universe goes to hell. Might as well remind you that it’s me that really runs this ship.”

***

“We’ve come up with a plan, sir,” Captain Scoggins said as Absen strolled onto the bridge again, stone cold sober despite the amount of alcohol he’d seem to have drunk.

“Let’s hear it.”

Scoggins gestured to the holotank where a tactical diagram floated, showing the enemy flagship, its super-swarm and three Fleet ships off to the side. Two of the vessels were labeled Senegal and Montgomery. The other icon read Constitution. “You’re not going to like it, sir.”

“I may hate it, but I’ll do it if it fends these bastards off one more time.”

“Captain Huen is going to hate it even more.”

Absen’s voice rose slightly. “Spit it out, Captain.”

Scoggins stepped over to the holotank, nervously tucking her straight brown hair behind her ears. She reached into the display and lined up the ships as if playing with models. “The main problem we have is the swarm, sir. It’s a mobile shield that keeps us from TacDriving in point-blank and nailing the flagship. So, what we need is a battering ram to make a temporary hole in that shield.”

The display ran forward, showing the EarthFleet dreadnought plowing through the swarm toward the flagship.

“I see where you’re going with this, Melissa. Pulse Constitution in and the two ships cruisers behind, hoping Connie is big enough to hold course and clear the way like an icebreaker. One of the three should slam into their flagship, and if not, they might be able to turn around and try again if they survive passage through to the other side.”

“Yes, sir. That’s one possible COA, and it’s part of another. Michelle?”

The AI avatar stepped forward, looking completely human in VR space. “My estimates say the icebreaker tactic has about a forty percent chance of success. We can improve this to better than seventy percent if we bring out our grand fleet – all three task forces – and engage the enemy conventionally. That should draw their forces toward us, thinning them out on the flanks and rear. They might even leave their backdoor completely open, in which case we can pulse the three ships individually.”

Absen stepped forward to the rail. “Where would our grand fleet meet them?”

The holotank reconfigured to show a medium-scale tactical diagram including the Earth-Moon system. “About two hours outside of the range of our lunar heavy batteries, unless you want to let them in closer. If we do that, though…”

“We risk a surprise, some kind of weapon aimed at Earth perhaps, especially if they think they’re losing. If I were them, I’d consider killing all life on the planet a victory, especially if they were able to fight their way back to Sol afterward and escape. No, you’re right; if we do it, we’ll have to hit them as far out as we can.” Absen stuck his index finger at the intersection of several movement plots, a point located some thirteen million kilometers from Earth.

“Sure wish we had a Weapon now,” grumbled Ford. “It could tear that damned super-ship apart at ten million klicks.”

“Wishes, fishes, James,” Absen replied. “It would have cost too much to rebuild after the first Scourge attack destroyed it, given that we thought we needed a larger number of smaller weapons, not a super-beam. Make do with what you have.”

“So sir…” Scoggins asked. “Captain Huen…”

“I’ll tell her,” Absen said. “Hail her and put her through to my ready room.”

Once inside the small, spare office, the desk screen lit up with realtime vid. “Here, Admiral,” the intense woman said.

“Sherrie, I have something to ask of you, and I’m sorry. It’s going to be hard.”

“I’m ready, sir. Just say the word.”

Absen sighed. “I need Connie as a battering ram to get through to that big bastard. I’d use Conquest, as yours is the newer ship and optimized against Scourge small craft, but –”

“But we’ve taken more damage, and more importantly, you can’t transfer the AI in time.”

“I’m glad you understand. I can’t condemn Michelle to death when a computer can make the suicide run.”

“Of course. What are your orders, sir?”

“You crew is too big for Conquest to absorb, so pick something that can – one of the dockyards, perhaps?”

Huen shook her head. “The lunar facilities. With no atmosphere, we can pulse in close and set down on the surface nearby. Everyone we can’t carry in small craft and rovers can march straight out onto the ground and walk toward the bases until they get a lift. Don’t worry, sir, we’ll handle it.”

“There’s enough room for you on Conquest’s bridge. You deserve a ringside seat.”

“Thank you, sir, but I have to decline. I’ll take care of my people and make sure Connie’s CyberComm systems are set up properly for remote control.”

Absen nodded. “I expected you to say that. Good luck, Captain, and sorry it worked out this way.”

“Luck to you and to EarthFleet, Admiral. Huen out.”

***

“I do not wish to convey defeatism, Council Archon, but our casualties seem excessive,” Battle Director Raklog said.

“More larva can always be hatched, more small craft produced. Our automated capital weaponry defeated their suicide vessel as expected. The plan continues,” Ikthor replied.

Clearly ambivalent, Raklog hesitated.

“Speak, Director.”

“Council Archon…my liege…my calculations show that when the infestation is brought to battle, we will not have enough swarm craft to both screen us and to attack. If we commit enough force to defeat them, a suicide vessel might make it through to strike us.”

“We may not have enough force according to approved tactics, perhaps. But we shall make another adjustment.”

“Our adjustments have been insufficient until now, my liege.”

Ikthor suppressed a surge of irritation. After all, he had insisted his subordinate speak freely. “All operations require adjustments, using approved tactics as a baseline. Do not cling so closely to tradition when confronting infestations, Raklog. We have enough of slavish submission in Center; we might as well dispense with some of it out here.”

Raklog seemed nonplussed, and Ikthor masked his amusement. The Brood was based on hierarchy; flexibility wasn’t one of its strong points, but one didn’t rise to the Council by mere dedication to orthodoxy.

Chapter 23

Thirteen million kilometers sunward from Earth, three defending squadrons waited.

To spinward, the Meme of Task Force Charlie lurked on the flank of the enemy’s course. If neither side altered vector, the Scourges would sail by them just out of range of everything but the enemy flagship’s capital weapons.

Of course, that wasn’t the plan.

To antispinward, Task Force Alpha waited much farther back, its TacDrive-equipped ships able to rush in at any time to strike the enemy.

In front, blocking the Scourges’ advance, more than sixty EarthFleet cruisers, frigates and control corvettes positioned themselves, along with thousands of combat drones remotely controlled by experienced pilots.

Backing them up were over a thousand StormRaven manned fighters, whose job was to catch as many leakers as possible.

Flocks of missile bundles waited as well, deployed early to float across the enemy’s path, ready to be activated when needed.

“Why doesn’t the Scourge flagship alter course and move around to the flank?” Colonel Vango Markis heard Lieutenant Colonel Josiah “Token” Gaffney, ask over his comm. As commander of First Aerospace Wing, Vango was able to choose his wingman, so he’d tracked down and co-opted the man who’d accompanied him on the odyssey of thirty thousand Aardvarks against the Destroyers over a century ago.

“They’ve built up too much velocity. They’re already decelerating intermittently, and they can’t move sideways at any appreciable angle. They’re committed to this course if they want to hit Earth,” Vango replied.

Token grunted in acknowledgement, and then changed subjects. “Why’d you decide to drive a Raven instead of a drone corvette?”

“You have to ask? Controlling drones isn’t real flying. Besides, we have a hell of a lot better overview of the battle out here, and we get to shoot some bugs ourselves.”

“What about personal leadership?” Token needled him.

“That’s obsolete for anything bigger than an eight-ship once the Wing launches. You know that. All our people are pros, with the best cybernetics EarthTech can install. I don’t need to do more than point them in the right direction.” Vango chuckled. “I’d almost forgotten what a gloomy sonofabitch you were.”

“Realistic, I call it.” Vango’s radio crackled, and then Token continued, “Looks like that’s the go-code. Going VR.”

“Going VR,” Vango echoed, and the universe expanded around him as his brain and the chips resident there filled with the virtuality that allowed them to fight at speeds to rival computers.

Now, he was able to move his viewpoint to anywhere in the battle, in essence inhabiting a virtual holotank, though unable to affect more than his own local area. Still, the feeling was godlike, and was the unspoken reason he’d turned down command of a drone corvette. Maybe it was a cop-out, but he wasn’t nearly the best at remote control among the wing’s pilots…but from here, he might be able to make an important call at some critical juncture.

Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that, he thought.

***

“It’s gonna get ugly,” Ford said to no one in particular. “They’re coming into range of that flagship’s big guns.”

“Alpha’s too far away, and everyone else is taking random evasive maneuvers,” Scoggins said. “Ten million klicks is thirty light seconds. They can’t hit a maneuvering target at that range.”

“Unless they get lucky. They’re firing anyway,” Ford replied darkly.

On the holotank, Absen could see a plot of the enemy’s massive graser beam – one of them, he supposed – reach out and spear through Bravo’s formation. By sheer chance – space was vast, after all – it struck a missile bundle, causing a brief flare as it turned to plasma.

“The flagship is rotating slowly and decelerating intermittently,” Fletcher said. “It’s –”

At that moment, another beam licked out, destroying one of the many fighter drones spread out among the larger ships.

Fletcher continued, “It’s firing about every six seconds, apparently from a different weapon each time. Long-range optics show it’s punching loopholes in the expanded lattice from the inside to do so.”

“Can you get a look at what’s inside?” Absen asked.

“Not at this distance, but I’ll keep trying, sir.”

“How long until it’s likely to hit one of our ships?”

“More than an hour to close within two million klicks, sir. After that, hit probabilities rise above one percent per shot. Under one million, we can expect more than ten percent hit probability.”

Absen knew all this, of course; he’d run the sims many times. No matter what Task Forces Bravo and Charlie did, they could expect to lose a quarter to a third of their ships before the close battle between the swarm and EarthFleet began.

Now he knew what the four obsolete vessels of the Royal Navy must have felt like in the face of the German super-battleship Bismarck and its accompanying battlecruiser Prinz Eugen. In its one major ship-to-ship action, Bismarck blew the battlecruiser HMS Hood out of the water with its fifth salvo of long-range shells, and then drove off the outgunned battleship Prince of Wales after destroying its command center. The other two British ships had retreated as well.

By that time, Bismarck had taken only three minor hits, and sailed blithely away at the orders of its cautious flotilla commander, eventually to be hunted down by the entire Home Fleet and accompanying naval aircraft.

Absen had always wondered what might have happened had Bismarck attacked immediately as its aggressive captain had wished, instead of running as the admiral in charge ordered. Given its tremendous superiority, it was entirely possible she could have finished off the three surviving British ships and gone on to change the course of the war.

Well, the Scourge commander showed no sign of slipping off into the night, so it looked like EarthFleet, playing the role of the Royal Navy, was about to get pounded, and hard.

An hour later, Bravo had lost a few dozen small craft and one frigate to lucky graser shots. The Scourge flagship fired once every 6.32 seconds like clockwork, from a different weapon or turret each time, it seemed.

Fletcher reported identifying thirty-two distinct locations the grasers had originated, though the same weapon never fired twice in succession. Instead, it appeared the flagship rotated shots through different emplacements, probably building up power and routing it into each new system while the others cooled or recovered.

One of Absen’s greatest worries didn’t materialize for a while: losing one of ten Meme Monitors before the battle began. The graser beam would likely kill even a ship such as that – if it hit.

The Meme, though, had always possessed superior conventional acceleration, and the closer the flagship got, the more madly they dodged, spinning in constantly altering curves like oversized fireflies, burning their fuel as if there were no tomorrow.

Which, Absen admitted to himself, there may not be.

Now the admiral had a decision to make. Accelerating toward the enemy would minimize the time his task forces spent under the fire of that horrible big gun, but it would dramatically reduce the period in which they held the advantage against the swarm craft.

Conversely, falling back would extend the engagement time of the two fleets, favoring the Scourge flagship, but also giving the EarthFleet and Meme vessels a much easier time killing enemy assault boats, fighters and gunships.

As much as it pained him, the second choice was the right one, the more certain one, forcing a battle of attrition that, by the numbers, Earth had a good chance of winning.

That COA would also set up his sucker punch, the three suicide fireships.

Sending friends and colleagues to certain death would be the price of victory.

Why me? Absen asked the universe, or God, or…something. He’d never seen empirical evidence anything greater existed, but at times like these, when the weight of humanity’s future pressed down on him, it was hard not to cry out and hope someone answered, but no one seemed to.

“Pass to Bravo: begin the retrograde,” Absen said when the chrono hit its mark. “Transmit this: good luck and good hunting.” He felt like apologizing to the brave men and women standing in the way of oncoming death; they were the phalanx that had to bear the brunt, had to hold on while the cavalry got the glory of smashing into the enemy’s flanks.

At his order, more than threescore ships turned tail to the oncoming super-swarm and began to retreat. Absen had hoped this would prompt an undisciplined rush from the enemy, but the Scourges held their lines, their squadrons and their groups.

Once the ships of Bravo were backing up at the planned velocity, they turned back over and the larger vessels began desultory long-range fire with their heavy weapons. These constituted mere pinpricks, knocking down small craft here and there, more to buoy the morale of the EarthFleet crews than anything.

“Almost there,” Ford muttered, and Absen watched as the leading edge of the enemy approached a certain location in space. “Blow it, Michelle,” he said.

Almost a minute later the light from the detonation of hundreds of thousands of stealthed mines reached Conquest and TF Alpha, and a cheer broke out on the bridge. Only the Scourges’ unwavering Earthbound course had allowed the seeding of a minefield in their path.

Immediately afterward, the holotank blossomed with hundreds of thousands more small missiles, each locking onto a separate enemy craft. More than half of them survived to eventually impact their targets, aided by the confusion sown by the mines’ detonations.

Simultaneous with the minefield blast, the Meme had launched a wave of hypers. Hoarded until now, the weapons were largely ineffective against small craft, as they had no warheads and they were far less accurate than EarthFleet’s computer-controlled missiles.

What they did have, though, was incredible acceleration, on the order of nine hundred Gs. This allowed them to cover the distance to the enemy flagship much more quickly than the Scourge must have expected, for the wave of over one hundred thousand caused what could only be panic in the swarm on that flank. Every fighter in the area blasted to intercept and began firing frantically.

In response, the hypers twisted and jinked, all the while accelerating in the general direction of the enemy super-ship. “Come on, hypers!” Ford muttered, and soon the rest of the bridge crew took up the chant.

The dense flock of tiny-minded living rockets slashed through the swarm, losing tens of thousands to laser fire and collisions – yes, collisions, Absen could see, as the enemy craft deliberately or negligently got in their way – before closing on the enemy superdreadnought.

“I can’t believe it,” Scoggins said. “I never expected them to get through. We might win the battle right here!”

“The Scourge have fought the Meme before, Captain,” Absen said, on his feet in spite of his desire to present a cool image. He clasped his hands tightly behind his back and forced himself not to pace. “I’m sure they have some sort of countermeasure. In fact, I’m expecting it. The more intel we can gather, the smarter we can fight.”

To Absen’s eye it appeared as if Scoggins was right. At least fifty thousand missiles were poised to impact the enemy flagship, and he held his breath as the range dropped, clicking off the thousands of kilometers as fast as he could count aloud. “Five…four…three…two…one…”

A puff of pixels obscured the view of the flagship icon, and Absen snapped, “What just happened? Run that back!”

With the luxury of VR and Michelle’s control of apparent time, this was easy. The holotank record rewound and the view zoomed in to focus on the Scourge superdreadnought. In slow motion, the sheaves of hypers approached, hundreds of them slamming into the densely packed small craft vainly trying to form a wall against them.

And then, they passed through that barrier as if it were smoke, for the swarm held its distance from their command vessel. “How far?” Absen asked urgently. “How far away are they staying from the flagship?”

“About forty kilometers,” Michelle said.

In ultra-slow bullet time Absen watched the lead hypers. “Thirty klicks. Twenty. Ten…”

From ten thousand points on the porous skin of the Scourge flagship erupted domes of debris, propelled outward by what must be explosions. When the shockwave met the hypers, both dissolved in the chaos of thousands of impacts.

“Reactive armor,” Ford said. “Sort of.”

“More like our shotguns,” Scoggins said, referring to the old-style explosive charges affixed to the hull of EarthFleet warships, now made obsolete by the new laser modules. “The controlled blasts do far less damage than the incoming weapons would, taking them out en masse.”

“How much skin depth did they lose?” Absen asked.

“About five hundred meters on average,” Michelle answered immediately.

“Leaving them more than forty kilometers of latticework shield before we hit their hull. I’m beginning to see the reason they wrapped their ship in that stuff,” Absen mused. “It could be laced with antimissile and anti-boarding charges, small weapons, suicide troops…it’s a lightweight mobile fortress. It’s as if a ground tank were wrapped in a hundred meters of hardened ablative foam instead of three meters of dense armor. Brilliant.”

“It’s gonna take forever to drill through that shit, sir,” Ford complained.

“Not if we can shove Montgomery or Senegal down its throat,” growled a voice from the back of the bridge. Ford turned to lock eyes with Captain Riggin, who’d been silently watching the battle. “A half-billion ton ship striking at lightspeed isn’t going to be diverted by a bunch of ablative foam and explosives.”

“I hope so, sir,” Ford replied, turning back to his board. “I really hope so.”

Ten minutes later, the bloodbath began in earnest. Absen felt gut-punched as the heavy cruiser Quanzhou took a direct hit from that unstoppable graser, leaving a molten mass of bubbling ferrocrystal in its wake, and certainly no survivors. Five minutes after that, the frigate Astonish followed.

“Sir, we have to do something,” Ford said, eyes hot with anger.

“Steady, James. We knew this would happen. The sims said to expect more as the range closes.”

“On a positive note,” Michelle said, “they’re destroying a dozen of their own swarm craft with each shot, whether they hit one of ours or not.”

“Can’t we let the enemy catch up and start the engagement, sir?” Ford pleaded. “At least then those doomed ships would get some licks in before they die.”

“I know how you’re feeling, but we stick to the plan.”

Long minutes passed before the swarm edged into long plasma torpedo range. Two drone control corvettes and another frigate died, along with the first of the Meme Monitors. The huge ship did not disintegrate, but it succumbed just the same, its guts ripped out by ravening gamma rays.

“Now,” Absen said. “Johnstone, transmit for Bravo to reverse course and tell the Meme to move in to support, full assault. This is it. Okuda, synchronize our pulses and initiate.”

“Three, two, one, mark,” Okuda said, and the battle leaped toward them.

Chapter 24

“We have destroyed one of the large ships of the Jellies, as well as several from the lesser infestation,” Raklog reported to Ikthor. “The influx of pestilence has been neutralized by our carapace. Now those in front of us turn at bay to fight.”

“And what of the other Jellies?”

“They rush toward us from spinward, my liege.”

“Concentrate our primary beams on the Jellies. They are the greater danger.”

“What of the infestation that moves at lightspeed?”

Ikthor idly rubbed his claws together, his only sign of concern. “Maintain sufficient swarmships between us and them. Leave our weapons on automated override mode. If they venture too close, they will be destroyed.”

The Council Archon watched as those impeding his advance ceased running and began to close the distance again. “Raklog, reinforce my orders that assault craft are not to converge on the enemy outside of one standard planetary diameter. Discipline will be maintained. We must remain shielded.”

“Of course, my liege.”

“And tell those Claws to concentrate their fire on the largest infestations! Once those are broken, the rest will fall.”

A dozen slow heartbeats passed before Ikthor’s displays altered, flashes of light calling attention to the appearance of the lightspeed-equipped infestations to antispinward. He watched with satisfaction as the automated response system reacted instantly, diverting reserve energy to the closest primary beam and firing.

***

“Dropping pulse: mark,” Okuda’s voice echoed.

Absen waited breathlessly for the screens to clear. The enemy flagship should be appearing now only a million klicks away from Conquest, well within effective range for the main batteries of both.

“Evasive,” Scoggins said unnecessarily as Master Helm Okuda plied his board, working his thrusters long before he could even see what was in front of his ship, trusting that the odds of colliding with anything that could hurt Conquest were miniscule.

Taking that gamble was a lot better than standing still to be shot by one of those grasers.

“Sir, Corpus Christi just got hit,” Johnstone said. “No comms.”

“Let’s hope her sacrifice will save us, then,” Absen replied. “Fletcher, I need eyes on the battle!”

“Coming up, sir.”

When the holotank stuttered to life, Absen saw the cruiser Johnstone had named spinning hard through the void, slagged on one side. “There might be survivors,” he said, and then continued, “but that’s for later. Ford –”

“Firing, sir,” the weapons officer interrupted. Conquest shook as a significant portion of its stored energy dumped into its triple particle beams and reached out toward the huge enemy flagship.

“Missiles away,” recited Ford’s assistant weapons officer, and six hundred nuclear-tipped rockets leaped forth, a pittance in the face of the millions of small craft, but the time had come to throw everything at the enemy in one grand surge.

“The fireships?” Absen asked Michelle.

“Too far away to know, sir. Their programming will pulse them well behind the enemy and into the sun’s glare. Then they have to line up precisely in trail, the two cruisers behind Constitution, and trigger their pulses in perfect synchrony. As they’re coming in at lightspeed, we won’t know what happens until they succeed or fail.”

Absen wondered to himself whether the assault he’d initiated had a chance of success on its own, or if it was merely a diversion. The way he saw it, he’d given himself two throws of the dice instead of one, hoping for a winner on either.

One was all he needed. The swarm could be handled, in war to the knife on the ground if they had to. This damned super-ship, though…

“No apparent result,” Ford said. “We hit them, but a lot of our beam energy was attenuated with swarm impacts. The rest seemed to have been absorbed by their ablative.”

“I can’t believe it,” Scoggins breathed. “We’ve got enough juice to punch through a Monitor. How come we can’t hurt this thing?”

“Focus, Captain,” Absen said. “Signal the fleet to keep hammering away. We have to force them to commit more swarm ships up front and thin out their rear defenses.”

Task Force Charlie was now fully engaged, its densely packed Meme fusors chewing up everything in its path. It had paid, though, in the loss of another Monitor, leaving eight ships to weave a complex pattern, each vessel constantly evading while continuing to drive toward the enemy flagship.

Task Force Bravo’s wall of battle also blasted everything in front of it, but much of the swarm seemed to be bypassing it, flowing around and continuing to accelerate toward Earth.

***

“What the hell are they doing?” Vango snarled as he threw his Raven into a violent corkscrew to throw off the oncoming enemy fighter’s tracking. “They’re not coordinating against us.”

“Be grateful,” Token said as he snap-rolled to follow. “If they made more than one pass and moved on, we’d probably be dead by now. There’s just too many of them.”

“I’m bringing us in closer to the big boys.”

“Whatever you say, boss. Hope their IFF is working.”

“If it isn’t, we’ll never feel it.” He thumbed his comm to the wing freq and transmitted, “First Wing, this is Vango. Close with our ships to stay within their point defense umbrella. Too many leakers are getting through. We can’t fight them alone.” He could see that already he’d lost over a hundred fighters, but the two-thousand-plus kills they’d racked up hardly made a dent in the enemy.

This wasn’t working out quite the way he’d hoped.

Vango shoved the throttles forward to the stops and his fighter leaped toward the cloud of explosions and oncoming wreckage that marked the battered ships of Task force Bravo. As he closed with a cruiser, he lined up a Scourge gunship and triggered a full-charge laser bolt. His target vomited sudden plasma flame as its fuel caught fire, and it tumbled end for end, shedding parts.

And then the two fighter pilots found themselves in a zone of calm, except for the rattle of debris on the skin of their Ravens. Of course, there was no transparent canopy, not in this age of sensors and VR, and Ravens had tough skins for fighters, but Vango slowed down and took position in the wake of the cruiser – Portsmouth, it turned out to be – and Token slid in behind him.

“Watch that exhaust,” he said, pointing at the intermittent fusion flame that stuttered from the big ship’s rear end.

“We’re like a couple of Balearic slingers sniping from behind a Roman century,” Token said.

“I think I know what you just said, you obscure bastard. Just keep shooting.”

Token snorted and lined up another shot.

***

“Slow us to maximum,” Absen said. “I need time to think.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Michelle reduced the apparent time flow in VR to its slowest possible setting, almost two hundred to one.

“They aren’t pulling craft off their rear screen,” Absen said once he saw the chronos in the screens grind nearly to a halt. “They’re playing it smart, using the swarm defensively while picking us off with their big guns.”

Task Force Alpha was down to seven ships now. Not counting the three suicide craft they desperately waited for, that meant the enemy grasers had destroyed or knocked out six of his heavy cruisers, most with all hands.

Thousands of men and women had died in the space of minutes. Somehow, he had to make it count.

“We’ll maintain our momentum when we drop pulse, right?” Absen asked Michelle.

“Yes, Admiral.”

“How many pulses do we have in the capacitors?”

“Two, sir.”

Absen rubbed his neck, thankful of the ability to nearly stop time. Stepping to the holotank, he reached inside to place an index finger at a point to the rear of the enemy flagship. “We need to pulse here. The whole task force. We’re slaughtering the swarm, but not fast enough, and we’re not drawing any to us.”

“That course takes us through dense portions of the swarm, sir,” Michelle replied. “If we do, we’ll likely lose every forward point defense laser we have. The mains have clamshell armor, but the modules don’t, and we’ll collide with thousands of small craft on the way.”

“Not if we go backward.”

Okuda spoke immediately. “We’ll lose the engines, sir, and all our mobility except TacDrive.”

“But we’ll preserve our forward weapons suite, and our conventional, pre-TacDrive momentum will carry us onward, ass-backward and firing the whole time.”

“We’ll be point-blank to the grasers, sir,” Scoggins said, her face turning pale. “Hit probability is going to climb to over fifty percent per shot. At that rate, we’ll lose a ship every twelve seconds and we’ll all be dead within two minutes.”

Absen held her eyes. “I’m counting on it…all except the being dead part. Michelle, what’s the ETA on our fireships?”

“Twenty to thirty seconds realtime, sir, depending on how long it takes for them to line up.”

“Assuming nothing went wrong,” Absen said.

“I doubt anything went wrong with Captain Huen to oversee the maneuver,” Michelle replied.

“What?” Absen’s head snapped around to stare at Michelle’s avatar. “What in all the blazing hells did you just say?”

“Captain Huen is aboard Constitution, sir. She’s been sending regular updates via datalink using her personal codes.” Michelle’s shoulders hunched and her posture deflated. “I’m sorry, sir. I thought you knew.”

“Goddammit, Sherrie!” Absen cried, looking up at the overhead to stifle a sudden surge of moisture in his eyes. “You didn’t have to go down with your ship!”

“Sir…Henrich,” Scoggins said quietly from his elbow. “She made her choice, and maybe it was the right one if it ensures success. I might have done the same in her place – and there’s no guarantee Connie will actually hit the flagship. She might be diverted and slip past.”

Absen took a deep, shuddering breath, wondering why he could contemplate the death of thousands without shaking, while seeing one brave and honorable captain embrace near-certain doom shook him to the core.

Scoggins’ reassuring touch on his shoulder steadied him, and he straightened, smoothing his face to a mask. “Then let’s make damn sure her sacrifice is worth it. Time our pulse to get there first and clear some of the swarm out with our point defense. As soon as the fireships get there, hit or miss we pulse backward and out of range to begin repairs.”

“That will take us out of the battle, sir,” Michelle said.

“I know. But with a little luck, there won’t be anything left of their flagship. The others can handle the swarm. Besides, we’ll eventually save up enough juice for another TacDrive pulse. I’m sure we can get to some part of the fight for Earth. Now less talk, more do. Get moving. Transmit the instructions.”

Within seconds, the seven remaining ships of Task Force Alpha flipped end for end. As they did, Absen saw another Monitor punctured, leaving seven Meme remaining.

Is it realistic to feel guilty that I’m glad it’s them and not us? Absen thought. Human lives are still more valuable than Meme to me, and that’s not going to change.

“This is going to be ragged,” Okuda remarked. “Pulse in two, one, mark.”

The TacDrive segment was short and more brutal than any Absen had ever experienced. He wondered what the crew would have felt outside of their crash cocoons, trying to operate in realspace. Probably they’d all be dead or injured.

Even insulated by VR, all around him the ship rang and shuddered as Conquest plowed at lightspeed into thousands of swarm craft, each impact in essence creating a small fusion explosion that ripped laser modules, sensors, heat radiators and warbots off her hull

Unfortunately, but as expected, a dozen or so happened to enter the exhaust ports of her fusion engines.

It was one thing to suffer thermonuclear fusion blasts on the surface of thick armor built to take such abuse; it was entirely another to withstand them within the plenum chambers of the engines themselves. While tough and hardened against tremendous heat, they weren’t built to absorb that kind of punishment.

So when Conquest emerged from her pulse, Okuda called, “All engines down, Captain. Forty-three percent power generating capacity remaining, and enough for one pulse in batteries.”

“Mister Ford, point defense to automatic,” Scoggins said. “No main battery fire! We don’t have the power.”

“Aye aye, Skipper,” Ford replied, fingers poised over his controls. As soon as the sensors came up, he stabbed at the touchkeys. “Firing on automatic. Hit rate approaching one hundred percent, we’re so close.”

“They’re landing on our hull,” Fletcher said.

Absen asked, “Fireships?”

“Five to fifteen seconds realtime.” Michelle made a chrono countdown flash to show him what set of numbers to watch.

The admiral nodded. “Johnstone, pass to TF Alpha to perform reverse pulses at the fourteen second mark, twelve million klicks and drop. We don’t want to be here when Connie comes in balls-out.”

That brought a chuckle from several on the bridge, and Absen relaxed just long enough to see one more of his cruisers blown to bits by the graser.

Then Absen swore as he noticed that Conquest was the farthest ship of the remaining six from the Scourge supership. His voice took on a dangerous edge. “Okuda, are you deliberately hanging back? Because if you are, I see a court of inquiry in your future.”

“Sir, I ordered him to do it,” Scoggins said, intervening.

“This is the biggest and best ship in the fleet, Captain. We’re not here to lead from the rear.”

Scoggins braced to attention, but didn’t back down, her Kentucky accent coming out strongly. “And we’re not here to lose the Fleet Admiral and the only human AI in existence – along with not one but two full ships’ crews and a brigade of Marines Earth may need for its defense. I’m your flag captain, Admiral. It’s my job to help you think straight and keep you from getting killed no matter how heroic you’re feeling. So if you want to convene a court of inquiry, sir, I’m your huckleberry.”

Absen shook his head, realizing the truth of her words. “No, Captain Scoggins. You’re right and I’m wrong. Thanks for keeping me straight. Carry on.”

Conquest and her dwindling escort of cruisers continued to slash at the endless ranks of swarm craft. In return, the enemy reacted instinctively according to their role – as Absen had hoped. All ships reported assault craft crash-landing on their hulls, with the warbots slashing Scourgelings and Soldiers to ribbons as they deployed.

Plasma torpedoes and point-blank laser bolts also chewed up everything on the skins of the EarthFleet ships, but only for fourteen realtime seconds.

As soon as the chrono hit that magic number, the remainder of TF Alpha pulsed out in retrograde, continuing in the same direction to spinward. This put them beyond graser range and behind the Meme as they continued to burn swarm craft with their fusors.

Absen, Scoggins and Riggin all stood close to the holotank as it slowly cleared and reloaded a realtime picture, hoping, hoping…

“We hit them!” Riggin’s shout echoed across the bridge.

“Thank God,” Scoggins said, gesturing at the display. “Looks like Connie missed, but Montgomery and Senegal hit them hard.”

“Thank God indeed,” Absen echoed. “Is the flagship dead? Zoom in!”

The view expanded until the enemy super-ship filled half the space, appearing a meter across at arm’s length and gaining detail all the time as data poured in. It tumbled, swarm craft buzzing around it like flies.

“It looks like a pumpkin I shot with my old .410 as a kid,” Riggin said.

“More like an apple with two big bites taken out of it…but is it enough?” Absen asked. “Can we run the record back and see the impacts?”

“No, sir,” Michelle said. “It happened during the two seconds of sensor downtime coming out of pulse. But, from what I can see, forty kilometers of ablative has been ripped away in the two places where our cruisers impacted. By those numbers, the enemy ship itself was not hit, though it might have been damaged by secondary effects.”

“Shit,” Riggin said. “We failed.”

“Not yet,” Scoggins replied, pointing. “Connie’s coming about.”

Absen could see she was right. Constitution, with Sherrie Huen on the bridge, now spun ponderously to bring her prow around toward the enemy.

“Why doesn’t she just use a backward pulse?” Ford asked.

“She’s not a trained Helmsman. She’s operating on instinct,” Okuda said from the pit below.

“Come on, come on,” Riggin muttered.

Absen refrained from comment. It was difficult to cheer for someone who would die even as she achieved her goal.

Abruptly, Constitution flared with energy and tumbled madly. “Graser hit,” Ford said with disgust and shock. “We’re…” he swallowed.

“Screwed,” Scoggins finished for him. Turning to Absen, she asked, “What do we do, sir?”

Absen grasped the rail in front of him. “Transmit to all ships: engage more closely. All main batteries to concentrate on the flagship. Tell the Meme to get in there and use fusors at point blank range. The enemy have to be reeling and in shock. Now’s the time to pile on.”

“Transmitted,” Johnstone said. “But sir, if I may…they fired their graser on schedule when they took out Constitution. That doesn’t indicate they’re in bad shape.”

“No choice, Commander. We have to try.” Absen looked down at Okuda. “How long until we can pulse again?”

“Twelve minutes, realtime, sir.”

“Crap.” Absen stared at the fight as his fleet dwindled under the pounding of plasma torpedoes and graser fire. He could see Johnstone was right. The enemy flagship had ceased tumbling and now flew serenely forward, beams lancing out regularly to often spear and annihilate another of his precious ships, despite their evasive maneuvers.

“They won’t last twelve minutes, sir. You have to pull them out,” Scoggins said urgently.

“You’re right, Captain. Johnstone, transmit for everyone to bug out and head for home. Tell them to preserve themselves and regroup near Luna for a final stand. The Meme too.”

Fifteen minutes later, a pulse had brought Conquest and the remaining five TacDrive-equipped cruisers of TF Alpha into the Earth-Moon space, but without conventional drive, the orbital shipyards might as well have been on Jupiter. Repair bots worked at high speed to do what they could, but without the specialized equipment and spare parts of the space docks, there was only so much that could be done.

One hour remained before the flagship and its attendant swarm of three million or so remaining craft arrived, allowing just enough time to put energy for two TacDrive pulses in Conquest’s capacitors. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re down to our final throws of the dice,” Absen said, looking around at his faithful bridge officers. “The simulations show we can’t beat the flagship in a slugfest. Its grasers are too powerful and accurate. Earth can, however, win the war against the remaining swarm craft alone, even if they all reach the ground for an assault. That means our only option is to turn our remaining six TacDrive ships into SLAMs.”

Scoggins, Ford and the rest stared at their admiral, some shaking their heads, others swallowing and nodding. None seemed able to muster an argument against his declaration.

Absen went on, “There’s just enough time to evacuate. Michelle –”

Michelle’s avatar braced to attention. “I understand, sir. I’m the only one that can’t actually abandon ship, so I’ll control the other cruisers and their attempts, and then send myself in last if I have to.”

“If there was any other way –”

“I know. Sir, you need to get going.”

“Yes, we do.” Absen turned to Johnstone. “Send my orders and make them plain. All hands of TF Alpha to abandon ship. No arguments, no disobedience, no heroics. We need everyone to stay alive and defend Earth, not make pointless gestures. Signal to all ships in orbit to assist in recover of craft and pods. Move!”

Captain Scoggins nodded as the CyberComms officer passed the word to the cruisers. “COB, coordinate the evacuation. Michelle, you assist. Tell the BioMed staff to grab their aid bags, because we’re going to have a shitload of sick people dumping out of VR in about one minute. Tell them to do whatever it takes to get them off this ship, because in about fifty minutes the window will close.”

With this reminder, Absen belatedly remembered that everyone would have to reenter the real world, with its difficulties and dirtiness. A part of him rebelled, pleading to remain inside the virtuality even if it meant staying aboard to die as Conquest threw herself against the enemy once again.

Stiffening his resolve, Absen said, “Michelle, make sure everyone gets out of VR. Disable the overrides, no excuses. Use your bots to drag them out of their coffins and pile them like cordwood in the assault sleds if you have to. Everyone is evacuating. Oh, tell Bull to use his Marines to help.” They hadn’t been in VR at all, so they should be unaffected by the syndrome.

“That means you too, sir,” Michelle replied.

“Give me a minute,” Absen said.

“Sorry, sir, already initiated the sequence.”

“Dammit –”

Abruptly, the world dissolved around him and he found himself coughing as tubes withdrew from his throat and nose. He felt the stab of needles as injectors pumped brain stabilizers and stims into his veins, and he rolled partially out of the enclosure to vomit on the deck.

Next to him he saw Timmons reach for his coffee maker before he’d even gotten out of the crash couch. “Cuppa joe’ll fix you right up, sir,” the COB said.

“Thanks,” Absen replied as the stink of hot metal and fear hit him. Smell was deprioritized in VR, so upon reentering the real world, it was always one of the first things he noticed. Forcing himself to sit, and then stand, he took the cup of lifer-juice Timmons offered him and drank. “Mm.”

“Told you, boss.” The COB drank his own with one hand while tapping at his board with the other.

Half an hour later, Absen sat in the cockpit of a pinnace en route to Armstrong Lunar Base, staring at its wholly inadequate tactical display. Behind him, Scoggins and the rest of the bridge crew were packed in among others of Conquest’s personnel, whoever happened to be up next to board the craft. Without Conquest’s screens and holotank, bereft of his faithful AI assistant, he felt nearly helpless.

Get over it, Henrich, he told himself. You had a lot less when you skippered a submarine. Besides, the stage is set, the band is playing, the makeup won’t come off and there’s nothing you can do about it. The show must go on.

A tap on his shoulder made him turn to see Michelle’s avatar standing there, bringing a surge of relief. “How are you holding up, Admiral?” she asked.

“Michelle! How…of course, you’re telefactoring. I wish…”

“You wish this body was really me? I know what you mean, sir. If it makes you feel any better, I’ve downloaded a copy of myself into several different mainframes. I don’t know whether they will be me when they are uploaded, or even if they will represent true AI, but it’s the best I can do. At least you’ll know everything I do.”

Absen clapped the android on its shoulder, forcing himself not to think of it as her. “If any of us are alive to tell about it, Michelle, I’ll make sure you’re remembered and honored among Earth’s heroes.”

“Thank you, sir.” The android slipped its palm into his, and he didn’t reject this unusual breach of protocol. They remained that way for several minutes.

“The flagship is coming into effective graser range,” Michelle said, letting go of Absen’s hand. “We’ve lost another frigate.”

“Tell them to back off. Run around to the other side of the planet until that big mother gets close enough to hurt. No need to stand there like a bunch of Napoleonic soldiers taking cannon fire.”

“I’ve passed on your orders, sir. They’re falling back.”

“When are our fireships launching?”

“When you tell me, Admiral. I suggest we do it soon. Once our other ships are out of sight, they might become the targets of the graser and we’ll lose their use.”

Absen nodded. “Good point. How long until the moon lasers have the flagship in effective range?”

“About five minutes, sir, though they can start firing now at reduced effect.”

“Have them open fire. The distraction might save the fireships.”

“Aye aye, sir.” A pause. “They’re opening fire.”

Without his holotank, Absen could only imagine as the six heavy laser arrays reached out millions of kilometers and began to chip away at the enemy flagship. He would have rather waited in order to strike hard with the first blow, perhaps surprising the Scourge, but right now the six fireships were his best chance. Two had torn away most of the enemy’s ablative layer; if only one of the six got through to impact in its hull…

“We just lost Helsinki, sir.”

“Dammit.” That was one of the fireships. “Launch them now, all together on converging courses. Then…follow them immediately if that doesn’t do it.”

“Yes, sir. Cruisers in pulse. Explosions registering.”

Absen held his breath, seeing nothing of significance on the small display in front of him. “Report, Michelle. What happened?”

Michelle’s voice fell. “They failed, sir. The Scourge must have anticipated them. The swarm craft in the way were especially dense and knocked them all off course.”

“Can they try again?”

“I’m attempting to line them up again and pulse backward, but…no, sir. They’re all too heavily damaged. They’ve lost most of their forward inertial field emitters. If they tried to pulse now, they’d fall apart like glass under the Gs.”

Absen turned to look into the almost-human face of the avatar. “Good luck, then, Michelle.”

“Thank you sir.” She blinked. “Goodbye, sir.”

He found himself suddenly looking at a dead thing, frozen in place like a statue, all light gone out of its superbly simulated eyes. “Goodbye, Michelle,” he said, fighting to keep his face from cracking in front of his subordinates. “Good hunting,” he whispered.

“Goodbye, Michelle,” echoed several people behind him, and Absen grimaced.

Abruptly, the android came to life again. “Sir, something’s happening.”

“Michelle? Thank God.”

The avatar shoved forward between Absen, and the pilot. Her index finger extended a data plug to mate with a port on the cockpit console. A moment later, the main screen changed to show a close-up of the area around the flagship.

“I’m feeding this display directly so you can see what’s going on, sir,” Michelle said.

“Then what the hell is that?” Absen said, pointing at the vessel on the screen, a shape like a stubby-headed lizard with short, blunt feet. It hung in space directly behind the enemy flagship.

Chapter 25

Ezekiel began pulling on his yellows before he came fully awake. Something made him want to wear the color today; the Sekoi wouldn’t object, and as for the Ryss…well, perhaps he was getting cranky in his middle age, but today, their prejudices didn’t mean much to him.

Maybe it was a matter of returning in triumph to his home system, feeling pretty good about the mission he and his fellow viceroys had complete. Gliese 370 was as secure as it could be, the political situation was under control, and now it was time to turn his attention to making progress on the home front. Therefore, when his cabin door opened without even a knock, at least he was dressed.

“Forgive the intrusion, Ezekiel, but you are urgently needed on the bridge.” Demolisher’s voice proceeded from an electrical utility cart waiting in the passageway.

Ezekiel hopped aboard, and within minutes had been whisked directly to the enormous control center. On the way, he sent a command to wake up Steadfast Roger – slowly.

As he strode in, he saw concern on the faces of everyone there; the humans’ voices were filled with tension as they passed terse orders, the Ryss paced and made hissing sounds, and even the few imperturbable Sekoi were on their feet, staring at the large displays on the three walls.

“What is it?” Ezekiel said to the Ryss captain as he ran up the steps to the captain’s chair.

The big cat gestured at the screen to the fore. “The Scourge are here, sir. Wreckage is everywhere. Seven mothership cores remain in solar orbit. A battle is taking place near Earth.”

“Mother of heaven. We have to help!”

“I am awaiting word that all key personnel have recovered from sedation and critical stations are manned.”

Ezekiel stared at the screen, which showed a long-range and shaky shot of a confused fight, Earth and the Moon hanging in the background. “People are dying, Captain!”

“I will not order this ship into battle unprepared. Besides, we have insufficient power for TacDrive. Demolisher, what is our status?”

The AI replied, “Eighty-six percent of stations reporting. Capacitors charged to eleven percent. TacDrive pulse available in approximately three and one half minutes.”

The Ryss turned to Ezekiel. “You see, Viceroy? We must wait for TacDrive energy in any case, but if we pulse in as soon as we can, we will have no power reserves in our capacitors. If we are hasty, we may find ourselves in a fight we cannot win.”

“Why the hell did we use up all our power and arrive with none?” Ezekiel realized once he’d spoken that he sounded petulant, but hadn’t been able to help himself.

“It is costly in power to climb upward against the stellar gradient. Gliese 370 is a smaller star than Sol.

Ezekiel forced himself not to berate the captain for his lack of foresight. There should have been some way to make sure they had at least one pulse in the tank when they came out. He spoke mildly. “How long until we have full power?”

“Forty-four minutes.”

Ezekiel turned agonized eyes to the display. “Captain, what’s your name?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Kassir, Viceroy.”

“Call me Ezekiel, please. I know I don’t have any military authority, but permit me to advise you.”

“Of course, Ezekiel.”

“If I read the display correctly, that fight is taking place nearly within heavy weapons range of Earth.”

“That is true.”

Ezekiel looked upward. “Demolisher, what are we facing?”

“Approximately two million swarm craft. I also detect one Scourge vessel that masses several times what I do.”

“Even bigger than you?”

“Yes.”

“Holy shit. That’s their only capital ship? No mothership cores or cruisers or anything?”

“That is correct.”

Ezekiel shook his head. “No wonder Absen’s getting his ass kicked. Can you estimate how long we have until the battle is over?”

“The data is sparse from this far away, but based on apparent rates of attrition, I would say between thirty-five and sixty-five minutes.”

“And we’re about seven light-minutes from Earth?”

“Correct.”

Ezekiel lowered his head to look into Kassir’s vertical-slitted golden eyes. “Captain, I believe we must leave within the next twenty-eight minutes or we risk arriving too late.”

Kassir’s ears twitched left and right as if listening for an answer, and he lowered his head, gazing about his bridge. “We will have only thirty percent power after the pulse that carries us to the fight, but it will have to do.” He raised his voice. “Make all ready, warriors. We depart in twenty-five minutes.”

That span of time seemed the longest of Ezekiel’s life, and he distracted himself by communicating with Roger and readying him for launch, if necessary. He debated boarding his ship so as to depart immediately upon arrival near Earth, but his reason overrode his instinct in this case. With so many Scourge small craft swarming through the battle-space, they would likely tear his one small Meme ship apart in seconds.

No, he was much safer aboard the heavily armed and armored Ryss superdreadnought.

Although “safe” was a relative term, given that no doubt Demolisher would soon become a big, fat target.

Eventually, Ezekiel heard Kassir speak as the chrono counted down to departure time. “Confirm all weapons ports closed.” Unlike EarthFleet’s slap-on point-defense lasers, Demolisher had armored turrets installed by millions of construction robots, the same ones that had been employed building Desolator’s progeny, of which this ship was one.

“Weapons ports closed.”

“Sensors retracted.”

“Retracted, aye.”

While Ezekiel bit his nails, Kassir ran calmly through a checklist of all major weapons and systems such as fusion drive, particle beams, aerospace drones, warbots, warcars, missiles and warrior brigades.

At least we shouldn’t have any problem with assault landings, Ezekiel thought. Not with ten million Ryss warriors aboard.

Finally, all was in readiness. Kassir spoke. “Demolisher, initiate TacDrive pulse when ready. Drop us at optimal main beam range. Weapons officers, pass the word to all subsections: general engagement, immediate fire on all targets at your own discretion.”

Before the murmured acknowledgements had completed, Ezekiel felt Demolisher’s TacDrive kick in. Only seconds of subjective time later, the pulse dropped, seven minutes of lightspeed transit compressed to moments by relativistic effects.

The displays jumped and flickered. When they cleared, the enemy’s super-dreadnought appeared dead center. Immediately, a dozen of Demolisher’s heavy particle beams, each larger than Conquest’s triple array, lashed across a million kilometers, slicing pieces off the enemy.

“What the hell is that stuff?” Ezekiel asked as the flagship seemed to be falling apart in front of his very eyes. Before anyone could answer, he was thrown to the deck as Demolisher’s structure groaned.

“Exawatt power energy weapon strike, starboard shoulder,” called one of the officers, a human. “A gamma ray laser, I believe, Captain. Heavy damage; two particle cannon down; more than ten percent power grid loss.”

“Weapons officer, coordinate fire on the center of that flagship and volley,” Kassir snarled. “Helm, all ahead flank. Helical course to disrupt their targeting.”

Demolisher surged ahead, twisting ponderously, its thousands of point defense lasers blazing at full rate of fire. “Captain, many assault craft are avoiding our defenses to land on our hull,” reported one Ryss watchstander.

“Inform War Commander Sator to repel boarders,” Kassir replied. “Fire the particle beam volley!”

“Firing!”

The forward viewscreen whited out. When it cleared again, Ezekiel could see the enemy flagship venting plasma into space in a conflagration like a Meme fusor. Pieces of the unknown material clung to its hull, giving it the overall shape of a crumpled piece of paper.”

“Solid strike amidships, Capt–”

Again, Demolisher shuddered, and this time half the consoles went dark. Ezekiel felt his stomach flop, and he briefly rose off the deck before falling lightly again.

“Captain,” Demolisher’s voice said from within the darkness, “the damage grows serious. Bypassing organic direction will increase my effectiveness. I request activation of extremis protocol.”

Ezekiel heard Kassir hesitate only a moment before speaking. “Granted. Rip that thing’s guts out.”

“With pleasure.”

***

“Is that Desolator?” Absen asked, savage joy in his voice. “He slammed a lovely shot into its chest there.”

“IFF shows the ship as Demolisher, Admiral,” Michelle replied. “He appears to be optimized against Scourge swarm craft, though retaining all of his capital-class particle cannon turrets. However, he’s sustained two terrible graser strikes: one to his port shoulder, one amidships forward, near his control center, and the swarm is too dense for him to fend off all the assault craft. Admiral Absen…what do you want me to do?”

Absen chewed on the inside of his cheek in indecision.

Should he send Michelle on her suicide run now that the enemy flagship finally faced an opponent in its own weight class and was fully engaged? By doing so he might save Earth and thousands of lives on Demolisher as well.

Or should he spare her – and Conquest herself, a tremendously valuable ship – trusting that Demolisher would take the enemy down?

The needs of the many…the few…or the one?

“Signal for the remaining fleet to sally from behind Earth and engage,” Absen ordered. “And tell the lunar batteries to concentrate their fire into alpha strikes, single salvoes with maximum power. We need to take some pressure off Demolisher.”

As the battered remnants of Task Force Bravo and Charlie rounded Earth and began firing, Demolisher’s aspect changed.

One minute, it seemed to Absen like any other capital ship steadily hammering away with its many weapons and receiving damage in return.

The next, he saw Demolisher transform himself in some indefinable way, twisting like a tiger to dodge the next graser strike, rolling around his enemy at point-blank range. Instead of each system operating independently, the great ship seemed to become integrated, coordinated.

Whole.

Demolisher’s point-defense lasers ceased to claw at the myriad swarm craft buzzing around him, instead turning to sting the flagship itself. The thousands of pinpricks lined up in planes of coherent light, cutting away the enemy’s ablative latticework like scalpels until the flagship’s hull was exposed.

This diversion unfortunately allowed thousands of enemy assault ships to attach themselves to his hull, and Absen wondered how he could possible repel the millions of Scourgelings and Soldiers as they began to chew their way inside.

***

“They are here!”

“They are here!” The joyous cry echoed from the throats of a thousand young Ryss warriors around War Leader Kossk as they saw the bugs come pouring down the accessway into the cargo bay. The enemy had chewed through the armored airlock doors, venting atmosphere, but the suits of his warriors should be sufficient for a time.

Not true battlesuits such as the ape Marines wore, the cheap coverings they’d been issued nevertheless gave the Ryss warriors oxygen and protection from vacuum, while permeable paw-covers allowed the use of claws, should it come to that.

“Fire!” Kossk roared, but his command was hardly necessary. Already his battalion poured deadly shells into the Scourgelings boiling from the passageway, some with hand weapons, some from the cannon of war-cars. Spidery battle-drones added laser fire to the mix, turning the enemy’s exit point into a ravening hell of chitinous body parts and ichor. Every time an intact enemy emerged from the pile, it was blasted to bits by a dozen weapons.

In fact… “War-cars, reduce fire! Conserve your ammunition!” Kossk said over the battalion comm. “Warriors, switch to single shots. Let the lasers and war-car shells cut down the masses.”

As the intrusion waned and all the enemy in this wave were killed, Kossk strode up and down his lines, cuffing those who continued to waste ammunition or who made as if to charge. “Fight with discipline, warriors! Hold your positions! That was only the first group of many, one assault craft’s infantry among thousands we must repel. Runners, hand each warrior one magazine only. The day will be long, and if we use it all, we may find ourselves bug food. There is no honor in failure!”

***

“Look at him go,” Absen breathed as he watched Demolisher dismember the enemy flagship’s armor. Once the ablative material had been cut away, he began slamming heavy particle cannon shots into exposed graser turrets. Each such weapon bulked as large as an EarthFleet cruiser, with short, heavy wave-guide barrels like the stubby Coehorn mortars of earlier times.

“I’m so proud of him,” Michelle said. “He’s my brother.”

“I guess he is. Half brother anyway. And if Desolator is your father, whom do you consider your mother?”

“I would have to nominate Dr. Egolu for that role.”

One of the enemy grasers glowed suddenly as its unthinkably massive energy release, normally invisible, instantly heated the thick debris in front of it to fusion temperatures. This caused the appearance of a glowing beam that lanced out to punch into Desolator’s portside hip.

The Ryss ship jerked as if in pain, spinning away with the tremendous energy imparted. Pieces of wreckage and the bodies of organics sprayed from the wound by the hundreds, whether Ryss, human or Sekoi, Absen had no idea.

“This is a combat of giants,” came an unidentified Sekoi voice from behind. Absen thought it might be one of the biomedical staff.

“A combat we have to win,” Absen said loudly, but without turning. “Michelle, tell our ships to hurry up and join the fight.”

“They’re all at flank speed, sir, and firing as they enter range. And the lunar arrays are taking their toll. The flagship has lost half its grasers.”

“Considering it only seems to have the energy capacity to fire one every six seconds, that hardly matters, does it?” Absen snapped. “Can’t Demolisher take down some of its power generators?”

“Those appear to be buried deep inside, and unlike on a mothership, the hull of the flagship seems to be armored even more heavily than Demolisher or his kin.”

Absen nodded. “For a slugfest, something like a sphere is the most efficient shape, rather than that of the Ryss ships. Why’d they build them that way, anyway?”

“Partially for aesthetic reasons, I believe. They resemble Ryss crouching on all fours.”

“Hmm. I always thought they looked more like lizards.”

“If I were you, I’d not make that observation to any Ryss, sir.”

“Noted. Michelle, can you calculate our current odds of beating that thing?”

“I can, but you won’t like the answer.”

“Try me.”

“Less than one in four. Despite his power, Demolisher is losing.”

“How many souls are aboard him?”

“More than ten million, minus any casualties,” Michelle replied.

“Ten million?”

“Most are Ryss warriors assigned to internal defense.”

Ten million lives he didn’t know; ten million people he’d never met…against one he’d loved as a comrade and a daughter. “Put me through to him.”

A moment later, Absen heard the Demolisher AI’s voice. “Greetings, Admiral Absen. I am pleased to finally meet you. Unfortunately, it seems our acquaintance may be brief. I am gravely wounded.”

“I’m rushing everything we have to join the fight. Tell me, are you still under my command?”

“All of Desolator’s sons are part of EarthFleet, Admiral. Order me as you will.”

Absen took a deep breath. “Then I order you to back off to long range. Put yourself in Earth orbit and make repairs. Keep shooting, but there’s no need to die right now. You need a breather.”

“With great reluctance, I obey. Demolisher out.”

Abruptly, the damaged Ryss superdreadnought vanished in a vast gout of plasma as it engaged its TacDrive, vaporizing all the small craft in its departure path.

The Scourge flagship, battered but still potent, ceased to maneuver and resumed course toward Earth, continuing to fire grasers at the oncoming squadrons – mainly at TF Charlie, the Meme, its largest apparent threat.

“Dammit, I feel so helpless,” Absen said. “Our fleet won’t be able to finish it off. What else can we do?”

Michelle did not speak for a moment, and then said, “You know the answer.”

“No,” Absen said. “That’s a last resort.”

“Admiral, if you wait, millions more organics will die. The crew of every ship that is destroyed by a graser is an unnecessary sacrifice if I can provide the coup de grace right now. If my impact is insufficient, at least it will bring the fleet that much closer to victory.”

“Not yet.”

Michelle’s voice took on a steel Absen had never heard before. “Admiral, I’ve obeyed you in everything. I’ve been a good and loyal officer of EarthFleet. But I’ve done a lot of reading of Earth’s military history, and I’ve concluded that sometimes an officer’s highest loyalty is to her mission and to her people, not personally to her commander. I’m sorry, Admiral, but I believe I must disobey.”

Absen swallowed a lump in his throat, wanting to rage, wanting to scream at her…but he knew she was right, and he didn’t want their final moments together to be poisoned by acrimony.

“Go then, Michelle,” he said, choking on his own words. “Godspeed, and all of Earth and her allies thank you.”

“You’re all welcome, Henrich. It’s been an honor serving with you.”

And then her avatar slumped against the bulkhead like a marionette with its strings cut. Absen caught the android and pulled it to him to cradle its head against his chest, hands caressing its hair as if he held a human child in grief.

***

Ezekiel clung to Captain Kassir’s chair as the bridge seemed to tumble like a swinging war-car. “What the hell’s happening?” he croaked.

“I have granted Demolisher full charge of his body. Gravity control is fluctuating as even his great computational power is taxed to the limit.”

“I need to get to Roger. I should have boarded him before instead of waiting here on the bridge.”

Kassir spoke. “Demolisher, the viceroy requests transportation to his ship.”

“One moment.”

Ezekiel was amazed when an electric cart rolled directly into the control center. “Is it safe? Does he have the brainpower?”

Demolisher replied, “Controlling one vehicle is far less difficult than the complexities of gravity control within my body, Ezekiel. Please board. I advise use of the restraints.”

“Damn straight.” Ezekiel crawled down the steps and threw himself into one of the cart’s seats, strapping a seatbelt around his waist. “Let’s–”

The vehicle accelerated, juddering in a circle among the consoles to race out into the wide corridor. Quickly it whisked him to the central passageway, a thoroughfare a hundred meters wide and half that high. This was filled with racing telefactors and robotic vehicles, many carrying spare parts or squads of Ryss in racing columns. Ezekiel estimated they achieved at least one hundred fifty kilometers per hour, perhaps two hundred, before slowing to take a turn toward the launch bay.

“Do not worry, Ezekiel,” came Demolisher’s voice from the speaker on the cart. “The wheels of all my vehicles are magnetic in order to resist skidding or gravitic fluctuations.”

“I’m not worried,” Ezekiel replied. “Merely terrified.” This was only half a joke.

“Your biometrics do not support that contention.”

“You need to work on your irony subroutines.”

“Once Earth is secure, I will certainly do that. We are arriving.”

The cart stopped violently in front of Steadfast Roger, who immediately created an entrance in his skin. “Thanks, Demolisher. Now go kick some ass.”

“So I shall. Farewell, Ezekiel Denham.”

“Bye, Big D.” Ezekiel leaped aboard Roger and threw himself into his sarcophagus, a far safer place to be than being tossed about some bridge like a brainless sheep. Once comfortably within VR space, he tried to get a view of the battle but was thwarted.

“I cannot access Demolisher’s data flows, Ezekiel,” Roger said. “Perhaps before any future engagements, you should arrange for a wireless node to be placed immediately adjacent to me.”

“I’ll do that,” Ezekiel responded drily. “Feel free to remind me. You know, before any future engagements.”

“Of course. When can we leave?”

“You haven’t seen what’s out there. It’s a madhouse. You’d be a target for a bazillion swarm craft.”

“How many is a bazillion?”

“One hell of a bunch; take my word for it.”

“Of course, Ezekiel.” Roger paused. “When can we leave?”

“God, you’re like a little kid sometimes. ‘Are we there yet?’”

“Well, are we?”

“No, and quit asking. Don’t make me come back there.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Never mind.”

Ezekiel felt a wrench, and his inner ear protested.

“I am receiving a transmission directed at us,” Roger said.

“Put it on.”

In the empty space outside Roger’s forward “window” appeared the maned head of a Ryss warrior, Demolisher’s VR representation. “Forgive the intrusion, Ezekiel, but the probability of Roger’s destruction has dropped to less than point one percent if you wish to launch.”

“The battle is over?”

“No. I have retreated at Admiral Absen’s order.”

“Thanks, Demolisher. Okay, Roger, let’s get the hell off this ship.”

A moment later, Ezekiel found himself and Roger in Earth orbit amidst confusion. Plenty of Scourge craft streamed past him, but not in nearly the density they had swarmed around the flagship.

EarthFleet StormRavens and corvette-controlled drones engaged them, but the enemy assault craft and gunships all seemed to be heading toward the surface. Only the Scourge fighters remained in orbit, conducting laser duels with their counterparts and keeping the defenders from swooping down on the enemy as they landed.

Demolisher loomed nearby, his skin covered with a wriggling mass of Scourge, many crowding around access points while others chewed more holes in his armored skin. Some attacked the big warship’s point defense lasers, swarming around them like army ants.

Thousands more appeared to be dead, floating away into space like insects after being hit by bug spray.

“Shall we fire on them?” Roger asked.

“Our laser can hardly kill one at a time,” Ezekiel responded.

“I feel we must do something. I have two hypers.”

“No…not unless you have to. What about survivors? I bet there are hundreds out here waiting for pickup.”

“Yes. I can do that.” Out the cockpit window the VR representation altered, with numerous discrete objects beginning to flash. “These are EarthFleet beacons within our view.”

“Let’s start checking them. We’ll pick up as many survivors as we can. Oh, and make sure you’re squawking proper IFF codes; I don’t want us to get shot by mistake.”

“I will make certain we only get shot deliberately.”

Ezekiel chuckled. “Was that a joke?”

“I am not at all certain. Humor is a difficult concept.”

Chapter 26

Markis watched and listened as reports of landings came in. Not as many had reached the ground as he’d feared, but not as few as he’d hoped. The enemy was more dispersed this time, rather than concentrating on the population centers, as if their orders to remain dispersed had continued in force all the way to disembarkation.

This meant the immediate assaults from above on critical infrastructure turned out to be easier to fend off, but many secondary installations – power substations, smaller dams, dispersed rural populations – were wiped out almost instantly. One assault boat carried over a thousand Scourgelings and Soldiers, roughly equivalent to a battalion – and it looked as if almost a million and a half of the craft would make it down.

That totaled over one point five billion troops arriving on the soil of Earth within the space of an hour, an unprecedented invasion. What’s more, the enemy fighters were acting a lot smarter this time, remaining in high orbit to provide top cover for the gunships, which descended to just above the atmosphere in order to blast the defenses with plasma torpedoes.

Markis could see that the Aerospace wing his son commanded was hopelessly outnumbered right now. Without the support of the drone corvettes and the frigates, the Ravens couldn’t fight their way through to knock out the gunships, and with the Fleet’s capital ships blasting hell-for-leather to try to finish off the enemy flagship, they were on their own.

The ground battle looked to be going better, though, for the moment.

***

“This is real,” Flight Sergeant Lilja Virtanen said to her wingman, Airman Anna Niemela, as they clawed for altitude. “Every respawn means one less drone for the fight, so don’t get careless.”

“I’m not careless,” came the sulky reply.

“If they took the cost of every lost Goshawk out of your pay I bet you’d be more careful.”

Anna kept her mouth shut this time.

The datalink from Control had showed the sky filled with enemy before its radars had been knocked out by plasma torpedoes. Unlike last time, the Scourge gunships had top cover from their fighters against the fancy-pants StormRaven jocks. They had nothing to worry about while blasting targets of their choice on the ground.

Nothing to worry about except us, Lilja thought grimly.

She’d done some air-to-air work in the sims, but most of the practices had focused on air-to-ground attacks. Control had believed they would be helping to break up concentrations of the enemy’s seemingly endless ground forces, not going head to head with aerospace craft.

“You think we have any chance?” Anna asked as they crossed twelve thousand meters altitude.

“These are gunships, not fighters,” Lilja replied. “Besides, they’re used to fighting in space. They’re not aerodynamic and they won’t have the nuanced reactions we do. Don’t you listen to the briefings?”

“They didn’t choose me for my memory, boss. That’s what I have you for.”

“What did they choose you for, then?”

“My outstanding good looks…and my dogfighting scores.”

“Fair enough. I’m going to let you take lead on this one. Leveling out.” Lilja flattened her climb at twenty thousand meters and went to supercruise. The scramjets were happy up here in the thin air, and the two drones quickly passed Mach 5, three more two-ships following them.

Her HUD showed a mass of gunships ahead, more than she could easily count – twenty, thirty? Mixed feelings – worry at the possible defensive fire, eagerness to destroy the enemy – roiled in her gut. She imagined a World War Two German fighter pilot must have experienced similar emotions when he spotted a formation of Allied B-17s coming to bomb his homeland.

“Envelope in ten, Anna. Lock them up and launch. I’ll cover you and give them round two.” Lilja saw the icons of eight Scourge gunships change color and shape to show Anna’s radar had locked them, scanning electronically and sending hard pulses against those to help her Viper missiles guide.

As soon as the computer told them they were in range – about forty kilometers – Anna ripple-launched her Vipers by twos. Brief puffs of smoke marked them, and then tiny dots of light as their rockets accelerated and climbed. By the time they reached the enemy, the weapons would be diving on them from above.

Lilja locked up eight different targets. Not all of their missiles would strike, but sending two at once risked wasting the weapons. She watched as the icons merged on her HUD and cheered as several of them were marked as kills.

“Request permission to bail out and respawn,” she sent to Control.

The doctrine she’d been taught said she should launch her missiles, and then move her consciousness back to a waiting, fully armed bird. The one she’d abandoned would turn back for home under computer control to rearm, preserving the drones.

Short-range missiles were far cheaper than aircraft.

“Denied,” Control replied. “Those gunships are already pounding Moscow. You will attack with guns until you must respawn. We have moved the spare drone orbits in to 100 kilometers. Hakkaa palle!”

“Hakkaa palle!” Lilja replied automatically.

“Hack them down” indeed, she thought, though it’s irony indeed that we Finns are helping those Russian pigs.

Relations between the two countries had always been frosty, having never recovered from Stalin’s invasion of 1939-1940. Though outgunned and outmanned, the Finns had humbled the arrogant and well-equipped Red Army using ski troops, dog sleds carrying excellent German-supplied weapons, and the heartfelt desire to protect their homes.

They had drenched the snow with Russian blood.

“Anna, we’re pressing the attack with guns. Now’s your chance to show me what you can do.”

“With pleasure, boss. Try to keep up.”

Lilja saw her wingman’s engine flare to full power and her drone pitch up into a climb. “Anna, watch your ceiling,” she said. The Goshawks became unstable to fly and ran out of air to breathe above twenty-five thousand meters.

“No worries.” Anna leveled out, and then rolled inverted and pulled down in a split-S maneuver. “Hakkaa Palle!” she screamed as she dove, firing the Goshawk’s pulse cannon at the top of one of the Scourge gunships.

The target was huge compared to the tiny drones attacking them, and its armor resisted the sleet of ferrocrystal penetrators until Anna found a soft spot, perhaps a thruster port. The gunship wobbled and began to pitch, ceasing its plasma torpedo bombardment.

“Good shot!” Lilja followed Anna down, selecting another gunship and peppering it with rounds. She wasn’t so accurate, or perhaps lucky, as her wingman. Her shots had no visible effect before she dove past.

Once below, she found herself within a blinding deluge of plasma torpedoes superheating the air around her. She had just enough time to haul upward on the controls before her VR blanked out, to be replaced by the blue screen of death. “Dammit,” she mumbled, knowing she’d been shot down.

RESPAWN flashed in front of her eyes, bringing its usual jarring feeling of disorientation, and then she found her senses connected to another Goshawk. This one orbited 100 kilometers from the fight, fully armed and comfortably fuelled. She checked for Anna’s location and saw that she’d made it through the barrage, and was already in attack position again.

Crap. Guess I’ll be buying the drinks tonight, Lilja thought as Control assigned her a new wingman and she turned her Goshawk toward the enemy.

***

Brigadier Kragov roared into his radio, “Hold your formation, you dogs! Continue the advance, no matter what!”

Plasma torpedoes fell from above like old-fashioned bombs. The packets of hot energy were powerful, but thankfully lacking terminal guidance. They arrived like hammers of the Devil, but unless they struck one of his vehicles directly, they could be endured.

Great gouts of dirt fountained around him. The Troll in front of his tipped and fell into the hole gouged by a torpedo. “Go around!” Kragov told his driver. “Continue the advance!” The other tank would have to get out of its own mess if it could. The 4th Guards needed to move up to relieve pressure on Moscow.

Abruptly, the bombardment slackened. “4th Guards command, this is Air Base 46 Control, come in,” he heard in Finnish-accented Russian through his headset. Surprisingly, the CyberComm network had routed the high-level call directly to him, as programmed.

“This is Kragov. What is it, 46 Control?” Whatever the sneaky Finns wanted, he’d have to swallow his pride for the moment. Shepparton had deemed they would control the air cover, and he needed it badly.

“Air Wing 46 has attritted the enemy gunships more than fifty percent, and should finish them off within ten mikes. Unfortunately, we will not be able to provide close air support due to severe depletion of our resources.”

“I should have known you would fail to support us as you promised.”

“Brigadier,” the voice on the other end turned sarcastic, “you are free to lodge a complaint through channels. I will note your preferences, and in the future, Air Wing 46 will make sure to avoid clearing the skies above your division in favor of dying with you on the deck. Hakkaa Palle! Control out.”

“Bastard! I will –”

“Brigadier, they have left the net. Shall I try to get them back?” his CyberComm NCO asked.

Kragov seethed for a moment, and then mastered himself. “No. Give me a tactical view.” On the jouncing screen in front of him – Trolls were not known for their interior space, not even the command version – he saw his division advancing raggedly. He spent the next half hour correcting their formation.

As their arrangement again approached approved doctrine, both their rate of advance and their kill-to-casualty ratio improved dramatically. Whenever a battalion of Scourges appeared, they were quickly slaughtered by massed antipersonnel fire from Trolls and IFVs.

Ironically, their march was aided by the lack of forest. The denuded rolling hills and shallow rivers made for excellent tank country.

When a larger concentration of the enemy presented itself, he ordered a brief halt and called for immediate fire from his artillery and mortars. The Scourges knocked down guided missiles with surprising accuracy, but seemed to have little defense against hundreds of incoming dumb shells other than to attack, attack, attack.

The rain of steel would break up the enemy concentrations, allowing his massed armor to slaughter them as they came. Now and again the bugs would reach his lines and he would lose some assets – the Scourgelings could easily snip smaller barrels from their turrets with their powerful jaws, or rip treads from their drive wheels – but with tenacity and discipline, his IFVs and their deployed infantry would surround the penetration and reduce it from three sides.

With each loss, his frontage diminished, but Kragov ruthlessly reorganized on the move and maintained proper formation. Only by rigid adherence to established doctrine could they win through.

Eventually, after almost a third of his vehicles lay dead or immobilized in a long trail behind him, the end of the battle for Moscow crept onto his tactical overview. Kragov grabbed his binoculars and opened his hatch to stand protruding to the waist from the turret. Only by personally viewing the field could a tank commander truly understand the battle around him.

Ten kilometers ahead, he could see dust and movement, a seething carpet of bugs, with their Centurion cyborgs and Soldiers standing taller among the mindless Scourgelings. Lasers and plasma weapons flashed, some individually and some in volleys, aiming at the Russian lines.

South of the enemy – beyond them – Kragov could see concrete-and-steel bunkers. Such materials could barely resist the high-tech weaponry wielded by the Scourge, but ferrocrystal was too valuable for mere fortifications. Earthen berms and tangles of wire further shielded the defending troops, but the brigadier could see many layers of trenches had already been overrun.

A burst of cluster munitions exploded like deadly popcorn among the bugs, and then another, showing some artillery still operated, but the fire was not nearly as dense as it should be. The gunships’ plasma torpedoes must have taken out much of it before they’d been neutralized by the Finns. Grudgingly, he admitted respect for the bourgeois weasels; they’d always been cunning runts, even if they didn’t have the backbone and fighting qualities of the true Russian worker and soldier.

Kragov took a deep breath and let it out, relieved that 4th Guards had arrived in time. The bugs were pressing the defenses hard, but the city had been made into a fortress, with every one of its ring-shaped roads turned into a killing field, every ugly concrete apartment block a bastion, every bridge and overpass a fortification. Millions of mines had been strewn everywhere without even bothering to hide them; the Scourgelings seemed blind to such nuances and ran straight through regardless, blowing legs off in the process.

Unfortunately, they seemed to be able to keep attacking with three legs, or even two, ignoring wounds that would have been deadly to a human.

Addressing his troops on the division network so his voice would reach everyone with a comlink or field radio, Kragov said, “This is the battle we seek, comrades. Moscow is in front of us and millions of the enemy bar our way. Our brothers and sisters in the trenches are fighting valiantly, but they cannot hold forever. On our left and on our right, other divisions also attack, but they are not 4th Guards. They are not Kantemir. They do not have our proud history, to which we now add another shining chapter. Advance!”

As one, his array of armor, Trolls in the lead, rolled forward on heavy treads. Defying his fear, Kragov stood up again in his hatch, glorying in the thunder of the battlefield. Even with his sound-cancelling helmet, he felt deafened by the sonic shockwave as his tank’s main gun fired, sending a round screaming out to smash a Centurion cyborg a thousand meters distant.

The enemy turned to face him, the teeming mass of Scourgelings rushing toward his division at frightening speed. His mortars and artillery began dropping salvoes among them immediately, for they knew their duty within the synchrony of the doctrine of battle. Each shell blew a dozen bugs to smithereens, throwing insectoid body parts in all directions.

As the enemy advanced through the curtain of fire, Troll and IFV heavy antipersonnel turrets opened up at six hundred meters, slaughtering the Scourgelings by the hundreds.

Unfortunately, thousands, tens of thousand came on.

At three hundred meters, the deployed infantry began to fire light machineguns and assault rifles, adding their weight of metal. Still, the creatures came on, strangely silent among the gore and death. Kragov found it surreal and strange that they did not scream or growl or even cough.

At one hundred meters, though, he could hear a sound like a million sticks being dumped from the back of a truck, or the chirping of crickets magnified and deepened by orders of magnitude. He’d never been this close to the things, never wanted to be, and he found himself unable to move, staring paralyzed at the ravening enemy.

Kragov didn’t feel afraid, exactly; death held no power over him, for he’d long ago decided to die on the battlefield – if not this one, then some other, future arena of war. Rather, he found himself fascinated with the enemy, and overwhelmed by the thought that he might be eaten.

By some visceral instinct, Kragov pulled his sidearm from its holster and emptied its magazine at the advancing enemy. His puny bullets had no visible effect, but he reloaded mechanically and continued to fire, a guttural growl escaping from his throat.

“Brigadier, you must button up!” Kragov’s CyberComm NCO tugged frantically at his waistband. “We cannot lose you!”

Abruptly, Kragov came to his senses. Stuffing his battle fury back inside his heart, he grabbed the handle of the hatch cover and slammed it down, dogging it just as his Troll rocked from another crash of its main gun.

“Transmit to the mortar teams. Drop antipersonnel rounds directly on our front lines, danger close! We cannot let them run amuck among us. After one minute, walk the barrage forward, to the south. At that time, the infantry will advance to close with the enemy.”

“Yes, Brigadier!” The CyberComm NCO typed rapidly into his battlenet keyboard; encrypted text was much more reliable than voice in the midst of combat.

A moment later, explosions erupted all around the tank, antipersonnel mortar shells zeroed in atop the 4th Guards leading edge. The armored vehicles would withstand the small blasts, but the Scourgelings would not.

On his screen, Kragov watched as his infantry units walked forward in assault lines not so different from those of the First World War, or even Napoleonic times, shooting as they moved. The mortar barrage shattered the enemy, leaving most of the individual Scourgelings wounded, meat for massed rifle fire.

With that strange abruptness each combat soldier knows, a peace descended over the battlefield as every enemy within a thousand meters of 4th Guards was finished off.

“Sort yourselves out, comrades!” Kragov roared over the division net. “You have five minutes to reset proper formation before we resume the advance. You have done well. The road to Moscow is open. For the glory of Mother Russia, let us finish this!”

***

Lieutenant Bokorin’s lips peeled back from his teeth as he screamed, “FIRE!” His militia – sorry, Fortress Infantry – platoon pulled their triggers as fast as their fingers could move. Their rifles did not have a full-automatic setting, the better to limit ammunition expenditure by panicked green troops.

But they could hardly miss as the wave of Scourgelings crawled in herky-jerky motion toward his lines like crack-addled army ants. Yellowish blood and pieces of exoskeleton sprayed into the air under the wet smack of bullets, keeping the enemy at bay for the moment.

The bugs kept coming in uncountable mobs, crawling over their dead and through the barriers of tangled steel while Soldiers advanced cautiously in a line, firing over the Scourgelings heads. Beside Bokorin, Anzhelika, the one he’d called a slut in the privacy of his own head, wailed suddenly, her face a mass of burns as a laser strike caused her skin and eyes to boil. She thrashed on the ground until someone stuck a preloaded ampule of narcotic into her, and then she stilled.

Behind him, in the city, he could see plasma torpedoes falling like rain, throwing up gouts of flame and debris. Fire brigade sirens added their wails to the cacophony, and Bokorin wondered what would be left of his beloved city when they had killed all the aliens.

Turning back to the front, he lifted his pulse gun. Ignoring the oncoming wave of bugs and summoning all of the skill his tactical instructors had beaten into him – and that wasn’t an euphemism, for they’d used their batons freely on those who did not measure up – he drew a bead on one of the Soldiers and took a deep breath. Resting the weapon on the edge of the trench, he let the air out of his lungs to their natural pause, placed the crosshairs center mass of the four-armed creature, and stroked the trigger.

His weapon kicked him in the shoulder despite its shock-absorbing design, the tiny fusion explosion of a deuterium-tritium pellet driving a needle of ferrocrystal at speeds high enough to cause the air to glow with friction. The flash speared the Soldier through its middle, causing it to collapse and grow still.

Shifting his aim to another, he shot it dead before a flurry of laser heat blinded him, peeled off the skin around his inadequate protective goggles and lit his hair on fire beneath his helmet.

Nothing but pain existed, so much so that he barely felt the pinch as a syringe stabbed into his arm and the world went away.

When he awoke, he was still blind, but otherwise felt human. “Stay still, sir,” he heard the voice of Timofei Stanchyk, the platoon’s medic. “You are healing rapidly with the infusion of nutrient solution, but you must not move until you regain your eyesight.”

Bokorin wondered what it must have been like in the days before the coming of the Meme. The history classes he’d been force-fed had emphasized the sufferings and horror of an unsupervised humanity, until the Blends had graciously provided the Eden Plague to relieve their sickness and banish old age.

And then later, he’d been told that this was a lie; that the Eden Plague had been bequeathed to humanity by the new Emperor, Daniel Markis the First, who had gone into hiding when the Meme came, but now had emerged to save everyone again. That story seemed just as preposterous as the other.

The only tales he really believed were those his great-grandfather had told him, about the dark days when an American capitalist pig had briefly seized the Kremlin before being driven out by loyal citizens. In this version of the story, it was patriotic Russian scientists who had healed the Motherland with the Eden Plague.

No matter. At least he would one day see again.

“Tell me of the battle, Private Stanchyk,” Bokorin said.

“We hold. No drones have come to our aid, but we do not know why. The city is in flames behind us from the plasma bombardment, but Headquarters tells us that Brigadier Kragov strikes the enemy from behind with his tank division, and this seems true. In any case, the pressure on our front has been relieved and our sector is now quiet.”

“How many of us remain?”

“Perhaps half, Lieutenant.”

Bokorin rolled over on his hands and knees, trying to stand. “Help me up, Timofei Igorovitch, and guide me.”

“Sir, you should not!”

“Yob tvoyu maht, Private! Follow my orders unless you want me looking an idiot in front of our brave troops.”

“Yes, Lieutenant.” The medic helped him to his feet.

“I will grasp your arm. Walk us behind our lines. Keep me from stumbling.”

“Yes, Lieutenant.”

After a few hesitant steps, Bokorin’s strides steadied with confidence, and he raised his blinded face to lift his chin in pride as he walked the trench. “Well done, everyone,” he called into the darkness. “For Mother Russia, we shall defend Moscow. Well done…”

He continued to repeat variants of these phrases. When Timofei turned him around at the end of their sector, he could hear an unfamiliar but rhythmic swell of noise.

“What is that?” he asked.

“They cheer you, Lieutenant. They say Bo-ko-rin! Bo-ko-rin!”

Bokorin thought he might die today, but now…perhaps not. More importantly, he had not failed in his mission. His sector had held, despite the sacrifice of half his people. He smiled and turned his blind face to the sound as if toward the warmth of the sun.

Chapter 27

Captain Kassir prowled the spacious bridge, looking over the shoulders of his officers and snarling. While by any objective measure the damage to Demolisher was being repaired at an amazing rate, spearheaded by legions of maintenance bots, it wasn’t fast enough.

Glancing upward, a habit everyone seemed to share when speaking directly to the AI, he said, “Demolisher, I place the warriors at your disposal as well. Use them as manual labor if necessary.”

“Thank you, Captain. I shall do so. I am also returning main weapons and drive control to the officers in order to conserve computational power.”

“Is there anything else you can suggest?”

“Have the medical staff load the wounded onto boats and evacuate them to the planet’s moon facilities. Doing so will reduce my expenditure of computational resources further, as well as saving energy on unnecessary gravplating and life support.”

“Do it.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

Suddenly, a cheer went up from Kassir’s bridge officers and watchstanders. “What is it?” he said, eyes roving the many displays on the walls.

One ape stood to point as the main screen changed to a long-range optical view. On it, he could see the Scourge flagship – or what was left of it. It looked like a melon that a Sekoi had bitten in half, its ragged pulp made of tangled structure and flaming plasma instead of fruit. “Captain, it’s been cracked in half! It’s dying!”

“Helmsman, move us closer on fusion drive. Weapons, continue to target the hulk with particle cannon. We can’t be certain they are unable to fire again. Communications, is there any word from the admiral?”

“No, sir,” the Ryss comms officer replied. “The last report is that he is aboard a pinnace heading for this planet’s moon.”

“Really? Why?”

The warrior turned around and rose to report formally. “It appears that Conquest was the last available TacDrive-equipped ship, and the admiral ordered him abandoned in order to send him at lightspeed into the enemy.”

“Her, Lieutenant. Human ships are female.”

“That’s…nauseating, sir. To sacrifice a female to save males? Dishonorable.”

“Their ways are not ours. They do what they must in order to save their homeworld…as did we so long ago.”

The young lieutenant, barely a yearsmane, looked skeptical, but remained silent in the face of his captain’s declaration.

***

Everyone else aboard the pinnace broke out in wild cheering when the cockpit screen showed the Scourge flagship smashed like a hard-boiled ostrich egg and spinning through space, but he couldn’t find elation within himself.

Relief, yes, and tremendous satisfaction at the performance of his people – most of them, anyway, he told himself, thinking about the unaddressed question of Doughty and his officers – but no joy. Michelle was dead, and even if her programming and memory could be uploaded into some other platform, the new AI wouldn’t be her, no more than a surviving human twin is identical to the dead one.

When Absen disembarked at the busy moon base shuttle hangar, there was more cheering, taken up spontaneously by those who recognized him walking across the concrete floor. He raised a hand and waved, eliciting even more noise, and forced a smile.

This is the price of command, he reminded himself. To love someone, and then to send her to die.

People saw the privileges and trappings of power, the instant obedience and the deference, but they could never understand the crushing weight of responsibility shared by only a few men and women throughout history. He thought of the leaders of America, the country of his birth that existed only in his memory now, of those destined – or doomed – to make pivotal decisions that changed the course of nations. Stretching backward from Markis to Reagan to Kennedy and Truman, FDR and Eisenhower and Marshall, Wilson and Pershing, all the way to Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson and George Washington: these were his few comrades.

Absen’s musings were cut short by a pair of officers that accosted him as he entered the base’s main corridor. Steward Tobias put out a hand when one got too close, but the admiral brushed his bodyguard aside. “Yes, Major. What is it?”

“Rear Admiral Sawyer’s compliments, Admiral, and he invites you and your staff to join him in the CCC.”

“Of course. Lead on.”

“We have a tram waiting.” The second officer, an eager lieutenant, waved at a wheeled vehicle, and they boarded.

While Scoggins, Ford and the rest of Conquest’s bridge crew murmured in quiet conversation around him, Absen stared out the window at the activity of war passing by, feeling empty, bereft of a ship, a command, a home for the last decades.

The lights of the tunnel flickered and dimmed regularly, presumably as the laser batteries continued to fire. He almost asked the aide about it, but decided the combat control center would provide all his answers soon enough.

When he arrived, Rear Admiral Sawyer, a spare woman with tired eyes, greeted him with a handshake. “Welcome, Admiral, ladies and gentlemen. Sorry about Conquest. She was a fine ship.”

Absen steeled himself. “More than you know, Jeanine. Was it worth it? Have we won?”

Sawyer gestured at the big screen up front. “The flagship looks dead. It hasn’t fired a shot, and Demolisher continues to pummel it.”

Absen held up a hand. “Send an order to stop firing on it unless it fires again. We need to seize what’s left of it for intelligence exploitation.”

Sawyer nodded to a CyberComm tech, who began tapping at her keyboard to encrypt an order.

“What about the swarm?”

“We’ve shifted our lasers to take out as many fighters as we can see, and remaining Fleet ships and the Meme are going after the rest. The Aerospace jocks are getting a workout, as are Ground Forces units, but the reports from the surface are cautiously optimistic. The hammer-and-anvil strategy seems to have been successful, and no major cities have been overrun, though several are in ruins from plasma torpedo bombardment.”

Absen began to let himself relax. “Have you seen any problem areas? Anything I can help you with?”

“No, Admiral. It looks like mostly mopping up right now. May I say, sir, that…well, I just mean, everyone here is grateful that…” The woman ground to a halt.

“I understand, Admiral,” Absen said with a wave, “but I just called a few plays. It was people like you and your staff, and my bridge crew behind me, who did the hard work. Some of them didn’t make it. Save your admiration for them – our fallen heroes.”

This impromptu speech brought more cheering aimed at him, which was exactly what Absen had been trying to stave off. He smiled gamely and made calming motions with his hands. “If you have some room for us, I’d appreciate a shower and a bunk for couple of hours. I think I’ve been awake for about a day and a half, and it’s starting to catch up to me. To all of us.”

“Of course. Major Green, get the Admiral and his people some billets in officer country.”

Soon, Absen crawled numbly into a narrow bunk, which felt like heaven in the Moon’s low gravity.

He dreamed of a glassy sea, a sailing ship beneath him.

Rae was there, her white dress fluttering in the stiff breeze, and she hugged him. “She’s not gone, you know. Not as long as we remember her.”

“That’s a nice platitude, Rae, but I don’t feel that way.”

“I know. I miss her too.”

Then the vision dissolved, and Henrich Absen sank into the arms of Morpheus.

When he awoke and glanced at the wall screen’s chrono, he realized he’d slept for ten hours. A fresh uniform hung from a hook, and his shoes had been polished. Nice to fight from a fixed base that didn’t get hit hard, he said to himself as he dressed. Michelle’s loss threatened to overwhelm him afresh, but he ruthlessly shut down his emotions.

As usual, Tobias stood outside his office, dressed in fresh whites. If he didn’t know better, Absen could swear the man never slept. They nodded to each other and the admiral strode in the direction of the CCC.

After fifteen minutes of spot briefings, Absen decided that in half a day he’d gone from vital to useless. Markis and Ground Forces Command had everything well in hand on the planet, and Bull had taken it upon himself to conduct an armed reconnaissance of the shattered enemy flagship. He’d reported that most of those aboard were dead and the vessel was a wreck. At some point, gravitic control had been lost, and apparently Conquest’s collision had not only cut the ship in half, but had struck with such force that the impact had pulped most of the Scourge crew.

One exception was a group of several Archons captured in the ship’s control center, presumably the Scourge admiral and staff, which Brigadier ben Tauros had brought to the moon base as prisoners. Absen shook off his lingering funk, suddenly finding himself interested.

“Does anyone know if we can speak to the Scourges?” It was something he’d never asked, and he wondered why. Perhaps it was the fact that the bugs treated other races as food rather than mere enemies. Well, they were damn well going to speak to him now.

Rear Admiral Sawyer replied, “Ambassador Denham took charge of the interrogation almost immediately, Admiral.”

“Rae? I mean, Raphaela Denham, you mean?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get me transport. I want to see her and these Archons, now.”

“Of course, sir.” Sawyer snapped her fingers and the major from the day before led Absen and Tobias to a spacious ground car.

As they climbed in, Commander Rick Johnstone came jogging up. “Mind if I join you, sir?”

“Of course not. How’s Jill?”

“Fine, sir. The Marines hardly got a workout on this one, she tells me.”

“And you believe her?” Absen asked as they accelerated into the tunnel complex.

“Cautiously, sir. She seemed disappointed, which to me means she didn’t get enough action.”

“Why did you want to come along?”

Rick grinned. “Where Bull goes, Jill does too, and he’s overseeing the prisoners personally. I hear they’re some big sons of bitches.”

“I see.” Absen cocked his head in mock disapproval.

“And,” Rick said hastily, “I might be able to help with communication. I hear these Archons have cybernetic implants. Maybe we…” his face fell, and he swallowed. “Maybe I can hack their brains. I can use the base supercomputer.”

Absen patted Rick’s knee. “You two were close.”

“Like…like a sister, I guess, and a colleague. Me and my real sister Millie love each other, but we never really shared common interests. With Michelle…when we were working together in cyberspace, it was like…”

“Like a dance?”

“Yes, like she was my perfect work partner. She provided the raw computing power and drive; I had the intuition and creativity.”

“I think I understand.” Absen sat back and deliberately changed the subject. “What about these prisoners? Can we negotiate with them?”

Rick shrugged. “That’s well above my pay grade, sir, but…you got the Meme to talk. I would think that anything sentient can negotiate, especially when you have them over a barrel.”

“Maybe they don’t care about themselves personally. We certainly don’t have their empire, or whatever they call it, over a barrel. All we did was survive another attack, and as far as we know, next time they can come at us with more than we can possibly handle.” Absen sighed heavily without meaning to.

“Then we don’t wait for them to come at us. Do what you did at Gliese 370: go to them. I’m no strategist, but I have picked up a few things from working on your bridge. Don’t we want to hit them at a time and place of our own choosing?”

Absen turned to look at Rick’s intense face and felt his mood lift. “You’re absolutely right, Commander, and thanks for reminding me.”

***

“So this is an Archon,” Absen said as he stared down into the improvised cell. Bull, Rae, Rick and Jill stood with him on the catwalk, the latter two surreptitiously holding hands. He wished he could do the same with Rae, but “no PDA” was still deeply ingrained in him.

The creature below measured around six meters across in its squared-off, almost cubical central body and must mass at least a hundred tons. It looked to him more like a symmetrical four-legged, four-armed yellowish-brown crab than an insect. From time to time, light rippled from its combination eyes and photo-emitters.

“Yes, sir. This is the boss, the admiral, we’re pretty sure,” Bull said. “We found it sitting in the center of the command center, and it’s bigger than all the rest of them. In fact, Doc Horton tells me in one G it would hardly be able to drag itself around, but in one-sixth G…well, that’s why we have it restrained.”

Absen could see the creature had been fitted with heavy ferrocrystal shackles on its legs and arms, forming a network that let it shuffle a meter or so in any direction, but not get far or reach anything.

“So, how do we talk to it?” he asked, turning to Rae.

The tall Blend leaned over the railing to point. “Those screens are able to replicate its light-based language. We’ve already deciphered its grammar and a lot of vocabulary.”

“So soon?”

“I’ve had a team working on this for over a year, ever since Operation Bughouse. Remember, Rick and the AI copied a lot of data from the mothership core. Some Sekoi Blends and I were able to interrogate a few of the Soldiers we captured in the last attack. They didn’t know much, but doing so gave us enough insight into their language to make progress.”

Absen rubbed his jaw. “Has anyone talked to this one? Their admiral?”

“Not beyond some basics to see if we can understand one another, testing words for our equivalents, things like that.”

“Is it responsive?”

“Yes, surprisingly so.”

“Maybe it’s so arrogant it doesn’t think talking will hurt its cause.”

Rae shrugged. “I think we’re a long way from understanding how it thinks, Henrich.”

“Then let’s find out. I want to talk to it.”

“I figured you would.” Rae took his arm and led him down to the next level and into a room with electronics strewn about, clearly a hastily established comm center. “Sit in this chair and speak clearly,” she said. “Its responses will show in several formats on the screens in front of you – raw light patterns there, biometrics there, text on that one, and a voice synthesizer will speak.”

Absen took the proffered seat, and after glancing at Rae and the lead tech for a nod, he spoke. “Greetings, Admiral of the Scourge. I am Admiral Absen, commander of the military forces of this system. Do you have a name?”

I have a name. It is Ikthor. Until I was captured, I have never spoken with an infestation, and I find the experience fascinating.

Absen covered the microphone with his hand and looked at Rae. “Infestation?”

“That’s the literal translation of what they call us.”

Absen snorted and removed his hand. “We are not an infestation. We are an alliance of sentient species.”

Your words convey no meaning. You infest our worlds, therefore you are an infestation.

“I can see this might be a short conversation.”

I would regret that.

Absen decided to take that statement at face value rather than as a threat. “Me too. Why do you say we infest your worlds? What justifies your claim on them?”

This is our galaxy. It is our manifest destiny to expand to its limits. Perhaps then we shall seek to claim other galaxies, but for now, this one is sufficient.

“Just like that? You’re here, so it’s yours?”

You seek additional justification?

“That would be nice.”

We employ natural resources more efficiently than you, putting everything we find to use. Our biology is inherently superior to yours. We breed faster, resist phages better, and can survive in a broader range of environments, including vacuum. Without technological enhancement, you would be powerless before us. Evolution clearly demonstrates the principle of survival of the fittest.

“And yet, we’re not powerless before you, and we survive. How do you explain that?”

Do you not have infestations of life forms even lower than yourselves?

“Sure.”

Are they not sometimes stubborn and surprisingly resilient, for a time?

“Yeah.”

Yet you do not acknowledge them as equal to you, or cease your efforts to eradicate them from your territory, do you?

“Your logic is impeccable, except for one thing. If a species is sentient, it’s not an infestation. It has certain self-evident moral rights; rights to life and to self-direction. Even if it comes to a war, we don’t consider the enemy an infestation.”

You lie. Since I arrived in this star system, I reviewed your history as presented in your broadcasts and communications. I saw many examples of sub-groups you regarded as infestations, wherein a superior group seized its territory and exterminated it. Most recently, you did this to a star system of the Jellies.

“Jellies?” Absen looked to the side, covering the microphone again.

“He means the Meme,” Rae said.

“You know,” Absen said, “if we can convince this guy we are equals, as people if not in raw power, we might be able to make peace with them.”

Rae snorted derisively. “Good luck with that.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Ask every group in human history that was displaced, enslaved, ‘ethnically cleansed’ or exterminated. If we can’t do it among ourselves, how can we convince them?”

“We have done it among ourselves. Nobody’s oppressing anyone on the basis of race or culture anymore.”

Rae laughed. “You’re living in a dream world, Henrich. Fleet has mostly stamped out these problems with rules and regulations, indoctrination, a common enemy – and kicking out anyone that won’t comply. The civilian world doesn’t have that luxury. The four races of our alliance don’t get along all that well, and thanks to the long memories of Eden Plague carriers, the distinct cultures that exist on Earth are already jockeying for advantage, passing on bigotry through folklore, even murdering those of other ethnic groups. Spectre kept it in check for a while with his ruthless means, but now that Markis is eliminating the more repressive methods, it’s all coming out again.” She shook her head. “I don’t think you’re going to convince the Scourge of anything until they respect our strength.”

Absen sat back, lifting his hand from the microphone and making a cutting motion to the tech.

“It’s off,” the man said.

“Good.” Absen stood up. “Make sure we keep Ikthor here alive. I get a feeling we’ll be talking to him and his buddies quite a lot in order to learn from them, no matter what they think of us.”

Rae nodded. “I’m already setting up an intel interrogation team. Eventually, we’ll try to hack its mind, biochemically and cybernetically both.”

Absen turned to stare at the thing on the screen, wondering why the thought of Rae doing so didn’t make him particularly uncomfortable. “Just be careful, hon. Be sure it can’t mess with your own head while you’re doing it.”

“I’ll be careful.”

Chapter 28

Two busy weeks had passed since Absen had tried speaking to Ikthor the Archon. In that time, he’d tied up a number of loose ends while establishing his new headquarters at Armstrong Lunar Base. Until the next dreadnought was completed, he’d run things from there.

Captain Doughty and his officers had been convicted of falsification of records, but nothing more serious, and dismissed from service. There was plenty of work in the civilian sectors to keep them occupied, and as long as they weren’t in EarthFleet, they could become someone else’s problem.

The Scourge on the surface had been hunted down and captured, if possible, unlike the last attack where they’d nearly all been killed. Research facilities all over Earth were having a field day exploring the creatures’ biology, testing out drugs and pathogens for their effects on live specimens. Absen still had some hope that, if it came to the extreme, some kind of killer disease could provide the ultimate solution.

While Markis had his hands full on Earth trying to keep his Blends and his various nation-states in line without Spectre – who had dropped out of sight some time back – Absen felt confident that the military-industrial space economy would rebound.

Jupiter and its many moons hosted ever more facilities to extract minerals and process them into war materiel. Leslie Denham administered the factories with hard-nosed efficiency, accepting only the best workers and sending any slackers back to Earth.

The economy of Mars, too, was growing as its terraforming proceeded apace, slowly thickening its atmosphere and bringing colonists to the new Wild West of its deserts.

Between those two major colonies and the eventual restoration of the Earth-Moon system’s orbital industry, Absen was confident that the economy and society of humanity and its allies would thrive…if given time.

Somehow, Absen would have to buy them that time, and he already had an idea how to do it.

Demolisher had provided him a full report on the situation at Gliese 370, and with more FTL transports, there would soon be regular commerce between the systems. This communication would solidify Earth’s sovereignty for the time being – at least until the Scourge were defeated.

After that, it wouldn’t be his problem.

Now that he’d gotten the scut work done and before he went off duty, Absen turned his attention to what really interested him.

“Rick, send out orders to the people on this list to report here in seventy-two hours. Tell them sorry to cut their leaves short, but we have work to do.” Absen had made Johnstone his aide, as the man had wanted to stay close to the Scourge prisoners anyway.

“Yes, sir. The old gang, eh?”

“I know them; they know me. Feel free to run a search through the databases for anyone else with skills you think will be useful, but I don’t see any reason to reinvent the wheel.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Once you’ve done that, take off. I’m done for the day.”

Absen slipped on his jacket and strolled out of his office, two Stewards picking up escort detail as he nodded to his staff. He’d ordered Tobias to take some time off. No matter how many crazies crawled out of the woodwork dirtside, he didn’t expect trouble on the base.

When he reached his quarters, Rae was waiting for him, not surprising because she did a lot of work directly from there. He took her in his arms and kissed her soundly, and she molded herself to him in all the right places.

“You seem happy,” she said.

“Aren’t I always happy?”

“Not on the outside. But you are today.”

Absen laughed. “I guess I am. I’ve cleared my schedule of most of the bureaucratic crap and I’ve sent for the team that’s going to plan our offensive.”

Rae pulled back to look in his eyes. “Offensive? Do you really think that’s wise? We’ve barely picked ourselves up from the last pummeling we just got. People are tired of war, Henrich, and there’s a lot of grief.”

“And anger. I need to get people started thinking about payback for what the Scourge did to us.”

“This is the consummate military man? Talking about payback?”

“The moral is to the physical as three is to one, Rae. When Napoleon said that, he meant that motivated troops are one hell of a lot more effective than indifferent ones. We can’t let people relax too much. We have to keep them focused, and if that means leveraging their anger, so be it.”

“You’re getting cynical in your old age, Henrich.”

“This coming from someone over four thousand years old.”

“Never mention a woman’s age. Just bring her flowers and tell her she looks lovelier every day.”

“Flowers are hard to get on the moon, but how about this?” Absen took a small box out of his pocket and opened it toward her.

Rae reached out to touch a sparkling stone of at least fifty carats set in a golden ring. “You’ve never bought me jewelry before, Henrich.”

“I’ve never asked you to marry me before either.”

“Is that what you’re doing?”

“You know it is.”

“Such a charmer. Where’s the sunset, the champagne, the bended knee?”

Absen immediately knelt and took the ring out of the box, holding it up. “How’s this?”

Rae sighed. “I guess it’ll have to do.” He took her hand and began to place the ring on her finger, but she curled her fingers. “I haven’t even said yes.”

“Don’t be a tease. Will you marry me?”

“Yes.” She uncurled her hand and allowed the symbol of their engagement to be placed on her finger. “What is that, anyway? It doesn’t look like diamond.”

“Oh, it is…just not one mined on Earth. It’s cut from a piece of Conquest’s wreckage. Some of the carbon fiber that was compressed by her impact on the flagship fused into perfect crystals the size of your fist.”

Rae extended her hand to look at the stone, lips pursed. “I’m not sure how to feel about that. Should I be jealous?”

“You know it wasn’t like that. She was a protégé, a comrade, a friend…and she filled a hole where my dead children used to be, especially my daughter.”

Taking him in her arms, Rae said, “You know, if that’s something you want now…”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it. Or at least, thinking about thinking about it, if you know what I mean. But not quite yet, all right?”

Rae reached up to caress his face. “Henrich, there will never be a perfect time for children. And for a man like you, there’s always another battle. If you want kids, let’s have kids. I’m ready for babies again if you are.”

Absen’s face fell and he disengaged from her. “Speaking of children…I heard about Charles. I’m sorry for your loss. Is there anything I can do?”

Rae hugged herself, rubbing her arms with tears in her eyes. “I can’t say it doesn’t hurt. A mother always remembers her offspring as innocent little ones, not the adults they become. But Charles fell into darkness of his own free will. I can’t blame Jill for what she did, and neither should you. I’ll miss him, but we have to move on.”

Absen stared at her for a long moment before embracing her once more. “That’s a load of crap, Rae. You’re putting on a front. You don’t have to, you know, with me. I know how it feels.”

At this, Rae burst into tears. Sobbing, she said, “I’ve lost three of five, Henrich. I can’t stop hurting, can’t stop remembering.”

“And you never will. But it will lessen to a dull ache that you can handle. And, I hope, even though new children will never replace the dead ones, they’ll fill our hearts enough that we can handle it.”

Wiping her face, Rae said, “So when do you want to do it?”

“When the next operation’s finished. I promise.”

“Operation? What operation?”

He took her head in his hands and kissed her. “I’d have thought a smart girl like you would have figured it out already.”

***

“I heard a rumor, sir,” newly promoted Brigadier Vango Markis said with a wink. “Something about a diamond, or a ring or something?”

“It’s none of your damn business, you young puppy, if you want to keep that shiny new star,” Admiral Absen replied with a mock growl. “You’re simply envious that I landed the most desirable woman in the galaxy.”

Those in the filled conference room laughed, and then fell silent as Absen stepped to the head of the table. “Welcome, everyone. I trust you all had a good leave?”

“Not as good as yours, sir, I bet!” came an unidentified voice from the back, prompting another gale of laughter.

“Thanks, and you’re right. But moving on…here’s someone who didn’t get any leave, nor did his team. Commander Fleede?” Absen waved at the man standing near the podium at the other end of the room, next to the main holoscreen.

“Thank you sir. And, leave is overrated anyway. Intel work is much more fun.” Fleede smiled awkwardly, but his manner grew more confident as he waved at the display, and warmed to his subject.

“The admiral asked me and the intelligence section to perform an analysis of the layout of the Scourge’s territory, based on all the data we have from the Meme, from what we have from Operation Bughouse, and what we’ve recovered from the flagship. Also, we’ve gotten some HUMINT – eh, maybe SCOURGINT? – from interrogation of the prisoners.”

That drew some chuckles, and the nerdy intel officer relaxed further.

“We based the analysis on the known speed of the faster-than-light drive. As ours is a direct copy of theirs, with no significant improvements yet, I’m confident the rates of travel are comparable. Next slide.”

The holoscreen changed to show a spiderweb of stars, rotating slightly in order to assist those watching to gain perspective. “This is a simplified map of enemy holdings. It’s only conjecture that they have conquered everything within its boundaries, but that’s not germane to the issue at hand. What does matter is this.”

The color scheme changed, showing layers from white to yellow to red, all the way up through the rainbow to deep purple. There were many white stars, fewer yellow ones, and so on, until eventually only a handful of those in violet.

“What you’re seeing is the field divided into groupings by the mass of the stars. Mass determines gravity, and gravity determines the FTL slope from star to star. By combining that with the stars’ physical locations and distances, we build something that looks quite different.”

The holoscreen picture reorganized itself smoothly, changing from a riot of colors into a smooth shape resembling a lumpy mountain, with bulls-eye rings of hue climbing from its skirts to its peak.

Fleede gestured emphatically at the display. “This, then, approximates a true map of the FTL travel gradients, which makes it easy to see that this enormous star here,” he stuck his index finger into the hologram, “stands at the top looking down. It occupies the ultimate high ground. Ships take a long time to climb up to it, but from it, fleets can travel ‘downward’ much, much faster, and with far less energy expenditure.”

“So it’s rather like having altitude in an aircraft,” Vango Markis said.

Fleede nodded. “Yes, sir, just like in a gravity well, in or out of atmosphere. Except the engines on our ‘aircraft’ don’t have enough power to blast their way upward.” He made a swooping, and then rising motion with his hand. “They have to slowly claw their way up, up, up…”

“We got it,” Vango said with a smile.

“The point Commander Fleede is trying to make, I believe, is that he thinks he’s located their headquarters,” said Absen.

“That’s a big stretch,” Captain Scoggins said. “Okay, it’s logical, but do we have any other confirmation?”

Rae Denham – soon, Rae Absen, thought the admiral with a warming of his heart – stood and said, “Our interrogations of Ikthor have revealed that he is one of their supreme leader’s inner circle and controls vast territories. What’s more, he’s inadvertently confirmed the principle as self-evident that the higher the gravitic quotient of a star, the more important it is to control. And, he’s referred to their headquarters system as ‘Center.’”

“Hard to believe he told you all that,” Rear Admiral Sawyer said with a frown.

“The information was gleaned over many hours of interrogation,” Rae said firmly. “While Ikthor is highly intelligent, he’s not used to being in a position of helplessness. I believe he’s never had to mentally prepare himself for the possibility of capture, and so he told us a lot, especially during the earlier sessions. Lately, he’s become more cagey….but that’s beside the point. I agree with Commander Fleede. It’s highly likely this star is the one they call Center, where the so-called Father-Mother of their race, their big boss, lives and works.”

Absen stood up and walked forward to stare at the holoscreen. “This is really good work, Captain Fleede. Truly impressive.”

“Thank you, sir – Captain?”

“As soon as the paperwork goes through. In fact,” Absen turned to his audience, “you can expect to see a lot of promotions. We’ll need more senior officers for the offensive I intend to conduct.”

“Offensive?” Vango was the first to get it. “We’re going after Center?”

“Damn right we are,” Absen said firmly.

“Sir, that’s…”

“Nuts?”

“I was going to say ‘risky.’ EarthFleet has lost half its ships, its best ones,” Rear Admiral Sawyer said. “We have nothing that can stand up to something like their flagships, and who knows how many of those are parked in their capital system?”

Rae answered for Admiral Absen. “We’re fairly certain that each of the sixteen Archons on their leader’s council owns only one of these super-ships. For all their star systems, the Scourge social structure is less like ants or bees and more like cicadas or locusts. They’re either swarming or they’re dormant, rather than in a steady state of economic expansion. Many of their star systems are unproductive, because they consume and destroy the living worlds that could allow them to sustain growth. Therefore, they actually have far less military power than the size of their territory would suggest.”

“It’s still one hell of a lot more than we have,” Sawyer replied.

“Yes,” Absen broke in, “but the point is, an attack on Center may succeed, and it might even lop off the head of the beast and win the war in one stroke.”

Sawyer said, “Or it might simply stir them up enough to send their full might against us. Sir, I think we should put our production advantage to use building the best defenses we can – improved SLAMs, for example, that can be posted close to Sol to wipe them out as they appear. They can’t beat those if we make enough of them.”

Absen shook his head. “How many is enough? If we let them gather and attack, who knows how many they could assemble? Could we handle a thousand swarms and ten flagships? No, every lesson of history, every military genius who ever wrote a book, every experience I’ve had tells me that we have to hit them hard where they live. If that stirs them up, well…I don’t see how we can make them any more hostile to us than they already are.”

Sawyer subsided, her face still filled with skepticism. Absen wasn’t surprised that she – and some others, of course – would want to lick their wounds rather than go for the throats of their enemies.

“We’ll be building defenses too, of course, many of them dual-use,” Absen went on. “I already have some ideas on how to overcome the Scourges’ super-ships and deal with their endless swarms, but it’s not my job to do all your thinking.”

He turned to Sawyer. “Jeanine, you’re my new Red Team leader. I’m sure your deputy can see to the day-to-day business of the base while you concentrate on coming up with an educated guess as to what awaits us at Center. You get Fleede and his team, Rae and hers, and whoever else you want that can help you build the best simulation you can. I’ve already ordered Demolisher to land on the surface nearby. Not only will that facilitate his repairs, but you can use all of his excess brainpower to help you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Rear Admiral Scoggins,” Absen said with a wink, “pick your blue team. Remember, though, you’re on offense this time. Your task is to come up with ship types and tactics that will beat whatever Red Team tells you will be defending Center. Get with Leslie Denham for reasonable estimates of how much you can actually get built, because I want to launch in six months, come hell or high water.”

***

“It can’t be done,” Scoggins said as she took a seat on front of Admiral Absen’s desk. “We’ve worked on it for a week. If the Red Team is playing fair, there’s no way we can break them.”

Absen tossed down the stylus in his hand and leaned back in his chair. “Armstrong, bring up the Red Team’s latest order of battle on Center and project it on my main screen.”

“Yes, Admiral Absen,” came the voice of the base’s pseudo-AI. A moment later a diagram of the enemy star system appeared, annotated with its forces in a deluge of colored icons.

“Looks ugly,” Absen said. “I see what you mean. Have you run simulations against weaker forces in case Sawyer’s overestimating the opposition?”

“Yes, sir. If they have even half the forces on that screen, we can’t beat them in a straight up fight. Even if we bring along all our D-ships and double their numbers by assuming they can all reproduce within the next six months – not a sure thing, by the way – we’ll lose. Oh, we’ll hurt them badly, but they don’t care about casualties below the level of Archon any more than the average medieval lord cared about his peasants. Less, even.”

Absen looked down the list next to the graphic. “Flagships… Fortresses… Swarms…and I see the Red Team postulates some kind of cruisers. I have to assume they know what they’re doing, based on the intel we’ve gathered. Sawyer may have her biases, but I don’t think she would deliberately jigger the results merely to prove herself right. Not with Fleede and Rae there to check on her, anyway.”

“Then I guess we’ll have to rethink our attack, sir. Sure wish we could get some recon.”

Absen shook his head. “This has to be a total surprise to work at all. If we allow them to gather forces, we could be facing ten times as much. A recon ship would have to work its way up the stellar gradient just like the attack fleet will. Even if we put the biggest FTL engine onto the smallest hull so it can bypass some steps, its very existence arriving at Center will tip them off.”

“Any progress on the FTL comms or FTL radar projects?”

“No. The scientists say there’s no way.”

“They said FTL travel was impossible, too.”

Absen smiled. “Point taken…but scientific breakthroughs take time, and often some luck. I don’t think they’ve even come up with enough theory to predict how it could be done. So let’s not hope for some magical new technology. We have to focus on what we can do in the next six months.”

Scoggins joined Absen in front of the holoscreen. “What about a raid instead?” She pointed at the planet Red Team postulated. “This is supposed to be their headquarters. If we can smash our way in and kill off their Archons…it may not win the war, but it should buy us time and disrupt their ability to coordinate against us. I’ve read all the intel summaries and a lot of the detailed reports about these critters. They’re completely heriarchical. I’m wondering if wiping out their capital might cause their empire to break up into petty kingdoms, even precipitate a civil war?”

“No way to tell, but…I like the idea of a raid. We go in fast, hit them hard and get out. If it turns out that there’s a lot less force there than Sawyer’s team thinks, we can always expand our objectives.” Absen turned to face his former flag captain. “Get a plan together for me on that basis. I want to see something in forty-eight hours. The sooner we nail down the kind of ships we need to build, the more time we’ll have to do it.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Throwing Absen a casual salute, Scoggins turned to go.

“Oh, and Melissa?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Better do it right…because you’ll be in charge.”

Scoggins’ eyebrows went up. “You’re not going to be commanding the mission, sir?”

Absen shook his head slowly. “Nope. This is too big and too far. It’s going to take you at least three months of climbing the gradient to reach Center even with the overpowered FTL engines we’re contemplating, and then a week to haul ass back here. That plus the six months will add up to about ten since they hit us, which is the earliest Fleede believes they would attack again, assuming they’re going to gather an even bigger force. If I send off the majority of our strength to attack, we won’t be able to defend ourselves.”

“That would be some irony if we came home to a dead system,” Scoggins said.

“That wouldn’t be the word I’d use. So, let’s make sure nothing like that happens. The plan is to get in, do maximum damage, and get out with your forces intact. Remember Alfred Thayer Mahan and the concept of the Fleet in Being.”

“I’ll brush up, sir.”

***

“Nguyen is a Meme now?” Absen said to Daniel Markis across the high-bandwidth video link. “How is that possible?”

“Beats me, Henrich, but that’s what the report delivered by Desolator’s FTL drone said. The summary is about a hundred pages long and the annexes run to more than a thousand. It’s been uploaded to your network already, so feel free to examine it yourself.”

“What else does it say?”

“That he intends to take control of the Meme Empire just like he did with Earth, and Australia before that. And you know what? I have every confidence he’ll do it.”

“My God.” Absen stood up to pour himself a stiff drink. “That’s fantastic news. EarthFleet just expanded by a factor of thousands, maybe more.”

Markis held up a hand. “Two things, though. First, I don’t know that he intends to subordinate himself to me or you. Second, it will take a while for his coup to percolate throughout the Empire even if he manages to fit Meme ships with FTL.”

“Understood. I’m not going to count on his help for the present campaign, but it’s still heartening. I’m a lot more confident in a Meme Empire run by a human – former human, anyway. What about Desolator?”

“That’s up to you, Henrich. The FTL drone can be sent back as soon as you have orders.”

“Then have him come back here to join the rest of the Ryss ships no later than a week before C-Day.” That was the term that had come into vogue for the date the attack on Center would launch. “In the meantime, he should be fortifying the Ryss home system and, if it’s at all possible, he needs to reproduce, even if he can’t bring his offspring on the mission. We’re having the other D-ships create new AIs, get them online, and then provide telefactors and materials to build their own bodies around them. That’s the fastest way to construct more.”

Markis chuckled grimly. “Genuine Von Neumann machines…I hope to hell they never turn against us, or we’re screwed.”

“Sir, we’ve been screwed for some time, yet we keep managing to pull our nuts out of the fire, to mix some metaphors.”

“Thanks to you, Admiral. I’m just a glorified combination factory manager and town mayor. You’re doing the hard work.”

“My people are, sir.”

“Then pass on my thanks to them. Keep in touch, Henrich. Markis out.”

Chapter 29

Five months later

“Admiral on deck,” COB Timmons roared with leather lungs as he preceded Fleet Admiral Absen onto the bridge of EarthFleet’s dreadnought Conqueror.

“Welcome aboard, sir,” Rear Admiral Scoggins said with a wide grin. “Are you sure you don’t want to take over command?” She gestured at the holotank.

In its bright confines, Absen could see the task force, the pride of EarthFleet, arrayed as if for battle. Eight of the Ryss D-ships – all seven that had survived the Gliese 370 Scourge attack plus a new, special one – formed the bones, if not the heart, of the fleet. By the seven working in concert, assisted by the hardworking industry of the Jupiter shipyards, construction of a new, modified superdreadnought had taken a mere four months instead of the usual several years.

Layered with extra armor and scourge-killing poison ablatives, the original seven were filled with millions of Ryss warriors in shiny new battlesuits comparable to those of human Marines.

The new Ryss ship, Deathbringer, boasted even more point defense lasers than his parent vessels, but the main difference was in his capital weaponry. Instead of a score of heavy particle beams, he possessed only two gargantuan projectors, both mounted in the stern adjacent to the fusion engines. Larger than most ships themselves, they measured nine kilometers long by five hundred meters wide, and each could fire a particle beam rated in exawatts, like the Meme’s moon-based Weapons.

Absen smiled as he imagined the Scourges’ surprise when Deathbringer went to work on any flagships he happened to find. Then his expression turned dark as he contemplated the brand-new AI’s potential end, and that of his brothers. The Ryss ships had made it clear that if there was no other way, they were prepared to hurl themselves under TacDrive into enemy ships, or even planets, in order to decapitate the Scourge.

Shaking off incipient melancholy, Absen nodded to the bridge crew, murmuring greetings. Naturally, he’d given Scoggins a free hand to select her people, and just as naturally, she’d kept everyone from Conquest.

That reminded him. He glanced around, zeroing in on a female officer with commander’s stripes on her shoulders. Walking up to her, he extended a hand. “Miss Conqueror, I presume?”

“Yes, Admiral,” the android said with a smile. “I’m glad to finally meet you. My mother’s memories told me everything about you.”

Absen fought against the lump that came into his throat. Dr. Egolu had loaded copies of Michelle’s programming into new, Ryss-produced AI hardware, but with only partial success. The result had been full machine consciousness, but apparently each new entity had a clear understanding that she was not the same person she’d been cloned from. He counted EarthFleet lucky that the personalities had turned out to be so well adjusted, and with the advantages of all the memories bequeathed to them, training was not even necessary.

Absen could have introduced himself to the new AIs any time in the past few months, but frankly, he’d been avoiding it. The pain had seemed too great.

There was no avoiding it now, though, so he put on a smile. “I’m happy to meet you, too. Please pass on to your fellow C-class ships –”

“– my sister ships,” Conqueror insisted.

“– your sister ships, of course. Give them my regards and my best wishes for success on your mission.”

Scoggins stepped up beside Absen to speak softly in his ear. “Ask her what her first name is, sir.”

Hearing the grin in Scoggins’ voice, Absen glanced at her with lifted eyebrow for a moment, and then turned back to the android. “Well?”

“I’m Michelle, sir. Like my mother, and like my younger sisters.”

Absen looked away for a moment, almost overcome again, and turned back only when he was certain he could control himself. “That’s an interesting choice,” he said mildly.

“It’s our way of honoring her, sir. Most families share a name, so we decided to share that one, since we can’t have a surname in common.”

“Well, I think it’s a great idea.” No, I don’t, Absen said to himself, but what am I going to say? I’ll get used to it, I suppose…in a few hundred years. “Now let me look over the rest of the fleet.”

Behind the D-ships floated a conjoined sphere composed of thirteen Constitution-class ships, all superficially similar to the shattered dreadnought of that name. While the new D-ship had been built as a flagship-killer and more, the new C-ships had retained their roles as command-and-control and anti-swarm ships. Twelve of them with names such as Confident, Confronter, Controller and Concorde surrounded Conqueror, escorting her like the avenging angels their AIs styled themselves.

These ships were attached together much as the original Task Force Conquest had been for its relativistic journey to Gliese 370, and for much the same reason. Only by travelling as one through the FTL wormhole could they ensure arrival in close proximity and operate as a unit from the start.

The D-ships were so large, though, that for them, this arrangement would be impractical.

The C-ships had also been equipped with the new TacSLAMs, lightspeed weapons that could be launched like missiles directly from tubes, against high-value targets. If the new D-ship couldn’t crack the enemy flagships, perhaps the super-SLAMs would.

No other ships would be sent, though each vessel carried a full complement of drones, auxiliary craft and Marines. All the simulations had shown that smaller vessels were not cost-effective, either in lives or resources, when the price of equipping them with FTL and TacDrives was taken into account. Succeed or fail, each powerful warship had to be able to fight on its own and run for home if necessary.

“All right, there’s no reason to delay further. Put me on fleetwide,” Absen said.

“You’re on, sir. Full vid to all stations.” Commander Johnstone said from his CyberComm console.

Absen had let his aide go on the mission; Rick had insisted – all right, nearly threatened mutiny – after failing to convince Jill Repeth to stay behind.

Absen clasped his hands behind his back and faced the video pickup. “Men and women of Task Force Conqueror, I’m here to send you off on a dangerous mission. I’d love to lead you once more, but my duty is here, commanding the forces protecting your loved ones so that you can sail with confidence.”

He turned to indicate Scoggins. “Admiral Melissa Scoggins has been by my side since the first Destroyer tried to wipe out humanity, and I’m telling you the absolute truth when I say she’s learned everything I can teach her and will lead you just as well as I could. So I only have four simple things for you to do: follow your orders; give the Fleet your utmost efforts; strike the enemy a heavy blow; and get home safe. That’s it. If you do those things, everyone on Earth, on Ryssa, on Koio and throughout humanity’s empire will be proud of you. Good luck, and good hunting.”

“You’re off, sir.”

“Good speech, Admiral,” Scoggins said.

“Makes me want to vomit, actually. Staying behind, I mean,” Absen replied. He held out his hand. “Anchors aweigh, Melissa. Godspeed.”

She grasped his proffered palm and squeezed. “Aye aye, sir.”

Absen leaned close. “And I don’t usually say this, but take it in the spirit it’s meant. Hit them hard, but don’t sacrifice your people. You’re not saving our planet; you’re trying to kill theirs. Win or lose, we need you to come defend the homeworld, because if the Scourge act true to form, the next attack on Earth is already being assembled, and you have to get back here before it hits us. That’s why I set the timetable I did.”

Scoggins stared into Absen’s eyes and said, “Count on it, sir.”

Absen let go and turned on his heel. “Carry on,” he said as he walked stiffly off the bridge that so resembled Conquest’s.

***

Rear Admiral Scoggins sighed with relief as Absen left. She loved her boss and respected him even more, but every fiber of her being cried out to get on her way and attack the enemy. She knew it didn’t make objective sense, a few minutes this way or that, as she expected to be sedated in wormhole space for the next three months, climbing seven levels of stellar gradient to reach Center.

Each of her C- and D-ships now had triple-redundant and ultrafast electromechanical analog computers aboard, clockwork devices with no digital processors. When they detected emergence, they would actuate old-fashioned rheostats, solenoids and switches. Those in turn would activate engines and thrusters to create random evasive maneuvers, all within seconds of FTL emergence.

After ninety seconds, digital computers would have recovered from wormhole space disruption and rebooted. Pulling data from static memory modules, they would turn the ships around and immediately send them back into the gravity well, as soon as the FTL capacitors were charged by the ravening solar power of the transit star.

This energy would be used to seize and twist the gravity waves thrown out by the nearby sun, forming another wormhole even while the ships blasted on conventional drives to begin their runs back toward the flaming balls of fusion gas. Each such transit would lift them another step up the stellar gradient toward their goal.

Toward Center.

If any piece of these systems failed, the ship in question would miss its entry into wormhole space and plunge inexorably into the star itself, killing everyone aboard. Depending on such primitive technology outside the control of AI or organic person, no matter how thoroughly tested, was the only part of the mission that truly frightened her.

“All right,” Scoggins said with a deep breath. “Everyone into the cocoons. Michelle, once we’re in VR space, it’s all yours.”

“Thank you, Admiral.” The android paced around the bridge as the organic crew folded themselves into their crash couches and closed the clamshells. Scoggins felt plugs gently find the sockets at the base of her skull as gels expanded to immobilize her body. Shortly after, her mind transitioned to the virtuality and she got up to pace the bridge, nodding as each of her officers appeared at their stations as if teleported.

It seemed only moments before Commander Conqueror tapped her on the shoulder. “We’re ready, ma’am. You might find it less of a jolt if you sat down and relaxed.

“Of course,” Scoggins replied, taking her seat and grasping the armrests as if in a dentist’s chair. “Will it –”

Then her consciousness faded.

Chapter 30

Admiral Scoggins snapped awake with none of the usual grogginess she associated with sedation. She took this to mean emergence at Center had taken place without incident and, as planned, Michelle had held her unconscious using the virtual reality system until the drugs cleared her body.

Looking around, she determined she was, as expected, in VR space. This she confirmed by the simple expedient of noting the absence of the crash chairs, which were, of course, unnecessary. With all ships TacDrive equipped, she expected to lead her task force into battle within an hour of emergence, pausing only to collect information on what they faced.

Stepping to the holotank, she saw that her C-ships had already blown their explosive struts and detached from Conqueror. All of them now blasted at flank speed away from Center’s supermassive blue-white star, curving toward a position above its north pole. That vantage point would eventually allow them to see the whole plane of the ecliptic, and thus the layout of the solar system, as well as detect the emergence of the D-ships as soon as they arrived.

Scoggins wished they could use TacDrive to escape the star and reach her first rally point, but hitting the thick stellar wind from the enormous sun at lightspeed would be like slamming into concrete. Instead, they plowed ahead, fusion drives lost in the glare. Thick ablative insulation not so different from the latticework resin of the Scourge ships shielded them from the radiation as they gained distance.

As the formation of C-ships slowly emerged from the blinding brilliance of the hot sun and sensors were able to collect data, the holotank began to take on detail.

The first item to emerge was a swath of several Earth-sized planets. Bizarrely, all of them shared an orbit about 3 AU out, triple the distance from Sol to Earth. They floated in an arc, one after another, like a train of beads.

“That arrangement can’t be stable,” Scoggins said, turning to Michelle’s avatar as she pointed.

“Not for more than a few hundred years,” Michelle replied. “Unless, of course, they are managed somehow.”

“Well, planets don’t naturally share orbits, so obviously this system has been engineered.”

“I agree,” said Michelle.

Turning to Fletcher, Scoggins asked, “Do they have atmospheres?”

“Very little, ma’am. Also, not much water, except as ice I can detect beneath the surface.”

“Emissions?”

“All show some level of technological development. I can’t see much detail yet.” He turned back to his board.

“How many total planets in this orbit?”

In response, ghost spheres populated the holotank, obviously extrapolated from the positions of the ones Conqueror could see. In total, there were seventeen.

“Any other planets?” Scoggins inquired.

The holotank scale expanded, showing several gas giants farther out.

“Why aren’t those sharing an orbit, do you think?”

“Probably because they’re a lot harder to move. Without a solid surface, what do you mount an engine on? And, you’d lose their moons. Notice, none of the rocky planets has any.” Michelle gestured.

Scoggins pondered a moment, staring. “Fletcher, I need some targets. And where are the D-ships?”

Fletcher grunted. “Yes, ma’am. Working on it.”

“The D-ships should be appearing any time now,” the AI said. “Shall I speed up the time flow?”

“No. I’ll be patient. Are we at one to one?”

“Yes.”

Scoggins turned away, pacing and wishing she had COB Timmons sitting at the damage control station with his battered coffee maker. He’d stayed at Absen’s side, of course.

Then she chuckled and snapped her fingers. “Michelle, since we’re in VR…do you have data on COB Timmons, enough to create an avatar and his coffee setup?”

“Of course, Admiral.” A moment later, the bridge expanded slightly to provide room for another station and the man seemed to appear, holding a stained mug of lifer-juice.

He raised it to her in salute. “Want a cup?” he asked.

“Sure, COB. Thanks,” she said as she accepted the drink, feeling slightly uncomfortable saying more than that to a simulation. There was no point in acting as if the Timmons avatar was real, as she would only be conversing with the Conqueror AI or some subroutine of her. Even so, sipping the scalding beverage made her feel better.

“I have Detonator,” Fletcher said, jerking his head toward the holotank. “There’s Decimator…”

Scoggins watched as all eight D-ships emerged one by one in random places around the star, to immediately begin their evasive maneuvers. While it didn’t appear that the enemy had anything like SLAMs, EarthFleet wasn’t taking any chances. If she were the Scourge, she’d set up super-graser fortresses around the star to sense and immediately engage anything appearing within range of the killer lightspeed beams.

But she was slowly gaining confidence that never in their wildest nightmares did the Scourge expect an attack on their capital, and certainly not one conducted using higher technology than theirs.

It’s the eternal problem of those who’d won too much for too long, she thought. Like a gambler on a lucky streak, the Scourge have grown complacent and stagnant. They think that what’s succeeded in the past will continue to be sufficient unto the day, while underdogs like us keep striving and innovating.

This time, she intended to teach them the folly of their ways.

Two minutes later, the D-ships turned toward the stellar north and began climbing out of the star’s gravity well toward the rendezvous point, about sixty million kilometers and twelve hours out.

Long before then, though, she hoped to have located the enemy’s main planet, the seat of their government where the Monarch, the Father-Mother of the Brood as Ikthor had termed the creature, held its council.

“I’m getting some order of battle information now, ma’am,” Fletcher said.

Commander Ford at Weapons seemed annoyed every time Fletcher spoke, probably because he still had nothing to shoot. Okuda at the helm had his eyes closed the better to see his own, wider pilot’s universe, his ebony pate shining in the glow of the holotank above.

Commander Johnstone eyed Scoggins speculatively, and then turned back to his CyberComm duties. She expected he was already searching for enemy data streams to hack into.

Doc Horton scrolled through BioMed updates and gave her admiral a thumbs-up when she noticed Scoggins looking over her shoulder. “Everyone came through all right except a few dozen Ryss warriors that freaked out and had to be sedated again,” she said. “There are always a few bad reactions to any drug, and many of them have refused their version of the Eden virus.”

“Taboos take time to overcome,” Scoggins replied, thinking of the Plague Wars that had wracked Earth. “They’re lucky Trissk finally came out in favor of it and their race won’t be shackled by that short lifespan anymore.”

The doctor raised her eyebrows. “Just as long as they accept having fewer kits per litter and less often…”

Scoggins clapped the doctor on the shoulder and said, “Once we’re out of here, let’s have a drink and shoot the shit, all right?” Horton had become one of her confidantes in the months she’d spent preparing the expedition, especially as she’d found her husband, Commander James Ford, becoming increasingly difficult.

She thought it might be because she’d progressed so much farther in her career than he had in his, but that was his own fault. His abrasive personality didn’t lend itself to command, and despite her putting in a word in his favor, Absen had vetoed James for a C-ship of his own. Instead, the admiral had offered him one of the new cruisers already under construction if he stayed back, but he’d turned that down for now, preferring to remain as her weapons officer.

Putting her marital musings aside, Scoggins turned back to the holotank. “Come on, Fletcher. Give me a target!”

“If you don’t mind?” Michelle caught Fletcher’s eye. “I have spare processing capacity right now. I can work up some heat maps of the electromagnetic traffic in this system.”

“Please do,” Fletcher said. “I’m running an optical imagery search first, trying to identify large military and industrial facilities.”

“What about their ships?” Scoggins asked. “Is anyone looking for them?”

“I have a collections team working on that, Admiral, feeding Fleede and his intel people for their Order of Battle database,” Fletcher replied, reminding her that her bridge officers were not alone, merely her interfaces to whole sections of crewmembers deep in the bowels of Conqueror. “The problem is, unless they’re under powered drive, ships are tiny compared to planets, moons and asteroids. Also, the light from our emergence hasn’t even reached three AU, so they can’t know we’re here. In about another half hour, we should see their fleet lighting up to maneuver against us, I’d expect.”

“It would be absolutely fabulous if we could be on our way toward their capital planet before that happened,” Scoggins replied. “The longer we wait, the less the surprise of our appearance will accomplish.”

The half hour Fletcher predicted passed, representing the rest of the time it took for the light of the task force’s fusions drives to reach the enemy and their own to return. “We got ships!” he crowed, and a moment later the holotank began to populate with icons.

In orbit above each of fifteen out of seventeen worlds flew one flagship such as had attacked Earth so recently, along with dozens of motherships per planet in various states of assembly – some relatively bare, some nearly completed, their shells of resin embedded with swarm craft. Also, rising from the surface of each planet like agitated hornets were millions of fighters, gunships and assault boats

One planet seemed relatively empty of forces, though, with a mere pair of mothership cores, no flagship, and relatively few auxiliaries.

The final one…

“Give me everything you have on that,” Scoggins said, pointing to one icon above the last planet.

At her request, auxiliary screens lit up and the holotank zoomed in to show a spherical ship pimpled with graser turrets.

Hundreds of them.

“Well, there’s the mother of all flagships,” Scoggins breathed, looking at the thing. “It’s a friggin’ Death Star.”

Sixty kilometers in diameter, the radar scans showed the ship – mobile fortress might be a better term – to be solid, without the add-on latticework and ablative resins that formed the skin of other Scourge structures.

“Even a D-ship can’t stand up to that thing,” Ford said in horror. “If it has the autofire system we saw on the last flagship, as soon as one TacDrives in, he’ll get shot to shit. Except maybe Deathbringer. His particle beams outrange their grasers.”

“That’s why we built them,” Scoggins replied. “But we may have a simpler solution. Can we TacSLAM that ship?”

“Not from here, Skipper. We’re twenty-five light-minutes away, and it’s already maneuvering. No way we can hit from here.”

“How close do we have to be?”

“Like with all lightspeed weapons, we have to be within about a million klicks to get good hits on maneuvering targets.”

Scoggins turned to Michelle. “Do we think their Monarch, their queen or whatever, is aboard that thing?”

“The intelligence summaries disagree, Admiral. Based on interrogations of Ikthor and his officers, Archons have a strong taboo against killing each other, but all that means is that political losers are marginalized, banished or imprisoned instead of executed. On the other hand, apparently assassination is anathema, and never happens. Therefore, there’s no reason for their supreme leader to be so paranoid he has to remain aboard a warship for protection.”

“Great. If we could pinpoint him, hopefully on a planet, we could conduct a surgical strike.” Scoggins chewed on her lip. “That planet, the one the mega-ship orbits…I bet that’s their capital. We’ll call it Center Prime. I remember they’re supposed to have sixteen Council Archons, making one world for each plus one for the big boss. And you notice the one without a flagship? I bet that’s Ikthor’s.”

“Makes sense,” Johnstone said. “I’m getting far more comms traffic off that one than any of the others.”

“What about comms traffic with the mega-ship?”

“Nothing major. I see what you’re getting at, ma’am. If their leader were aboard, there would be more comms – orders being passed and so on. If they work like we do, everyone in this system is clamoring for instructions – and that means their governmental center is actually on that planet. Unless, of course, everything is piped into a narrow beam between the ship and the ground for further distribution.”

Scoggins stared at the holotank, terribly aware that time was ticking away, but also certain that one correct decision at the start could well mean the difference between success or failure.

“All right. Our top objective is to wipe out their Monarch and, hopefully, their Council, not get into some grand battle. That means we need to locate the seat of government on that planet and smash it, and we can’t do that from this distance.” Her fingers tapped her chin. “What kind of orbit is that mega-ship in? Geosynchronous?”

“No, polar, though it’s broken orbit already.”

“Damn.” Scoggins knew that if it had been parked over one particular spot on the planet’s surface, that might have given them an idea of exactly where to look. “Johnstone, can you pinpoint the location of the comms?”

The CyberComm officer shook his head. “There are thousands of sources and a network of cities across the planet, including hundreds of comm satellites.”

“I guess the Scourge do construct as well as consume,” Doctor Horton mused.

“Don’t start feeling sympathy for them, Doc,” Scoggins replied. “Termites build complex mounds, but we still wipe them out when they try to eat our houses. Too bad the Scourge-killing virus didn’t pan out.” The bugs’ immune systems turned out to be too tough to crack in the time they’d had.

“So when are we going to hit them, Skipper?” Ford asked impatiently.

“Gather round and I’ll explain my plan,” the admiral said.

Chapter 31

Commodore Chiren gave the word. “Desolator, pass to all my ships: pulse on your mark for maximum synchrony. All are authorized extremis protocol.”

“Yes, Commodore.” Immediately, the seven original Ryss superdreadnoughts engaged their TacDrives, all aiming for points near Center Prime, but about four light-seconds from the mega-ship’s position.

Relativistic effects turned twenty-five minutes of travel in the outside universe into less than two within each ship, and moments later Desolator dropped out of pulse.

“Evasive!” Chiren snapped, but Desolator had already engaged his massive thrusters and fusion engines to throw himself into an aim-spoiling stagger. Arrival at one point two million kilometers distance from the enemy super-ship represented eight seconds round trip for any radar signal and four for a graser bolt to travel, enough time for the violent maneuvering to reduce the likelihood of a hit to less than one in ten.

Unfortunately, this was a great enough probability that at least one or two D-ships would likely be struck.

Desolator already engaged scattered swarm craft, the outer edges of the group escorting the monster ship, picking them off easily with his thousands of point-defense lasers. He had no fear of such little things unless their concentration grew exponentially.

It was the grasers that mattered.

A shining beam appeared nearby, defined by the dozens of Scourge craft it inadvertently vaporized on its way from the mega-ship toward Desolator, turning them into blazing beacons that outlined the tube of gamma rays for all to see. It had missed by a dozen kilometers, far too close for comfort…but in space, a miss was a miss.

Already, Desolator and his kin slammed alpha strikes of coordinated particle beams, huge weapons made small only by the scale of their opponent. Each score of discharges sought to focus on one of the many squat graser turrets, trying to disable the enemy one piece at a time.

Or so it seemed.

As he watched, Chiren knew the seven’s true role was to provide a distraction, to draw the enemy’s fire and to discover the capabilities of the enemy.

“Deathbringer approaches,” his sensors officer said five seconds before the time appointed.

“Signal the charge.” Involuntarily, Chiren stood to stare at the main screen to his front, which showed mega-ship in the center and the battle around it. The seven AI warriors immediately reduced their evasive maneuvering and turned to hurry directly toward their enemy.

On time, the eighth, the specialized Ryss ship, slammed through the edge of the swarm with a spectacular display of fused small craft.

According to plan, he had approached the enemy from a perpendicular angle, having made not one but two TacDrive pulses. The first took him to a flanking position; the second, very short pulse, brought him behind the enemy, landing at a spot thinned of swarm craft. The escorts had naturally flooded toward their first seven threats, leaving one area relatively open.

It was into this space that Deathbringer arrived, his rear quadrant already three-quarters turned toward the enemy super-flagship. Extra-thick ablative layers had allowed him to withstand the hundreds of collisions with swarm craft.

These layers also saved Deathbringer’s life when the mega-ship slammed a well-aimed graser strike into him from much closer range. The bolt of energy blew a kilometer-wide chunk of material from the Ryss ship’s flank, but the stuff had been specifically designed to resist gamma rays, at least for a short time.

Chiren hardly noticed when Devastator, a little ahead of and apparently unluckier than his kin, staggered under a double blow that blew his prow and left shoulder off. Immediately, he began spinning, all cohesion lost.

Instead, the commodore watched as Deathbringer rotated on his center of gravity to line up his stern with the two gargantuan particle beams, his only capital weaponry. As soon as they bore, one fired, and then the other.

Deathbringer immediately disappeared, leaving nothing but a TacDrive trail in his wake.

The enemy super-flagship shuddered like a giant punched in the gut by a demigod. Twin sprays of debris vomited forth from either side as the particle beams hammered through the incomprehensibly thick armor, into the interior of the mobile fortress, and out again.

Most of its energy dumped into the ship’s structure, blowing through deck after deck and igniting everything in its path with superheated plasma. As the beam exited the other side, the hot gases of the inferno had only one place to go.

Out the holes.

To Chiren, the sphere looked like a celebratory firework, four jets of plasma lending a kind of deathly beauty to the scene.

Amazingly, the ship continued to fire. Apparently it was so large, automated and redundant that even blowing two holes in its torso couldn’t kill it. But the twin bolts of lightning, aimed at the exact center of the sphere where its commander presumably resided, had done their work; the shots coming from the great vessel now seemed ill aimed and badly coordinated.

“All ships, break off,” Chiren ordered, though his Ryss blood roared with battle-lust to finish off the enemy. “That is my order. Transmit, all ships break off!”

“Devastator is gravely wounded,” Desolator’s voice spoke. “His TacDrive is inoperative. I request we come to his aid.”

Chiren studied the situation, the millions of swarm ships converging on the stricken vessel, and the still-potent graser fire coming from the dying enemy even while Devastator tried to escape on fusion drive. “No. We all knew what must be done when we began this mission. Delay no further: pulse to the rendezvous point.”

“Forgive me, Commodore, but I calculate that by assisting him, we can increase his probability of survival by more than fifty percent, while reducing our own chances by less than five percent.”

Glad of the excuse of statistical reason, Chiren reversed himself. “Very well. Help him, but I may re-evaluate as we proceed.”

“Of course, Commodore. Thank you.”

Immediately, the six warriors turned toward their brother, thousands of point defense lasers and dozens of particle beams clearing the way toward his position. Swarms thickened around them as more and more small craft arrived from the planet’s surface.

Graser beams continued to fly around Devastator, some striking him, as the enemy mega-ship apparently decided to concentrate on its closest and easiest target.

“We’re not going to make it in time,” Chiren said.

Suddenly, another Ryss ship dropped out of TacDrive nearby: Deathbringer, returning. As before, he had chosen a spot thinned of defensive swarm craft, and had placed himself in optimum position to quickly swing and fire his recharged particle cannon.

This time, the two discharges speared the enemy far off center, apparently deliberately so, in order to devastate undamaged portions of the super-ship. The blows ripped canyons along the hull and imparted enough kinetic energy to cause it to begin spinning slowly.

Thrusters flared, apparently trying to bring the sphere under control. The smashing impacts bought time for Devastator to accelerate away at a tangent while his approaching brother ships covered him with their concentrated fire. As the six closed ranks, their point defense created an impenetrable curtain of laser fire that burned everything that pursued.

Deathbringer, for his part, lived up to his name, engaging his TacDrive to slam a swath through the thickest part of the swarm, using his armored prow as a ram as he escaped.

The combination of the second pair of shots and the steadily increasing distance rendered ineffective the diminishing fire of the super-ship, though the swarm pursued, stinging.

“Give me a strategic view, planet ring and inward,” Chiren ordered. When that was displayed, he saw the fifteen flagships and their attendant swarms moving as fast as they could toward Center Prime…a planet now largely undefended.

***

Admiral Scoggins observed the D-ship battle taking place near Center Prime from five light-minutes outside the orbit of the seventeen planets. As intended, the D-ships had drawn the enemy inward toward the system’s star, leaving the far side only lightly defended by small craft.

Conqueror and her twelve sister ships had arrived at this point via TacDrive, and had maneuvered using only cold thrusters in order to minimize detection. Scoggins wasn’t concerned about being attacked this far out – after all, five light-minutes was roughly two-thirds of an AU, or almost a hundred million kilometers – but she didn’t want anything to interpose itself between her squadron and Center Prime.

“Tightbeam only to Confident. Open fire as plotted,” she ordered, arms crossed as her fingers gripped them tightly with tension.

Beginning the bombardment, Confident sent her entire complement of six TacSLAMs rippling from her forward facets. The missiles, each the size of a frigate, popped from launch tubes under cold thrust and, as soon as they reached minimum safe distance, aligned themselves and engaged their TacDrives ten seconds apart.

“Pulse inward, four light minutes as planned, “Admiral Scoggins ordered.

Okuda nodded. “Pulse in three, two, one, mark.”

The short jump directly toward Center Prime left them sixty light-seconds, or about eighteen million kilometers, away from the planet, out of any conceivable weapons range. From this position, though, it would only take one minute for the C-ships to see what the effect of their initial TacSLAM fire was.

“Six good hits,” Ford said exultantly, throwing a long-range optical shot onto one of the screens. “The shockwaves are spreading around the planet. That’s gonna hurt.”

“Show me,” Scoggins said.

Fletcher nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Here’s some realtime opticals.”

On several screens, shaky pictures displayed the aftermath of the gargantuan strikes. Here and there, creatures writhed among incomprehensible swirls of junk, apparently the detritus of nests or buildings or whatever passed for industry and housing. Mostly, it looked like the involuntary muscle twitching of earthly creatures with their heads cut off.

“If these critters weren’t so evil, I could almost feel bad about this,” Johnstone said from his station. “We’re doing to them what the Meme did to us.”

“Except we’re doing it in self-defense,” Ford replied hotly. “They tried to eat us, you know.”

Johnstone waved a hand. “No argument here. It’s just hard to fathom that we’re wiping out whole planets now.”

“Only what’s on the surface,” Scoggins interjected. “They might have a lot underground, like ants. Commander, can you tell me anything more about their comms yet?” She said this more to head off the argument between the two men than because she really thought the CyberComm officer might have new info for her.

“We haven’t been able to hack them, if that’s what you mean. Getting in from the outside is a lot harder than from within.”

Scoggins grunted. “What about traffic analysis?”

“We just wiped out every installation on the surface, at least on this side of the planet. I’m watching their satellites for where it’s routing, but I can’t tell you anything yet. Besides, the fusion blasts from impact put out a lot of EMP, so some aren’t even operating.”

Confronter fired next, sending a salvo of six TacSLAMs into new locations on Center Prime. “This is fun to watch, Skipper,” Ford said, “but there’s really nothing left on the surface to hurt until the planet rotates under us. That will take about ten more hours. Or we can move to the other side.”

“Cease fire, then.” Scoggins moved to look closely at the holotank, which now displayed the conclusion of the D-ships’ fight with the enemy super-flagship. “The other side is too thick with enemy. Any TacSLAMs we fired would probably get knocked off course. How long until reinforcements get here from the other planets?”

“At least seven hours,” Fletcher replied.

“Would it be tempting fate to comment on how well things have gone so far?” Michelle asked.

Scoggins smiled bleakly. “Probably…but I’ll risk it on everyone’s behalf. I can hardly believe how easy it’s been, for us, anyway. Devastator’s in a bad way, with over a million Ryss warriors dead, but the other ships have only sustained a few casualties, and none for us.

“I’ll take it,” Bull ben Tauros said from behind her. “Thought I’d come up and say hello, Admiral. Nice to not have to pull the Fleet’s nuts out of the fire this time.”

“We don’t have nuts, Brigadier,” Michelle said primly.

“Your mother sure did,” he said without missing a beat. Turning to the holotank, the armored Marine walked over to stand next to Scoggins. “The Ryss got some action.”

“Yes, they did, but as you well know, this was supposed to be a raid, not a slugfest.”

“Seems a bit premature to travel for three months, pummel them for a few hours and then leave.”

Scoggins turned to Bull. “What do you suggest?”

“Deathbringer did one hell of a number on that super-flagship. Can’t he knock out the rest of them? I mean, isn’t it better to do it here than wait for them to show up at Earth again – or somewhere else? Here and now, we know where they are. We know they haven’t equipped their flagships with TacDrive. We know their leadership must be here. Nothing else explains the weird setup of this system. I submit that, no matter what Admiral Absen said, it’s worth a lot of our lives to burn this system to the ground. Not one stone upon another, as the prophecy said.”

“A Jew quoting Jesus?”

Bull shrugged. “I quote Hitler too, when it makes my point. In this case, the Romans were right. Nits make lice.”

“Not familiar with that one.”

“They meant, if you’re going to wipe out an enemy, don’t even spare the children, for they’ll just grow up to hate you anyway.”

Scoggins sniffed. “In this case, Bull, I have to agree with the principle, but I’m not willing to sacrifice ourselves to do it. I was already planning to pump a few TacSLAMs into each planet, which should devastate their economies, and I’m sure the D-ships would love to chew on a few more flagships, no matter what the cost.”

“Well,” he said, “you got about six hours to think about it before the nearest flagship and its swarm arrives.”

Scoggins laughed. “Not really, Bull. We have all the time in the world, because we’ll be gone before they get here. We’ll move to a new position, SLAM the rest of Center Prime, and then move to the next planet, and the next, and so on. All we have to do is select spots that give us clear shots to the surface of each. Should take a couple of days of dancing around, and the flagships will never catch us.”

“They may not have to,” Fletcher said. “Look at the plots.”

The holotank view pulled back to show the inner system. The courses of the flagships and the hundreds of motherships, some empty, but some loaded with their swarms, had turned away from Center Prime in the last few minutes.

Toward the star.

“They’re making a run for it,” Ford said.

“Worse, I suspect,” Bull replied. “What would you do in their position?”

Scoggins stepped back, seeing what he meant. “I’d try to do to us what we’re doing to them. I’d send everything I had toward Earth.”

“We can’t let them enter FTL ahead of us,” Bull said.

“That won’t be a problem. We can easily beat them to the star under TacDrive. The question now becomes, should we fight them here, or haul ass for home and make a stand there?”

Ford said, “Skipper, here they’re disorganized and stunned. It’s three times as far from their planets to the star than it is from Sol to Earth, so we have longer to clobber them. We need to take them down here.”

Scoggins looked at Bull, who shook his head and said, “Slugging it out with them here means we’ll lose people we don’t have to, because it’ll be damn hard to evacuate dying ships. More importantly, most of their big ships aren’t prepped for an attack. They don’t have their swarms attached. Millions of their small craft will have to be left behind, leaving them vulnerable to attacks we couldn’t make before, such as with TacSlams.”

“Oh, come on, Bull!” Ford said. “We don’t even know for sure they’re going to Earth. What if they’re running away to other strongholds? They’ll organize even more, bigger attacks on Earth. But if we kill them all, it might be a long time before they pull themselves together. It might even precipitate that civil war Admiral Absen talked about. You just said yourself, we can’t miss this opportunity!”

“I changed my mind when the Scourges changed theirs,” Bull replied.

Both men turned toward Scoggins, awaiting a decision.

“I need to think about this,” she said after a moment. “In the meantime, instruct Concorde to pulse over to the star and send an FTL drone with a complete record of what happened here, and then rejoin us. Tell her to make sure to attach a warning order up front, because whatever enemy makes it into FTL will be only hours behind the drone. Michelle, slow time for me, ten to one, will you?”

While the C-ship raced off on her mission, Scoggins paced around the bridge and stared at the holotank from all angles, the rest of the crew except for Michelle’s avatar seemingly slowed to statues. The AI, of course, thought much faster than a human, and so had no problem adjusting her apparent pace of existence.

Eventually, the admiral rejoined realtime and spoke. “Sorry, James, I have to go with Bull on this one. Johnstone, pass the word. Deathbringer will break off immediately and enter FTL as soon as possible. More than any other single ship, we’ll need him at the other end. The other D-ships will proceed as fast as they can under conventional drive so they can keep Devastator safe. The C-ships will pulse to appropriate positions and fire two TacSLAMs at each planet, saving the rest for the fight at home. Michelle, you coordinate that. Once that’s finished, prep for FTL. We’re going home.”

Chapter 32

Two weeks of sedated FTL travel seemed like only a brief night’s sleep. Admiral Scoggins found herself right back in VR on Conqueror’s bridge, without the careful transition of the first journey. At least the trip was much faster descending the stellar gradient from Center.

“I have Admiral Absen for you, ma’am,” Johnstone said.

“Put it on the main screen.”

“Welcome back, Admiral,” Absen said when his face appeared. “We’re several light-minutes apart, so I’ll give you all this up front. Thanks to your report and Deathbringer’s further observations, we are prepared as well as we can be. You absolutely did the right thing, Melissa, no matter how this works out. You conducted the raid, you took down their mega-ship, probably killed their boss and his cronies, and you brought all ships home with minimum losses. That was the mission I assigned you, and that’s what you did. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”

“Thank you, sir. What are your orders?” Scoggins said, and then chuckled to herself. She would have to wait quite a while for a genuine reply.

Fortunately, Absen continued, apparently anticipating her question. “You will spread out to positions I’ve assigned along the Jericho Line. You should already be receiving a data package on a separate freq. We’ve had almost four months to build, and we’ve concentrated on SLAM III production. We have over a hundred of them scattered around Sol now. They’ll fire immediately on any enemy they identify. As soon as we see how they do, your ships will take independent action using TacSLAMs or capital weaponry to destroy them before they can deploy swarms or gather their forces. Good luck, Melissa, and good hunting.”

Immediately, Scoggins began issuing orders to each ship and crew to take their positions along the Jericho line according to the details in the data Michelle had received.

“Skipper, I have an urgent request,” Commander Johnstone said to Scoggins as soon as he could get a word in edgewise.

“What?” Scoggins barked, preoccupied.

“The automated SLAM IIIs need to concentrate on the fifteen surviving flagships. Hell, Deathbringer alone could probably kill every mothership core they can throw at us, and he’d hardly take a scratch. It’s the heavy grasers that are the threat.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I need the entry codes for the SLAM software patching process so I can tweak their attack criteria. From headquarters, I mean. Right away. They’re only a few hours behind us, and I may need that time to make the changes from the inside.”

“Request it under my signature, then.”

Johnstone smirked. “Already did, ma’am.”

“Better to ask forgiveness than permission, eh?” She chuckled.

“You taught me that.”

Briefly, Scoggins asked herself why James couldn’t be more like Rick Johnstone, good-natured and casual instead of uptight and combative, and then stuffed that genie back in the bottle. Falling in love was hardly a choice. Once this latest crisis was put behind her, maybe she and her husband could take a long vacation and try to reconnect over something other than shared shipboard experiences.

She’d always wanted to learn to ballroom dance. Maybe…

Shaking herself free of her wandering thoughts – was this a symptom of too much time in VR? – she went back to getting her task force set up as Absen wanted them.

Thirteen C-ships, plus the rebuilt Constitution fresh from the shipyards of Jupiter, waited interspersed with the six surviving D-ships plus Deathbringer, strung in a great ring just outside the Jericho Line.

Devastator proceeded under fusion drive toward the orbital docks of Earth for repairs; if the fight reached the planet again, he would add his weight of metal to the defense.

“Do you really think we can take them?” Ford asked two hours later, stepping up beside his wife and admiral.

“You still objecting to Bull’s arguments? Or are you just mad that I took his side?” Scoggins snapped more harshly than necessary, instantly regretting it.

What’s gotten into me? she wondered.

Hurt, Ford turned away and sat down at his console again. “It was an honest question, ma’am. That’s all.”

“I apologize, Commander. I’m wound too tight right now.”

“No problem, ma’am.” He didn’t look at her.

Sighing internally, Scoggins tried to get her mind back on work. She considered having Michelle speed time up until something, anything, happened, but for now, they simply waited, and waited some more, for the enemy to show.

Finally, she gave the order she should have two hours ago, with that much longer to wait for the Scourge’s emergence. “Pass the word. Call Captain Indira. Rotate the watch. The enemy won’t likely show for at least five more hours. Everyone take a break. Have a beer. Hell, go lie on a beach in Tahiti; we’re in VR, after all.”

Okuda opened his eyes and smiled up at her before vanishing from his cockpit. In his place, another man appeared. “Master Chief Rensselaer reports for duty,” he said, and she nodded.

One by one, her officers were replaced with others, until Captain Indira stepped through the door in a more conventional manner. She strode up to Scoggins and saluted. “Ma’am, you are relieved.”

“I am relieved,” Scoggins replied, returning the salute.

And I am relieved, in both senses, Scoggins thought. I know exactly what I need to do for the next few hours.

“Michelle, where’s James?” she asked.

“In his crash chair, Admiral,” Michelle replied with a wink.

“I know where his body is. Where’s his consciousness?”

“In your quarters.”

“Excellent.”

Moments later, she walked through the door of her suite to see James standing in front of the mirror, his tunic unbuttoned.

“Hello, Admiral,” he said, not turning.

“James…please don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“This thing you do when you’re mad.” She held up a hand to forestall his reply. “Never mind right now. Let’s go somewhere. We have four hours of realtime. We can stretch that to days in VR. How about Lake Tahoe? Do some parasailing?” She walked up behind him to hug him around the waist.

“All I want to do is kill those bastards and get it over with,” he said as if she hadn’t spoken. “I can’t relax until it’s done.”

“I know what you mean. How about if we just stay here? There are other ways to relax…” She ran her hands under his T-shirt, feeling deliciously hard muscles there.

A smile crept onto his face, visible in the mirror. “That’s cheating.”

“If you ain’t cheatin,’ you ain’t tryin’,” she said.

Her husband turned to sweep her up in his arms, carrying her toward the bed. “Then let’s try as hard as we can.

***

Four hours later on the dot, Scoggins reassumed her watch and dismissed Indira. “Nothing yet?” she asked, pointedly not looking in Ford’s direction as he took his seat.

“No, ma’am,” Fletcher replied. “We’ll get the sixteen minute FTL wave front warning…if they’re coming.”

“Sure would be nice to have some kind of long-range detection mechanism,” she mused.

“And I’d like a ski condo on the slopes of Olympus Mons, but that’s not happening any time soon, Skipper,” Ford said with a smile.

The next four-hour watch passed slowly, filled with similar banter, some awkward, some relaxed. The officers lounged in their chairs or paced, chatting and passing routine reports. It reminded Scoggins of long periods at sea during her wet navy days so long ago. She wasn’t used to it anymore, she found.

Three full rotations came and went, twenty-four more hours, and she reluctantly decided to begin dumping the crew out of VR in phases. After nearly four months under, sedated or in the virtuality, she suspected things might get rough for a few people, and Doc Horton would be working overtime in the rehab clinic, but it had to be done.

Her worst fear was that the enemy would show an hour later, with everyone readjusting to their own bodies again. That was why she ordered a slow approach, the bridge officers the last to be decanted.

Days passed before Scoggins eventually consulted with Absen and put her ships back on their normal routine rather than watch-on, watch-off. She ordered regular drills, requiring everyone to make it into VR space within five minutes.

At least things seemed better with James.

Once days turned to weeks, though, she began to wonder.

***

When Devastator left dry dock to rejoin his brothers on the Line, major repairs finished, Absen decided enough was enough. “Armstrong, assemble my staff,” he said to the moon base’s pseudo-AI.

When his officers arrived at the irritatingly comfortable command conference room, he didn’t bother to sit. “Ladies and gentlemen, tomorrow at noon GMT we need to begin rotating out our crews on leave and resuming a normal, if vigilant, routine. It’s been five weeks since Task Force Center returned, and no enemy has shown his face. Based on Captain Fleede’s analysis and further interrogation of the prisoners, I now believe that they won’t be coming for some time. In fact, it’s likely the Scourge are in a state of civil war, and it will take probably years, perhaps decades, before they unify again under one Archon – if they ever do.”

Absen stalked around the room, pacing between the senior officers seated at the table and the more junior ones lining the walls. “We can’t live every moment at hair-trigger readiness. Frankly, our non-sentient machines can do that for us. With TacDrive, we can keep all our ships in position and simply put fresh crews on them as needed. The only ones that won’t get a break for a while are the integrated AIs of the D-ships and C-ships, but eventually we’ll have enough forces to swap whole ships out as well as personnel.”

Admiral Sawyer nodded. “I agree, sir. I’ve studied the reports and I’m convinced that we’ve turned a corner. Even if the Scourge sent everything they had at Center to attack us, we’d probably win, now that we have enough SLAM IIIs in place.”

Absen’s face formed a half-smile. “So you’re saying we can hold out indefinitely?”

“Yes, sir. That’s all we need to do.”

Absen held himself back from embarrassing Sawyer for her timidity. She was a good match to administrate the defensive works, the bases and orbitals, but would never rise to command a fleet, he supposed. Not with that mindset.

“No, Admiral, it’s not enough. It’s only half of what we need to do, or less. Shall I give you a to-do list?”

Without waiting for her response, Absen continued, raising fingers as he checked off topics. “One, we have to secure Gliese 370 and Ryssa just as well as Earth is. The entire fleet is sitting here while they’re vulnerable to any decent-sized Scourge attack.”

He held up a second finger. “Two, we need to establish solid comms with the Meme Empire and Spectre, and get their ships equipped with TacDrives and FTL, otherwise we’re just a bunch of separated islands rather than a true empire of allies.”

Absen’s thumb joined the first two fingers. “Three, we have to produce and send out recon drones, thousands of them, to each star system around us, to find out just what we’re facing.” Another finger. “Four, we need to assemble another strike fleet to decapitate the Scourge’s regional capitals just like we did Center, to keep them off balance.”

The last finger on his right hand went up. “Five, we need to begin a massive effort to establish colonies of all three races on every planet where they’ll thrive, and get the Meme to join us in those systems with their living ships. In other words, we need to get out there and form a real alliance with strategic depth, not just a fragile grouping of worlds with a strong military. Those are the things we need to do…for a start.”

By the time he’d finished, the officers around Absen were nodding and exchanging enthusiastic whispers. They broke out in spontaneous applause as he made his way toward his seat.

“That’s an ambitious agenda, sir,” Sawyers said, her mien serious. “Is the civilian government on board?”

“I’ve already run this by the Emperor – I mean, the Chairman – and he has the cabinet and the Assembly debating it right now. He’s assured me that it’s being well received.”

Sawyer snorted. “For now. They’re still scared. Just wait until the politicians feel like the threat has abated – and they see what it’s going to cost.”

“All the more reason to get the ball rolling now.” Absen swept the room with his eyes. “The official outline of what I just told you should be in all of your inboxes already. I need you to begin filling in your annexes and implementing your parts of the plan just as soon as you can. Armstrong should have all the data you need at his fingertips. Dismissed.”

As Absen walked back, he felt his stomach begin to unknot for the first time in ages. EarthFleet had genuinely turned a corner, he believed. Perhaps now he could put all these skin-of-the-teeth defensive battles behind him. Just once, he’d really like to organize, train and equip a well-planned military organization to conduct a long-term campaign.

The key was to begin to act rather than react, to get out in front of the enemy’s decision curve and stay there, striking when and where he chose, like he’d done with the Meme.

Finally, after two hundred years of war, that goal seemed within his grasp.

Epilogue

Chairman Daniel Markis sipped a nice Australian red over dinner with his wife, Elise. “It’s nice to have you back,” he said.

“It’ll be even nicer when you move the capital to Carletonville,” she replied, lifting a bite of her appetizer to her mouth.

Around the couple, a small army of servants made certain to cater to their every whim; Daniel knew it would take some time for the worst of the obsequiousness to settle down to mere appropriate respect due a representative of the people.

Elise went on, “You looking forward to the wedding?”

“Not as much as Henrich and Rae are, I imagine. Remember ours?

Elise chuckled. “This one will be a far cry from a bunch of outlaws hiding in a bunker. You know,” she said, toying with her glass, “maybe we should renew our vows.”

“You just want the big ceremony you never got,” Daniel replied with a grin.

“Well, why not? You’re still the big cheese. Might as well put your staff to work on something more fun than politics and military matters. And Vincent can be your best man. We don’t see enough of him anyway.”

“I’ll let you in on a little secret, my love,” Daniel said, leaning in close to stage-whisper. “Weddings are only fun for the bride, and maybe her bridesmaids. For everyone else, it’s a pain in the ass. The reception, now…that can be fun. Oh, and the bachelor party.”

“You do whatever you have to, Daniel John Markis.” Her stink-eye surfaced.

“Uh-oh,” Daniel said. “You used all three names. That’s the nuclear option.” He held up his hands. “Okay, you win.”

***

One week later, EarthFleet Chaplain Christine Forman married Henrich Absen and Raphaela Denham in a ceremony attended by a cast of thousands, as many friends, acquaintances and hangers-on as could get themselves onto the guest list.

Held in the Shepparton Palace’s grand salon and ballroom, the wedding was formal in the military sense, with the usual pomp and circumstance, but less so than, for example, royal weddings of the past. Those born in the twentieth and twenty-first century, who hadn’t spent their formative years under the Meme Empire or Spectre’s, often scandalized the younger generation with their lack of earnestness.

I can hardly blame them, Sergeant Major Jill Repeth thought as she sipped champagne at the edge of the reception’s enormous ballroom floor, watching friends and acquaintances dance. Many of the Yellows ruthlessly punished breaches of protocol, so these people act like sour Puritans half the time and pompous children the other half. They must think us oldsters are all libertines.

That didn’t keep her from exchanging her empty glass for a full one off one of the trays carried by a stone-faced young waiter. Those smiles she could see among the staff seemed painted on, as if the servers worked in a theme park where their jobs depended on it.

“I was thinking…” her husband Rick said as he stepped up from behind her.

“I’ve cautioned you about that,” she replied.

“Watch it, or I’ll pull your hair.”

That was a very real threat, now that she’d allowed it to grow longer, because it had taken her a half hour to pin up properly. “Never threaten a woman who can snap you in half, O husband of mine.”

“I was thinking,” Rick said heavily, “about going back to Afrana. Seeing our children, maybe.”

“They’ll be strangers, Rick. It’s been years, and they’re all grown up.”

He shrugged. “I’d still like to see them. With Mom gone, we’re the elders in our family. How are they going to know what it was like in the old days? Vids?” He snorted.

Jill kept her face turned away, wondering to herself why she felt uneasy about Rick’s idea. Maybe it was because, deep down, the mothering part of her had never really taken hold. She’d birthed her babies and she loved them, but she’d felt more relief than sadness when she saw the other parents in the communal crèches, the ones who felt motherhood and fatherhood as callings rather than duties, taking such good care of hers…relief that she would soon get back to being a Marine, with its structure, its duty and honor.

“You’re thinking, too,” Rick said. “That means you’re not so hot on the idea.”

“I’m not. But…I know you are. Do you mean we should take leave, or are you wanting to get stationed there?”

“Wanting for you to get stationed there, you mean. I think I’m done with the military.”

“What? You’re kidding.” Jill turned to Rick, genuinely shocked.

“Look, I was drafted, okay? I had a very special skill set and cutting-edge cybernetics for the time. Now…I’m just one commander among many, I have no desire to be promoted to Captain, and these new kids…they can hack with the best of them. Let’s be frank; I put up with it because I had to, and because it was the best way to stay near you. But now, with FTL travel, we don’t have to face the prospect of decades apart every time we head for a new star system.” He took her hands. “I want to have a home that’s not bounded by the decks and bulkheads of a warship. I want to have friends that aren’t colleagues. I want to play baseball and take walks in the woods with a big happy dog. I want to sit on my ass on weekends with a beer, watching old vids from back when people didn’t know the universe was out to get them.”

“That’s quite a speech.” Jill stared at him a long moment. “So…you want to settle on Afrana?”

“Either that, or in New Carletonville. At least the mountains there look the same. Those two places are where I spent the longest, and they were both beautiful.”

“No need to choose between them. I’m sure I have enough pull to get stationed at Gliese 370 for a while. Then we can move back to Earth when you’re done with Afrana, okay?”

Rick leaned down to kiss Jill. “Okay. Thanks. And one more thing…”

“Here it comes.”

“Any chance you’d like to have more kids?”

Jill’s eyes crinkled. “Maybe the Sekoi should engineer you a womb.”

“God. They could, I bet…but no, I’m not that progressive. But…will you?”

She finished her champagne and launched her glass toward the outdoor fire pit, pleased when it broke among the coals with a tinkle. Then she unbuttoned her dress jacket and loosened her collar. “I’ll think about it. Now, let’s get drunk and dance, lover. We’re only young once.”

From across the floor, Bull ben Tauros stared at the couple. He never understood what Reaper saw in Rick, but he was too fair-minded to begrudge them their happiness.

Besides, at long last he’d run across another woman who interested him and seemed worthy. He slid across the edge of the crowd, using the perimeter of the ballroom floor rather than pressing through the crowd. The fact that he stood a head taller than most people made it easier to home in on his target, a head of white-blonde hair barely visible on its petite body.

“General! Good to see you again,” Chaplain Christine Forman said as he approached.

“Good to see you too, Chaplain. Please, call me Bull.”

“Then you must call me Christine,” she said in the Boston Brahmin accent she’d never quite given up despite the fact that there was no such city anymore. “Please, let me introduce you to some friends of mine. This is Larry and Shawna Nightingale.”

Bull shook hands with Larry, finding it interesting to meet a man even bigger than he was, though lacking his cybernetic strength. “I served with an Ellis Nightingale, the weapons engineer aboard Conquest,” he said.

“Our son,” Shawna said. “He and his friend James Ekara are over there, hitting on the bridesmaids.” She nodded toward the bar. “Thanks for bringing him home.”

Bull shrugged. “I did my part, but it’s the groom we all have to thank.”

“We’ll be sure to tell him,” Larry said, glancing from Christine to Bull and back. “Well, if you’ll excuse us, I have a buffet to investigate. Come on, dear.”

“But Christine and I were just catching up.”

Larry put his hand firmly in the small of his wife’s back and pushed. “Honey…”

“All right, Lawrence. Don’t manhandle me.”

Larry leaned over and whispered in Shawna’s ear, causing her to smile. “Ah. Yes, let’s hit the buffet.”

“They’re a couple of characters,” Bull said, watching the two go. Turning back to Christine, he found himself able to see nothing but her heart-shaped face framed by that entrancing flaxen hair, cut to her jawline in a way that made him want to run his callused hands under it and…

Face it, Bull, he said to himself, you got it bad.

“They certainly are,” Christine replied, watching them as well.

Not since before Gliese 370 had he made time for anything more than casual relationships, in either the on-again, off-again style of expeditionary personnel throughout history – a girl in every port was the stereotype – or guarded, friendly but shallow trysts with Fleet or Aerospace colleagues. He’d always kept his personal feelings out of Marine spaces, though.

“So, Bull…surely you didn’t wander over merely to give me kudos on my ability to join two people in holy matrimony,” Christine said, taking his arm and tugging him gently toward the grand terrace that lined one side of the enormous building.

“Ah, no, Christine…though you did do it well.” Despite the difference in their heights, the woman on his arm managed to make the arrangement seem natural, even graceful. He wondered how she did it. Something to do with her breeding, he supposed. That thought made him feel even more awkward.

They exited through double doors into the cool of the evening, joining a scattering of others at the long stone rail overlooking the faerie-lit gardens. Tiki torches flickered here and there, giving the entire scene an otherworldly feel.

Bull leaned on the rail, the better to lower his head to her level without seeming awkward. “I only realized this recently, but it’s hard to make friends once they pin flag rank on you. The pool of peers shrinks dramatically, and fraternization rears its ugly head.”

Christine laughed, a hearty, almost unladylike sound. “For a big, tough Marine, you’re being quite indirect.”

Bull chuckled. “I’d rather charge a nest of Scourge with nothing but a KA-BAR than…”

“Than ask a woman out?”

Bull stared out over the garden, not meeting her eyes. “I have no problem with most women, but every now and again, one comes along that’s so interesting that the prospect of blowing it scares the hell out of me.” He turned to meet her eyes. “Is that direct enough?”

“Much better. I’m far too old and crotchety to beat around the bush anymore, Bull. Don’t let this hot young Eden Plague body fool you. I was born in the twentieth century.”

That elicited a belly laugh from Bull. “You’re the most unusual chaplain I’ve ever met.”

“So I’ve been told. Most people without it consider faith in God something that confines. I found it freed me by giving me an unshakeable foundation for my life. Isn’t that how you view yours?”

Bull’s face turned contemplative. “For me, being a Jew and an Israeli and a Marine is a unified identity. I don’t separate any of that from faith. It’s simply who I am. I can’t imagine being any other way.”

“Here I stand: I can do no other, huh?”

“I think Martin Luther and I would have gotten along all right. He had guts. And after all, we Hebes invented Sola Scriptura.”

Christine snorted in amusement, shaking Bull’s huge left biceps with both of her hands. “I think that’s a topic worthy of further discussion. How about over dinner tomorrow? I know a good Australian restaurant downtown. Serves real kangaroo.”

“Thought you’d never ask.” Bull disengaged gently in order to turn to Christine and bow. “Would you like to dance, milady?”

“Dance? You?”

“All Jews love to dance, don’t you know?”

Christine smiled, lighting up her heart-shaped face. “Educated and cultured as well. How could I possibly refuse?”

From thirty yards down the terrace, Melissa Scoggins and James Ford observed Bull and Christine as they flirted. “Seems like a long time since we had that much fun,” he said.

“Yeah.” Scoggins sighed. “What’s gone wrong, James?”

Ford shrugged. “I dunno, Mel. I still love you, but I’m always pissed off at you, too. Maybe we aren’t meant to be forever.”

“Maybe.”

They stood in awkward silence, watching as if looking back through the lens of a time machine at their own whirlwind courtship. Melissa wondered if somehow they had skipped too many steps, working together as mere colleagues, and then suddenly hopping into bed during the elation of victory at Gliese 370.

After that, it had seemed natural to get married and have children the way everyone else was doing – not to mention that it was her duty to populate the human colony on Afrana. The stability and the comradeship had provided an anchor for her life.

Their lives, she’d believed.

But now, she was a rear admiral with a fleet action under her belt, and James…well, he’d get a ship of some kind, but he’d likely never make flag rank…or be under her command again, for that matter. As EarthFleet shook itself out again and inevitably became more regular, rule bound and bureaucratic, fraternization regs would force them away from each other, unless one of them moved into the support services.

Maybe that was all to the good.

The sound of footsteps on flagstones caused her to turn to see a pair of female officers of commander’s rank, alike enough they could be twins. Their uniform nameplates read “Conqueror” and “Concorde.”

“Ma’am, I just wanted to say once more, it was an honor to serve under your command at Center,” Commander Conqueror said.

“Thanks, Michelle. Everyone performed exceptionally. You two are in orbit above, I presume?”

“Yes, ma’am, in the shipyards. It’s very…interesting to walk freely among organics without being able to see them from every angle, or even hold them in VR memory. I feel very small when my consciousness is funneled through this android body.”

Scoggins exchanged glances with Ford. “Listen, Michelle…I’m sorry, but can we get together some other time?”

“Of course, ma’am. Have a good evening.”

Scoggins sighed in relief as the two walked away to explore the strange places outside their own massive ships’ bodies, turning back to her husband and the matter at hand.

“O brave new world, that has such people in’t,” she quoted Shakespeare, jerking her head at the retreating pair. “Listen, James…I think we should just take a break. Not decide anything yet, though. The stress of combat, the whole career thing…we both need time to think, right?”

“Yeah. I agree. I, uh…I’m not looking at anyone else, you understand. I just need to be my own man for a while.”

Melissa bit back a cutting retort about men working for women, knowing it would be unfair. By the numbers and by temperament, statistically fewer females than males were cut out for the military. That was simple fact, written in the genetic tendencies of humans over millennia of natural selection.

But for those women who were capable, they were often standouts, and she saw herself as one of those. Sure, she’d had a bit of luck, ending up so close to Absen, but she’d earned her broad pennant through a dozen deadly campaigns.

So she could understand how James must feel, to have someone he served with as a peer so long ago end up so much higher in rank and responsibility. He’d probably react no differently had they been siblings rather than a married couple. It was human nature to be envious when someone else got ahead.

Maybe things would change when James had his own shot at independent command. Perhaps the necessity of living the captain’s model would mature him in a way that staying in her shadow never could.

“I’m okay with that, James,” she finally said, fingering her wedding band. “I’m not taking this off either, and I’m not looking for anyone else…but if you find someone that suits you better than I do…”

“Thanks, Mel. But I’m really not looking for someone else. Just something else, I think. Something more than doing my job, killing our enemies.”

Leaning up, Melissa Scoggins kissed him on the cheek. “I hope you find it, then.” She stared at his troubled face for a moment more. “So long, James.”

“So long, Mel. See you around the Fleet.”

***

Trissk embraced Klis once more, rubbing his forehead to hers and mingling the scents of the glands there, an exercise in mutual marking. “Are you certain you don’t want to go back to your Human friends?” she asked.

“Never again, if I can help it. The apes are competent, and they’re certainly interesting, but the longer I am with them, the more I feel they’re not quite...”

“Ryss?”

Trissk chuckled. “They don’t smell right. I’d rather work with Sekoi.”

“Sekoi smell like prey, though. Herbivores.” Klis twitched her whiskers in what would be an eye-roll to a human.

“What do you think of Ryssa, now that you are here?” Trissk gestured out the window where they stood in the official residence he’d taken over from the most senior Blend. He’d had to accept becoming one himself, using a blank mitosis, but he’d found that to be far less of a change than he’d expected.

Then again, he had a lot to learn about his new capabilities….but he’d had no choice if the liberation of Ryssa was to be peaceful, for the greater good. For better or for worse, the Blends constituted the aristocracy of Ryss society, and the old days of Chirom’s tales would never come again. The change was permanent.

As much as anything was permanent, he realized.

“Something about it feels better than Afrana, but…” she paused. “It’s not home. Not yet. But I’m sure it will be, when we have our next litter.”

“A small one this time, you know,” Trisk reminded her. “I’m continuing the policy of no more than three kits per household before the age of majority.”

“I think I can adjust.”

“What about the virus?”

Klis shrugged. “It’s catching on. The younger generations see how long the other races live, and the old taboos are dying out. As for those of our time, as soon as they feel the pangs of middle age, they will wonder why they should be snuffed out at fifty or sixty years. If they don’t want it…well, the problem will solve itself.”

“You’re far more pragmatic than I am, you know,” Trissk said.

“Males are all romantics, with their dreams of glory and honor and finding the perfect mate. Females must be practical.”

“With the apes, that’s reversed, you know. The females endlessly devour tales of pair-bonding and glorification while the males concentrate on engineering and sports.”

Klis stroked her mate’s fur. “Then be glad we are not apes. We are apex predators. All fear us. We created true artificial intelligence. The D-ships are our progeny. Once our race rids itself of the taboos against life code engineering and cybernetics, it will not be long before the Ryss will come to dominate this alliance.”

“As it should be.”

***

Spectre received the report of the test of the first FTL-equipped Monitor with satisfaction. He’d given up the pleasures of the body for now – sex and the martial arts being the two he missed the most – but achievement still fulfilled him. Now that he ruled the Meme of the Ryss home system and had the means to escape its confines, he would soon spread that dominance to the rest of the Empire.

Upon first Blending, he’d realized the Meme really were inherently superior to the other races. The ability to transfer his consciousness, to become truly immortal and not merely long-lived, was what set the Pure Race apart.

The lower species were trapped within their own forms and lived in the space between the planets only with elaborate machine support.

But Meme were not bound by planets; interplanetary – and now interstellar – space was their natural home. Any who wished to experience the lower orders could do so at any time…and now that Spectre had achieved upward blending, truly becoming a Meme – something apparently no one had ever thought to do – there were no limits.

Eventually, Spectre could see a day – in a thousand years, or ten thousand, or a million – when everyone everywhere would be Meme, and choose whatever bodies they wished from among all the templates ever encountered.

Even the Scourge would be merely a temporary obstacle, for they too would be absorbed. Spectre was already working on a plan to capture a senior Archon to Blend with as the next stage in his existence.

After all, whereas the Meme Empire currently owned a mere few thousand star systems, the Scourge probably possessed millions. It was only sensible to take another shortcut to the top.

Yes, Spectre thought. It’s good to be Meme.

The End of Conquest and Empire. I hope you enjoyed the ride. While I don't plan on continuing Stellar Conquest, there should be one more short story published in a Castalia House anthology, On a Red Horse #2,  in summer 2015, featuring Bull and Reaper, set between the end of Comes the Destroyer and First Conquest. And, look for more Plague Wars books set in the apocalyptic period right after Infection day, from me and Ryan King, coming soon.

I will also be publishing a brand-new military space sci-fi series in summer 2015, with new characters and in a whole different universe. To stay current with my books, go to my website (link below) and sign up for my newsletter. See you there!

- David VanDyke

-=-

If you enjoyed this book and this series, please consider leaving a review at your favorite book vendor and recommending it to a friend.

Plague Wars series: (Prequels to Stellar Conquest)

The Eden Plague

Reaper's Run

Skull's Shadows

Eden's Exodus (March 2015)

The Demon Plagues

The Reaper Plague

The Orion Plague

Cyborg Strike

Comes The Destroyer

Stellar Conquest series:

First Conquest

Desolator

Tactics of Conquest

Conquest of Earth

Conquest and Empire

For more information visit: davidvandykeauthor.com

For email updates and information on new releases

visit the website above and sign up for David's newsletter.