Symbionts (49 page)

She nodded and managed a smile. “Thanks, General.”

“Are you all right?”

Again, she nodded.

“That’s the Katya I know. There’s a hell of a lot to do yet, even now. I’m going to miss Dev. I would miss you, if we lost you as well.”

“I’m not sure what you need me for now. The war, well, the war’s over, isn’t it?”

“If the truce holds.If the Emperor ratifies the new agreement. If hotheads on one of the occupied Confederation worlds don’t launch an attack on the Imperials during the next few weeks. A lot of ifs… but yes, I think the war is over.”

“Thank God.”

“Yes. And thank the people who bought that victory for us. People like Dev.”

Clearly, the Empire, the entire Hegemony, had been shaken from Frontier to Core Worlds to Earth herself by the Battle of Second Herakles. The knowledge that the Confederation had allied with the DalRiss had proven to be at least as critical for this revolution as an alliance with the nation of France had been in another revolution, over 760 years before. A cease-fire had gone into effect almost at once, and so far it had lasted, even on New America, where armed guerrillas continued to share the world with Imperial occupation forces. Negotiations were under way, both on Earth and on Liberty. Imperial recognition of the Confederation was widely accepted as fact; all that remained was to map out the actual extent of their victory. Rebel worlds currently unoccupied by Imperials, like Liberty and Rainbow, would certainly receive full independence. Occupied planets, those like New America and Eridu, would probably be allowed to go, or the question might be put to a vote ratifying the decision on each world. Other worlds that had indicated their desire to be free by signing the Declaration of Reason, but which had not joined in the fighting, planets like Loki and Juanyekundu and Deseret… well, their fates still had to be worked out.

But
peacefully.

Both sides were sick of war.

As for the DalRiss, they would be all right as well. She’d heard later that the long-expected Imperial fleet had, indeed, arrived at ShraRish some weeks after the fight at Herakles. They’d dropped out of K-T space, taken up orbit… and vanished.

Could Achievers make other things go away? Or bend space in unexpected ways? Gods, so little was known yet about these beings, able to bend reality with a thought. It was a dreadful mistake to underestimate them.

“Actually, General, I think what I need most right now is work.”

“That’s the spirit. I’m sure Dev would approve.”

She almost laughed out loud. No one but her knew of Dev’s curious survival.

They’d talked about it a long time, after she’d been picked up and returned to the
Eagle.
When she’d jacked in to ViRcom a message to
Freedom
and the other Confederation reinforcements, he’d been there.

She’d seen him…
touched
him. And they’d made love together on a nameless, deserted beach with the ocean surf crashing nearby. All of the myriad and intricate programming that had been Dev, it seemed, had been saved, and that included the far cruder programs that had once been resident in his now vaporized RAM. What was a program but saved information? The information was still there, distributed through the DalRiss fleet.

They made love, and she tried not to think about the fact that his touch, the feel of him on her and around her and inside of her, was not real.

What was “real,” anyway? She closed her eyes and downloaded the scene to her biological memory once again.

“They want me to go with them,” Dev told her afterward, as they lay together on the wet sand. “I’ll be gone a long time.”

“What? Who?” She’d been wondering about Dev’s body. It was just information, after all, and the Naga might have preserved a pattern of that as well.…

“The DalRiss, of course.”

“Can’t you… stay? We could talk with Sinclair, maybe see about having the DalRiss migrate to human space.…”

“Uh-uh, Kat. They sacrificed a lot to help us here. And I sure as hell don’t want anyone trying to lay claim to their fleet just because the… call it the
soul
of one human striderjack is somehow trapped inside their communications network.”

“What… so you’re going with the DalRiss exodus? Where are they going?”

Again, she felt the warmth of his infectious smile. He couldn’t be dead, he
couldn’t.
She couldn’t be imagining his warmth, his humor, his smell, his
presence
in this much detail, and it had none of the hollow emptiness of a recorded encounter. He, everything about him, was too real. Somehow, the Naga link had preserved so very much more of his personality than words and thoughts alone.

“You know what the DalRiss think about life,” he said. “It’s damned near a religion for them.”

“Yes.”

“We’re going… out there. Beyond human space. Jumping from star to star, looking for life. They believe—and I believe with them—that the galaxy, the whole universe is chock brim full to overflowing with life… and tidal theories and prebiotic matrices be damned. They want me to navigate for them.”

“But you haven’t been out there. I thought you had to have been to a place, to pass its feel on to the Achiever.”

“Maybe what they really want is a human viewpoint. A human outlook on the universe. Remember, both the DalRiss and the Naga are blind to the visible spectrum. They’ve both learned to see, in the same way that we’ve learned to ‘hear’ radio with artificial receivers, but we have a clearer perspective on the universe than they do, the way it’s made, the way it really is… at least in some ways. I can help them.”

Katya sighed. “I find it hard to believe that humans can see
anything
clearly.”

“I know what you mean. But, well, the perspective of seeing things from someone else’s vantage point, that always makes things clearer in the end. Don’t you think?”

“Dev, I don’t want to lose you. Not again.”

“I’ll be back. But I think you need some time on your own. Time to get used to…”

“To you being a ghost? Maybe so. And maybe those DalRiss biological wizards can do something about a body for you, someday.”

“Maybe. Right now, I don’t want to even think about it. Katya, I
want
this. You know, since my memories have been coming back, from my childhood, I… I’d forgotten how much I wanted the wonder of it all. The stars. Katya, the
stars
…”

“You always wanted to be a shipjacker, didn’t you? Until you got sidetracked into the warstriders.”

“It was a good sidetrack. I met you there, right? I wouldn’t have missed that for anything.”

“I’m glad I knew you, Dev.”

“Me too.And… I
will
be back.”

She’d not told him, even then, that when she’d last seen a DalRiss, aboard one of their ships, the being had “looked” at her with the curiously scanning crescent of its head… and mentioned the new life growing deep in her belly.

Katya had deliberately kept a piece of Dev for herself, that last time aboard the ascraft, by switching off the part of her cephlink that regulated her sexual rhythms.

“I love you, Dev,” she’d told him.

And, through the Xenolink, she’d felt his lips brush hers, as warm and as sweet as reality.

TERMINOLOGY AND GLOSSARY

AI:
Artificial Intelligence. Since the Sentient Status Act of 2204, higher-model networking systems have been recognized as “self-aware but of restricted purview,” a legal formula that precludes enfranchisement of machine intelligences.

Alpha:
Type of Xenophobe combat machine, also called stalker, shapeshifter, silvershifter, etc. They are animated by numerous organic-machine hybrids and mass ten to twelve tons. Their weapons include nano-D shells and surfaces, and various magnetic effects. Alphas appear in two guises, a snake-or wormlike shape that lets them travel underground along SDTs, and any of a variety of combat shapes, usually geometrical with numerous spines or tentacles. Each distinctive combat type is named after a poisonous Terran reptile, e.g., Fer-de-Lance, Cobra, Mamba, etc.

Alya:
Naked-eye star Theta Serpentis (63 Serpentis) 130 light years from Sol. A double star with a separation of 900 All (5 light-days), Alya A is an A5 star, Alya B an A7. Alya B-V is the homeworld of the DalRiss, who know it as GhegnuRish. Alya A-VI is known as ShraRish, a DalRiss colony.

Analogue:
Computer-generated “double” of a person, used to handle routine business, communications, and duties through ViRcom linkage.

Annaisha:
“Guide.” Term for Imperial liaison officers who coordinate military or political activity between the Empire and Hegemony military forces.

AND Round:
Anti-nano disassembler. Tube-launched NCM round that bursts almost as soon as it is fired, releasing an NCM cloud.

Antigenics:
Nanotechnic devices programmed to hunt down and destroy disease bacteria and parasites inside the body.

APW:
Armored Personnel Walker. Any of several large, four-legged striders designed to carry unlinked passengers. VbH Zo (“Elephant”) can carry fifty troops. Kani (“Crab”) can carry twenty.

Ascraft:
Aerospace craft. Vehicles that can fly both in space and in atmosphere, including various transports, fighters, and shuttles.

Beta:
Second class of Xenophobe combat machine, adapted from captured or abandoned human equipment. Its weapons are human-manufactured weapons, often reshaped to Xeno purposes. They have been known to travel underground.

Bionangineering:
Use of nanotechnology to restructure life-forms for medical or ornamental reasons.

CA:
Combat Armor. Light personal armor/space suit providing eight hours’ life support in hostile environment.

Cephing:
Also linking. Derived from cephlink. To operate equipment, computers, striders, etc., through a cephlink.

Cephlink:
Implant within the human brain allowing direct interface with computer-operated systems. It contains its own microcomputer and RAM storage and is accessed through sockets, usually located in the subject’s temporal bones above and behind each ear. Limited (non-ViR) control and interface is possible through neural implants in the skin, usually in the palm of one hand.

Cephlink RAM:
Random Access Memory, part of the micro-circuitry within the cephlink assembly. Used for memory storage, message transfer, linguistics programming, and the storage of complex digital codes used in cephlinkage access. An artificial extension of human intelligence.

Ceramiplas:
Plastic-ceramic composite used in personal armor.

Charged Particle Gun (CPG):
Primary weapon on larger warstriders. Including proton cannons and electron guns, they use powerful gauss fields to direct streams of charged subatomic particles at the target.

Chiji:
“Governor.” Specifically, the Hegemony governor of Shichiju worlds. Usually (but not always) an Imperial.

CMP:
Cluster Munitions Package. Missile or artillery round payload. Dispenses hundreds of mines, bomblets, or nuclear-triggered plasma bolts in a destructive “footprint” across a large area.

Coaster:
Intrasystem, low-cost space transport, usually for cargo, although sometimes passengers are carried. Cramped, old, and uncomfortable, they are characterized by brief periods of high-G acceleration and deceleration at either end of the journey, with a long interval of zero-G “coasting” between.

Colonial Authority:
Hegemonic bureaucracy charged with overseeing government, trade, and terraforming of the human-inhabited worlds.

Commpac:
“Communications package.” Long-range communications unit that plugs into both temporal sockets and is worn behind the head. It permits long-range communication and can serve as a modem to planetary computer networks without a direct palm interface.

Compatch:
Small radio transceiver worn on the skin and jacked into a T-socket. Allows cephlink-to-link radio communications.

Compscam:
Using computer networks—especially non-AI systems—to illegally divert money, equipment, etc.

Cryo-H:
Liquid hydrogen cooled to a few degrees absolute, used as fuel for fusion power plants aboard striders, ascraft, and other vehicles. Sometimes called “slush hydrogen.”

C-socket:
Cervical socket, located in subject’s cervical spine, near the base of his neck. Directs neural impulses to jacked equipment, warstriders, construction gear, heavy lifters, etc.

C
³
, C-Three:
Military term for Command, Control, and Communications, the essentials of battlefield command.

DalRiss:
Nonhuman intelligence first contacted in 2540. Native to Alya B-V (GhegnuRish), they are highly advanced in biological sciences, relatively backward in engineering and metallurgical sciences. Compound name reflects use of Dal, a gene-engineered organism, as “mount” by Riss (“Master”).

Deplur:
Depleted uranium. Ultradense metal used in massive projectiles such as 8-mm hivel ammunition.

DHS:
Directorate of Hegemony Security. Joint military-civilian bureau under Imperial overwatch tasked with internal security in both civilian and military sectors.

Dracomycetes mirabila:
Fungus harvested in jungle lowlands of Eridu, the source of a drug used for memory enhancement.

DSA:
Deep Seismic Anomaly. Seismic tremors associated with subsurface movements of Xenophobe machines.

Durasheath:
Armor grown as composite layers of diamond, duralloy, and ceramics; light, flexible, and very strong.

El-shuttle:
Saucer-shaped pressurized chamber ferrying passengers and cargo up and down the sky-el. The passenger deck has seats for up to a hundred people, complete with jackplugs and a recjack library.