CHAPTER NINE

Colin MacIntyre sat in Conference One once more. He'd grown to hate this room, he thought, bending his gaze upon the tabletop. Hate it.

Silence fell as the last person found a seat, and he looked up.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "for the past month I've resisted all arguments to move on because I believe Keerah represents a microcosm of what probably happened to the entire Imperium. I now believe we've learned all we can here. But—" he drew out the slight pause behind the word "—that still leaves the question of what we do next. Before turning to that, however, I would like to review our findings, beginning with our Chief Engineer."

He sat back and nodded to Chernikov, who cleared his throat quietly, as if organizing his thoughts, then began.

"We have examined many artifacts recovered from Omega Three. On the basis of what we have discovered to date, I have reached a few conclusions about the technical base of the Imperium—that is to say, the Empire.

"They had, as we would have expected, made major advances, yet not so many as we might have anticipated. Please bear in mind that I am speaking only of non-biological technology; neither Cohanna nor I is in a position to say what they had achieved in the life sciences. The weapon which destroyed them certainly appears to evidence a very high level of bio-engineering.

"With that reservation, our initial estimate, that their technology was essentially a vastly refined version of our own, seems to have been correct. With the probable exception of their mat-trans—on which, I regret to say, we have been unable as yet to obtain data—we have encountered nothing Engineering and Dahak could not puzzle out. This is not to say they had not advanced to a point far beyond our current reach, but the underlying principles of their advances are readily apparent to us. In effect, they appear to have reached a plateau of fully mature technology and, I believe, may very well have been on the brink of fundamental breakthroughs into a new order of achievement, but they had not yet made them.

"In general, their progress may be thought of as coupling miniaturization with vast increases in power. A warship of Dahak's mass, for example, built with the technology we have so far encountered—which, I ask you to bear in mind, represents an essentially civilian attempt to create a military unit—would possess something on the order of twenty times his combat capability."

He paused for emphasis, and there were signs of awe on more than one face.

"Yet certain countervailing design philosophies and trends, particularly in the areas of computer science and cybernetics, also have become apparent to us. Specifically, the hardware of their computer systems is extremely advanced compared to our own; their software is not. Assuming that Omega Three is a representative sample of their computer technology, their computers had an even lower degree of self-awareness than that of Comp Cent prior to the mutiny. The data storage capacity of Omega Three's Comp Cent, whose mass is approximately thirty percent that of Dahak's central memory core, exceeded his capacity, including all subordinate systems, by a factor of fifty. The ability of Omega Three, on the other hand, despite a computational speed many times higher than his, did not approach even that of Comp Cent prior to the mutiny.

"Clearly, this indicates a deliberate degradation of performance to meet some philosophical constraint. My best guess—and I stress that it is only a guess—is that it results from the period of civil warfare which apparently converted the Imperium into the Empire. Fleet computers would have resisted firing on other Fleet units, and while this could have been compensated for by altering their Alpha Priority core programming, the combatants may have balked at allowing semi-aware computers to decide whether or not to fire on other humans. This is only a hypothesis, but it is certainly one possibility.

"In addition, we have confirmed one other important point. While Omega Three's computers did use energy-state technology, they also incorporated non-energy backups, which appears to reflect standard Imperial military practice. This means a deactivated Fleet computer would not experience a complete core loss as did the civilian units discovered at Defram. If powered up once more, thus restoring its energy-state circuitry, it should remain fully functional.

"Further, even civilian installations which have been continuously powered could remain completely operational. Omega Three's capabilities, for example, suffered not because it relied upon energy-state components, but because it was left unattended for so long that solid-state components failed. Had the battle station's computers possessed adequate self-repair capability and spares, Omega Three would be fully functional today."

He paused, as if rechecking his thoughts, then glanced at Colin.

"That concludes my report, sir. Detailed information is in the data base for anyone who cares to peruse it."

"Thank you." Colin pursed his lips for a moment, inviting questions, but there were none. They were waiting for the other shoe, he thought dourly.

"Commander Cohanna?" he said finally.

"We still don't know how they did it," Cohanna replied, "but we're pretty sure what they did. I'm not certain I can accept Dahak's explanation just yet, but it fits the observed data, assuming they had the ability to implement it.

"For all practical purposes, we can think of their weapon as a disease lethal to any living organism. Obviously, it was a monster in every sense of the word. We may never learn how it was released, but the effect of its release was the inevitable destruction of all life in its path. Any contaminated planet is dead, ladies and gentlemen.

"On the other hand—" as Colin had, she drew out the pause for emphasis, "—we've also determined that the weapon had a finite lifespan. And whatever that lifespan was, it was less than the time which has passed. We've established test habitats with plants and livestock from our own hydroponic and recreational areas, using water and soil collected by remotes from all areas of Keerah's surface. From Governor Yirthana's records, we know the weapon took approximately thirty Terran months to incubate in mammals, and we've employed the techniques used in accelerated healing to take our sample habitats through a forty-five-month cycle with no evidence of the weapon. While I certainly don't propose to return those test subjects to Dahak's life-support systems, I believe the evidence is very nearly conclusive. The bio-weapon itself has died, at least on Keerah and, by extension, upon any planet which was contaminated an equivalent length of time ago.

"That concludes my report, Captain."

"Thank you." Colin squared his shoulders and spoke very quietly as the full weight of his responsibility descended upon him. "On the basis of these reports, I intend to proceed immediately to Birhat and Fleet Central."

Someone drew a sharply audible breath, and his face tightened.

"What we've discovered here makes it extremely unlikely Birhat survived, but that, unfortunately, changes nothing.

"I don't know what we'll find there, but I do know three things. One, if we return with no aid for Earth, we lose. Two, the best command facilities at the Imperium's—or Empire's—disposal would be at Fleet Central. Three, logic suggests the bio-weapon there will be as dead as it is here. Based on those suppositions, our best chance of finding usable hardware is at Birhat, and it's likely we can safely reactivate any we find. At the very least, it will be our best opportunity to discover the full extent of this catastrophe."

"We will depart Keerah in twelve hours. In the meantime, please carry on about your duties. I'll be in my quarters if I'm needed."

He stood, catching the surprise on more than one face when his audience realized he did not intend to debate the point.

"Attention on deck," Dahak intoned quietly, and the officers rose.

Colin walked out in silence, wondering if those he'd surprised realized why he'd foreclosed all debate.

The answer was as simple as it was bitter. In the end, the decision was his, but if he allowed them to debate it they must share in it, however indirectly, and he would not permit them to do so.

He couldn't know if Dahak's presence was required to stand off the Achuultani scouts, but he hoped desperately that it was not, for he, Colin MacIntyre, had elected to chase a tattered hope rather than defend his home world. If he'd guessed wrong about Horus's progress, he had also doomed that home world—a world which it had become increasingly obvious might well be the only planet of humanity which still existed—whatever he found at Birhat.

And the fact that logic compelled him to Birhat meant nothing against his fear that he had guessed wrong. Against his ignorance of Horus's progress. His agonizing suspicion that if Fleet Central still existed, it might be another Omega Three, senile and crippled with age . . . the paralyzing terror of bearing responsibility for the death of his own species.

He would not—could not—share that responsibility with another soul. It was his alone, and as he stepped into the transit shaft, Senior Fleet Captain Colin MacIntyre tasted the full, terrible burden of his authority at last.

The moss was soft and slightly damp as he lay on his back, staring up at the projected sky. He was coming to understand why the Imperium had provided its captains with this greenery and freshness. He could have found true spaciousness on one of the park decks, where breezes whipped across square kilometers of "open" land, but this was his. This small, private corner of creation belonged to him, offering its soothing aliveness and quiet bird-song when the weight of responsibility crushed down upon him.

He closed his eyes, breathing deeply, extending his enhanced senses. The splash of the fountains caressed him, and a gentle breeze stroked his skin, yet the sensations only eased his pain; they did not banish it.

He hadn't noted the time when he stretched out upon the moss, and so he had no idea how long he'd been there when his neural feed tingled.

Someone was at the hatch, and he was tempted to deny access, for his awareness of what he'd done was too fresh and aching. But that thought frightened him suddenly. It would be so easy to withdraw into a tortured, hermit-like existence, and it was over six months to Birhat. A man alone could go mad too easily in that much time.

He opened the hatch, and his visitor stepped inside. She came around the end of a thicket of azaleas and laurel, and he opened his eyes slowly.

"Art troubled, my Colin," she said softly.

He started to explain, but then he saw it in her eyes. She knew. One, at least, of his officers knew exactly why he'd refused to discuss his decision.

"May I sit with thee?" she asked gently, and he nodded.

She crossed the carpet of moss with the poised, cat-like grace which was always so much a part of her, straight and slim in her midnight-blue uniform, tall for an Imperial, yet delicate, her gleaming black hair held back by the same jeweled clasp she'd worn the day they met. The day when he'd seen the hate in her eyes. The hate for what he'd done, for the clumsy, cocksure fumbling which had cost the lives of a grandnephew and great-nieces she loved, but even more for what he was. For the threat of punishment he posed to her mutineer-father. For the fullness of his enhancement while she had but bits and pieces. And for the fact that he, who had never known of Dahak's existence, never suspected her own people's lonely, hopeless fight against Anu, had inherited command of the starship from which she had been exiled for a crime others had committed.

There was a killer in Jiltanith. He'd seen it then, known it from the first. The mutiny had cost her her mother and the freedom of the stars, and the endless stealth of her people's shadowy battle on Earth had been slivered glass in her throat, for she was a fighter, a warrior who believed in open battle. Those long, agonizing years had left dark, still places within her. Far more than he could ever hope to be, she was capable of death and destruction, incapable of asking or offering quarter.

But there was no hate in her eyes now. They were soft and gentle under the atrium's sun, their black depths jewel-like and still. Colin had grown accustomed to the appearance of the full Imperials, yet in this moment the subtle alienness of her beauty smote him like a fist. She had been born before his first Terran ancestor crawled into a cave to hide from the weather, yet she was young. Twice his age and more, yet they were both but children against the lifespan of their enhanced bodies. Her youthfulness lay upon her, made still more precious and perfect by the endless years behind her, and his eyes burned.

This, he thought. This girl-woman who had known and suffered so much more than he, was what this all was about. She was the symbol of humankind, the avatar of all its frailties and the iron core of all its strength, and he wanted to reach out and touch her. But she was the mythic warrior-maid, the emblem, and the weight of his decision was upon him. He was unclean.

"Oh, my Colin," she whispered, looking deep into his own weary, tormented eyes, "what hast thou taken upon thyself?"

He clenched his hands at his sides, gripping the moss, and refused to answer, but a sob wrenched at the base of his throat.

She came closer slowly, carefully, like a hunter approaching some wild, snared thing, and sank to her knees beside him. One delicate hand, slender and fine-boned, deceiving the eye into forgetting its power, touched his shoulder.

"Once," she said, "in a life I scarce recall, I envied thee. Yea, envied and hated thee, for thou hadst received all unasked for the one treasure in all the universe I hungered most to hold. I would have slain thee, could I but have taken that treasure from thee. Didst thou know that?"

He nodded jerkily, and she smiled.

"Yet knowing, thou didst name me thy successor in command, for thine eyes saw more clear than mine own. 'Twas chance, mayhap, sent thee to Dahak's bridge, yet well hast thou proven thy right to stand upon it. And never more than thou hast done this day."

Her hand stroked gently from his shoulder to his chest, covering the slow, strong beating of his bioenhanced heart, and he trembled like a frightened child. But her fingers moved, gentling his strange terror.

"Yet thou art not battle steel, my Colin," she said softly. "Art flesh and blood for all thy biotechnics, whate'er thy duty may demand of thee."

She bent slowly, laying her head atop her hand, and the fine texture of her hair brushed his cheek, its silken caress almost agony to his enhanced senses. Tears brimmed in the corners of his eyes, and part of him cursed his weakness while another blessed her for proving it to him. The sob he had fought broke free, and she made a soft, soothing sound.

"Yea, art flesh and blood, though captain to us all. Forget that not, for thou art not Dahak, and thy humanity is thy curse, the sword by which thou canst be wounded." She raised her head, and his blurred eyes saw the tears in her own. One moss-stained hand rose, stroking her raven's-wing hair, and she smiled.

"Yet wounds may be healed, my Colin, and I am likewise flesh, likewise blood," she murmured. She bent over him, and her mouth tasted of the salt of their mingled tears. His other hand rose, drawing her down beside him on the moss, and he rose on an elbow as she smiled up at him.

"Thou wert my salvation," she whispered, caressing his unruly sandy hair. "Now let me be thine, for I am thine and thou art mine. Forget it never, my dearest dear, for 'tis true now and ever shall be."

And she drew him down to kiss her once again.

The computer named Dahak closed down the sensors in the captain's quarters with profound but slightly wistful gratitude. He had made great strides in understanding these short-lived, infuriatingly illogical, occasionally inept, endlessly inventive, and stubbornly dauntless descendants of his long-dead builders. More than any other of his kind, he had learned to understand human emotions, for he had learned to share many of them. Respect. Friendship. Hope. Even, in his own way, love. He knew his presence would embarrass Colin and Jiltanith if it occurred to them to check for it, and while he did not fully understand the reason, they were his friends, and so he left them.

He gave the electronic equivalent of a sigh, knowing that he could never comprehend the gentle mysteries which had enfolded them. But he did not need to comprehend to know how important they were, and to feel deeply grateful to his new friend 'Tanni for understanding and loving his first friend Colin.

And now, he thought, while they were occupied, he might add that tiny portion of his attention which constantly attended his captain's needs and desires to another problem. Those encoded dispatches from the courier Cordan still intrigued him.

His latest algorithm had failed miserably, though he had finally managed to crack the scramble and reduce the messages to symbol sets. Unfortunately, the symbols were meaningless. Perhaps a new value-substitution subprogram was in order? Yet pattern analysis suggested that the substitution was virtually random. Interesting. That implied a tremendous symbol set, or else there was a method to generate the values which only appeared random. . . . 

The computer worried happily away at the fascinating problem with a fragment of his capacity while every tiny corner of his vast starship body pulsed and quivered with his awareness.

All the tiny corners save one, where two very special people enjoyed a priceless gift of privacy made all the more priceless because they did not even know it had been given.

The last crude spacecraft died, and the asteroid battered through their wreckage at three hundred kilometers per second. Bits of debris struck its frontal arc, vanishing in brief, spiteful spits of flame against its uncaring nickel-iron bow. Heat-oozing wounds bit deep where the largest fragments had struck, and the asteroid swept onward, warded by the defenders' executioners.   

Six Achuultani starships rode in formation about the huge projectile as it charged down upon the blue-and-white world which was its target. They had been detached to guard their weapon against the pygmy efforts of that cloud-swirled sapphire's inhabitants, and their task was all but done.   

They spread out, distancing themselves from the asteroid, energy weapons ready as the first missiles broke atmosphere. The clumsy chemical-fueled rockets sped outward, tipped with their pathetic nuclear warheads, and the starships picked them off with effortless ease. The doomed planet flung its every weapon against its killers in despair and desperation . . . and achieved nothing.   

The asteroid hurtled onward, an energy state hungry for immolation, and the starships wheeled up and away as it tasted air at last and changed. For one fleeting instant it was no longer a thing of ice-bound rock and metal. It was alive, a glorious, screaming incandescence pregnant with death.   

It struck, spewing its flame back into the heavens, stripping away atmosphere in a cataclysm of fire, and the Achuultani starships hovered a moment longer, watching, as the planetary crust split and fissured. Magma exploded from the gaping wounds, and they spread and grew, racing like cracks in ice, until the geologically unstable planet itself blew apart.  

The starships lingered no longer. They turned their bows from the ruin they had wrought and raced outward. Twenty-one light-minutes from the primary they crossed the hyper threshold and vanished like soap bubbles, hastening to seek their fellows at the next rendezvous.