43
The blast of the Moray hitting the riever blew over Rev’s head as he gently descended the hole. He wasn’t weightless. He could feel the Mother’s pull. He could feel Pashu dragging on his shoulder, but he wasn’t falling. He was slowly descending as if in a floorless elevator. The farther he went, the lighter the shaft became, the stone walls glowing a muted light blue.
He wasn’t sure how far down he went—possibly a hundred meters, possibly a bit more. But whatever was lowering him deposited him gently on the floor. He turned around . . . and froze.
Facing him were three Centaurs. Not armored Centaurs, but three versions of Hank, the body he and Tomiko had recovered. They were not human, but there were enough similarities that freaked Rev out more than a little. That could be due to parallel evolution, Rev knew, but the briefs they’d had mentioned that their DNA was similar, too.
About a meter tall, their pale skin looked sickly in the blue glow. Each of them had what looked to be oxygen cannulas running into the three gashes he and Tomiko had assumed were Hank’s equivalent of a nose. If they were cannulas, they weren’t connected to a tank, however, the best Rev could see.
Like Hank, if these three had eyes, they weren’t obvious, and their two bony-looking arms bifurcated into three limbs topped with anemone-like tentacles.
“We welcome the opportunity to communicate with you,” the one in the front said.
Rev just stared at them. This was simply beyond his imagination. This . . . this tin-ass . . . was talking to him in accentless Standard. It may be a little formal usage, but it spoke better than many Marines he knew.
What was a Marine suppose to say to a Centaur? Their job was to kill them, not hold a conversation. But he had to say something.
“Who are you?” was the best he could do.
“We are who you refer to as Scutum-Centaursians.”
“I know that. I mean you. Who are you? And what do you want?”
There was a pause that reminded Rev of the way some people paused to consult with their battle buddy.
“We are the Three.”
Rev took back his previous opinion that they spoke perfect Standard. He had no idea what the thing was saying.
“What do you want with me? Why am I here?”
“We wish to show you something. Please follow us.”
They turned, almost in unison, and proceeded down the passage. Rev watched for a moment, and then after a glance back up the shaft, shrugged and followed. He was already this deep into it, and he might as well see it through.
He ran his right hand along the walls as he walked. He could tell they were the native rock, but they were completely smooth to his fingertip. Curious, he extended Pashu’s much more sensitive fingers. They couldn’t discern any variations of the surface. That this small group of Centaurs, with nothing that looked like heavy construction equipment, had created a tunnel like this was almost as impressive as the lift he’d ridden down to this level—and it was just one more piece of evidence that they were far more technologically advanced than humans.
The fact that humans had managed to hold them off so far was nothing short of a miracle.
Well, that and the fact that we’ve been willing to throw bodies at them.
There was no sign of the other Centaurs, and there were no branches to the tunnel. It just kept descending. Underground or not, Rev should know where he was. The Mother’s magnetic field was well known, after all, and it had been downloaded into his battle buddy. But while Rev had an idea of his location, it was rather fuzzy, which would be the best way to describe it.
They passed six mini-Centaurs, all quiet as they lined the walls. They weren’t quite the same as those on Tenerife, but the similarities were strong, and it was immediately clear that these weren’t manned. Which meant it was probable that along with the two paladins and the riever, there had only been six living Centaurs at this site.
And then they were at the end of the tunnel. The three Centaurs turned and faced Rev. Just beyond them, what looked like an upside-down saucer, the kind little kids used to slide on the snow, was on the ground.
“Do you know what this is?” the talking Centaur asked.
“No.”
The Centaur turned to the others. Rev couldn’t hear anything, but there was an annoying itch deep inside his ears. Rev wondered if they were telepathic but dismissed it. If their DNA had a passing resemblance to humans, then telepathy was probably out. Given their technological superiority, Occam’s Razor would indicate they had some sort of high-tech communicators, something like Rev’s battle buddy, and by using it, Rev’s own augments were reacting.
It turned back to him and pointed to the wall. “Please record this.” A moment later, a string of barely recognizable symbols flashed across the wall.”
“I don’t understand what that means,” Rev said as the symbols ceased.
<That is SESSI. It’s a somewhat arcane programming language.>
“Please upload that to your decision-makers.”
“I can’t. You’ve blocked off all communications,” Rev said.
The talking Centaur tilted its head in an almost human gesture, and Rev’s comms came alive.
“Sergeant Pelletier, this is Tango-Foxtrot-Three-Three. What is your situation?” immediately blasted over his comms receiver.
A second later, another voice reached out to him. “This is Admiral LaPlata. What the hell are you doing? I want an update, and I want it now!”
“Can you read this SESSI?” Rev asked Punch, ignoring the admiral for the moment.
<Not without the key. It was not in my initial download.>
“Do you think it’s a virus? All I did was a visual recording, so it should be safe, but I don’t want to upload it and end up taking down the entire system.”
<Theoretically, it could be. Do you think it is?>
“I don’t know.” He looked at the Centaurs. He didn’t see any eyes, but he was sure they were “looking” at him, however they did that.
The admiral was getting angry, screaming for Rev to answer.
Rev made up his mind. “I am with three Centaurs. They have a message they want me to send to you. It’s in SESSI, and I made a visual recording. I don’t know if it somehow contains a virus.”
The admiral shut up for a long moment, then came back and said, “We’ve isolated this feed. Send it.”
“Do it.”
<Done. And comms went back down the moment I sent it.>
“So, we’re cut off again. Figures.”
He looked at the Centaurs as they stood in silence. Even the talking one was quiet now as if they were waiting for a response. Rev was put off by their arrogance. They told him to send up the visuals, and like a good little boy, he did it. But he didn’t have to remain a good little boy. He was a Marine, and his mission was to kill the bastards.
They had no armor that he could see. All he had to do was to power up, and he could fry them. Hell, from the looks of them, he didn’t even need to power up. One blow from Pashu would probably break them in two. If they really were the only three left, Rev could end it right here and now, and the temptation was growing to do just that.
But he held back. Something told him that for good or bad, he needed to see this through.
“What is that thing?” Rev finally asked.
“You do not have a word for it in your language. As close as we can describe it, it would be a planet-breaker.”
Rev’s heart fell to the bottom of his gut, and his mouth gaped open as he tried to wrap his mind around that.
“A planet-breaker? Like that thing can destroy the Mother?” he finally managed to choke out.
“Yes.”
“You can’t just say yes and leave it like that!” Rev sputtered out, taking two steps closer, Pashu raised.
The Centaurs seemed non-plussed.
“Yes, it can destroy your homeworld. It is webbed now. You gave us the time to accomplish that.”
Rev took a step toward it, Pashu half-raised. The Centaurs didn’t try to stop him. It didn’t seem like something big enough to destroy the planet, nothing like the huge Navy weapons designed to scour a planet. But the thing had mentioned “webbed,” and Rev believed it. This was a very real threat.
“Is that why you’re here? You’re going to destroy the Mother?” he asked, forcing his voice to remain calm.
“No.”
Once again, the frustrating single-word answer.
Off somewhere down the passage, Rev could hear faint shouting, Marines calling his name. He tuned them out.
“So, you aren’t going to use this thing? Then why put it here?”
“We will not destroy your homeworld. You might do it.”
Which made absolutely no sense to Rev. He turned back to them. “I don’t understand what you mean. We don’t want to harm the Mother. Earth.”
“This is what you so aptly refer to as a dead man’s switch.”
Rev didn’t like where this was going.
“Once you kill the last Three, it will detonate.”
“The last Three? You mean like you?”
More shouts, this time louder, reached him, and Rev half-turned to the passage.
“There are four Three’s left. You humans have killed the others.”
“You mean at the other sites where you landed.”
The Centaur said nothing, but Rev’s mind was churning. If what it said was true, that meant that at forty-five other objectives, the Raiders and Mad Dogs had succeeded . . . but at what cost? And Rev’s gut said the Centaur wasn’t lying. The three of them that had emerged from the tunnel hadn’t fought. They hadn’t even deployed their main cannon, nor had they self-destructed.
But what was their goal? Why were they doing this? If they just wanted to destroy the Mother, then they didn’t have to land and set up a dead man’s switch.
There’s only one way to find out.
“What do you want out of this?”
Rev felt the little itch again, and he was sure they were discussing the question.
Finally, the spokes-Centaur said, “We are a dying people.”
Rev just stared at it. That was in line with the brief the Raiders had received, but it was different hearing it from a Centaur. And why was it telling him this? It was hardly something he’d have thought a race would tell their enemies.
“We are not much older than you on a galactic scale, but still, we’re dying. We have more deep-seated deterioration at a genetic level, and our reproduction rate is down. Our population has plummeted to the point where our very survival is in jeopardy.”
“So, why start a war? You’re losing more of your people,” Rev said, faltering over the word. They weren’t people. They were scum.
But in a way, it made sense. Every time humans started to inflict damage on an invading force, the Centaurs retreated. If the situation was as bad as it said, then any losses could be too much to accept. Whereas humans, with their trillions, could afford to lose soldiers and sailors and still survive as a species.
“We are searching for an answer, hoping to find something that will help us. There are rumors that in the long ago, some of us spread out to populate the galaxy, maybe even distant galaxies, and we hoped to find them, if they even exist.”
Rev didn’t think there were any hidden pockets of Centaurs in this section of the galaxy. They would have been discovered. But he didn’t say that.
“You didn’t have to fight us. You can communicate with us. Why didn’t you do that?”
“Do you communicate with rats?”
Rev frowned. Despite their differences, he could hear the condescension in its voice. “That’s different. They’re vermin.”
The Centaur remained silent, and that pissed off Rev even more.
So, we’re vermin, huh?
“Rats can kill, you know. And so can we,” he almost snarled.
“But they are still rats. And you despise them.”
The fact that what the Centaur said was true didn’t make Rev accept the entire concept.
“So, is that what this is? You’re the exterminators? You want to kill us all?”
The Centaur jerked its head back a few centimeters, and Rev could swear it was laughing. “We can no more eliminate your kind than you can eliminate rats. Even where we have cleansed a planet of your kind, there are still rats surviving.”
Rev wanted to lash out, to destroy that arrogant piece of crap. When it said “cleansed a planet,” it meant genocide. It took a tremendous strength of will to refrain, knowing that the fate of the Mother might rest in what he did over the next few minutes.
The shouting was getting louder. The team was getting closer.
“Tell me, then. If you don’t want to eliminate us, then what do you want?”
“We want you to save us.”
* * *
Rev’s mind was blank. What the Centaur said made no sense at all. His mouth gaped like a goldfish in the tank, but nothing came out.
Finally, he managed to ask, “Save you? How?”
“If we knew that, then we wouldn’t need you.”
He could make out Strap’s voice, yelling at him to hang on, that they were coming. If he had comms, he’d tell them to hold up. He had to get to the bottom of this.
“But we . . . uh, you are more technologically advanced than us. What makes you think we can do anything.”
“You are aware of the simian foamy virus, correct?”
Rev nodded. The SMV was a small parasite, one of many that have lived in human bodies probably since they came out of the African grasslands. They hadn’t caused many problems, nor had they provided a benefit. Until, that is, humans were hit by the GMM-26 pandemic. Hundreds of millions of people died until the connection was made. Those with higher populations of SMV survived; those with lower populations usually died. The parasite was grown in industrial quantities and spread throughout humanity until the tech developed to create nanos designed to do the same thing.
Rev wondered two things. First, how the heck did the Centaurs know about that? Second, what did that have to do with the situation?
“Yes,” he said. It was his turn for a blunt answer.
“You understand, then, how a lower life-form can save a higher one.”
So, you’re not even trying to hide the fact that you think you’re higher than us.
He had to bite his tongue.
“But we’re not an SMV. You haven’t told me why you think we can help you.”
The speaker turned back to the other two again, and they conferred for a moment. “You have already shown a proclivity for the life sciences.”
“Huh?”
“You have developed a plague that is ravishing our people. We can see what you did, but not how, nor how we can stop it.”
The gat? The virus? They can’t stop it?
Rev first felt a surge of elation, the thrill of victory. But the overturned saucer on the floor of the tunnel covering who knew exactly what brought him back down. Letting the virus kill off the people would not save the Mother.
But maybe that’s the price we have to pay for all of humanity. And wouldn’t a mother sacrifice herself for her children?
The thought was almost too much to bear, but there it was. He was tempted to mow the three down and just wait for the last few Threes, as it called them, to be killed as well.
<Ask for the specific action they want.>
Rev had half-raised Pashu, but Punch’s order, the first he’s ever made, shook him out of that frame of mind.
“You want us to save you? Do you mean stop the virus we created, or something else?”
“Stop the plague you unleashed first. But then use your biological capabilities to save our people. Don’t let us die.”
“And suppose we do? Then what. Then you cleanse our planets?”
“Did you exterminate the simian foamy virus?”
Rev didn’t want to admit that made sense. But why would humans trust the creatures that had killed so many of them? What possible motive would they have to step up and save an evil race instead of letting it die out? And that was assuming they had the ability to do so.
“Why should we do this? What would be our benefit?”
“Your homeworld would be spared in the immediate term. But we would stop all aggression, immediately leaving your territory. And as you are primitive in so many ways, we would share our technology with you. Nothing held back.”
Rev had flashes of Centaur ships, rising majestically off a planet’s surface without blasting everything underneath with its exhaust. Anti-gravity, the holy grail of human physics. That alone would boost the entire human economy.
But these are the enemy. Think of who we’ve lost. And most of all, can we trust them.
“And you can promise that?”
“We are a Three,” it said, as if that answered the question.
He could now hear footsteps running toward him. The team would be here any moment, introducing another dynamic into the situation.
“What if I agreed to this? Can you stop that planet-breaker?”
For the first time, the Centaurs seemed surprised by what he said. They conferred for a moment before the first one said, “You are not a decision-maker. You are a sergeant, a low-ranking human. How can you formalize an agreement?”
“I can. Take it or leave it,” Rev said. “My team is almost here, and I can’t promise how they will react.”
“We will not disengage the planet-breaker, but if your team does not kill us, then it will not detonate. If you can deliver what you promise with the plague, and if you agree to use your capabilities to save our people, then with those caveats, we accept.”
“What the hell have I just done?” he whispered.
<You have given Earth a temporary respite, at least.>
“But I can’t deliver. It was right. I’m just a Marine sergeant.”
<Then what you promised will have no bearing, and the Earth may still be destroyed. You have postponed that, and that gives humanity more breathing room to come to a solution.>
“There he is!” Strap shouted.
Rev spun around. With Strap in the lead, the entire team was running down the passage. He could see it in Strap’s eyes when he saw the Centaurs and started to raise his M-49.
“Stop!” Rev screamed, putting his body between his team and the Centaurs. “Don’t fire!”
With a confused look on his face, Strap slid to a stop. “Get out of the way!”
“I said stop!” Rev shouted again, putting every gram of authority he could in his voice.
Strap looked back as the master guns and Tomiko came up alongside him.
“Master Guns, do not fire. You can’t kill these tin-asses.”
“What the fuck are you doing, Pelletier?” the team leader asked, his eyes locked on the three Centaurs. “And why can’t we waste them. That’s our mission.”
“Because if you do, the Mother will be destroyed. They’ve got the planet rigged with a dead man’s switch, and if all of them die, it detonates.”
“What are you talking about?”
Rev pointed at the overturned saucer. “That right there. Or what’s beneath it. It’ll blow the place.”
“And how do you know that?”
“They told me.”
“Rev, are you sure about this?” Tomiko asked in a quiet voice.
“Yes, Miko, I am.”
“Pelletier, start at the beginning, from why you followed those tin-asses to what the hell line of BS you’re trying to feed me now.”
Rev took a deep breath and started from the paladins and the riever not fighting back, to meeting the Three and following them down the passage, to what they’d told him about their situation, and to what they wanted now.
“Did they give you any proof, or are you just trusting them?” the team leader asked when he was finished.
“Yes. I mean yes to the proof. At least, I think so. They had me visually record a bunch of code. SESSI, Punch said it was. And I sent it up the chain.”
“Comms has been out, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“They gave me a window. I sent it to some admiral.”
The master guns slowly shook his head. “So, we’re supposed to just stand here and wait? Are you still in contact with the command?”
“I’m not in contact now. And I’ve already . . . uh . . . I’ve already reached an agreement with the tin-asses.”
“You what?”
Rev looked back at the three Centaurs, who looked like they hadn’t moved a centimeter. He returned to the master gunnery sergeant.
“I said we agree with their demands. We’ll give them an antidote for the virus, and we’ll try to figure out why they’re dying. They won’t blow up the Mother, they’ll stop attacking us, and they’ll share their technology with us.”
It wasn’t just the master guns who were shocked into silence. Tomiko and the rest obviously couldn’t believe their ears.
“And what gave you the idea that you could go around making promises like that, for the Mother’s sake?”
“Exactly. For the Mother’s sake. It was that or . . .” He trailed off, giving the saucer a glance.
The master guns closed his eyes, took in a deep breath, then slowly let it out.
“Sergeant Pelletier, you are a nexus of chaos, do you know that? You attract it like flies to honey. And in your wake, you leave death and ruined careers. I was warned about you, but stupid me, I thought I could tame you. I evidently thought wrong.”
Rev didn’t think that was fair, and he wanted to protest. This wasn’t his fault, nor were any of the other things that had happened to him since he was conscripted. Everything he’d done was for a reason, and he thought the right reason. But he bit his tongue. He knew better than to challenge the master gunnery sergeant.
“Tell your friends there that you need to communicate with the command.”
“So, you believe me?”
“Hell, no, I don’t believe you. I think this is so much bullshit. But unlike you, Sergeant, I’m not taking responsibility for this. This is so far above my pay grade that I can’t even see it, much less take action.”
Rev caught Tomiko’s eyes. She didn’t give him a smile or a supporting nod, and that hurt him more than anything else. He turned and stepped closer to the Centaurs.
“It would seem that you are not a decision-maker as you said you were,” the Centaur said.
“You are mistaken. I am. But now, I need to report to my command to tell them what I’ve agreed to.”
The Centaur did nothing.
“Look. Letting me talk to my command is the only way we can proceed. If you don’t, my team is going to kill you. And if you are the last ones, then the Mother will be destroyed, and no one will know of your situation and what you need. The Mother will be gone, and any hope your people have for help will have vanished.”
One of the other two Centaurs said, “Wise words.”
Immediately, Rev was assaulted by a blast over his receiver. “I’ve got him!” a voice shouted, followed a moment later by the admiral.
“Sergeant Pelletier, do you see some kind of weapon? If you do, you have to deactivate it. It will destroy the Mother if it detonates. We’ve got troops inbound, but do what you can.”
“Admiral, I’ve got the three Centaurs here. They—”
“Kill them now before they set the thing off.”
“I can’t.”
“Don’t tell me what you can’t do, son. It might be up to you to save the Mother. I don’t care what they’ve done to you, you have to—”
“SHUT UP!” Rev said, at the end of his rope.
There was a moment of stunned silence, and Rev took advantage of it.
“Send up the recording of what’s gone on here. All of it,” he ordered his battle buddy. Then, to the admiral, he said, “I just sent you up a record. I suggest you watch it. The bottom line is that the weapon you just told me to destroy somehow is detonated by a dead man’s switch. If these Centaurs are killed, it will go off, and I guess you know what will happen then.”
“Sergeant—”
“I said shut up, Admiral. This is too important. The Centaurs have their demands, and in return, they’ll spare the Mother, stop the war, and transfer technology to us.”
The admiral hesitated, and in a tight voice, said, “We will look at the recording, Sergeant, and if I deem fit, I will forward it to the Council.”
That was the second time in just a few minutes that “Sergeant” had been used almost as a curse.
“How they decide to proceed will be up to them, but you are to watch over those tin-asses. I don’t want them getting anywhere close to that weapon. Is there anything else you need to tell me?”
Rev could tell that the admiral was fuming, but he was smart enough to know that he needed Rev right where he was and able to contact him. But as soon as this was over, if Rev and the Mother managed to survive, he knew the admiral would take his revenge on the upstart sergeant.
“Yes, sir,” Rev said, trying to put just as much disdain into the “sir” as the admiral put into sergeant. “There is one thing. All you and the Council have to do is put this in motion. I’ve already agreed to the terms.”
“I don’t believe I heard you correctly.”
“I said, I’ve already agreed to the tin-asses’ terms. You just need to figure out how to do our side of the bargain.”
“You are way in over your head, Sergeant, and we’ll have a reckoning, you and me, rest assured of that.”
“I’m serious, sir. I already made the agreement.”
“OK, I’ll play along. Why should I care whatever you might have promised the enemy of humankind?
“Because I was the senior military member at the scene.”
“And so?”
“The Torinth Accords, Paragraph 5.23.2. I came to terms with an enemy combatant, and we are legally bound by that agreement.”
He waited for a response. That had worked on the asteroid with the Frisians, but this was something much different. Not the least was that the Centaurs were not signatories. But it was worth a shot.
There was dead silence until another voice came over the comms. “Sergeant Pelletier, you are to stay in your present position. Keep this channel clear, and someone will get back to you.”
Rev turned around to the master guns. He’d heard everything Rev had said, and he could probably guess what the other side had said.
“Nexus of chaos, Pelletier. You do know, though, that the command doesn’t give a shit about the Torinth Accords, Paragraph whatever. They can ignore that if they want and stash you in a dungeon so deep underground that not even the rats can find you.”
Rev shrugged and said, “No, they can’t. If they want to ignore me, the Mother will be history, with you, me, and everyone else blasted into our component atoms.”
The team leader nodded. “You’re probably right about that.” He used the muzzle of his M-49 to point at the three Centaurs. “But do you really think they’re on the up-and-up?”
Rev shifted his look to Tomiko. She gave him a half-smile, her eyes broadcasting worry. He didn’t know if it was for him or for the entire situation.
“I don’t know, Master Guns. I really don’t. But they have more to lose than we do, I think. And this is just too important to us—and to them, I guess—for us to act without taking everything into account. And as my battle buddy reminded me, if nothing else, I’ve bought the Mother a little bit more time.”
The master guns grunted.
“Besides, it felt good to shove the Accords up that pompous admiral’s ass.”