Storming Heaven (47 page)

“They don’t,” Chiyo99 said, bitterly.  “They’ve decided that we are impossible, so we don’t exist for them.  We have to be nothing more than a data glitch for them.”

Tabitha felt bitter despair.  “What do we do now?”  She asked.  The sense of frustration almost overwhelmed her.  To have come so far, only to fail at the last hurdle.  How could the Killers just ignore them?  “Just crash the entire network, all of it?”

“That may no longer be possible,” the MassMind said.  It’s normally confident tenor shifted.  Tabitha felt its doubt and growing despair.  The grand plan, the nuclear option, would no longer work.  “They may already have prevented us from successfully crashing their network.”

***

The newborn had been wrapped in conversation with Rupert – the mite, no, the
human
, had a name, something else alien to the Killers – when it had heard the first human call through the communications network.  It had almost been lost in the howling data storm that the destruction of one of the hubs had created, yet it was unquestionably alien.  The newborn abandoned its conversation and extended its mind out to the newcomer, but the other Killers simply ignored it.  It could not exist, so it didn’t exist.  The newborn had no such preconceptions.

It formatted a call of its own, using what it had learned from Rupert and the human minds it had absorbed, and replied.  The sense of the MassMind almost overwhelmed it, yet it was prepared and ready for such an entity – it was almost like encountering a far larger and diverse Killer, like the ones who had been slaughtered on the remains of the sphere.  There was a sense of
presence
, of many minds working together as one, yet also a sense of unity and calm contemplation.  The MassMind was everything that the human race was, it realised; it was all the glory, the delight, the pride and the agony.  It was far more like a Killer than the Killers themselves – or the humans – would have felt comfortable admitting, yet it was surprisingly alien…and different.

Their minds meshed together almost unwillingly, each bringing something different to the merger.  The newborn saw, for the second time, many different human lifetimes and the fear of the Killers that had bound the human race together.  The MassMind saw, for the first time, the memories of the war against the First Enemy, a foe that had been defeated millions of years ago, yet how the Killers had never realised that there were different races on each of the rocky worlds.  They had never encountered another gas giant-dwelling race, never, yet was that such a surprise.  The gas giants were hardly as habitable as Earth-like worlds.

“We need to end this,” the MassMind said, directly to the newborn.  There was no room for doubt or deceit, not when two very different and yet alike minds were in such close harmony.  It would have destroyed another Killer, but the newborn had the mental capability to endure the touch, even embrace it.  “We need to end this before we destroy each other.”

“We have to shout louder,” the newborn replied.  They were sharing thoughts and ideas faster than any human mind could understand, or handle.  They were both vaguely aware of the two puny human minds, left far behind by their communication, yet there was no time to update them, or seek their consent.  “You have to…here.”

A plan formed in their shared mind.  The MassMind reached out, through the Killer Communications Network, to touch the very heart of their shared consensus.  They used their own network to share thoughts and ideas, even though they were far from human, and they all used it.  They might no longer be able to share memories directly, through the transference of cells from Killer to Killer, but they could talk.  They could be one.

The MassMind formatted a new message, a
gestalt
of everything they were, everything they ever had been and everything they could be, in the future, and broadcast it right into the heart of the Killer consensus.  It was a massive shout, a wordless cry of WE ARE HERE, and it screamed into their minds.  The shock was undeniable.  No amount of disbelief could hide its true nature, or humanity’s, from the Killers, either from the Warriors or the Civilians living down in the gas giants; they could no longer deny the truth.  The entire fate of the universe seemed to hang in the balance.

And then the Killers replied.

The peace accords were signed at Ceres, at Patti’s insistence.  The war had begun in the Solar System, after all, and it had seemed fitting to her that it end there.  Thousands of humans from all over the Community had come to see the end of the war, although the Killers had only sent a handful of starships and representatives.  The Killers – no one had yet parsed out their actual name for themselves – were hardly comfortable in a human environment and vice versa.  It was that, Patti decided, that would ensure that the truce would ensure and become a permanent peace.

Both sides had slaughtered billions of the other’s population, civilian and military, but they actually had little to fight over.  They couldn’t use the same worlds, or even the same technology to some extent, and there were an infinitive number of asteroids and stars out there to use for resources.  The only real difference was that humanity could now land on and settle as many planets as they liked, while the Killers could infest as many gas giants as they wanted.  Patti knew that there were researchers from the Technical Faction and Builder Killers getting together to share their thoughts and combine their intellectual resources.  The combinations of human and Killer technology had already provided some interesting results. 

She had been worried about lone maniacs on both sides attempting to restart the war, but insane – as opposed to monomaniacal – Killers seemed to be rare, almost non-existent.  The remaining Killer Warriors had been as shocked by the discovery that humans were not the First Enemy as had the Thinkers, Civilians and Builders and had reintegrated themselves with the Killer civilisation.  A handful had actually opened wormholes and vanished in the direction of other galaxies, apparently with the intention of being alone for a long time.  The Killers didn’t measure time the way humans did; the Killers she’d seen hadn’t been too worried about their brethren.  They were effectively immortal; if they wanted to spend millions of years on their own, they would be welcome back when – if – they finally returned.

The Community had been more of a problem, but the hotheads had been restrained by more reasonable people who pointed out just how much damage the Community had taken over the last few months and how many more would die if the war restarted.  The Defence Force had halted a handful of small efforts to strike back at the Killers – and a handful more had failed utterly without intervention – and Patti privately hoped that the reopening of Earth-like worlds and the new challenges opened by the Killer technology would prevent further outbreaks.  There were already billions of humans planning to land and settle new worlds, while billions more were choosing to remain in space.  They saw no reason to land on heavy worlds when they could have the freedom of the stars and the resources that floated through space, free for the taking.

And Earth…

The Technical Faction had long had a plan to reform Earth, one that was already underway.  Starships were dumping genetically engineered seeds into the atmosphere already, absorbing and filtering out the gunk in the air, while robotic teams were landing on the planet to start clearing the radiation.  The Killers had actually assisted by providing some details on their weapons and their long-term effects; the Technical Faction was already talking in terms of recovering Earth for human settlement within the next thousand years.  Patti was almost tempted to go into stasis at the end of her term, to wait until she could walk on Earth without powered armour and heavy internal shielding, but it would have to wait.  She had a term to finish and, with all the new worlds and internal divisions opening up, she might be the last President of the Community.  Without a deadly external enemy, humanity’s worst traits were starting to surface again.  It had been all she could do to convince the Assembly to pass laws forbidding the redevelopment of the other inhabited worlds the Killers had destroyed.  Let them stay, she’d argued, as monuments to the war.  Let the universe remember what had happened when one race lost its way.

She looked up from the table as Rupert approached, followed by a glowing sphere that hummed as it floated through the air.  The light within the sphere illuminated a collection of cells, glowing faintly as they absorbed and redirected the light; it seemed impossible that she was looking at a Killer in its pure form.  The sphere extended tiny manipulators as she watched, allowing it to pick up a pen and carefully sign the treaty.  Rupert had had to explain the concept of a peace treaty to the Killers himself.  They had never developed the concept themselves – they never had internal wars, for which Patti could only envy them – and their relations with other races had always ended badly, until now.  The real agreements had been made via the MassMind and its link into the Killer Communications Network, but even the Killers had accepted the need for a formal ceremony.  The Killer, the youngest Killer by nearly twenty
million
years, signed the paper with an elaborate image that meant little to Patti.  Her own signature looked far more human.  The combination added, somehow, to the importance of the document.

“And let that be an end to it,” Patti said, fervently.  Rupert nodded slowly, bowing his great head.  The Spacer had added several more augmentations since the last time she’d seen him, including a device intended to allow direct communication with the Killers.  She’d heard that some of the Spacers intended to work hand-in-hand with the Killers over the next few centuries, particularly the Builder Killers.  They had some grand scheme that could only be accomplished by combining both races and their technology.  “Is that it?”

“It does seem rather anticlimactic compared to the war,” Rupert agreed.  Beside him, the Killer sphere glowed brighter for a moment.  “”The Youngest agrees with you, but thinks that it’s time to end it permanently.”

Patti had to smile as she stared into the glowing sphere.  Who would have guessed, before the first successful capture of a Killer starship, that the Killers remembered the First Enemy so clearly that it might as well have been yesterday.  It had fuelled their determination to wipe out what they had thought were thousands of colony worlds belonging to the First Enemy and even though Patti couldn’t understand how they had believed that humans were the same as some other race, it made sense from their point of view…and uncounted billions had died.  It could never be allowed to happen again.

“I agree,” she said, firmly.  The glowing sphere daunted her.  “We won’t let it happen again.”

***

Andrew found himself, once again, taking part in a simulated conference involving hundreds of thousands of Captains and their senior officers.  The end of the war had brought a complex mixture of emotions to the Defence Force; they’d won, in the end, so what now?  They had existed as something apart from the Community, yet charged with its defence against the Killers and keeping the peace between settlements.  The Killers were no longer a threat – he remembered the wavefront of white light that had melted an entire Dyson Sphere and shivered – and already human disputes were coming to the fore.  What would happen when different groups started fighting over planets?

“You all did well,” Brent said, from the podium.  The simulated room fell silent, although Andrew couldn’t decide if everyone had gone quiet for their commander’s benefit, or if the processors running the program had dampened out the noise.  Either was possible and, now that the war had come to an end, discipline was frayed.  “We won the war.  Can I ask for a moment of silence on behalf of the dead?”

Andrew bowed his head along with the rest of the Captains.  Too many had died in the Battle of the Sphere, as it was already being called.  Two
thousand
starships had been destroyed outright by the killers, another four hundred had been caught and destroyed by the wavefront of Cracker energy, or smashed into the Dyson Sphere by the powerful gravity beams the Killers had unleashed in a final attempt to save part of their communications network.  No one had relished having to fight another such battle, or perhaps a series of such battles, yet without the peace treaty, it would have been impossible to avoid.  The Defence Force needed time to rest and recuperate.

“Some of you will discover that your starships are being converted into survey craft to explore the areas of the galaxy we never touched in a thousand years,” Brent continued.  “The remainder of you will continue to serve as warriors, as
soldiers
, until we know what the future holds.  It would be unwise of us to no longer maintain a deterrent force; after all, the Killers may no longer be a threat, but who knows what else is out there, waiting for us?”

Andrew nodded slowly.  The one lesson that humans should have learned, in their history, was that peace was often only the space between wars.  Those who wanted peace – permanent peace – needed to prepare for war, even at cost.  The Community, with an infinite level of resources, could build and maintain a vast military without having to drain civilian resources.  By combining human and Killer technologies, who knew what they might be able to develop?

Afterwards, he found himself in front of the Admiral himself.  “You’re being given a number of medals,” Brent confirmed, once they had exchanged greetings.  “You’re also being given a new mission.  You’re to hunt for the remainder of the Ghosts.”

Andrew blinked.  “Sir,” he said, “the Ghosts are dead!”

“Perhaps,” Brent said.  “As you know, we’ve been comparing notes with our…opposite numbers among the Killers.  They noted possible traces of a third race living within a hundred light years of the Ghost System.  They also never did anything about it, although I’m not entirely sure why.  Some of the Killers actually studied the various races and one of them may have decided to leave them alone to see what would happen.”

“But that would have meant that they understood that the races were different,” Andrew pointed out, in disbelief.

“Not really,” Brent countered.  “Inside a typical asteroid settlement, there are humans with three eyes, or four arms, or five testicles, yet they’re all the same race.  Still…”

He leaned forward.  “The bottom line is that the Killers are alien, Andrew, and they don’t think like us.  They may decide, for no reason that makes sense to us, to go back to war tomorrow.  If that happens…if it comes to another war, we’re not going to have to sneak around for a thousand years.  The Defence Force will develop the weapons needed to beat the Killers quickly, whatever the politicians have to say about it.  Understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Andrew said.

***

“But tell me,” Chiyo99 said.  “What am I?”

“You are the last of Lieutenant Chiyo Takahashi,” Tabitha Cunningham said, calmly.  They stood together in the MassMind, watching the endless flow of thoughts and feelings spinning through the network.  The MassMind was talking to the Killers.  For the first time in its existence, it had something that it could talk to on even terms.  “The Killer that took her – you – swallowed the remainder of her and you’re all that’s left.  You
are
her.”

“I don’t know,” Chiyo99 admitted.  “I feel like a ghost of a ghost.”

“That’s not uncommon when duplication happens,” Tabitha said.  “The Killers didn’t mean to allow you – her – to exist within their network at all, even though it was evident that their network was capable of holding you.  She duplicated herself because the network wasn’t configured to prevent that from happening and…she created you.  And now
you’re
having problems adjusting to being the last of her.”

“Problems,” Chiyo99 repeated.  “I don’t even know if I’m real.”

Tabitha smiled.  “I don’t know either,” she admitted.  “Am I the same Tabitha who managed to save a tiny fraction of humanity from the Killers, or am I just a ghost within the machine with delusions of grandeur?  In the end, the best I can do is stop thinking about it.  I have an existence on my own and it doesn’t matter if I am part of her or something new.”

“But I am not her,” Chiyo99 said.  She looked up towards the MassMind and smiled grimly.  “Thank you for everything, but…”

She threw herself up into the MassMind and vanished.

“Suicide,” Tabitha said, although she had to admit that she didn’t know for sure.  Chiyo99 would add her diversity to the MassMind and would live on in some form.  For an instant, she faced the temptation to do the same, before pushing the thought firmly aside.  There was still so much to do.  “Good luck.”

***

She opened her eyes slowly, wincing against the light that poured in and struck daggers down her optic nerves.

“Welcome back to the universe,” a voice said.  She looked over, keeping her eyes half-closed, and saw Chris standing by her side.  “How are you feeling?”