War Against the White Knights (22 page)

“We are surrounded,” came the voice of the Hummer commando team inside her mind. “We can progress no further.”

As she had grown accustomed to this mode of communication, Indiya had begun to pick up nuances of emotion. There was nothing nuanced about the spike of blind terror that passed through this mind link and made Indiya’s heart flutter.

“Calm yourself,” she admonished. “This is uncomfortable, but you will survive.”

“We have killed!”

Indiya tried to break free of the Hummers, to initiate the next stage of the operation. But the horror in the Hummer thoughts would not release her.

“I am sorry,” she said. “But this is a war. Now let me go.”

“My people have killed one another. This is unknown. Unforeseen. What have you done?”

What had
she
done? The idea of her manipulating the arch-deceivers was so incongruous that she was momentarily distracted from the Hummers’ shock. A moment was all she needed. She opened conventional comm links: one to a modified field dredger in orbit on the far side of Euphrates, and another to her senior staff officer.

“Admiral?” acknowledged both Flag Lieutenant Hood, and Captain Locus-Heart.

“Captain, initiate Stage II descent. Hood, place a ring of nukes twenty miles from the source of our team’s beacon. Do not wait for my confirmation.”

If her officers replied, Indiya did not hear it. She curled into a ball, grabbed at her head, and screamed with the Hummers – sobbed at their corruption by outsiders, that it would come to this: Hummer against Hummer. Choked on the bitterness that they should become ensnared in the poison-barbed entanglement of their own long-laid manipulations. Then she fell silent as she felt her essence spill into the hot waters of liquid hydrogen and oblivion come to claim her.

The connection broke.

Indiya took in great heaving gasps, her skin pooling bubbles of sweat and tears that in the zero-g clung to her like accusations, covering her eyes and invading her nostrils.

She shook free.

After taking a few seconds to compose herself, she checked the progress of Stage II. Her command team had proposed several rival plans and picked one at random, to thwart the Hummer ability to foresee the future. Chance had picked a good one. The first team of Hummers did not have to penetrate to the barrier controller, only to attract the attentions of their opponents. The missile flotilla had delivered a ring of one megaton yield fusion warheads around the most concentrated point of conflict. If what the Hummers told her proved to be true, the resulting blast would not kill the Hummers so much as overload them with energy. As one told her: ‘to you the interior of Euphrates is bathed in lethal levels of heat and high-energy radiation. To us, it is home.’

If they were right, they would wake up in a few days with the equivalent of a monstrous hangover. If they were wrong, or had been lying, then they would be dead.

The part of the operation under Captain Locus-Heart’s command was more conventional. A second Hummer team, their bodies carrying the reprogramming code, was descending rapidly at the far side of the planet from the nuclear blast. Unlike the first team, who had descended naked into the planet, the second team were descending at high speed in hastily designed drop pods. The first team had taken four days to descend to a depth of 10 million atmospheres; the second team should reach that level in four hours.

She felt foolish doing so, even treacherous, but Indiya wished the Hummer team Godspeed.

The screen in Indiya’s quarters came to life, showing two figures in vacuum suits goofing around in front of the camera. Behind them was a starship of a type Xin, Tremayne, and Del-Marie had never seen before.

Indiya froze the recording.

“What you’re seeing is a feed from home-made spybots I made when I was still a junior cryo technician on
Beowulf
. Being one of her pet projects, the Reserve Captain indulged me with access to equipment and secrets. I had a tiny amount of entangled material, enough to leave a handful of these spybots at the location where the
Bonaventure
exploded. They were primed to activate if anything of interest occurred in the vicinity and transmit what they found across the FTL-link to
Beowulf
.”

“When was this recording made?” asked Tremayne.

“About four months after we took control of
Beowulf
from the Free Corps rebels. Four months after I destroyed
Themistocles
. We were on our way back to Tranquility. Frankly, I expected you all to die there.”

“Tawfiq suggested these jokers were Amilxi,” said Xin. “Was she correct?”

Indiya sighed. “You do realize Tawfiq is playing mind games – she’s sowing dissent.”

“Of course she frakking is.” Xin gnawed at her lower lip until her anger subsided. “She’ll mix a toxic cocktail of truths, lies, and insinuations. I want to know which is which. Is there a reason to think these people are Amilxi?”

Indiya grimaced. “Perhaps. You knew about many strange features of the
Bonaventure
. The crew size was too small for a start, and then there was artificial gravity, which still no one has managed to replicate, despite huge efforts.”

“And the crew called themselves Amilx,” added Xin. “Arun McEwan. Indiya. Xin Lee. I don’t know whether that’s a taunt, an invitation, or what it is, but naming yourselves after an acronym of our names sure as hell isn’t a coincidence.”

Indiya glanced at Tremayne. She didn’t need to use her augmentations to interpret the pain in her face. There was no Springer on that list of names, no Tremayne either. That knowledge had poisoned her relationship with Arun.

“There is one thing you do not know,” said Indiya. “I investigated one puzzle in particular – why did the
Bonaventure
explode? There was no warning, nothing on the sensor recordings to suggest heat build-up, a missile, or the chemical residue from a bomb. One moment it was fine, and the next it had already exploded. When I say ‘moment’, I’m talking around 100 nanoseconds, because I stepped through the
Beowulf’s
sensor recordings frame by frame. But there was another project the Reserve Captain had tasked me with – a black box data recorder I had been running – which gave a different answer. One that still makes no sense. According to my black box sensors, it looked as if a ship docked with the
Bonaventure
, rescued the crew we had captured, and took them away to safety.”

“Why did we not see the ship?” asked Del-Marie. Was it stealthed? Perhaps it was the Hardits?

“I’m sure it wasn’t the Hardits.” Indiya pointed out the vessel in the background of the video recording. “It was that ship. That was the rescue ship, and part of the reason we didn’t see it, is because – according to my black box recorder – that ship arrived, took the Amilxi crew on board, and left, all in a single frame of the sensor record. All of that within 100 nanoseconds.”

“But that’s impossible. Your black box must have malfunctioned.”

“My guess at the time – and it’s only a guess – is that my black box caught a glimpse of… of an error in reality as one version of events was removed and a replacement spliced into its place. You can see why I haven’t brought it up.”

“Forget the ship, and your crazy theories,” insisted Tremayne. “Show me the eyes!”

Indiya returned Tremayne’s stern gaze and was astonished by the shocking violet of this scarred Marine veteran’s eyes.

Indiya looked away, and restarted the video. She’d seen the images a thousand times. This time she watched the faces of the others, suddenly struck by how differently they had aged.

The figures in the video would be coming close to the camera now, leaning in and…
There!
Xin, Del-Marie and Tremayne, all registered the same moment of shock. But Xin’s face quickly moved to suspicion, and Tremayne’s to loss.

Indiya turned back to the screen and saw for herself the figures: a young man and a young woman who had lifted the outer shielding on their helmets so the camera could see their faces clearly. Unruly brown curls framed freckled faces. The woman had a cute, dimpling smile that looked like it was employed frequently. Arun had said at the time that the girl’s smile was identical to Springer’s. Their foreheads looked like Arun’s, as did their eyes, with one crucial exception: the irises were violet.

“Come, follow us,” said Indiya. “That’s the message they’re repeating.”

“Who are they?” asked Del-Marie. He searched for recognition in Tremayne and Xin’s faces, but soon realized that they did not know any more than him.

“I asked Arun that same question, Ambassador.” Indiya hesitated while the personal memory her mind replayed of her speaking those words to the young Major Arun McEwan. “He said that you, Springer – I’m sorry, I mean Tremayne… He explained the consequence of your wounds taken on Antilles.”

“I was sterile,” Tremayne spat. She glared at Indiya, but quickly switched the focus of her anger toward Xin. The two of them held each other’s gaze in mutual loathing, before Tremayne slid her focus down to Xin’s fertile belly. “I still am.”

Indiya cleared her throat. “I challenged Arun, thinking he had secretly had children with you when very young, Tremayne, but he was adamant that this was impossible. He was very angry, as I recall. So was I. There were many mysteries that remain unexplained about the
Bonaventure
and this is just one more to the list. Seeing these images was one more painful memory, and so I locked them away, until today.”

“Stop vulleying around the point, Admiral,” said Xin. “Those eyes are unmistakable. In fact, I think that’s the whole idea. Those people wanted you to see their faces and those eyes.”

Tremayne laughed bitterly. “Perhaps the Admiral is blinder than she looks, Xin. Even after all these decades, we Marines all look the same to the ship rats. You see, Admiral, Xin and I both recognized those eyes instantly because we’ve both had a lover with eyes just like that. They might have my color, but those are Arun’s eyes. Would you agree, General?”

“Without a doubt,” said Xin. “I know it makes no sense, but Arun and Tremayne are their parents. Pedro mixed their DNA and produced those embryos that caused so much trouble. If Pedro could do that, someone else could have done so, and earlier.”

“You might not realize this, Admiral,” said Tremayne, “but I was just ten years old when my regimental commander ordered me to befriend Arun. We’ve been manipulated since before we were born. The most logical explanation, therefore, is as Lieutenant-General Lee says, more embryos. I’m disappointed Arun never mentioned them. Did you know about this, General?”

“He kept this from me too.” Xin switched her gaze from Tremayne to Indiya. It was like being caught by a battleship particle beam. “You and General McEwan were both angry, Admiral. That’s what you told us. May I ask why?”

Indiya swallowed and pressed on, braving the hostility of these women. “Arun attempted to forge a romantic liaison with me. He was still a Marine cadet really; still a teenager and with a corresponding set of urges. I told him that I was not able to give him what he wanted, but he seemed to see that as a challenge.”

“He wanted to save you,” whispered Tremayne. “He’s an arrogant twonk with a God complex, but in those days he couldn’t bear to see pain and loneliness in people he cared about. He didn’t see you as a challenge. More a moral obligation.”

“You’re right, I was a moral obligation. An exotic-looking one who took his fancy, but you’re right that he cared about me.” Indiya snorted. “You had no need to defend his honor, Tremayne. That’s what I meant. And no, you Marines don’t all look the same. I recognized Arun in those faces instantly and incontrovertibly.”

“But he made progress in his romance, didn’t he?” said Xin, sounding as if she were getting ready to slug anyone who badmouthed her partner. “Arun invaded your frozen heart, and that’s why you talk now of anger and pain.”

Indiya shrugged. “You are correct. When the watch officer patched through the video you’ve just watched, Arun and I were in my quarters, and… in a state of some intimacy.” She cast her eyes down. “I occasionally wonder how I would have turned out if Arun had tried a little harder, if this video image had been sent a few weeks later. We still talk on many issues – with Loobie dead, he is my most intimate confidant – but since that day I have neither entertained General McEwan nor anyone else in my quarters.”

By her personal clock, these events took place twenty-three years ago, but none of the others seemed surprised that she had been so alone for so long. She gave a long and trembling sigh, and then cut to the chase. “I think this is evasion and gossip on your part. Both of you. You have both talked of a logical explanation for why we should see people with eyes that resemble McEwan and Tremayne, but there is another explanation and you are both too cowardly to say it.”

“I think,” said Xin carefully, “that I am very glad I am afraid, because the other explanation you allude to would crush everything I know, shatter everything I fought for. Laugh at my dreams.”

“
Laugh at your dreams
,” Tremayne sneered. “You’re such a drama princess, Lieutenant-General. Not burdened with dreams of my own, I’ll speak plainly. The
Bonaventure
is a mystery ship. We all know that. Those people we see are not just my genetic descendants. I think they are the
same
children that Pedro produced as his frakking backup plan in case Arun I were killed. The same ones that I assume are still somewhere safe, hidden in the fleet, still just embryos. What you see there are my children. My children from the future. And that’s how your mystery ship did everything within the hundred nanoseconds. I bet you can pull a heap of fancy stunts like that if you can manipulate time.”

Tremayne looked at the three other people in the compartment. “Isn’t anyone going to tell me that I’m talking drent?” She gave a hollow laugh when no one denied the truth of the words.

“And me?” asked Del-Marie. “The Hardit said I was there twice. Was there a version of me from the future?”

No one could answer Del-Marie’s question.