Return to the Denoument Chapter Listing Page
"It’s not your fault, sir."
Philip Nimbnumber glanced up at his executive officer. He hid the lower half of his face behind folded hands, resting his elbows on his desk. Putting his hands down on his desk, he sighed, hazel eyes gazing sadly at his friend. "Ka, you’ve been my executive for how many years on how many ships?"
"Twenty and four, Phil." The Kzroth leans forward in his seat.
"And how many times have you said that when I blow it?"
Ka-Ri grimaced. "I've lost count."
"And how many times have you been right?" Philip smiled wryly.
"A few times." Expecting Phil's next query, he added: "But it never works."
Nibnumber nodded. "I blew this one, plain and simple. I didn't read the situation correctly, and we've lost three destroyers, a light cruiser, and two frigates because of it. Everything else that joined us on our little jaunt is now recuperating in the shipyards and won't be fully combat-ready for at least two weeks."
"We did manage to destroy the superbattleship, sir."
"Yes," Philip sighed, "we won the battle but may have lost the war on that one. In our effort to destroy it, we've depleted an appreciable portion of our strength. We need reinforcement... any reinforcement. Even the Thaurians would be helpful at this rate."
"And the nearest Thaurian force concentration is on the other side of the Reaver advance." Ka-Ri scratched behind one ear. "I don't envy you your job, Phil. Never had and never will... but we can't give up now."
"Who said anything about giving up?" Philip’s face fell into a grim mask. "We fight until we win or we fight until we die. That’s all we can do."
Ka-Ri nods. "Agreed… but you can’t tear yourself apart over this, Phil."
"And you know I bloody well won’t," Phil sighs, "but I have to beat myself up at least a bit to ensure I don’t blow it again."
The Kzroth scoffs and shakes his deep red-orange head. "That’s just rationalization talking and you know it. No matter what, mistakes will be made on occasion. Move on."
"I’ve just killed a few thousand of our troopers with a mistake. That’s unacceptable and I can’t move on until I figure out how to avoid a similar mistake in the future."
"I’m not saying don’t learn from it," Ka-Ri exclaims, "just don’t let it grind you down. I know the reason why you requested to be transferred to exploration duty, but you just have to shoulder it and keep going."
Philip falls silent for a moment, thinking quietly to himself. That’s not the only reason, my friend. I’ve fought for thirty years, I can fight for thirty more… I’m just not sure I can do it for much longer alone. Still, that is my problem and no one else’s. "I will, Ka. I led us into this mess, so I’ll sure as hell try to lead us out of it."
Ka leans forward, placing a brawny hand on his friend’s shoulder. "I know you will, sir… Really, you should find someone to help."
"I’ve got FleetCom and the entire C3 and UniStrat sections working together on this one. I’m going to listen to advice in this bind, trust me."
"You know that’s not what I mean."
Damn kitten knows me. Phil smirks and nods. "Well, you do know me. And you know my philosophy."
"Yes, a philosophy that blatantly denies any of the major truths of human psychology."
"No, not denies…" Phil chuckles slightly. "I’ve never been good at denying. Rather, it does something to those ‘major truths’ that I’m rather good at."
"And what’s that?" Ka-Ri smiles. I have to hear this dodge.
"Resist."
"So, how’d your lesson with ‘Bane go?" Pelok smiled, tapping a fork against his tray. He’d selected stir-fried rice with various non-terrestrial meats and vegetables as an experiment in CHON, and he seemed to enjoy how it turned out. The nanocompilers make food no different from "natural" food but people have a tendency to psychosomatically make it taste inferior in their own minds. Some simply deal with it, others complain, and others-the creative ones like Sergeant Pelok-experiment.
"Not poorly at all." I stuffed another bite of some Koltrop mush that I can pronounce but not spell into my mouth and swallowed. I was somewhere between dealing and experimenting, and the mush didn’t taste too bad… had the consistency of sea urchin, though, which was not a plus. "I enjoyed myself a great deal. She… um… it… did get a bit brusque at the very end."
"I personally figure ‘Bane to be a dame, and a damn classy one at that," Pelok grins, "but I’m a traditionalist anyway so hey. Brusque, eh? What happened?"
"I don’t know. I’m not even sure it’s anything I did."
"Oh, ‘Bane would’ve told ya if it was your fault. Paint a picture for me."
"Well… we’d just finished iconography and she announced it was time to stop, despite my pleas to the contrary. At that point, everything seemed well. Then some ships jumped in, and I was about to run a status check by looking at them when she cuts the signal."
Pelok frowned. "You didn’t hear?"
"Hear what? When I got kicked, I came directly here for dinner. Didn’t talk to anyone save for a note about situational awareness."
"Nibnumber’s hunter-killer squadron leaped out to bring down that super-BB that grazed us and got into a real furball. Six ships lost outright, ‘bout a dozen convalescing in the docks."
I thought about that for a moment. Quite a lot of comrades died, but this was a war and that was expected. Brisbane seemed to care for her crew as her symbiotes but there was no indication that she had anything to do with the crews of other ships. Other sentient ships. Oh.
Pelok obviously watched my eyes shift color as I thought. "You get it, I see. ‘Bane gets kinda choked up when her friends make bad real-estate deals, especially the old Democracy-class destroyers. They tend to be even older than the ‘ol gal. Like parents."
I was absolutely speechless. In hindsight, it’s not particularly surprising… but it seemed quite the revelation at the time.
"You okay, ma’am?"
I think this is what I said, but I was in too much of a trance to remember exactly: "She wants to talk to me."
Pelok, I remember, just leaned back and looked at me like that was the first time he’d ever seen my face. "You should be honored."
I don’t remember my response to that.
Dmitri threw himself into a chair, sitting in it backwards, leaning forward nonchalantly on its wicker back. He rested his ready pistol on the top, gently balancing it with his opposing hand. Smirking broadly, he merely waited for his captive to begin.
The captive, an unusually thin Thaurian whose general poise and multiple scars identified himself as a mercenary. Eyes darting left and right, this thoroughly surprised merc tried valiantly to keep his mental balance. "I don’t know what you’re talking about."
"Oh, please." Dmitri scoffed and shook his head but never let his eyes lose contact with the Thaurian’s. "I’m walking along, minding everyone else’s business, when what do I hear but you sniveling about how you not only sold out the Concordat but fled right into the occupation zone… and seeing how you’re sitting there with tears all over your face and several bags full of jinglies I don’t quite see how I can be mistaken."
"Are you from… the Inquisition?"
"I could answer that question, but then I’d have to kill you and you’re too useful to me and mine alive right now. Now, I’ll tell you what I’ll do." Flicking his left wrist, Dmitri produced a vial of the mind-parasite antidote, a viscous orange colloid in a metal-capped clear plastic tube. "This here will take out that aggregate on the base of your skull before it can leech too far into your brain. Tell me what I want to know and I’ll give you a dose."
"What do you want?" The mercenary stared at the vial. Dmitri knew it gave him away as WZISS, but he didn’t much care at the moment. Hopefully the merc respected his personal freedom of thought enough that it would be a good bargaining tool.
"Simple. What did you set up, how did you do it, and for whom?"
The mercenary flicked his eyes to the left for a moment, thinking. Dmitri only chuckled internally. I don’t even have to read his mind on that one. Thaurians look to the right when remembering and to the left when creating. Left-brain right-brain issues. Still, I’ll take a peek.
-- Yeah, that’ll work. Tell him I work for the Reavers, then when he gives me the shot I can get him and take the gun.
Amateur. Dmitri couldn’t help but roll his eyes.
"A-a-all right," the Thaurian stuttered, "I… um… sold naval strength assets, and the Reavers put me up to it."
Dmitri nodded, walked carefully around the merc, and then jabbed him right in the aggregate with the business end of the transderm. Combined with the already less-than-pleasant effects of the antidote, the aggregate’s natural anti-contact defense caused the merc to leap forward onto the floor, twitching and hissing through clenched teeth in pain. Putting one boot on the Thaurian’s neck, Dmitri smiled coldly as he leveled the pistol with one hand and brandished the antidote with the other. "Lie to me again and I’ll give you another dose."
"Ugh, urgh!" The merc, temporarily losing the faculty of speech, flailed his arms in the universal signal of ‘no, wait!’ Pausing to catch his breath-Dimitri watched his pupils dilate-the merc started sobbing. "All right, all right, I’ll spill. I rigged the propaganda bomb in the Master-Cleric’s transport. I bragged about it at a brothel I went to and one of the dames there offered me a lot of cash to… rearrange the bomb."
"Okay, there’s the ‘what.’ All you have to do is give me the ‘who’ and ‘how’ and then I can leave you to the rest of your pathetic existence. I’m also curious to exactly how much your price was."
"I dunno who the dame was-all I know is that she had seven million in hard cash laying around, and I’m not going to argue with that kind of money-and I put the bomb on the inside wall of the fuel cell grid instead of the armored hull."
Dmitri couldn’t help but whistle. Seven million doru? That’s quite a bit of grease; very few in the Concordat can afford to hire lackeys at that rate and even less would have the motive to off the Master-Cleric. This definitely limits it to the aristocracy or the theocracy, and a small percentage of them as well… could possibly be an ISA megacorp or the Reavers, maybe even a Zone megacorp, but then motive falls apart. True Earth hasn’t had that much slush-fund quid in almost ever.
"Name and location of the brothel. I assume it’s on Trono."
"The Yellow Slipper; it’s on the corner of Lowsky and Blueriver in the Historic District."
"Name of the girl."
"Ah, um, er…"
Dmitri applied a bit more pressure to the boot on the Thaurian’s neck. "I’m not asking what position she preferred, just her name. Spill the data before I’m forced to redecorate the room in viscera tones."
"Okay, okay, ‘Cloud-Day’ was her work name; she didn’t say her real one."
"Thanks for your assistance." With that, Dmitri kicked the merc’s face in. Sliding most of the cash into the bag (but ensuring enough scattered around that it’d be found later) and wiping the blood off of his boot on the merc’s clothing, Dmitri made sure to pummel the corpse a bit more before running off. The best way to make a professional killing not look like a professional killing is to make it look like a sloppy mugging.
"Got news, ma’am." The Koltrop intelligence director clacked his mandibles in glee. "One of our TC agents reports that the Master-Cleric assassination was a set-up."
"Well, I’ll be damned," Supreme Emperor J’hsen let her eyes go wide in mock surprise before glowering, "of course it was a bloody setup. Good work on discovering the obvious."
"Now we have proof, ma’am. He contacted the guy who rigged the bomb, and has a lead to the payoff."
"How much?"
"Seven million doru."
"Shit. That almost limits it directly to Imcedi or Garbog right there."
"Our thoughts exactly, especially seeing how they’re the only two who have profited in any way whatsoever."
Imcedi Odegi would have disputed that remark as he sat under the cold stare of Grand Inquisitor Chreeti. That’s all she seemed to do, just stare at him, that and actively try to minimize his involvement in what was arguably his empire. "There must be some way to assist our allies at the Lokar shipyards," he ventured. Does she want to lose this war?
Chreeti grimaced. "Not without ruining our own defensive posture. This war doesn’t have fronts, my dear Imcedi, not against your foe. It was hard enough to organize the loyalists to defend their own systems effectively, much less into a relief task force."
"Honestly, Grand Inquistior," Imcedi felt the bile rise in him and fought hard to keep it down, "I’m not sure we’re going about this correctly. We give our allies no support whatsoever-no intelligence, no military support, not even foodstuffs. How do we expect them to win?"
Chreeti sighs. "They will win because they are Zoners. That is what they do."
In the name of… Odegi cursed in his mind. This female is insane.
"Do we at least have proof that Garbog is responsible for this whole mess?"
The pale female eyes Odegi coldly. "That is not my concern."
Odegi snapped. "What the-you’re the leader of the damned Inquisition. This sort of work is in your charter or something. For a bloody intelligence service, you don’t gather much damned intelligence, do you? Just assassinate people who get in your way and do your damnedest to get in the way of everyone trying to help?"
Chreeti pulled her vibroshiv in a flash then looked it over carefully. The sudden movement followed by the leisurely grace in an instant transition that almost looked like a bad film splice caused Odegi to start instinctually back into his chair. "We like to keep our intelligence to ourselves… and yes, assassinations are quite common." She points the tip of the shiv at Imcedi. "No one helps out of altruism, and we are not about to owe anybody anything. This is for the best."
I flopped down, still in uniform, on my bed, silently sinking into the comforfoam mattress as I stared at the ceiling and tried to not imagine it as an intestinal wall. My quarters were the standard junior officers’ quarters-maybe five meters square total, split between a bed, a small desk with the requisite terminal, a kitchenette in one corner and a closet-like head and bath in the other-but I saw it as a minor cell in some sort of endocrine gland, some sort of specially adapted organ to house symbiotic microbes. Regretting taking that biology correspondence course three years prior, I closed my eyes, and the ever-present thrum of Brisbane’s reactor acted as both heartbeat and soft breathing in my mind.
Actually realizing that I was living in a sentient organism for the first time slightly twisted my perception of things. I had always known, as a fact, that our ships were sentient-they had to be to make the trillions of mundane decisions that the crews couldn’t be bothered or were just too slow to make-but the repercussions of that never quite clicked until that moment. It was odd, living in someone else’s body entirely by their prerogative, and quite humbling as well. For the longest time, what was my purpose on Brisbane? I served in no technical role, I was merely a benign hitchhiker… maybe mildly parasitic, as I consumed resources but gave nothing back really to the ship.
The terminal chirruped softly. Opening my eyes and sitting up, I looked at the simple blocky holodisplay as if it were some sort of eye watching me. Well, more like eye watching, mouth calling, and finger beckoning. Shaking my head to get the organipomorphistic imagery out of my brain, I swung my legs off the bed and walked mechanically to the terminal. The utilitarian console that I used every day was no longer just a machine, but an organ, a nerve center.