Fassin looked at the pot-bellied stove device squatting on the golden floor, and at the heavily armed troopers, and thought what a perfect opportunity was presenting itself for a complete decapitation of the system's top brass.
'This is an extraordinary session of the Mercatorial Court of Ulubis, before the Hierchon Ormilla,' an official announced over the chamber's PA, voice thundering. 'The Hierchon Ormilla!' the official shouted, as though concerned that people hadn't heard him the first time.
The official was speaking the human version of Standard, the galaxy's lingua franca. Standard had been chosen as an inter-species, pan-galactic language over eight billion years ago. Dwellers had been the main vector in its spread, though they made a point of emphasising that it was not theirs originally. They had one very ancient, informal vernacular and another even more ancient formal language of their own, plus lots that had survived somehow from earlier times or been made up in the meantime. These latter came and went in popularity as such things tended to.
'Oh no, there was a competition,' the Dweller guidementor Y'sul had explained to Fassin on his first delve, hundreds of years ago. 'Usual thing; lots of competing so-called universal standards. There was a proper full-scale war after one linguistic disagreement - a grumous and a p'Liner species, if memory serves - and after that came the usual response: inquiries, missions, meetings, reports, conferences, summits.
'What we now know as Standard was chosen after centuries of research, study and argument by a vast and unwieldy committee composed of representatives of thousands of species, at least two of which became effectively extinct during the course of the deliberations. It was chosen, astonishingly, on its merits, because it was an almost perfect language: flexible, descriptive, uncoloured (whatever that means, but apparently it's important), precise but malleable, highly, elegantly complete yet primed for external-term-adoption and with an unusually free but logical link between the written form and the pronounced which could easily and plausibly embrace almost any set of phonemes, scints, glyphs or pictals and still make translatable sense.
'Best of all, it didn't belong to anybody, the species which had invented it having safely extincted themselves millions of years earlier without leaving either any proven inheritors or significant mark on the greater galaxy, save this sole linguistic gem. Even more amazingly, the subsequent conference to endorse the decision of the mega-committee went smoothly and agreed all the relevant recommendations. Take-up and acceptance were swift and widespread. Standard became the first and so far only true universal language within just a few Quick-mean generations. Set a standard for pan-species cooperation that everybody's been trying to live up to ever since.
'Which is not to say that everybody everywhere loves it without qualification. Amongst my own species in particular, resistance to its use continues to this day, and individual obsessives and small and indeed quite large groups and networks of enthusiasts are forever coming up with new and, they claim, even better universal languages. Some Dwellers persist in regarding Standard as an outrageous alien imposition and a symbol of our craven surrender to galactic fashion.
'Such persons tend to speak ancient formal. Or at least they do where they haven't invented their own unique and generally utterly incomprehensible language.'
Uncle Slovius himself, on what, fittingly, had turned out to be his final delve, had accompanied Fassin on this, the young man's first. 'How perfectly typical,' he'd observed later. 'Only Dwellers could have a completely fair competition eight billion years ago and still be arguing over the result.'
Fassin smiled at the thought and looked round the giant auditorium as the official's words echoed and faded amongst the precious metals and sumptuous clothing. He thought it was all very impressive, in a slightly camp, almost vulgar way. He wondered how much tedious ceremony and baroque speechifying they would now have to sit through before anything of note happened or was said. He did a quick count of the bodies in the chamber. There were well over twice the thirty that the emissarial projection had told him to expect.
A tap-screen appeared on a stalk out of the platform surface and positioned itself in front of him, flicking into life with search and note facilities enabled, but no audio or visual record. Fassin tapped a symbol to confirm that he was there. Round the circular chamber, the others were also being presented with screens or their species-relevant alternative.
'You are here to witness the transmission of a signal from the Engineership Est-taun Zhiffir,' Ormilla's deep, synthesised voice said calmly. 'We are informed that it is, of necessity, in the form of an Artificial Intelligence construct which will be destroyed after the audience has finished.' Ormilla paused, to let this sink in. Fassin thought he just hadn't heard right. 'How you use the information you are about to learn is a matter of duty and conscience,' Ormilla told them. 'How you came by it is not; any revelation regarding the signal's form is punishable by death. Begin.'
An AI? A conscious machine? An abomination? Were they serious? Fassin couldn't believe it. The entire history of the Mercatoria was the record of its implacable persecution and destruction of AIs and the continual, laborious, zealously pursued effort to prevent them ever again coming into existence within the civilised galaxy. That was what the Lustrals were all about; they were the AI hunters, the remorseless, fanatic persecutors of machine intelligence and any and all research into it, and yet here they were, calmly watching the cooking-pot device and the technicians surrounding it.
A semi-transparent image flickered in the air above the dark machine in the centre of the chamber. The hologram was of a human male dressed in the uniform of an Admiral of the Summed Fleet. Fassin hadn't even known that one of his species had risen to such impressive heights. The human admiral was an old, well-built man with a heavily lined face. Bald, of course, but sporting a heavily tattooed scalp. He wore, or his image appeared to wear, a high-rank space-combat suit, its helmet components in stowed configuration round the neck and shoulders. Various insignia on the surface of the suit confirmed with no discernible subtlety that the Admiral was an extremely important military person.
'Thank you, Hierchon Ormilla,' the image said, then seemed to look straight at Fassin, who felt startled for a moment before realising that the image probably appeared to be looking directly at everybody in the chamber. He certainly hoped so. 'I represent Admiral Quile of the Summed Fleet, commanding the Third Medium Squadron of the battle fleet accompanying the Engineership Est-taun Zhiffir on its journey towards Ulubis system, Fleet Admiral Kisipt commanding,' the projection said in a calm, no-nonsense voice.
Battle fleet? thought Fassin. You didn't send a battle fleet to accompany an Eship, portal-carrying or not, did you? They usually travelled with a few Guard ships or one or two units of the Navarchy Military plus a single small Summed Fleet craft sometimes for ceremonial purposes. He was no military expert, but even he knew this sort of stuff, just from catching newscasts of at-the-time-recent connections and reconnections. He watched the military on the semicircular podia closely. Yep, looked like they were startled by this news, too.
'I am to dispense information, and orders,' the hologram said. 'Then I will answer questions. Then I will be destroyed. Information first. Intelligence we have received strongly indicates that Ulubis system will, probably within a year and possibly within months of this signal reaching you, become the target of a full-scale invasive assault originating from the Cluster Epiphany Five Disconnect.'
The hologram paused, appearing to listen. There was a certain sense of stillness, even of shock in the chamber, but no gasps or expressions of fear or incredulity that Fassin could hear.
He scanned the people in the chamber, trying to work out if he was the only person present to whom this news might come as a surprise. Face flickers from the quaup, big staring looks between the whule, perhaps a few rather wide-eyed expressions amongst the tech people down near the dark AI machine. Some of the more readable courtiers looked a little stunned. The Ifrahile es
uit might have wobbled fractionally. Fassin's hand was moving towards the tap-screen when it lit up with a diagram of the galactic local volume, about a thousand years in diameter and centred on Cluster Epiphany Five, the millions-strong mass of stars core-in from the isolated wisp of suns near the end of which lay Ulubis.
'Indeed, our strategists put at about six per cent the possibility that by the time this signal arrived the invasion would already have happened.' The hologram looked around the chamber and smiled. 'I am glad to see that is not the case.' The smile disappeared. 'On the other hand I had hoped, when the original of this signal was recorded, that I would be telling you that the invasion was still three to five years away. Since becoming embodied here I've been given access to some of the real-time intelligence you've been gathering and have had no choice but to plump for an estimate that gives you even less time to prepare than we'd been hoping for.' The image paused briefly.
'The E-5 Discon was already known to be expanding aggressively. Deep-space monitors have been picking up blossoming eighth-power-level weapon-blink for several hundred years, centred on the Leseum systems.' The image looked around the chamber. 'Space battles and high-megatonne nukes, in other words. All the signs are of a rogue hegemony, possibly under the thrall of a human calling himself the Archimandrite Luseferous. He was once genuinely of the Cessoria, though at the rank of Hariolator, not Archimandrite, so it would appear he's promoted himself. In any case, I think we may now count him apostate.' The hologram smiled thinly. 'The Leseum systems were until not all that long ago the last remaining connected part of the Epiphany Five region. However, that wormhole portal fell victim to a minor action of the Strew, leaving the whole volume completely cut off from civilisation.' The thin smile faded.
'Ten days ago from the time this signal was sent an invasion force out of the E-5 Discon comprising several hundred capital ships plus retinue and troop carriers attacked the Ruanthril system, inward from the E-5 Cluster. We assume it came as a surprise to them that Ruanthril had just received a new portal and been connected to the Mercatoria. It had not been part of the Complex before, which may help explain their miscalculation. In any event, elements of the Summed Fleet were present when the E-5 forces attacked. The attack was beaten off, with heavy losses on both sides.' At this, Fassin saw a look of something that certainly seemed like consternation pass over the face-parts of the Fleet Admiral Brimiaice. 'Yes,' the image said, as though responding. 'We were surprised too, frankly, and just had insufficient ships. Even more distressingly, the portal was subsequently destroyed.' Here, Fleet Admiral Brimiaice, a quaup, assumed the blank face of - if Fassin recalled his Facial [or equivalent] Expressions and Body Language of Mercatorial Species 101 course - vicariously shamed shock.
'Before that happened,' the hologram continued, 'intelligence from the captured enemy flagship was transmitted into the Complex. It included a personal record belonging to their equivalent of a Grand-Admiral - the invasion fleet's Supreme Commander - in which he recorded for posterity or his memoirs his puzzlement that so much of the vast military machine of which he was so proud to be a part was being directed not where it would carry the most weight or help capture the greatest number of systems in the shortest possible time - in other words, towards where the greatest mass of stars were, spin-ward, back, up, down and especially core-ward - but away from those regions, towards the almost empty galactic outskirts, towards the Southern Tendril Reefs, towards Stream Quaternary and the Ulubis system, or "the shit-nailed anus-probing finger at the end of a withered arm", as he colourfully described it.'
Fassin nearly laughed. Most of the officials on the main ceremonial platforms, led by the humans, registered shock, horror or outrage in some form. The Hierchon's esuit rolled back half a metre, as though physically struck.
The image took its time to look around the chamber. 'Yes, unflattering. My apologies. You will be happy to know that the gentleman who was the source of this memorable image is currently helping the Combined Forces Intelligence Inquisitariat with its inquiries.'
Fassin watched a few slightly forced expressions of satisfaction appear. They really didn't know any of this before, he thought. He'd assumed the Hierchon and his chums would have been granted some sort of sneak preview earlier, but this seemed to be as new to them as it was to him.
'We also, of course, have the pre-invasion probing-sequence profile for the E-5 Discon's attempted conquest of Ruanthril,' the hologram said, 'plus those of several other systems attacked by the same force-mix. The musings of the invasion fleet's commander provide credible reason to believe Ulubis is under significant threat. The comparison of the pre-attack probing-sequence profile for Ruanthril with the recent raids on and other hostile actions within Ulubis system leads to the conclusion that said threat is imminent, within the time-frame of a few months to less than a year and a half. There is a long-accepted, high-consistency Beyonder attack profile, and the aggressions Ulubis system has been experiencing over the last three years are anomalous to that.'
Fassin suspected that this was a subtle criticism of the system intelligence and strategy services, and especially the Navarchy's. Fleet Admiral Brimiaice looked unnaturally still, as though trying not to draw any unnecessary attention to himself. The information also pointed to something of a cover-up. Like Verpych, Fassin had thought these 'anomalous' attacks had begun just over a year ago; this AI had been given access to information indicating that they had been going on for two years before that. Well, that would come as no surprise to anyone. Being spoon-fed rosy-hued misinformation by the authorities was no more than people had come to expect - and pre-emptively discount. They only got suspicious when presented with what looked like the plain unvarnished truth.
'I do have more to say,' the image above the cooking-pot device told the assembled listeners. 'However, I sense that some of you are already anxious to ask questions, and so at this point I would like to invite queries regarding what you have heard so far. No need to introduce yourselves, by the way - I know who you all are.'
Everybody looked at the Hierchon, who obligingly boomed, 'Machine, what percentage of likelihood pertains to this invasion?'
The hologram did not look particularly impressed with this first question. It might even have sighed.
Fassin only half listened to the answer and paid even less attention to the following questions and answers; none of them added anything significant to what he'd already heard and mostly the questions boiled down to the categories: Are you sure? Are you mad? Are you lying, abomination? And, I won't get blamed for any of this, will I?
He used the tap-screen to get a better idea of the relevant galactic topography. He called up a usefully scaled hologram and flicked between the local civilisational state of play as it had been understood until today - effectively two and a half centuries out of date - and the updated version that the AI signal had brought with it, which was only seventeen years old. As he did so, whole vast volumes of stars changed from one false colour to another, indicating where this Cluster Epiphany Five Disconnect hegemony had spread its influence.
'—Resist them with all our might!' Fleet Admiral Brimiaice roared.
'I'm sure you will,' the hologram said. 'However, all the indications are that even if you devoted yourself to all-out, full-time emergency war-craft construction and a full war economy, you will still be outnumbered several times over.'
Fleet Admiral Brimiaice then blustered.
Fassin had a question of his own, but it was a question for inside his own head, not one that he wished to ask the AI. It was a question he had the unpleasant feeling would at some point shortly be answered, though he sincerely hoped it wouldn't. It was: What the hell does all this have to do with me?
'May I continue?' the image said after the next few contributions showed unmistakable signs of heading in the direction of becoming not so much questions as attestations of innocence, pledges of heroic determination, position-protection statements and attacks on other funct
ionaries present within a wide spectrum of subtlety, biased towards the low end. The hologram gave a small, thin, regretful smile. ‘I realise that all the foregoing has come as something of a shock, for all of you. However, it is, I am afraid to say, in effect just a preamble to the most significant part of this communication.'
The image of Admiral Quile paused to let that sink in, too. Then the hologram said, 'Now then. There is a gentleman amongst you who has no doubt been wondering for some little time what exactly he is doing here.'
Oh, shit, Fassin had time to think, then the image looked at him. Was it really looking at him now? Could everybody see the hologram looking at him? Heads, or other parts as appropriate, turned in his direction. That probably meant yes.
'Seer Fassin Taak, would you make yourself known to the others?'
Fassin heard the blood roar in his ears as he stood and gave a slow, if shallow, bow towards the Hierchon. He was getting that flesh-shrinking thing again. The chamber looked to be tipping, and he was glad to sit down again. He tried to control the blush that he felt building under his throat.
'Seer Taak is a young man, though born centuries ago,' the image said. 'He has spent a productive and dutiful career with the gas-giant Dwellers of the planet Nasqueron. I understand that many of you may have heard of him already. He has now been given the rank of major within the Shrievalty Ocula, for reasons which will become clear in due course.'