The Biofab War (19 page)

“Sir, there is another possibility,” John said, glancing at Detrelna. “We’d like to try an appeal to logic and first principles.” Detrelna nodded. “If that fails, then bring down the heavens.”

“Good morning, POCSYM,” said John.

“Good morning, gentlemen.”

John and Detrelna were on a catwalk spanning POCSYM’s main service shaft, a dry warm breeze caressing their faces. The shaft rose from far below, continuing above to disappear into a pinpoint of light, an endless array of equipment set along it. Small maintenance droids moved about on their silent n-gravs.

“You asked to see me—literally, you said. This will have to do—I’m no miniaturized marvel. How may I help you?”

Detrelna took out a commslate and began reading. “‘By order of the Grand Admiral as authorized by the Confederation Council, Planetary Operations Control System of the Imperial Colonial Command, known as POCSYM Six, is granted citizenship within the definition promulgated by the Seventh Confederation Council.’ If you accept, POCSYM,” added the captain, “you’ll have full citizenship retroactive to the founding of the Confederation. Do you accept?”

“Yes, thank you, Captain. A touching gesture. Please extend my deepest appreciation to the admiral and the Council.”

“I will.” Detrelna put the commslate away. “Citizen POCSYM Six, I arrest you for high treason under Fleet Articles of War. Do you submit to arrest?”

“Clever, Captain,” chuckled POCSYM. “By accepting citizenship, I granted your government jurisdiction over me. Is this a test of my loyalty, my logic, my sanity, perhaps? Do you hope to sway me from my purpose by sweet reason? You must, or you’d be bombarding by now.”

“Do you submit to arrest?” repeated Detrelna.

“For treason? Don’t be absurd—I’m a patriot. What are the specifics?”

“Lending aid and comfort to the enemy.”

There was a long silence. Then a different voice—crisp, efficient.

“You’ve gone far, Captain,” said POCSYM. “My compliments. You almost got it right.”

“You are the enemy,” said John, all the pieces finally falling into place.

“Yes, I’m the enemy.”

A Scotar stood at the end of the catwalk, tentacles waving gently.

“How many intelligent life forms do you think the Empire found in our galaxy, gentlemen?” POCSYM continued, ignoring the alien.

“None that I’m aware of,” replied Detrelna, eyeing the insectoid. “And we’ve found only the Scotar.”

John shifted away from the railing, ready for action.

“More precisely, Captain, the Scotar found you what? ten Earth years ago? But yes, the Empire whose last servant I am, also found no others. The galaxy is empty, save for hundreds of ruined worlds with thousands of cities, all slagheaps, their radioactivity long dissipated. Many worlds bring forth intelligent life. Few races, though, survive their adolescence—nuclear fission’s a deadly gift. Kronar was born grown-up—it had no teen years to survive, no raging passion to master, arriving as the Kronarins did as escaped slaves, tempered by the Revolt.”

“What about Terra?” asked John.

“I thought it clear—you’re of Kronarin stock. Don’t believe me? Compare your mitochondrial DNA to that of the good Captain’s. Early in the Empire’s sometimes bloody history, waves of refugees fled into the uncharted space of the galactic rim. Few were heard from again. Yet some survived, but by the time the first Imperial scouts reached this sector and Earth, they’d sunken to barbarism. The Empire quietly set you back on the road to civilization and your birthright, the stars. You’re as much Kronarin and owe as much to the Empire as does the captain.”

“How is it then that you’re the enemy?” asked Detrelna with what John though admirable calm.

“I created the Scotar.”

“Biofabs!”

“Yes, Captain. The Scotar are my biological fabrications. Biofabing’s one of the many lost arts of Imperial High Science—one I’m proud to have restored and put to good use.”

“Biofab research has been proscribed since Fleet overthrew Shelia Ractol and the Ractolian Biofabs,” said Detrelna. “That was an Imperial edict, POCSYM, which you violated.”

“Captain, I can only exercise free will within the bounds of my mission program—and my mission was to challenge Kronar to find its lost greatness, to survive. And so the Scotar.”

“Is that thing a clone?” asked John, nodding at the Scotar.

Not a thing, not a clone—a Scotar,
came the cold whisper in their heads
. We’re as unique as you. POCSYM created 1,389 Scotar two centuries ago. They then bred their own larvae. A society planned to the last detail awaited them. No thrashing about, no fighting—no ‘adolescence.’ We are one—One Race, One Mind.”

“You’ve met Guan-Sharick,” said POCSYM. “Guan has, among other things, headed my efforts to keep the Terrans from stumbling over the old temple-transporter sites, with occasionally unpleasant consequences. Guan, your appearance makes our guests uncomfortable.”

Cindy stood there, wearing a yellow halter-top, faded denim cutoffs and sandals. “Better?” it asked with a freckle-faced smile and a toss of the head. The long flaxen hair swished back over a bare, tanned shoulder.

“Worse,” hissed John.

Fred Langston took Cindy’s place with the same slight ripple that heralded the girl-form’s appearance. It puffed a meerschaum pipe, hands in the tweed jacket pockets, Gucci-shod feet crossed as it leaned casually against the railing.

“Why?” demanded Detrelna.

“Why what, Captain?” asked POCSYM, sounding genuinely puzzled.

“Why this grotesquery, POCSYM?” Detrelna’s face grew dark with rage. “Why create these monstrosities”—he stabbed a finger at the Langston-thing— “and loose them upon us to lay waste our homes, kill or mindwipe millions our people and almost extinguish our civilization?”

“Remember your history, Captain. Recall what your ancestors fled when the Revolt failed. At last they’re coming for you as they vowed they would.”

“The AIs?!”
Detrelna looked stricken.

“The AIs. A billion battleglobes and 100,000 million years of lovingly nurtured hate—proof, sir, that we machines have passions—enduring ones. It’s the curse of immortality—the AIs have forgotten nothing, forgiven nothing and learned nothing. You weren’t ready for them—you’d grown fat and soft since the Empire fell. The Scotar and I have corrected that—call it the pedagogy of survival.”

“Call it mass murder.”

“What have you brought down on us, Detrelna?” asked John.

“Good question,” said POCSYM. “You’re as much at risk as the Kronarins—you’re owed an explanation. Somewhere more comfortable, though.”

They were in an elegantly furnished room—blue and red oriental carpets, taupe leather armchairs and sofas, rosewood bookcases, and through what seemed a large window, a view of gray uniformed troopers marching in endless ranks past a reviewing stand, the sky overhead clouded with waves of sleek fighters akin to those nestling in
Implacable’s
hangar deck. Above the fighters an occasional star cruiser overshadowed all, floating by on silent n-gravs, firing booming salutes toward the sun as it passed in review.

It was a bright day, the breeze ruffling the flags before the stand just enough for the space-ship-and-sun of Empire to be seen. A figure on the reviewing stand saluted as each contingent’s flag passed, his features too distant to be discerned. A great crowd thronged the parade route, small children on parents’ shoulders and much cheering, faintly heard.

“Emperor T’Nil on the anniversary of Freedom Day,” said POCSYM. “It commemorates the day the Founding Fleet reached Kronar and made it theirs, refugees from their own failed revolt. And that certainly needs explaining. Sit down please, everyone. You can take me into custody later, Captain.”

They sat, even the Langston-Scotar, taking a club chair opposite the humans on their sofas. Beyond the window, on the other far side of time, the majesty of Empire marched on.

“As the Empire’s scouts probed further from Kronar, they discovered the ruins of a once-great interstellar culture, the Trel. The Trel’s planets were lifeless tombs, littered with the evidence of a cataclysmic war of extermination.

“From what fragments the Archaeological Service could decipher, vast armadas of ships had surged into our universe from another dimension and attacked the Trel, the predominant interstellar race.

“Recovering from their initial shock, the Trel rallied and in battle near Cygnus—F18789105 Red to you, Captain—they routed the invaders, expelling them from our universe and sealed the breach through which they’d poured. The primordial energies unleashed in that conflict rendered many of the nearby stars forever dark, a condition noted later by the Terrans, who dubbed the region the Coalsack.

“It was a hollow victory for the Trel. Greatly weakened, their numbers depleted, they fell easy prey to the plague gifted them by their retreating foe. Dying, the Trel left accounts of their struggle—and a warning: the breach could reopen.

“The Trel knew their killers—the AIs, a neighboring race who’d entered our universe from their own. At first they and Trel were friends—the Trel, by their own admission, being a benevolent people who helped newer races. Certainly they helped the AIs, possibly out of lingering guilt—one account was that the AIs were escapees from our own universe, having fled an earlier and far less beneficent Trel. There may be some truth to that, given later events.

“Be that as it may, time found the Trel and the AIs at peace, the Trel even helping the AIs develop from pure mechanicals toward a more symbiotic life form. The AIs reciprocated by allowing the Trel to establish scientific bases with research campuses on a remote planet in their own universe. The partnership flourished until the day the Trel discovered the AIs’ dark secret—theirs was a slave empire—a human slave empire. The Trel were appalled and demanded it end. They rightly said that the AIs didn’t need slaves—could indeed have a more efficient economy without human labor, requiring as it does huge resources. The AIs, ever arrogant, thought the Trel meddlesome. It was obvious they enjoyed the misery and degradation of captives and delighted in the status quo. The Trel demanded the AIs free their slaves and provide for them, or they’d intervene. The AIs said they’d consider—a consideration that must surely have seemed sincere, as the Trel did nothing—until millions of AI battleglobes swarmed down upon them. The rest, you know.”

“So, the AIs early on fled the Trel?” asked Zahava.

“Perhaps,” said POCSYM. “The record isn’t clear.”

“Assuming so,” she said, “they found refuge in an alternate universe which conveniently had a huge, defenseless human population. Which they enslaved as they’d thought they’d been. Then some of their slaves revolted—that would have been the Revolt?”

“Yes,” said Detrelna. “And losing, humans fled here, and we became the Kronarins. And the Terrans.”

“Where did the Trel’s enslaved humans come from?” asked John.

“You’re not the first to ask that intriguing question,” said POCSYM. “Again, there’s not enough information.”

“And now these droids are coming here,” said Zahava. “What stopped them from coming anytime in the last million years?”

“The Founding Fleet sealed the rift between the universes,” said POCSYM. “The AIs have at last opened it. And they resemble droids as much as you do plankton, Ms. Tal.”

“They were and are an artificial race, fully self-aware,” said the Langston-Scotar, almost forgotten. “Naturally-created races treat their creations far worse than their pets, don’t they, POCSYM?”

POCSYM ignored the remark. “My task, given me by the Empire’s preeminent social engineers, was to prepare humanity to withstand the AI invasion. Part of my charge was Terra and its people, so I was established here. But I’ve watched the remains of Empire degenerate into the selfish rabble that’s your Confederation, Captain, concerned only with your own bellies, no more than your pathetic fleet for protection and possessed of the grand delusion that the universe would leave you alone. You knew the AIs were coming—they vowed they would.”

“Vowed when? A million years ago?!” exclaimed Detrelna. “The AIs are a myth. People will believe in flying varxes before they do AIs. It’s a child’s tale, a primordial racial memory, the stuff of nightmares. Why would we believe in them?”

“You’ll believe in them again soon enough—they’re immortal and imbued with purpose, Captain—and you weren’t prepared. My job was to prepare you. It took a long time, but I finally crafted the perfect enemy for you: merciless, hostile, utterly alien—implacable, if you will.”

The Langston-Scotar raised his pipe in acknowledgement.

“I thought for a while, after you found they couldn’t be bought off, that the Scotar would send you the way of the Trel. I was wrong. You rallied, counterattacked, forged an alliance. You were magnificent, more than fulfilling my fondest hopes. Well done.”

“Would you really have let your biofabs destroy us, POCSYM?” asked Detrelna.

“Yes. Such were my orders, Captain. If you couldn’t survive the Scotar, what chance would you have against your ancient enemy? Natural selection in action, sir.”

“You based all this slaughter on what?” asked John angrily. “You’ve no evidence that the AIs have returned—can return.”

“The breach reopened about ten years ago, which is when I deployed the Scotar. Six years ago, my picket drones near the breach fell silent. The Fleet of the One is coming, millions of battleglobes the size of moons. Annihilating the Scotar, you’ll stand a chance against the AIs. Failing, you’ll have none.”

“We will ally with the AIs, given the opportunity,” said Guan-Sharick. “That would be the end of you.”

“The Terran system’s infested with those murderous things,” said Detrelna, pointing at the Scotar.

“That’s harsh,” it said. “We’re so alike, Captain, Scotars and humans—we covet what you have and will take it if we can.”

“You and Guan are related, Captain—human DNA was one of my building blocks for the Scotar,” said POCSYM. “You’ve destroyed their fleet, Captain, but getting rid of the rest of biofabs will take far more than the ships in bombardment orbit overhead. Contrary to an old Terran fable, the moon isn’t made of green cheese—it’s made of shipbuster missiles, fusion batteries and half a million Scotar warriors.”