The Expendable Few: A Spinward Fringe Novel (22 page)

“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try,” replied Emiss. “We have the capsules, we even have people in place.”

“You’re right, of course,” Marcelles said. “Even though Judge here may be right, something must be done. The people here have created a biological weapon that will introduce several diseases into the ecosystem. The forests the Order have been planting here would be destroyed. There is a lack of biodiversity in the plants that they use, and we will take advantage of that vulnerability. After they are destroyed, the issyrians will be left to purify the clutches.”

“We could not have done it without you, Doctor,” Emiss reminded him.

“They would have figured out a replication and delivery system eventually, my contribution is miniscule.”

“How can we help?” Judge asked.

Davi shot him a warning glance.

“Hypothetically,” Judge corrected. “I have to consult my C.O.”

“Once your own people here trust you - Remmy, Mary, and Isabel - then I will find a place for you in our plan,” Doctor Marcelles answered.

“What’s your timetable?” Davi asked.

“There is no reason to wait. I’ll consult the surviving elders, but I suspect they’ll agree that we can accomplish this within your three day limit.”

“Why Port Gibblin?”

“If a capsule went off there, the contents would be carried across the entire hemisphere by their atmospheric terraforming towers,” Doctor Marcelles said. “It is the perfect target, and with your well made fake identification, you might have enough time to pull it off.”

“Why not send your own humans?” Davi said. “I’m sure they’d clear security.”

“Remmy, Mary, Isabel, and I are the only humans here.”

Doctor Carl Anderson’s office had increasingly become the last place he wanted to be. Shannon insisted their status updates take place there. She didn’t have an office, insisting she learned more about people by visiting them instead. He had never disagreed with one person so frequently in all his life. The Intelligence Officer operated in the interest of progress regardless of the cost in manpower or moral standing.

“So, how large does a team have to be to get Doctor Marcelles off that planet?” she asked.

Doctor Anderson already had the emotional leverage in the conversation. He was the more experienced one in the room, and after losing so many officers, criminals or not, he had grown bold with her. One word in the wrong or right direction and the frustration she’d been controlling would come out in some indignant declaration. It was time to provoke her, set her off and see what came out. He put his feet up on his empty desk. “We could always send a platoon of cloaked marines in, maybe lend them a hand with the upcoming mission. You know that old saying; ‘if you can’t beat ‘em…’”

“This mission is holding everything back,” Shannon said. “If we get involved with this planetary war we’ll be choosing the wrong side against the Order of Eden. We can’t afford to make any move that can be seen as a declaration of support for the issyrians. The people I represent specifically instructed me to ensure that we don’t get involved in exterior politics.”

“A selfish clause on any mandate, not to mention short sighted,” Carl Anderson said. “We know our advanced cloaksuit teams can assist the people we have down there without being detected by Order of Eden sensor grids. We even have the ships to get them there.”

“We don’t know anything for certain. The testing you’ve done has been very limited,” Shannon replied.

“Because you won’t let any of our teams get close enough to Order of Eden installations to perform real tests,” Doctor Anderson replied. Talking in circles infuriated the Oversight Officer.

“Don’t try to lure me into an argument, it’ll get you nowhere,” Shannon said. “The Order has issyrians on their side as well. Healthy issyrians who benefit from intensive medical assistance,” Shannon retorted. “An assault would fail, evidence of our involvement would surface.”

“So even though the nano recorders we smuggled in on Davi and his people have shown us that the strike and fade tactics they’re using down there are working, and they’re planning something big that will go down with or without us, you’re not going to give me a few men to help seal the deal? If they fail, the consequences could be worse than our direct involvement.”

“There are over sixteen million humans down there. Many of them are soldiers, more of them are recruits, and the majority of them are hardened colonists. One platoon wouldn’t make any difference. It would make a big difference to this ship, however. We’d be down to two platoons of trusted soldiers, further unbalancing the ratio of trustworthy military to traitors and malcontents aboard. Your train of thought does not lead to a guarantee that we will come out of this endeavour with any real improvement in our abilities to fight off a framework incursion, or to bolster Freeground Nation’s defensive position in the galaxy.”

“You and the Purity Party are paranoid,” Doctor Anderson said, not for the first time. “This framework army that’s got you so terrified doesn’t exist. No Intelligence Officer, no matter where they are stationed, has ever seen evidence of framework soldiers. The framework army Freeground Intelligence has been predicting for years hasn’t materialized. They are not willing to spend the resources when they have a ready supply of Order of Eden recruits. It’s that army you should be worrying about.”

“It’s a real threat,” Shannon insisted. “We can’t trust your suppositions.”

“We can’t trust paranoia either,” Anderson replied. “We’ll have to agree to disagree, from the looks of it. Now, what brought you here?”

“I wanted to tell you in person that Clark Patterson’s team has officially been written off. If they return to this ship, they’ll be treated as deserters,” Shannon said. She stood and started for the door.

“You don’t have that power. You’re oversight, remember?”

“When there’s evidence of wilful sedition, I can order you to dissolve and disavow a team,” Shannon said. “That’s what I’m doing. You’re also being assigned to review a deal that was made a couple of days ago. I’d do it myself, but as you pointed out, I only have conditional command authority.”

“Wheeler,” Doctor Anderson said. “Why me?”

“I know you have history, but you are the only one who has the rank to approve the deal,” Shannon said. “Have you reviewed the materials?”

“He’s trading his claim to the Triton for permanent amnesty with Freeground Nation and standing rank with Intelligence,” Doctor Anderson said. Giving Lucius Wheeler more power and a safe haven was against everything Anderson felt for the man. He was the only person he’d known in all his years that he would never be able to forgive. “You could submit this for approval next time we’re clear for a burst transmission.”

“You’ll do this now because he has put a clock on his offer,” Shannon said. “As Wheeler put it, he can only remain aboard the Sunspire for so long.”

“I’ll put it through after I check the written component for surprises,” Doctor Anderson said.

“You’re not going to meet with him? He seems very interested in speaking with you,” Shannon replied.

“He’s lucky he’s not under guard. Captain McPatrick isn’t fond of him either.” Doctor Anderson cleared his throat and shook off a rising wave of irritation. “Like I said, it’ll be done, but I’m noting that there was significant pressure from Oversight. Hopefully this will come up for review when a new party is elected.”

“That won’t be for a very long time, Doctor,” Shannon said.

“We’ll see.”

“Why does he look so nervous, Samuel?” Mary asked Davi.

Davi looked over his shoulder to Kipley, who was looking every which way with fearful, wide eyes. The rough-hewn round tunnel around them glittered under the light of naturally bioluminescent plant life growing out of the walls. The stones in the walls looked like the insides of sea shells, flattened by heat then rounded by rushing fluids. The looser soil had turned to glass. “He’s afraid of mirrors,” Davi replied with amusement.

“Fuck you,” Kipley spat back in a whisper. “Could be anyone hiding on the other side of these walls, watching us right now. We’d never know.”

“Picking anything up, Remmy?” Mary asked.

“Just the people we’re meeting and us,” Remmy replied. “Jitters over there is crazy. These walls don’t hide anything, I can get a clear scan of all the nearby tunnels for over ten klicks.”

“So, what did this?” asked Tamera, one of the Intelligence cloak troops that was discovered when they arrived.

“This was once the main transit arteries between several clutches,” Emiss said. She led the dozen armed issyrians who were responsible for this trip. The humans were just going along for help. Davi was sure that Kipley, Judge, Tamera, and Stanley were being tested. Whatever they encountered on this trip had to be handled gracefully, or they’d be counted out when it mattered. He paid close attention to Emiss; she seemed to be one of the active leaders, and familiar with Mary. “Water flows between clutches, like your cities. It is our main form of transportation, communication, and a demonstration of trust. If all the clutches are healthy, then the cities in a network thrive. If one clutch becomes diseased, the others can purify it, heal it.”

“But if they all face disease?” Judge asked.

“Then the clutches must be drained, or isolated,” Emiss said. “And our waterways become still, then dry - like this.” Emiss picked up a handful of loose soil and glass chips and let it slip between her fingers. “Dead.”

“Better find a better system,” Kipley muttered.

Judge slapped him across the back of the head.

“Hey!” he said.

“Stop talking,” Judge said with a glower.

Kipley was about to reply but thought better of it, and swallowed his words.

“I’m sorry this happened to your people,” Davi told Emiss.

“You don’t understand,” Emiss said. “Outsiders can never understand,” she replied before picking up her own pace and walking ahead.

Davi thought a moment and looked around. The tunnel didn’t smell like the sewers of Trest, but he couldn’t help but recognize that there was a lot of dead plant life between the glittering features of the wall. The transit-way had been dry a long time, dead a long time. “What am I not seeing here?” he said so Mary, Remmy and his own people could hear.

“The clutches aren’t just cities,” Remmy said. “They’re collections of organisms. The issyrians communicate with their environment, including the living things that build their homes.”

“So there’s a builder class we’re not seeing?” Davi asked.

“No, animal intelligence sea mammals, from what we’ve seen,” Mary said. “Think of something like an octopus that builds a nest, like a spider builds a web, lays their eggs, raise their young then moves on. The issyrians learned how to influence them into building nests that make good homes, and a lot more. That’s just the beginning. Purdai are the main species that they use, but there are hundreds of others.”

“Just like a spider isn’t the only type of insect that can spin a web,” Tamera added.

“Right. Plant life provides everything else,” Remmy said. “The thing is, the issyrians communicate through chemistry, and that gets caught in everything. When they die their bodies become part of the clutch too. So, lost relatives who live a long, natural life in or around their clutches aren’t forgotten. We have our religions and what we think an afterlife is like, they have clutches that keep them healthy for centuries and consume them once they die. Knowing that future generations will be able to feel their presence along with all their other ancestors is their immortality.”

Davi didn’t have to say anything, he just nodded. Death was never absolute for an issyrian unless they were isolated from their clutch for a long time, or if it was destroyed.

They walked in silence for a while before Mary turned to him. “So, how did you get reassigned to the Sunspire?”

Davi knew the question was coming, it wasn’t something he liked to talk about, but knew he’d have to share. “I was married to a good man,” he replied. “He’d love this, actually. Jovral had great taste.”

“Jovral? That’s a Lorandian name, isn’t it?” Remmy asked. “I didn’t think Freeground was associated with Lorander that long ago.”

“They weren’t,” Davi said. “He changed his name during our brief alliance with them a few years ago. He thought it was a lot better than Bart.”

“He’s right,” Remmy chuckled.

“Anyway, Jovral wasn’t a military man. A little too delicate for the service, as he used to say,” Davi said. It was difficult to talk about him, but he pressed on. “I tried to keep most details of my job away from him.”

“Were you transferred out of the regular forces because of your relationship?” Mary asked.

Davi shook his head. “We were married before the Puritan Party was voted in, there was nothing they could do. That was, until one of my subordinates produced evidence that Jovral was cheating on me while I was deployed.”

“Happens to a lot of us,” Judge said.

“Yeah, and a divorce would have satisfied the higher ups if my subordinate didn’t also have evidence that Jovral had long discussions about my post with his lovers. Seems he knew a lot more than I thought.”

“I’m sorry,” Mary said.

“Well, Jovral was sentenced to twelve years, a slap on the wrist. I was sentenced to twenty five. They put him in civilian prison,” Davi took a long breath and let it out as he tried not to think too much about what he was about to say. “He lasted five days before his bunk mate smothered him in his sleep. They say they didn’t know the man was a Puritan fanatic, but I’ll never believe.”

“Sons of bitches,” Kiply said.

“I was coming up on four months in prison when they pressed me into service on the Sunspire. Intelligence says they want me back in the regular service, I just have to prove myself, but there’s no place for me on Freeground.”

“Yeah, you must hate them after what they did,” Kipley added.