Originator (52 page)

Pause. “
You're right, that is weird
.”

“You know what it's like?” said Sandy as it occurred to her. “It's like a bunch of teenagers who've watched a war movie and thought that looks like fun, and so decide to build a modern army. And so they look around for some weapons, find something someone else built before, and copy it. No idea of why it all fits together like that, or what it's for, just blind faith that they need weapons, and this is a weapon, so they'll build it.”

“
So . . . your theory was that organic Talee didn't survive the catastrophe. That synthetic Talee brought them back from extinction, right?
”

“Right. So now I'm wondering, what if that was recent? I recall Ari saying that in a total species wipeout, if you had enough birthing tanks and reproductive tech, you could turn a few hundred individuals into millions within the space of a few generations. And from there, millions into billions isn't so hard. Two groups of Talee explains why their tactics suddenly changed, so what if . . . what if the organic Talee aren't here to punish humans at all? What if they're here to punish their own synthetics, and we just got in the way?”

“
You're saying . . . you're saying this is some kind of Talee civil war?
”

“Dammit, what have you got looking at Pantala right now? Can you see any signs of activity elsewhere on the planet, something the Talee were looking for over the last month?”

“
We're looking at everything, Sandy, but planets are big, and this one's magnetism and atmospheric dust are disagreeable with our scanners
.”

“League maps are better than ours—pull their damn station apart, see if they've got any better maps on Pantalan geography. Whatever they're looking for isn't in Droze, so it must be somewhere else . . . but they had to shut down Droze to access it, because otherwise Droze would have stopped them. I'm betting it's old and somewhere hard to find . . . plenty of blowing sand on this dirtball, over a few thousand years things can disappear real good.”

“
Sandy, League Fleet's demanding full access to Droze. They say thanks, but they'll take over now, they'll be in position to put a shuttle down in a few hours
.” Which meant they weren't exactly rushing in and were being careful . . . but in the circumstances, it was fast enough.

“Tell them we have reason to believe there are Talee agents still present here. With our upgrades we're invulnerable for the moment, but League won't be. Tell them if they come down here in force, they'd better bring some comfortable pillows.”

A delayed smirk on the screen. “
They won't be pleased
.”

“The golden rule of my life,” Sandy said sourly, “if League are pleased with me, I'm doing it wrong.”

“
Let me get this straight, and I want to hear it from you. What do you think we're facing here?
”

“I think organic Talee are the rebellious teenagers who got tired of the synthetics running their lives and threw a tantrum. Explains why their fighting style sucks, why they're brash and stupid with foreign relations—they're sticking it to mum and dad and learning the hard way that mum and dad might have had a point. Add to that being terrified of this mental disorder of theirs that Cai described, and I'll bet Cai was right, and they're after that technology most of all before it spreads. But I also don't think Cai was telling the whole truth.”

Reichardt exhaled hard as she spoke, the picture breaking into light static as he ran a hand through his hair. “
Well, that's just great. Fleet has this carefully constructed textbook of what Talee are like—they're cautious, they're meticulous, they're clever and rational. And now you tell us that organic Talee are actually none of those things, and that we've been dealing with synthetics all this time. And now the organics are presumably becoming the majority once more, as will always happen with organics because we breed so fast, and that majority are a bunch of petulant, drug-taking, rough-housing school students?
”

“Let's hope that's overstating it.”

“
What do you think we're looking for on Droze? Some kind of base?
”

“Some kind of very old base, or bases. Chancelry discovered Talee outposts here. My own GIs, Kiet's bunch from Pantala, were living in caves the Talee had used a long time ago . . . but there was no technology there, we've gone over all of that before. What we don't know is if this was a base of synthetic Talee or organic. This system is a long way from Talee main space, so it seems it survived their catastrophe, or mostly. This is where the seeds remain that weren't burned in the fire. Seeds that are thousands of years old and hold the key to knowledge that was lost millennia ago. That's what I think the
organics are here to find, something that the synths were keeping from them. What and why, I've no idea.”

Reichardt pursed his lips, thinking about that. The delay lasted longer than light-speed suggested it should. “
Wow
,” he said finally. “
You know, Kresnov, I think I've done pretty well following you around all this time, saving your ass. I mean, I've got to see some pretty far-out stuff
.”

“Find that damn base,” Sandy said wryly. “We might not have seen anything yet.”

An hour later, Home Guard began lobbing makeshift mortars over the walls. Encouraged by the lack of a more typical devastating response, they started lobbing more and hammering heavy machine gun fire at the visible corporate zone buildings. Doing so under corporate rule would have seen them, and several hundred innocents, immediately incinerated. But now it was playtime for fools.

“Shouldn't we do something to stop that?” Poole asked as they climbed into their hoppers to go attend to the Dhamsel perimeter guard's latest problem. Another explosion echoed, somewhere distant. Then another, nearer.

“Can't shoot them without killing the civvies they're hiding behind,” said Sandy. “Let them shoot, it's not like they'll hit anything.”

“Dunno about that,” said Poole, firing up his power core. “Idiots always get lucky. You think they even know that the last bunch in here were Talee?”

“If all the corporate zone civvies ran into the outer zones to hide, they'll know.” She tested feedback, a flex of the arms. “Thing is, they hate Federation nearly as bad as League. They're probably fine with Talee.” Outside the building lobby, they fired up thrusters and leaped for the Dhamsel wall.

Below the ten-meter-tall reinforced wall were a series of bunkers and concrete trenches. Sandy and Poole descended by a trench where Lieutenant Duana awaited in his hopper suit, while an unoccupied suit stood nearby.

“Private Tulloch's in the bunker,” Duana said with faceplate raised. “The defensive systems are working; they're just not patching into central systems, so we can't control it yet. Tulloch thinks he can do it.”

“But you had something?” Sandy asked.

“Yeah.” A shell whistled over nearby. “Got a visual myself, didn't tacnet it, it's not tactical. But I thought you'd like to see.”

A flicker as Duana's systems patched into hers and an image appeared on her visor display. Zoomed, first-person visual, a bit shaky. It was the far side of the wall, taken from this side, looking down and out. The first several blocks of what had used to be Droze buildings were gone, torn away after the Crash when the corporations had bulldozed a clear space for defence. A hundred meters of kill-zone into which previously anything that wandered unauthorised was dead. Beyond that, deserted buildings, not bulldozed but crawling with killer droids. Those buildings blocked any line-of-sight from the buildings that
were
occupied and provided cover for swarms of easily re-tasked robots that could just as easily fan out as hold the line, if required.

But now, Duana's visual zoomed on the base of one of those buildings by the corner of a main road . . . and she saw them, behind the burned-out wreck of a car. Kids, peering at the walls. Looking both scared and hopeful, and now debating with each other. Even now another one ran over, no more than seven, in dirty old pants and sneakers. Droze street kids, the city had plenty. These ones seemed to have figured out that something had changed, and there might be something on the other side of the wall worth risking everything for.

“Fuck,” said Sandy with feeling. “We're sure all the defensive grids are down?”

Duana nodded. “They're safe, but they don't know that. They're taking a hell of a risk.”

Sandy shook her head. “No, street kids here are smart. They'll have noticed the defender bots' behaviour changing under the Talee, I don't know if the Talee were still tasking them to shoot at people, but they'll have been different. And now the attack's come through and all the bots are silent, they know the zone's changed hands.”

“You think they know it's Federation?” asked Poole. Machine gun fire, from somewhere farther away. Tacnet showed heavy rounds, well out of accurate range, streaking over the perimeter. Accuracy wasn't their goal, just noise. A single missile from her backrack could have silenced them. “You're kind of famous here, you beat Chancelry, took over their HQ. And they'll know Danya, Svet, and Kiril went with you.”

Sandy stared at him with dawning desperation.

“Might get a kid dreaming,” Poole finished. “And you know kids can dream.”

“Fuck,” Sandy repeated. She didn't like this at all. “Our protocol is to always inform the civvie population what's happening to them, when possible. I have to tell them the Federal Security Agency has taken the corporate zone for now. But if I tell them that, we'll have street kids and other desperates running for our gates, asking for a ticket to Callay.”

“I would,” said Duana.

“Yeah, me too. And fucking Home Guard will call them traitors and start shooting them, you watch.”

“You think?” With the wide-eyed disbelief that a lot of younger GIs showed for cynical predictions of human behaviour.

“Yeah, I think. Look, we stay quiet for now. Lieutenant, get those kids in here. Don't go looking for more, but if they do show up, get them all in, get them sent back to Dhamsel HQ, find some armoured runabout for transport in case one of these mortars gets lucky. And if Home Guard even
look
like they're gonna shoot at them, you fucking toast them first, got it?”

“Yes, Commander.”

“Tickets to Callay are pretty expensive,” Poole suggested, looking dubious.

“Federation's rich,” Sandy muttered. “If we can afford to carry troops and ammo all the way here, we can afford to carry a few kids back.”

“
Commander?
” Tacnet showed it was Williams, farther along the wall. “
Take a look at this
.”

An image appeared: Williams's visual feed. It showed a man, in plain civilian clothes, walking across the bulldozed kill-zone toward the next entry gate along. Behind him, dragged by one hand, was another man, hauled by his collar through the dust. The ease with which the weight was pulled, for so little sacrifice in posture, indicated the walking man was a GI. And his cargo, so unceremoniously hauled, was . . .

“Well,” said Poole, viewing the same feed. “Looks like we found Chairman Patana.”

Sandy and Poole sealed up and ran, nearly a kilometre along the inner wall, saving their thrusters and not drawing extra attention to that gate. At the gate, more soldiers in hopper armour stood back, while the personnel gate alongside the big vehicle gate was opened. Through it walked the man, dragging the Dhamsel CEO behind him. He dumped Patana and stood calmly before them.

Sandy lifted her faceplate once more and knelt, rifle butt down on the dirt for stability. The GI was African-looking, broad-faced, and handsome. His hair was worn in that series of spikey studs that African hair could attain. She didn't know if that hairstyle had a name. Svetlana would know, being a student of such things. But thinking of Svetlana was a mistake, because suddenly she missed her so badly her eyes watered.

“Who are you?” she asked him.

“Commander Kresnov,” the man greeted her, in that very calm, intelligent way only a high-des GI could. Any GI that high-des, and in the Federation, she'd know. That left two options, and if this was a League GI, he'd be ISO, and ISO weren't about to just hand her an asset like Patana. That left one. “I've brought you a gift.”

Sandy looked at Patana. A slim, dusky man, half-conscious in a dirty suit, shirt ripped and tie long gone. “I've been given better,” she said darkly. “What's the trade?”

The man smiled. It was a wry smile, edged with darkness. “Perhaps I misunderstand the human custom. Is there always a trade with a gift?”

“Among friends and family, no. Among people like us, always. I'm sure Talee are the same.”

It was a bold statement, but the Talee-GI inclined his head, not arguing. Biologists had discovered that different life-forms evolving in similar environments ended up following very similar evolutionary paths. Sandy was certain that just as evolution was evolution anywhere in the galaxy, so were politics and power.

“I come to you as a friend. I have no alliance to those who previously occupied the corporate zone. But I think you already know that.”

“A friend of ours explained some things to us,” Sandy agreed. “He went by the name of Cai. Perhaps amongst his own people he went by a different name.”

“Cai is known to us. How does he fare?”

“He died. Defending us and his investment in us.” The man's face fell. “He was brave, and we owe him a debt. I owe him personally.”

“‘Debt' is our custom too. I'm sad to hear he's gone, though he knew it was a dangerous task when he took it. ‘Duty,' I believe, is another common concept between us.”

“It is,” Sandy agreed. She hiked one armoured thumb back toward the Dhamsel HQ. “Your organics are becoming unruly. Can't you control them anymore?”