Tim grinned. “Well, this is where it all started. That gives me a legitimate interest. Showing the accessors that it’s been
retaken and sanitised makes for a good piece.”
“Typical rover, put the story before anything else, like mundane security and common-sense safety. I should have just shot
you.”
“But you didn’t. That means you’ve got confidence in the serjeants?”
“Could be. I know I couldn’t do what they’re doing.
Still
doing. Thought I could when I came here, but this whole Liberation is one big learning curve, for all of us, right? We just
don’t do war like this any more, if we ever did. Even if a conflict goes on for a couple of years, individual battles are
supposed to be brutal and fast. Soldiers take a break from the front, have some R & R, grab some stims and some ass before
they go back. One side makes a few gains, the other knocks them back. That’s the way it goes, but this—it never stops, not
for one second. Have you ever captured that in your sensevises? The real essence of what this is about? One serjeant loses
concentration for one second, and one of those bastards will slip through. It’ll start up all over again on another continent.
One mistake.
One
. This isn’t a human war. The weapon which is going to win this is perfection. The possessed? They have to commit to being
a hundred per cent treacherous devious sons of bitches, never let up trying to sneak one of their kind past us. Our serjeants,
now they have to be eternally vigilant, never ever walk along the wrong side of the road because the mud isn’t so deep and
vile there. You’ve got no idea what that takes.”
“Determination,” Tim ventured.
“Not even close. That’s an emotion. That’s a way in to your heart, weakening you. That can’t be allowed here. Human motivations
have to be abandoned. Machines are what we need.”
“I thought that’s what the serjeants are.”
“Oh yeah, they’re good. Not bad at all for a first generation weapon. But the Edenists have got to improve on them, build
some real mean mothers for the next Liberation. Something like us boosted, and with even less personality than the serjeants.
I’ve got to know a few of them, and they’re still too human for this.”
“You think there’s going to be another Liberation?”
“Sure. Nobody’s come up with another method of kicking the bastards out of the bodies they’ve stolen. Until that happens,
we’ve got to keep them on the run. I told you: show no weakness. Pick another planet, maybe one of those Capone infiltrated,
and start rescuing it before they take it away. Let them know we’ll never let up chasing their asses out of our universe.”
“Would you join that next Liberation?”
“Not a chance. I’ve done my bit, and learned my lesson. This is too long. You wanted a story about what Exnall was like, you
came a day too late. We still had some of the possessed around yesterday, waiting for zero-tau. They’re the ones you should
have talked to.”
“What did they tell you?”
“That they hate the Liberation the same way we do. It’s wearing them down, they haven’t got enough food, the rain doesn’t
stop, the mud climbs into bed with them each night. And ever since Ketton took that Ekelund bitch away, their organized resistance
folded in. Now it’s just gone back to instinct, that’s why they fight. They’re losing it, because they’re human. They came
back here because they were determined to end their suffering, right? That’s the ultimate human motivator. Anything to escape
the beyond. But now they’re here, where they thought they wanted to be, they’ve got all their old flaws back. As soon as they
became human again, it becomes possible to beat them.”
“Until they take their whole planet out of the universe,” Tim protested.
“Fine by me. That removes them from interfering with us any more. A stalemate in this war means we have won. Our purpose is
to prevent them from spreading.”
“But even the war isn’t an end to this,” Hugh said. “Have you forgotten you have a soul? That you will die one day?”
Elana’s claws clacked irritably. “No, I haven’t forgotten. But right now I have a job to do. That’s what matters, that’s what’s
important. When I die, I’ll confront the beyond fair and square. All this philosophising and moralising and agonising we’re
doing, it’s all bullshit. When it comes down to it, you’re on your own.”
“Just like life,” Hugh said with a gentle smile.
Tim frowned at him. It was most unlike Hugh to offer any comment on death and the beyond; the one subject he (strangely) always
avoided.
“You got it,” Elana boomed approvingly.
Tim said goodbye, and left her monitoring the zero-tau pods. “Live death like you live life, huh?” he chided Hugh when they
were far enough away to be outside the range of the mercenary’s enhanced auditory senses.
“Something like that,” Hugh responded solemnly.
“Interesting person, our Elana,” Tim said. “The interview will need some tight editing, though. She’ll depress the hell out
of anyone who hears her ranting on like that.”
“Perhaps you should let her speak. She’s been exposed to the possessed for a long time. Whether she admits it or not, that’s
influenced her thinking. Don’t slant that.”
“I do not slant my reports.”
“I’ve accessed your pieces, you dumb everything down for your audience. They’re just a compilation of highlights.”
“Keeps them accessed, doesn’t it? Have you seen our ratings?”
“There’s more to news than marketing points. You have to include substance occasionally. It balances and emphasises those
highlights you worship.”
“Shit, how did you ever wind up in this business?”
“I was made for it,” Hugh said, which he apparently found hilarious.
Tim gave him a bewildered glance. Then his neural nanonics reported his communications block was receiving a priority call
from the Fort Forward studio chief. It was the news that the Confederation Navy had attacked Arnstat.
“Holy shit,” Tim muttered. All around him, marines and mercenaries were cheering and calling out to each other. Trucks and
jeeps sounded their horns in continual blasts.
“That’s not good,” Hugh said. “They knew what the effect would be.”
“Damnit, yes,” Tim said. “We’ve lost the story.”
“An entire planet snatched away to another realm, and all that concerns you is the story?”
“Don’t you see?” Tim swept his arms round extravagantly, encompassing the occupation station in one gesture. “This was
the
story, the only one: we were on the front line against the possessed. What we saw and said mattered. Now it doesn’t. Just
like that.” His neural nanonics astronomy program found him the section of dark azure sky where Avon’s star shone unseen.
He glared at it in frustration. “Someone up there is changing Confederation policy, and I’m stuck down here. I can’t find
out why.”
______
Cochrane saw it first. Naturally, he called it Tinkerbell.
Not quite limber enough to stay in a full lotus position for hours on end, the hippie was sprawled bonelessly on a leather
beanbag, facing the direction Ketton island was flying in. With a Jack Daniels in one hand and his purple sunglasses in place
he possibly wasn’t as alert as he should have been. But then, none of the other ten people sharing the top of the headland
with him saw it.
They were, as McPhee complained later, looking out for something massive, a planet or a moon, or perhaps even Valisk. An object
that would appear as a small dark patch amid the vanishing-point glare and slowly swell in size as the island drew closer.
The last thing anyone expected was a pebble-sized crystal with a splinter of sunlight entombed at its centre arrowing in out
of the bright void ahead. But that’s what they got.
“Holy mamma, hey you cats, look at this,” Cochrane whooped. He tried to point, sending Jack Daniels sloshing across his flares.
The crystal was sliding over the cliff edge, its multifaceted surface stabbing out thin beams of pure white light in every
direction. It swooped in towards Cochrane and his fellow watchers, keeping a level four metres off the ground. By then Cochrane
was on his feet dancing and waving at it. “Over here, man. We’re here. Here boy, come on, come to your big old buddy.”
The crystal curved tightly, circling over their heads to their gasps and excited shouts.
“Yes!”
Cochrane yelled. “It knows we’re here. It’s alive, gotta be, man; look at the way it’s buzzing about, like some kind of inter-cosmic
fairy.” Slivers of light from the crystal flashed across his sunglasses. “Yoww, that’s bright. Hey, Tinkerbell, tone it down,
baby.”
Delvan stared at their visitor in absolute awe, a hand held in front of his face to shield him from the dazzling light. “Is
it an angel?”
“Naw,” Cochrane chortled. “Too small. Angels are huge great mothers with flaming swords. Tinkerbell, that’s who we’ve got
here.” He cupped his hands round his mouth. “Yo, Tinks, how’s it hanging?”
Choma’s dark, weighty hand tapped Cochrane’s shoulder. The hippie flinched.
“I don’t wish to be churlish,” the serjeant said. “But I believe there are more appropriate methods with which to open communications
with an unknown xenoc species.”
“Oh yeah?” Cochrane sneered. “Then how come you’re already boring her away?”
The crystal changed direction, speeding away to fly over the main headland camp. Cochrane started running after it, yelling
and waving.
Sinon, like every other serjeant on the island, had turned to look at the strange pursuit as soon as Choma informed them of
the crystal’s arrival. “We have an encounter situation,” he announced to the humans around him.
Stephanie stared at the brilliant grain of crystal leading Cochrane on a merry chase and let out a small groan of dismay.
They really shouldn’t have let the old hippie join the forward watching group.
“What’s happening?” Moyo asked.
“Some kind of flying xenoc,” she explained.
“Or probe,” Sinon said. “We are attempting to communicate with affinity.”
The serjeants combined their mental voice into a collective hail. As well as clear ringing words of greeting, mathematical
symbols, and pictographics, they produced a spectrum of pure emotional tones. None of it provoked any kind of discernible
answer.
The crystal slowed again, drifting over the headland group. There were over sixty humans camping out together now; Stephanie’s
initial group had been joined by a steady stream of deserters from Ekelund’s army. They’d broken away over the past week,
sometimes in groups, sometimes individually; all of them rejecting her authority and growing intolerance. The word they brought
from the old town wasn’t good. Martial law was strictly enforced, turning the whole place into a virtual prison. At the moment,
her efforts were focused on recovering as many rifles as possible from the ruins and mounds of loose soil. Apparently she
still hadn’t abandoned her plan to rid the island of serjeants and disloyal possessed.
Stephanie stood looking up at the twinkling crystal as it traced a meandering course overhead. Cochrane was still lumbering
along thirty metres behind. His annoyed cries carried faintly through the air. “Any reply yet?” she asked.
“None,” the serjeant told them.
People had risen to their feet, gawping at the tiny point of light. It seemed oblivious to all of them. Stephanie concentrated
on the folds of iridescent shadow which her mind’s senses were revealing. Human and serjeant minds glowed within it, easily
recognizable; the crystal existed as a sharply defined teardrop-filigree of sapphire. It was almost like a computer graphic,
a total contrast to everything else she could perceive this way. As it grew closer its composition jumped up to perfect clarity;
in a dimension-defying twist the inner threads of sapphire were longer than its diameter.
She’d stopped being amazed by wonders since Ketton left Mortonridge. Now she was simply curious.
“That can’t be natural,” she insisted.
Sinon spoke for the mini-consensus of serjeants. “We concur. Its behaviour and structure is indicative of a highorder entity.”
“I can’t make out any kind of thoughts.”
“Not like ours. That is inevitable. It seems well adjusted to this realm. Commonality would therefore be unlikely.”
“You think it’s a native?”
“If not an actual aboriginal, then something equivalent to their AI. It does seem to be self-determining, a good indicator
of independence.”
“Or good programming,” Moyo said. “Our reconnaissance drones would have this much awareness.”
“Another possibility,” Sinon agreed.
“None of that matters,” Stephanie said. “It proves there’s some kind of sentience here. We have to make contact and ask for
help.”
“That’s if they understand the concept,” Franklin said.
This speculation is irrelevant,
Choma said.
What it is does not matter, what it is capable of does. Communication has to be established.
It will not respond to any of our attempts,
Sinon said.
If it does not sense affinity or atmospheric compression then we have little chance of initiating contact.
Mimic it,
Choma said. The mini-consensus queried him.
It can obviously sense us,
he explained.
Therefore we must demonstrate we are equally aware of it. Once it knows this, it will logically begin seeking communication
channels. The surest demonstration possible is to use our energistic power to assemble a simulacrum.
They focused their minds on a stone lying at Sinon’s feet, fourteen thousand serjeants conceiving it as a small clear diamond
with a flame of cold light burning bright at its centre. It rose into the air, shedding crumbs of mud as it went.
The original crystal swerved round and approached the illusion, orbiting it slowly. In response, the serjeants moved their
crystal in a similar motion, the two of them describing an elaborate spiral over Sinon’s head.
That attracted its attention,
Choma said confidently.