Agent of the Imperium, page 17
“We are aligned, you and I. We both want the same: progress; safety. The dance brought you here. There is a purpose for you. We just need to take the next step.”
He was mad. Insane. I tried to suppress the thought. He could sense my aversion, but now I was paralyzed. My muscles tried to squirm or flail, but they stood immobile. I had let my guard down, fascinated by his story; not seeing where it was leading.
Lieutenant Orloff stood equally still. If he could move, I was sure that he would have.
Lord Shatlijiatlas approached without malice. His touch was almost loving as he removed my wafer, fitted it to a small packet, and applied it to a place in the back of his skull.
I understood.
In a flash of invisible light and a clash of inaudible sound, I understood everything that Shatlijiatlas had been telling us; more than that, I believed everything that he said. It all made sense. It was all supported not by wishes and aspirations, but by scientific proof, careful hypothesizing, rigorous testing. I knew that the dancers could bend reality; that they had done so in the past. Some pattern of dancing years before had set up a cascade of events that made our ship misjump here so that I could see the very truth of their mission and believe in their sacred cause.
Now I saw that I could intervene in the affairs of the Empire; draw them closer to the Consulate; reduce our conflicts. Bring the benefits of Zho psychology to our own populations.
A voice in the back of my head, his voice sharing my mind, spoke to me, telling me what I needed to do; assuring me of the long-term benefits; defining my actions as service to the Empire, and more: as service to all mankind. I had never been so completely sure of myself as at that very moment.
And yet, even as he spoke his voice faltered. Just as I was listening to him, feeling his belief in his way of life and his conviction that the Second True Path was absolute truth, he was listening to me, hearing not only my belief in service to the Empire, but also my memories. They washed over him: not just memories of killing millions, and billions of people, Human or not, but also my commonplace ability to dissemble and misdirect.
He was strong, but he was not trained in the details of the psychology in which he felt such confidence. He expected that he would dominate in our shared mind. He underestimated the situation.
I knew that he had stalled Zhimaway; that it was immobile on the other side of the world. I knew how he had done it, and I with a simple decision reversed his action.
“Sir! We have power!”
“What was the problem? Never mind. Lift in three, two, one.”
“Yes, we have lift.”
The ship rose slowly from the shallow sea to about a hullheight, and then accelerated straight up.
I stood and planned what I needed to do.
I reached out to our pinnace and instantly the pilot knew without understanding that he needed to board his two passengers in the plaza. It would be a matter of mere minutes.
I also thought that the dancers should clear the plaza to avoid injuries. Through the window, I even then could see them flowing to its edges.
Lord Shatlijiatlas had assumed a figurative fetal position in the back of our head, and I turned my attention to him. His plan had been that I spearhead an effort to bring the Zhodani psionic sciences to the Imperium, and with it their euphemistic adjustments of minds to accept their stations and lots in life. For all of his sophistication, this Lord had no true grasp of Imperial dissimulation.
He would have his body back in a month, and I began a series of mental conversations before he regained full control.
Now I the Lord addressed me the Agent as only self can to self: in brief phrases and staccato half-expressed ideas, confident that I would understand me.
“Leave these people alone.” They are not a threat to the empire; at least not now.
The pinnace hit the plaza hard and its hatch irised open. In a matter of seconds, the pilot appeared as we approached.
“Reveal nothing,” I whispered to myself.
I touched Lieutenant Orloff and he collapsed. His memory of this would be blank. Agent me and pilot hauled him into the craft. In the last minute, I pulled away the wafer from my niche and returned it to my Agent host, and they were gone.
ENNA PLANT LAGASH
REPORT 4
Video image of an older Human woman with dark hair in a spacer cut and streaked with grey. Her eyes have slight wrinkles at the edges that shift as she smiles. She speaks with authority. Datestamp: 092-541. Report 4.
Our time on the ship settled into a routine. We all had responsibilities, but none were onerous. There was a flurry of activity just before and just after a jump transition, and there were tasks to be performed as we scanned new systems and refueled.
But our time during jump had few demands on us. We exercised. I studied. Our book club met and discussed. I stood a watch on the bridge twice; the techs similarly shared a rotation in the drive compartment.
I formed a habit of reading alone. Early on, Flink had given me a day-long tour of the ship, from astronics compartment in the very prow, to the stern chasers fixed between the drive outputs. Off the drive compartment, into each wing, were horizontal maintenance shafts that directly accessed sensors and servos and led to wing-tip weapons turrets. Within each was a single acceleration couch with aimers and triggers and an observation dome. I could sit there for hours, reading the classics, comparing texts, making notes, turning over in my mind the many roles there were in society. Anglic literature was no longer my vocation, but it remained to me interesting, even compelling.
After Jonathan showed me jumpspace, I made a habit of deopaquing the dome, and the chaotic roil of jumpspace strangely became a soothing background to my thoughts.
In this particular instance, I was re-reading Nert’s script on hope when I noticed a change in the chaos around me. Where normally I would see a cascade of intense points of many-colored lights, they were now transitioning to one color. Some, then many, then most, and finally all the points became intense blue.
I noted the time and tapped text into the comm asking Jonathan to join me, adding a word to denote urgency. Within five minutes, he was stepping half through the hatch while asking why and what. I shushed him, although technically I was not supposed to shush the captain and said I would explain other things later.
“But now, look out there.” I closed my eyes so he would have an untarnished view.
“This started about ten minutes ago. Before, it was ordinary. Now, everything is blue. What is it? Can I open my eyes now?”
He said I could, and the intensity faded by about half. We decided to take turns looking, and we each tried to memorize what we saw, narrating our notes to the recorder. Eventually the points returned to their normal multi-colored appearance. I noted the time: about ninety minutes elapsed.
My newfound familiarity with math kicked in as I made some quick calculations aloud. “Our courseline is three parsecs, call that ten light-years, or one hundred twenty light-months. Our jump should be 168 hours, more or less. That effect? phenomenon? change? was ninety minutes long, or a hundredth of our jump. Or about a month long?”
Jonathan was tapping a pad. “Thirty-two days. But jump doesn’t work that way. There is no direct correlation between time in jump and location.”
I knew that; I had been taught that. “Then again, we just saw it. A direct correlation.”
“There is that.”
He touched parts of the screen to preserve our narrations, whatever information the scanners and imagers had preserved, and I saw him triple tap a space labeled Ultimate. In our entire interaction, neither of us had spoken the word wave.
Then I had to explain to him why I was spending my time in the port wing turret.
DATHSUTS
056-560
Aboard B Emamela Orbiting
Vlan 1703 Dathsuts C310200-8 Lo
I awoke to the gentle hum of bridge noises: low voices, gentle processing sounds, the occasional audible alert. To my question about senior, the response acknowledged me. Next senior was Captain Lebelle and my briefer was Commander Sathpaaba.
If activations to determine the fates of worlds can be considered normal, then this particular activation was still unusual for several reasons that Commander Sathpaaba noted. We were aboard a single, aging semi-dreadnought, the Emamela, patrolling beyond the Imperial border in Vargr space, above a world with no atmosphere and almost no people.
Against this background, my Newt briefer spelled out the problem. “Our routine anti-corsair patrol took us to this system and our sensors picked up an extensive activity on the polar plain. Initially, this was identified as a pirate base: no matter that they would be better off burrowing in an asteroid in the belt. But the readings and scans show something much too big for that.
The primary transpex viewport opaqued and images appeared. The first showed a city: a center with concentric rings and extending rays, overlaid with a smaller gridwork of connectors. Some of those rays extended far beyond the city to smaller clusters. Sathpaaba highlighted one, “This cluster is an open pit mine exploiting meteoric FeNi. Note the smelter and processing complexes.” He highlighted another location, “And this cluster is processing native copper.” A third, “And this, much farther away, is extracting radioactives.”
Finally, he highlighted and enlarged the very center of the city. “They are building a ship.” I could see it was a very large ship, roughly cylindrical, its base visible surrounded by gantries and frames.
“The diameter of the base is about 350 meters. The ogive of the hull so far says it will be 700 meters long. Bullet-shaped. Two million tons. Ten times the size of our ship. Four times the largest ship the empire builds.
“See the cluster of gantry frames. They’re makering the hull and interior structures in a single pass. No one builds ships like that.”
I mused, “Except them. How many people in that city?”
“None. They are robots.
“From what we can tell, this city started four years ago. There’s a small outpost on the other side of the world mining some rare earths: about a hundred Humans and Vargr. They noticed something and when they tried to visit they were first ignored, and later actively kept away. The locals have shared with us their surveillance imagery.”
“Tell me your evaluation?” I already knew the probable concept: self-replicating automatons who land, build more of themselves, and send those off to do the same again. Meanwhile, the robots left behind would eventually consume this world building more of themselves. The empire’s secret archives had records of now-dead worlds with surfaces converted to vast robot cities. Who knew where their robot citizens ultimately went?
“Yes, Agent. Their first priority seems to be completing their big ship. They don’t seem to have jump drive or gravity-based maneuver. That thing appears to use an orion-drive.”
Which was craziness. The ship would ride on successive fission or fusion bomb explosions. It would destroy the city as it lifted off. What machine logic was at work here?
“So, this city is not long-term viable? It will be destroyed when the ship lifts off?”
“Most probably. Maybe the robots don’t care about radiation.”
“Where’s the ship going?”
“Orion means sublight; probably a tenth lightspeed. Perhaps thirty or forty years per parsec. Theoretically, if they knew where to go, they could reach Vland in 500 years.”
“Where did they come from?”
“They could have been cruising for millennia before they got here. We don’t have enough information. Did they run low on supplies or fuel? Was there something special about this world? We just don’t know.”
The robots seemed oblivious to us hanging in orbit. On the other hand, they were not unintelligent. What if they discovered we had jump drive? What if they could reprogram their maker shipyard to build effective faster-than-light drives?
My decision was easy. “Scrub them.
“Captain, I operate under Imperial Edict 97. Make a pre-emptive strike as soon as possible. When can that be?”
Heretofore silent, Captain Lebelle, now spoke. “I agree. First strikes can be in as soon as an hour.”
“I want a person and ship census for the system.”
A clerk spoke up. “There’s us. The mining outpost has perhaps a hundred people. Three ships on the ground there: Trader Legend out of Regina with a crew of four, Ore Carrier Shar Seven Three with a universal megacorp number, and Far Trader Xyneid registered locally. All are on the surface at the outpost currently.”
“Put an assault team in the outpost; I want everyone aboard those ships and in orbit before the strike begins. How long will that take?”
A marine lieutenant spoke up, “Two hours to prepare and hit the surface. Six hours for a sweep. Two hours to get out.”
“Ten hours. Make it happen.” Then to the ship captain. “Make sure they are away before you start.”
Almost all of the ship’s marines participated. A squad remained behind to handle any issues and to provide me security, although I did not expect any need. As we waited, after I had seen the assault lander off, I engaged the squad leader in conversation. Where are you from? How long have you been in? What, precisely, are you?
This particular squad was composed of six Threep, a trifold sophont with three legs, three arms with three-fingered hands, a head with three faces. They were considerably more agile than they looked.
“The Navy lets us enlist as a pod;” he said in a loud voice, “we stay together through training and assignments.”
I thought that perhaps they had been left behind for some reason of prudence, or comparative inefficiency. Instead, it came out that their assignment was a simple rotation of responsibilities. This particular squad leader, Doorn, took pride in his unit and in their performance. If I had pressed a question of inefficiency, he would have been insulted.
In idle talk, I spoke of how fortunate we all were that we had found this specific threat before it had matured. That if these robots were loosed on the Empire, they could devastate whole worlds and vast populations. Sergeant Doorn and his corporal nodded in agreement and understanding.
Marines have their own Rule 1. They are trained to be very efficient, and yet they can be sympathetic. They allowed each of the evacuees to take whatever he or she could carry and gave them minutes to pack. The entire operation took slightly less time than scheduled.
While the ore carrier hung in orbit near us, the two traders docked in our hangar bay. The larger red one discharged about half the evacuees and a handful of marines down a ramp; the smaller white ship gave us the rest and their own contingent of troops out a large oval hatch. I addressed the sixty or so locals. They were variously stunned, angered, dazed, and argumentative.
Doorn activated a klaxon that focused their attention and silenced them.
I began with Rule 1. “There is no appeal from these events. You are fortunate that you have been evacuated before the world below is scrubbed and that you have escaped with your lives.
“Interrogators will interview each of you to harvest what information we can about the settlement on the far side of the planet. Be patient until you are called.”
I waved an instruction and marines started culling the first to be questioned. As I watched, Doorn grabbed my elbow and turned me away from the crowd. That, in itself, was a violent violation of protocol. Before I could respond, he held a three-fingered hand in front of my face, shielded from view by anyone else. In silent marine battle language, he spelled out in quick succession
identifiers for three of the evacuees by position,
a marker of each as enemy, and
a strange notation that they were not Human, not sophont.
I understood immediately, and held out my own hand with the two-digit signal, “Kill Them.”
Doorn must have been simultaneously signaling with his other hands because shots sounded even as he pulled me down to the deck. In slow motion I took in the next ten seconds. Two figures dashed toward the red ship’s ramp, grabbing others as they passed, dropping them as they twitched with shot impacts, then seizing more as shields. A fallen third rose, half of his shoulder missing, to attempt the same process. One fell, rose, then fell again with a leg missing. Even as he fell, shots rang from his hand. Not from a pistol; from his hand. Bodies dropped and red splattered. I noticed a man on the periphery holding a strange tiger-striped woman as shield, backing toward the shelter of a wall, and then a marine covered me with his body. Shots staccatoed to the accompaniment of screams and cries. Although the shooting stopped, the action didn’t. The evacuees scattered to the perimeter of the chamber. There was nothing for me to do: the marines followed standard combat protocols. At the edge of my perception, I noted that the access ports had slammed shut (also a standard protocol). I hoped that those on the other side realized that depressurization would not help us against robots.
At last it was over. Three marines grabbed me and literally carried me out of the chamber and up a flight of stairs to the flight control overlook. Once there, the marine leader, on his own initiative, forced everyone against the transpex at gunpoint.
I watched his fingers twitch in battle language. The marine to his right withdrew a short blade from his boot, held out his arm, and cut it enough to bleed. Without a word, he grabbled the arm of each of the three techs and cut them. The marines next. I offered my own arm and he cut it as well.
