Read The Dark Imbalance Online
Authors: Sean Williams,Shane Dix
Tags: #Science Fiction, #Fiction, #Space Opera
The Dark Imbalance (23 page)
In the end, though, his luck ran out, and a stuck hatch forced him into another team’s path. When he realized his mistake, he tried to double back on his pursuers and take them by surprise. They realized just in time, and the concentrated fire from three security guards finally brought him down.
Roche took a deep breath. That made four confirmed kills. As Coriett’s cab came to a halt, she felt sure that it would soon be five.
The team were ready for anything as the doors slid open. From the viewpoint of one of the guards, Roche watched as they inched forward, weapons at the ready, until they were within meters of the woman.
She didn’t move.
One guard reached gingerly forward to slide the still-smoking gun out of arm’s reach.
Still she didn’t move.
More confidently, another approached to test for vital signs while the others kept their weapons trained on her. If she was conscious, or even alive at all, she gave no indication as his fingers sought for a pulse in her throat.
The diagnosis wasn’t one Roche expected to hear.
“She’s alive,” the guard called.
The containment team had begun to relax in the face of her lack of response. Now they tightened formation again and began to inch away nervously.
“What do we do with her?” said one of the team anxiously.
“Restrain her,” came the response. “Bring her in for examination and interrogation if you can. But shoot her if she so much as moves. Whatever you do,
don’t
let her get away from you. If she—”
A siren began wailing through the ship. Distracted from the view through her implants, Roche looked up. Murnane’s eyes were flickering rapidly, intent on an internal feed.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
“Overheated life-support module,” said Nemeth.
The siren grew louder and more strident.
“Is that all?” she said.
He stared at her. “You still haven’t grasped how big this ship is, have you? Each of those modules is bigger than a small moon, and there are
five
of them. If one blows, it could start a chain reaction through the ducts that’ll tear the whole place apart.”
“What’s causing it?”
“The Heresiarch is trying to find out. Something is interfering with the module’s normal operation. A virus of some sort, perhaps, triggered from the outside.”
“Sabotage?”
“Could be. We don’t know yet. But it’s going to blow in thirty seconds if we can’t get control of it, so hope for both of us someone works out quickly what the hell is going on.”
Roche’s attention was drawn back to the channel in which Coriett was being dragged out of the cab. The woman was limp, unprotesting, to all appearances completely unconscious. And as she watched, a sudden realization brought with it a sense of terrible panic.
“Tell your team to shoot her!”
Nemeth’s eyebrows shot up.
“What?”
“It’s
her
,” Roche found herself shouting.
“
She’s
doing it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Nemeth, but the uncertainty was evident in his tone.
“Didn’t someone say she worked for Environment Control? She would have been in a perfect position to set something like this up. If she has implants, and if she’s faking unconsciousness...”
Roche didn’t need to go any further. The alarm blossoming in Nemeth’s eyes matched her own.
He turned away to rattle off orders to the containment team and to the councilors around him. The siren wailed on as the guards readying Coriett for mechanical restraint looked up at their superior and listened to the new orders coming through their armor’s communication links. They let go of her and backed away.
But even as they did this, Roche felt it was too late.
The warrior’s eyes snapped open, and in an instant she had rolled toward the nearest guard and grabbed him by the legs, blood squirting from her injured back in a high-pressure jet. Confused, surprised, frightened, the guard didn’t have time to react, and fell heavily to the floor. His head hit the ground with a sickening thud.
Coriett seized the fallen guard’s rifle and raised herself up on one knee, leveling it effortlessly at the others. But three members of the containment team had managed to raise their own weapons first and had already targeted the injured woman.
A volley of shots flung the clone warrior back into the cab, and they kept firing until her body stopped moving altogether...
Nemeth acknowledged the woman’s death only in passing. He didn’t relax until word came that the interference with the life-support module had ceased. Its operations were being normalized, and the threat to ship integrity would soon pass. He sagged visibly as the siren decreased in volume and then fell silent.
“That’s it,” he said. “I think we can call this operation a success.”
“Bring her body,” said Murnane. Outwardly he seemed unaffected by the events. “I want
all
of the bodies in for postmortem examination. Then we’ll know for certain.”
“We already know,” said Nemeth.
“We can take nothing for granted,” said Murnane evenly.
“How could you even doubt it? Look at them! They ran and they fought—they fought even when there was no chance they could win! If they weren’t the enemy, then what were they?”
Roche looked, and knew what he was feeling. Five of the clone warriors lay dead on the
Phlegethon
’s decks—killed by the Pristine Humans they impersonated.
That
was progress.
“Now we’re getting somewhere!” Nemeth gloated.
But as the surviving security guards picked themselves up and saw to their injured colleagues, and as the casualty reports came in listing thirty dead guards and fifteen dead civilians, Murnane’s face grew grim.
“At what cost?” he asked, perhaps of himself.
Roche looked down at her trembling hands aid wondered the same thing.
14
SHCV Phlegethon
955.2.14
0560
Within the hour, chaos had erupted all around the system. Border skirmishes broke out and became firelights; grudges became battles; enemies forgot diplomacy, along with the greater good, and exchanged open, sometimes devastating attacks. Within three hours, virtually every Caste present in Sol System was engaged in some form of dispute.
“I don’t understand.” Nemeth watched the screens with a growing confusion. Perhaps, Roche thought, he was watching his newfound position of dominance in the council dissolving before his eyes. She hoped he had more Humanity than that; she herself saw nothing but lives wasted, nothing but more death and destruction—with the potential for it to become worse than anything she had witnessed in Palasian System. Worse, even, than anything she had ever imagined.
“I don’t
understand
!” Nemeth said again, hitting a console with the palm of one hand. Roche could appreciate his frustration, but his anger was serving no purpose. A feeling obviously shared with the Heresiarch, who turned to Nemeth and said: “If
you
don’t understand, then who does?” The question was clearly rhetorical, for the Heresiarch didn’t wait to hear what Nemeth would say next. Instead he returned to the business of running the ship, turning his attention to the influx of data coming at him from all the monitors about the room.
He was standing in the center of the small room adjoining the fane to which Roche and Haid had been moved following the
Ulterior’s apparent success with the five clone warriors. The room was fifteen meters across, at most, with glowing blue walls that looked as though they had been fashioned from crystal. Set into the walls and floor, and even the ceiling, were consoles and stations for dozens of crew members. The air was full of whispered instructions, burbling data, and an impression that everything was running perfectly to order. Busy yet not chaotic, the adytum hummed to its own driving rhythm.
In this space, the Heresiarch did the real work involved with the running of the
Phlegethon,
rather than the ceremonial. Roche knew that being permitted here, among the highest officers and critical decision-makers, watching the information pouring in live from tens of thousands of ftl drones, was something of a privilege. Also a high honor, if Nemeth’s expression upon arriving was anything to go by.
“We killed those five easily enough,” persisted Nemeth, turning now to Murnane with his concerns. “They had no chance to warn the others. All this...” He gestured at the mess on the screens. “It
has
to be a coincidence.” He searched the room now, looking for support but finding none. “It’s always been at flashpoint,” he insisted. “The whole system was unstable from the moment we arrived—and it’s been getting worse every day! There have been skirmishes, conflicts, even small wars, before. This is just more of the same. Only worse.”
“Much worse,” the Heresiarch said dryly, leaning against the steel rail surrounding his station. He seemed to be completely hairless; his eyes were a deep brown, like his skin.
“It’s a chain reaction, that’s what it is.” Nemeth began pacing and gesticulating agitatedly. “Civilization A attacks civilization B, who calls in C as an ally. That would be fine, except D has been waiting for the chance to move on C and ropes in E and F to stack the odds. G is caught in the crossfire, and H and I come to its rescue. And so on. Perfectly sane and comprehensible.” His words trailed off as he stopped and looked up at the screens. “What we did has nothing to do with this,” he finished more calmly. “It
can’t
have.”
“I fear it did,” said Murnane.
The elder councilor didn’t waste energy posturing as he talked. He simply stood, composed, on the other side of the Heresiarch. “The timing is too precise. Every new conflict was initiated within moments of the deaths of those five. Medical tests confirm that they were the enemy, so their exposure and attempted capture
have
to be connected. The others, the rest of them”—his eyes flickered for a second to the screens—”the ones that are still alive are fighting now because they know that we have learned how to find them. They feel vulnerable—perhaps even afraid. We were able to kill those five because we managed to take them by surprise; the others are not going to allow the same thing to happen again.”
“But
how
did they know?” Nemeth’s frustration was palpable.
Murnane shrugged. “I’m not sure,” he said. “But the information
must
have been transmitted by either an epsense or hyperspace signal. There’s no other way it could’ve spread so quickly.”
Roche remembered the black speck at the heart of Cane and Jelena Heidik’s minds, as viewed by the
irikeii,
and the look on Janil Coriett’s face as firing broke out on the far side of the
Phlegethon.
“It was epsense,” she said.
Nemeth rounded on her. “How can you know that? None of our reaves have ever detected anything.”
“Neither have we,” she said. “But look at the recordings: Coriett suspected she’d been discovered, but she didn’t know for sure until someone opened fire on one of the others. She wasn’t anywhere near any sort of hyperspace communicator; there’s no way we know of to hide one inside a Human body—and we would’ve found it if one had been there. So it must have been epsense.”
“That’s not proof,” Nemeth said.
“It’s all we have to go on,” said Murnane. “We need to recall our field agents and warn anyone who might not have realized what’s going on. Without extensive ftl communications or epsense on
our
side, word might take time to spread that the disturbances aren’t local. We have to save as many people as we can, starting with our own.”
“And then what?” Nemeth asked.
“Then we wait and see what happens.” The elderly councilor suddenly looked very tired. “This might blow over; it might just be a warning. We might receive some sort of communication, at last. Who knows? If they are that concerned that we have the ability to find them now, we might even be able to negotiate a settlement.”
“What
have
we got to negotiate with?” The short bleat of a laugh from Nemeth was cynical and derisive. “If we don’t find someone else who can do this, it’ll take us months to sweep the entire system. Maybe forever, if Roche is killed!”
“The enemy doesn’t
know
that!”
“How long do you think it’ll take them to figure it out?” said Nemeth. “They’re not stupid, you know.”
“Exactly—they’re not. They know they can’t afford to take too many chances while they’re so outnumbered.”
“But what if they can?” continued Nemeth. “What if they
don’t
negotiate?”
Murnane shrugged. “Then we save what we can,” he said. “That’s all we can do.”
“There is another alternative.” A new voice entered the discussion, this one hauntingly familiar to Roche.
Murnane looked up. “Yes, Trezise?”
The senior aide to Auberon Chase stepped into the center of the adytum. Roche hadn’t noticed him there before, but recognized his narrow, almost equine features immediately.
“Roche claims to have among her crew one of the enemy.”
“Yes; the council decided Adoni Cane was a fake,” Murnane said.
“What if he isn’t? What if he
is
as tame as Roche suggests? Surely his opinion would be worth seeking at this juncture.”
“Bring another one of the enemy onto the ship?” objected Nemeth. “We’ve just killed a lot of people clearing out the first lot! If he is a clone warrior, it would be insane to allow him on board.”
“What other means do we have to decipher the enemy’s intentions?” Trezise opened his hands in supplication. “If an epsense link
does
exist, he might be able to tap into it.”
“
If
he is genuine,” Murnane said.
Trezise nodded, agreeing calmly. “If he is genuine, yes.”
Murnane turned to face Roche. “What do
you
think?”
She wanted to say that this was what she’d wanted to do two and a half weeks earlier, that if they’d listened to her the first time, then maybe everything that had happened since then might have been avoided.
But she didn’t. She was too conscious of the fact that this could be her last opportunity to speak to the council. She couldn’t afford to miss that chance.
“On two conditions,” she said instead. “One: you will grant any member of my crew asylum on this ship should they seek it. And two: you will make me a participating member of the council, effective immediately.”
Murnane chuckled softly. “
I
have no objection to either condition,” he said. “Obviously, though, the granting of asylum would need to be ratified by the Heresiarch.” He nodded to where the Heresiarch stood at his station, preoccupied with the running of the ship. “I’m not sure he would extend the honor to Adoni Cane, enemy or not. And your membership in the council would have to be on a
pro tem
basis, to be ratified by a formal sitting—”
She raised a hand to silence him. “Okay, okay, you’ve made your point,” she said, and sighed. “Just give me your assurance that you’ll
listen
to me, at least.”
He nodded once. “Make arrangements to transfer Adoni Cane across and we’ll prepare for the interview.” He swept his gaze across the room. Nemeth looked relieved, but said nothing. “If there are no further urgent issues to be raised, we will adjourn to await further developments. The Heresiarch has work to do, and our being here can only be a distraction.”
Even as he spoke, a bell chimed loudly, sending the assembled officers to their stations. A raiding party from a small but aggressive government had stumbled into the
Phlegethon’
s camouflage field and opened fire on the middle decks. Roche turned to the monitors, watching as hundreds of pod-shaped fighters swarmed out of the giant ship’s many docks to repel the intruder.
The council moved out to the fane. Hue Vischilglin took Roche’s arm, nodding recognition but saying nothing. As she and Haid were led away, Roche caught a glimpse of Salton Trezise, who could barely contain his look of triumph.
* * *
From the safety of another conference room, Roche made arrangements for Cane and Maii to cross by scutter to the
Phlegethon.
She also instructed Kajic to assume a close parking position under the big ship’s shadow. While the raid had in no way threatened the
Ana Vereine,
it did highlight the potential for conflict nearby. If things did get too hot, Kajic had permission to seek protection in the
Phlegethon
’s larger docks.
Once that was organized, Roche had nothing else to do but observe. Even as only a
pro tem
member of the council, the information she now had access to was overwhelming. What had once been chaos had now become a slaughter. Traditional alliances dissolved; defensive agreements were torn apart; like fought like as intra-Caste conflicts expanded to consume entire fleets. Conservative estimates put the number of ships and stations lost in the first three hours at twenty thousand. That only amounted to barely two percent of the million or so ships known to have entered the system, but the sheer loss of life could not be ignored.
Its choice of words made her frown. <1 hope this is more than just a game to you, Box.>
She couldn’t decide whether the AI was being insincere or patronizing. Perhaps it was both.
<
If
a trend emerges,> she said, thinking of the twenty thousand ships destroyed already and wondering how many more it would take to give the Box enough data.
She went back to watching the screens. Sitting beside her, heavy and brooding in his black combat suit, Haid was as silent as she was. He kept his emotions carefully hidden, only a slight tightness to his jaw revealing anything of the tension he must have been feeling.
After a few moments, she addressed the Box again.
to serve a purpose, yet result in no known proteins. Whatever else they might do remains a mystery, but these stretches can be used to distinguish a clone warrior from any other ordinary Human.>
Roche absorbed this.
know?>
Tired of repeatedly butting the same brick wall, Roche fell silent. A few minutes later, Kajic reported that Maii and Cane were ready to leave. Roche switched her implants to a view of the scutter’s cramped interior. Cane sat in the pilot’s seat, his face expressionless. Maii sat beside him, still somewhat pale, but looking better than she had been earlier; the medicinal pack covering her wound was less bulky than it had been, indicating that its healing work was almost done. Behind her...