ONA SUDAK
We fell into the Plate system like a million arrows falling towards the same target. Emerging as one, white and glistening in the starlight, we filled the sky around the Plates, arranged in a vast sphere with all our needle-sharp prows pointed inwards, ensuring nothing could escape the cluster of flying habitats. We were like a sea of fast, lethal piranhas surrounding a pod of immense, drowsing whales.
Standing on the bridge of my flagship, I found it hard to resist a sensation of almost sexual potency. I had such power to wield, so much might with which to impress my will on the universe, I felt akin to a god. Even the razing of Pelapatarn seemed dwarfed in comparison. There, I had been in command of a couple of dozen ships—plus the six Carnivores that had actually done the deed—whereas now, my legions could easily have encircled that entire planet. The Outward wouldn’t have stood a chance. I could have swept away their entire navy in minutes and ended the war with no need to attack the sentient jungles. I could have bent the entire Generality to my will and used the Fleet to secure our borders from alien incursion. I could have stopped the Outward perverting their culture with foreign ideas and traditions.
Not that the white ships would ever have let me use them for my own selfish gain. I just couldn’t help fantasising. I suspected it to be a side effect of being in such close proximity to the greatest armada the Multiplicity had ever known.
Ah, if only those clowns who’d ordered my execution could have seen me at that moment—standing at ease, surveying the field of my coming victory.
The Trouble Dog had no way out. She had no direction in which she could run without being intercepted by hundreds, if not thousands of ships simultaneously. She didn’t even have room to build up enough speed to make a jump into the higher dimensions. This time, my strategy was flawless and my forces unbeatable. And knowing I had her thoroughly trapped, I could afford to be magnanimous, and give her one final chance to surrender and be mothballed instead of annihilated.
I instructed the ship to open a communication channel aimed at the Plates, and relay it from every ship in the Fleet, so she’d receive it no matter where she might be hiding.
“This is Ona Sudak calling the Reclamation Vessel Trouble Dog,” I said. “By now, you will have had the chance to apprehend the scale of the forces arrayed against you, and come to the conclusion you can neither prevail nor escape.” I pressed my palms together and touched my fingers to my chin. “However, to prove I’m not the monster for which you take me, I am prepared to spare both yourself and your crew if you surrender the weapon that destroyed three of my ships. Failure to do so within the next two minutes will result in your destruction. Sudak out.”
I closed the channel and smiled, warm with the simple pleasure of having bested a worthy opponent. She’d led me a merry dance, but now the Scourers were attacking the worlds of the Generality and playtime was over. I needed that weapon. The game had reached its inevitable end, and now only one move remained.
Thirty seconds passed.
Then another thirty.
Then, “This is Captain Sal Konstanz of the RV Trouble Dog.”
A screen opened on the wall of the spherical bridge. It showed Konstanz in her command chair. She wore ship fatigues, open at the neck to reveal a grey T-shirt with a threadbare collar, and as usual, she’d tucked her hair into a ratty blue baseball cap.
“Greetings, Captain. Which is it to be: capitulation or cremation?”
“Haven’t you got bigger fish to fry?”
“I take it you mean the forthcoming onslaught from the higher dimensions?”
“Yeah.”
“Surrender the weapon and place your ship in hibernation mode.”
“What’s the point?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Konstanz’s cheeks flushed. “The whole point of everything you’ve done has been to prevent the Scourers coming, right?”
“Yes…”
“But they’re coming anyway.” Her voice rose. “It’s all been for nothing. All those ships, all those people! And for what?”
“We had to try.”
“You just made everything worse. Instead of suppressing us, you should have tried to work with us. Together we could have been far stronger. We could have fought side by side instead of between ourselves.”
For the first time, I felt a shiver of doubt—it was as if the sun had momentarily passed behind a cloud. I’d been so caught up in the Fleet’s urgency to prevent conflict and avoid attracting the enemy, I hadn’t stopped to consider the human ships as a possible asset.
“You fucked up. If you’d reached out and made an alliance, you could have had every human ship standing with you. Instead, you decided we couldn’t be trusted. You made your mind up we were too warlike and decided to declare war on us for it.” Her voice had risen to a shout. “And in doing so, you brought about the destruction you were trying to avoid!”
I felt taken aback by her words but kept my face impassive. “There may have been strategic errors. However, I am still in command of this fleet and this situation, and you will comply with my orders.”
Konstanz took a deep breath. She pulled off her cap and scratched her head. When she spoke again, she was almost icily calm. “There are several million civilians on these Plates,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen when the Scourers get here, but they need to be defended. You have the ships, and we have our own resources. We need to work together.”
“What will you do if I say no?”
Konstanz didn’t blink. “We’ll force you.”
“Force me? I have you outnumbered a million to one.”
“And I have an ace up my sleeve.”
“Really?”
“Right now, my engineer, Nod, is talking to the Druff onboard your vessels—Druff who were kept in stasis for five thousand years, cut off from the World Tree. Druff whose families never knew what became of them. Druff who witnessed the Fleet cannibalise its builders, and who, now they’ve been brought up to speed on your activities, profoundly disagree with the destruction you’ve wrought. Druff who can, now they know the truth, disable every ship you’ve got.”
My hands started to shake. I knew she wasn’t bluffing. “If you do that, the enemy wins.”
“I’m reliably informed they’re called ‘Scourers’.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Wouldn’t I?”
We held each other’s gaze. And, damn it to hell, I knew she was right. I guess Konstanz saw the uncertainty on my face. She said, “The monsters are coming, Sudak. You failed. Failed big time. And now there’s no longer any point persecuting us, is there? It won’t make a shred of difference.”
I sat back and let out a tired sigh. Around me, I could sense the Fleet of Knives agreeing with her. Its mood had changed. Its Druff were convincing it. The apocalypse was upon us, and our strategy had to adapt. The time for vendettas had passed. Our attempt to prevent the war was over, and it was time for the Fleet to fulfil its primary purpose and engage the enemy.
A worse thought struck me: was she right that our actions had hastened the coming confrontation? Left alone, might the human race have learned the lesson of Pelapatarn and forgone violence for another generation? Had everything Bochnak said been right? In crushing the Generality’s ability to wage war, had we ourselves provided the lure that drew the beasts towards it?
“I suppose you’re right,” I said. “I should have realised earlier. As soon as those beasts started showing up, I should have known we were too late.”
Konstanz’s expression hardened. “Well, it’s a shame you didn’t come to that conclusion before you killed our shipmates.”
“I assume you mean the crews of the Manticore and Penitence.”
“I do.”
“If it’s any consolation, they died bravely.”
I saw her fists clench at the bottom of the screen. If we’d been in the same room, I had no doubt she would have struck me.
“That,” she said through bared teeth, “is no consolation whatsoever.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you? Are you really? Because from where I’m sitting, you’re just a fucking psychopath. What’s the matter? One genocide wasn’t enough for you?”
I closed my eyes and saw again the mushroom clouds blotting out the surface of Pelapatarn. I watched Adam’s youthful body chewed by machine-gun fire. Saw white ships carve a path through battle groups from both the Outward and Conglomeration Navies. Former comrades asphyxiating in the vacuum. Whole planets cut off from the supplies on which they depended to live. Up until now, I’d been convinced the means we’d chosen to employ had been warranted by the ends for which we’d striven. But now, faced with this woman’s blunt appraisal of the situation, the scales had begun to fall from my eyes.
I watched her regain her composure.
Blinded by the need to justify my actions at Pelapatarn, I had simply repeated the same pattern and once more betrayed everything for which the Conglomeration Navy stood.
I owed Bochnak an apology. Hell, I probably owed the entire Generality an apology.
“Yes,” I said.
Konstanz frowned. “Yes, what?”
“Yes, we can work together.”
She replaced her hat. “In that case, I’m going need your ships to take up defensive positions. They need to turn around and face outwards, away from the Plates.”
My cheeks burned. My throat was tight. “I will give the order.”
“Thank you.” She leant towards the camera. “But make no mistake. One day, when this is all over, you’re going to have to answer for what you’ve done.”
I looked down at my hands, which were clasped in my lap, and recalled the morning I’d been due to face the firing squad on Camrose. As then, I felt neither guilt nor anger, although I probed inside for both. Instead, the only sensation I had was one of numb inevitability. The scale of my transgression was too great for my emotions to fully process. All I felt was a kind of desperate, weary resignation, and the terrifying emptiness of a static radio channel.