~ They still don’t have uniforms? This is a whole society run by fucking dissidents. No wonder I hate it.
The crew treated Quilan with fastidious civility. He learned almost nothing from them or about them. They seemed to spend a great deal of time in simulations and had little time for him. He wondered if they just wanted to avoid him, but didn’t care if they did. He was happy to have the time to himself. He studied their archives through the ship’s own library.
Hadesh Huyler did his own studying, finally absorbing the historical and briefing files that had been loaded along with his own personality into the Soul-keeper device within Quilan’s skull.
They agreed a schedule that would allow Quilan some privacy; if nothing important was taking place then for the hour before sleep and the hour after waking, Huyler would detach from Quilan’s senses.
Huyler’s reactions to the detailed history of the Caste War, which against Quilan’s advice he turned to first, went through amazement, incredulity, outrage, anger and finally—when the Culture’s part became clear—sudden fury followed by icy calm. Quilan experienced these varying emotions from the other being inside his head over the course of an afternoon. It was surprisingly wearing.
Only afterwards did the old soldier go back to the beginning and study in chronological sequence all the things that had happened since his body-death and personality storage.
Like all revived constructs, Huyler’s personality still needed to sleep and dream to remain stable, though this coma-like state could be achieved in a sort of fast-forward time which meant that instead of sleeping all night Huyler could get by on less than an hour’s rest. The first night he slept in the same real-time as Quilan; the second night he studied rather than slept and partook of just that brief period of unconsciousness. The following morning, when Quilan re-established contact after his hour’s grace, the voice in his head said, ~ Major.
~ Sir.
~ You lost your wife. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.
~ It’s not something I talk about much, sir.
~ Was that the other soul you were looking for on the ship where you found me?
~ Yes, sir.
~ She was Army too.
~ Yes, sir. Also a major. We joined up together, before the war.
~ She must have loved you a lot to follow you into the Army.
~ Actually it was more me following her, sir; enlisting was her idea. Trying to rescue the souls stored in the Military Institute on Aorme before the rebels got there was her idea too.
~ She sounds like quite a female.
~ She was, sir.
~ I’m really sorry, Major Quilan. I was never married myself, but I know what it is to love and to lose. I just want you to know I feel for you, that’s all.
~ Thank you. I appreciate that.
~ I think maybe you and I need to study a bit less and talk a bit more. For two people in such intimate contact we haven’t really told each other that much about ourselves. What do you say, Major?
~ I think that might be a good idea, sir.
~ Let’s start by dropping the “sir,” shall we? Doing my homework, I did notice the bit of legalese attached to the standard wake-up briefing which basically says that my admiral-generalship lapsed with my body-death. My status is Reserve Honorary Officer and you’re the ranking grade on this mission. If anyone’s going to get called sir around here it should be you. Anyway, just call me Huyler, if you’re happy with that; that’s how people usually knew me.
~ As you say, ah, Huyler, given our intimacy, perhaps rank isn’t entirely relevant. Please call me Quil.
~ Done deal, Quil.
• • •
The few days passed without incident; they traveled at absurd speed, leaving Chelgrian space far, far behind. The ROU Nuisance Value passed them via its little shuttle craft to a thing called a Superlifter, another big, chunky ship, though with a less extemporized look to it than the war craft. The vessel, called the Vulgarian, greeted them by voice only. It had no human crew; Quilan sat in what looked like a little used open area where pleasantly bland music played.
~ Never married, Huyler?
~ An accursed weakness for smart, proud and insufficiently patriotic females, Quil. They could always tell my first love was the Army, not them, and not one of those heartless bitches was prepared to put her male and her people before her own selfish interests. If I’d only had the basic common sense to have been taken with airheads I’d have been happily married with—and probably even more happily survived by—a doting wife and several grown-up children by now.
~ Sounds like a narrow escape.
~ I notice you’re not specifying who for.
• • •
The General Systems Vehicle Sanctioned Parts List appeared on the screen in the Superlifter’s lounge as another point of light in the starfield. It became a silver dot and grew quickly to fill the screen, though there was no sign of detail on the shining surface.
~ That’ll be it.
~ I suppose so.
~ We’ve probably passed near several escort craft, though they wouldn’t be making their presence so obvious. What the Navy calls a High Value Unit; you never send them out alone.
~ I thought it might look a little more grand.
~ They always look pretty unimposing from the outside.
The Superlifter plunged into the center of the silver surface. Within it was like looking from an aircraft inside a cloud, then there was the impression of plunging through another surface, then another, then dozens more in quick succession, flicking past like thumbed paper pages in an antique book.
They burst from the last membrane into a great hazy space lit by a yellow-white line burning high above, beyond layers of wispy cloud. They were above and aft of the craft’s stern. The ship was twenty-five kilometers long and ten wide. The top surface was parkland; wooded hills and ridges separated by and studded with rivers and lakes.
Bracketed by colossal ribbed and buttressed outriggers chevroned in red and blue, the GSV’s sheer sides were a golden, tawny color, scattered with a motley confusion of foliage-covered platforms and balconies and punctured by a bewildering variety of brightly lit openings, like a glowing vertical city set into sandstone cliffs three kilometers high. The air swarmed with thousands of craft of every type Quilan had ever seen or heard of, and more besides. Some were tiny, some were the size of the Superlifter. Still smaller dots were individual people, floating in the air.
Two other giant vessels, each barely an eighth of the size of the Sanctioned Parts List, shared the envelope of the GSV’s surrounding field enclosure. Riding a few kilometers off each side, plainer and more dense-looking, they were surrounded with their own concentrations of smaller flying craft.
~ It is a little more impressive on the inside, isn’t it?
Hadesh Huyler remained silent.
• • •
He was made welcome by an avatar of the ship and a handful of humans. His quarters were generous to the point of extravagance; he had a swimming pool to himself and the side of one cabin looked out into the chasm of air whose far wall, a kilometer distant, was the GSV’s starboard outrigger. Another self-effacing drone played the part of servant.
He was invited to so many meals, parties, ceremonies, festivals, openings, celebrations and other events and gatherings that the suite’s engagement-managing ware filled two screens just listing the variety of different ways of sorting all his invitations. He accepted a few, mostly those featuring live music. People were polite. He was polite back. Some expressed regret about the war. He was dignified, placatory. Huyler fumed in his mind, spitting invective.
He walked and traveled through the vast ship, attracting glances everywhere—in a ship of thirty million people, not all of them human or drone, he was the only Chelgrian—but was only rarely forced into conversation.
The avatar had warned him that some of the people who would want to talk to him would be, in effect, journalists, and might broadcast his comments on the ship’s new
s services. Huyler’s indignation and sarcasm were an advantage in such circumstances. Quilan would have carefully measured his words before speaking them anyway, but he would also listen to Huyler’s comments at such moments, seemingly lost in thought, and was quietly amused to see that he gained a reputation for inscrutability as a result.
One morning, before Huyler had made contact again after the hour of grace, he rose from his bed and went to the window which gave out onto the external view, and—when he ordered the surface transparent—was not surprised to see the Phelen Plains outside, scorched and cratered and stretching into the smoke-filled distance beneath an ashen sky. They were traversed by the punctured ribbon of the ruined road on which the blackened, crippled truck moved like a winter-slowed insect, and he realized that he had not awakened or risen at all, and was dreaming.
• • •
The land destroyer jerked and shook beneath him, sending waves of pain through his body. He heard himself groan. The ground must be shaking. He was supposed to be beneath the thing, trapped by it, not inside it. How had this happened? Such pain. Was he dying? He must be dying. He could not see, and breathing was difficult.
Every few moments he imagined that Worosei had just wiped his face, or had just sat him up to make him comfortable, or had just spoken to him, quietly encouraging, gently funny, but each time it was as though he had somehow—unforgivably—fallen asleep when she had done these things, and only woken up after she had slipped away from him again. He tried to open his eyes but could not. He tried to talk to her, to shout out to her and bring her back, but he could not. Then a few more moments would elapse, and he would jerk awake again, and feel certain once more that he had just missed her touch, her scent, her voice.
“Still not dead, eh, Given?”.
“Who’s that? What?”.
People were talking around him. His head hurt. So did his legs.
“Your fancy armor didn’t save you, did it? They could feed most of you to the chasers. Wouldn’t even have to mince you up first.” Somebody laughed. Pain jolted from his legs. The ground shook beneath him. He must be inside the land destroyer with its crew. They were angry that it had been hit and they had been killed. Were they talking to him? He must have dreamt it turretless and burning, or perhaps it was very big inside and he was in an undamaged part. Not all dead.
“Worosei?” said a voice. He realized it must be his own.
“Oo, Worosei! Worosei!” another voice said, mimicking him.
“Please,” he said. He tried to move his arms again, but only pain came.
“Oo, Worosei, oo, Worosei, please.”
In the old faculty building, beneath the Rebound courts, in the Military Technical Institute, Cravinyr City, Aorme. That’s where they had stored them. The souls of the old soldiers and military planners. Unwanted in peace, now they were seen as an important resource. Besides, a thousand souls were a thousand souls, and worth saving from destruction by the rebel Invisibles. Worosei’s mission; her idea. Daring and dangerous. She’d pulled strings to make it happen, the way she had before when they’d joined up, to make sure that she and Quilan would be posted together. Time to go: Move! Now! Jump!
Had they been there?
He seemed to remember the look of the place, the warren of corridors, the heavy doors, all dark and cold, glowing falsely in the helmet visor. The others; two squires, Hulpe and Nolica, his best, trusted and true, and the Navy special forces triune. Worosei nearby, rifle balanced, her movements graceful even in the suit. His own wife. He should have tried harder to stop her but she’d insisted. Her idea.
The substrate device was there, bigger than they’d been expecting, the size of a domestic chiller cabinet. We’ll never get this onto the flyer. Not with us at the same time.
“Hey, Given? Help me get this off. Come on. It might help.” Somebody laughing.
Get this off. Never get this back. The flyer. And she’d been right. Two of the Navy people went with the thing. They’d never get off. Never. Was that Worosei? She’d just wiped his face, he could have sworn. He struggled to call her back, to say anything.
“What’s he saying?”.
“No idea. Who cares?”.
One arm was very sore. Left arm or right arm? He was angry at himself for not being able to tell which. How absurd. Ow ow ow. Worosei, why … ?
“You trying to tear it off?”.
“Just the glove. Must come off. He’ll have rings or stuff. They always do.”
Worosei murmured something in his ear. He’d fallen asleep. She’d just gone. Worosei! he tried to say.
The Invisibles came, with heavy weaponry. They must have a ship, probably escorted. The Winter Storm would try to stay hidden, then. They were on their own. Waiting for the flyer to return for them. Then the discovery, attack, and losing them all. Madness, flashes and explosions all over as the Loyalist side shelled and counter-attacked from who-knew-where away. They ran out into the rain; the building behind them burned and slumped and fell, turned to glowing slag by the energy weapons. It was night by then and they were alone.
“Leave him alone!”.
“We just—”.
“You just do as you’re fucking told or I’ll drop you on the fucking road, understand? If he lives we’re going to ransom him. Even dead he’s worth more than you two brain-dead fuckwits, so make sure he’s alive when we get to Golse or you’ll be following him to heaven.”
“Make sure he’s alive? Look at him! He’ll be lucky if he lasts the night!”.
“Well, if we pick up any medics less fucked up than he is, we’ll make sure they deal with him first. In the meantime; you do it. Here. Medpac. I’ll see you get extra rations if he lives. Oh, and there’s nothing worth taking.”
“Hey! Hey, we want a cut in the ransom! Hey!”.
They’d dived into the crater, sliding and falling. A big explosion had punched them half into the mud. Killed them if they hadn’t been suited up. Something whacked into his helmet, sending the speakers crazy and filling the visor with blinding light. He pulled the helmet off; it rolled into the pool of water in the foot of the crater. More explosions. Stuck, jammed into the mud.
“Given, you’re just a heap of fucking trouble, you know that?”.
“What’s this do?”.
“Fuck knows.”
The land destroyer, turretless, trailing smoke and leaving one wide segmented track unravelled on the slope behind it, ground and skidded and rumbled its way into the crater. Worosei had recovered first, hauling herself out of the ooze. She tried to pull him free, then fell back as the machine rolled down on top of him. He screamed as the huge weight pressed him into the ground and his legs caught against something hard, breaking bones, pinning him.
He saw the flyer leave, taking her to the ship, to safety. The sky was full of flashes, his ears were pounded by the concussions. The land destroyer shook the ground as its munitions detonated, each pulse making him cry out. Rain lashed down, soaking his face and fur, hiding his tears. The water in the crater was rising, offering an alternative way to die, until another explosion in the burning machine hammered the ground, and air blew out of the center of the filthy pool and it all frothed and drained away into a deep tunnel. That side of the crater collapsed into it as well, and the land destroyer’s nose tipped down, its rear went up and it pivoted off him, thundering down into the steam of the hole and shaking with another series of explosions.
He tried to drag himself out with his hands, but could not. He started trying to dig his legs free.
The next morning, an Invisible search and recovery team found him in the mud, semi-conscious, surrounded by a shallow trench he’d dug around himself but still unable to free himself. One of them kicked his head a few times and put a gun against his forehead, but he had just enough wits left to tell them his rank and title, so they pulled him from the mud’s embrace, ignoring his screams, dragged him up the slope and threw him into the back of a half-wrecked armored truck with the rest of the dead and dying.
• • •
They were the slowest of the slow, the expected-to-die consigned to a wagon which itself was not expected to complete the journey. The truck had lost its tail doors in whatever engagement had resulted in its being unable to travel at much more than walking speed. Once they’d moved him and cleaned the blood from his eyes he could look out to watch the Phelen Plains unroll behind. They were black and scorched as far as the eye could see. Sometimes smudges of smoke adorned the horizon. The clouds were black or gray and sometimes ash fell like soft rain.
Real rain pelted down only once when the truck was on a part of the road sunk below the level of the plains, turning the roadway into a greasy stream of rushing gray and washing over the tailgate and into the rear compartment. He had been lifted, mewing with pain, to a sitting position on one of the rear benches. He could move his head and one arm very weakly, and so watched helplessly as three of the wounded died struggling on their stretchers, drowned under the swirling gray tide. He and one of the others shouted, but it seemed that nobody heard.
The truck went light and slewed from side to side as it was nearly washed away in the flood. He stared wide-eyed at the battered ceiling as the filthy water swirled over the submerged bodies and around his knees. He wondered if he cared anymore whether he died or not, and decided that he did because there was just a chance he might see Worosei again. Then the truck settled and found traction and climbed slowly out of the waters and grumbled onward.
The slurry of ash and water drained out through the rear, exposing the dead, coated in gray as though by shrouds.
The truck took frequent detours around shell holes and larger craters. It crossed two makeshift bridges, swaying. A few vehicles whizzed past them going in the other direction, and once a pair of aircraft slammed overhead, supersonic, so low their passing raised dust and ash. Nothing overtook the wagon.
He was attended to, minimally, by the two Invisible orderlies who’d been told to look after him by their CO. They were really Unheards; a caste above Invisibles by the Loyalist way of thinking. The two seemed to veer unpredictably between relief that he was going to live and perhaps furnish them with part of his ransom, and spite that he had survived at all. He had named them Shit and Fart in his head, and took some pride in not being able to recall their real names at all.