Nemesis (63 page)

‘That is most definitely
not
good,’ said Ann. ‘How far away are they?’

‘About thirteen AU.’

‘How long till their estimated departure?’ said Ann.

Koenig shook her head. ‘I’m not sure. Our SAP models have kind of given up. Brinsen is probably the best man we have on Nem swarm behaviour.’

‘Then get him up here, too,’ said Ann. ‘Now!’

Koenig mumbled into her visor.

[
Open a channel to the entire station, please,
] Ann told her shadow. [
These people need to be filled in.
]

[
Done.
]

While Voss stood there staring at her with exhausted contempt, Ann ushered a camera drone over and addressed the League.

‘People of the League,’ she said. Her voice echoed from speakers all across Snakepit Station. ‘There has been a change of plan. We always assumed the Nems represented a retaliation mechanism. Now, however, we know that’s not what they’re for. Their real purpose is to react to threats and incorporate their enemies’ weapons back into Snakepit’s reasoning matrix. In this case, the weapon they collected was human sentience. Like it or not, we have inadvertently given birth to a new alien species – one that apparently requires human minds as part of its operating system. It is now almost as intelligent as humanity and getting smarter all the time.

‘The Nems returned here to assert control over their homeworld and prepare it for the wholesale incorporation of the human race. Will Monet blocked that but the mutants are still out there. For whatever reason, they didn’t accept Will’s supremacy. I have to assume that means they’ve selected a new nest site: Earth.

‘As humanity’s acting ambassador for alien contact, I am hereby taking charge of this operation. This has become a game of species survival and the stakes are now so high that your political concerns must be set aside. As Will Monet’s envoy, I will personally vouch for every member of this organisation and ensure their protection from political fallout caused by the League’s work, with the exception of Parisa Voss and Sam Shah. I will shortly be leaving on the
Ariel Two
to attempt to prevent the Nem swarm departure. The League has a chance to redeem itself. We’re now the people best equipped and informed to defend the human race. Good luck, everyone. We’ll be back for the rest of you as soon as we can.’

Voss glared at her as she closed the channel. ‘Singling people out for punishment is a little petty, don’t you think?’ she said.

Ann glared at her. ‘This has nothing to do with punishment. You made poor leadership decisions and now you’re going to take responsibility for them. That’s how leadership works. I can assure you that I will be strictly factual in my report. I’ll even let you read it before I submit it to the IPSO tribunal.’

Jaco stepped in from the pod bay, a sick, guilty look on his action-hero face.

‘Ma’am,’ he said weakly.

‘Jaco,’ she said. ‘You’re familiar with Nem behaviour patterns. Take a look at these swarm vectors and tell me how long we have before the drones exit the system.’

She threw the data onto a screen for him to review. Jaco pored over it.

‘On one hand, they’ve got a lot of drones to carry,’ he said. ‘On the other, they came in with a nestship, so their carrier is likely already geared for a large envelope. I’d give them two hours at most.’

Ann glowered. It’d take them that long just to reach the out-system.

Kuril stumbled in between a couple of Spatials.

‘Release that man immediately,’ Ann snapped. The circuits in the walls echoed her command, turning her voice into a deafening electronic shout.

The Spatials stepped rapidly away from their charge without another word.

‘How are you?’ said Ann. ‘Did they hurt you?’

‘Oh, please,’ Parisa sneered.

‘I’m fine,’ said Kuril. ‘Interrogation wasn’t fun but I’m in one piece. The drugs have worn off, at least.’

‘I have one last favour to ask of you,’ said Ann.

Kuril’s eyebrows crept upwards. ‘You’re kidding. Another one?’

‘I need to you take command of the
Chiyome
for me. Jaco Brinsen will be your subcaptain. The command keys will be irrevocably cued to you. If you die, that ship will be floating in space until someone finds it, which at this rate may be never.’

Kuril let out a single ragged laugh and rubbed his untidy mop of hair.

‘Why me?’ he said.

‘Because right now you’re the only person I trust to be in charge of an invisible planet-buster,’ said Ann. ‘And if we get out of all this alive, I will do my best to make sure that ship stays yours. Your mission is to head straight to New Panama as fast as you can to muster support.’

She turned to Jaco Brinsen. ‘Jaco, are you prepared to accept that subcaptain position?’

‘Of course, ma’am,’ said Jaco. He sounded indignant. ‘I’m loyal to the greater cause of the human race. Hopefully you recognise that. I always have been. Before, that meant serving the League. Now it means cleaning up.’

Ann shook her head. Even now, Jaco Brinsen still managed to be sanctimonious and annoying. Unfortunately, he was also useful.

‘From the moment the League reveals itself, we’ll have a problem,’ said Voss. ‘Fingers will be pointed. Don’t assume the human race will automatically get behind us. Someone’s going to have to rally the team.’

‘Let me guess,’ Ann snarled. ‘You want that job. You think I should just let you leave with Jaco rather than make you come with me. And then, hopefully, I see you later and everyone’s friends again. Is that it?’

‘I’m proposing that you let me help,’ said Voss sharply.

‘No deal,’ Ann growled. ‘You’re coming with me in the
Ariel Two
whether you like it or not. We leave immediately.’

Ann’s second attempted shuttle crossing to the
Ariel Two
couldn’t have been more different from her first. This time, there were no drones to avoid or League soldiers to escape. Rather than being thrown around by Will’s evasives, the shuttle flew on a straight-line boost at three-point-eight gees of thrust. Ann could barely feel it.

Parisa Voss lay in the couch behind her looking ill from the persistent acceleration. But Ann’s attention wasn’t on her former boss. She spent the time fighting back the urge to scream while she watched the Nems readying for exit.

When they reached the
Ariel Two
, Nelson Aquino was waiting for them in the docking pod. His bloodshot eyes suggested he’d taken Will’s apparent loss harder than the rest of them. He looked at Ann oddly.

‘Welcome, Captain Ludik,’ he said. ‘Apparently you have Will’s abilities now? You’re taking over as ro-captain?’

‘Correct,’ said Ann as she drifted through the lock. She felt sure, suddenly, that they’d never see Will again. Taking over the
Ariel Two
and leaving without him held a kind of horrible finality. ‘It’s not what I want,’ she said, ‘but there’s no time to grieve. Hold on, please.’

They took the docking pod down the hundred-kilometre drop to the primary habitat core. She tore away the safety limits on the pod and pasted everyone to the floor for the duration of the journey.

During the descent, Will’s shadow integrated her with the ship. As it came alive in the back of her mind she could feel the freshness of its repairs like fading bruises under her own skin. The mighty vessel’s antimatter reserves had been filled to bursting. They were ready.

Without her shadow there to mediate, accommodating a starship in her head would have been an intolerably alien sensation. Ann forced herself to accept it.

‘Everyone strap down,’ she told the crew as she reached the core. ‘Now!’ As soon as everyone clipped in, Ann punched them towards the swarm at full tilt. She kept a close eye on everyone’s vitals as she piled on the warp, trying not to kill anyone before she got there.

While she approached the swarm-carrier, it completed its packing assembly and began to increase spin. A dense cluster of Nems sat between the two discs, inside the skipping-rope fronds. They looked like a nest of waiting bees. She watched in despair as the weird aura of Nem-warp pasted itself over the plasma shell created by the spinning fibres.

‘Fire!’ she told her shadow. ‘Kill that thing!’

The
Ariel Two
fired every g-ray it had. But Ann already knew she was too late. The image of the spinning ship that reached her was still thirty seconds old by the time she came close enough to fire. The carrier winked out as if it had never been there, not even leaving a trail to follow.

Ann sagged in the captain’s couch, staring at the dead space that had once held the mutant swarm. Her mouth felt dry.

‘Captain Aquino, any guess on their exit vector?’ she said.

‘From the orientation of their warp-field, I’d say Tiwanaku,’ he said. ‘Almost certainly.’

That was a small mercy, at least. She’d have fewer drones to fight back in the home system, at least.

‘Everyone stay buckled,’ she said. ‘We’re headed for Earth and it’s going to be rough.’

19.3: WILL

At human scale again and struggling for virtual breath, Will stood on a sea of white nothingness and saw Rachel, his dead wife, walking towards him out of a wall of blinding fog. He knew immediately that it wasn’t her. The Transcended had borrowed her form again, just as they had years ago.

‘You,’ Will growled. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Watching,’ she said. ‘As always.’

‘You did this, all this, didn’t you? You made this place.’

‘Of course.’ She smiled gently. ‘Who did you expect?
Another
galaxy-spanning civilisation?’

‘You
killed
me,’ he breathed.

‘Only after a fashion,’ said the Rachel-thing. ‘We’re still talking, aren’t we?’

‘But why?’ said Will.

He never thought he’d be able to truly hate something with Rachel’s face. Now he knew different.

‘We can’t have what you know leaking out,’ she said. ‘Snakepit shouldn’t know, not until much, much later.’

‘But
why
?’ said Will. ‘Why
lie
? Why build an entire world only to deceive it?’

‘To make what comes next easier,’ she said. ‘It’s better if those entities you call the Nems don’t know their own origin. It makes it easier for them to become humanity.’

Will squinted at her, uncomprehending. ‘Become
us
?’

‘That’s right. Why do you suppose they abandon operational complexity once they mirror a new species? It’s because they don’t need it any more. They become that which they encounter, with a few important adjustments, of course. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice.’

Will gawped. There had been clues to what was happening after all, just so subtle he hadn’t noticed them. The cells’ weird adaptations he’d seen in Pari’s base. The curious behaviour of the biosphere Ann had described. Even the curator’s own words. He’d seen all those hints and blanked them, dragged along by the tide of events.

‘They’ll mimic your race, feed on it and then improve upon it,’ said the Transcended. ‘That’s hard for them to do effectively if they’re aware they’ve been manufactured to achieve that end. They must believe in themselves, just as you do. They need a vision, even if it’s a false one.’

The import of her words seeped into Will’s mind in slow, ugly stages.

‘You knew we’d release the Nems,’ he said. ‘You were counting on it.’

‘Of course,’ she said with a laugh. ‘In our experience, an intelligent species never ignores a free weapon for long, even with prior warnings. It’s a game-theoretic imperative we find it useful to exploit.’

Will shrank inside. The Transcended had arranged all this.

‘You knew we’d come here. You knew Earth would be at risk.’

‘Yes, but please don’t grant us powers of prediction we don’t have. This process never pans out the same way from species to species. And your outcome has been particularly surprising. We’ve never seen a messenger-agent such as yourself arrive so late in the game, or push so hard once they were involved. Your appearance at the last moment astonished us, as did the choices you made. The human capacity to surprise delights us, and proves the correctness of our choice.

‘In the grand scheme, though, the order of events matters little. As you know, we vet for appropriate species using the suntap and employ messenger-agents to encourage compliance in those edge cases where intervention appears worthwhile. You did a terrific job of that, by the way. Humanity has been far more predictable since your involvement. Then, if a species survives vetting, we allow it to reach what you might call a
gingerbread world
. The gingerbread world then neutralises any messenger-agents if they haven’t been disassembled already. So you can console yourself with the knowledge that your dismantling was inevitable, at least. You were never going to leave. Gingerbread worlds are very welcoming, you see. Their standards for integration are, you might say, rather loose.’

Will felt a surge of embarrassment. The curator had handed him power on the basis of a handful of files. He’d thought himself so clever. It had never occurred to him that she might not have a choice.

‘And every gingerbread world produces cuckoos. Inevitably, they are released,’ said the Transcended. ‘A species’ own capacity for constructive self-modification which we filter for at level one becomes a tool for the cuckoos to utilise at level two. Of course, only cuckoo-compatible species are allowed to get this far.’

‘Cuckoos,’ said Will stupidly.

He’d spent every day since the war believing in the Transcended. Believing in hope and straining his life to further that ideal of development and peace. Was this what all that striving had been for? To release some plague of usurpers to feed on the human race?

‘Why?’ he croaked. ‘If you wanted us dead, why not wipe us out the way you did the Fecund?’

‘Because we don’t want you dead,’ she said, her eyes bright. ‘We want you for something
wonderful
.’

Will lashed out at her. His fist connected only with air.

The Rachel-thing cocked her head. ‘You’ve become a destabilising influence, Will Monet,’ she said. ‘You should be very proud of that. It’s rare. You’ve produced patterns of behaviour we’ve never seen before. And our memories are long, believe me. So rather than taking you out of play, we’re leaving you in the game, after a fashion. That’s a risk, of course, but there’s evidence it’s worth it. So you’ll be staying here and integrating with the planet as she desires. We’ll take the blocks out to enable that. She’ll be delighted, I assure you.’