Fear the Future (The Fear Saga Book 3) (45 page)

Interval G: Advocating for Devils

Kattel had been a simple man. Clever, in his way. Capable, certainly. He had gained a reputation as a reliable engineer, lacking imagination, perhaps, but not lacking diligence and a mind for details, critical traits in the field of mind-mapping.

For his area of expertise had actually capitalized the dichotomy of those two factors, as he sought to copy, faithfully, the imagination and personality of others, without adding any of his own in the process.

When he had been approached by the Nomadi Alliance to work on the mind-mapping for their Agent in the Advanced Team, Kattel had been both honored and skeptical. This was not the reason he had gotten into this line of work. Indeed it was quite the opposite.

He had become embroiled in this work not of his own free will, but as a work of love, love for his uncle, a man who had suffered for many years with a degenerative disease that attacked and slowly corrupted nerve centers in his brain. The effect was glacially slow, and often almost imperceptible, but over time it changed the sufferer, subtle tweaks in their personality leading them to become a different person, and all too often it changed them too much to let them continue to fit into whatever life, whatever family, whatever circle of friends, and whatever marriage had once been home to them.

His work, then, both therapeutic and curative, had focused on the process of analyzing which areas were under attack in each patient, and attempting to copy and duplicate those areas into synthetic substrates for transplant into the host’s mind, both providing a permanence of personality, and allowing the removal of corrupted cortices to stop the spread of the disease to other as yet uncontaminated parts of the mind.

He had been successful, but, in an ironic twist for a man otherwise bereft of a creative soul, the process had proven to be more of an art than a science. As the research had developed into a field unto itself, it had come to be known as personality forging, though it was, in truth, more forgery than forging, as its opponents pointed out all too often.

As more and more parts of a person were transplanted and augmented, at first for medical reasons but then, increasingly, for more elective motives, the inevitable question was begged: at what point is the person no longer there, and only the copy of that person? At what point does the surgery to remove a memory center or other cortex constitute not enhancement, but something closer to euthanasia?

Kattel had pondered the question more often than he could remember, and he could remember doing this very clearly because of his own synthetic memory chip, bolstering his recall function, an augmentation his job had necessitated.

But that had not been the route of his misgivings when he had been recruited to help prepare the Armada’s advanced team all those years ago. His objections had been those voiced by so many as the debate had ranged around the world. He knew the stories about the human race. Tales of cruelty and inequality that were, he assumed, often exaggerated, but must have had at least their foundation in fact.

Deep down he had known, like many others, that he was really indifferent to the future of that alien race, even if he wouldn’t have admitted as much. But his indifference did not mean he was keen to be a contributor to their wholesale slaughter. So he had wrestled with the issue, right up until he had been offered four times his previous wage point, and the free travel permit to all partner nations that was a perquisite of contribution to the war effort.

He had always longed to see some of the great cities of the world. Not just in sim, but for real. To take the long hike to the mountain citadel of Eltol, to wander the underground market labyrinth under Kyryl’s second city, with all its delights, both legal and otherwise. And, of course, to stand on the parapets of the Castelion of BaltanSant and stare out at the vast plains, the site of so many storied battles: the infamous Boneyard.

So he had agreed, and in doing so had become a part of the great war machine, inducted into its heart to become a cog in its inner-working, working with billions of others for a task that few truly supported, and even fewer truly understood.

He did not remember when he had changed. Not fully. He did not remember the event. That often plagued him. He could recall the time before. He could recall his apathy. And he could recall the time of work, of ever more complex tasks assigned to him as he proved himself and rose up to the rank of team leader.

But at what point he had become a traitor to the cause he could not, precisely, say. But a traitor he was, he thought, as he listened for a sign of the coming apocalypse. The ringing of the bell. The sign of his work’s success, either in the form of breaking news reports, or in the form of darkness. His own end, the bomb-maker hoisted by his petard.

After what came next, if he was still alive, he would look for another sign. He would search the system for a specific anomaly, a sign that they had awoken on the other side, and were out and about. Doing what they must, readying for whatever came next.

For now, though, the plan was out of his hands. They had done all they could do. Something was coming, or rather they hoped it was. They could not know for certain. The different parts of their conspiracy were so widespread they spanned light years. But if the silence of the IST and the slowly resolving images of Earth had been any confirmation of the other half of their work’s success, then the next stage, the next landmark event in their war, should come any moment now.

And it would be
any
moment, as well. There would be no warning. They were just over two years out from Earth now. Two years. That would be the rough timeframe. They had known when they left that, if their Agent was successful, then by now the Earth would be furiously preparing, arming themselves and bracing for the coming fight. Preparations that, by the very nature of their required scale, would make themselves all too visible to an approaching Armada.

They were getting close now. Close enough that they were starting to catch glimpses of their goal from within the aura of its star, like a fighter pilot squinting up into the sun to try to glimpse their quarry, the Armada’s incredibly capable eyes were squinting as well as they focused on the growing brightness over the horizon of their long night, the dawn at the end of the last seven-year night of their epic journey.

They would be able to see sometime soon. They would be able to see what Earth had really been doing all these years while the IST sat silent. And when that happened, Kattel had to assume that all hell was going to break loose.

If hell’s hounds didn’t break out before then, of course.

And so he waited, going about his daily business while he thought about what was about to happen. Waited and walked. Waited and read. Waited and looked over interminable mission analytics. Waited and, one more time, tried to remember when he had agreed to do all this. When he had agreed to become involved in such an act of madness, such a leap of faith. And for what? For who? He shook his head.

He could only hope that the part of him, no, the version of him, that had gone ahead in the mind of the Agent known as John Hunt was not suffering such doubts, out there alone, on that alien planet, among that alien race.

Maybe, one day, if he himself survived the coming onslaught, he would find out what that other part of him had been up to on earth for all these years.

- - -

The chairman of Third Yalla walked into the Council meeting on foot. It was her turn as head of the Council, and she enjoyed a more traditional approach to proceedings than her fellow Council members. While it was her turn to set the stage for their meetings, she would bring a modicum of dignity and tradition to it all.

For starters, the Council members could not transpose directly into the space. Instead they arrived outside the main entrance, in something akin to an elevator, whose doors would then open onto the reception area to her virtual boardroom.

She smiled as she walked through the elaborate and beautiful vestibule. It was a mimicry of her own meeting area at her private hub off of Third Yalla, the homogeneous orbital ring built during the financial collapse of the formerly democratic nation of Yalla. Its construction had been funded by the generosity of the nation’s remaining elite, if only to house their own interests, and create a new state, their state, to be precise, far above the ruins of the old. It sat, quite literally, above First Yalla, from where it managed that nation’s diminished resources and interests, including its least valuable commodity, its people.

But that was all ancient history for the illustrious chairman of Third Yalla. She went by no other name anymore. She had fought long and hard to secure this position. She had used every ounce of leverage, political capital, and tactic she had known. And now she was to be the chairman of the newest Yallan corporate entity, the next evolution, a wholly owned subsidiary of the parent nation.

She had picked her team carefully. She had worked with the very best AM surrogates to craft the most loyal, most capable AM suite on Mobilius. Or anywhere, she supposed, smiling. And here was her handiwork in evidence, she thought, as she ran her hand along the burnished wood, a living tree, like the original back home, woven into the fabric of the room, manipulated on the physical and genetic level to become part of the space station’s very superstructure. Yes, thought the chairman, so close to the original. An extravagance she would see remade, on earth, when she ruled her very own slice of it.

She entered the long, lavishly appointed meeting room with a flourish of her long cloak and a generous smile. She saw some of the looks of her peers. Some mocking. Some patronizing. She laughed a little to herself. She enjoyed being underestimated, for now.

They were all here. She had waited until even the little princess arrived, savoring entering last, a treat which that little madam normally demanded.

“If we are all here,” she said magnanimously, taking her seat at the head of the table, “we can begin.

“We do not have a great deal of business to go over today. I can update you formally, though I know you are all privy to the reports of the latest composite imaging coming from New Mobilius. We are now officially able to make out the planet and its moon. Images still seem to be suffering from some degradation, apparently there is a gravitational anomaly that cannot be accounted for that is throwing off our imaging, but my AM assures me that the issue is temporary, and we should see marked improvement over the next weeks and months.”

“If I may,” asked Theer-im Far, and several members groaned inwardly to themselves, but soon the archivist went on, “you say that the anomaly cannot be accounted for, that is not entirely accurate. It
can
be accounted for, just not by explanations that fall within our understanding of the technological capabilities of New Mobilius’s aboriginal species.”

Here we go, thought several members of the group, including the chair, but some among them, including Quavoce and the ever-diligent Shtat, were curious where the archivist was going with this.

“The anomaly, for example, could not be an error at all, or a distortion caused by radiation from the planet’s sun. The gravitational distortion is potentially indicative, for example, of a second moon, or a large orbital.”

Some openly laughed, and while the derisive noise was filtered out by the Yallan AM hosting the simulation, the somewhat exaggerated laughter could be seen on more faces than Quavoce would have thought likely. He scowled at Sar Lamati, something she would have fiercely rebutted from anyone else, but she did seek his respect, and as such she relented, and even appeared momentarily contrite, for her.

But even Quavoce had to admit that this speculation from the ever-diligent Hemmbar representative was beyond the pale. And when the Hemmbar Council member had finished, Quavoce voiced the room’s incredulity, speaking politely but firmly. “Respectfully, Theer-im, I think we can assume there is no way the initial recon probes could have miscounted the number of moons around our destination. So what you suggest would require the humans to have managed to build or harvest an orbital body in the last twenty years, something that would have been far outside their ability on an ordinary technological timeline, let alone with the added obstacle of our advanced team working in their midst.”

Quavoce waited for a reply, but was not surprised when the archivist quietly nodded and sat back. The academic had not been proposing something he felt needed to be discussed, it seemed, so much as playing the role he felt was his. And it was an important role, no doubt about that, the role of devil’s advocate. Quavoce nodded at the Hemmbar, appreciating him once again. He respected the need for people like that. They kept you on your toes.

But that did not mean you needed to allow every possible theory to cloud your judgment, no matter how outlandish. So Quavoce now added, “That said, it is a fair observation, Theer-im, thank you for that. But such a supposition would necessarily imply that the advanced team has not only failed, but been, well, co-opted in some way, and down such paranoid channels lies only paralyzing fear, something any military leader learns to avoid early.”

There were some nods, and even some rolled eyes as his pride in his martial training started to turn the color of conceit, but he went on regardless. “I caution that such opinions should continue to see the light of day, and we should remain as open-minded as possible, but I think we can safely categorize this one as unlikely, in the extreme.”