“Of course,” said Albedo. He flicked his hand as if discarding the useless segment of this conversation. “But we can still register the connection. We feel sure that the girl is among those returning from Old Earth via the old farcaster network.”
“There are others?” said one of the males.
Albedo nodded. “A few at first. More now. At least fifty activations at last count.”
Nemes folded her arms. “Do you think the Something Else is terminating the Old Earth experiment?”
“No,” said Albedo. He walked over to the nearest slab and looked down at the naked human body on it. It had been a young woman, no more than seventeen or eighteen standard years old. She had red hair. White frost lay on her pale skin and open eyes. “No,” he said again. “The Sectors agree that it is just Aenea’s group returning.”
“How do we find her?” said Nemes’s female sibling, obviously musing aloud on the 75-megahertz band. “We can translate to every world that had a farcaster during the Hegemony and interrogate the farcaster portals in person.”
Albedo nodded. “The Something Else can conceal the far-cast destinations,” he said, “but the Core is almost certain that it cannot hide the fact of the matrix fold itself.”
Almost certain. Nemes noted that unusual modifier of TechnoCore perceptions.
“We want you …” began Albedo, pointing at the female sibling. “The Stable Sector did not give you a name, did it?”
“No,” said Nemes’s twin. Limp, dark bangs fell over the pale forehead. No smile touched the thin lips.
Albedo chuckled on the 75-megahertz band. “Rhadamanth Nemes needed a name to pass as a human crewmate on the Raphael I think that the rest of you should be named, if just for my convenience.” He pointed at the female. “Scylla.” Stabbing his finger at each of the males in turn, he said, “Gyges. Briareus.”
None of the three responded to their christenings, but Nemes folded her arms and said, “Does this amuse you, Councillor?”
“Yes,” said Albedo.
Around them, the atmosphere vented from the dropship curled and broiled like a wicked fog. The male now named Briareus said, “We’ll keep this archangel for transport and begin searching all the old Web worlds, beginning, I assume, with the River Tethys planets.”
“Yes,” said Albedo.
Scylla tapped her nails on the frozen fabric of her jumpsuit. “Four ships, the search would go four times as fast.”
“Obviously,” said Albedo. “There are several reasons we have decided against that—the first being that the Pax has few of these archangel ships free to loan.”
Nemes raised an eyebrow. “And when has the Core asked the Pax for loans?”
“Since we need their money and their factories and their human resources to build the ships,” said Albedo without emphasis. “The second—and final—reason is that we want the four of you together in case you encounter someone or something impossible for one of you to handle.”
Nemes’s eyebrow stayed up. She expected some reference to her failure on God’s Grove, but it was Gyges who spoke. “What in the Pax could we not handle, Councillor?”
Again the man in gray opened his hands. Behind him, the curling vapors of fog first obscured and then revealed the pale bodies on slabs. “The Shrike,” he said.
Nemes made a rude noise on the 75-megahertz band. “I beat the thing single-handedly,” she said.
Albedo shook his head. The maddening smile stayed fixed. “No,” he said. “You did not. You used the hyperentropic device with which we supplied you to send it five minutes into the future. That is not the same as beating it.”
Briareus said, “The Shrike is no longer under the control of the UI?”
Albedo opened his hands a final time. “The gods of the future no longer whisper to us, my expensive friend. They war among themselves and the clamor of their battle echoes back through time. If our god’s work is to be done in our time, we must do it ourselves.” He looked at the four clone-siblings. “Are we clear on instructions?”
“Find the girl,” said Scylla.
“And?” said the Councillor.
“Kill her at once,” said Gyges. “No hesitation.”
“And if her disciples intervene?” said Albedo, smiling more broadly now, his voice the caricature of a human schoolteacher’s.
“Kill them,” said Briareus.
“And if the Shrike appears?” he said, the smile suddenly fading.
“Destroy it,” said Nemes.
Albedo nodded. “Any final questions before we go our separate ways?”
Scylla said, “How many humans are here?” She gestured toward the slabs and bodies.
Councillor Albedo touched his chin. “A few tens of millions on this Labyrinthine world, in this section of tunnels. But there are many more tunnels here.” He smiled again. “And eight more Labyrinth worlds.”
Nemes slowly turned her head, viewing the swirling fog and receding line of stone slabs on various levels of the spectrum. None of the bodies showed any sign of heat above the ambient temperature of the tunnel. “And this is the Pax’s work,” she said.
Albedo chuckled on the 75-megahertz band. “Of course,” he said. “Why would the Three Sectors of Consciousness or our future UI want to stockpile human bodies?” He walked over to the body of the young woman and tapped her frozen breast. The air in the cavern was far too thin to carry sound, but Nemes imagined the noise of cold marble being tapped by fingernails.
“Any more questions?” said Albedo. “I have an important meeting.”
Without a word on the 75-megahertz band—or any other band—the four siblings turned and reentered the dropship.
•• •
GATHERED ON THE CIRCULAR TACTICAL CONFERENCE center blister of the H.H.S Uriel were twenty Pax Fleet officers, including all of the captains and executive officers of Task Force GIDEON. Among those executive officers was Commander Hoagan “Hoag” Liebler, Thirty-six standard years old, born-again since his baptism on Renaissance Minor, the scion of the once-great Liebler Freehold family whose estate covered some two million hectares—and whose current debt ran to almost five marks per hectare—Liebler had dedicated his private life to serving the Church and given his professional life to Pax Fleet. He was also a spy and a potential assassin.
Liebler had looked up with interest as his new commanding officer was piped aboard the Uriel. Everyone in the task force—almost everyone in Pax Fleet—had heard of Father Captain de Soya. The former torchship CO had been granted a papal diskey—meaning almost unlimited authority—for some secret project five standard years earlier, and then had failed at his mission. No one was sure what that mission had been, but de Soya’s use of that diskey had made enemies among Fleet officers across the Pax. The father-captain’s subsequent failure and disappearance had been cause for more rumor in the wardrooms and Fleet staff rooms: the most accepted theory was that de Soya had been turned over to the Holy Office, had been quietly excommunicated, and probably executed.
But now here he was, given command of one of the most treasured assets in Pax Fleet’s arsenal: one of the twenty-one operational archangel cruisers.
Liebler was surprised at de Soya’s appearance: the father-captain was short, dark-haired, with large, sad eyes more appropriate to the icon of a martyred saint than to the skipper of a battlecruiser. Introductions were made quickly by Admiral Al-dikacti, the stocky Lusian in charge of both this meeting and the task force.
“Father Captain de Soya,” said Aldikacti as de Soya took his place at the gray, circular table within the gray, circular room, “I believe you know some of these officers.” The Admiral was famous for her lack of tact as well as for her ferocity in battle.
“Mother Captain Stone is an old friend,” said de Soya, nodding toward his former executive officer. “Captain Hearn was a member of my last task force, and I have met Captain Sati and Captain Lempriere. I have also had the privilege of working with Commanders Uchikawa and Barnes-Avne.”
Admiral Aldikacti grunted. “Commander Barnes-Avne is here representing the Marine and Swiss Guard presence on Task Force GIDEON,” she said. “Have you met your exec, Father Captain de Soya?”
The priest-captain shook his head and Aldikacti introduced Liebler. The commander was surprised at the firmness in the diminutive father-captain’s grip and the authority in the other man’s gaze. Eyes of a martyr or no, thought Hoag Liebler, this man is used to command.
“All right,” growled Admiral Aldikacti, “let’s get started. Captain Sati will present the briefing.”
For the next twenty minutes, the conference blister was fogged with holos and trajectory overlays. Comlogs and ’scribers filled with data and scribbled notes. Sati’s soft voice was the only sound except for the rare question or request for clarification.
Liebler jotted his own notes, surprised at the scope of Task Force GIDEON’S mission, and busy at the work of any executive officer—getting down all the salient facts and details that the captain might want to review later.
GIDEON was the first task force made up completely of archangel-class cruisers. Seven of the archangels had been tasked to this mission. Conventional Hawking-class torchships had been dispatched months earlier to rendezvous with them at their first sally point in the Outback some twenty light-years beyond the Great Wall defensive sphere so as to participate in a mock battle, but after that first jump, the task force of seven ships would be operating independently.
“A good metaphor would be General Sherman’s march through Georgia in the pre-Hegira North American Civil War in the nineteenth century,” said Captain Sati, sending half the officers at the table tapping at their comlog diskeys to bring up that arcane bit of military history.
“Previously,” continued Sati, “our battles with the Ousters have either been in the Great Wall no-man’s-land, or on the fringes of either Pax or Ouster space. There have been very few deep-penetration raids into Ouster territory.” Sati paused in his briefing. “Father Captain de Soya’s Task Force MAGI some five standard years ago was one of the deepest of those raids.”
“Any comments about it, Father Captain?” said Admiral Aldikacti.
De Soya hesitated a moment. “We burned an orbital forest ring,” he said at last. “There was no resistance.”
Hoag Liebler thought that the father-captain’s voice sounded vaguely ashamed.
Sati nodded as if satisfied. “That’s what we hope will be the case for this entire mission. Our intelligence suggests that the Ousters have deployed the vast bulk of their defensive forces along the sphere of the Great Wall, leaving very little in the way of armed resistance through the heart of their colonized areas beyond the Pax. For almost three centuries they have positioned their forces, their bases, and their home systems with the limitations of Hawking-drive technology as the primary determining factor.”
Tactical holos filled the conference blister.
“The grand cliché,” continued Sati, “is that the Pax has had the advantage of interior lines of transport and communication, while the Ousters have had the defensive strength of concealment and distance. Penetration deep into Ouster space has been all but impossible due to the vulnerability of our supply lines and their willingness to cut and run before our superior strength, attacking later—often with devastating effect—when our task forces venture too far from the Great Wall.”
Sati paused and looked at the officers around the table. “Gentlemen and ladies, those days are over.” More holos misted into solidity, the red line of Task Force GIDEON’s trajectory out from and back to the Pax sphere slicing between suns like a laser knife.
“Our mission is to destroy every in-system Ouster supply base and deep-space colony we encounter,” said Sati, his soft voice taking on strength. “Comet farms, can cities, boondoggles, torus bases, L-point clusters, orbital forest rings, birthing asteroids, bubble hives … everything.”
“including civilian angels?” asked Father Captain de Soya.
Hoag Liebler blinked at his CO’s question. Pax Fleet informally referred to the space-tailored DNA-altered mutants as “Lucifer’s angels,” usually shortened to “angels” in an irony bordering on blasphemy, but the phrase was rarely used before the high brass.
Admiral Aldikacti answered. “Especially angels, Father Captain. His Holiness, Pope Urban, has declared this a Crusade against the inhuman travesties the Ousters are breeding out there in the darkness. His Holiness has stated in his Crusade Encyclical that these unholy mutations are to be eliminated from God’s universe. There are no civilian Ousters. Do you have a problem understanding this directive, Father Captain de Soya?”
Officers around the table seemed to hold their breaths until de Soya finally answered. “No, Admiral Aldikacti. I understand His Holiness’s encyclical.”
The briefing continued. “These archangel-class cruisers will be involved,” said Sati. “His Holiness’s Ship Uriel as flagship, the Raphael, the Michael, the Gabriel, the Raguel, the Remiel, and the Sariel. In each case, the ships will use their Gideon drives to make the instantaneous jump to the next system, will take two days or more to decelerate in-system, thus allowing time for crew resurrection. His Holiness has granted us dispensation to use the new two-day resurrection-cycle crèches … which offer a ninety-two percent probability of resurrection. After regrouping the attack force, we will do maximum damage to all Ouster forces and installations before translating to the next system. Any Pax ship damaged beyond repair will be abandoned, the crew transferred to other ships in the task force, and the cruiser destroyed. No chances will be taken with the Ousters capturing Gideon-drive technology, even though it would be useless to them without the Sacrament of Resurrection. The mission should extend some three standard months. Any questions?”
Father Captain de Soya raised his hand. “I have to apologize,” he said, “I’ve been out of touch for several standard years, but I notice that this task force is made up of archangel-class ships named after archangels referred to by name in the Old Testament.”
“Yes, Father Captain?” prompted Admiral Aldikacti. “Your question?”
“Just this, Admiral. I seem to remember that there were only seven archangels referred to by name in the Bible. What about the rest of the archangel-class ships that have come on-line?”
There was chuckling around the long table and de Soya could see that he had cut the tension much as he had planned.
Smiling, Admiral Aldikacti said, “We welcome our prodigal captain back and inform him that the Vatican theologians have searched the Book of Enoch and the rest of the pseudepigrapha to find these other angels which might be promoted to ‘honorary archangel,’ and the Holy Office itself has authorized dispensation in Pax Fleet’s use of their names. We found it … ah … appropriate … that the first seven planet-class archangels built be named after those listed in the Bible and should carry their sacred fire to the enemy.”
The chuckling turned to sounds of approval and finally to soft applause among the commanders and their execs.
There were no other questions. Admiral Aldikacti said, “Oh, one other detail, if you see this ship …”A holo of a strange-looking starship floated above the center of the table. The thing was small by Pax Fleet standards, was streamlined as if built to enter atmosphere, and had fins near the fusion ports.
“What is it?” said Mother Captain Stone, still smiling from the good feeling in the room. “Some Ouster joke?”
“No,” said Father Captain de Soya in a soft monotone, “it’s Web-era technology. A private starship … owned by an individual.”
A few executive officers chuckled again.
Admiral Aldikacti stopped the laughter by waving her thick hand through the holo. “The father-captain is correct,” rumbled the Lusian admiral. “It’s an old Web-era ship, once owned by a diplomat of the Hegemony.” She shook her head. “They had the wealth to make such gestures then. Anyway, it has a Hawking drive modified by Ouster technicians, may well be armed, and must be co
nsidered as dangerous.”
“What do we do if we encounter it?” asked Mother Captain Stone. “Take it as a prize?”
“No,” said Admiral Aldikacti. “Destroy it on sight. Slag it to vapor. Any questions?”
There were none. The officers dispersed to their ships to prepare for the initial translation. On the wasp-shuttle ride back to the Raphael XO Hoag Liebler chatted pleasantly with his new captain about the ship’s readiness and crew’s high morale, all the while thinking, I hope I don’t have to kill this man.
6
t has been my experience that immediately after certain traumatic separations—leaving one’s family to go to war, for instance, or upon the death of a family member, or after parting from one’s beloved with no assurances of reunion—there is a strange calmness, almost a sense of relief, as if the worst has happened and nothing else need be dreaded. So it was with the rainy, predawn morning on which I left Aenea on Old Earth.
The kayak that I paddled was small and the Mississippi River was large. At first, in the darkness, I paddled with an intense alertness that was close to fear, adrenaline-driven, eyes straining to make out snags and sandbars and drifting flotsam on the raging current. The river was very wide there, the better part of a mile, I guessed—the Old Architect had used the archaic English units of length and distance, feet, yards, miles, and most of us at Taliesin had fallen into the habit of imitating him—and the banks of the river looked flooded, with dead trees showing where the waters had risen hundreds of meters from the original banks, pushing the river to high bluffs on both sides.
An hour or so after I had parted from my friend, the light came up slowly, first showing the separation of gray cloud and black-gray bluff to my left, then casting a flat, cold light on the surface of the river itself. I had been right to be afraid in the dark: the river was snarled with snags and long fingers of sand bars; large, waterlogged trees with hydra heads of roots raged past me on the center currents, smashing anything in their way with the force of giant battering rams. I selected what I hoped was the most forgiving current, paddled strongly to stay out of the way of floating debris, and tried to enjoy the sunrise.