Tony Daniel (35 page)

This commander on Triton, Sherman, was a knave, but not a fool. He’d taken out a DIED destroyer. The file on the man showed him as a West Point graduate. West Point was the rival service academy to San Filieu’s own Sacajawea, the naval academy on the Vas. In many ways, this war—and convert San Filieu had no doubt it was to be a full-fledged war—would be a contest between the versions of modern warfare taught at the Point and at those expounded at Old Sac. West Point graduates commanded most of the Federal Army. Most of the DIED had commanders who were Sacajawea alumni. The outer system, astonishingly, had almost no navy. It was like trying to fight a land war with no air power. Amés, San Filieu, and the other commanders had been aware of this, of course, and it was thought that a rapid space campaign would be the first step to achieve domination—provided the campaign was swift and ruthless.

The next stage of the invasion of Triton was going to be ruthless indeed.

San Filieu called up Captain Bruc and signaled him to join her in the virtuality. He was promptly standing before her. Bruc was diligent and thorough, if a bit unimaginative. He dissipated himself too much in revelry when on leave—San Filieu knew from his file that Bruc had practically had venereal diseases named after him—but on duty, he was a rock. After Bruc arrived, San Filieu ordered the captain of the other surviving ship, the
Jihad
, into her presence. Meré Philately was not Catalán, as was Bruc, and San Filieu did not trust her as far as her own, handpicked captain of the
Montserrat
. But Philately was Old Sac ’99, and was, without a doubt, one of the best line officers in the fleet. It was just that, if it ever came down to choosing blood over cleverness, San Filieu would always go with the blood.

“How goes Nereid?” San Filieu asked Philately.

The woman licked her lips and smiled thinly. “We have ten thousand marines in place, Admiral. The population is a bit restless, but under control.”

“Restless?”

“There was isolated resistance, and a warehouse was intentionally destroyed. We’re looking into the contents. Some sort of grist. Agricultural, we think.”

“And your repairs to the
Jihad
?”

“They are complete, ma’am,” answered Philately.

“That was quick thinking, pulling out when you did, Captain.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“But I hope not an indication of any timidity on your part,” San Filieu continued. “Haven’t gotten gun-shy, have we, Captain?”

“No, ma’am!”

“Good, because we’re about to move into the final stage of this operation, and I’m going to need you in full fighting trim.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“In a few hours we’ll move into position to deploy the rip tether, and I’ll need your support fire.”

“We’ll be there with it, ma’am.”

“Good,” San Filieu replied. She turned to Bruc. “Have you got the orbital minefield mapped out?”

“To the best of our ability, ma’am,” said Bruc. “The mines are shifting, and most of them are sentient, so there is a margin of error. But intelligence has been eavesdropping on the fremden force’s knit, and we think we have worked out the code they are using as a passkey for the minefield.”

“Very good,” San Filieu said. “But don’t trust that passkey. The first thing I would do is put a fake one on the vinculum, if it were me down there.”

Bruc seemed a bit put out by this suggestion—he’d seemed so proud of having broken the code—but he stiffened up and answered, “Yes, ma’am!” in his proud Catalán manner, and San Filieu smiled at him. Good blood in the boy. The Brucs owned tobacco, she recalled, and possessed more robotic workers than any other family on New Catalonia.

“The Director has given me full power to deploy the rip tether contained in the
Montserrat
’s hold, and we will now proceed to do so.” San Filieu straightened and indicated the meeting was coming to a close.

“Aye, aye, Admiral,” Bruc and Philately said in near unison.

“We’ll meet again when the
Montserrat
is in position for the rip tether deployment. Meanwhile, if I want anything else, I’ll immediately call you both back here into the virtuality. Are there any questions?”

“No, Admiral.”

“Dismissed.”

The two left, Captain Bruc making a bow in addition to his salute as a token of Catalán respect for San Filieu’s social position. It was good to have underlings who knew their place so completely. Very soon, if Carmen San Filieu had her way, the entire outer system would be saluting her as smartly, and with complete deference.

And, like Bruc, they would be made to understand that they were the means, and that San Filieu and her peers were the end toward which humanity should show utter devotion. That was what being better meant.

They must have stayed there for an hour or more, sitting and standing in turns, almost unable to believe that they had made it down in one piece. Then there was a faint sound.

“Visitors,” said Century in a hoarse voice. She had been yelling her comments most of the way down, and had hardly said a word after their landing, resting her voice.

A clang, and the whole control room shook.

“They want in,” Century said. “Should I give them the key?”

“Who is it?” Andre asked.

“Federal Army, they claim.”

“Well, we’re either going to be rescued or killed, I suppose.”

Century made a gurgling noise that sounded like a bird being strangled. It had evidently been intended as a laugh. “Belay that rescue talk; I’ve got enough fuel left to take us halfway around the sun.”

She had obviously passed along the code key, for a moment later a door to the control room irised open and a man stepped through in the blue-black of the Federal Army, a color that had always seemed to Andre as exactly similar to the color of a bruise. Behind the man were five soldiers, similarly garbed.

“Captain John Quench of the Third Sky and Light Brigade,” the man said. “Would you folks like a lift over to town? There’s a colonel would like to have a talk with you.”

“Hello, John,” Andre said.

“Father Andre?” The man stepped farther into the room and regarded him. “I’ll be goddamned! Excuse me, I mean, this is a surprise.”

“Good to see you,” Andre said. “These people are with me,” he went on. “I’ll vouch for them. All of them.”

Quench gave Century a cold appraisal. Evidently, someone had identified her when she’d called in to identify herself. “Very good, Father,” Quench finally said. “If you folks will follow me to the troop hopper.”

They followed Quench and his men down a long docking port, which retracted itself behind them as they walked, and piled into the hopper. There were twenty other heavily armed soldiers within. Quench obviously wasn’t taking any chances in case of a ruse and ambush, and had brought along backup.

“Corporal Lefty, take us back to the bunker,” he said.

Lefty was a wiry blond woman with a thin line for a mouth. “Yes, sir,” she said, seemingly without parting her lips. They were soon under way.

“Let me bring you up to speed on the current situation as quickly as I can,” Quench said. He was sitting across from the
Mrs. Widow
passengers, who were all side by side on a bench, squeezed amidst a row of soldiers. They could not see outside, but Andre felt his stomach lurch as the hopper reached the apex of its parabola and started downward to make its next bounce. “They thought they were catching us unawares, but they weren’t,” Quench continued. “Had a grist-based attack a few e-days ago. Broca patch virus. Nasty stuff. Guess it was supposed to soften us up, but it also gave us warning, since we—that is, the Colonel—figured straight away what it was. It’s still bad, but we got it contained, and the victims cut off from merci realignment, so we don’t have to fight an army of zombies in our midst.” Quench smiled at the thought, but then frowned again. “Took a lot of good people, though. Anyhow, forty-eight hours ago, a rip tether was deployed in orbit. Just one. Things are deucedly expensive to make, I guess. Or maybe they just thought one was enough.”

“Captain, may I inquire as to what a rip tether might be?” said Molly.

“Oh, sorry, ma’am. Jargon there. It’s something like a lift cable—made of the same stuff as the rest of the Met—but they drop it into a nongeosynchronous orbit so that the tail end of it that reaches the ground precedes about like a reverse Foucault’s pendulum.”

“Pardon, officer?”

“A . . . it describes a circle on the ground.” Quench described a circle in the air with his finger. “Only the circle becomes a spiral because the moon is turning under it, if you see what I mean?”

Molly evidently did not, but Quench continued.

“The point is,” he said, “that it’s a half a kilometer thick and it digs a furrow a hundred meters deep. It destroys all in its wake, ma’am.”

“I see,” Molly said. “Such as cities.”

“That’s right, ma’am. The rip tether’s made a pass through New Miranda already. Sliced a diagonal across the town, and caused a lot more collateral damage. Damned destructive.” Quenched slapped his knee, as if to express his anger at the memory, which he carefully kept from his face. “Damn destructive. We are attempting to deal with that threat at the moment, though I won’t go into details.”

“You mean it’s coming back?”

“It will return every Triton-day, ma’am, until the drag on it pulls it out of the sky. But that could take months.”

“Good Lord,” said Century.

“God has nothing to do with that monster,” Quench replied. “We couldn’t stop the tether’s first pass, but the attack ships—that’s another matter. Them, we were laying for. Can’t believe they only sent two. We were expecting ten or more.”

“There’s three,” Century said. “There’s a third.”

“Ah, now, the colonel will be very interested in hearing that. I’ll just call that bit of information in ahead to him now. There. We’ll be wanting all the data you could collect on them, if possible.”

Century tapped her head. “In my noggin,” she said. “Ready for download.”

Quench looked at her again, this time without so much distaste. “Excellent,” he said. “Excellent news. Anyway, we set up a killing zone up there in orbit, all cloaked and inviting. Nuke mines. A weapons platform the colonel and I threw together. A fistful of asteroid-breaker missiles. Lots of decoys made from our weather equipment to draw their fire, too. It seems we took out one of the warships right away. The other withdrew after delivering some fire to the ground. We lost the Meet Hall, but no politicians, for good or ill. Presumably the second ship, and the third that you saw, are up there regrouping and getting new orders on their vinculum network. And that’s the down and dirty of it.” Quench was quiet for a moment, and Andre realized he was receiving communications on the Army’s knit network. He nodded to himself. “More grist-based attacks in town. We’re diverting to a bunker on the outskirts.”

After half an hour and several more long bounces, the hopper set down. The docking passage was again deployed, and the group was escorted out and into what looked for all the world like a natural crevasse in the side of a canyon wall. But once they were inside, it was clear that they were in a complex military command center. Images and data swirled about the walls, and officers trotted hither and thither on what must be important errands, judging by their determined speed.

They went down one long hall, turned, and walked down another. Then a door slid open, and they were ushered into a nondescript meeting room with a conference table. The table was lit up with a map of nearby space, and Andre was just beginning to study it when Roger Sherman briskly stepped through the door.

Andre smiled broadly, and Sherman quickly returned it, then set his face back into its customary grimness. “Good to see you, Father Andre. My garden needs tending pretty badly.”

“Nothing would make me happier than to get right on that,” Andre replied. Sherman reached out to shake his hand, and Andre pulled him into a bear hug, which Sherman returned firmly, if a bit stiffly. Andre introduced the rest of the
Mrs. Widow
passengers.

Sherman acknowledged each with a nod, but said nothing further. He asked them all to gather around the conference table.

“Theory?” he said.

“Yes, sir?” answered the table.

“Pop me up a schematic of that warship we took out.”

“Yes, sir.” The map on the table was replaced by a rotating portrait of one of the black ships that Andre had seen. But there were some blank patches on it, indicated by white fields, particularly around where Century had seen the weapons clusters.

Sherman turned to Century. “Captain Quench informs me that you have some observations to report.”

Instead of answering, Century stepped forward and put her hand—the false one—on the table. In an instant, Theory had read the data and integrated it into the schematic. Sherman turned to Century and gave her a hard stare across the table.

“You
think
that I know you, but I don’t,” he said.

“Never met you, either, Colonel,” said Century.

Sherman turned to Andre. “This is the man you were telling me about, isn’t it? The one who is somehow imprinted on our times, or vice versa?”

“That’s right,” Andre replied. “He’s the one.”

“What would happen if we lose him?” said Sherman.

“Do you mean, if he is killed?”

“That is my meaning.”

Andre smiled. “I’m not sure that’s possible, Roger.”

“Come again?”

“I’m not sure the local timescape will let him be killed.”

“Bullshit,” said TB.

“Let me put it another way,” Andre said. “If Ben—TB—dies, then local causality will be disrupted. Now what exactly might that mean? I think we can safely say that induction would be out the window as a logical principle. We would be sucked into a kind of temporal singularity, the equivalent of a gravitational black hole. I used to work in a field where we thought about such things. Now, you are aware that some have postulated that a black hole is the way our universe spawns babies? That these new universes have different laws of nature, different ways that matter and energy might arrange themselves to make the phenomenal world? Well, imagine if the laws of logic did the same. Imagine a universe with a different sort of rationality.”