Neal Stephenson - Seveneves

Kath Two had not been a fighter. Her weapons training had given her the bare minimum of skill needed to discharge a katapult in the direction of a hungry canid. Kathree didn’t know, yet, whether that was one of the things that had shifted. In a sense it did not matter. No matter how good she might turn out to be at combat, she would never be as effective as Beled, Bard, and — judging from appearances — Roskos Yur. She was, however, finding them to be a dull, slow bunch. They failed to notice much that was obvious to her. And it was clear that they were tired and fading toward sleep. After it had gotten fully dark, Kathree consumed three consecutive full meals from the rations that Roskos Yur had brought with him, then slipped away and climbed a short distance farther up, to the very top of the rim, from which she could look and listen inland.

When she returned, she startled Roskos Yur, whose steady breathing had been audible from a thousand paces away. He’d been asleep, or close to it.

“You should warn me when you are approaching, Kath Two!” he hissed.

“She’s dead.”

“Kath Three, then.”

“No one is coming,” she said, “at least not for a few hours.”

“Not unless they drop from the sky,” he retorted.

Langobard, ever sociable, had approached. “They will not come by air,” he said. “If they can take us out quietly, they will do so — and never say a word of it. But to make a full assault? That would clash with the narrative that they are building for the consumption of the people of the ring.”

“When are we going to begin writing our own fucking narrative?” Yur said. And there the conversation stalled.

But his question was answered an hour later when Kathree, then the rest of them, discerned a whine and a rumble coming from the direction of the water. Running lights appeared over the horizon, coming from the south over the limit of the world, but then winked out as the pilot made the decision to run dark. It was clear from the sound, and from the way it hugged the water, that this thing was neither an airplane nor a ship but the in-between thing known as an ark. They heard it sough into the water a kilometer away and switch over to the chugging engines it used to maneuver on the surface. It dropped anchor several hundred meters offshore: well away from the land, so as to respect the hair-trigger sensibilities of the Diggers, but close enough that people and gear could be ferried to and fro on small boats. It opened its big rear cargo ramp, allowing the sea to flood its interior and float a collection of small boats and barges that had been packed aboard. On one of these, a small party came ashore. Kathree heard them conversing, mostly with Ty and Arjun, though Einstein as usual found a way to make himself part of the action.

A barge from the ark had been towed into the open water between it and the shore, and anchored. The sounds coming from it spoke of complex mechanical internals. After a few minutes it began to rumble and hum, and a fountain of glittering flynk chain, an upside-down U, grew out of its top and began to extend skyward as its velocity built and its sound sharpened into a steady keening note. Within a few minutes the aitrain had elevated to a height of perhaps a hundred meters and begun to give off a soft light, filling the cove and the beach with enough illumination for people to move about easily and read documents. Kathree could now read the name of the ark, blazoned on its fuselage near the nose: Darwin . It must have been sent out from a big TerReForm base — most likely Haida, which served the northern Pacific coast.

The aitrain that they had deployed on the barge was a common enough military device. As such it was probably radiating in other wavelengths besides just visible light. It was a sort of all-in-one communications hub that was interconnecting everything that had line of sight to it, as well as uplinking to Denali and other installations in the ring.

Sleep was now out of the question for Kathree, and so she made her way down the crater to the beach. When she emerged from the brush she discovered Einstein and the Cyc, standing next to each other in a crossfire of lights, facing a camera. To one side, sorting through notes, was a new arrival, a tall Moiran woman with the posture, the self-possession, and the golden eyes of a fashion model. She wore clothing suited for the chilly, damp coast of Beringia. It hung on her slender but strong frame in a way that suggested it had been made for her, probably by a clever designer on the Great Chain.

Kathree didn’t have to get any closer to understand what was happening: the tall Moiran woman was producing just what Roskos Yur had asked for. She began by talking directly into a camera for some time, then interviewed Einstein and the Cyc. It was all being beamed live to the ring.

Kathree sat alone on the beach, hugging her knees and watching the woman do what she did and wondering what events in her life had caused her to shift into what she was now, so tall, so lovely, so watchable. She did not have the manner of one who had been born beautiful, which made Kathree suspect that she had come by it through some kind of personal disaster. After she was finished doing her interviews, she shut down the lights and the cameras, approached Esa Arjun, and stood face-to-face with him for a while, just talking. Both of them had put on varps and Kathree got the idea that they were conversing about whatever it was that the devices were projecting into their eyes.

Kathree became certain that Kath Two had seen the woman broadcasting from trouble spots around the ring: habitats where general strikes or civil disorder had gotten out of hand, where Quarantine Enforcement or police had been called in to break things and hurt people.

The mere fact that Kathree was sitting still long enough to make such observations and to string such thoughts together was indicative of a coming crash — the inevitable result of how she had spent most of the day. It was about halfway between midnight and dawn, and Kathree felt herself plummeting toward sleep with the same power and inevitability as Endurance diving into her final pass through perigee.

Instead of which she found herself gazing at, and being gazed at by, the tall Moiran woman, who had silently drawn almost to within arm’s length of her. Kathree jumped to her feet and nearly fell over.

“Kath Amalthova Three,” the woman said, “I am Cantabrigia Barth Five.”

Five . Wow. “You must have seen some crazy shit,” Kathree said. “I hope for your sake you have taken a set in your current form.”

Cantabrigia Five made a tiny movement of her golden eyes, by way of acknowledging the remark, but let it pass without comment. “I am what amounts to the commanding officer here,” she said.

It was neither the craziest nor the least crazy thing Kathree had heard lately, so she took it impassively. By outward appearances, Cantabrigia Five was a video journalist. But it made sense that, in a world where no police or military action could be judged successful unless it looked good to ordinary persons watching it on video screens, she was also a general.

Arjun had approached from behind Cantabrigia Five and now took up a position just to one side, peering over her right shoulder. He caught Kathree’s eye briefly and nodded.

“Over the wireless,” said Cantabrigia Five, “I just now spoke to Sergeant Major Yur and Lieutenant Tomov and Langobard, and gave them their instructions. These are yours . A small Red military force is approaching. They are still some hours away. We have intelligence that they are being guided this way by two Diggers familiar with the route. When they get here, there may or may not be a fight. If there is, do not enter into it directly. Stay clear of our buckies. Look for the Diggers. If you can prevent them from doing harm, by all means do so. But dead Diggers on a video screen is a thing we can-not afford.”