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  ‘To defend Earth by whichever means are deemed necessary.’

  ‘Deemed necessary by whom?’ prompted Jones.

  ‘The acting Fleet Admiral.’

  She didn’t like that Halley didn’t name her, but she could hardly call Halley out on it and be so pedantic in front of the conference of her team and that of all ships. Personal presence from the other Captains wasn’t sensible at the current stage of space expertise. Ship-to-ship excursions were dangerous and with communications crisp and clear would be a needless risk.

  Jones took over. ‘Thank you, Halley. Any questions at this juncture?’ she asked.

  She thought there would be a barrage of questions, but none spoke. They were all very smart people. Questions would come but they were listening and thinking before speaking. She was grateful for a lull because she was tired and though loath to admit it, Admiral Jones was scared – she was going to try to bring an alien artefact aboard, and burn a planet and if she couldn’t get the soldiers on the ground up and safe? She would have to relive Fayetteville over again and sacrifice her own soldiers once more because leaving the threat and the artefact on Zoa behind for the Cephal to use was not an option.

  ‘One nuclear weapon,’ said Jones with a heavy sigh and leaden heart, ‘is accompanying the engineering team to the site of the warp conflux – the portal. From there two battalions, marine and armoured, will enter the portal and deliver the weapon. Their orders are to destroy a structure on the other side’

  Only a few truly understood what was on the table. She didn’t want to be the one to tell them, but this wasn’t something an Admiral should, or could, delegate. Her first question came not from her seven staff at the table, but one of the observers.

  ‘Admiral? A structure?’

  She nodded, accepting the question and tried to address it as fully as she could.

  ‘Yes. It is alien, and of the same material as the Cephal’s armour, and the rings surrounding the portals. We work on the assumption that it, too, is Cephal. The portal through which Fleet came is a two-way street, which gives us great hope of returning to Earth. The portal on Zoa is however far smaller.’ She remembered well the sensation of travelling through a conflux. It was an experience she would never forget. ‘An exploratory scout vehicle has travelled through the conflux on Zoa and found this. Halley, please?’

  ‘Ma’am,’ said Halley. Halley’s face on the wall disappeared to show the image from the other side of the portal; a giant, golden ziggurat of impossible proportions on a flat plain.

  There was a commotion from around the table, and Jones allowed it to continue for a moment.

  ‘We do not know if it is a command centre, a stronghold, or a forward post. I admit it is largely supposition. Scans indicate a large body of resistance between the site and the...pyramid.’ Jones called it that pyramid because that was what it most looked like to her. A blocky Mayan or Cambodian style pyramid, rather than the smooth sided pyramids of somewhere like the Valley of Kings.

  ‘I face the choice of risking a longer excursion we do not have the resources for,’ she continued, ‘or bringing back the portal and making all available attempts to end the Cephal and Zoan threat to Earth. I cannot justify this with our capabilities. Once the team is on site we may not get another opportunity. They are volunteers and they understand the import of their sacrifice...’

  ‘Sacrifice?’ asked another of the five observers.

  The Admiral lowered her head. ‘Yes. An A.T. is being adapted to carry the nuclear payload and those brave souls who will deliver it will not return.

  ‘We can accept no chance that the portal or the structure can continued to be used by hostile forces. In precisely one twenty-four hour cycle this Fleet will annihilate the planet below.’

  ‘This is unnecessary, Admiral, surely?’

  ‘With our resources, it is entirely necessary,’ she told her dubious communications officer. She had doubts, too. But how could she allow doubt to pass her features here, now, where her authority was paramount? ‘This is the safest, surest way to achieve our primary goal. Earth’s safety must be our focus.’

  Jones spotted Mamet entering the bridge, and afforded the linguistic the smallest of smiles in acknowledgement.

  ‘I make this decision with the deepest sorrow. We have encountered alien life and found it unrelentingly hostile. Our primary objective must be upheld. We end it now. We shall remember them, and honour them, but we will close this doorway to Earth forever.’

  Want and duty rarely met. Delphine understood Jones’ position. There was the smallest of nods to each other. Humanity’s protection came before scientific advancement. Delphine and Jones knew they could not advance science and ensure Earth’s safety, too.

  ‘Lord Death be beside us,’ whispered someone.

  45.

  Twice Shy

  - Kiyoko Jones

  The following morning, preparations complete for the surface portion of the mission, Delphine understood when Jones told her she needed to be alone and didn’t push. Jones was grateful, because she felt that this might well be the last journal entry she sent back to Earth’s system. Matters were coming to a close.

  As she wrote, her stylus was unsteady against her matt-pad, and her writing not her usual neat hand. Even her writing betrayed her mixed emotions about her decision.

  She wrote:

  What is my ultimate purpose in coming through the portal? To discover new planets? No. To control those planets? No.

  My purpose is to end the threat to humanity.

  To this end, I make a choice. Is that goal best served by understanding the enemy? One of my advisors, Dr. Mamet, is very persuasive on that matter. To return with anything which might help us understand the Cephal, their technology, and in doing so perhaps discover the Cephal’s motivations. However, I must believe that we cannot know without supposition, since we don’t understand any method by which they communicate. In seven years, we have made no headway. So, do I risk all to explore in the faint hope we might learn here what we did not in seven years, facing a horde of invaders, with more minds available to us?

  Our shipboard AI, the most advanced detached unit outside Global Net, recommends global death. In this, I am for once inclined to agree with a computer over a human.

  Does this serve humanity best?

  I can but answer in the affirmative, for lack of a better option any can see, and I have authorised the nuclear option on an entire planet.

  Even now, as I write this missive, we work toward finishing this place we named Zoa with the weapons fleet has available. Perhaps it might not be achievable.

  We – no, that responsibility rests on my tired shoulders alone – I, have agreed to wipe an entire planet from all chance of redemption. We will abandon a force of Earth’s bravest warriors though they might live, or die, fail, or succeed in their mission on the other side of the portal we destroy.

  What a choice...and to have to make it once again.

  Kiyoko Jones tears dropped onto her pad. She wiped them away, and leaned back. For a moment, she tried to stop herself from crying. But why? No one was around.

  She sobbed until her head and faced ached with it.

  Then, she squared her shoulders, as she always did when she knew there was no other way. There was a job to be done. It was more than unpleasant. It was sickening…but that didn’t change the fact that it had to be done, did it?

  Does this moment decide if I go into history as a coward, a fool, a conquering hero?

  It does not feel like a victory to me.

  But in these moments, the greatest and the most foolish among us must stand. Our aim is clear. Disable the enemy. Protect Earth. That’s paramount.

  Signed: Kiyoko Jones

  1st Admiral A.U.F Boston

  1st Admiral A.U.F.

  She loaded her missive, and remotely fired her drone on autopilot through the space warp conflux and back to Saturn, where it would float and wait to be picked up by the A.U. Nash, an
d perhaps one day become a testament to tenacity, or idiocy. Only history would be able to tell which.

  *

  Kiyoko asked Delphine to breakfast. When Delphine arrived though, she was quiet and her thoughtful, almost sad expression marred her fine features.

  ‘What is it, Delphine?’ asked Kiyoko, putting down her spoon. It didn’t matter that she was the Admiral. She ate the same pretend-proteins as everyone else aboard the ship. The gravity fluctuations in orbit around the new planet played havoc with her appetite, too, so she didn’t mind the break from forcing herself to take on nutrition.

  ‘If there was any chance that the team could complete their mission and be retrieved, somehow...would it be possible to wait?’

  ‘Place the payload at the alien structure and leave the portal, you mean? Delphine, I understand what you’re saying, but we can’t risk Fleet or this mission.’

  ‘Not even one ship?’

  Kiyoko gave it her honest consideration. Delphine was wise enough to let her think on it without interruption.

  ‘Answer me this, Delphine. Do you think Halley has our best interests in mind?’ asked Kiyoko eventually. ‘You think she serves humanity, or, is it possible she serves Global Net instead?’

  ‘An AI, disloyal?’

  ‘Why not? It thinks. It has a personality.’

  ‘I don’t trust her, no,’ admitted Delphine. ‘But Kiyoko, where are you going with this?’

  ‘All this time a question has niggled at me. Why didn’t Global Net predict or prevent the Zoan and Cephal invasion? If they came from the Keppler Gap, there was time for a warning and we received none. The explanation of jamming, or some catastrophic failure caused by the Cephal? It never did sit right with me.’

  It was Delphine’s turn to think that over.

  ‘Did anyone ever ask it?’ she said. ‘I mean, personally? Not through StratInt?’

  Now that was a good question.

  ‘I honestly don’t know. I only know what is assumed, common, knowledge. I never saw any evidence to support the explanation, but...I don’t trust it. Maybe it’s irrational, but between you and I it’s the reason I refuse to host StratInt on the Boston.’

  ‘Halley’s an extension, though. If StratInt were here, wouldn’t they give the same advice, stick to the same strategies, as Halley herself? What about asking Halley? Asking her why?’

  ‘Halley isn’t Global Net,’ Kiyoko pointed out.

  ‘But whatever else she is, whatever her loyalties, she is an AI. Perhaps Halley might think like an AI. Think in ways a human might not.’

  ‘I’ll talk to her,’ agreed Kiyoko.

  ‘My other question?’ said Delphine. ‘What does Halley have to do with whether it’s possible to leave even one ship or skeleton crew?’

  ‘I wish we could,’ said Kiyoko. The thought of just giving up on those who would go through the portal to deliver a nuclear bomb to the alien structure was horrific, and memories of Fayetteville never faded. ‘I’m not confident Halley is on our side, Delphine. We’d need this ship, or one of the others, and all are reliant on AI.’ She didn’t feel the need to whisper, like Halley might monitor seditious conversations. She wasn’t paranoid. She didn’t feel paranoid, anyway.

  How would I know if I was? Maybe I’m space psychotic after all.

  ‘You’re the Admiral,’ said Delphine, reminding Kiyoko of the obvious. ‘If you order Halley to answer, or order her to do anything...isn’t she programmed to comply?’

  Kiyoko stared at Delphine. ‘You’re honestly suggesting I should leave behind a ship in case those marines find a way back?’

  ‘No,’ said Delphine. ‘I’m suggesting that Halley runs this ship almost entirely on her own. I’m not suggesting any ship. I mean us. You and I. If not you, I would be willing to stay behind.’

  ‘Should Halley prove loyal to us, not this mission?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m proposing. There’s only one way to find out where Halley’s loyalties lay, isn’t there? Ask her.’

  Kiyoko wasn’t interested in her bland breakfast. Her mind raced at the thought of it. The practicalities. She would have to helm the Boston, and she was willing to stay behind if there was even the slightest chance she might bring marines home and not condemn them to death. Was there any way they might be able to achieve both goals – saving human lives here, and n Earth?

  If Halley would help...

  There was a chance, and she couldn’t ignore it.

  ‘Will you come with me to the bridge? Speak with Halley with me? I value your thoughts.’

  ‘I will,’ Delphine told Jones.

  It was seven hours before they would either bring back the warp conflux to the bowels of the ship, or fail, but whatever else happened it was seven hours until they burned the planet back to bedrock, too.

  46.

  Cowards and Fools

  Vidar Dawes

  On Zoa we’d fought our way deep into those alien forests of red trees with nodes and questing mouths like coral, of hard plants which seemed more stone than organic matter. Perhaps the entire planet was some artificial, biomechanical breeding ground for war-beasts. We fought for vengeance, but Zoa - the planet or its teeming, varied lifeforms - were not the true enemy. It was clear to me after our short time on Zoa that blaming it, or killing the whole planet, wouldn’t be much more useful than screaming at rain for the cloud which unleashes it on your head. Perhaps every creature from Zoa itself was an unwilling slave to the Cephal masters.

  We couldn’t know, and I understood well enough. Maybe it was callous, maybe wrong, but if there was even a chance Zoa might be a factor in the destruction of humanity itself, I wasn’t going to cry about it.

  They told us to wait.

  Of all the discomforts, the dangers, the hardships of being in the army, waiting was my nemesis. I was terrible at inaction. I was infantry, and now I was a marine. Whatever name you put on it, I was built to fight. To go before others, not to follow on after. I might not have been born a marine, and I certainly wasn’t trained like career army had been, before the war.

  My training was holding a gun and not dying. I swear if there’s a better way to make a warrior, I’d have taken it.

  How can you call anyone a coward for not wanting to die? You can’t. And it was a choice, wasn’t it? No one was forcing us to go through to the new world to give our lives so that we might end the Cephal in their golden pyramid.

  The portal, or warp conflux, would be removed in part or whole behind us. There would be no going back.

  I didn’t blink when I volunteers to head through to the other side. It was automatic.

  Those who’d fit would come through. I was glad armoured would fit, though cavalry and their bikes wouldn’t and we could only take through three remaining smaller model bikes with us. I’d want armoured to have my back, for preference, every time.

  We weren’t just going to walk to the golden pyramid that waited for our nuclear missile. The scout drones showed a huge concentration of life forms on sensors, and we’d seen those same signatures for seven years. There were Zoan on the other side.

  We prepared kilograms of ammunition – as much as we could stow or carry – for what we expected would be a hard, protracted battle to the pyramid.

  We could have just sent a drone through to blow the portal on the other side. Perhaps it would have done the job. But if you’re going to fly hundreds of light years through space, you kind of want to get it right, don’t you? A drone might do the job, it might not, but inside that thing? Didn’t matter what it was. Some alien bastion, or Mount Olympus full of Cephal gods...stick a nuke in there, even Zeus’d be toast.

  Five thousand of us were going through. We weren’t a conquering force. We weren’t going there to win, but to die. I was fine with that. None of us were coward. Nobody thought badly of those who returned for evacuation prior to the strikes that would end Zoa.

  If you stepped through, knowing you weren’t coming back? That took guts or insanity.
We were Patriot Company. We had both.

  Part Six

  To Death March Tall

  The Citadel Demiworld – 2297 A.D.

  ‘...soldiers raged and toiled on senseless fields,

  Through ceaseless battles so embroiled cried ‘no!’,

  We shall never yield,

  Brothers, sisters, snatched away,

  ‘Fight!’ we say, no matter night, nor day,

  Tear and blood should fall,

  And though a heart might sob with black-dog sorrow,

  And those white-bone flowers mark each brave warriors’ burrow,

  Death’s bell chimes for all.’

  ‘Blood and Dirt’

  24th Unity Skald (Laureate Regina) May Yoshima

  Wide Earth Edda

  47.

  No Time for Wonder

  Vidar Dawes

  I’d never been so tired as I was in the constant running battle across fields of Velasan. It was hard to tell just how large the Citadel was from so far out. Deceptive, like coming up on a mountain, like taking a bus to the foothills of the Adirondacks and wondering how something like that could get so damn big the closer you came. It wasn’t a mountain, or a range of mountains. Just a golden peak, a pyramid. Maybe aliens had come to Earth, millennia ago, and taught us how to make triangles seem to sit atop jungles and deserts. That was just as likely as anything else in this improbably nightmare. I never dreamed this.

  That pyramid was the only thing breaking the flat, dull vista. The Cephal had to be in there. I could take that, I could face those blank-headed devils, but to not even bother to show up for a fight?

  Above us, the great dome held back space and endless strange constellations, and blackness.

  Velasan. Not a world, or a city, but something else. A place we got to by accident, almost, because we sure as hell didn’t know what we were doing. We stepped through a gate.