Christopher Nuttall: Storming Heaven

“And let that be an end to it,” Patti said, fervently. Rupert nodded slowly, bowing his great head. The Spacer had added several more augmentations since the last time she’d seen him, including a device intended to allow direct communication with the Killers. She’d heard that some of the Spacers intended to work hand-in-hand with the Killers over the next few centuries, particularly the Builder Killers. They had some grand scheme that could only be accomplished by combining both races and their technology. “Is that it?”

“It does seem rather anticlimactic compared to the war,” Rupert agreed. Beside him, the Killer sphere glowed brighter for a moment. “”The Youngest agrees with you, but thinks that it’s time to end it permanently.”

Patti had to smile as she stared into the glowing sphere. Who would have guessed, before the first successful capture of a Killer starship, that the Killers remembered the First Enemy so clearly that it might as well have been yesterday. It had fuelled their determination to wipe out what they had thought were thousands of colony worlds belonging to the First Enemy and even though Patti couldn’t understand how they had believed that humans were the same as some other race, it made sense from their point of view… and uncounted billions had died. It could never be allowed to happen again.

“I agree,” she said, firmly. The glowing sphere daunted her. “We won’t let it happen again.”

Andrew found himself, once again, taking part in a simulated conference involving hundreds of thousands of Captains and their senior officers. The end of the war had brought a complex mixture of emotions to the Defence Force; they’d won, in the end, so what now? They had existed as something apart from the Community, yet charged with its defence against the Killers and keeping the peace between settlements. The Killers were no longer a threat — he remembered the wavefront of white light that had melted an entire Dyson Sphere and shivered — and already human disputes were coming to the fore. What would happen when different groups started fighting over planets?

“You all did well,” Brent said, from the podium. The simulated room fell silent, although Andrew couldn’t decide if everyone had gone quiet for their commander’s benefit, or if the processors running the program had dampened out the noise. Either was possible and, now that the war had come to an end, discipline was frayed. “We won the war. Can I ask for a moment of silence on behalf of the dead?”

Andrew bowed his head along with the rest of the Captains. Too many had died in the Battle of the Sphere, as it was already being called. Two thousand starships had been destroyed outright by the killers, another four hundred had been caught and destroyed by the wavefront of Cracker energy, or smashed into the Dyson Sphere by the powerful gravity beams the Killers had unleashed in a final attempt to save part of their communications network. No one had relished having to fight another such battle, or perhaps a series of such battles, yet without the peace treaty, it would have been impossible to avoid. The Defence Force needed time to rest and recuperate.

“Some of you will discover that your starships are being converted into survey craft to explore the areas of the galaxy we never touched in a thousand years,” Brent continued. “The remainder of you will continue to serve as warriors, as soldiers , until we know what the future holds. It would be unwise of us to no longer maintain a deterrent force; after all, the Killers may no longer be a threat, but who knows what else is out there, waiting for us?”

Andrew nodded slowly. The one lesson that humans should have learned, in their history, was that peace was often only the space between wars. Those who wanted peace — permanent peace — needed to prepare for war, even at cost. The Community, with an infinite level of resources, could build and maintain a vast military without having to drain civilian resources. By combining human and Killer technologies, who knew what they might be able to develop?

Afterwards, he found himself in front of the Admiral himself. “You’re being given a number of medals,” Brent confirmed, once they had exchanged greetings. “You’re also being given a new mission. You’re to hunt for the remainder of the Ghosts.”

Andrew blinked. “Sir,” he said, “the Ghosts are dead!”

“Perhaps,” Brent said. “As you know, we’ve been comparing notes with our… opposite numbers among the Killers. They noted possible traces of a third race living within a hundred light years of the Ghost System. They also never did anything about it, although I’m not entirely sure why. Some of the Killers actually studied the various races and one of them may have decided to leave them alone to see what would happen.”

“But that would have meant that they understood that the races were different,” Andrew pointed out, in disbelief.

“Not really,” Brent countered. “Inside a typical asteroid settlement, there are humans with three eyes, or four arms, or five testicles, yet they’re all the same race. Still…”

He leaned forward. “The bottom line is that the Killers are alien, Andrew, and they don’t think like us. They may decide, for no reason that makes sense to us, to go back to war tomorrow. If that happens… if it comes to another war, we’re not going to have to sneak around for a thousand years. The Defence Force will develop the weapons needed to beat the Killers quickly, whatever the politicians have to say about it. Understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Andrew said.

“But tell me,” Chiyo99 said. “What am I?”

“You are the last of Lieutenant Chiyo Takahashi,” Tabitha Cunningham said, calmly. They stood together in the MassMind, watching the endless flow of thoughts and feelings spinning through the network. The MassMind was talking to the Killers. For the first time in its existence, it had something that it could talk to on even terms. “The Killer that took her — you — swallowed the remainder of her and you’re all that’s left. You are her.”

“I don’t know,” Chiyo99 admitted. “I feel like a ghost of a ghost.”

“That’s not uncommon when duplication happens,” Tabitha said. “The Killers didn’t mean to allow you — her — to exist within their network at all, even though it was evident that their network was capable of holding you. She duplicated herself because the network wasn’t configured to prevent that from happening and… she created you. And now you’re having problems adjusting to being the last of her.”

“Problems,” Chiyo99 repeated. “I don’t even know if I’m real.”

Tabitha smiled. “I don’t know either,” she admitted. “Am I the same Tabitha who managed to save a tiny fraction of humanity from the Killers, or am I just a ghost within the machine with delusions of grandeur? In the end, the best I can do is stop thinking about it. I have an existence on my own and it doesn’t matter if I am part of her or something new.”

“But I am not her,” Chiyo99 said. She looked up towards the MassMind and smiled grimly. “Thank you for everything, but…”

She threw herself up into the MassMind and vanished.

“Suicide,” Tabitha said, although she had to admit that she didn’t know for sure. Chiyo99 would add her diversity to the MassMind and would live on in some form. For an instant, she faced the temptation to do the same, before pushing the thought firmly aside. There was still so much to do. “Good luck.”

She opened her eyes slowly, wincing against the light that poured in and struck daggers down her optic nerves.