The End of All Things: The First Instalment (10 page)

“Why do you ask?”

You have been training me all this time. I’ve been doing well, as you said. I’m ready for missions.

“You want to fulfill your obligations to us,” Control said.

I do.

“In order to regain your body.”

I would be lying if I said that wasn’t a big part of it,
I thought. Which was also true as far as it went.

“I don’t have any information for you,” Control said. “You will get a mission when we decide the time is right. It is not the right time yet.”

I understand,
I thought.
I am just anxious
.

“Don’t be,” Control said. “You will be busy soon enough.” And then it opened up a simulation in which I was fighting three Colonial Union frigates at the same time.

It was one I had done before, with some variation. The goal wasn’t to destroy all the frigates. The goal was to make them expend as much of their firepower on me as possible so that when three
other
ships skipped in to attack them, they wouldn’t have the defenses to survive.

Basically I was bait in the scenario.

It wasn’t the only scenario that I’d been bait for, recently.

Let’s just say I wasn’t loving the pattern to the simulations I was seeing.

* * *

The communications window on my captain’s screen, normally dead as the famous doornail, lit up. I put the feed inside of it onto the virtual bridge’s largest monitor.

On the feed, as advertised, was Secretary Ocampo.

“Mr. Daquin, are you there?” he asked. He was looking into his PDA camera, inside what looked like a stateroom even smaller than the one he had on the
Chandler
.

I am,
I thought.

“Okay, good,” Ocampo said. “I only have an audio feed for you. They didn’t give me a video feed for some—” He stopped here abruptly. He had just realized that the reason he didn’t have a video feed was because there wasn’t a body for him to look at, just an exposed brain in a clear box.

But
I
had a video feed, so I could see a flush rising through Ocampo’s features. He had at least enough grace to be ashamed of himself for forgetting what he had gotten me into.

It’s all right,
I thought.
I just wanted to talk anyway. If that’s all right. If you have time
.

“Today is a religious observance day for the Rraey who run this outpost,” Ocampo said. “So nothing’s going on today. It’s why I’m able to speak to you at all.”

Hooray for Rraey Christmas,
I thought, to Ocampo.

He smiled at this. “So, what’s on your mind?” he asked. And then I got to see another flush rise through his face as he realized just how inappropriate that particular phrase might be to me. This time, at least, he didn’t try to run from it.

“Jesus, Rafe,” he said. “Sorry about that.”

It’s all right,
I assured him.

“I’m not sure why you even wanted to speak to me,” Ocampo said. “If I were in your shoes—
fuck
.”

Okay, if I could laugh, I would definitely be laughing right now.

“I’m glad one of us would be,” Ocampo said. “My point is I don’t know why you want to speak to me. I assumed that given what has happened to you, you would never want to speak with me again. That you would be furious.”

I
was
furious,
I admitted, which was 100 percent true.
I can’t say I’m happy even now with the situation I’m in. You know what they did to me. To my body
.

“Yes.”

That’s nothing to be happy about. But I remember what you said to me the last time I saw you. Do you remember?

“Not really,” Ocampo said. “I, uh.” He paused. “There was a lot going on that day,” he said.

You said that you had to ask where your loyalties were, to the Colonial Union or to humanity. You said there was a difference between the two.

“All right. Yes. I remember that now.”

I want to know what you meant by that,
I thought to him.
Because while neither you nor I can change what’s happened to me, maybe there’s something you can tell me that makes sense of it all. So I don’t think I’ve lost my body and my freedom for nothing.

Ocampo was quiet at this for a moment, and I was content to let him take his time.

“You understand there is a lot that I can’t tell you,” he said, finally. “That much of what I’m doing now is classified. That my colleagues could be listening in to this conversation so that it wouldn’t be safe to share anything confidential with you, and that even if they weren’t listening in that I wouldn’t share it anyway, because that’s the nature of things.”

I understand that,
I thought.
Secretary Ocampo, I know what my role is. “Mine is not to ask why, mine is to do or die.”

Ocampo blinked, and then smiled. “You’re quoting Tennyson to me,” he said.

Misquoting him, more likely, but yes. What I’m saying is that I’m not asking about the tactics and strategy, sir. I’m asking about the philosophy. Surely that’s something you can talk about.

“I can,” Ocampo said, and then, jokingly, “but how much time do you have?”

I have all the time you want to give me,
I thought, and let that just sit there, between us.

And then Ocampo started talking. Talking about humanity, and about the Colonial Union. He gave me a brief history of the Colonial Union, and about how its first encounters with intelligent alien species—all of which went badly for the Colonial Union, and almost destroyed the young political system—permanently marked it as aggressive and warlike and paranoid.

He talked about the decision to sequester away the planet Earth, to intentionally slow its political and technological progress in order to make it essentially a farm for colonists and soldiers, and how that gave the Colonial Union the raw human resources it needed to become a power among intelligent species far more quickly than any of the other species expected, or could deal with.

He explained how the Conclave, the union of hundreds of intelligent species, was formed in part
because
of the Colonial Union—how its leader, General Tarsem Gau, realized that more than any other species or government, the Colonial Union had a template that would eventually lead to domination of the local space—and of genocide, intentional or otherwise, of other intelligent species. That creating the Conclave was the only solution: that the Colonial Union would either be absorbed into the Conclave as one voice among many, or counteracted because the Conclave would be too large for the Colonial Union to take on.

He explained how this was a great idea in theory—but in reality the Colonial Union had nearly destroyed the Conclave once, and only General Gau’s personal decision to spare the Colonial Union kept all the species of the Conclave from falling on it like a train bearing down on a rodent on its track. He explained that once Gau was gone, the Colonial Union was a target—and all of humanity with it.

And he explained—only generally, only in vague terms—how he, a few trusted allies, and a few alien races who were presumed to be enemies of humanity but were in fact merely enemies of the Colonial Union thought there was a way to save humans as a species even if the Colonial Union should fall. And by “should” it was understood what was meant was “would,” and that, in fact, the Colonial Union wouldn’t so much fall, as be pushed, and in a particular direction.

All of this Ocampo expounded, with himself in the role as a reluctant catalyst or fulcrum for history, someone who wished it were not necessary to give the Colonial Union that push, but one who, recognizing it was necessary, nevertheless stood up—regretfully, yes; heroically,
perhaps?
—to administer the push, in the service of the species.

In short: what an asshole.

Which is not what I said.

Which is not what I even came close to allowing myself to think at the time.

What I said and what I was thinking during all this was variations of one simple phrase, that phrase being
do go on
.

I wanted him to talk, and talk, and then talk some more.

Not because he was the first human I had spoken to since that day on the
Chandler
. I didn’t like him that much, although of course I didn’t want him to know that.

I wanted him to think I was interested and curious in what he had to say, and thought as well of him as I could under the circumstances.

I wanted him to think I thought his thoughts were golden. Pure nuggets of humble wisdom.
Do go on
.

I wanted him to think this because while he was talking to me, he was connected to the
Chandler
. His PDA, more specifically, was connected to the
Chandler
.

And while he was talking to me, I was going through and copying into the
Chandler
’s storage every single file he had on his PDA.

Because here was my problem: No matter what sort of free run I had with the
Chandler
’s system, I was trapped there.

I couldn’t get into the system that Control used to connect to the
Chandler
. Someone would notice that the
Chandler
was trying to address the system. They could log every request. And they would eventually figure out who was doing that. And then I would be screwed.

Besides that, whatever system there was, would be entirely alien. I had suspected and Ocampo unwittingly confirmed that wherever we were, it was someplace controlled and run by the Rraey. I knew nothing about Rraey computing systems, or their design, or their programming languages. There was likely to be a computing shell of some sort in which human-designed operating systems could run, and some software that could port documents created on either side to the other.

But full access to the system? That wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t have the time or resources to get up to speed if it did, and I would be found out and probably tortured and then maybe killed if I tried.

Ocampo’s PDA, on the other hand. I knew
all about
that software and hardware.

Official Colonial Union PDAs were manufactured by lots of different companies but all had to run the same software. They all had to be able to talk to every other PDA, and any computers the Colonial Union used for official business. When you have that level of standardization across a government spanning trillions of miles, every
other
computer, operating system, or piece of technology is either standardized to it, or is able to communicate with it.

Oh, I
knew
Ocampo’s PDA, all right. Once he opened that connection to the
Chandler,
I knew how to access it, how to look around it, and how to extract files.

And I knew how to do it without him knowing.

Not that I expected him to know; he didn’t exactly have the “programmer” look to him, if you know what I mean. He’d be the programmer’s boss. The one they hated. The one who made them work on holidays.

I also knew that Ocampo would have all sorts of interesting files on his PDA. Because simply put, where else would he have them? That’s the computing and storage unit that he left the
Chandler
with. He would be even less familiar with Rraey technology than I would be. Makes sense that he would keep it, and that he would keep his own information on it. I remembered the exchange Ocampo had with Tvann about Vera Briggs. That poor woman was kept in the dark about a lot of things. Ocampo was used to keeping his own counsel about his business.

The longer I kept Ocampo talking, the more I could find out about his business.

Not that I was trying to sort through any of it while he was talking to me. I had to stay attentive and keep him talking. If I gave any indication he was boring me figuratively out of my skull then he’d drop the connection.

So I kept him talking and had a program make a copy of his PDA. All of it, right down to the communication program he was using to talk to me. I could sort out all of the data later, including the encrypted files.

All of which, it turned out, were keyed to the PDA, so opening them in a virtual copy of the PDA would open the files just fine.

Sloppy.

Three cheers for sloppiness.

The entire copying process took just a little under two hours. I kept Ocampo talking the whole time. It required very little prompting.

Ever heard of “monologuing”? The thing where the captured hero escapes death by getting the villain to talk just long enough to break free?

Well, this wasn’t that, because I was still a brain in a box and likely to die the first time I was sent on a mission. But it was something close. And Ocampo had no problem talking and then talking some more.

I don’t think it was sheer megalomania, or, if I wanted to be nice about it, him taking pity on the guy he’d caused to be turned into a naked brain. I don’t know how many other humans there were where we were; I only knew of Ocampo, Vera Briggs, and whoever the woman was who helped supervise re-implanting weapons systems on the
Chandler
. Of the other two, the weapons systems supervisor looked sort of busy whenever I saw her. As for Vera Briggs, I imagine at this point she might not be feeling especially friendly toward Ocampo.

In other words, I think Ocampo just plain might have been lonely for human contact.

Which I could understand. I had been lonely too.

The difference being, of course, that one of us had made the
choice
to be lonely. The other one of us rather unexpectedly had the choice thrust upon us.

As it turns out, Ocampo’s desire to monologue lasted about fifteen minutes longer than the time I needed it to. I knew he was done when he said “But I must be boring you” to me, which is narcissist-speak for “Now I’m bored.”

You’re not boring me,
I thought at him.
But I understand how much of your time I’ve already taken up today. I can’t really ask for more of it. Thank you, Secretary Ocampo
.