Nemesis (38 page)

‘Right up until one person’s choice destroys another’s?’ she said. ‘Because that’s what we’re looking at. That’s the reality your endless, cowardly optimism has created. You stayed golden. You got to act the hero. Your power and position gave you the liberty to adopt the moral high ground about human progress without ever having to look at what it meant for everyone else. Well, here’s something to think about. You fired on those Nemesis machines
by choice
. Which means that
your
action triggered the next phase of the immune response. We made sure of that. The
Gulliver
couldn’t fire. The
Chiyome
didn’t on purpose. It’s
your
act and only yours that will cause the attack on Earth. Whatever you may think of us, you’re responsible for what happens to Earth now.’

Will’s skin prickled.

‘I don’t expect you to like me or understand me,’ said Pari. ‘It’s too late for that. I don’t expect you to join my side. But after the attack on Earth, someone will need to unify humanity. Someone who will bring revenge against the attackers and word of a new home for humanity. Because without that organising force, everything will slide backwards. We intend that unifying force to be
you
. Just as you elevated Gustav after the war without giving him any real choice in the matter, so we will elevate you. Over the years you’ve confided in me plenty with your feelings about Earth, Will. You’ve told me over and over about your isolation and the terrible moral load. Well, guess what – I freed you from that burden by taking it on myself, thereby enabling you to fulfil the goal you were meant for. The job you were
supposed have finished years ago
.’

Will looked at her with horror and then buried his face in his hands.

‘I’ll leave you now,’ she said. ‘You’ve got some thinking to do.’

Will felt sick. Pari had touched him as she’d intended. He couldn’t help but see that the situation he found himself in was as much his own doing as anyone else’s. Yet she didn’t have a clue what her actions had wrought. She still imagined she was in control.

13.2: ANN

Ann waited on the station’s command deck for Senator Voss to finish her session with Will Monet. They’d overhauled the place again since her visit months ago. Video panels now covered every available inch of wall-space, densely packed with a hundred different kinds of visualised statistics about the world beneath them. Work tables and clusters of meeting couches equipped with projector bubbles dotted the gently curving floor. League scientists filled the seats, rapt in study. It was like walking around inside a giant infographic.

After weeks in the cramped interior of the
Chiyome
, the cavernous spaces of Snakepit Station came as a huge relief. Except Ann couldn’t shake the feeling that the officers busily analysing the planet below them had all missed a crucial detail.

A transit pod delivered the senator to the floor. She emerged breathing hard, her hands pressed together.

‘Senator Voss, ma’am. A word, if I may,’ said Ann, striding across to meet her.

The senator looked exhausted – more than she usually let people see.

‘What is it, Captain?’

‘First, ma’am, are you okay?’ said Ann, examining Voss’s face. Her usually flawless olive skin showed lines of stress.

The senator exhaled. ‘Yes, just a little wound up, I suppose. I’ve been rehearsing that speech in my head for years. But when I finally got to say it all to his face, it took rather a lot out of me.’ She smiled, her artificial brightness coming back online. ‘Ah, well. We all do the jobs fate assigns us, don’t we? What do you need?’

‘I wanted to report to you personally as soon as I could about the Nems, ma’am,’ said Ann. ‘I know you already have my written account but I don’t think this can wait. From what we saw, the Nems are operating dangerously close to the edge of our model tolerances. We can’t say with any confidence that the Tiwanaku swarm is operating as expected.’

The senator’s smile switched off again. ‘An unfortunate assessment,’ she said.

‘Furthermore, discussion with Captain Monet during his transfer raised a disturbing point. He suggested a level of deliberate agency in the biomaterial we deployed that our analysis hadn’t detected. As I understand it, the team in the denaturing lab believed they’d minimised the capabilities of the material, but from Will’s account, it’s not clear that they succeeded.’

‘Under the circumstances, one might expect Monet to overstate the risks,’ said Voss.

‘Understood, ma’am,’ said Ann, ‘and were it not for the fact that his account appeared to correlate with what I witnessed first-hand, I wouldn’t have brought it up.’

‘I see.’

‘Coupled with the absence of the
Gulliver
, I’m concerned that our project may already have veered off track,’ said Ann.

The senator folded her arms. ‘Really. So what do you recommend?’

‘An immediate scouting flight to Tiwanaku to check the development of the swarm. Also, a short visit to the Nerroskovi System to see whether the
Gulliver
can be located. As I understand it, one of our watcher drones arrived with a report of a Nem departure event in that direction.’

Senator Voss frowned. ‘Surely by the time you got there, the end of the rendezvous window would have passed. The
Gulliver
would have already left.’

‘Accepted, ma’am, but at least knowing the fate of Mark Ruiz and Overcaptain Shah would strengthen our hand. We might be able to bolster our negotiating position with Captain Monet.’

‘Of course,’ said Voss. ‘But potentially at the cost of limiting our capabilities here during the next phase. Sam Shah is a smart man,’ she added. ‘Nobody knows more about the Nems than he does. It’s lamentable that he’s out of the picture at this point, but that possibility always existed.’

Ann nodded. ‘You’re right, ma’am. Certainly locating them comes as a secondary priority to monitoring the swarm. I have one other proposal.’

Voss inclined her head. ‘Go on.’

Ann took a deep breath and spoke her mind. ‘I strongly recommend the creation of a backup option to cover the eventuality that Nem behaviour becomes dangerously unpredictable. In that scenario, we cut a deal with Captain Monet and abort.’

The senator’s lips thinned.

Ann hurried onwards. ‘Either he helps us and swears to protect the interests of the League, or we leave him here and avert the machine attack without him.’

Parisa’s face was unreadable. Data light flickered in her synthetically blue eyes. Ann waited for a response.

‘That would not be a backup,’ said the senator eventually. ‘That would be a disaster.’

‘Ma’am—’ Ann started.

Voss cut her off with a sweep of her hand. ‘We know the machines will be destroyed at Earth. No other part of this endeavour has been over-engineered to such an extent. The Nems could quadruple the size of their expected fleet and still not change our risk envelope. And at the end of the day, we have the Nem homeworld. To prevent the creation of new machines, we nuke the planet. Then they won’t have anywhere to take their samples to. Admittedly this would represent a terrible waste, but we
are
equipped for that eventuality. As your video log from Tiwanaku clearly demonstrates, planets are delicate things. And this one is no different. Tell me, Captain,’ the senator added. ‘Did you see any evidence at Tiwanaku that the Nems
wouldn’t
carry out a follow-up attack?’

‘No, ma’am,’ said Ann, her cheeks colouring. ‘But all those models were based on a fixed rate of development—’

Voss chopped her down again. An edge entered her voice. ‘We put everything into this,’ she said. ‘Our money. Our time. Our credibility. And now you’re proposing that we throw away all that effort and demonise ourselves over fear of a pile of five-million-year-old machines? That planet hasn’t had intelligent life on it since humans walked upright.’

Ann could think of nothing to say. She hadn’t proposed capitulating, only the careful examination of another course of action. Without meaning to, she appeared to have caught the senator in a moment of imperfect rationality. That disappointed her. She’d always held Parisa Voss in high regard, ever since the senator had recruited her.

‘I appreciate scientific caution, Captain Ludik, but not when it impedes action,’ said the senator. ‘And there is some evidence from your latest outing that you have a skewed notion of where that balance lies.’

Ann stiffened. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am?’

‘I read your interim report and I read Lieutenant Brinsen’s. Because of choices you made, we nearly missed acquiring the
Ariel Two
. Consequently it was necessary to expose Nelson Aquino’s role, which limits our future capacity to influence Monet. And now that ship is damaged and will take more days to repair than we originally assigned for it. This adds risks to our already burdened plan. What you need to understand, Captain Ludik, is that the events we have set in motion are much larger than we are. Our choice is to see them through or be crushed beneath them.’

‘With respect, I am well aware of the scale of the plan,’ said Ann tersely. ‘But regardless of its scale, it remains inevitably true that sunk costs are irrelevant. What we’ve invested means nothing unless the plan works.’

The senator’s nostrils flared. ‘That’s enough,’ she said. ‘Clearly you either have a limited grasp of our current risk profile or you’ve become a little too close to your assigned target.’ Her tone suggested that she believed the latter. Jaco must have said something in his report. ‘I recommend you take a well-deserved rest and leave the handling of the situation to us now. Your input has been heard and I will give it due consideration.’

Ann opened her mouth to speak again.

‘Don’t make me ask you twice, Captain,’ said Voss.

Ann blushed. She saluted crisply, turned on her heel and left, her cheeks burning.

13.3: MARK

Mark tested the door with his weight and explored the edges of the room for ports or seals he could rip. Then he looked for air vents. They were all situated at ceiling level, far too high to reach even if they piled the chairs into stacks. He hadn’t managed to reach the processor for the window-wall, either.

He slumped in a meeting-room chair and gazed mournfully out at the desolation beyond the window. The situation, as far as he could see, was his own fault. He was captain of the
Gulliver
. He’d been assigned responsibility for looking after the diplomatic team. And he’d had all the evidence before him that someone was working against their interests. Except he’d been so focused on the threat outside the hull that he hadn’t noticed the one right in front of him.

What would happen now? In all likelihood, Sam would rejoin Ash and the two of them would leave, committing Zoe, Venetia and himself to the hands of the local FPP, if not the clutches of the Photurian swarm. That path led to humiliation in the best case, and death – or something worse than death – as the alternative. Will’s leaden stories about protecting your shipmates from harm didn’t sound so pointless now.

He hung his head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Looking after you was my job. I failed.’

‘A fine sentiment,’ said Venetia. ‘If, perhaps, one that belongs in a previous century. This isn’t your doing, Mark. We’re all volunteers here. And neither Zoe nor I are the kind of women who need looking after.’

Mark looked up, embarrassed. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

‘Don’t bait him,’ said Zoe from her place at the wall. ‘He’s taking responsibility. He cares. That’s what you want in a starship captain.’ She paused. ‘Mark, thank you for the efforts you’ve made. Don’t feel too bad – we were all duped. There wasn’t enough data for us to see the big picture and we had plenty of other stuff to think about.’

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I know I’ve not been the easiest person to get along with.’

‘We appear to have some time on our hands,’ she replied. ‘Until someone lets us out or a miracle happens, we’re stuck here. So why don’t you explain it?’

Mark frowned. ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

‘You just admitted you’re not easy to get along with,’ said Zoe. ‘We know that’s in part down to your history with Will. You get angry every time his name comes up. So fill us in on the details.’

He sighed. ‘You really don’t want to know. It’s not an interesting story.’

‘Could have fooled me,’ she said. ‘The way Ash tells it, you stole a starship.’

‘That he did,’ said Venetia. ‘Among other things.’

‘So what are you going to do?’ said Zoe. ‘Sit there and let us subsist on rumour?’

Mark peered at the horizon. If he couldn’t unburden himself now, when could he? He wondered if his nanny-SAP would complain the moment he opened his mouth and realised he hadn’t heard a peep out of it since Will’s upgrade package. He suspected it’d been shut down.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You asked for it. For starters, I didn’t get my roboteer mods the normal way. I was part of a secret genetic breeding programme run by the Fleet.’

‘No shit!’ said Zoe.

‘My parents were volunteers from Earth who were given a chance to sign up to have a heavily engineered child,’ he went on. ‘This all happened in the years just after the war. Will Monet had this whole idea that he was going to create a new team of high-functioning roboteers using volunteers from every world, but particularly from Earth. We were going to represent the great shared future of humanity – constructive self-editing and all that. The thing was, he signed up the parents and kicked it all off before going to the media. He wanted it to be a fait accompli. Except that everyone went ballistic once he started talking about what he had planned.’

‘I remember that,’ said Venetia. ‘There were all those claims of an alien plot.’

‘That’s right,’ said Mark. ‘Half the sects on Earth were convinced that Will Monet was trying to breed an army of pliant super-warriors for his alien masters to control.’ He snorted in derision. ‘So then he had a problem – a room full of kids and no way to tell anyone what they were. That was the mess I was born into. Of course, when I was little, I barely clocked any of it. Except that I was often told I was
special
. I went to special classes and had special lessons and ate special food. None of us saw that much of our parents. Will and Rachel were closer to us than any of our families.