Lena
“How was it? My speech?”
“Fabulous.”
“You’re not just saying that?”
“Of course not.”
“I felt it played rather well.”
“It was majestic.”
“Captain Flanagan…”
“You don’t need to say anything nice to me, Lena.”
“I may have underestimated you.”
He pauses, a twinkle in his eyes. “And I, you,” he says, gallantly.
“This is a bold thing you have embarked upon.”
“It is the grandest endeavour in all human history.”
“I admire you.”
“Thank you.”
“Will you…”
“What?”
“Hold my hand.”
“Of course.”
He does.
“And stroke my cheek.”
“If you wish.”
He does.
“And kiss me.”
“Hey now.”
The Captain looks alarmed. He is a cartoon figure with big bushy grey beard and wild eyes, and he dresses like a blind man. But I have become fond of him. I run my fingers through his hair. I press my lips to his.
After a few minutes I release my kiss.
“Is that good?” I ask him.
“Sublime.”
“You’re not just saying that.”
“Of course not.”
“Do you love me, Captain?”
“Kiss me again, if you like.”
I do. I run my fingers over his crotch. I feel his manhood stir. I do have power over him. I do. Honestly!
I do!
Flanagan
We are on our way.
Lena’s speech was weird. It was passionately and movingly delivered, but in many ways ill judged for its audience. It had the air of a plea for pity by a woman riddled with guilt. Which is, I guess what she is, and what it was.
I had, to be honest, expected better from her. But who cares? She has her allotted role to play, whether she knows it or not.
However, since then, we appear to have some kind of sexual “thing” going. Jamie and Brandon taunt me about it. But I’ll do whatever I need to do. Even… that. It’s a relatively small price to pay.
After Lena’s speech, I rose and spoke myself. I told the assembled pirates in the most vivid and extravagant terms about our reconquest of Cambria. I stirred the hearts of those formidable pirates. I inspired them with a vision.
War.
Not victory, not justice, not revenge. War itself and for its own sake was what these men and women yearned for. Hope had died in their hearts long ago. They had no need of worldly comforts – they’d stolen all they would ever need. And they were in no imminent danger either. The days of constant pursuit and persecution of pirate crews were long gone.
Because the truth was, the Corporation had so much wealth, it didn’t care what we stole from its vessels and cities.
For what is wealth? Any fabric, from cashmere to silk to spiderweave, can be manufactured in an orbital factory. The designs of the great designers can be transmitted around the Universe via the Beacons in less time than it takes to think a thought. Furniture and jewellery can be easily created, gold spun to order, flying cars made in a matter of minutes. Vast orbiting factories crewed by human slaves and self-manufacturing robots can create anything, easily, whether it involves the transmutation of metals, or the precise manufacture of leisure electronics, or the most skilful knitting and weaving.
All it takes to fuel this self-perpetuating infinitude of wealth is energy. And that, too, is available in near-limitless quantities. Over more than a thousand years (Earth Elapsed Time) the human race has spread itself over a small part of one small galaxy; but within this area the power available within the stars is beyond measure. For each and every star is lit and fired by a complex series of nuclear reactions which generates more energy than the human race has ever used and will ever need.
Once you have superdense power capsules which can be hurled into the sun’s core for recharging, or arrays of solar panels orbiting the star like satellites, you have access to as much power as you can desire. And then you create robot computers which can build their own replacements. And then – you have plenitude. Ecological pollution is scarcely an issue; most inhabited planets are terraformed in any case. The population explosion never registers; space is big enough for everyone, and besides, lots of slave-class humans die doing dangerous jobs. The Sol system itself is carefully controlled so that only an élite few become citizens; the rest are dispatched on colony ships. Or exterminated.
It’s a perfect, self-regulating system. Space, it seems, really is big enough.
When I was a young pirate, I realised nothing of this. I thought that by pillaging merchant ships I was striking a small but significant blow against the prevailing autocracy. I squandered wealth, I burned cargoes, in the hope of giving the Cheo sleepless nights.
It was all nonsense. We pirates are the butterflies on an elephant’s arse. We are no threat to anyone.
But we are, let’s face it, a formidable army.
Twenty thousand pirate ships have gathered, crewed by nearly a million warriors. Some are mercenary soldiers, some are sneak thieves and con artists, making a living by cheating and defrauding the system. Many are Space Factory workers who have fled the grind and horror of their daily lives. Some are murderers who have been repeatedly brain-fried but have still not lost the urge to slaughter and maim. Some are merely criminals; outlaws who have cheated or stolen from their own human kind. They are a brutal ugly gang but we need every man and woman jack of them.
We are headed for Kornbluth, which is eighteen light years from our sanctuary in Debatable Space, and will take us twenty subjective years to reach. We have chosen not to attack Illyria, our nearest neighbour in space. The plan is that, if any ships survive, we will lash Illyria in the course of our headlong retreat back to Debatable Space. Assuming, that is, that any of us live that long.
The joy of interstellar warfare is that it is relatively easy to sneak up on people. Our flotilla of warships is a cloud that fills the sky viewed from a perspective of two or three hundred miles. But in the wider scheme of things, we are a blip, a mosquito in a vast expanse of black sky.
Our mosquito accelerates at near-light speed. Behind us we tow an asteroid and a Space Factory. Like a horde of Mongol warriors, we steadily advance towards an apocalypse.
It will, however, be a long journey. For many it will be their entire life, from birth to death. And I am sobered at the scale of the challenge we face. Because when we are spotted, in seventeen or eighteen years (our subjective time) the Corporation will immediately commence its defence plans. All available warships will be marshalled.
But, even more alarmingly, new ships and soldiers will be grown. The space factories around Kornbluth will be diverted into the manufacture of warships and Doppelganger Robots. Raw materials ripped out of planets and asteroids and dark matter itself will be funnelled into vast smelting vats. Metals will be sifted or transmuted; if necessary, hydrogen will be turned into helium which will be turned into carbon which in turn will become diamond-hard iron. But metals are only needed for the internal structures of spaceships. The hulls themselves are grown out of organic polymers of greater-than-spider-web tensile strength. Production lines will churn out Doppelganger body parts with all the sensitivity of human skin but with the durability of an armour-plated missile.
Within a year the factories of Kornbluth can create a million warships and five hundred million soldier DRs. It’s faster, by far, to grow soldiers from scratch than to ship them from one part of this vast galaxy to another. This is the source of the Corporation’s impregnable power. They have limitless energy, limitless manufacturing capacity, and they have conveyor belts which can churn out entire armies of soldiers every few hours.
So we have decided to take them on at their own game. We have our own space factory, we have an asteroid’s worth of rock and metal ore, and we have scoops that ceaselessly dredge in dark matter and space debris to fuel our smelting vats. We, too, are growing polymer skins for warships. We too are mass-producing weapons.
And we too are growing soldiers. The Bacchanalia that ended our historic evening in the Pirates’ Hall is a memory that will never fade for me. Hundreds of thousands of pregnancies have resulted; and artificial wombs are already growing the human foetuses that were conceived that night. As the factories build more warships, the newborn babies will be carefully spread among our fleet, nurtured and loved by vicious and powerful pirates. Each child will have two parents, and half a million uncles and aunts. These children will be cherished, but they will also be hothoused, and trained. They will be strong, fit, fast, fearless, able to multi-task in battle, able to effortlessly commune with computer intelligences while planning war strategies.
And new babies are being conceived every day in this, our first month in space. In a year the conceptions will cease and the new generation will be raised. In twenty years, by the time we reach Kornbluth, we will have 10 million new soldiers, ranging in age from eighteen to nineteen, at the peak of their physical powers. We will also have 200,000 new warships, giving us in total a fleet of near a quarter of a million vessels.
It will be the most formidable pirate horde ever seen in space. An army greater than any ever assembled in the long and bloody course of human history.
Our fleet sweeps through space, chewing up every inch of matter and energy on our route, while raising and training an army of magnificent warriors.
We are not just a mosquito; we are the impossibly vast mosquito swarm that grows and grows and flies up high into the sky in an attempt to eat the sun.
We expect to burn and die in glory.
Alliea
I have chosen to be a mother. I think the Captain was surprised, after all I’ve told him of my desire for celibacy and a life lived in mourning for Rob. And, of course, on the night of the sexual Bacchanalia, I carefully abstained. I spent the evening playing checkers with myself, as orgiastic sex erupted on all the tables around me. Annoyingly, I kept forgetting which of me had played the previous move, due to the distracting genital imagery, so I concede the game was something of a disaster.
But I kept myself pure then, and I still do now. But as the months passed, and the deadline for the final conception loomed closer, I found myself increasingly beguiled at the prospect of motherhood. After six months (with the help of growth-accelerating artificial womb techniques) the first of the babies was born. I began helping out in the nursery and acting as babyminder for a dozen or so pirate mums. I discovered I had an ability to completely lose myself in the child; time and space would vanish in a haze of tears as the baby stared blearily and angrily at me and demanded its milk.
I opted for artificial insemination; six months later my baby was born. I called her Roberta. She was a small baby, with big black eyes that peered out soulfully. Then she started to bawl and she became a raging pixie. Then I fed her with bottle milk and she almost swallowed the teat in her joy and luxuriant pleasure. I got the haze of tears thing again.
I was still in combat training, obviously. But I no longer socialised so much with the others. I was rarely to be found in the bar or the common room. I never watched movies or saw concerts. I became a baby-loving hermit. The Captain used to smile indulgently whenever he saw me with Roberta, but I felt the jealousy surging through him. He wanted it to be his child; he wanted to be part of my universe. He wanted, in short, to be my true love. But he wasn’t. That could never work.
Then Roberta got an infection and I spent twelve hours by her cot, panicking. Infant mortality is almost unheard of these days, but there are viral infections that can damage a baby’s brain and cause behavioural problems later in life. These are almost undetectable and untreatable; some say the Cheo himself had been virally infected as a child. So I lived through twelve hours of fearing the worst.
But it was just meningitis, easily cured. I breathed easy and hugged my baby. Hera, the woman from Hecuba who spoke that night in the Pirates’ Hall, was on nursing duties. She made me sit down and drink some tea and lulled me to sleep with a gentle mantra. When I woke Hera was cradling my baby. I didn’t mind. It seemed right.
That’s how it began. Hera, like me, had sworn a vow of celibacy. Sex was too traumatic for her to even consider. And neither of us had lesbian orientation. But I didn’t want a lover, male or female. I wanted another parent for my child.
I wanted someone to share my joy at Roberta’s first smile. I wanted someone who didn’t mind me talking to them for long long hours about the new little funny little thing my baby had just done. Puking on my nose! Rolling from one wall to another! Having a really big shit! These were moments to be savoured, but also to be shared.
I could see the Captain didn’t approve of my new intimacy. But it was a shared love of unique intensity. A triangular affair of baby, woman, and woman.
Hera delights me with her gentleness, and her wryly acid humour. She is a born home-maker, and has transformed our spartan cabin into an oasis of rugs and wall furnishings and burning candles. She cooks for me, we play checkers together. We quiz each other on galactic phenomena. We even train together. Hera is a fierce and agile warrior. I have learned much from her; and I believe she has learned from me too.
And together we have raised my baby, Roberta. She is the most perfect baby ever born. Sometimes she cries and cries but she always falls asleep when I sing to her. I imagine what kind of child she will be. I hope she has blonde hair, like my sister. And Rob’s grace, and sense of humour. I hope she’ll be my best friend. She’ll tell me everything, and I’ll listen to her patiently, and I’ll laugh when she tells me silly jokes. I’ll care about her and about her friends. And my only regret is the knowledge that she is unlikely to ever live to be a woman, and to have a baby of her own.
I have done my best to keep her safe. I made the Captain concede that when battle eventually commences, the youngsters will be in the rearguard. Let the old-timers like us be in the first wave to die. Let us be the cannon fodder, and spare the children for as long as possible. And the Captain agreed, reluctantly, to this. But I’m aware that it’s a small, and a worthless, concession. The odds are massively against us; our enemies are legion; and most if not all of us will die.
Yet I am desperate for my one and only child to live for at least a little while after I die. I want her to savour the pain of grief, the agony of losing me. I long for that moment, for only when I am mourned, will I truly feel I have completed my life’s journey.
Smile for me, baby. Let me wipe your poo. Let me hug you and kiss your sweet cheeks and watch you feed till you are bloated.
And then when you are a woman, or very nearly a woman, grieve for me, my baby. When the moment of my death comes, as it inevitably will, honour and lament my demise, in those precious minutes or even hours before you, too, have to die.
Brandon
“Captain?”
“Yes.”
“Are you okay?”
“No.”
“Can I help?”
“No.”
“What did Alliea say to you?”
“She had a request. I granted it.”
“Good.”
“Not good. Fuck off, please.”
“You shouldn’t get so melancholy, Cap’n. It’s bad for morale.”
The Captain stares at me. “Brandon,” he says.
“Yes?”
For the first time ever in dealing with the Captain, I fear for my life. There is a rage in his eyes that is less than sane. But he visibly chokes back his berserker rage.
“Leave me be, Brandon,” he says wearily.
“Yes, Cap’n.”
Lena
Are you brooding?
Mulling. Reflecting.
What about?
About love. I fear the Captain is madly, dangerously, obsessively in love with me.
What? I mean, oh yes, I’m sure you’re right.
He tries to hide it of course. He always speaks roughly to me, and he has perfected an ornately sarcastic style with me. “Yes, Lena,” he’ll say, “we are your humble servants, unworthy to polish your slightest witticism.” Or: “How can we serve to further exalt you, O beloved mistress, in a manner that leaves us even more abased than we already, most wretchedly, are?” It’s all sham, of course, a show of rudeness to conceal an inner awe and longing.
Indeed.
It does get wearisome though. Recall how I played my new concerto to a selected audience in my cabin, an inspired piece created as a homage to superstring resonance theory.
Yes, you…
Indeed, I devised my own scale based on the string resonances of atomic structure; the first note is electron, the second note is electron-neutrino, the third is up quark, and so on and so forth. The parallels I created between musical resonances and particle resonances are, I concede, a little contrived. But I do consider it to be a profoundly revealing musical artefact.
But for days afterwards, Flanagan kept humming the melody. “Dum dum dum dum DUM DAH DAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAh.” But it wasn’t meant to be a tune! It is a musical symbol of the hidden structure of the Universe.
I found it to be magnificent.
Thank you. And for all the flaws of my composition, it is better by far than those interminable bluesy dirges he plays. Repetitive three-chord transitions, sung in a grating pseudo-labouring-classes voice. How utterly pretentious and pathetic is that!
Very.
Indeed. But I have to keep reminding myself – Flanagan is a relatively unsophisticated human being. I, by contrast, have lived on Earth; I have mastered two dozen languages; I have attended classical concerts in Prague and Vienna and New York; I have seen at first hand the great paintings of Picasso, Beril, Marotti and xander P. I am a cosmopolitan woman of the Universe.
Am I not?
Sorry. Yes, indeed you are!
Flanagan, by contrast, grew up in a cave, and has spent his life in the company of pirates. He’s quite widely read, I concede, but essentially he’s a philistine.
But curiously, this is the quality that’s beginning to attract me. His rough-hewn, artless, naive nature. I feel that he is clay which I could mould. I could make something special out of this shaggy-haired foulmouthed kidnapping fool.
And we do have a wonderful banterflow. He insults me daily, and I mercilessly mock him back. “You need a shave,” I tell him, with devastating irony. Or: “You’re such a clod,” I argue, with rapier-sharp wit. Or: “Oh shut the fuck up you patronising cs mf!” You observe of course, my mastery of rhetorical irony?
He does have an annoying smile though. More sneer than smile, really. And he constantly doubts my version of history. He argues that Heimdall was authorised long before my tenure as President of Humanity. He points out that Hope was run by a collective of scientists and philosophers and was by no means my private fiefdom. But I never said it was! It was merely my obsession. Yes, of course, my child had many fathers; but I was still her mother.
Also, Flanagan nagged me for ages to have a baby to swell the ranks of the pirate army. This, of course, I could not endure. Am I a brood mare? I will not be demeaned in such a way. And besides, the very idea of my eggs being fertilised by some man’s sperm feels to me a violation akin to rape. At my age, sex itself is something of an ordeal. Conception is entirely beyond the pale.
I have had to take some steps to stamp my authority over Flanagan. As I keep reminding him – I am the leader of the pirate horde, he is merely my trusted aide-de-camp. I am the hero of the hour; he is the sidekick. I think he takes the point. And, every day, I make a point of addressing the entire fleet via the intercom with one of my poems, reflecting some vital point or other about our mortal existence. These go down very well; I am frequently congratulated for my day’s illuminating broadcast. “Keep up the good work, Lena!” I am told by ugly cut-throats. “We love devastating use of litotes!” The dykes seem to like me too. I think for them I am a role model of robust yet sexy femininity.
But ohmigosh, I wish they wouldn’t wear those external clitoris rings.
I do feel a certain trepidation about the forthcoming battle. And I have begun to seed possible escape routes to cover the inevitable moment when we are doomed and facing certain death. I have instructed my remote computer . . .
That’s me.
I am addressing my readers and listeners, please don’t interrupt.
. . . to send out distress beacons which are carefully calibrated to start transmitting after the battle is lost. That way, I can escape by liferaft and claim that, after all, I was all along a hostage of these evil pirates.
I do not consider this a betrayal. I am, after all, throwing in my lot with them. I believe in their ideal; I yearn for a peaceful and democratic society. I yearn for the overthrow of the Cheo’s dictatorial regime.
But I yearn to live for another millenium. There is so much I haven’t done, so much I haven’t seen.
Indeed, I have a folder containing details of everything left for you to do.
But there’s more, far more! There are things you haven’t thought of, that you could never dream of, being a mere, as you are, machine.
I stand corrected.
Indeed you do. Oh and I have, by the way, and I trust you have not been eavesdropping upon these moments, compelled Flanagan to have a sexual relationship with me. I explained to him that my psyche requires validation and support, and that it is his duty to support me. Naturally, of course, he readily agreed, despite a playful grimace and a curse so foul I had never actually heard it before. So now we have fantastic passionate sex on a daily basis.
But you thought/said just a moment ago that sex was repellent to you.
I have mellowed since the beginning of this chapter. Besides, I was curious.
Is he good?
Satisfactory.
And you? How would you rate your skill as a lover in your own, so to speak, humble opinion?
I am magnificent! I am sensuality incarnate! Eros deified! Though I must admit, I do have a habit of falling asleep immediately afterwards.
And sometimes, during.
So, you have been spying on me?
Of course not. I am careful to respect your privacy, by disengaging at any and all intimate moments.
Oh, I don’t mind, feel free to watch me rogering the Captain. You never know, you might learn something.
With respect Lena, I am a molecular computer the size of a pebble with pre-programmed emotions and a 300 gigagigabyte hard drive. Tantric sex holds little appeal for me.
You’re being snide again.
No, no, not at all. It merely seems that way, because you programmed me with your own razor-sharp sense of humour.
Hmm.
You were telling me about your sexual congress with our Captain?
Yes, so I was. Ah, what bliss, what ecstasy. I never thought I would once again experience the joy of being in love!
You should write a poem about it.
Or a concerto.
Stick to poems, they hurt less.
What did you say?
I said, a concerto written by you and inspired by love would be a joy to hear and a boon to humanity.
I get muddled sometimes. I could have sworn you said… Are you sure you’re logging all this for posterity?
As always.
It’ll need editing.
I shall do that for you.
Do you really think he likes me?
He adores you. You are magnificent, he has never seen a woman like you.
Why isn’t he nicer then?
That’s merely his bold piratical style.
I sometimes fear he is faking his orgasms.
How could he? The physical evidence is…
But he takes so little joy in the act of love. For me, it is an adventure, a ballet of the senses. For him it’s…
Wham bam thank you ma’am. That, I believe, is the correct idiom.
I deserve his love and his passion.
Indeed you do.
For he needs me. Without my leadership, this whole doomed expedition would be…
Doomed?
Yes. You know what I mean.
You should rest.
Why?
You’re getting cranky, and incoherent.
I feel tired. I feel I carry the world’s burden on my shoulders.
You are a goddess.
That’s putting it too strongly.
You are a goddess.
Or perhaps not.
You are a goddess, and I worship you.
I can live with that.
Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.
Roberta Jane
I can’t imagine a better childhood.
I’ve read lots of books, of course, about children on other planets. Novels about girls in a boarding school on the colony of Arcadia, where every child comes from genetically superior stock and the teachers are all Nobel Prize winners. And stories about boys and girls living on an early settlement in the Asteroid belt, always getting into mischief. And my mum has always encouraged me to read the ancient Earth texts to “help define the nature of childhood”. Books like Swallows and Amazons, Five Children and It, The Railway Children, Tracy Beaker, Arabella and Her Orphan Family on Mars and Dragos.
But I am being raised on the Rustbucket, a Type 3 warship which sails with the pirate horde fleet to wage war against an evil empire. Our ship has a vast central atrium which has been turned into a virtual museum of Earth habitats. Our play area was usually a tropical rainforest; but we could swap programs whenever we wanted in search of the perfect environment. One day we would be nomads in the Gobi Desert; another day we would be cowboys and Indians in Earth’s Monument Valley. We could do anything, be anywhere. Perfect!
We could program virtual-activity games too – we fought monsters and zombies and we piloted spaceships and rode horses and competed in dance tournaments. But the best thing of all was just wandering the ship itself – climbing up and down ladders into deserted bits of the ship with bulkheads and portholes and computer screens buzzing with activity.
I loved the porthole zone, where they had those huge huge windows that gave you a panorama of the space outside our ship. If you stared for long enough, the ship itself would vanish and you’d feel like a particle of matter floating through the Universe for ever and ever and ever and ever.
We also found a way into the engine room. It meant climbing through narrow pipeways, using cable for rope, leaping across live fusion chambers. I loved the throb of power of the fusion drive, and the clicking of microcomputers. I imagined I was in the belly of some mythical beast, a whale or a space-travelling orc. And every night, my mother would tell me stories of faraway lands and princes and princesses and oppressive ghastly tyrants who were hanged or castrated or crucified, which served them bloody well right.
But the most fun of all was when we trained. Sometimes we got hurt – I had my skull fractured twice, and every limb got broken when I fell off a floating disk and landed badly. But that didn’t worry me, it was all part of the rough and tumble. And I much preferred real combat to playing virtual-reality warrior games. I got a real buzz whenever I strapped on a real sword, or charged up a laser blaster. And became a warrior.
I was taught the art of kendo by my Uncle Harry; and it was hilarious! Whenever I hit him on the shin, he would growl and dribble spit down his fur. Uncle Brandon taught me how to build bombs and mentally calibrate distances before throwing grenades and flares and poison balls. And Uncle Alby was always there, flickering and snickering around, making dry sarcastic hissy comments. I loved Uncle Alby best, he was so funny, and so silly. Once, he hid in my pocket, and no one knew until my trousers caught fire and he crept sheepishly out!
We had a gang, of course, and I was the leader, because I was the fastest, and the strongest, even though I’m a girl. The gang members were my brothers Jack, Roger, Rob Junior and Ajax, my dorm mates Ginger, Gorgon, Frank and Piers, my sisters Persephone and Shiva and Hilary and Silver and Garnet and Ji, and Holly, who came from another dorm but liked to hang out with us. Jack was my best friend when I was little. But now I’m all grown up and eleven years old, I spend more time with Gorgon. He is a cheeky monster of a boy, he takes no shit from no one. Uncle Flanagan used to try and tell him off, but it never worked. Gorgon worked out that children could get away with anything, provided they kept up their training routine. He sleeps late and never tidies anything even when he’s the one who made the mess and he eats three ice creams at a single sitting. He has two mothers, Jenny and Molly, and they scream and swear at him, but he takes no notice. Because Gorgon is a natural flier, he can zoom around on a jet pack like a Dolph swimming in the ocean. So Uncle Flanagan always says, “Leave the boy alone.”
My mum, Alliea, is an important person on the ship. I can tell that. Uncle Flanagan always asks her advice before taking important decisions. And although Uncle Flanagan is in charge of everything and everyone, when they’re with us children, Alliea gives the orders. She once made Uncle Flanagan help her build a raft for us to sail down a virtual river. He started with a pile of logs and some twine, and after an hour he was swearing like, well, like a pirate. But Alliea just scolded him like a ten-year-old, and he grimaced and groaned and took it. So who’s the boss there then! I think my mum is pretty cool. I like Aunt Hera too.
I know that there will be a war when we reach our destination. I know that many of us will die and it will be horrible. But I imagine, also, it will be quite fun.
I’ve lived all my life in outer space, on a warship sailing between planets. Who could ask for anything more wonderful than that?
Harry
I am in the gym when the call comes through. But I am distracted. I stare at myself in the gym mirror and I realise with horror – I have grey hairs in my body fur. “This journey is taking too damn long,” I snarl. But then I hear the sound of the beeper.
War stations.
We run towards our positions. In every corridor, wall screens show us images of the Corporation fleet that has assembled against us. It is very very big. Then the screen switches to another camera’s perspective. It is more than very big. It is vast.
On the vidscreen, like ocean waves, I see the warships of the Galactic Corporation sweep towards us. And in the real world, I see a female Loper pirate standing near me in the corridor. We lock eyes. It will be some time before the infantry have a role to play. There is time, just about, for some fur on fur. We move off together and find an empty cabin.
As she manipulates my sexual organ, the girl Loper laughs. “You have grey fur,” she said.
“I’m having it regrown,” I growl irritably at her.
“I think it’s kind of cute,” she purrs, and for the first time in a long long while, I feel relaxed and content.
Jamie
I hear the alarm siren that tells me combat is about to commence. And I run up the ramps all the way to the bridge and end up too breathless to speak. “Hi,” I gasp.
“Where’s Harry?” says Alliea.
“Otherwise engaged,” Brandon chips in. He hacks into all the ship’s cctv cameras, he has a funny smirk on his face. Ooooh, I think, Harry’s up to something naughty . . .
But back to me! Flanagan turns to the bridge crew: “Jamie will be supervising the computer links.”
“Have we time for a vanishing trick?” I ask.
Flanagan nods. “I’ve assigned five thousand vessels.”
“They need to accelerate into position right away. You need a diversion.”
Flanagan presses a button on his console. On the vidscreen, we vividly see one of our own ships explode.
“Who did you kill?”
“They were volunteers,” he says, curtly. Into the intercom: “This is your Captain speaking. Panic, please, act like a bunch of arseholes.”
The fleet of ships panics, in incoherent unison, veering off every which way. I try to hide my grin. I have learned, painfully, that people don’t like it when you laugh at such moments. It’s considered bad form.
“How many vessels in the Corporation fleet?” I ask.
The computer flashes up an answer: circa 4,800,000. We have 251,602 vessels, having built all those extra ships during our long voyage. So, we’re way outnumbered.
“This is your Captain speaking,” Flanagan says into the intercom. “ You have your instructions, and you must follow them to the letter. Remember: our aim is not to defeat this enemy fleet. Our aim is to reach Kornbluth. Let’s kill some robot.”
“Flanagan!” A shrill voice cries out. Lena has arrived on the bridge.
“I was meant to give the order to attack,” she says petulantly. Flanagan hides a smile.
“I haven’t yet given the order.”
Lena presses the intercom switch. “This is your leader. Attack.” And she lets out a rebel yell. Despite myself, I feel goosebumps down my spine. I echo the rebel yell.
Everyone in the bridge does a rebel yell. It feels good.
We feel like real warriors.
Brandon
Lena is now in charge in the bridge. She runs around a lot and barks aggressive instructions. But most of our strategy is pre-programmed. So while Jamie runs the computer link, and the Captain tries to keep out of Lena’s way, I sit at my screen and flick from space camera to space camera to follow the totality of what is going on. The Captain nods. “Keep your eyes peeled Brandon,” he says, and I flash my teeth in an almost-smile.
As always, the Corporation warriors show no strategy. Our fleet is diffuse and straggly; theirs is focused and compact, making a smaller and much easier to damage target. Also, while our ships are making a play of floundering about in panic at the “unexpected” accidental detonation of a warship, our advance party of five thousand vessels have cloaked themselves in flying mirrors so that they cannot be seen in the blackness of deep space. As our main forces assemble, the ambush troop fly fast and high above the enemy fleet. There they hover, as the enemy prepare their force fields and laser cannons.
We stand our ground. They move inexorably forward. Lena orders the launch of our torpedo. It weaves and curves its slow path through space, a small missile the size of a pea. It is, we hope, undetectable by any of their sensors; it’s a grain of sand on a sandy beach.
They fire their laser cannons, and at one fell swoop our first rank of a hundred vessels is incinerated.
“Panic more,” orders Lena and our fleet becomes even more undisciplined and incoherent. Then we launch our antimatter bombs.
Wave after wave of antimatter bombs sweep through space… but the enemy have a counterplan prepared. Each of our AM bombs is snarled in a razor-wire net and forced to spin around in spiral patterns. Some of them come back at us and explode our own vessels. Some are hurled into deep space. Not a single AM bomb gets through; our great strategy has been a fiasco.
Antimatter/matter explosions shatter the silence of space that looms between our two distant fleets.
“Good,” grunts Flanagan.
“Keep panicking!” screams Lena.
“This is so sweet,” I mutter, my fingers running over the computer keyboard, dancing my dance.
Apparently reeling after the total failure of our antimatter bomb attack, we fire our own laser cannons, but their mirrors and force fields easily deflect the cannon rays. Their own laser beams are “smart” beams brilliantly designed to change frequency and direction in a totally random way, obviating all barriers. We are totally outclassed.
“They got us!” I yell. “We’re d”
“oomed!” Jamie says, continuing my sentence.
Flanagan smiles.
The enemy wallows in smugness. We smarten our formation in space. No more fake panic.
Then our ambush party attacks. They have been, for the last thirty minutes, hovering patiently above the enemy fleet. Now they unleash their full firepower. It takes a few seconds for the enemy computer to adjust to this new direction of threat and gear their weapons upwards. In that time, dozens and dozens of Corporation warships are blown up. And that is our cue to . . .
. . . retreat. At high speed. We leave behind our camera-bots in space, to give us a bird’s-eye view of the carnage. Our ambush ships put up a valiant fight. They score direct hit after direct hit, and chunks of enemy hull go flying off into infinite orbits. Our ships’ laser beams cut through reinforced plastic and skilfully evade force barriers. But the reverse toll is devastating. The enemy warships are astonishingly heavily armed, and they wreak havoc with our pirate predators.
Then the torpedo finally lopes its way to its destination, and the remote detonator is triggered.
The torpedo is our most valuable weapon. It contains the residue of an asteroid compressed at the expenditure of vast energy to the size of a pin. And then compressed again, and again, to sub-microscopic dimensions, so that space itself is being crushed.
This is a compressed space bomb, one of Jamie’s many brilliant inventions. It is, essentially, very much like the Universe before the Big Bang, a parcel of energy and mass in a form so tiny that the mind cannot imagine such a minuscule scale. These days, we use compressed space as a form of energy storage. Jamie’s unique genius was to find a way to release the energy all in one go, without entirely devastating the Universe.
We cannot see or hear an explosion. The bomb merely pops, like an inflated crisp packet burst by a hand. And then, for a few chilling seconds, nothing happens.
Then suddenly all the ships in the sky vanish. It is that simple. We have destroyed our own ships of course; but we have also cut the heart out of the enemy fleet. Two or three million Corporation warships have, in the blink of an eye, ceased to be.
It is, of course, a dangerous and desperate strategy. Now that we have invented this weapon, we have to endure the bitter fact that the enemy will be able to copy it and use it against us. Our fabulous contribution to posterity is to find a new weapon even more appalling than the ones humankind has already created. But that’s a price we have to pay.
“Fire the asteroid,” Lena says.
Our workers have quarried out the inside of the asteroid and filled it with liquid hydrogen. Now rocket launchers at the arse end of the big rock are fired and the asteroid shoots through space. Inside it, the hydrogen is being drenched in huge amounts of energy, and the transmutation of hydrogen to helium is taking place.
Our fleet tries to tuck itself out of the way of the flying and in-the-process-of-exploding asteroid, but it is inevitably caught up in the wake. And as it travels the asteroid slowly ignites. It flares.
It becomes a sun.
The flaming sun lights up black space as its course takes it through the region where the enemy fleet used to be, towards the second line of enemy warships. They are, frankly, flabbergasted to discover that we have thrown a sun at them. And, once again, the “warriors” on Earth who control the all-powerful Doppelganger Robots show their typical inability to adapt to new circumstances. They flail and flounder and do nothing.
Then the sun hits the enemy fleet; and they are devastated. Another million ships at least are incinerated. And slowly the fires die down and we are left with the ragged remnant of the enemy fleet.
But there are still, at a guess, almost a million ships facing us. Some are badly damaged and disorientated, but we are still, after two massive strikes, outnumbered and outgunned.
The Captain gives the signal to Lena; Lena gives the signal to us.
“Charge,” she says, in cool and deadly tones.
Our fleet forms itself into an arrow formation and charges. Our own ship holds back and we watch our people accelerate into the enemy ranks. A bitter space dogfight breaks out.
Missiles and torpedoes flash and flare. Our ships break formation and start weaving and bucking. Sheer speed and brilliant piloting allow our ships to veer under and above the slow-thinking enemy battleships. A terrible carnage ensues.
Then I see on my screen Doppelganger Robots abandoning their damaged ships and taking to open space. They are wearing body armour to further protect their frames, though all of them are able to “breathe” in space vacuum so none of them need to wear actual spacesuits. They do, however, wear body rockets and carry formidable laser guns. And, with their increased manoeuvrability, they are able to dive into the very heart of our fleet.
“Okay, guys, go and get ’em,” says Lena.
Lena
It is an extraordinary event, war most bloody and barbarous. Legions clash and lasers flare and bombs shatter and hulls impact inwards and bodies are sundered and fried and internal organs are compressed and blood emerges from nostrils and space itself is shocked at the sheer atrocity of man’s atrocious cruelty to man, is that too many atrociouses?
It is.
. . . man’s contemptible cruelty to man and yet, ah, the green-glow-incandescence of it soars my spirit with bitter-bleak-black sweetsourness and
Lena, please focus, there’s a battle going on.
It’s okay, we’re in the rear flank, we’re a long way from the action.
Not any more. Two Corporation battalions just appeared behind us.
Shit.
Jamie
I am lost in the combat, my hands are a blur, my brain is in a million places at once. I steer the nanobots through space into Corporation ships, I send energy blasts, I steer the unexploded bombs into vital positions then explode them. I sit at my computer and I am a warrior as brave as many, but my fingers are stiffening, I fear repetitive strain of the brain will kick in . . .
“Keep with it Jamie,” the Captain says, in an infinitely calm and comforting authoritative growl. I fight on.
Harry
I howl with rage, like the animal I am. Our ship is out of the battle zone. I yearn to stand and fight and bite and claw my enemies. But I cannot!
Alliea
Hera and I are among the first to be propelled from the airlocks. We fly out into open space to encounter a scene of such vastness and grandeur that my heart stops. Huge spaceships are aflame, dead DRs and human beings float through space, a burning sun sears our vision as it speeds away into space – then veers, and kinks, and turns around, and comes back again for a second crack at the enemy.
As we spin swiftly around, we see vivid red and yellow flame colours smeared against the inky blackness of the stellar backdrop. Then we fly like hawks with our rocket backpacks and shoot robots out of the sky. They are fast and powerful, but their controllers have little practice at this kind of warfare. We, however, have trained every day for twenty years. Flying is for us, as natural as walking, or weeping.
My concentration is split. I have a computer readout on my visor; I hear intercom voices in my inner earpiece; I see a video screen of the battle which I can switch at will; and my heart is with Hera. I watch her tackle a dozen Doppelganger Robots, weaving in and out of them like a deadly dolphin in a shoal of shattered and bewildered sharks.
They thought they could best us in open space! In truth, their only useful weapon is superior firepower and greater resources. In every other respect, they are, indeed, shite.
“Left flank, Alliea!” Hera screams at me, and I zoom in a circle and blast the ambushing robots behind me. I complete the circle just in time to see . . .
. . . two DRs blow Hera’s head and feet off simultaneously with their laser blasts.
For a moment my heart stops.
Then I cut the robots to ribbons with my own laser and speed into the next assault.
The carnage becomes mechanical. After a while, I cannot believe I am still alive. But my rocket keeps flying me, my laser keeps shooting. DRs keep exploding. The war keeps on. The war continues. The war continues.
The war is over. I am still alive. I check my visor. I have programmed my computer to flash red every time one of my children dies in the course of the battle. I have, in all, forty-three children. Forty-two of them are adopted, twenty-one are girls.
Slowly, carefully, I count forty-three red lights on my visor. That doesn’t include Hera. So first, I mourn Hera.
For one long, agonising, heartfelt minute, a second at a time, I mourn her. And each second is a death knell.
Then when my pain is purged, I mourn each of my forty-three children. I mourn them for five seconds, each.
Jack.
Hermione.
Silver.
Garnet.
Hilary.
Roger.
Lustre.
Ji.
Ajax.
Baldur.
Mystery.
Jane, Sheena, Magic, Leaf, Phoenix, Edna, Sharion, Jayn, Shiva, Persephone, Garth, Rob, Will, Diane, Apollo, Catherine, Jon, Letitia, Leo, Dawn, Sunset, Raphael, Zayna, Cosmos, Rob Junior, Ashanti, Amor, Tara, Helios, Jenny, Rosanne.
And Roberta.
After 215 seconds have elapsed, I disconnect my oxygen cylinder. I take off my helmet.
I breathe in a huge lungful of deep space.
Grendel
I watch Alliea die. I have already seen my beloved friend Hera blown to shreds. And when I see Alliea kill herself, I rage at the waste of a talented warrior, though I respect her choice. However, I am Grendel, leader of the pirate pack. I have vowed never to die peacefully.
My leg is blown off by a rocket blast, but the suit self-seals and I battle on. I am a huge, flying one-legged killing beast. I battle on. And on. I see limbs floating freely, weightless and shorn, both human and robot. I see streams of blood that form red comets in the still emptiness of space. The speed of the warriors fighting in this battle is so extraordinarily fast that we resemble molecules in motion in a murky liquid.
The flashing lights are laser beams. Shock waves rock us to and fro, but we continue moving, bobbing, flicking, surging. I kill many many DRs, and I savour each one, for each is a precious, and a cherishable victory. My radio is silent for the most part, but I have programmed my earpiece to play a solitary drumbeat as I fight. DUM dum-dum-dum-dum, DUM, dum-dum-dum-dum, DUM. It calms me, and it gives my body an inner rhythm, as I whirl and veer like lightning trapped in a jar.
And so, and thus, I fight.
It is some time before I realise I am dead. I wonder… where am I?
Brandon
I am on the bridge, with Harry, who is in a howling rage, and Jamie, who is the cybergeek god incarnate.
I drafted this battle plan, to Flanagan’s brief. And on my computer screen I can feel the war unfolding. Ambushes and boobytraps are carefully seeded, like twists in a detective novel. But most of all, we rely on the sheer fighting power of our rocket-propelled warriors flying outside the ships. They are like wasps that bring an elephant to its knees, and chew its bones.
“Brandon?”
The Captain is speaking to me. I realise that, for three long seconds, my heart has stopped beating. I gulp, force myself to breathe again.
“Alliea is dead,” I tell him. He stares at me blankly.
Alby
The rules of my ssspecies tell me I cannot intervene in any way in this combat. We are a paccccifist, nonwarrior life form. We do not fight, it is alien to usss, imposssssible to our nature. We cannot fight. Ever!
I watch as ten Corporation warshipssss close in on the Captain’s ship. I worry that they will be able to destroy Flanagan before his crew notice this new threat.
Sssso I ssssupernova. The nova becomes focussssed into a ssssingle flare. I lunge and plunge and ssssoar and sssspike, ripping through the enemy warships like a ssssun turned javelin.
It issss gloriousssssssssssss!
Flanagan
“Shit, what was that?” I ask.
Jamie checks his computers. The debris of enemy warships litters our path.
“Not sure, Cap’n. Spontaneous combustion?” he hazards.
The shattered warships are burning up, they are actually melting in deep space. I make a guess.
“Thank you Alby,” I murmur to myself.
Flanagan
Lena is in her room. I go and visit her. She is actually asleep.
I gently kiss her cheek and she awakes. “Oh, you,” she murmurs. Then her eyes flash open. “It’s over?”
“It’s over.”
“We’ve lost.”
“We’ve won.”
“How many survivors?”
“Very few. Perhaps, three ships in all. Maybe a hundred pirates still alive. Plus our own ship.”
Her face is ashen. I’m surprised. I didn’t think she would have cared that much.
“A hundred left,” she says, “out of eleven million, and that’s a victory?”
“Well, we killed all of them.”
“I’m sorry for sleeping.”
“There’s nothing you could have done.”
“I want to sleep a bit more.”
Lena lies down. Her eyes close. Within seconds, she is asleep again. I look at her with jealousy. I yearn to sleep. To switch off. To have a brief respite from guilt.
But that cannot be.
Alby
The battle issss won. Flanagan’ssss ship and hisss asssault fleet of three vessselsss hass esscaped and ssset off towardssss Kornbluth.
But I linger.
I should not have played a role in the combat. That isss not the way of my people. We do not take sssides in the warssss between men. But I like Flanagan. I consssider him a friend. He hasss taught me much.
Succhh a sssstrange sssspecies. Yet endlesssly fasssscinating and varied. I ssssee them, metaphorically sssspeaking, asss an animal with razzzzor handsss which ripss out itsss own eyesss. Such is the human raccce.
And, sssstrangesssst of all, each human entity is indisssolubly sssseparate. They reproducccce ssslowly and painfully. They have no capacccity for genuinely abssstract thought that worksss at the level of pure meaning without the aid of numberssss or sssymbolssss. And they are, believe it or not, tool buildersssss.
I musssse, for a while, at the infinite folly and entertaining variety of humankind.
Then I feel a flicker of wearinesss, and I die.
Sssoon after, my new ssself is reborn, and consssidersss the ssstack of available memoriesss and intentionsss of the now dead and exxtinguished “Alby”. It decidesss to continue the charade of being a single, continuousss, consssistent perssssonality. I become “Alby” oncccce again.
I glory in the ssssight before me. The humansss’ amazzzingly recklessss compressssed-ssspace bomb hasss wreaked appalling havoc. But it hassss left in its wake a shimmering glowing hazzzze of glory. It isss a light richer than light itsssself. For a being such assss myssself, composed entirely of light and flame, it is the nearesssst I will ever come to experiencing a vision of God. This light-hazzzze is quite sublime.
I drift clossser. I ssssee that the hazzzze is made of tiny particlesss. Ssssmall vibrating loopsss that hover and danccce in space. Some of the loopssss vanish then rematerialisssse. Some merge and form larger loopsss, then exxpand, then contract.
The energy of the dancing loops issss extraordinary. I wonder what will happen if they were to continue to exist in their pressssent sssstate and ssssize. For I know that these vibrating loops are singing in space. Their musssic, their ressssonancccce, issss the esssssence of reality itsssself.
I marvel at the sssight. Who elssse hass ever ssseen such a thing?
For these loopsss are the entity we call . Human scccientistsss called them “ssssuperssssymmetrical ssstrings”. They are, of courssse, the fundamental indisssssolubles of which all matter isss comprissssed – they are the origin and the parent of electronsss, photonssss, muonssss, quarks, neutrinossss and every other physical manifessstation of matter in its tiniesssst formsss.
The are the ssssmallest objectssss posssssible in the universe. For humans, they are a theorised reality, too small to be ssseen or detected with their instrumentsss. Because of coursse all human ssssubatomic detecting instrumentssss rely on the interaction of particlessss; and there issss no particle ssssmall enough to interact with the ssssmallest object possssible.
And yet, thessse tiny particless are now as large as firefliess. They sswim through space, large enough to see, ssssolid enough to touch. This is a conssssequence of an esssssential part of their curious and immutable nature – ssssuperstrings will expand when sssubjected to high energies. They can double or triple in size; or grow by a hundredfold. They can even become macrosssscopic.
And that isss precisssely what they have now done, in the blinding blazzzzing energy release of the human’s compressssssed-space “Big Bang Bomb”. This is the unexpected sssside effect. Ssssuperstrings made macrossssopic, for me to ssssee and hear.
I glory in what isss around me. The ssssong of the is manifessst as the Universssse itssself, in all its infinite variety. And now I can hear that sssssong, I can see that shimmering frenzzzzzy that is the origin of everything.
I bassssk in joy asss I ssshare in God’s ssssong.
And then I die, of sheer ecssstasy.
And then I am reborn.
Flanagan
We drink, and toast, and count the cost of victory.
It is the worst and vilest cost. All of us sit with vomit in our throats, wallowing in our own disgust. Though it was, we all concede, a brilliantly planned and executed military manoeuvre.
Picture the scene. The largest fleet of warships ever assembled and marshalled is faced with a small pirate flotilla. Millions of warships, versus hundreds of thousands. It is inconceivable that the Corporation could lose such a one-sided contest.
But they did. We slaughtered them, and left not a single robot brain intact.
And yet I feel no pride. For the truth is – the entire battle was no more than a diversionary tactic, to allow us to move on towards our real objective. I sacrificed my entire nation, in order to keep myself and my crew members safe for the task ahead.
And that is why we did not fight. We stayed back. When facing danger, we fled. And all my pirate crew stayed with me, apart from Alliea, who refused to live when her children were doomed to die.
So here we are, celebrating a victory in which we played no part. Rejoicing in the sacrifice of warriors who sacrificed themselves to save us.
It is a hollow, bitter kind of evening. But we enjoy it nonetheless.
I take my guitar and play. The strings are programmed to play old-fashioned honky-tonk piano notes; and I have programmed the guitar’s chip to give me an idiosyncratic, heartfelt bass and drums accompaniment. And my singing is carried via the intercoms to every vessel in our small fleet.
I don’t sing the blues. That would sink us entirely. Instead, I sing a gospel hymn of hope and redemption.
I sing:
“On my way
To Canaan Land
I’m on my way
Yeah, to Canaan Land
On my waaay
Oh yeah
To Canaan Land,
On my way
Glory Hallelujah
On my way.”
The piano chords smash and crash through the soaring melody and the heartfelt lyrics.
“Yes I’m on my way
To Canaan land
Yes, I’m on my way
To Canaan Land
On my waaaaaaaaaay
To Canaan Land
On my way
Glory Hallelujah
On my way.”
I raise the energy level. I sing my heart out.
“I’ve had a mighty hard time
But I’m on my way
Had a mighty hard time
Yeah yeah yeah
Mighty hard time
On my way.
On my way
Glory Hallelujah
On my way!”
I have had my vocal chords modified to help me reach the rich throaty pitch of gospel songs like this. I feel as if my skin is being ripped off and my soul itself is reaching out and touching all my comrades, those before me in the assembly room, and those in their own ships.
I think of Alliea. I have seen video footage of her lonely death in space; her choice. Her end. Her glory.
“I’ve had a mighty hard time
But I’m on my way
Had a mighty hard time
Yeah yeah yeah
Mighty hard time
O-on my way.”
I think of the many who died. Hera, Grendel, most of the Children Ships. All my own children too, forty-eight of them, died in the heat of battle. I wanted to save at least some of them, my favourite children, by keeping them in my command vessel. And I issued orders to that effect on my Captain’s email; then deleted them. And issued them again; and deleted them again. For how could I chose my favourites, among that wonderful, rebellious rabble of kids? I loved them all, equally. And how could I save my own, while sending the children of others to certain death? No! No exceptions could be made. All had to die. Their sacrifice was needed, and their sacrifice was taken.
“Yes I’m on my way
To Canaan land
Yes, I’m on my way
To Canaan Land
On my waaaaaaaaaay
To Canaan Land
On my way
Glory Hallelujah
On my way!”
I think of life and death. So much death. Rob, Alliea, my children from the ship, my wife on Pixar, our children. My crewmates. My friends. My lovers. My victims. All the countless millions who die, every year, as the casual side effect of the Cheo’s reign. And here I am, still alive. Heart still pounding. Mind still racing.
And my only consolation is the certainty that I, too, will die soon. Because with all that faces us – how could it be otherwise?
I reach the last chorus, I keep the honky-tonk piano settings, and I segue into another gospel song.
Alby
I have caught up with the shipssss. I float outside their hullsss, flickering like the ssssun on water. Through my intercom, I can hear Flanagan’sss sssssong. And I can imagine the men and women in their cabinsss and assssssembly roomssss, lisssstening, clapping, ssssinging along.
And assss I float past them in deepesssst spacccce, a flame among the starssss, I, too, hear the new ssssong he ssssings. It isss fasssst, urgent, with a ssssurging piano accompaniment; and it is a ssssong of hope, with a catchy melody that makesss the heart ssssoar:
“Oh Lord!”
Flanagan sssings, and I long for fingersss to click along to the beat. He continues:
“Oh Lord
Keep your hand on the plow
Hold on.
Oh Lord
Oh yeah
Oh Lord
Oh yeah
Keep your hand on the plough
Hold on.
Mary had three lengths of chain
And every length was in Jesus’ name.
Keep the hand on the plough
Hold on.
When I get to heaven gonna sing and shout
Be no body there gonna put me out.
Keep your hand on the plough
Hold on.
Oh Lord
Oh Lord
Oh yeah.
Keep your hand on the plough
Oh Lord
Oh yeah
Oh Lord
Oh yeah
Keep your hand on the plough
And hooooooooooooooooooooold on.”
Lena
“What’s wrong?” I ask him gently.
The wake is over. All are sober. I am in the bar with a deeply melancholic Captain Flanagan. My previous mood of perverse elation has melted away. I am now bathed in Flanagan’s despair.
“So many have died,” he says softly.
“You knew that would happen.”
“For no reason.” He looks at me blankly. “We can’t succeed.”
“We’ve destroyed a Beacon before.”
“And now they know our methods. They’ll be prepared. It’s a suicide mission.”
“Then so be it.”
“You’re prepared to die?”
“Hell no. But I’m prepared to let you all die.”
“Thank you Lena.” He smiles a wry smile.
He cannot find a way around the time-lag factor.
“It’s the time-lag factor, isn’t it?” I say to him.
He is silent for a long long time.
“I knew you’d figure it out eventually,” he tells me.
I pour myself a drink. We sip. We bathe in our own misery.
Every time the pirates invent a new military strategy, it may be ten or twenty years in subjective time before they can travel far enough to implement it again. But in Earth Time, those twenty years are in fact forty or even fifty years.
“Time dilation is against you. And the vast distances of space. By the time you fly from one star to another, they’ve had half a century or more to plot and counteract your next move.”
“You got it.”
Every battle is recorded on every ship’s cctv and transmitted instantaneously back to Earth via the Beacons. Flanagan used an antimatter bomb once; the second time, the Earth DRs had built a net to catch it. He used the child Jamie’s computer skills to capture the Doppelganger minds on Cambria; but by now, every Doppelganger in the Universe will be Earth-Mind Read Only.
“You can’t use the Big Bang Bomb again,” I say. “They’ll have a way around it.”
“I wouldn’t risk it anyway. This is our Universe. What the hell are we doing with it?”
“Fair point. So, what’s your plan to destroy the Beacon on Kornbluth?”
Flanagan takes his glass and throws it at the wall. It doesn’t break, it bounces. The effect is laughable, rather than dramatic. Flanagan looks duly chagrined.
“We try, we fail. That’s the plan,” he tells me.
“That’s a plan?”
“That’s Plan A,” Flanagan tells me. There’s a shade more confidence in his voice now. But I can tell he is still beset by terrible doubts.
“So what’s Plan B?”
He stares at me.
The air in front of him seems to shimmer and flicker. For a moment, I assume I have a migraine of a kind I haven’t endured for centuries. Then I wonder if Alby the flame beast is back inside the ship.
Then the air solidifies into a black floating particle. More particles swarm, to form a shape, a letter. The letter grows. It is the shape and size of a standing human being without limbs. It is an I. A free-floating I which is almost as big as I am. Then the I flickers and changes, and I realise what is happening. The air is talking to me. The air is talking to me.
And it says:
I stare at Flanagan.
“You’re insane,” I tell him.
“I have no choice,” he says flatly.
The letters shimmer a little more and turn into a humanoid shape. The humanoid black shape sits in an armchair, and crosses one humanoid leg over another.
The humanoid shape is, I know, made of billions upon billions of microscopic entities, swarming under the control of a focused group intelligence. It is an alien being that is alien beyond imagining.
Flanagan has forged a treaty with the Bugs.
I am in the same room as Bugs.
Every pore and follicle on my body shivers in horror. I feel as if my skin is being ripped off. I cannot breathe.
The Bug entity shimmers and changes its shape again. It is, I realise, trying to find a succinct way of indicating friendly and non-aggressive intentions towards me. But the shape it chooses is surreally inappropriate. It heightens my panic attack. It makes me almost insane, torn between a desire to hoot with laughter and an overwhelming urge to defecate then die.
This is what the Bug becomes:
“Oh no,” I say. “Oh merciful heaven, no!”