Ben Javna was at his desk when the lobby security detail rang through.
“Yeah,” Javna said.
“Mr. Javna, we’ve got a gentleman here who says he needs to speak to you about a sheep.”
“A sheep?” Javna said. “Who is he?”
“His ID says his name is Samuel Young,” the guard said.
“Have someone bring him up to me,” Javna said.
Two minutes later Samuel “Fixer” Young was standing in front of Javna.
“Let’s cut the bullshit and get right to cases, if you don’t mind,” Javna said to Fixer, after the security guard had left. “Tell me where Harry Creek and Robin Baker are, right now.”
“Fine,” Fixer said. “Creek and Baker are on a cruise liner called the Neverland. Right now it’s in n-space between Brjnn and Chagfun. They’re safe for the moment.”
“And you know this because,” Javna said.
“Because I put them on the ship,” Fixer said.
Javna felt himself relax. “That’s good news,” he said.
“It’s not,” Fixer said. “The Nidu know they’re on the ship. When the Neverland arrives at Chagfun, the Nidu will likely board the ship, take Robin, and destroy the Neverland and kill everyone on board.”
“How do you know this?” Javna said.
“I can’t tell you,” Fixer said. Which wasn’t exactly true. He could tell, but the Church had offered him a substantial chunk of cash to keep its name out of it. Fixer had had a rough few days, but if he lived through the next few he was going to be richer than hell.
“Can you prove what you’re saying to me?” Javna said.
“No,” Fixer said. “But it’s true.”
“Do you seriously expect me to believe you?” Javna said.
“You could double-check my story with the Nidu,” Fixer said. “I’m sure they’ll be happy to admit they’re planning to torpedo a cruise liner filled with UNE civilians.”
Three minutes later, Javna and Fixer were in Jim Heffer’s office. Fixer repeated his message.
“Isn’t this convenient,” Heffer muttered, looking up at Javna. “And just a few hours before you and I are supposed to be on our way to Nidu for the coronation ceremony.”
“It’s no coincidence,” Javna said. “They grab the girl and get her to Nidu before there’s time to do anything about it. The coronation ceremony starts late, but it finishes nonetheless. And there’s another wrinkle.”
“I can’t wait to hear what it is,” Heffer said.
“Robin Baker’s no longer a UNE citizen,” Javna said. “We disenfranchised her to make her her own sovereign species and to keep the Nidu from having an excuse to break our treaties. But it also means that if they grab her and use her for the ceremony we have no legal way to protect her. We have no treaties with the woman.”
“The Nidu would still be violating their CC charter,” Heffer said.
“Not if they declared war on her first,” Javna said.
Heffer chuckled ruefully. “Nidu declaring war on a single person. Good lord.”
“It’s idiotic but it’s legal,” Javna said.
“We can’t signal the Neverland,” Heffer said.
“It’s in n-space,” Javna said.
“At the very least we can warn Nidu not to board her,” Heffer said.
“We could,” Javna said. “But how do we enforce it? Chagfun is a minor Nidu colony. We have no presence there. They could torpedo the Neverland and we’d never be able to confirm it. If they hit her hard enough, everything would simply burn up in the atmosphere.”
“How long until the Neverland reaches Chagfun?” Heffer asked.
“I have no idea,” Javna said.
“Here,” Fixer said, fishing out a piece of paper. “It’s the Neverland’s itinerary.”
Heffer took it and looked at it. “The Neverland jumped into n-space less than a half hour ago,” he said. “You couldn’t have come by an hour earlier?”
“I’m just the messenger,” Fixer said. “Please don’t shoot me.”
“She’s not due in at Chagfun until the day after tomorrow,” Heffer said, and tapped his desk for a moment. “Come on, you two,” he said. “We’re going to the Pentagon.”
At the Pentagon, Bob Pope ignored Heffer to zero in on Javna. “You know Dave Phipps has gone missing,” he said.
“I didn’t,” Javna said. “When did this happen?”
“The day he had lunch with you,” Pope said, and then pointed at Heffer. “After our little meeting with the president about the Nidu destroyers I tried to reach Dave and got nothing. He’s been out since with no word.”
“He told me that he needed to close down a couple of projects,” Javna said, “relating to our little interdepartmental power struggle.”
Pope opened his mouth to refute Javna, then shut it and looked at Heffer. “We’re all friends today,” he said, as a statement, not a question.
“Whatever you say, Bob,” Heffer said.
“We contracted out to a team suggested to us by Jean Schroeder.” It was Heffer’s turn to open his mouth; Pope put up his hand. “I know. Friends, Jim. Schroeder has gone missing. The team we were using—what’s left of it since the Arlington Mall incident—has gone missing, too. I’m pretty sure Dave went to see Schroeder the night he disappeared.”
“So Phipps is with Schroeder and his team,” Heffer said.
“I can’t believe Dave would do that,” Pope said.
“I have to side with Secretary Pope,” Javna said. “When I talked with Phipps he said things had gone too far. He sounded like he was wrapping things up, not getting ready to run.”
“If he’s not with Schroeder, then where is he?” Heffer said.
Pope looked at Javna. “You know what I think,” he said.
“You think he’s dead,” Javna said. “You two put together a team to kill Harry and Robin Baker and when Phipps decided to have them take the fall, they killed him instead.”
“Bob, whatever happened to Phipps, I’m sorry to hear it,” Heffer said. “But at the moment we have another problem.” Heffer had Fixer repeat his warning about the Neverland.
“Who gave you this information?” Pope asked Fixer.
“The same people who saved me when one of the members of your ‘team’ tried to eat me,” Fixer said. “I realize I don’t count here, but I’m personally inclined to believe them.”
“What do you think?” Pope said, to Heffer.
“We can’t ignore it,” Heffer said. “The Nidu have already tried every legal avenue to get Robin Baker. She’s a critical part of the coronation ceremony. I think this information makes sense. I think they’re going to try for her and to hell with anyone who gets in their way.”
“Dropping a UNE ship into Nidu space is awfully close to war, Jim,” Pope said.
“The Nidu firing on a civilian ship is already an act of war,” Heffer said. “If nothing else, Nidu won’t be able to hide what they’re doing from us or the CC.”
“If you’re wrong on this, I’m taking you down with me,” Pope said.
“If I’m wrong on this, you won’t need to take me down with you,” Heffer said. “I’ll go willingly.”
Pope jabbed a button on his desk; the windows in his office went opaque and the room became noticeably dimmer. Pope pointed at Fixer. “You wait outside.” Fixer nodded and headed to the door. When he was gone, Pope poked a second button. A projector above his desk came to life and displayed a dimensional map of the space that contained the Earth, her colonies, and other local star systems.
“Display Chagfun,” Pope said. A star near the top of the display glowed brightly. “All right,” Pope said. “The closest colony we have to Chagfun is Breton Colony, here.” Pope reached in to touch a star; the display flickered and reset to show an Earthlike globe. “List UNE ships at Breton,” Pope said.
There were three. “The James Madison, the Winston Churchill, and the British Columbia,” Pope said. “The Madison and the Churchill can
’t help us. Their jump engines are too weak to get to Chagfun in time. But the British Columbia.” Pope touched the name in the floating list; the screen flickered again and generated an image of the British Columbia and a catalogue of its stats. “Yes, the ‘Britcee’ could do it. If she gets under way in the next hour, she can be there right around the time the Neverland arrives. It’s going to be close, though.”
“What are you going to do, Bob?” Heffer asked.
“First, I’m going to get Admiral Nakamura on the comm and tell him that if he doesn’t get the ‘Britcee’ on the move in fifty minutes, he can have his resignation on my desk ten minutes after that,” Pope said. “Then I’m going to take your little friend on the other side of the door and haul him over to the Oval Office so I can explain why I’ve committed a UNE battle cruiser to a combat mission without the president’s approval. Then if I still have a job I believe I’m going to have a stiff drink. Aren’t you going to the Nidu coronation, Jim?”
“I am,” Heffer said, and signaled to Javna. “We both are. We’re leaving in a couple of hours.”
“Well, that’s excellent,” Pope said. “You’ll be there to explain to the Nidu why we’ve started a war with them. And I’m glad. After today, I may be out of a job, but the two of you are likely to be prisoners of war. I’d rather have it that way than the other way around. Now if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I need to play Russian roulette with our planet’s future with the bullet you’ve so thoughtfully provided. I hope you don’t mind if I don’t see you out.”
A bullet whined past Brian’s ear. He flinched.
“Realistic, isn’t it?” Andrea Hayter-Ross said.
The table at which the two of them sat floated serenely over the vast Pajmhi plain. Around Brian erupted the sights and sounds of war: The bursts of gunfire, the wet smacking sounds of rounds striking human or Nidu flesh, the screams of both species as its members fell to the plain writhing, their blood—both red—oozing, spurting, and flowing into the ground. Brian gripped the table; he knew intellectually that the table was actually not floating over the plain, and that what he was seeing was a computer simulation, but that didn’t stop him from feeling dizzy or uncertain of the stability of his seat.
“This is how it happened, you know,” Hayter-Ross said.
“What are you talking about?” Brian said.
“The Battle of Pajmhi,” Hayter-Ross said, and poured herself more tea. “Each UNE serviceman and woman went into battle with a little camera in their helmet, and every camera recorded what it saw and transmitted back the data. Plus monitor cameras that caught the action from above, so long as they weren’t shot down by the rebels, and many of them were. But overall, that’s over 100,000 points of view of the battle, all recorded for posterity. Not that posterity has bothered with it. All the data feeds are stored in UNE Defense servers and are available for public viewing—Freedom of Information and all that. But no one ever does. Certainly no one has done this”—she swept an arm to encompass the carnage—“stitch the data all together and play out the entire battle.”
“So this is it,” Brian said. “This is really it.”
“As best as can be reconstructed,” Hayter-Ross said. To her left an infantryman caught a bullet below his left eye; his face caved as he jerked back and collapsed into the dirt. “There are gaps here and there. Even with 100,000 helmets, there are still places where no one is looking at any one time. But it’s mostly here. I haven’t bothered to simulate the movement of every leaf on every tree. But the battles—yes. Those are exactly as they happened. Now, come along.” The table appeared to slide along the landscape; from every line of sight Brian saw death. He longed to warn the humans he saw falling around him but knew it would do no good. Like Scrooge tugged along by the Ghost of Christmas Past, he was seeing only the shadows of the past, not the event itself.
A marine screamed in Brian’s ear as a rebel slug raggedly severed her arm from her body, just below her shoulder. Shadow or not, Brian winced at the pain.
“You have no memory of any of this, of course,” Hayter-Ross said. “The brain scan that created this version of you was made before you came here. This is all alien to you.”
“Yes,” Brian said.
“That’s probably for the best,” Hayter-Ross said. “When you see your friends die, it won’t have any meaning to you.”
“Did many of them die?” Brian asked.
“Oh, yes,” Hayter-Ross said. “Quite a few. And here we are.”
Their tea table came to a stop mere feet from a squad of soldiers crouched behind a ridge, exchanging fire with a cadre of rebels in the brush in front of them. With a start Brian recognized himself, only slightly older than he was at the time of his brain scan, tossing a grenade over the ridge at the rebels. Three men down the line Harry crouched, carefully sighting rebel infantry and firing in short, controlled bursts before moving again to avoid being shot himself. Brian was horrified and fascinated at seeing a portion of his life that he had not experienced, and which would shortly end in his own death.
Hayter-Ross noticed. “Unsettling,” she prompted. Brian could only nod. “I know,” she said. “This version of me was taken from memories stored only until the day before my death. I died during another session to transfer memory and consciousness, so I’ve no memory of it. I’ve watched the recording over and over. Watching myself die while doctors and technicians struggle around me, watching the look in my eyes as I realize that I’m passing on and yet not being able to feel the actual emotion. I don’t know if it was fear or relief or confusion. I wasn’t there. It can be maddening.”
“Why are you showing me this?” Brian said, unable to take his eyes away from himself.
“You’ll see,” Hayter-Ross said. “In fact, you’re going to see right now.”
Brian watched as the soldier version of himself hurled another grenade and lay low while it detonated. His soldier self peeked over the ridge and saw rebel troops pulling back, let out a whoop, and headed over the ridge to clean up as they fled. Behind him two other soldiers followed, carried as much by Brian’s excitement as their own. Watching himself, Brian could hear Harry and their sergeant both yelling at him and the other two to get back, but this other version of himself either couldn’t hear or wasn’t listening. Within seconds, the three soldiers were heedlessly far from their comrades, chasing rebels through the tall grass toward a copse of trees. Brian felt himself tense, waiting for the inevitable.
It wasn’t long in coming. Just short of the copse, one of the soldiers spun wildly from a bullet in the shoulder; another bullet struck as he spun, sneaking under his bullet shield and piercing his back, spattering gore on the inside of his bullet shield as it erupted through his front side. The second soldier was down next, his kneecap vaporized; he was screaming before he hit the ground. From his tea table, Brian noticed the rebels had shot down the most distant soldiers first; the ones in front wouldn’t see their comrades fall and would recklessly keep moving forward.
Brian watched helplessly as his other self became the final target. He was struck near simultaneously by two bullets, one in the left ankle and a second in the lower right hip. The force of the ankle hit worked to flip Brian, but the hip shot counteracted the spin; in the end Brian simply flew backward as if hit by an invisible freight truck. Brian the soldier’s body flew backward, landing back in the grass with a solid thump; two seconds later he began to scream.
“What do you notice?” Hayter-Ross asked Brian.
Brian collected himself and tried to think. “We’re all still alive,” he said, finally.
“Yes,” Hayter-Ross said. “Alive and screaming and out in the open where anyone who comes to rescue you is an easy target for the rebels. You saw how they shot the three of you in reverse sequence. And they shot you to keep you alive—in the short run at least. You know what that means.”
“They laid a trap,” Brian said. “I thought I had flushed them out in the open, but they flushed me out instead.”
r /> “Because if there’s one thing other species know about humans,” Hayter-Ross said, “it’s that you don’t leave anyone behind. And look, here come your squadmates.”
Brian turned back toward the ridge to see two soldiers snake their way through the grass toward the last of the soldiers. One lay down a suppressing fire as the second tried to lift the wounded soldier into a fireman’s carry. As he did so he popped up out of the grass. From the copse came a hail of fire; one struck the soldier just below the jaw, tearing open his neck. The soldier instinctively grabbed at his neck, causing the soldier he was carrying to drop heavily to the ground, head first. A second bullet from the copse struck the still-standing soldier, punching him back down to the ground. The soldier who had been laying down fire crawled to the second soldier and pressed his hand against his friend’s neck.
“That won’t help,” Hayter-Ross said. “Look at the spurting. It hit the carotid artery.”
“Stop this,” Brian said, turning away. “Stop this now.”
“Very well,” Hayter-Ross said, and everything froze. Brian stared at the stopped time.
“Do you know why I’m showing you this?” Hayter-Ross said.
“No,” Brian said.
“I’m showing you this because you have a distressing tendency not to think before you act,” Hayter-Ross said. “You attacked the Church’s network because you stupidly thought there would be nothing to stop you from burrowing through its defenses. And of course we see how that ended.” Hayter-Ross nodded toward the frozen battlefield. “Here, you ran into the open, chasing the enemy you thought you had on the run, and because of it, you died—but not before condemning three of your fellow soldiers to the same fate. You were the last to die, you know. Your friend Harry Creek managed to get to you and stop your bleeding and then protect you and the other fallen members of your squad for two Chagfun days before you could be pulled out. You died just before they got you out. Peritonitis complicated by an infection of Chagfun microbes. The microbes killed a lot of soldiers. Something about the human chemistry superheated their metabolisms and made them reproduce like mad. Your hip had almost entirely rotted away before you died.”