Extremis (27 page)

Urkhot was (surprised, pleased). “This is well reasoned, Fleet Second. And what have you found, out here?”

“Firstly, that the other races depicted in human news and entertainment narratives are not fabrications, but actual species.”

“Interesting. Then where are they?”

“For the most part, they dwell in comparatively remote regions of space,
Holodah’kri
, and the species do not share worlds very frequently. However, after the Second Battle of Raiden, we discovered that some of the remains of enemy fighters were of radically different design. We took several of these on board our ships for analysis and discovered that these craft belonged to the species that the humans mislabel the Orions.”

“Interesting. But if this is true”—and Mretlak felt a faint undertone of anxiety in Urkhot’s
selnarm
—“then it is significant only if these Orions possess
selnarm
and an awareness of Illudor. Do they?”

“
Holodah’kri
, there is no such evidence. Although we had no live Orions to examine, their ships are devoid of
selnarmic
repeaters or receivers. And given the speed of action in a fighter, it is hard to imagine that they would willingly eschew the advantages gained by direct
selnarmic
command of the craft’s key operating systems.”

“So these are simply
griarfeksh
with much more fur and much larger teeth. Tell me: among the other races that reputedly exist, are there any signs or reports of
selnarm
?”

“No, not as such.”

“What does that mean?”

“
Holodah’kri
, the race that the humans have labeled the Bugs employed some form of communication which, like
selnarm
, is not subject to many of the laws and constraints of Myrtakian space. However, it was clearly not
selnarm
. Its manifestation was limited to the system in which the sender was located, and its transmission was not instantaneous.”

“And what of the creatures called the Gorm, the heavy hexapeds? Is there not evidence that they have sensitivities which are non-Myrtakian in nature?”

“Yes,
Holodah’kri
, but the Gorm mental exchanges are simply vague impressions, mostly emotional in nature—much as our newborns project—and these transmissions are extremely short-ranged, typically constrained to a few kilometers.”

“However, it seems the closest phenomenon to
selnarm
is to be found in these Gorm.”

“Perhaps,
Holodah’kri
, but that is not the parallel the human media have been drawing. We have discovered on each human world we have conquered that we are being compared to the Bugs, which were—reputedly—a ravening hive intelligence that—again reputedly—ate the humans’ live infants and children with great avidity.”

“So our deeds and our nature are being distorted and vilified through the human leadership’s propaganda?”

(Agreement. Faint irony.) “Yes,
Holodah’kri
. They have decided that we are not truly intelligent beings, nor individuals, but dangerous monsters. At least in terms of the opinion they hold of their current adversary, they seem much like us.”

“Our view is the correct one, Fleet Second.”

“I did not claim nor imply that it is not,
Holodah’kri
: I simply observe that their categorization of us matches our categorization of them.”

Urkhot clearly did not feel this to be an appropriately compliant answer, but Mretlak could also sense that the priest could find no fault with what Mretlak had said, and so the
Holodah’kri
moved on. “So, among these many races, the humans are dominant?”

“They are the most widely established,
Holodah’kri
. This is true largely because—”

“—because they are warlike?”

“More because they are curious and acquisitive.”

“Tell me, Mretlak, is ‘acquisitive’ simply a longer word for ‘greedy’?”

“With respect,
Holodah’kri
, greed and acquisitiveness are not interchangeable motivations in all, or even most, humans. Many
simply wish to—well,
build
things: structures, communities, institutions. They take a great joy in the act of making, and most then wish to exert some lasting ownership over what they’ve built.”

“As did the
zifrik
colonies of our homeworld. Even those pestilential insects had a great—and aggressive—pride of ownership for their hives and other constructs.”

As do we, ourselves
, Mretlak thought, carefully keeping that reflection separate from the flow of his
selnarm
. “However, our analysis suggests that the primary behavioral variable that drives humanity’s expansion is their thirst for the novel. Humans revel in experiencing new places, new ideas, new challenges.”

(Boredom.) “Fascinating. I now understand—in detail—why the
griarfeksh
are the duplicitous, violent vermin I knew them to be before you commenced your briefing.”

“Yes,
Holodah’kri
, but this review does serve another purpose.”

“And what is that?”

“It provides important new data in the attempt to resolve the matter of determining where, and how much, variance exists between the true nature of our
griarfeksh
adversaries and their self-representations, which we have suspected was largely disinformation.”

(Wariness.) “And how does this new data resolve this matter?”

“
Holodah’kri
, in analyzing the human naval wrecks and the archives of the planets we’ve conquered, we are discovering an extraordinary uniformity of both objective data and of cultural history—all of which makes it increasingly implausible that the humans are engaging in an intricate campaign of disinformation. Not only would the scope of such an effort be unthinkably vast, but
all evidence of the organizations and orders which effected these supposed revisions of human history must also have been flawlessly purged from all recent records—another most unlikely occurrence.”

“Well, the absence of such evidence is hardly surprising. The government’s own agents would certainly have removed it.”

Mretlak kept to the point. “But still,
does
such a speedy yet expansive conspiracy seem plausible? It would have to retroactively deny truths which living humans have known for years, or decades.”

“Indeed. That any species could be so easily brainwashed is certainly proof of their weak cognitive capacities. And even so, it is nonetheless an astounding feat of propaganda, isn’t it? It seems to defy belief—yet what is the alternative?” (Watchfulness. Zealotry. Monomania.)

Mretlak knew he was now on the horns of an impossible dilemma. Either he had to concur with Urkhot that the humans had actually succeeded in mounting such an impossibly sweeping and successful conspiracy of disinformation. Or he had to challenge that view, which in turn meant he was proposing nothing less than heresy: that the human self-representation was fundamentally accurate.

And that would only spawn even more distressing inquiries. For if the humans’ self-representations were true, then it raised the further issue of their personhood: whether, in fact, creatures without
selnarm
could be truly sentient. Better to presume that humans were simply a savage pack of clever animals, an ultimate challenge that Illudor had posed to test the worthiness of his own Children. Urkhot’s wide, quivering central eye told Mretlak that his interlocutor-become-inquisitor was already committed to this belief with a mania that could not even be fully expressed through
selnarm
. The
Holodah’kri’
s conviction was not merely monomaniacal: it had slipped over into something approaching madness.

Mretlak quickly turned to the military section of his briefing. “I am pleased to report that with our increasing numbers of heavy superdreadnoughts and their Desai drives, we are quickly reducing the advantages the humans have enjoyed in both tactical and strategic mobility. In large measure, this allowed us to keep our losses lower in Beaumont and particularly Raiden—” And Mretlak felt a strong, hot surge of passion rise up in Torhok’s
selnarm
. The specific form of passion was suppressed, but Mretlak could guess: the prior, disastrous attempt to take Raiden by frontal attacks—led by the now discarnate Admiral Lankha—had been Torhok’s brainchild.

Mretlak hurried on. “Unfortunately, we are still lagging far behind the humans in fighter technology.”

Urkhot was (puzzled). “And yet we have made such advances in the drives of our larger ships. What causes this discrepancy?”

Mretlak interlaced his lesser tentacles. “Most of our gains have come through increased efficiencies made possible by the greater scale of the drives in the larger craft. However, the humans are exploiting other technological approaches to achieve their superior performance in the smaller drives. Consequently, although the fighter is a weapon whose tactical significance is swiftly diminishing, it can still be quite dangerous in certain situations. Particularly illustrative of this is the Battle of Beaumont, where the humans deployed their fighters within the Desai limit.”

“It was a cowardly ambush,” asserted Urkhot.

Narrok intruded. “It was also a shrewd tactic that capitalized upon our now-predictable doctrine of pursuing all engagement relentlessly and all our objectives directly.”

Torhok did not respond. Indeed, he could not do so without also critiquing the source of that tactical doctrine—himself—and the person who had insisted on following it at Beaumont: Urkhot. Mretlak sought to find some oil to pour upon the troubled waters: “Happily, the improved drives of our new SDH class actually provide that class of ship with slightly better speed than their human analogs.”

(Relief, triumph) from Urkhot. “Well, this is welcome news. And tell us: what innovation of ours has allowed us to so quickly improve upon the flawed human version of the Desai drive, Mretlak?”

Again, Mretlak found himself mid-stride in a potential misstep, because there was no way to furnish Urkhot with the answer he evidently expected—and wanted—to hear. “Esteemed
Holodah’kri
, our improvement simply arose from being able to compare our system to theirs, and then combining the best features of both. So by partially—copying—the humans, we came up with a better drive.”

(Anger. Manic pride. Denial denial denial.) “Are you now claiming that the humans are our technological superiors?”

Careful now.
“It is clear enough that our technological strengths are quite
different
. After all, we had never encountered what they call the Desai drive. But they have never managed to create a sustained power source so vast and useful as the one at the core of our pinhole drive.”

(Relief.) “Yes. Quite true. We are fortunate enough to enjoy the technological edge—and aptitudes—that really matter the most.” (Satisfaction. Suspicion.)

Mretlak elected not to comment on Urkhot’s dubious assertion. “However, in the smaller drives, particularly those of the human ‘strike fighters,’ the wreckage we’ve examined suggests that their tuners are more advanced, and that they use instrumentation and third generation quantum computing that we do not have. And do not yet fully understand.”

(Disbelief.) “Is not our computing superior?”

“We, of course, have
selnarm
interfaces. Our computers do not merely obey our instructions—they become extensions of our selves, and their responsiveness is absolute.”

“So, what is this quantum computing and how is it that we do not have it also?”

“We do not have it because we have not long been students in the needs of space war,
Holodah’kri
. You might say that our peaceful nature has imposed a temporary disadvantage upon us.” Mretlak used Urkhot’s recession into (mollification) to explain. “Because our
selnarm
is instantaneous across all distances, our ability to share information is faster than the processes that occur within our computers, which are constrained to the speed of light. However, in select human systems—some of those governing the fighters’ tuners and point-defense fire systems, for instance—the basis of transmission is in non-Myrtakian space. It exploits certain principles of what the humans call
quantum entanglement
. This gives the humans a profound edge in terms of how fast some of their automated systems may respond.”

“I see—but how did our peacefulness keep us from discovering this innovation on our own?”

“With respect,
Holodah’kri
, what need would we have had for such speed? We needed to escape the supernova of Sekamahnt and so perfected the pinhole drive, and the many systems and sciences required for our long journey and eventual resettlement. We had not known true war for many centuries. In contrast, the humans stumbled upon and utilized warp points,
thereby coming
into contact and conflict with other species. They have been driven and defined by an endless round of savage wars. And war rewards alacrity as does nothing else, so they necessarily turned their attention to reaction times, to exploiting aspects of non-Myrtakian space that were of no utility to us.”

Urkhot added a capstone to Mretlak’s analysis. “Happily, the advantages the humans have enjoyed thus far they shall soon lose. We shall catch and surpass them in all their sciences and technological endeavors. But they can never match our greatest advantage. The knowledge that we are eternal, and thus fear no death. Indeed, as Illudor teaches us,
destolfi montu shilkiene
.”

Having watched the casualty lists grow ever longer in the Fleet, Mretlak had come to wonder if, as Urkhot had cited, “Discarnation is but a little thing.” However, Mretlak had no permissible reply, and so was relieved when Narrok asked the question he could not. “Is it,
Holodah’kri
?
Is
discarnation always a ‘little’ thing?”

(Wariness.) “What do you mean, Admiral Narrok?”

“I mean that we
Anaht’doh Kainat
are already much diminished since arriving here in human space. We can ill-afford further campaigns that buy us few gains at the expense of many discarnations of our well-trained fellow Wanderers. We shall not see their replacement for many a year.”