The being designated SystemLord brooded in his containment tank aboard the great Meme Empire guardian-ship Monitor. An eye and several pseudopods provided access to screens, controls and interfaces, but most of his body consisted of rich protoplasm infused with untold numbers of the molecules that made up his free-floating mind.
SystemLord called himself “he” in his own thoughts because of his long association with the lower races, especially those where the warriors were males. Unlike many Meme, he felt a certain fascination with the savages and Underlings that lived on planets rather than in free space as pure Meme did.
SystemLord considered himself a warrior. One day, when he grew tired of ruling, he would blend with an Underling. The thought of making war and killing with his own extremities, to take females for pleasure and produce progeny by sexual reproduction, sent quivers of anticipated decadence through his jelly-like substance.
But not today. At present he occupied himself with contemplating the concept of the personal name.
By tradition Meme only took names upon blending with sentient creatures. Until then, the amoeba-like bags of interconnected memory-molecules were designated based on function. Only upon absorbing and subsuming another thinking being would one of the True Race select its own name, to trade space-dwelling status for the sensory pleasures of planetary existence.
He also ruminated on the basis of his own race’s name of Meme, which meant simply ideas conveyed, imitated and replicated. It was an apt moniker for a people that reproduced by fission and expanded by blending with and taking over the bodies of others.
SystemLord wondered whether the Meme had been too long bound by tradition. A suitably impressive name might be useful, delineating him from all others also called SystemLord, but to do so would invite conflict. After all, named beings simply did not command systems.
His thoughts then turned to the concepts of taboo and iconoclast.
A communication pulse, filtered through the hierarchy of his Sentries, was routed to his main vision screen. Hemispherical, concave, the display perfectly surrounded the enormous eyeball that was a semi-permanent part of SystemLord’s body. The Meme ceased to brood as he studied the Sentry’s brief engagement, drawing certain conclusions.
First, the destroyed object was artificial, having revealed itself by transmitting. It was therefore by definition hostile. Because the concept of alliance or coexistence simply did not exist in Meme society, any non-Meme technology revealed an enemy.
SystemLord shuddered as he remembered Species 447, which called itself Ryss. Those creatures had resisted absorption for thousands of cycles, and had scoured many Meme systems clear of the True Race as it struggled to remain wild. They had required an Empire-wide effort to crush and absorb. Blending with their defeated, biologically lobotomized remnants had been sweet indeed.
Second, the object’s extrapolated line of approach originated within five degrees of the savage Species 666, so-called Human, planet, which had also proved itself resistant to absorption. Probability dictated it had come from there.
Why any species would defy the Meme and the Empire escaped SystemLord, but lower sentients were wild, unpredictable and insane.
Third, these Humans were vicious, but lacked the proper military mindset. Any commander worth his electrolytes would have ensured the probe died inert, failing to confirm its artificiality to its enemy. Had it done so, the automated Sentry system might have mistaken the device as merely an unidentified floating object, never to be reported.
But clearly Humans were fools, for now SystemLord knew they were coming.
***
“Wake them up.” Craggy, intense, and pale, Admiral Henrich J. Absen sat stiffly in his crash chair, feeling it respond perfectly to every shift. Looking confident in “The Chair” was important to any ship’s commander. Never comfortable with the adapted enemy biotech the seat used, he had to force himself not to fidget. It reminded him too much of the stasis cocoon he’d just spent forty years in.
At least he’d been among the earliest revived: first the BioMed personnel; next, the officers and other key personnel by rank; and then the rest of the thousands of crew.
Then there were the million colonists stacked in stasis deep in Conquest’s belly, but they would stay there until the battle was over.
“Aye aye, sir,” replied Doc Horton, the BioMed officer on bridge duty. The woman spoke aloud into the comm at the same time she transmitted her words via brain-datalink implant. “BioMed control, this is the bridge. Skipper says, wake them up.”
Skipper. The word felt right as it echoed through Absen’s head. He was a full Admiral now, three-star rank in EarthFleet’s Commonwealth-derived naval structure, but he’d declined to choose a flag captain to skipper the massive dreadnought EFS Conquest, as well as command the task force it would soon become.
Arrogant, some called him, but as the Fleet’s most experienced and decorated commander – surviving commander – he had that leeway. We drove the Meme back from Earth every time, he thought, but oh, the cost. Good friends gone forever.
Glancing around his bridge, he felt nothing but pride at his handpicked command crew. Survivors of numerous brutal alien assaults on Earth’s solar system, those that remained now meshed smoothly. Or they had, before more than forty years of stasis. Most had been revived only a few hours ago.
Of course, they had all taken yearlong waking shifts during their travel, but with thirty thousand crew to draw from within the multi-billion-ton ship, that was no burden.
“Intel, do you have the latest on Earth system?” Absen knew the question uppermost on everyone’s mind: Is my home still there?
The intelligence officer on watch replied, “Yes sir. Just came through from Analysis.”
“Push to all stations,” Absen ordered.
Those bridge crew not fully engaged in vital tasks avidly read the short extract on their screens:
SITREP EXECSUM: SOLAR SYSTEM SECURE AS OF DATE 2079/05/25. ENEMY TASK FORCE DETECTED INBOUND EARTH ETA APPROXIMATELY THIRTY-ONE (~31) YEARS (ARRIVAL DATE 2110/?/?). ASSESSED STRENGTH IN EXCESS OF SIXTY-FOUR (64) DESTROYERS. MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL PROJECTIONS ESTIMATE FORTY-THREE (43) PERCENT PROBABILITY EARTHFLEET DEFENSE SUCCESS.
A detailed report full of annexes followed, but for most, the summary was enough. As the ugly truth sunk in, a hush fell over the bridge.
Conquest and the task force she represented were thirty-six light-years from home. Because nothing known exceeded light speed, the information from Earth was by definition thirty-six years old.
The bridge readouts showed the 9th of April, 2115 AD, therefore the enemy fleet had already struck Earth’s solar system five years ago, sometime in the year 2110. Everyone at home might be dead, or lobotomized and absorbed by the Meme.
Forty-three percent chance of survival. Sixty-four Destroyers, Absen thought in quiet horror. Destroyers – but not the traditional human use of the term meaning an escort vessel. The name had come from captured Meme information: “Destroyer” was a simple declaration of function. Meme Destroyers were huge ships as puissant as his own dreadnought, which was itself the biggest and best warship EarthFleet had ever produced.
The best forty years ago, he reminded himself. Four more decades of development must have produced powerful ships indeed.
He sincerely hoped so.
“Schedule an All-Hands assembly in eighteen hours,” Absen ordered. “But since I know that the scuttlebutt will get there first, let me just say this to everyone. Nothing has changed for us here. Earth is either still free or it isn’t, and nothing we do will alter that. We accepted this mission when we left home forty years ago. We are here in the Gliese 370 system to make EarthFleet’s first conquest of an enemy-held planet. Humanity can’t sit at home and absorb ever-increasing assaults from an empire spanning thousands of worlds. Our only hope is to attack.”
***
Sergeant Major Jill “Reaper” Repeth, EarthFleet Marines, gasped as the slimy tracheal tube withdrew and she began to breathe on her own again. Lifting her hands to rub her face, she carefully opened her eyes for the first time in what must be nearly forty years. Lighting glowed dim and no klaxons wailed, no strobes flashed, so she figured Conquest to be on schedule, nearing her destination.
Reaper felt the living coffin, another product of adapted enemy biotech, loosen on her lower body, and she winced when the catheter probes withdrew. Naked, she was birthed anew. She welcomed the sound and fury to come. After nearly sixty years of Marine service – plus the forty in stasis – she still looked forward eagerly to righteous battle. Neither guilt nor moral ambiguity troubled her thoughts of killing aliens hell-bent on genocide.
Sixty years. She’d never expected to serve for that long, but the Eden Plague virus conferred immortality and rapid healing, so such spans were now commonplace. She could have easily been an officer by now, but she’d always hated the idea of separation from the rank and file. Offered her choice of warrant or commission many times, she’d always refused, preferring to stay where she was most comfortable – top enlisted Marine in a front-line combat unit.
Looking around, she marveled at the rows upon rows of the biotech cocoons that had kept everyone alive, healthy but in stasis for the last four decades. Lines of them extended in a vast adult nursery, incubators of military personnel. She could see at least a thousand of the things from where she stood. In various stages of processing, BioMed personnel bustling among them, she knew many thousands more were spread throughout Conquest and the ships attached to her.
Stumbling for the female showers in the deliberately heavy gravity that matched the target planet the astronomers had named Afrana, she was grateful for the protocol that decanted key leaders in order of rank. Brigadier Stallers and the rest of the Marine brigade’s officers should have been awakened ahead of her.
Under hot water she soaped and sluiced, scrubbing remnants of bio-gel out of her ears, and then gingerly tested her cybernetics. As far as she could tell, her laminated bones and polymer-enhanced musculature had come through without degrading.
Holding up her hands, she extended her claws in sequence to their full two centimeters, starting with the thumbs. The pain of the ferrocrystal knives slicing through her skin from beneath was familiar, comforting.
Like the anachronistic bayonet, she seldom used the cutting blades in combat, but they’d come in handy for covert missions, back before Earth had been unified.
Thoughts of Earth threw her mind back to her last view of that fragile blue marble hanging in space, and all the hopes and dreams of its inhabitants. Leaving behind everyone there was hard, and once again she crammed down the gentler part of her humanity, coating her soul in armor not so different from what she wore in combat. Only one man had been allowed past that façade: her husband, Commander Rick Johnstone.
Having him along kept her human, but the time for softness was past. Conquest and the ships attached to her had one simple mission: kill any Meme craft in the Gliese 370 system, destroy all resistance from the aliens nicknamed “Hippos” on the planet Afrana, and then colonize.
She thought about the briefings on the Hippos, what little they knew. So called because they were huge and gray and thick, they were reported to have technology similar to Earth’s, or possibly better.
It’s gonna be a hard fight, she thought.
Reaper touched her palm to the locker she had closed forty years ago and it hissed open, revealing her carefully packed kit. Looking in the mirror set inside, she saw a severe, strong-jawed face, intense brown eyes, and skin tinged with the blood of at least one Hispanic ancestor.
A warrior’s face.
Once dressed in crisp utilities, she felt like a Marine again. With her starched eight-point cap settled carefully on her head – an affectation from her U.S. wet-navy days – she went in search of coffee, information and her commander, in that order, probably all in the consolidated wardroom where officers and senior NCOs ate.
Drawing a steaming cup of “lifer-juice,” the muddy coffee dispensed by the industrial-sized brewer, she nodded at Brigadier Stallers sitting with his battalion commanders. One of those was her own, Major Joseph “Bull” ben Tauros, originally of the Israeli Defense Forces before volunteering for EarthFleet Marines. A hulking brute of a man, he was the only one that seemed completely normal without hair; the cue ball was his usual look.
Bull caught her eye and lifted his cup. She raised hers back in greeting, but doubted his held coffee. He stood up, nodding to the brigadier, then waved Reaper over to a table nearby, growling at a lone Navy ensign. The young man hastily grabbed his powdered eggs and found another place to be.
“Good decade, SMAJ,” Bull greeted her as they sat down.
She accepted the familiar corruption of “Sergeant Major” with good graces, knowing such nicknames built trust and camaraderie. “Good freakin’ four decades, Bull,” she replied, “but it feels like I only slept for a week.” Reaper sat down across from him and reached over to tilt his cup toward her with one short-nailed finger. “Ugh. Can’t believe you’re still drinking that dreck. I should space it.”
Bull pulled the protein shake back protectively. “Don’t you dare. I used all my personal allowance on this stuff. Can’t stay big on Navy food.”
“Who cares if you stay big? Your cybernetics provide most of your actual strength. Besides, it gives you gas like a sick hound.”
“I like to be big. You think this huge noggin would look good on a skinny body like yours?” He reached up to run a hand over his basketball-sized cranium.
Reaper held up her hands in surrender. “All right. So what’s the word?”
“Word is, All-Hands assembly at 1500 hours. Word is, Earth got hit five years ago by sixty-four Destroyers. We don’t even know if anyone’s left.” Bull slurped more of his shake, pensive.
Reaper pursed her lips and put on a stoic front. “Can’t help that. We knew when we left it was long years of traveling at best, a one-way trip at worst.”
“We might be all that’s left of the human race.” Bull hid a fleeting expression of deep concern.
She leaned over to pound her index finger on the tabletop in front of the big young Marine officer. “Listen, sir, I’ve been in active combat longer than you’ve been alive. I’ve spoon-fed green lieutenants and I’ve made and I’ve broke battalion commanders like you. But I’ve seen you over the past few months – before the forty years – hell, you know what I mean – and I know you’ve got what it takes. So just do your job the best you know how and have faith in ol’ mother Reaper.” Unconsciously she patted her left breast pocket where her father’s ancient leather-bound small-print Bible rested.
Bull’s mouth quirked up in a smile at her gesture. He reached up to his neckline to reveal a heavy ferrocrystal Star of David medallion on a chain. “I got faith, SMAJ. But Moshe Dayan said faith and bullets’ll get you farther than faith alone.”
Reaper laughed. “Amen to that, my bulky brother. No atheists in armor, eh? Pass the Lord and praise the ammunition.” She clapped him on the shoulder, a sensation like slapping wood. “I see the NCOs are up. Suggest you finish that glop and start doing some officer stuff. Find your drip-nose lieutenants, tell them mommy and daddy will make everything all right.”
Bull rose with her, draining his plastic cup and folding it into a cargo pocket. “Yeah, lieutenants. Making simple shit hard since Christ was a corporal.”
Reaper tsk-stk’d good-naturedly at his irreverence.
The Jewish major grinned. “You don’t like the way I talk, SMAJ, that’s your cross to bear.”
“Why do I feel like you set up every Gentile you know for that line?” With a rueful snort she took her leave and refilled the coffee mug and headed out, intending to see to her awakening troops. It was NCO business to get them ready so officers didn’t have to.
Crossing the floor, Reaper spotted Tran Pham “Spooky” Nguyen sitting alone in a corner. Usually the slim Vietnamese highlander was easy to overlook, except that today she saw he wore the blinding white high-collared uniform of the Naval Stewards, EarthFleet’s specialized protective police service. She’d given up surprise at Spooky’s changes of uniform; he’d long since passed into legend within the clandestine services of Earth.
He’d gotten the nickname long ago, before the aliens salted Earth with the Demon Plagues with which the Meme had tried to reduce humanity to mindless animals. Later enhancements – combat nanites in the blood, cybernetic implants like Reaper’s, and his dedication to the martial arts – had only magnified his legend.
I’m one of the handful of people aboard that knows he’s a covert operative – spy, assassin, intimidator. Should have figured he’d show up; he’s always where the action is.
“G’day, Spooky. Nice look.” She sat down, knocked her coffee cup against his tea mug. “You playing bodyguard this trip?”
“Thank you, Jill. Of course, a Steward’s role extends beyond personal protection of the senior staff.” His accent was precise, perfect upper-class English, an affectation adopted so long ago that it was unshakeable. “Are you still playing at being Australian?”
She noticed he didn’t exactly answer her question, a common occurrence with Spooky. Jill chuckled. “Lots of Aussies in the Marines, so I pick up the dialect, that’s all. But are you doing anything, uh, specific, or just keeping an eye on things?”
And I refuse to ask why you even came on this mission, she thought. You’ve always done exactly as you pleased, and somehow you get away with it.
“As you say, keeping an eye on things.” Spooky’s gaze roamed the room, searching, she knew, for anything out of place.
Reaper wondered whether he was hunting traitors and spies again…ugly work, work she never wanted to have to do again. Guarded, she watched him for a moment more. “Good to see you on the job, but I have things to do. Look me up sometime.”
“Oh, you can be sure of that.” His look was unfathomable.
She ignored the comment and stood up, bowed formally to him as if they were back at the dojo, and then put away her mug to go look for her troops.