The End of All Things (41 page)

The skies above the rebellious worlds added new constellations as a flood of CDF ships flowed into their space. Each rebellious planet received no fewer than a hundred ships—a piece of psychological warfare designed to cow and intimidate those trying for their freedom.

They would not be cowed. They shouted their defiance and dared the Colonial Union to do its worst.

This went on in a seemingly intractable manner. There was no clear end to the stalemate. The planets demanded the Colonial Union and the CDF withdraw from their skies. The Colonial Union replied that they would not. The large majority of the human military fleet was now permanently stationed above the worlds that it used to protect.

On October 21, a ship appeared in the skies above Earth, a trading ship registered to a world of the Conclave. It was the
Hooh Issa Tun,
and it had disappeared almost a year before. In a moment, the
Hooh Issa Tun
was no longer alone as another ship of Conclave ancestry appeared, and another, and another. A student of recent history would recognize the staggered appearance as a bit of theater. The late General Tarsem Gau, when he was the head of the Conclave, would do the same thing when his grand fleet appeared over the sky of an unauthorized colony. The Conclave would then give the colony the choice of being evacuated or destroyed.

The Earth would not have the same choice. The fleet would follow the same dynamic as Gau’s fleet, waiting until the very last ship arrived, waiting until the audience below could register its immensity, before launching its weapons to destroy those watching below.

Which meant that timing was going to be a tricky thing indeed.

The satellites the Colonial Union placed in orbit around the Earth registered the
Hooh Issa Tun
the second it arrived in Earth space. The data was shot at the speed of light to a brace of very special skip drones located at the L4 Lagrangian point in the Earth-moon system, each carrying the prototype skip drive designed to work at those gravitationally flat spots in space.

Three of the drones skipped immediately. One of them arrived at its destination as a topographically interesting shower of metal shards. The other two arrived intact.

And in a space outside the solar system that housed Premier Hafte Sorvalh’s home world of Lalah, two fleets readied their final preparations for attack.

The first fleet was a small one: ten ships, specifically selected by Vnac Oi. The second one was substantially larger. Two hundred CDF ships waited—had waited—for battle.

Back at Earth, the influx of ships had stopped at one hundred eight, a number ever so slightly higher than either the Colonial Union’s or Conclave’s estimates of the fleet. Their first action would be to begin disabling the Earth’s network of satellites. This would take it several minutes.

The satellites marked the position of each of the fleet’s ships above the Earth and shot that information to the waiting skip drones. Three of them immediately skipped. This time all three made it.

Inside the CDF ships, each of them was receiving a list of their primary, secondary, and tertiary targets. This transfer of information, and the acknowledgment thereof, took on average ten seconds.

Twenty seconds after that, every single CDF ship simultaneously skipped into Earth space.

Including the
Chandler
. Who alone among the fleet did not have targets. Its job was to observe. On the
Chandler
were Ode Abumwe, Colonels Egan and Rigney, and Vnac Oi of the Conclave. And me.

From Nava Balla’s bridge we watched as CDF ships appeared less than a kilometer from their primary target ships and surgically attacked with particle beams and other relatively low-carnage armament, pinpointing propulsion, navigation, and weapons systems.

“Put the comms on speaker, please,” Abumwe asked Balla, who nodded and did Abumwe’s bidding.

The air was a cacophony of CDF ships reporting back, confirming their attacks were successful. In less than two minutes, the entire Equilibrium fleet had been disabled.

Disabled, not destroyed.

“Are you ready?” Abumwe asked Rafe Daquin.

“You know I am,” Daquin responded.

Abumwe smiled at this. “Then begin.”

“Pilots of the attacking ships,” Daquin said, and his words were broadcast to each of the ships we had disabled. When we could make a reasonable guess as to the identity and species of the pilot of the ship, we automatically translated Daquin’s words into their language. Otherwise we relied on the ships having translation software. “My name is Rafe Daquin. The pilot of the
Chandler
. I am like you. My ship was attacked and taken by an organization I learned was called Equilibrium. Equilibrium killed my crew and singled me out as a pilot. They took my body from me and forced me, like you, to pilot my ship alone and to do their bidding.

“We know that you have been forced into this attack. We know that you were offered a terrible bargain for your complicity: death if you refused and the promise of your bodies returned if you accepted. You should know Equilibrium never intended to return you to your bodies. To them you are disposable. You were always disposable. After this attack you would have been killed and your ships destroyed in order to preserve their goals and their anonymity.

“You may not have been made fully aware of the scope of your mission. It was to attack this planet, the planet Earth, with nuclear weapons. Those weapons would have obliterated life there and the lingering aftereffects would have made the planet uninhabitable. We, who are human, and for whom this is our home world, could not allow that to happen. We have stopped you from carrying out your mission.

“We have attacked your ships. We could have easily destroyed them, and you. We choose not to do this. We have not destroyed your ships. We have not destroyed you. We did not because we know you did not have a choice. We know because I did not have a choice when I was in the same position as you.

“We are giving you a choice now. The choice is this: Surrender your ships now, and we will care for you, protect you, return you to the Conclave, alive and intact, so you may go home, be with your families, and god willing, be given new bodies to live your lives.

“Some of you may already be trying to repair your ship systems to carry out your mission. If you do, we will have to stop you. If we have to stop you, we may have to destroy you. The weapons you carry have too much death in them. We can’t allow the launch of a single one.

“I am like you. I am still like you. I have stayed this way because I was waiting for a moment like this. So you would know, you would truly know, that you are not alone and that you are not without a choice. That you don’t have to kill in order to live. That your life can be returned to you, and all you have to do is spare the innocent people that an organization who has enslaved you wants you to kill.

“I am Rafe Daquin. I am like you. I live and I am no one’s slave. I am here to ask you to surrender now. Surrender and live. Surrender and let others live. Tell me what you will do.”

And then we waited.

For close to a minute there was dead silence on the comms.

And then.

“I am Chugli Ahgo, pilot of the
Frenner Reel
. I surrender to you, Rafe Daquin.”

“Iey Iey Noh. Pilot of
Chundawoot
. I surrender.”

“Lopinigannui Assunderwannaon of the
Lhutstun
. Holy shit, human. Get me the fuck out of this thing.”

“I am Tunder Spenn. I pilot the
Hooh Issa Tun
. I want to see my family. I want to go home.”

*   *   *

I helped Rafe write that. I just want that out there.

One hundred four of the pilots surrendered their ships. Two sabotaged their internal systems after attack and before Rafe sent his message, committing suicide, I guess from fear of what would happen if they were captured—or from fear of what Equilibrium would do to them if they were captured. One pilot had what could best be described as a psychotic break and was unable to surrender or indeed do much of anything else. We took the pilot out of the control loop of its ship before it could hurt itself or anyone else.

One pilot refused to surrender, managed to repair his weapons systems, and tried to launch his nukes. His ship was destroyed before the nukes were out of their tubes.

“You’re going to get credit for this,” Oi said to Abumwe, as the surrender notices came in. “You’ve spared the lives of pilots of dozens of Conclave species. They’ll remember it. It was smart.”

“It was his idea,” Abumwe said, pointing to me.

“Then it was smart of you,” Oi said.

“Thank you,” I said. “But I didn’t suggest it to be smart.”

Oi dipped its tendrils in acknowledgment.

As the surrender notices came in we received the first news from the Conclave attack on Equilibrium’s base on Sedna. The Conclave chose not to wipe out the Equilibrium members it found there. Instead it disabled the base’s life support and communication systems and destroyed any ship or vehicle capable of getting anyone in the base out of it.

Then the commander of the mission gave those inside the base a choice: surrender, or not so slowly freeze to death.

Most chose not to freeze.

In the coming weeks and months the scope of Equilibrium was revealed, its agents named, and its ability to wreak havoc on the Conclave, the Colonial Union, or Earth negated. In the end it was difficult to believe that Equilibrium could have ever presented a threat at all. But then it never would have, had the Colonial Union, the Conclave, and Earth not been so determined to be a threat to themselves.

*   *   *

“Interesting times we live in,” Danielle Lowen said to me. She and I were at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, in Washington, D.C. Hart Schmidt was with us, on his first trip to Earth—the surface of it, at least. He was determined to be the most touristy tourist who had ever touristed, and was presently snapping pictures of the statue of Jefferson from every conceivable angle. It was late March, and the cherry blossoms were beginning to bloom.

“You know there’s a curse about living in interesting times,” I said to her. “It’s attributed to the Chinese.”

“That’s a myth, you know,” Danielle said. “The Chinese never said anything that foolish.”

I smiled at this. “Ode says hello, incidentally,” I said. Ode Abumwe, who had retired from active diplomatic duty to take on a new role: primary architect of the new constitution that the Colonial Union was creating with its colonies.

“How goes the nation building?” Danielle asked.

“When I last talked to her about it she said it was an immense pain in her ass, but there was just no other alternative. Her deal with you and Sorvalh, ironically enough, served to force the Colonial Union to accept her deal with the rebellious colonies. They couldn’t accept a fait accompli agreement with the Earth and Conclave and not accept one from their own colonies. I think that’s why she was appointed to run the discussions. The higher-ups wanted to punish her.”

“The irony being that they’re making her the mother of the new Colonial Union. She’s going to be remembered forever for that.”

“If she can get a deal.”

“This is Ode Abumwe, Harry,” Danielle said. “As if she’s not going to get a deal.”

We watched Hart take his photos.

“I can’t help but notice you’re still not green,” Danielle said to me. “I thought this natural skin tone thing was just supposed to be a summer look for you.”

“I’ve been busy,” I said.

“We’ve all been busy.”

“All right, fine,” I said. “I also missed being this particular tone of me.”

“Is this indicative of anything? Subconsciously or otherwise?”

“Probably not.”

“Right.”

“Fine,” I said. “I might be thinking of retiring.”

“Hanging up the superbody and aging like a normal, decent human should?”

“Maybe,” I said. “This is only an idle thought.”

“If nothing else, you can’t say that the Colonial Union didn’t get its money out of you, Harry.”

“No, I suppose not,” I said.

“If you did retire, where would you go? What would you do?”

“I haven’t thought that far out.”

“I have an opening on my staff,” Danielle said.

“I don’t want to work for you, Dani.”

“I’m a terrific boss, and I’ll brutally sabotage the career of any underling who says different.”

“You should use that as a recruiting statement.”

“What makes you think I don’t?”

I smiled at this. Hart was now photographing the bits of the Declaration of Independence carved into the walls of the monument.

“Seriously, Harry,” Danielle said, after a minute. “Come back to Earth.”

“Why?”

“You know why,” she said. “And you can now.”

“Maybe I will,” I said.

“
Maybe
.”

“Don’t rush me. I’ve got a lot to work out.”

“All right,” Danielle said. “Just don’t take too long.”

“Fair enough,” I said, and took her hand.

“Interesting times we live in,” Danielle repeated. “That’s not meant to be a curse. I like interesting. I like it now, anyway.”

“So do I,” I said. She squeezed my hand.

“This place is great!” Hart said, coming up to the both of us.

“Glad you like it,” I said.

“I really do,” he said. He looked at the both of us, excited. “So. What’s next?”

AN ALTERNATE

“THE LIFE OF THE MIND”

Deleted and Alternate Scenes

Introduction

The End of All Things
took me longer to write than most of my books do, in part because I had a number of false starts. These false starts weren’t bad—in my opinion—and they were useful in helping me figure out what was best for the book; for example, determining which point-of-view characters I wanted to have, whether the story should be in first or third person, and so on. But at the same time it’s annoying to write a bunch of stuff and then go
Yeaaaaah, that’s not it
. So it goes.