Nemesis (69 page)

She experienced a moment’s panic. There were too many targets and half of them were probably already filling up with innocent people. Even with a ship like the
Ariel Two
, she wasn’t going to be able to save them all.

Even while her mind raced, a wave of attack drones flashed towards them and battered themselves against the
Ariel Two
’s shield.

[
Slow and steady wins the race,
] said her shadow. In that moment, it sounded a lot more like the real Will than a semi-sentient echo of him. [
If we make those aphids defenceless, the sects can take care of themselves.
]

Ann nodded. It was a sound approach – take care of the big threats first. While the aphid-ships were backed by g-ray batteries, they were unbeatable. She could do something about that.

Ann fired as they bore down on the second raspberry. This time she didn’t bother with the boser. She used her own g-rays. The space between her and the Nem cruiser became a searing dead-zone hotter than the surface of the sun. The raspberry briefly tried to split up as her beams hit, but this time Ann was ready and her firing spread widened as the drones detached. They burst like popcorn.

Ann brought her ship about and aimed for the last major threat. The raspberry saw her coming and made rapidly for the far side of Triton on conventional thrust. It couldn’t afford to warp. It was only useful while its suntap-link was intact, and gravity bursts would break it instantly.

‘Some of those spider-drill-ships are disengaging and heading for their insertion points,’ said Nelson. ‘The carriers may be ready to make a move.’

Ann cursed wildly. The Nems had come for hosts. Now that they had them, they were leaving already. On her virtual bridge, she clutched at her hair. The fight was way too spread out and too complex for a single large ship like hers to make a decisive difference. They were losing and there wasn’t a single thing she could do about it. Still, she wasn’t going to let them leave without a fight.

‘They’re not getting away this time,’ she snarled. ‘We’re changing course. I want that carrier dead.’

20.5: MARK

Mark dropped warp at the home system in an eye-scorching burst of hard light. Nobody paid the slightest bit of attention. The largest space battle in human history had been underway for hours. Zoe performed a rapid battle analysis.

‘Four carrier sites,’ she said. ‘I’m seeing targeted drops for Uranus, Saturn and Neptune, plus one outlier. The Uranus carrier site has harvesters reconverging on it already. They’re pulling the same trick as they did at Carter. We have to cut off their escape.’

‘Agreed,’ said Mark. ‘Then we can deal with the rest of this shit.’

He didn’t drop spin for an instant. Instead, he slammed them back into warp and brought the ship around to the Uranus arrival site as fast as he could in an arc that tested the limits of the vacuum-drive. The luminous shell around them sparked and wobbled as he pushed the envelope to the brink of tearing. Fast they might be, but vacuum-drive ships didn’t handle corners well.

He signalled the armada hovering behind him.

‘Overcaptain Tak,’ he said. ‘We’re moving to intercept an enemy exit point. They have human hostages. On no account can the enemy carrier be allowed to depart. I recommend immediate deployment of one-third of your task force on my mark.’

‘Understood and agreed,
Gulliver
,’ said Tak. ‘You have my consent.’

Mark dropped warp just light-seconds from the Nem convergence point and spun down his fronds just enough to let a part of their armada boost away in radial formation. At the same time, Zoe tight-beamed an info-dump of their situation to Fleet Command. The battle cruisers surged forward, fired warp-drones and blasted the carrier into atoms. With their exit cut off, the cruisers set about boxing in the harvesters.

Mark knew he couldn’t afford to stop to watch things play out. He pushed their spin rate back up, threw them into warp and arced around the system again, the drive straining badly as he headed as close to Saturn as he could reasonably get. He wished he could have flown straight across the system but he didn’t dare try. Like all forms of warp, the vacuum-drive was hopeless in dense space. The ionic clutter was simply too thick. It was actually faster to fly out and around, even though that meant distorting the warp field in ways it was never meant to be used. For the better part of an hour, they watched the envelope strain and flicker and prayed it wouldn’t crumple.

By the time Mark reached the second carrier, harvesters were already prepping to depart and this time they had a cloud of drone defence to back them up. Behind them, unmarked gunships traded fire with Nem raspberry-ships armed with g-ray batteries. Mark dropped the second portion of his armada straight into a fire-fight.

As soon as he released the ships, a wave of Nem drones headed straight for him.

‘Tak!’ Mark warned. ‘We can’t let our carrier be damaged.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Zoe. ‘I’m on it. These ships are still running vanilla Nem-cloaking. They’re
mine
.’

As he watched, the drones’ flight patterns changed. Instead of impacting, they slid inside the carrier’s envelope like willing sheepdogs. The other Nem-ships immediately started pumping out protocol-change warnings but by then the Nems had lost their edge.

One of the raspberries spontaneously split. The gunships hammered at the stuttering drones, cutting lanes of explosions through their ranks like chains of firecrackers. The remaining raspberries started gouging space with intersecting talons of g-ray fire.

‘Now get us out of here,’ said Zoe. ‘Unless you want to die.’

Mark piled the power back on and slipped away before the fight could trap him there.

Making it around to Neptune took another ninety minutes of nail-biting flight. He watched the third battle arena evolve in ridiculous fast-forward as the light-lag shrank and held his breath as the last carrier spun up to escape.

‘We lost,’ he said. ‘They’re getting away.’

Then, out of nowhere the
Ariel Two
surged upwards, blasting harvesters and drones alike in a frenzy of high-energy violence. Raspberries and Nem drones from all across the home system had already started converging on it.

‘Overcaptain Tak, do you see what I see?’

‘I see a capital ship in need of supporting fire,’ said Tak. ‘Preparing to deploy on your mark.’

Mark dropped warp as close to the fray as he dared. Tak’s ships dived out and fell on the enemy like feeding sharks. Nevertheless, two of the harvesters made it into the waiting arms of the carrier. Its fronds became a blur and the weird luminescence of the false-vacuum began to slide down across it.

Just when Mark felt certain their cause was lost, the
Ariel Two
’s boser lanced up, carving across the spreading vacuum-field in a blast at least half a second long.

The carrier’s envelope splayed open, unravelling across space, and the mutant space–time it contained spilled out. For a brief moment, something surreal and vaguely organic sent questing tendrils into the void, offering glimpses of an impossible geometry within. Then it flickered and was gone.

In the silence that followed, Mark messaged the
Ariel Two
.

‘Nice shooting,’ he said with a grin. ‘Nice to have you back on the team … Dad.’

Ann Ludik appeared in the reply window, her expression grave.

‘Wasn’t Will,’ she said, ‘but thanks anyway.’

Mark’s smile dropped. He felt a lurch of confusion and worry stabbed at him unexpectedly.

‘I’ll explain later,’ said Ann. There was something a little like pity in her eyes that made Mark scared.

‘No time for reunions!’ said Zoe. ‘We have one more carrier, remember?’

Mark dived back into helm-space. ‘Where is it?’

‘Calculating now,’ said Ash. ‘I’m extrapolating from the flight paths of the remaining harvesters.’

Mark’s battle visualisation lit up with a set of converging lines. The Nems weren’t wasting any time. From all across the system, harvesters were fleeing for their one remaining exit point.

‘Shit,’ he said. ‘That’s practically back where we started.’

‘Better get busy, then,’ said Zoe.

Mark reopened the channel to
Ariel Two
. ‘Ann, I need weapons support. We’re going after that last carrier. You coming?’

He sent her flight data, showing how to park the nestship inside the spinning array.

‘On it,’ said Ann.

Mark spread his skipping ropes wide, dropping spin almost to nothing. He needn’t have bothered. With a burst of surprising agility, the
Ariel Two
danced inside, leaving the fronds wobbling from gravity distortion.

‘Are we going or what?’ said Ann.

Mark ramped the spin up and headed out, cutting above the ecliptic and down again. As he dropped away from Sol faster than light, the harvesters all appeared to slide backwards on their flight paths. As he returned, they all rushed forwards, manoeuvring to leave with a manic ant-like deliberation. He counted down the seconds, watching the final carrier spin up. Most of the harvesters weren’t going to make it. However, nine of them already had.

Mark dropped warp just in time to see the carrier wink out. He bellowed his frustration, slamming the roof of his bunk.

‘They got away,’ said Ash.

‘Under the circumstances, this is not a fail,’ said Zoe. ‘The home system is intact. The number of lives lost is minimal. This is where we count our blessings.’ She flicked open the channel to the
Ariel Two
. ‘Sorry to bring you out here for no reason, Ann. With the carriers gone, the rest of the Nems can’t get out. But this entire system still has to be cleared otherwise the drones will swarm and build another.’

‘Understood,’ said Ann. ‘We’re on it.’

‘Wait,’ said Ash. He passed them a video feed.

Without the carriers, the remaining Nem ships appeared to be milling. They looked anything but aggressive.

‘They’re sending a message,’ he added.

In a video window, the face of Yunus Chesterford appeared.

‘Earth forces, we willingly surrender. Our peace crusade is postponed. We will await your further instructions with grace and patience. God be with you.’

He beamed as he said it, as if giving up was what they’d planned to do all along. Mark stared at the image in blank bewilderment. Yunus was
alive
? He checked the cameras in the lounge. Citra was watching the feed with a face drained of blood. Her eyes were wide open like a pair of empty bowls.

21:
RECKONING

21.1: MARK

Mark took a shuttle from the
Gulliver
to the IPS
Knid
, Admiral Baron’s home system command ship. It was essentially an armoured space station with habitat rings under full gravity, enormous g-ray batteries and suntap-powered conventional-thrust engines. The docking pod delivered him to an immaculately decorated executive waiting room, about ten minutes early for his meeting with Uncle Ira.

Mark paced up and down for about a minute before Ann arrived. He froze in his tracks as she came into the room, immediately recognising the roboteer signature that she manifested via the room’s network. It didn’t belong with the face he was looking at.

‘Want to tell me what happened?’ he said quietly.

Ann’s lean features gave nothing away. She sent him a memory dump. Mark knocked it back and groaned involuntarily as understanding smacked him like a mallet. Tears sprang to his eyes. The man who’d almost been his father was gone. All that was left of him lay inside Ann. The years of resenting Will’s presence in his life reversed themselves in a single heartbeat.

‘So he’s still in there?’ he said, his voice breaking.

‘A piece of him,’ said Ann. ‘He’s asking to speak with you. Is that okay?’

Mark frowned. Part of him didn’t want to face this. He fought down the urge to refuse and nodded once.

‘Okay,’ said Ann. ‘I’m going to let him drive for a bit. Hold on.’

Her face went slack. Then her expression changed. Somehow, the sad smile that arrived looked like Will’s, even though the face did not. Will looked down at his front, and then back at Mark.

‘Well, this is odd,’ he said.

‘You could say,’ Mark croaked.

He found himself so distraught that Will’s small attempt at levity just cut a larger hole in his heart. For all his faults, Will had been a huge part of Mark’s life. Only now did he understand how big a gap his loss would leave behind.

‘Is there a chance they’ll be able to put you back together?’

Will shrugged. ‘It’s not clear how separable I am from Snakepit at this point,’ he said. ‘I half-hoped that the real me would have made it out by now. That didn’t happen, so I don’t know what to tell you.’

Mark waved a strengthless hand. ‘Couldn’t you … I don’t know … just use your smart-cells to separate yourself from Ann? Build a clone or something?’

Will smiled. ‘I tried that once. Didn’t work so well. Plus this isn’t the real me you’re talking to – I’m borrowing a bunch of Ann’s subconscious functions just to hold together. The Transcended put a lock on me that prevents self-duplication. It’s surprisingly effective, even now. I’ll keep trying, of course. However, I’d still be in Ann. Her DNA has been rewritten to host me, and I can’t edit myself out of her without killing her in the process.’

‘Don’t you remember how you did it the first time?’

Will actually laughed. ‘Hell no. I was the size of a planet at that point. I had some extra resources. Still, right now we have more important things to work on. And Ann and I make a pretty good team.’

Mark had no idea what to say. He was talking to a ghost. He stared at the floor.

‘I saw the memory dump you filed,’ said Will. ‘I want you to know that I’m incredibly proud of you. I want you to know I’m going to stick to my word. I’ll make sure you get full ownership of your interface. You’re your own boss from here on out.’

Mark bit back a jag of powerful, pointless despair. ‘I appreciate the sentiment but I’m pretty committed to the Fleet at this point,’ he said. ‘There’s work to do.’

Will nodded. ‘I never should have pushed you as hard as I did. And I should have come clean with the truth about your biological parents a long time ago.’

Mark brushed the comment off. The resentment towards Will that he’d felt before Carter felt so distant and childish now. It had no place in the person he’d become. Instead, Will’s plight just lent fuel to Mark’s fire. The problem of Snakepit merely added another target to his crusade.

‘It’s old news,’ he said. ‘I know where you were coming from now. It’s in the past, anyway. I spent a lot of time being angry with you and not enough noticing what you were trying to give me.’

Will smiled. He reached out and grabbed Mark in a hug.

‘Definitely odd,’ said Mark.

‘That was Ann’s idea, not mine,’ said Will. ‘She thought you needed it.’

Despite the creeping discomfort, Mark felt something in him relaxing, something that had been wound tight for a very long time. He hugged back.

‘Maybe it’s just that Ann is nicer to hug than you are,’ he said.

‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Will.

The doors at the far end of the room opened. Ira Baron appeared, followed by a swarm of assistants, organic and otherwise. He took in the sight of them and looked confused for a minute.

Mark and Will spontaneously stepped apart.

Ira’s expression was grave. ‘Are you two done?’

Mark nodded.

‘Then you should follow me,’ said Ira. ‘The clock’s ticking.’

21.2: ANN

Ira shooed away his entourage and ushered Mark and Ann aboard a private pod with security updates scrolling on the walls.

‘Thank you both for your reports,’ he said. ‘In the six hours since the end of the battle, I can assure you that they’ve been studied extremely closely. Clip in, please. We’ll be dropping gees.’

Ann’s shadow borrowed her mouth. ‘Ira, where are you taking us? What’s this about? I assumed you’d want us on our way back to Tiwanaku by now with a hold full of antimatter bombs.’

If the admiral of the IPSO Fleet was unused to being addressed so informally, there was nothing in his manner to suggest it.

‘Your mission plans have been prepped already,’ said Ira. ‘And yes, I want you out there ASAP. But there’s something I need you to do first. I have the mouthpiece of the raiding fleet aboard – in a secure environment, of course. I’d like you to meet him … it. You’ve both had more direct exposure to this threat than the rest of us and that might be useful. Frankly, we’re making up our response to this as we go along. There are no procedures for situations like this one.’

The travel pod slid up out of the spin-ring, dumping gravity as it went, and passed down the spine of the ship.

‘How bad were our losses, sir?’ said Ann.

‘Surprisingly light, in-system,’ said Ira. ‘Earth and Mars lost a few thousand people to radiation burns. The damage to exposed surface environments was extensive. Earth will probably have to scrap its last surface biome park, but frankly it wasn’t looking that great anyway. Other than that, we’re okay.’ He exhaled deeply. ‘The outer system is a whole other issue. A lot of our real estate from Saturn outwards was harvested or burned and the dead or missing number in the hundreds of thousands. We have about two million in quarantine who we rescued from those harvester-ships.’ He shook his head. ‘That wasn’t pretty, by the way. I’ll spare you the details. And we have billions in damage, of course. About eighty per cent of those stupid floating palaces the sect Leading love so much were scorched and sucked dry. Local economic indicators are in free-fall. But frankly, the econ-SAPs can go fuck themselves. We’ve got bigger problems right now.’

Ann cringed inside. This was what all those years of careful planning had come to. This hideous mess. She couldn’t help but reflect on every moment of moral quandary she’d squirmed over. She felt ashamed that she hadn’t let her conscience guide her long ago.

‘Sir, what are you going to do with the League conspirators?’ said Mark. ‘I mean, there are hundreds of them. Are you going to arrest them all?’

Ann was glad he’d asked. It saved her from the pain of doing so.

‘Nope,’ said Ira. ‘I can’t spare the officers at this point. They’ll have to live with their sins for now. I’ll handle them after this threat is neutralised.’

‘So that’s it?’ said Mark. ‘They all just get off, scot-free?’

Ira fixed him with a hard glare. ‘Oh no, son. They’re going down. They just have to work for me first. In the meantime, everyone’s role in this will be kept quiet to minimise the chance of revenge killings from within the Fleet. Except Sam Shah. I’ll be handling Sam myself. Personally. Along with Parisa-fucking-Voss.’

The pod gained gravity again as it headed out along a narrow docking spar. At the end of it, if the wall-screens were to be believed, sat a drab little supply boat. The pod docked and the door slid open to reveal an extremely white room that looked exactly like what it was – a cross between a very high-tech scientific lab and a prison.

A couple of Vartian Institute technicians were in there, working with projector bubbles full of unreadably dense visualisations. And standing inside a transparent cylindrical cell in the centre of the room was Yunus Chesterford – or what he’d become.

The new Yunus was a giant of a man with a rugged physique and a shock of white professor hair. Tiger stripes of densely packed orange freckles covered his skin. He wore a skin-tight silver garment that left nothing to the imagination. Ann found the sight of him repulsive.

‘I’ve already spoken to this
creature
,’ said Ira. ‘Nobody else knows we’ve got him here. There’d be a riot. So far as the public are aware the invaders are already dead. But I wanted to give you both the chance to speak to … it … before we take next steps. You might be able to get something out of him that we’ve missed.’

Mark stepped up to face Yunus. Yunus stared at him with bright, unblinking eyes and a cryptic smile.

‘Welcome,’ said Yunus. ‘It is good to see you. I am glad that you have come.’

‘Do you remember me?’ said Mark.

Yunus nodded. ‘You are Captain Mark Ruiz of the IPS
Gulliver
. Of course I remember you. I remember how troubled you were. How much you hurt. I could spare you that.’

‘Do you remember Citra?’

Yunus nodded again. ‘You mean Citra Chesterford. Who was my wife. And a biologist. I have memories of her, too. She was also troubled. She curtailed her career on my behalf and it frustrated her very much. She doubted herself. You should bring her to me. We Photurians are not defined by the small tasks that we do. She would be happier with us.’

‘I’m not sure that’s true,’ said Mark. ‘Is there anything you’d like me to tell her?’

‘Yes,’ said Yunus, in the same blandly enthusiastic tone. ‘Tell her that happiness awaits. My people will seek her out and save her. She will know joy.’

‘I’m sure she’ll find that reassuring. Tell me, do you love her?’

Yunus spread his huge, prophetic hands. ‘Of course I love her. I love all mankind.’

‘I thought so,’ said Mark. He turned away, and then hesitated. ‘You mentioned God in your broadcasts, by the way. Do you still have faith?’

‘I have no need of faith,’ said Yunus. ‘I have certainty now. My God is the Body, and the Body is God. God is real and immortal. You will come to understand this, as will all humanity. Joy awaits those who grasp that truth.’

Mark frowned walked back to where Ann stood.

‘I’m done,’ he said. ‘It’s revolting.’

[
May I try?
] said Ann’s shadow.

Ann took a deep breath and let the ghost drive.

‘Why did you come here?’ said Will.

‘To save mankind,’ said Yunus.

‘Then why simply raid us at the edges? Why not stay and collect hosts?’

‘It was not the right time.’

‘I see,’ said Will. ‘When is that time?’

‘I do not need that knowledge.’

Will snorted. ‘Convenient. And how will it be accomplished?’

‘I do not need that knowledge.’

‘Really. And what about those people who don’t want to be saved?’

‘God is generous,’ said Yunus. ‘The unwilling will also be rescued.’

Will turned to look at Ira. ‘Do you have a deep microbial scan of the prison cell I could look at?’

Ira gestured at the technicians. ‘We know it’s exhaling bioweapons, if that’s what you’re worried about. The cell is fully contained. What you’re seeing is a surface hologram on a hermetic pod locked down by Vartian Institute protocols. Not even light gets out of that fucking box without us checking it first.’

Will examined the scan data. For a few short moments, Ann’s head filled with a barely comprehensible whirl of images and ideas. Then understanding started leaking into her mind like air through a poorly sealed hatch.

‘They’ve stopped,’ she said.

[
Right,
] said her shadow. ‘They’re not evolving any more,’ he said aloud. ‘Whatever it was about us that they wanted, they’ve got it. That’s good. It means they don’t stand a chance of reclaiming their homeworld.’

‘Why not?’ said Ira.

‘Snakepit will only let the Nems in if they can assert primacy,’ Will explained, ‘which they can’t do unless they constitute a new mutation. But Snakepit’s seen this variant already, and it lost. We still have no idea what happened on the surface, but we do know the Nems didn’t get their planet back. So they’re locked out now and that’s how they’ll stay.’

Yunus’s face fell. ‘You’re wrong. The Body will be returned to us.’

Will used Ann’s mouth to smile. ‘That hurts you, doesn’t it? That you can’t go home.’

‘It is only temporary,’ said Yunus.

‘It’s got to suck, being evicted from your own God. Knowing that it doesn’t want you any more.’

‘It is only temporary.’

‘I’m sure they told you that.’

Yunus’s face distorted for a moment, his mouth stretching wider than nature would have allowed.

‘It is only
temporary
!’

‘There’s not much to learn here,’ Will told Ira. ‘This is a machine, nothing more. I’ve met smarter transit pods.’

‘Our assessment also,’ said Ira. He turned to the Yunus-monster. ‘You attacked our home system,’ he said.

‘We sought to enlighten,’ said Yunus.

‘No, you sought to plunder. It’s my intention to seek out your kind and destroy them all. Do you have anything to say for yourself, or your kind, in your defence before we dismantle you for our edification?’

‘We will build a new human empire without strife,’ said Yunus. ‘It will be fair and it will be peaceful. And it will achieve what you never could.’