Theirs Not to Reason Why 5: Damnation (38 page)

“And the fear?” Agent Tango asked, mopping his freckled brow again as the warmth of the bridge continued to rise.

“They know now that I can kill them. Any place, any distance, any
time
I desire.” Tipping her head back, but keeping her left hand steady and her eyes on the ship’s course, Ia drank.

“How
do
you kill a . . . ? No,” Myang corrected herself, closing her eyes and shaking her head. “No, I do
not
need to know that information. I’m not a half-breed, and I wouldn’t be able to stop them from killing me, first.”

“You are very wise, sir,” Ia praised politely, returning the bottle to its holder. “The next group of Humans to figure out how to kill a Feyori won’t come along for nearly four hundred years. I assure you, that won’t turn out very well for them.”

Dinyadah shifted abruptly in her seat. “Ah . . . we have a broken pipe on Deck 12, aft, near cross-corridor Papa, sir. It’s just a small leak . . . looks like a seal blew its gasket. The crew are already rerouting . . . and repair teams are on their way from Engineering.”

“Deck 12, aft, near Papa?” Private Hong asked from his seat at the gunnery post. “I’ll bet you it was that patch we did after the fight at that K’Katta outpost back in mid-March. The Commander wasn’t fully happy on the rush job we had to do.”

“You’d win that bet,” Dinyadah confirmed, checking the repair logs.

“There will be no actual betting,” Colonel Sofrens ordered them, speaking up from his position at the spare operations station. He flicked a glance at his superior. “That’s against the rules and regs.”

“Colonel, I am well aware that betting for things
other
than cold, hard credits goes on all over the Space Force,” Myang told him. “I used to bet scutwork detail with my junior officers when I served as a first officer in the TUPSF Navy, on board the
Aitzaz Hasan
. Lost a few, too, before I got better at picking my bets. It is only betting for
wealth
that is frowned upon by the rules and regs. Money or other valuable goods. If we tried to outlaw all forms of betting, the whole Human race would be up in arms against us.”

“Do you ever bet on anything, General Ia?” the freckled Agent asked her. “Or rather, does anyone allow you to bet? With your precognitive knowledge of the probabilities . . .”

She lifted her right hand from the edge of the console, indicating the various views of the planet visible on most of her thirteen major, medium, and minor workscreens with her upturned hand. “You’re looking at it right now, meioa-o. I am betting I can save the Alliance from the Salik, the plague, the Greys,
and
the ancient enemy of the Greys three hundred years from now. Long after all of us on this ship are dead and gone.”

“. . . I think I’d rather clean the life-support filters,” he muttered.

“So would I, meioa,” Ia agreed. “
Very
much so. But that’s not the hand I was dealt for this particular game.”

JULY 28, 2499 T.S.
LLGKH-PWOK
T’UN SHIEN-SWISH 1271

The silver-wrapped planet centered on the
Damnation
’s viewscreens was the last of the infested colonies with an atmosphere. Technically an M-
beta
-class world since it had a cold core, Pwok sat halfway between the size of Mars and Earth, dusty and dry near the equator but wet and temperate at its poles. Plague-infested and lacking a hot mantle to draw to the surface, it required being flung out of orbit.

The Premiere and his Agents had already disembarked. He had personally overseen the destruction of the Salik homeworld, as was only fitting, but his position as the chief Councilor required him to get back to work. Admiral-General Myang was still on board, but it was her sleep cycle. Colonel Sofrens sat in one of the spare seats, as did Denora de Marco, but neither had anything to say.

Ia sighted through the blur of tempered prisms scattered between her and the thumb-length planet, and fired the main cannon. Just for a split second, but it was enough to diffuse through the scatter-bomb clouds and strike the mass of Feyori enveloping the world. Nearly a million of them, the Meddlers had finally convened from every corner of the galaxy two days ago, to begin tossing worlds at their parent suns. Locked in the group-mind of the Gathering, they absorbed and shared the energy she tossed at them.

With an effort that felt like a subtle pressure against her inner senses at this distance, the aliens shifted the planet a little more out of orbit. Ia patiently waited a full minute and a half, then pulsed the main gun again. Each time she did this, the scattering effect diminished as the power of the laser chewed through the prisms.

Miniscule dots—Feyori who were on patrol instead of partaking in the Great Gathering—swept and swerved, herding the prisms more or less back into the center to fill in the gaps that had been made by the Godstrike. A few moments after they shifted away—nearly a minute after, at light-speed relativity—several missiles streaked past the
Damnation
, shooting from stern to bow.

“And . . . the
Lauri Torni
reports they are now out of scatter-bombs, sir,” Private Kirkman stated, sitting back in his seat. “That’s the last of them.”

Ia fired again, eking one more shot through the current mass of prisms before the missiles reached their target zone and exploded. “Acknowledged.”

“Three more pushes should send Pwok spiraling into T’un Shien-swish,” Wildheart stated, manning the navigation post. Her main screen was running a real-time calculation of the planet’s speed and trajectory in the network of planets and their moons circling the local star. Llgkh-Pwok didn’t have a moon, thankfully, but it was a heavy mass to move. “But you’d be better off making it four.”

“Acknowledged.” Sighting again, Ia waited for the right moment, then fired. Though she could not see the prisms, as from her end of things the scatter-bombs had not yet exploded, she knew the beam chewed through a knot of them, spreading out to saturate the planet far beyond.

However, rather than keeping the ship pointed at her original target, she shifted the nose of the
Damnation
to the right and up a little. Mental toes in the timestreams, she adjusted her aim with tiny touches from the thrusters, then tapped the button. Ten seconds later, bright red snapped out from the nose in a twentieth-of-a-second burst. Swinging the
Damnation
’s nose back to the planet, she waited while the Feyori on herding patrol gathered up the straying crystals once more.

“Ah—sir, we’re being pinged. Salik vessel,” Kirkman stated, sitting up once again. “An actual Salik vessel.”

“Put her through.”

“Her?”
Aquinar murmured. The gunnery lead twisted in his seat, eyeing Ia in bemusement. A moment later, his eyes widened. “The Squid! You’re telling us the Squid survived?”

“I don’t know, but wherever they are, it’s insystem; there’s no lag on the signal,” Kirkman said. “Connecting it now, sir.”

The bulging eyes, broad mouth, and bared teeth of an angry Salik appeared on Ia’s upper third tertiary screen. The use of it required her to tip her head back. It was subtly ironic, since the stubby eyestalks of the amphibian race had meant their own viewscreens were almost always angled overhead on their ships.

“Hhheww have been a worthhy foe, Ee-Ah. I, G’nathg’pish, am the lasssst Ssssalik alive. I demannd to be eatenn by you
persssssonnally
.”

“You have been a worthy foe, G’nathg’pish,” Ia replied, stumbling a little over the glottals, and the nose-whistle. “However, I’m afraid I cannot oblige.” She returned her attention to her center screen, and made another subtle adjustment before tapping the main cannon button again. “I am in the middle of destroying Colonyworld Pwok.”

That, she managed to pronounce correctly, since in Sallhash, it was a sort of indrawn lip-smack sound, one similar to the lip-smacking noise they made when mocking a potential sentient meal. Rumor had it that when the Salik first settled there over three centuries before, there had been a primitive sentient race on the world—the Alliance insisted on keeping advanced civilizations away from primitive ones, and the Salik had known this. They, of course, had denied it, claiming their “herd beasts” from this world had been nothing more than brute animals.

Either way, it was moot; the natives had been devoured long ago . . . and the devourers were now quite dead. All but this last one. “I have, however, honored you by being the last to die,” Ia told the Squid, the hunter-female who had repeatedly chased her ship over the last few years. “I knew you would survive that last ambush, and that you would run silent for a while. I didn’t bother to have anyone chase you down because I knew you would come to me.”

“. . . Asss all prey mussst,” the female agreed. She bared her sharp teeth for a moment in a not-smile. “I demannnd you kill mmme persssonally. There isss a sssmall but habitable—”

“I’m sorry; I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Ia apologized, looking up once again. Her finger tapped the button, shooting the Feyori through the dwindling prism-cloud one more time. “I’m also sorry I did have to destroy your race. I wish you could’ve learned to get along, to be genuinely compassionate toward others, rather than deceptive. You should have treated all sentient life as though they were your own pond-brood . . . but your people did not, could not, and never would. The only thing I can give you is a salute for being a worthy foe and a swift death.”

Lifting her right hand from the controls, Ia touched her fingers formally to her brow.

The Squid narrowed her pupils and opened her mouth to speak. The signal cut off abruptly.

“On target, and on time, quick and painless,” Ia murmured. She lowered her arm, then bowed her head for a moment. “And may God grant me the same.”

“What was that?” Denora asked. The reporter perked up her seat. “Are you expecting to die soon?”

Ia didn’t answer. She gauged the timestreams, then tapped the button one last time. Again, that pulse of mass kinetic inergy washed over her, a distant pulse of intent from the Gathering wrapped around the infected world. “Wildheart, how does the trajectory look now?”

“It . . . looks good. Very good. A fifth pulse . . . would . . .
definitely
run the risk of the planet pulling a slingshot around the sun, according to the navicomp,” the tech stated, running the simulation through the navicomp one more time to verify. “Confirmed, sir?”

Ia turned her attention inward, checked, and nodded. “Confirmed. Everything else has been killed by hydrobombing it to death . . . and with the Feyori standing guard over each world, no one is getting a single scrap of the plague between now and that planet being devoured by its star.”

“I’ll go tell the Admiral-General it’s done,” Colonel Sofrens offered. He unbuckled his restraints and rose, smothering a yawn. “Or as done as it’s going to get.”

Beside him, Denora hastily raised her own hand, her own mouth gaping. “Ohhh . . . don’t do that! Don’t yawn . . . I’m so ready for my bed. If this is all, I’ll let the recordings cover the rest. I don’t need to be an eyewitness to a mudball moving slowing toward the local sun—I’d rather make an eyewitness report on watching paint dry. It’d be faster.”

“Sleep well,” Ia told them, resisting the urge to yawn herself as the oddly contagious act spread to the rest of her bridge crew. Hundreds of years with all manner of advances in biomedicine, and doctors still couldn’t tell a meioa why a yawn was so contagious among Humans. “Our next stop will be Battle Platform
Warcraft IX
in five days. I’ll see you tomorrow, de Marco, for our wrap-up interview.”

Denora fluttered her fingers as she left. Ia waited until her last two witnesses had left the bridge, then gathered her strength. Focusing her mind, she reached out to the Great Gathering. It was . . . dangerous. Their group-mind was strong. Powerful. But her weak telepathic abilities—tele
pathetic
, according to the late Miklinn—were an advantage because it didn’t give the Meddlers much to grab onto and pull her in.

(
The planet is now on course for the local star. It is time to disperse. Those who were selected to guard shall remain behind; the rest of you . . . I have one more shot to give you, to pay you in the energy needed to leave. Do not use it on the planet, or I will have to call you back within a year to correct its course.
)

(
UNDERSTOOD.
)

Disengaging quickly, she shuddered in revulsion only after she was out from under the weight of their group-mind. It wasn’t so much a single thought-word, as an entire concept pulsed wordlessly, with thousands of undertones. The vast majority were in full compliance with her wishes, however. In this state, with nearly a million of them in gestalt, they were far too powerful. But she had Time literally on her side.

If they didn’t kill her now, while they could, they wouldn’t be able to kill her, ever. Individually, and in small groups of up to a couple thousand, Ia could face them down and win from
her
high ground, the timeplains. Like this . . . not a chance. Great Gatherings were rare occurrences, however, particularly as this one would result in a spate of pairs and triads and even a few quartets splitting off together, until baby-sized matrices were budded free, spinning into newborn Feyori.

New players always upset the Game, but Ia had the advantage; she had instructed the gestalt-mind how to deal with each newborn, the same as she had instructed the former Salik players on which new territories to claim for their pawns. As she had promised, she had increased the play between the various players, enhancing the Game in ways that would help her allies. The Game would be very well balanced for the next four hundred years. But five hundred years from now—and the Feyori were a very patient, long-lived race—the Game would start getting rather interesting for them.

After the Savior saved everybody, when it would be too late for the Meddlers to realize they had been Meddled with. It was a very long Rite of Simmerings, with a lot of deep-laid plans, all generated from carefully placed butterfly wings. Ia was very glad she would not be around to see it happening. That was a level of irritation, fury, and respect she did not want to have to face.