On board the transport Heritas, inbound for Caern, Colonel Streicher and Major Ramirez settled back on the reclining seats within the transport's briefing theater and allowed the technicians to adjust their input helmets and mikes. Only a handful of other shipboard officers shared the room with them, but when the VR tech touched a screen on the main console, the theater vanished and they found themselves within a stadium packed with thousands of uniformed Confederation officers.
Their bodies were still in the theater aboard Heritas, but in their minds, beneath virtual reality helmets and the needle-slender beams of light flicking across their retinas, and with low-frequency electromagnetic beams stimulating the tiny net of cranial implants touching their brains, they were elsewhere, beneath a green transplas dome on a world thousands of light years distant from the star system of Sallos. At the stadium's center, towering above them all, was the richly beribboned and impressively martial form of Major General Weslen Ricard Moberly.
"We are fighting," he said, his amplified voice booming through the virtual theater like thunder, "against gods. . . ."
A ripple of amusement danced through the bleachers, seating alcoves, and tables encircling the General's titanic form.
"At least," the apparition thundered on, "Intelligence informs us that that is how the Aetryx see themselves.
"In fact, our xenopsychological people suggest that they evolved socially with an innate worldview that essentially hardwired them to think of themselves as the masters of the cosmos. It might be a religious compulsion—think of all the human religions that told their followers that they were lords of creation. More likely, there's a biological root. Maybe their ancestors learned to breed domestic animals to fit specific needs, and they developed from that a philosophy that saw all other life as tools, as things to be used for their gain, comfort, and safety. We just don't know.
"We do know they have an advanced biological science that lets them manufacture bodies, or somas, to order, both within their own species, and in others. Here's the form we're most familiar with. . . ."
Moberly's form faded away, and in its place, suspended in midair above the stadium center, was an alien being at once shockingly strange, yet almost hauntingly beautiful. Centauroid—four-legged and two-armed—it had a body as sleek and as graceful as that of a jungle cat, with glistening ebony fur marked by streaks of silver. The head was oddly shaped and angled, but the face was eerily human, with large, expressive eyes that looked like orbs of shattered, golden crystal with jet black, slightly elongated pupils.
The being looked at once muscular, sleek, and benevolent; when those magnificent eyes blinked, Streicher had the feeling that a powerful mind resided behind them.
"Intelligence calls this form the Diplomat," Moberly's voice explained as the image slowly rotated in space. "It was apparently gene-tailored specifically for the purpose of communicating with humans."
The black and silver being vanished, and was replaced by another, also centauroid, this time massively armored with bony plates embedded in a leathery hide, a walking tank in mottled patterns of olive green, brown, and black. The head on this one was a horror out of some ancient mythology, dragonish and snake-necked, with a saw-toothed crest of black spines, and red slits for eyes within bony protective turrets.
Interesting. The diplomat form had inspired an almost instinctively positive response in Streicher. This one inspired an instinctive dread. Streicher wondered how the image alone was able to affect him emotionally and with such power.
"This is one of several warrior forms," Moberly said. "Warrior, Type One. And this . . ."
The warrior was replaced by yet another centaur form. It possessed the same basic body shape, but the upper torso jutted forward instead of up and was capped by a nightmare tangle of multiple red-gold eyes, palps, and wetly gleaming mouth parts. "Our intelligence sources call this an Aetryx protosome. We think, we think that all of the subspecies derived from this one.
"General," one of the officers in the virtual room asked, "what are you saying . . . that all of these different forms are Trixies?
"We're not privy to the Trixies' biological labs," Moberly replied, "but our xenobiology labs think that the Aetryx genome must be highly plastic. Think of dogs, with all the different sizes and shapes and breeds they come in, and yet they're all Canis familiaris, from a palmpup squeaker to a Nordanian riding hound.
"Our sources tell us that the Aetryx don't attach the same importance to body image that we do. They may gene-tailor themselves to fit specific roles in their society. They may also have the capacity to so perfectly pattern the thoughts and memories of their own brains that they can download them into computers or possibly specially grown organic brains. This is all guesswork, at this point, but our intelligence sources claim this is the basis for the Aetryx claims of godhood. They don't die. They're effectively immortal. When their body ages, they download their minds to another one. At least, that's the claim.
"We have evidence that the Aetryx also use intelligent beings in their bioengineering schemes. And that, of course, is one reason the Confederation has declared war on these monsters."
The Aetryx protosome faded away, replaced by the image of a human.
Or was it? It was humanoid, certainly, with human features emerging from the broad, flat, muscular face. It was nude and male, though the genitals were missing, along with every bit of hair, right down to the eyelashes. Like the Warrior, Type One, the being's skin was leathery and protected in places by bony plates that followed the shape of the sharp-etched muscles underneath. The horns curling up from the being's temples added a peculiarly sinister aspect, as did the fangs protruding from an elongated jaw.
"A Warrior, Type Two," Moberly continued. "Also called a troll. It appears to have been gene-tailored from human stock."
Streicher heard groans and gasps from others in the virtual audience.
"Apparently, wherever the Aetryx go as they expand into the galaxy, they tinker with the genetics of any species they come across. We don't know the details of how they do this, but it's easy enough to see why. By altering the gene pool of any given world, they can tailor its population to their specs, make them tractable, docile, loyal, whatever is necessary. This makes them extraordinarily dangerous as military opponents.
"Caern was once one of the outlying frontier worlds of the old Concordiat, far up the Perseus Arm and pretty well off the beaten track of trade routes and military defense districts," Moberly went on. The troll's image was replaced by the swollen orb of a planet, a ringed gas giant, circled by a drifting coterie of moons. One of those moons, large and cloud-streaked as the camera angle zoomed in for a closer look, showed the colors of life—greens and olives and russet golds, with the telltale gleam of ocean blue beneath dappling clouds.
"Caern," Moberly continued. "A major moon of Dis, Sallos V. It's located just outside the traditional habitable zone boundaries, but the gas giant exacts tidal stresses enough to keep the surface warmed in the liquid water range. At last census, Caern was home to nearly three hundred million humans.
"That, however, was five centuries ago. When the Concordiat collapsed, all contact with Caern was lost. The Aetryx must have arrived shortly after that, conquered the planet, and enslaved whatever was left of the human population.
"We know very little about the Aetryxha. We know they have star travel, but we don't know how large the Aetryx empire is, or even if they have an empire along the lines of the Confederation. We've had minimal contact with them so far . . . at Jolhem, at Draelano, and here at Sallos, and our diplomatic exchanges with them in the first two have been limited to radio. Intelligence believes they may be slowly expanding through the Perseus Arm, settling only on worlds that offer them good . . . building materials. Congenial hosts they can work with, mold to their specifications. This appears to be the first time humans have run into them face to face, as it were."
Streicher felt a growing anger . . . or was it fear? An alien species with a technology evolved along biological lines, rather than the traditional methodologies of physics, chemistry, and math . . . their arsenal might be expected to include impressive biological weapons. And their conquests of other worlds would involve literally reshaping the inhabitants of those worlds to meet the new masters' specifications.
Jon Jarred Streicher was a military man from a military family, but his roots were on Aristotle and within the quasi-religious doctrine of Ethical Eudaimonics . . . which stressed that each individual had the right to develop his or her full potential through creativity, artistic endeavor, and individuality. The greatest good for the greatest number.
The idea of an outside intelligence reshaping an entire world population to its own ends . . . the very idea was disgusting.
And yet, he thought, no wonder the Caernan human population reportedly thought of the Aetryx as "gods." The impulse to worship higher powers might well be genetically enhanced or even grafted in whole.
But Moberly was still lecturing. "Confederation traders rediscovered Caern five standard years ago," he went on. "The condition of the human population on Caern was only gradually uncovered after several trading settlements were established on the fringes of the Storm Sea."
As Moberly spoke, words and names overlaid the slow-turning holographic globe, showing continents, cities, seas and other geographical features. As would be expected for the moon of so large a gas giant, Caern was tidally locked with its primary, one side forever facing Dis, the other looking outward, toward the stars. Because Dis was large enough to generate a fair amount of thermal radiation through gravitational collapse, the Disward side of Caern was desert, while the antipodes were ice-locked tundra, glacier, and solid-frozen ocean. Between the two extremes was a chain of landlocked seas girdling the planet from pole to pole. Rugged mountains had crinkled and gnarled the planetary crust with fractal geometries too complex for the eye to follow. Ice melt from mountains and outside glaciers had carved crazy-quilt jumbles of canyons, rivers, and badlands, and active volcanoes glowed and grumbled everywhere. Most of the cities—the old Concordiat population centers—were scattered along the seas and fertile plains pinned between desert and ice.
Planetographic data scrolled through Streicher's inner awareness, cold facts and figures inadequate to describe so vast and complex a thing as a living world. Smaller than Earth, with a surface gravity only three quarters of a G, and a low atmospheric pressure as well, .8 bar., Caern circled Dis in four days and eight hours, rotating once in that time as it faced its primary.
Two suns crawled slowly across the Caernan sky through the long, long day. With so much thermal energy falling on Caern both from the stars and from Dis, storms were large, violent, and frequent, though the slow rotation and small seas together meant that large Coriolis-induced storms were nonexistent.
Local storms, though, could be fierce, sudden, and fast-moving, with torrential downpours, tornadoes, and brick-sized hail. Thick ozone layers and a planetary magnetic field measuring about 1.2 gauss protected the surface from the vast bands of radiation flung off by giant Dis; the night skies were ablaze with auroras.
Caern, Streicher thought, must be a world of wild and spectacular beauty.
It was also a world that would be filled with unexpected dangers, even deadliness, all quite apart from any surprises the Trixies might have arranged for unwanted visitors.
Moberly was still talking behind the image of the slowly turning moon, describing the history of contact with Caern since the first traders had arrived five years earlier.
"Requests that Confederation officials be allowed to inspect the living conditions for Caern's human population were ignored or rebuffed," he said. "Those Caernan humans we were able to interview showed signs of having been brainwashed or otherwise conditioned emotionally into believing the Aetryx are actually gods of some sort. Demands that full civil rights be extended to Caern's humans were ignored. So were demands that our merchants have direct access to the human population.
"Tensions escalated when the Aetryxha Circle, as their government styles itself, rejected the Persean Doctrine. You've all received downloads on the legalese. Essentially, the Doctrine guarantees the rights of humans throughout the Confederation's sphere of influence, and establishes the Navy as the guarantor of those rights."
Images shifted and drifted across Streicher's vision, replacing the holographic globe of Caern. Confederation naval vessels, huge, irregularly patterned in swaths and stripes of black, gray, and light blue, moved into Disian space, the ringed, back-lit globe of the gas giant looming vast within its necklace of crescent moons.
"Since Caern is well within the treaty boundaries of Confederation influence, the Confederation Senate authorized military intervention. Two months ago, the battlecarriers Esan and Helias, the command cruiser Galahedron, and three destroyers arrived at Caern as part of a show of force to win Aetryxha acknowledgment of the Doctrine's provisions. You've all been briefed. You all know what happened. . . ."
Silent pulses of light illuminated the squadron of warships drifting across Streicher's inner vision. Through computer simulation, the virtual watchers observed again the ambush of BTF-74, the eye-searing disintegration of the Helias and the Esan, the two destroyers and the Galahedron.
"Kurbal recorded four battlecarriers moving out of Caern orbit as she swung past Dis," Moberly said, as the enemy vessels were highlighted in the scene by flashing red reticule boxes. "We don't know whether those ships are stationed permanently in the Caern System, or at some other Aetryxha base at another star. Third Fleet has engaged enemy forces at a known Trixie base at Draelano, ten parsecs from here, in an operation designed to draw local forces off . . . and it appears to have been completely successful. Our lead fleet elements have now reached Caern and begun the preliminary bombardment. They report that the carriers aren't here now, which means we will be able to achieve and maintain complete control of local space.
"With total air-space superiority, we will be able to land the special assault units without delay and without concern for counterattack or unpleasant surprises from enemy spacecraft. We will follow Landing Plan Brilliant Lightning. Targeting and LZ data is being downloaded to the Bolo Strike Force as we speak.
"And so, ladies and gentlemen, we are on a mission of mercy . . . and of rescue. Hundreds of millions of our human brothers and sisters are enslaved on Caern, and we are going in to save them! And we'll prove to the damned Trixies that they aren't gods, if we have to kick them all the way back to heaven!"
The virtual audience around Streicher erupted in cheers and shouts. Streicher exchanged a glance with Ramirez as she arched one perfect eyebrow, then shrugged.
"Not all of them have seen combat before," he told her. "They don't know . . ."
"They're going to find out," Ramirez replied. "We all are."
We certainly are. For Streicher, in fact, shared the major's doubts about this mission. Things had come together so swiftly, with such enthusiasm during the two months since the destruction of BTF-74. But he wondered if anyone had thought about the real risks involved. . . .
"All personnel, report to your combat stations," the general told them, shouting above the ongoing cheers. "We hit atmosphere in ninety-three minutes!"
For the past eighty-one minutes, I have been receiving data feeds through the ship network AI nexus, with constant updates as more information becomes available. The invasion force has entered Disian space. The cruisers, destroyers, and gunships have begun the planetary bombardment, and the transports are now maneuvering for an approach path that will place us on the necessary vectors for release and insertion. So far, there is still no sign of the Enemy battlecarriers reported to be in this system, and no serious opposition to our approach. I remain confident that the initial phases of the battle plan have succeeded to a greater degree than is often the case with operations as large and as complex as this one. I calculate a probability in excess of 82 percent that we will be able to establish a beachhead on the target planet with casualties of less than five percent.
My regimental commander is not so sanguine about our chances for immediate success, however. On our private comm channel, he warns me to "stay on my toes," though the anatomical allusion baffles me for a full 0.0031 second, until I locate the appropriate phrase definition in my slang dictionary files. Colonel Streicher, it seems, is concerned that the Enemy may not be so unprepared as he seems and may have hidden reserves that could seriously upset the projected timetable for deployment or battle prosecution.
"The Enemy's best opportunity for blocking the invasion," I tell him, "is during our approach to the objective. Once our heavy units have been deployed and reached the surface, he will be unable to bring sufficient firepower to bear to hinder our movements."
I do not add the obvious, that the Bolo Mark XXXIII has won the appellation of "planetary siege unit," with each single Bolo possessing, as it does, sufficient firepower to overcome most typical planetary defense garrisons. Our first wave consists of the entirety of First, Second, and Third Brigades, a total of seventy-two Mark XXXIII units, with three more brigades in orbital reserve. It is what ancient strategists referred to as a powerhouse punch, designed to eliminate all Enemy resistance in a minimum of time and with a minimum of friendly casualties or collateral damage. It is the hope of the Confederation High Command that principal Aetryx resistance on Caern can be broken by L-plus-thirty hours with minor damage to the local infrastructure, allowing the humans held in Aetryx slavery to take over the governing of their own world with a minimum of cost and delay.
"There was an important military base here five centuries ago," Colonel Streicher informs me after several long seconds. Human speech is appallingly slow, but I collect the words as they are spoken, storing them for processing and response when appropriate. In the meantime, I continue seven separate diagnostic routines on various integrated software and satellite systems.
"Much of the hardware must be obsolete by today's standards," he continues, "but. . . well, you know there's a good chance that there are Bolos on Caern, right?"
That fact, of course, is in my briefing files. The Concordiat's Perseus Arm, Twelfth Military District Headquarters, was located on Caern, including an aerospace base, army command post, and a Bolo reserve depot.
"According to my records," I tell him, "ninety-three Bolos were left here at various reserve bases. Forty-one were advanced Mark XXXIIs, while the rest were older models, Mark XXVII through XXIX. It is unknown how many may still be in operation."
"Exactly," the Commander says. "It's unknown. You guys could find yourself in quite a fight down there."
"The Bolo Mark XXXIII Combat unit is vastly superior to all previous marks," I tell him. I am aware that human AI psytechnicians still argue whether my kind knows emotions such as pride or self-satisfaction, but that is only because they have not questioned me directly. I am fiercely proud of what I am and of my potential. "Obsolescent combat units on the objective world will not pose a serious threat."
"You sound smug." He sounds surprised.
"I merely state fact," I tell him. "I have been fully programmed with the tactics, communications protocols, and access codes of earlier Bolo marks. Unless the Aetryx have made major reprogramming changes, the Bolos on Caern will not even be able to attack. We will simply co-opt their major control systems and shut them down."
"I hope it's as easy as you think it will be," my regimental commander tells me.
I comprehend. He is warning me against overconfidence.
But I am a Bolo, Mark XXXIII, and in my case, at least, overconfidence is not a part of my psychotronic profile.
Streicher rose from the padded chair in the Bolo Combat Control Center. As always, there were ghosts here.
Peace, it seemed, always came with a price. You had to buy it, first in blood, privation, and suffering. Later, though, when peace was a way of life, you paid through unpreparedness and the inevitability that someone bigger and stronger than you was going to come along and try to force his version of peace down your throat. The Confederation had been at peace for a long time now and was not, in Streicher's professional estimation, ready for war . . . even so small and easily won a war as the Caern Incursion promised to be. Unlike his fellow Confederation officers, Streicher had had far too much experience with war. He'd seen the elephant, as an ancient and somewhat incomprehensible military adage put it, and he'd not liked what he'd seen.
His earlier charge of euph had worn off, the joy and self-confidence failing. Instinctively, he reached for a breast pocket on his uniform, clawing at it before he remembered he'd left the packet of small, intensely blue tablets in his quarters. He was trying to ration himself, but it seemed as though the need was coming more frequently these days.
"Colonel, Lieutenant Tyler has just come on board," the Bolo's voice announced, a calm, almost thoughtful male baritone filling the tiny compartment from above. "She is on her way to the battle center via personnel conduit one."
"Very well. Thanks, Vic."
Ducking to keep from banging his head against the lower rim of the 360-degree holoscreen dome hovering above the command chair, he made his way aft toward the hatch. A monitor in the bulkhead showed Lieutenant Tyler's lanky frame coming up the moving way aft of the battle center.
Bolos had been fully autonomous, not requiring a human commander on-board, since the Mark XV . . . and those dated back as far as the late 24th century, at least. Still, sheer conservatism, and the centuries-old fear that Bolos might start thinking for themselves and slip out from under the figurative thumbs of their human builders and masters, had kept this tiny compartment with its battle command center, reclining seat, and holoscreen buried deep within the duralloy mountain of most Bolo combat units.
He laid one hand on the curved, metal wall of the control center, feeling the faint pulse transmitted through layered duralloy and ceramplast. The heart of the Bolo, beating along in its centuries-old rhythm. The heart of a living mountain.
Or of a god of war.
Streicher often came to the BCC, sometimes to talk with his enormous charge, sometimes simply to be alone and to think. He'd started out nearly twenty-five years ago as a very young, very junior lieutenant on a Bolo maintenance crew on his home world of Aristotle, out on the remote marches of the Confederation, and that was where he'd discovered this safe haven from barked orders, hassles, and overly anal authority. Later, after the horror of the Kerellian Incursion, he'd been the human liaison with a Bolo in the old 4th Star Guards and then been transferred to Asetru, where he'd commanded a company of two ancient Mark XXVIIs.
Now he was a colonel, in command of a regiment of six Mark XXXIIIs. On each world, in each command, he'd found it necessary for sanity's sake to seek this metal-walled haven out, a place of escape when he needed one.
For Streicher had seen far too much of the folly men called war. He'd been wounded—not with visible scars or missing limbs or the cancerous burn of radiation, but with deep and ragged tears etching his soul.
The agony of losing his family and people, his entire world . . .
God, he needed another euph.
He'd been taking the little blue chew-tabs for twenty years, now, ever since Aristotle. A sympathetic doctor had prescribed them, at first, back when it wasn't even clear if the grief-stricken band of exiles from the scorched world would survive.
Euph tablets had been popular on Aristotle long before the Kerellian Incursion. Streicher, like nearly everyone throughout the Confederation's Thousand Worlds, carried a cerebral implant in his brain, part of the microsymbiotic hardware grown molecule by molecule throughout his body that helped him link in to AI simulations or data feeds or connect mind-to-mind with other people.
Euphorinase was an artificial molecule, an enzyme that catalyzed a reaction between sugar molecules in the blood and the cupric-hafnide neuron receptor sites within the implant. When chewed in tablet form, the molecule entered the bloodstream through the capillaries beneath the tongue and almost immediately began bonding to the implant receptors in the brain. Over the course of the next hour or so, sugar was broken down, yielding a thin flow of free electrons as it did so.
The result was a kind of trickle charge directly into the implant where it bonded with the brain's key memory and sensory areas. It felt good. More than that, it tended to inhibit painful memories, dull them and push them into the background, without interfering with the normal functioning of the brain. Not physically addictive at all, it was widely used by medtechs to relieve stress and aid patients dealing with serious loss or mental trauma.
And if there was some emotional addiction for some, well, it was easy enough to reprogram the implant to reject euphorinase and break the craving once and for all. He could stop any time he wanted to at all.
Euph was forbidden to Confederation military officers, but everyone knew that plenty of people at all ranks took the stuff. It was harmless, after all, and could even help a man focus, to think harder and straighter, without the distractions of whatever memories had driven him to the drug in the first place.
Once, twelve years ago, a spot physical check had caught traces of euph in Streicher's implant and bloodstream, but the discovery hadn't hurt his career in the least. His implant had simply been reprogrammed. Within two weeks, he'd found a civilian medtech willing to program him back.
And life went on, made bearable by the occasional chewing of those bright, beautiful blue pills.
A tone sounded, and the battle center hatch irised open. Lieutenant Kelly Tyler stepped through, ducking to avoid banging her head. "Oh!" she said, rising to meet Streicher's gaze. "Excuse me, Colonel. I . . . I didn't know anyone else was in here."
"You can always query the machine, Lieutenant," he told her.
"Yes, sir, but, but I didn't think of that. People don't usually come up here."
"I do. So do you, apparently."
"Uh . . . yes, sir." She seemed nonplussed. She had long red hair, which at the moment she was wearing at a most nonregulation length down her back. She started to run her fingers through her bangs, then realized what she was doing and stopped. "I, uh, just wanted to run a prelaunch on Victor, here, from his command center."
"I've already done that," he told her. "For the whole regiment. But please feel free to check me if you want."
He could see her hesitate, see her weighing the best possible reply. He was pretty sure that Kelly, like him, came here to be alone.
She was a strange one, he'd decided almost as soon as he'd joined the regiment. Shy, unwilling to put forth her own ideas in conference, she was nonetheless an excellent Bolo unit commander, with a decided rapport with her huge charge. She could talk to the Bolo, he knew, far more comfortably than she could communicate with most of her human comrades.
And, just maybe, he thought, she was a little in love with her titanic charge, and wanted to say goodbye.
He knew exactly how she felt. "I'll be in the launch center," he told her. He checked the time on his implant. "Make it fast. You have ten minutes."
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."
"And . . . your hair."
"Sir?" She flushed.
"It's attractive hanging down that way, but regulations say you wear it up, high and tight, at least on-duty. Don't want you catching it on the instrumentation."
"S-sorry sir." She reached up and began tucking it into a bun.
"Besides . . ." Streicher raised his eyes toward the ceiling, indicating the Bolo. "I don't think he notices your hair style."
She stammered something unintelligible, her blush growing darker. Grinning, he ducked through the hatchway and into the narrow, green-painted passageway beyond. Streicher knew what she was going through and would give her what time with the Bolo he could.
But in another handful of minutes, the regiment would be on its own.