Of course, that assumption had been made in the early centuries, prior to ANA. For any individual downloaded into ANA, access to that quantity of processing capacity was an everyday occurrence. The Advancer Faction routinely ran a scan of all messages to ANA:Governance to check if any of its own activities had been noticed and reported.
When the Faction’s monitor routine detected a starship TD connection established to Wohlen’s spacewatch network downloading a key fragment to ANA:Governance’s security division an alert was flagged. Over the next two point three seconds, the remaining seven key fragments arrived via routes from seven different planets, and the monitor acknowledged that someone was trying to establish a very secure link. Nothing too out of the ordinary in that, it was the security division after all. However, all eight planets were within twenty-five lightyears of the Advancer Faction’s secret manufacturing station. That bumped the alert up to grade one.
Three seconds later, Ilanthe’s elevated mentality was observing the secure call itself, placed through the ninth planet, Loznica, seventeen lightyears from the station.
“Yes Troblum?” ANA:Governance asked.
“I need to see someone. Someone special.”
“I will be happy to facilitate any request in relation to Commonwealth security. Could you please be more specific?”
“I work for the Advancer Faction. Make that ‘worked’. I have information, very important information concerning their activities.”
“I will be happy to receive your data.”
“No. I don’t trust you. Not any more. Parts of you are bad. I don’t know how far the contamination has spread.”
“I can assure you, ANA:Governance retains its integrity, both in structural essence and morally.”
“Like you’d say different. I can’t even be sure if I’m talking to ANA:Governance.”
“Scepticism is healthy providing it does not escalate into paranoia. So given you don’t trust me, what can I do for you?”
“I’m entitled to be paranoid after what I’ve seen.”
“What have you seen?”
“Not you. I’ll tell Paula Myo. She’s the only person left that I trust. Route this call to her.”
“I will ask if she will be willing to listen to you.”
Fifteen seconds later, Paula Myo came on line. “What do you want?” she asked.
“There’s something you need to know. Something you’ll understand.”
“Then tell me.”
“I need to be certain it’s you. Where are you?”
“In space.”
“Can you get to Sholapur?”
“Why would I want to?”
“I’ll tell you everything I know about their plans for fusion, all the hardware they’ve built, all the people involved. All that, if you’ll just listen to me. You have to listen, you’re the only person left who’ll deal with it.”
“With what?”
“Come to Sholapur.”
“Very well. I can be there in five days.”
“Don’t stealth your starship. I’ll contact you.”
The connection ended.
***
As ANA and its abilities were to the Unisphere, so there were hierarchal levels within ANA. Discreet levels of ability surreptitiously established by a few of the humans who had founded ANA. Abilities only they could utilize. They couldn’t corrupt ANA:Governance, or use the Navy warships for their own ends. That magnitude of intervention would be easily detectable. But there was a backdoor into several of ANA’s communication sections, allowing them to watch the watchers without the kind of effort which the Advancers had to make for the same intelligence. And as they were there first, they had also observed the Advancers and other Factions spread their monitors into the Unisphere nodes as their campaigns and reach grew. They knew which messages the Advancers intercepted.
“Ilanthe is going to go apeshit over that kind of betrayal,” Gore said.
“At least we know Troblum is still alive,” Nelson replied.
“Yeah, for the next five seconds.”
“Until he gets to Sholapur at the very least. And never ever underestimate Paula.”
“I don’t. If anyone can collect him in once piece, she can.”
“So we might just be able to sit back and relax if Paula does bring back information on what the Advancers are up to. Hardware, Troblum said. That has to be the planet-shifting ftl engine.”
“Maybe so,” Gore said. “But he was offering that as a bribe to make sure Paula listened to something else, something big and scary enough to get him really worried. Now what the fuck could that be?”
***
Marius sprinted down the corridor. It wasn’t something the universe got to see very often. With his Higher field functions reinforcing his body, the speed was phenomenal. Malmetal doors had to roll aside very quickly or face complete disintegration. His dark toga suit flapped about in the slipstream, for once ruining the eerie gliding effect he always portrayed. Marius didn’t care about appearance right now. He was furious.
Handle’s brief call had been very unsettling. He’d never failed her before. The implications were terrible, as she managed to explain in remarkably few words. He only wished he had time to make Troblum suffer for his crime.
He streaked through the three-way junction which put him into sector 7-B-5. Some idiot technician was walking down the middle of the corridor, going back to her suite after a long shift. Marius charged past her, clipping her arm which broke instantly from the impact. She was spun round, slamming into the wall. She screamed as she crumpled to the floor.
The door to Troblum’s suite was dead ahead, locked as of two minutes ago with Marius’s own nine-level certificate to prevent the little shit from leaving. The suite’s internal sensors showed Troblum sitting at a table slurping his way disgustingly through a late night ‘snack’.
Marius began to slow as his u-shadow unlocked the door. It expanded as he arrived, and he coasted through. Troblum’s head lifted, crumbs of burger bap dropping from the corner of his mouth. Despite bulging cheeks he still managed a startled expression.
A disruptor pulse slammed into him, producing a ghost-green phosphorescent flare in the suite’s air. Marius followed it up immediately with a jelly gun shot. He would obliterate the memorycell in a few seconds, then that would just leave Troblum’s secure store back on Arevalo.
Instead of disintegrating into a collapsing globule of gore, Troblum simply popped like a soap bubble. A rivulet of metal dust spewed out from the wall behind the table where the jelly gun shot hit. Marius froze in shock, his field scan functions sweeping round. It hadn’t been Troblum. No biological matter was in the room. His eyes found a half-melted electronic module on the seat, ruined by the disruptor blast. A solido projector.
Marius was perfectly still as he stared at it. “What happened?” Neskia asked as she strode into the suite. Her long neck curved so her head could see round Marius.
“It would appear Troblum isn’t quite the fat fool I’d taken him for.”
“We’ll find him. It won’t take long. This station isn’t that big.” Marius whipped round, the wide irises in his green eyes narrowing to minute intimidating slits. “Where’s his ship?” he demanded.
“Sitting in the airlock,” she replied calmly. “Nobody enters or leaves without my authorization.”
“It better be,” Marius spat.
“Every centimetre of this station is covered by some sensor or other. We’ll find him.”
Marius’ u-shadow ordered the smartcore to show him the airlock. The Mellanie’s Redemption was sitting passively at the centre of the large white chamber. Visually it was there, the airlock radar produced a return from the hull. The umbilical management programs reported a steady drain of housekeeping power through the cables plugged into its base. He queried the ship’s smartcore. There was no response.
Marius and Neskia stared at each other. “Shit!” Four minutes later they walked into the airlock. Marius
glowered at the long cone-shaped ship with its stupid curving tailfins. His field scan swept out. It was an illusion, produced by a small module on the airlock floor. He smashed a disruptor pulse into the solido projector, and the starship image shivered, shrinking down to a beautiful, naked young girl with blonde hair that hung halfway down her back. “Oh Howard,” she moaned sensually, running her hands up her body, “Do that again.”
Marius let out an incoherent cry, and shot the projector again. It burst into smouldering fragments, and the girl vanished.
“How in Ozzie’s name did he do that?” Neskia said. There was a hint of admiration in her voice. “He must have flown right past the defence cruisers as well. They never even saw him.”
Marius took a moment to compose himself. “Troblum helped design and build the defence cruisers. Either he infiltrated their smartcores back then, or he knows a method of circumventing their sensor systems.”
“He compromised the station smartcore, too. It should never have let the Mellanie’s Redemption out.”
“Indeed,” Marius said. “You will find the corruption and purge it. This operation must not suffer any further compromise.”
“It was not me who compromised this station,” she said with equal chill. “You brought him here.”
“You had twenty years to discover the bugs he planted. That you failed is unforgivable.”
“Don’t try to play the blame game with me. This is your foul up. And I will make that very clear to Ilanthe.”
Marius turned on a heel, and walked back to the airlock chamber’s entrance. His dark toga suit adjusted itself around him, once more giving off a narrow black shimmer that concealed his feet. He glided with serpentine poise down the corridor towards the airlock chamber which contained his own starship.
His u-shadow opened a secure link to the Cat’s ship.
“It’s so nice to be popular again,” she said.
“We have a problem. I want you to find Troblum. Eliminate that shit from this universe. In fact, I want him erased from all of history.”
“That sounds personal, Marius dear. Always a bad thing. Messes with your judgement.”
“He’s heading for Sholapur. In five days’ time he will meet with an ANA representative there, and explain what we have been doing. His ship has some kind of advanced stealth ability we didn’t know about.”
“Gave you the slip, huh?”
“I’m sure you’ll be more capable of rectifying our mistake.”
“What do you want me to do about Aaron? He’s still down on the planet’s surface.”
“Is there any sign of Inigo?”
“Darling, the sensors can barely make out continents. I’ve no idea what’s going on down there.”
“Do as you see fit.”
“I thought this was all critical to your plans.”
“If Troblum exposes us to ANA there will be no plans, there probably won’t be an Advancer Faction any more.”
“The strong always survive. That’s evolution.”
“Paula Myo is the representative ANA is sending to collect Troblum.”
“Oh Marius, you’re too kind to me. Really.”
***
It should have been tempting. Alone in a small starship with three amazingly fit men, who would probably have been honoured to got to bed with him. Oscar had been delighted when Tomansio had introduced his team. Liatris McPeierl was his lieutenant, a lot quieter than Tomansio, with a broad mouth that could flash a smile that was wickedly attractive. He would handle the technical aspects of the mission, Tomansio said, including their armaments. Gazing at the pile of big cases on the regrav sled which followed Liatris about, Oscar had his first moment of doubt; he didn’t want to resort to violence, though he was realistic enough to know that wasn’t his decision. Cheriton McOnna had been brought in to help because of his experience with the gaiafield. There was nothing about confluence nest operations which he didn’t know, Tomansio claimed. Oscar was slightly surprised by Cheriton’s characteristics, they were almost Higher; he’d altered his ears to simple circle craters, his nose was wide and flat, while his eyes were sparkling purple globes, like multifaceted insect lenses. His bald skull had two low ridges reaching back from his eyebrows over his cranium to merge together at the nape of his neck.
“Multi-macrocellular enrichment,” he explained. “And a hell of a lot of customized gaiamotes.” To prove it he spun out a vision of some concert. For a moment Oscar was transported to a natural amphitheatre, lost in a sea of people under a wild starry sky. On the stage far away, a pianist performed by himself, his soulful tune making Oscar sway in sympathy.
“Wow,” Oscar blinked, taking a half step back as the vision cleared. He’d almost been about to sing along, the song was familiar somehow—just not quite right.
“I composed it in your honour,” Cheriton said. “I remember you told Wilson Kime you liked old movies.”
Now Oscar remembered. “That’s right. ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’, yeah?” He took care to reduce his gaiamotes reception level. Cheriton had produced a very strong emission. It made Oscar wonder if the gaiafield could actually be used in a harmful way.
“Yes.”
The last member of the team was Beckia McKratz, whose gaiafield give-away made it very clear she’d like to bed him. An equal to Anja in the beauty stakes, and minus all the neurotic hang-ups. Oscar wasn’t interested. Not even that first morning when he stumbled out of his tiny sleep cabin to find all four of them in the main lounge stripped to the waist and performing some strenuous ni-tng exercise. They moved in perfect synchronization, arms and legs rising gracefully to stick out in odd directions, limbs flexing. Eyes closed, breathing deeply. From their gaiafield emanations, their minds seemed to be hibernating.
Aliens teleported into human bodies, and carefully examining what they could do.
It was all very different to Oscar’s wake-up routine, which normally involved a lot of coffee and accessing the most trashy Unisphere gossip shows he could find. And that was the whole non-attraction problem. All this devotion to perfection and strength didn’t seem to leave them much time to actually be human. It was a big turn-off.
So he crept round the edge of the lounge to the culinary unit, snagged a large cup of coffee and a plate of buttered croissants, and sat quietly in a corner munching away as he watched the strange slow-motion ballet.
They came to rest position, and took one last breath in unison before opening their eyes and smiling.
“Good morning, Oscar,” Tomansio said.
Oscar slurped some more coffee down. That morning routine also included no conversation until his third cup. The culinary unit was suddenly busy churning out plates with large portions of bacon and eggs, with toast.
“Something wrong?” Liatris asked.
Oscar realized he was staring at the man eat. “Sorry. I assumed you’d all be vegetarians.”
They all exchanged an amused glance. “Why?”
“When we were flying the Carbon Goose across Half Way I remember the Cat kicking up a big fuss about the on board food. She refused to eat anything produced and processed on a Big 15 planet.” His companions’ amusement evaporated. To Oscar it was as though he’d been transformed into some kind of guru, steeped in wisdom.
“You did talk to her, then?” Beckia asked.
“Not much. It was almost as if she was bored with us. And I still don’t get why you idolize her the way you do.”
“We’re realistic about her,” Cheriton said. “But she accomplished so much.”
“She killed a lot of people.”
“As did you, Oscar,” Tomansio chided.
“Not deliberately. Not for enjoyment.”
“The whole Starflyer War happened because humanity was weak. Our strength had been sapped away by centuries of liberalism. Not any more. The External Worlds have the self-belief to strike out for themselves against the Central Worlds. That’s thanks to Far Away’s leadership by example. And the Knights Guardia
n are the political force behind Far Away. Politicians don’t ignore strength any more. It is celebrated on hundreds of worlds in a myriad of forms.”
That was the trouble with history, Oscar thought. Once the distance has grown long enough any event can be seen favourably. The true horror fades with time, and ignorance replaces it. “I lived through those times. The Commonwealth was strong enough to prevail. Without the strength we showed then, you wouldn’t be alive today to complain about us and debate what might have been.”
“We don’t want to offend, Oscar.”
Oscar downed the last of his coffee, and told the culinary unit to produce another. “So sensibilities aren’t a weakness, then?”
Liatris laughed. “No. Respect and civility are highpoints of civilization. As much as personal independence and kindness. Strength comes in many guises. Including laying down your life to give the human race its chance to survive. If the Knights Guardians have one regret, it is that your name is not as famous and revered as the others from your era.”
“Holy crap,” Oscar muttered and collected his coffee. He knew his face was red. My era! “All right,” he said as he sank back on to the chair which the lounge extruded for him. “I can see we’re going to have fun times debating history and politics for the rest of the mission. In the meantime, we do have a very clear objective. My plan is quite a simple one, and I’d like some input from you as we shake it down into something workable. You guys are the experts in this field, and this era. So, for what it’s worth: there are several ANA Factions extremely keen to find this poor old Second Dreamer, not to mention Living Dream, which has a very clear cut agenda for him. Between them they have colossal resources which we can’t hope to equal, so what I propose is to jump on their bandwagon, and let them do the hard work. We should position ourselves to snatch him as soon as they locate him.”
“I like it,” Tomansio said. “The simpler it is, the better.”
“Which just leaves us with mere details,” Oscar said. “Everyone seems to think the Second Dreamer is on Viotia. We’ll be there in another seven hours.”