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Bureau (part 4)
*** Connecting to port 71 of server telfi.arifel.eygow.fila.Bythe MOTD - telfi.arifel Message of the Day - /list
/join +SubConf <661528> oh dear, its 997913 <200211> (bums) to the wall! <997913> oh shut up, you two. <000077> How goes it on the Dominion's latest trouble spot, 997913? <200211> (snicker) <997913> we are pulling the plug, didn't you hear? level six <661528> What? Those Poor Little N-FRF-Knh/K? Level SIX? <997913> you have obviously never worked with them, 661528. swine <661528> Never Trust Anything With Less Than Six Legs. <200211> and how many legs do *you* have, 661528? o=o <000077> Wasn't that operation supposed to be taking place in about <997913> it was. there has been so much bother with the second and <200211> (gulp) crikey! <000077> If Up-On-High has taken an interest in it, then it's all <997913> oh, I'd like to be assigned to the Moridani sweep <661528> Seriously? You Think There Are Still Moridani About? <000077> We KNOW that they are still about, 661528. Didn't you <661528> No, I Missed It. <000077> established that there are between five and twelve original <661528> We Should Have Done That Three Thousand Years Ago. <997913> concurrence. concurrence. ****** napaiSUB 200211 has left the conference
"Gulp. Crikey." muttered Tsiry-Feylen.
After the ships' first shift from physical-space to probable-space and back, Kelanie and Marek had found some thick padded mats in a hold of the ship and were lying on them, in the ward-room, after an unsuccessful attempt at making love on the curved floor of the berths. "If we're going to put together a bed, it might as well be in the ward-room," Kelanie said. Marek hesitated; (despite being brought up on Millimillenary, he was not comfortable with the idea of appearing naked before xenoforms, even Tsiry-Feylen); but only for a moment. The ship's communication channels hissed faintly, the sound broken by the occasional beep to indicate that the ship had passed out of the effective range of one gravitic beacon and into another. Twice, a voice on the channels had spoken, in NoSaNoOs Tertiary; Marek translated. "They're asking us if we need assistance. They've assumed that the Bythians killed us." "Meaning that they can't accept the possibility that we killed the Bythians?" Marek nodded. "They're more hide-bound than I thought. How they've kept hold of control for this long is a mystery to me." Tsiry-Feylen entered, still wearing her battle suit, docilely followed by Kayren. She replied to Kelanie's musings: "It's because the situation is being handled locally, so far. As soon as it is referred up to a Parkry that doesn't mind admitting that it has no idea of what to do next, then it will become a matter for the Millimillenarian NapaiSUB and the Bythians. That's when we may be in trouble." Tsiry-Feylen stalked over to the control board, poked fingers into a group of control-spaces, deactivating video screens, muting the hissing of the communication channels. She continued; "We have to announce a slight change of plans, children." Kelanie retorted, `Would you please stop calling us that?' Still working at the ranked banks of control columns, Tsiry-Feylen waved the camera-booms of her suit in a manner reminiscent of the pattern used, by the insectoid Kaelen, to indicate amusement. "If you wish. As we were saying: we will stop over at the asteroid base to visit my sister before we make for Earth. The situation has changed slightly." Marek left off kissing Kelanie's neck to ask, "When will you tell us exactly what's going on? What we will do when we reach Earth?" Tsiry-Feylen sat her suit down, the legs folding up underneath like a cat's. "If we told you everything, if we gave you the statistics that govern our movements against the NoSaNoOs, you would both probably walk out of the airlock without your suits. Be content with knowing that you will both, most likely, be able to live out your allotted lifetimes. Which is more than can be said for the rest of humanity." Kelanie lay back on the pile of matting, staring at the ceiling of the ward-room, and said, "I've been meaning to ask you about that, Robyn." In her suit, Tsiry-Feylen smiled, baring her needle teeth. "If we are stopping over on Earth, how much of a risk would it be to let a few of our most trusted friends know what's going to happen, and invite them onboard? There's room on this ship for at least a hundred people." Abruptly, Tsiry-Feylen's suit cracked down the middle and opened like the two halves of a hotdog bun. She stepped out, blinking in the watery yellow sodium light, and shook her legs in pairs. "We have no objection to that... if you would like to prepare some text mail messages - we can't risk video, because even humans can tap into that - we will send them through a secure channel, after making sure that the NoSaNoOs monitors in the mail network can't pick up on what we are doing by reading them." Kelanie was surprised. "Do you mean to say that the NoSaNoOs manage to read ALL the mail?" Tsiry-Feylen grinned, exposing a frightening array of dental work. "That's why they have a machine monitoring it. If it wasn't for the organisational skills of the NoSaNoOs Artificial intelligence and the diligence of its sub-units, the Dominion would have collapsed long ago." "How many people can we rescue?" Tsiry-Feylen spread her six-fingered hands in a gesture of apology. "Limit it to six or less. We have already allocated the rest of the space for cargo; there is a lot of equipment that we have to get off Earth before Threat Termination blow it." Marek glanced at Kelanie, and then said slowly, "That isn't going to happen for six months, though, isn't it?" Tsiry-Feylen spun about nimbly on her six legs, gestured to the Pthalklin Ervae and left without answering, followed by Kayren. Marek and Kelanie glanced worriedly at each other. Some twenty hours later, when Kelanie and Marek had decided to give the spherical sleeping-berths a second chance, Tsiry-Feylen raced past in her battle-armour, shouting to them; "Suit up. We have company." They disentangled themselves and scrambled for the suits that were kneeling, opened like clam-shells, in a corner of the ward-room. Over the suit radios, Tsiry-Feylen brought them up to date. "The ship reentered physical-space just inside the asteroid belt as expected; what we didn't count on was the entire belt being thick with Bythian scouts. We understand that they are still preparing the assault on Earth. There's a scout approaching, crew of four, informing us that it is about to dock. We haven't responded yet. Come down to the lower fore airlock." When they got there, Tsiry-Feylen was replacing a panel on the side of the hatch, hammering the lock-bolts home with her flattened palm. "We're going to have to lure them out and then blow the hatch; we hope the decompression will kill them all. We want you both to back up this corridor, just there, around that corner; if one of them gets past, kick the stuffing out of it." Tsiry-Feylen's suit crouched down directly in front of the hatch, clutching a handful of sharp metal fragments. There was a minute's silence, and then the plastic of the hatchway creaked under an unfamiliar stress. Kelanie, braced against a data column in the passageway, poked the tip of a boom-mounted camera around the corner, patching the image through to Marek's suit. The black glass door of the hatch rippled away, and two Bythians leapt through, weapons drawn. They didn't recognise Tsiry-Feylen's crouching tank-shape for a moment; a third Bythian had stepped through the hatch when the first two whipped up their guns. Too late; Tsiry-Feylen flicked the fragments at them with as much strength as her suit could impart; they punched through the Bythian's heads and necks, embedding themselves in the wall behind them. As the bodies collapsed, she set off the explosives that she'd packed into the hatchway; there was a sharp crack, and a shock-wave pushed Tsiry-Feylen's suit back against the wall, where she grabbed hold of a stanchion. The shock-wave suddenly reversed as air rushed out, the hatch crackling and buzzing as it tried to cover over the enlarged hole. The scream of escaping air quickly diminished to a hiss, and then stopped as the hatch-field closed. Tsiry-Feylen was checking an external camera on her suit monitors; she relayed the images to Kelanie and Marek, who watched as the torn globe of the Bythian scout ship spun off into the distance; the tiny figure of the fourth Bythian wriggling in open vacuum, gradually becoming still.
Among the debris that drifted around in the trailing LaGrange point of Mars was a rock, about two metres along its longest axis. Indistinguishable from the other orbital rubbish, it hung there, apparently inert, until it decided to distinguish itself from its more sedentary companions by suddenly rotating forty degrees, aiming itself at a spot somewhere in the outer fringe of the solar system. Another rock, in the leading LaGrange point, did the same. They were now both pointing to a spot about twelve million miles above the plane of the ecliptic; inside each rock, mass-sensors triangulated, fixing the position of one of the NoSaNoOs projectiles. Satisfied that the asteroid was where it was supposed to be (although not where they would prefer it), the small but capable artificial intelligences in the spy-satellites oriented on another asteroid, and another. When they were satisfied that they had correctly placed all the known threats, they did a general half-hearted scan for any other sizable objects that weren't where they should be. Surprisingly, they found one, an asteroid of some two thousand and seventy tonnes that, according to their very accurate and up-to-date database, should be at least two million miles further out. Then they spotted another. Then four more. Approaching a state that could best be described as `alarm', the two spy-satellites sent a coded signal on the gravitic channel that was, until recently, used by the NoSaNoOs as the main data link for Earth-bound communications. Use of this frequency would arouse the least amount of suspicion if the Bythians were listening in. The spy-satellites knew that the intended recipient of the message would always be listening. Suddenly, faster than even electronic reflexes could allow for, the spherical shape of a Bythian scout shot past, loosing a stream of stone chips at high velocity, battering the spy-satellite into inactivity.
"How many asteroids are there in the asteroid belt?" Marek asked. "...don't know," Kelanie replied absently, scanning the starfield. "hundreds of thousands, I suppose... what I'd like to know is, where are they all?" "We've seen your illustrations of the asteroid belt,' Tsiry-Feylen commented, "and we can assure you that the ratio of rocks to empty space is several magnitudes smaller than they would have us believe. Like physical reality... it's mostly vacuum." She stood at the control column, twitching fingers thrust into the control-spaces, slowly rotating the ship, looking for a particular pattern of stars. She aligned a single glittering spot on the screen in front of her, rotated the ship on its forward axis and drove it forward. While one hand monitored the ship's velocity, the other activated the communications system embedded inside the front of her battle suit, which was propped open next to the control column. Two of her voices chattered rapidly, and were answered by two others from the comms system. Kelanie's notepad could make nothing of it; the exchanges were too rapid, switching back and forth with inhuman speed. The spot on the screen that represented their destination hadn't changed size appreciably; Tsiry-Feylen left off chattering for a moment, stuck all her fingers into a bank of control-spaces and said, "Hang on, children." Marek grabbed Kelanie, who, having nothing better to do, wrapped her arms around him. The ship lurched forward, spilling them backwards, over the pile of mats. They had enough time to struggle to their knees when the ship moved in a different direction, shifting from underneath them. Kayren, mounted in a corner as unobtrusively as an office pot-plant, merely swayed slightly. Tsiry-Feylen, who had remained upright through all this, gestured towards the screen. "Here we are." The screen was filled with rock-textured grey, sharp black highlights slowly shifting as the asteroid rotated. Tsiry-Feylen made a few delicate adjustments to the ship's attitude, matching spin, and then nudged it forward. Suddenly, off to the left, the featureless asteroid face split open along seven radial lines, the triangular segments folding back like flower petals. The now-familiar white shape of a Moridani battle-suit emerged, legs kicking, holding a struggling something in its arms. The Moridani kicked the shape - a Bythian in a torn pressure suit - away, the reaction of which pushed the battle-suit back towards the hatch. The arms extended as far as possible, scrabbling against the hatchway petals. The chattering sound came from Tsiry-Feylen's suit resumed briefly. Tsiry-Feylen sighed, and said, "It seems that Threat Termination have decided to use this asteroid after all. Kendr-Saranaxio-Parndta-Athanasius - our dear sister -has dealt with the scouts... but Threat Termination will soon wonder why this asteroid isn't moving. We're going to try and bluff them."
*** Open channel *** < Threat termination here. > it had humans in it. nine of them. they were armed. < Can you tell if the structure was human-built? Any signs of > their living quarters were damaged beyond recovery. what we saw < (sigh) This just goes to confirm NAPAISub's evaluation. Estimate > we can. we have three charges left; once we get the projectile up < Marked. This is the last one, team; once you have confirmed *** Close channel ***
"That's slack. For Bythians, that is slack." Kendr-Saranaxio was a slightly smaller version of her sister, moving with sharp, efficient grace. She shut down the video-simulator, which she had played like a puppet-master, transmitting a convincing portrayal of a Bythian scout, mimicking its phrases. "We don't think that they believe us." Tsiry-Feylen spoke to her in rapid-fire bursts of Moridani; Kendr-Saranaxio replied with a single word, which sounded something like fs'yen. Both Moridani bared their teeth in what Kelanie assumed were smiles. Kendr-Saranaxio summoned her battle-suit, which walked into the docking bay of its own accord, opening as it entered. "Stay here, children. We are going to set off some fireworks."
ComonCurensy Isotope is another one of those annoying off-shoots of their plastics industry, according to my sources on Syndaine. The NoSaNoOs manufacture it in foundries that orbit very close to certain suns; solar power is somehow stored in a sort of semi-stable carbon lattice... yes, that is rather vague; this is because CCI - a monopoly on efficient power-conversion technology - is one of the three things that keep the NoSaNoOs in control. There's no percentage in giving that sort of information away. Kelanie, Marek and Kayren were huddled together in a corner of a room adjacent to the docking bay of the Moridani base. The humans were in their suits again; they were all listening to Kendr-Saranaxio counting down to the detonation of the Bythian scout's CCI charges that had been set three kilometres from the asteroid. Marek and Kelanie were discussing the ease with which they had overcome the Bythians so far. "I once saw a nine-hour epic video that relates to this," Kelanie said. "It was about a world that was so inhospitable that the inhabitants became natural warriors... they spread throughout the galaxy, but once they'd conquered everyone in sight, they deteriorated, because they lacked real opposition." Marek agreed. "The Bythians on Millimillenary were a pretty soft bunch. You'd hear reports of how a team of six Bythians had taken on an entire planet of dissidents and wiped them out completely; yet, there were always messages on SubVerSiveNet about how Bythians kept blowing their feet off, because they didn't know how to operate their weapons properly." A soft pinging tone indicated that Kayren had something to say. They waited politely for the translation: "The Bythian reputation is well-founded; during the Second Expansion, they were ferocious, efficient and almost without regard for their safety. It was a common technique for a Bythian to steer a scout-ship, loaded with CCI charges, into the middle of a group of enemy shuttles and set off the charges. We partly attribute their decline to a lack of suitable opposition and partly to their maturity as a species. When they were created - and this was told to me by a Bythian just before I killed it - they felt that they had no racial identity, and thus had less to live for." Kelanie asked, "Just how powerful are these CCI charge things?" Tsiry-Feylen said over the radio: "Brace yourselves, children; you're about to find out." There were three distant thumping sounds; echoes of the shock waves, transmitted through the thin layer of gases that were a result of the detonation of the CCI charges. There was a pause, during which Marek said, "Well, that wasn't so-" and then the entire base shifted as if God had kicked it. There was a crash as some unsecured containers fell over; the entire base creaked as if it were being twisted. Kelanie felt a ghostly acceleration inside; the base was under power, moving. She unclamped her suit from Marek's, stood up and tried to open the door to the docking bay. It was locked. She raised a boom-mounted camera to the small, round window mounted in the centre of the door, peered through. She could see a corner of the open gate through which Tsiry-Feylen had steered the NoSaNoOs ship, part of a star-field that was rolling in a dizzying fashion. Tsiry-Feylen spoke: "Okay, children, we're on our way. We will be in Earth orbit within forty hours, unless we get stopped for exceeding the speed limit. Kelanie, could you meet us in the garage, please?" A map of the Moridani base appeared on Kelanie's heads-up display, with a blue arrow marking the location of the garage. "We have been giving some thought as to your future as a partisan." Tsiry-Feylen and Kendr-Saranaxio were sitting on rugs woven with intricate patterns in shades of grey, legs folded underneath. Kelanie was sitting inside the opened shell of her battle-armour, eyes closed. "I still don't believe any of this. I suppose that it's a failing of mine... I just can't encompass the idea of genocide. Human genocide, in particular." Tsiry-Feylen sent some text to Kelanie's heads-up display; she grabbed the eye-piece, read it; replies to her mail-messages, from her friends.
kel, we'll try and be there - everything has gone crazy in the past week, the NoSaNoOs have withdrawn completely, the news services have been canceled, there isn't any fast transport available - we'll be hitching a ride with Baralascopae, remember him? the ultralight enthusiast. if we can find him. there are all kinds of wild rumors flying around, like the machine-virus one; the most persistent is the one about a giant asteroid that's about to hit the earth; we can't check this out, because all the satellite observatories are owned by the NoSaNoOs. or were. what's going on? Kelanie closed her eyes again. Kendr-Saranaxio said, "There are two ways you can take this. You can sit back and let it happen, pretend that there's nothing you can do about it - " Kelanie snorted cynically. "... or you can fight back." "Is that going to save anyone?" "It's too late for that. We have seen this happen to six other civilisations... each time, we managed to save some of them, only to watch them submit to apathy. We had hoped that humanity would be different." Kelanie sat up in her battle-suit. "I don't think you understand - I'm not a warrior; I don't know anything about weapons - I'm a prostitute! You," pointing at Tsiry-Feylen, "pretending to be Robyn, you assigned me to Millimillenary - why me? Why not a weapons specialist, why not someone who could do a better job of attacking the NoSaNoOs?" "Human weapons specialists no longer exist. The NoSaNoOs proscribed human weapons research. In our limited capability with the Bureau of Procuration, we checked everyone that we could for the qualities that we need. You came out on top." Kelanie sneered, falling back into the suit. "Oh, I'm sure that the ability to deliver a good blow-job is essential to partisanship." Tsiry-Feylen bared her teeth. "The qualities we are looking for include adaptability, quick reflexes and a willingness to believe that the impossible can, at least, be attempted." She got up, padded over to the side of Kelanie's suit. "We once found a human weapon specialist... he was one of the first people to travel off-world when the NoSaNoOs arrived. He had definite ideas about what could be done and what couldn't, and he had no inclination to change those ideas or broaden his horizons." "What happened to him?" "He joined a group of Pthalklin Ervae on Copperla, and a Bythian killed him. The point is, while he knew a great deal about military matters, his knowledge got in the way - he couldn't conceive of battles fought with asteroids, for example, and he refused to even consider the one thing that the NoSaNoOs fear above all." Kelanie opened her eyes. "Which is?" Tsiry-Feylen held up the video-eyepiece which had been connected to Kelanie's notepad. "Biological augmentation. Man-machine interfaces. Do you recall the first thing that the NoSaNoOs did when they arrived?" "After taking over and disassembling our nuclear capability, they laid down guidelines for acceptable research, warning us that if we stepped outside those guidelines, they would be reinforced with a show of military strength." "And at the top of the list of prohibited technology?" "Artificial intelligence. Genetic engineering. Virtual reality. Biological modification." "- and the NoSaNoOs believe that humans, even unmodified, are such a threat that you have to be wiped out completely. Can you see that they fear you almost as much as they fear us? That you have the potential to undermine them?" Kendr-Saranaxio added something in Moridani, which inspired a brief argument between the two xenoforms. Kelanie sighed, closed her suit and turned off the cameras.
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