Fear the Future (The Fear Saga Book 3) (44 page)

Chapter 48: The Forgotten

Birgit heard about the coup as a data package. Minnie, understanding as ever, did not bother her mother, even in the face of such a profound betrayal by those she had trusted most. Birgit would read about it in more detail soon enough, and would reach out to her daughter, talk to her, comfort her, but for now she had too much to do.

They were home now, she had caught her man and brought him back. For now they focused on recovering. Rob was injured, but alive. The module was grounded and secure, if awfully small all of a sudden. She tended to Rob’s shattered shoulder, trying to keep him comfortable. His body remained unconscious, inanimate as it tried to heal the tearing wound he had suffered under the rigors of terrible g-force.

His mind was able to remain active enough, though, and in the form of their only remaining wrecker he worked outside the remaining module, checking and rechecking their tethers, and preparing for their next move. They could not walk to the IST. There was no meaningful gravity on this rock, huge as it seemed, and their tethers were not long enough to reach around to where the massive alien artifact lay.

So they would move their home there, in its entirety. It would be a slow, painstaking process, probably taking months, but for this all to have been worthwhile they needed to be able to get inside the mighty device, to penetrate it. Once there, they would work with what John and Quavoce had been able to tell them about the machine and try to subvert it to their will.

But for now they would pause and recover, like their distant cousins on Earth. Recover from the shock and the loss, from the truth and the pain. They would enjoy, they hoped, a time of relative calm, of some certainty.

- - -

Wednesday God awoke with a start. After he and Friday had exhausted their mission parameters waiting for further orders from their commanders, they had eventually succumbed to the requests from Mother, and ceded control of the Skalms, if with great reluctance.

At least now they were truly together again, in Wednesday’s room at Home, and they smiled at each other.

“Wow!” said Friday, sitting back on his haunches and laughing with an infectious giddiness.

Wednesday beamed, wide-eyed. “I know. Wow!”

Friday looked at his friend, “
So
much better than the simulations.”

Wednesday quietly acknowledged the admission, and the statement behind that simple sentiment, Friday’s way of admitting that his friend had been right without actually having to say it.

They looked around, expectantly, and then Friday said, “Well, what next?”

There was a moment’s silence and then a familiar voice said, “That is up to you.”

They turned to the door and saw Mother standing there, and another woman, both smiling with that enduring patience both boys now knew well.

The boys’ looks of patent curiosity and complete trust were endearing. Endearing, Minnie thought, and profoundly tragic.

“We have something to tell you both,” said Mother. “Something that you already guessed at, Wednesday, to some extent. Once we have told you about it, you are going to have to make a decision. It will be a big decision, but it won’t be a permanent one, and you will be able to revisit it whenever you want in the future.”

The boys looked confused. This was turning into a very strange day indeed. But the two Minds standing at their door knew that it was about to get much, much stranger for them. For they needed to know the truth. They needed to know that they were not really little boys anymore.

They were still young, and in their minds they were still the same two friends that had shared a cot back in their orphanage in North Korea. And in this world, this virtual place, all that was still true, that was who they were. But as Minnie and Mynd uncovered more of the conspiracies that had come to a head in District One, they had found the real victims here, in District Two, in a darkened basement of Dr. Ramamorthy’s laboratory, where hundreds of young children’s brains hung suspended in plasma, wired into the system, disembodied and disenfranchised.

They would try to rebuild their bodies, but it would take time, and they had no idea whether they could really do it, and what measure of life and humanity they could really return to these lost children, these orphan pilots. For this had been Neal’s secret weapon, both against internal uprising and in the coming war. Children younger than even Banu had been when Amadeu had inducted her. Open minds, blank slates, their very innocence being their greatest asset as they were molded and formed into the perfect pilots, the ultimate interstellar warriors.

These were the orphan pilots. They were Earth’s greatest achievement and its most terrible atrocity.

- - -

Far away, Neal and Ayala sat in silence in the hold of a StratoJet en route to this very island. He had hoped to keep the school secret until the very end. He knew its discovery would bring instant and utter revulsion from all he had ever held dear. He had hoped to keep it secret until the final battle, when the victory the children would hopefully have helped secure would at least have been able to justify his crime.

Failing that he had planned to use the children to rule until the war was over, to force the world to do as he knew must be done. He sat in silence and thought of all he had lost. And in the depth of that darkness he instinctively reached out his hand for Jennifer, always there, always helping him get through this interminable ordeal. But not now. Not ever again, Neal knew that. He could only hope to never see her again, and never have to see in her eyes the hatred and disgust she must now feel for him.

Neal breathed deeply and hung his head.

And while Minnie and her small circle silenced the two opposing conspiracies, the world, ignorant of the dangers that so many had faced in the last two days, watched the missile-mine swarm rush outward into the night on its long journey. They hoped the salvo would find its mark; they hoped.

Interval F: A Different Approach

“Go!” shouted Quavoce, and they were off. To-Henton accelerated ahead almost immediately, his personal battlesuit, recreated in the sim in faithful detail, giving him more speed than Quavoce’s.

They ran toward an obstacle course, one that changed and refreshed itself constantly, one originally designed to test marines as they prepared for combat, but used in reality more by the wealthy, the self-titled nobility, as they tested themselves and sought to prove their worth to anyone pretentious enough to care.

Both their suits had the additional leg joint at the bottom, giving them an extended, amplified foot motion that significantly increased their speed. But Quavoce’s suit’s legs were shorter than To-Henton’s, which, among other aspects of his suit’s design, sacrificed pure speed in favor of greater agility.

Quavoce watched as To-Henton stretched out ahead, approaching the course proper. But soon he would have his chance to catch his rival, in the closeness of the course.

He forged onward, into the coming challenge, steeling himself before diving headlong at the morphing web that represented the first obstacle. As he leapt at the great semi-structure, he studied its shifting form. Looking for purchase. There, two lines intersecting as they moved past each other. He would grab hold there.

At the last moment he saw as To-Henton connected above him, and saw the ripple from the other man’s contact surge outward across the surface. He cursed as his intended landing spot moved out of reach, forcing him to change tactics at the last moment. He was forced to catch the line with his inverse knee, instead of his hand, clenching to hold onto it.

He would not be able to stop himself completely, so he wouldn’t try. Passing through the yawning gap in the netting that had threatened to be his downfall, he felt the tension come to his leg as he was slung downward. He let himself go, even pulling himself in to a ball as he passed under his own leg, and back through the netting once more, at speed now. At the last moment he released his leg, extending himself, and felt as he was flung outward and upward, his momentum now redirected.

It was his turn to surprise his opponent, and he studied his angle in the seconds before reconnection. There, he saw it and lunged out for it, grasping with all his might and shouting through his suit comms. The shout was not only a voicing of his effort, it was a distraction. A distraction for To-Henton who glanced downward, expecting to see his friend plummeting back to ground.

Instead he saw as Quavoce, suddenly far closer than he should have been, connected with an intersection of the shift-net and wrenched at it. Only just in time did he reassess his position and catch himself, darting his attention back to his own hands and feet as the net bucked in front of him, threatening to shake him loose.

He laughed with the thrill of it as he successfully saved himself and set to climbing once more.

“Nice try, you slippery little …” shouted To-Henton, his words trailing off as he focused on the task at hand. He had a lead, not as much of one as he had hoped for, though, and he was not one to underestimate his opponent. Not here, and not in life either.

They were friends and To-Henton trusted Quavoce, there was no doubt about that. But whether Quavoce still trusted To-Henton was another question altogether. In truth, To-Henton meant his friend no harm, none whatsoever. He liked the Mantilatchi, loved him even. If it was as common-place to join with another man in his own society as it was in, say, the Nomadi tribes, he would have suggested that to Quavoce a long time ago, such was his affection for him.

But it was not, and they had not, and so, though they had remained friends, they had also, it seemed, become rivals. Rivals for something Quavoce had never even really wanted, thought To-Henton, as he reached the top of the shift-net and flung himself over, giving one last parting rattle to it as he went.

What was really going on between Quavoce and Princess Lamati was beyond him, but it had been going on, well, on and off, for far too long now to be discounted as merely a fling. He judged his leap downward and jumped, kicking outward and downward in a calculated dive that would have faltered a fainter heart.

He glanced at his friend as he fell past, hot on his tail still, and coming up fast. It was not that he would begrudge the man a union with the princess, or even that he really wanted one himself, despite the very real power it would give him and the Eltoloman nation he represented.

There was a time when he and his fellow ministers back in the Eltoloman Parliament had thought that their best route lay with a marriage of their close ally Quavoce with the Lamat Princess. But as that had come to seem ever more unlikely, they had changed tactics, and somewhere along the way To-Henton had come to see that marriage as his right, his destiny.

He grabbed out with both hands to grasp a passing strand of the net as he went by, setting parameters on both claws to detach automatically if he could not connect with his feet as well. At these speeds, even his machine claws might be ripped free by the sudden rending, and he would need them if he hoped to keep his lead through the next stages of the treacherous course he now felt himself on.

- - -

Princess Lamati stood and stretched. She was naked, and almost happy.

She looked down at her empty bed. Yet another night alone, after an evening of athletic but, she feared, regretted sex with the man she hoped to pair with. As the afterglow had faded, he had left, as he so often did.

He was her lover, no doubt about that. And he was her prospect, she had made that clear early on. She wanted him to enter contract with her, and to begin negotiations for mutual progeny design, both artificial and real. Even if she had tried to keep it some kind of secret it would have been obvious to all but the simplest pundit and political observer that she was pursuing him.

She was seen with him often. He was gentile and considerate enough to never spurn her request to kneel by him, or eat at his circled table, but nor was he moving forward. His misgivings were all too real. And, she admitted only to herself, they were not without foundation, she could acknowledge that at least, but only here, to herself.

But that said, she could not wait for much longer. She needed a union. She had commitment from another, commitment that would, she believed, survive a more public unionification with the Mantilatchi, such was her hold over that state’s leader. But if Quavoce was truly going to continue to refuse her, she was going to have to make a decision. And she was going to have to make it sometime soon.

She sighed. Not now, though, not yet.

“Schney!” she barked.

He appeared at her bedside. He had been waiting for the past two hours for her to wake. She rarely got up much before sunrise, but on the rare occasion she did, it behooved him to not only come quickly, but to be prepared and compos mentis when he got there.

“What’s going on, Schney?” she said with disdain. She hated his name. It was common, in both senses of the word, just like him. He was, she knew, an underhanded little shit of a man, but he was resourceful, and she had rewarded him just enough to buy his loyalty, just enough to tie his destiny to hers. And once he was loyal, if only to his own continued success, then his lack of scruples served her purposes. Her last assistant, Brim, had suffered from an inconvenient conscience that had eventually won him an unpleasant end.

Well, unpleasant for him. Sar had rather enjoyed it. As Schney deftly and diffidently gave his update on the latest comings and goings around the fleet, she listened. She listened and she stretched, she listened and she yawned, she listened and she passed wind.

But she
was
listening. She was more attentive and careful than even she liked to believe, such was the depth of her deceit. She closed her eyes as he droned on, but there were sometimes kernels of importance in there, kernels you might not even realize were important. One such kernel was about to appear.

“… have appointed a new military oversight committee that …”

“Wait. Go back.
Who
did you say has appointed a new … ‘military oversight committee’?”

“The Hemmbar Archivists, Princess,” replied Schney, before going silent.

The princess was pensive a moment, then said, “Why, Schney, would the academics need a military oversight committee?”

Schney did not blunder into an answer. He was diligent, no one could fault him for that, and so he considered the question before replying. “Their purpose here, they claim, is to catalogue the history of humanity up until their coming extinction, and the details of the conquest, and finally to establish a hub of archival for the new world.”

He saw impatience start to flare on her face, as it had a tendency to do with an abundance only exceeded by its lack of forewarning, but he was getting to his point. “They claim the committee is to be dedicated to the war effort in particular. What is interesting is that, barring the notably minimal feed of data from our destination, we have had nothing but the prelude to the war effort for them to catalogue this entire time.”

“So …?”

“
So
, your grace, one has to wonder, what has changed that they would now find the war effort … of greater interest?”

“Quite,” she said, somewhat mollified by this cogent codification of her own misgivings.

After a moment’s thought she went on. “Have the AM perform a complete analysis of all communications with the Hemmbar over the last two years, more if that seems necessary to identify a set of probable causes for this change.”

Schney was nodding. Nodding and making note of the request to pass on as soon as he was done here.

“And … let’s invite the head of this … military oversight committee for a meeting. We can tell them of our own preparations, well, most of them, anyway.”

Schney nodded once more, and waited a moment. He knew her tone. She was dismissing him. But woe betide him if he left too soon, if he dared misinterpret, or heaven forbid preempt one of her countless unspoken rules.

He saw her expression change, though, and in a flash he was bowing backward and vanishing as he did so, as was his style. Leave her with diffidence, arrive with subjugation. Notes she appreciated. He calmed himself. He loved her, he told himself. He served her, he told himself. He must never let his hatred show, he must suppress it, banish it from his mind. She was his mistress, his burden, and his salvation. He would serve her as long as it served him.

He contacted the AM and set to work.

- - -

The final leg of the race was closer than To-Henton would have liked, but he was elated anyway. He had not needed to beat Quavoce here, he had needed to stay competitive, close enough in the tight spaces where Quavoce excelled so that he could use his greater speed in the final sprint to the finish line.

Quavoce saw it too. A lesser man might have resorted to lesser means in such a situation, veer away from friendly sabotage into outright attack. But such tactics, however effective, only deflated any victory that came from them anyway. This was a race, a test of speed and agility, not a battle sim.

He felt the air on his battlesuit’s face as he broke free from the final obstacle, a soupy swamp filled with cling-reeds that needed to be fought through, preferably working down into its depths to cut through the bases of the reeds rather than trying to rip through the fatter stems closer to the surface.

It was with very real relief that Quavoce extricated himself from the morass and dug in for the final run, gripping at the open ground and driving outward with all his might, free now, out in the open, and ahead, if only for a moment longer.

He sensed as To-Henton broke into his own sprint. He worked hard, adding every ounce of strength to push his suit faster, but his instincts told him it was too late.

To-Henton would win this one, then, thought Quavoce as the other man pulled level and began to eek out a lead, laughter coming through the suit comm. Not unpleasant laughter, not mocking. It was an achievement to beat Quavoce. He was a fierce competitor. But he was not a sore loser. He did not begrudge To-Henton his victory.

Not here, not now. But …

Why Quavoce continued to stay in their other race he did not know. Maybe it was his very love for his old friend To-Henton that did it. Maybe, he tried to tell himself, he wanted to try and save To from a loveless union with the dangerous Sar Lamati. Or maybe, Quavoce knew, the fact that To wanted her made her seem more … made it all seem somehow … made him crave …

No.

No. He did
not
want to unite with Sar. Allegiance was one thing. But a contract of marriage was another altogether. It was too often sullied by ambition. He would not do that. But how to convince To to stay away as well, how to do that, Quavoce did not know.