War in the Galaxy
A Science Fiction Novel
Read Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, and 22.
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23
The conference was being held in one of those cylindrical conference-houses a hundred stories tall and filled with floating walkways and expansive open vaults. Lilia wondered why this made for a better conference than an ordinary hotel or auditorium, but she didn’t organize conferences. At least this one wasn’t in a pyramid.
Lilia had been undercover enough to have attended a variety of trade conferences in her time. She’d noticed that venues had a habit of using trendy architecture to attract customers, and that conferencegoers seemed to particularly like gaudy or impressive building styles, as though there were something useful to the study of molecular biology about windows overlooking purple vistas or glass towers built into the sides of cliffs.
Lilia was at the conference primarily for one reason. Reni Haffenswen was going to be there. Haffenswen, she assumed, would also be undercover. Ostensibly, as a war-skeptical influencer, he had no reason to attend such a conference. But he’d registered under an alias – the agency was, of course, tracking his movements and activities – and signed up for several sessions on ancient viruses. It had, of course, crossed Lilia’s mind that Haffenswen knew the agency was on to him and had signed up for the conference in attempt to throw his pursuers off his tail. He was the biggest fish to fry of all the Wildprong dissidents.
It was while she was standing at the edge of a floating walkway, waiting for it to dock on the other side of the atrium, trying not to look at the empty forty stories below her, wishing the conference-house had just built a walkway running all the way around the wall, so that a person could take the long way instead of engaging in this performative floating-on-air exercise, that Lilia heard Dr. Sideney’s voice.
“It seems we always meet each other at chasms.”
She looked around. He was floating by on another walkway.
“Where are you going?” he asked her.
“To one of the panels on ancient viruses.”
“Isn’t that a little dry for you? A waste of time?”
“My employer wants a report on someone’s research there,” which was technically true.
Sideney nodded. “Perhaps I will catch up with you later,” he called as his walkway passed behind hers. “I’m going to meet an old friend.” The various other pedestrians on the walkways ignored their conversation, leaning against the railings and watching the floor below, or staring at the screens on their eyeglasses or in their hands.
It was only when Lilia reached the door to the room where the virus lecture was being held that she realized how foolish it had been to assume Haffenswen had some grand plan of attending the conference under an alias. There he was, perfect hair and frank face, standing outside the door, filming himself. The film was being streamed directly to his fans in-system, who were no doubt short-casting it out to the rest of the province and preparing it for transport on ships bound for the rest of the Federation.
“I’m standing here at the one-hundred-and-eighth annual conference of the Academy of Astrobiological Medicine and Science – at least, that’s what they tell us it’s called – about to enter a panel on ancient viruses. I don’t know much about ancient viruses, but I’m going to learn more. I think it’s curious that Marielus would be hosting a conference on ancient viruses. Very curious. Why would a bunch of academics come out to the Wildprong Province to talk about ancient viruses when they could talk about them perfectly fine back at their universities?
I think that’s curious. I think there’s more to the story and I’m going to find out. Do you think it’s likely that the official story of this conference is the truth? Do you think it makes sense to travel to a backwater like Marielus just for ancient viruses. Don’t they know there’s a war on?
Or maybe they do know there’s a war on. Maybe that’s why they’re all coming here. Maybe there’s something they can’t talk about on more civilized worlds.
Conference on ancient viruses? Or something more sinister? I’ll let you decide. Me, I’m going to find out more before I make up my mind. I encourage everyone to do that. Always learn as much as you can before you make up your mind. The people in charge want you to come to conclusions quickly. They want you to think bioweapons and secret labs are implausible. Me, I don’t know what to think, but I don’t think it’s implausible that there’s more to the story than they’re telling us. I’ll be back with more, after this presentation is over.”
Lilia stayed back several yards and watched Haffenswen. She knew not to engage. The agency didn't need their agents blowing cover for something trivial. Lilia had been around long enough to know that any passersby who found their way into Haffenswen's videos ended up as suspects for grand conspiracies invented by his followers and encouraged by Haffenswen. A talented operator, Haffenswen never passed up an opportunity, and if she walked into one of his frames, it was quite possible that someone watching would know who she was.
By now, the crowd of people trying to enter the conference room was diverting around him as people tried to skirt by without ending up in his video. Some kept their heads down and tried not to look at him and a few gave him dirty glances. A few held up brochures in front of their faces, assuming it was better to draw attention to themselves in the short term while keeping their faces unidentifiable by home-bedroom sleuths.
Lilia waited, and after a few minutes, Haffenswen stopped recording. He looked around with a pleased smile. He didn't move out of the way, forcing passersby to continue stepping around him.
At that moment, three security officers showed up. One of them had a stunner out, although he tried to hold it against his leg so as not to cause any panic.
"I understand there's been a disturbance here," said one of the officers, walking up to Haffenswen and stopping an arm's reach away. "We had a complaint."
"Oh, I don't know anything about that, officer," said Haffenswen with a sweet smile. "I was just standing here minding my own business. I'm sorry that you had a complaint. Why..."
"Knock it off," said the officer. "We know you were recording a video here. You can't use this space as a recording studio. You've got to leave right now."
Haffenswen mimicked an indignant innocent perfectly.
"I don't believe this," he said. "I've done nothing wrong. Who accused me of making a video? And where in the conference rules does it say that we aren't allowed to record ourselves for friends and family."
"It doesn't," said the officer, "But that doesn't mean you can do it. And never mind who accused you. We know you don't belong here. We know who you are. You weren't calling friends and family, you were making a video for the holoweb."
Haffenswen held up the conference credential hanging from a lanyard around his neck.
"Do you see this?" he said. "You're violating my rights. You can't just order me to leave."
"I don't know how you got that," said the officer. "But it's fake."
"How dare you?"
The officers began stepping forward.
"You can't do this to me. Just because there's nothing in the rules that says I can't record a video doesn't mean recording is prohibited."
"I'm deciding it's prohibited," said the officer, although Lilia could see he was struggling with this one.
"Abuse of authority," cried Haffenswen. He pulled out a small holorecorder and began running it. "I'm still here at the conference," he said quickly, "and these thugs are trying to violate my rights. They don't understand the difference between everything not explicitly allowed being prohibited, and everything not explicitly prohibited being allowed."
The man with the stunner raised it. "Put that away," he said.
"Law enforcement brutality," cried Haffenswen. "I'm a victim of law enforcement-"
The man hit him with the stunner and the holorecorder flew out of his hand. Haffenswen dropped to the ground. Presumably, though, it had been streaming directly to the local network, so already Haffenswen's fans would be making copies for distribution around the galaxy. The officers picked him up, along with the recorder, and began dragging him away.
Lilia had to admit, Haffenswen was pretty good. She wondered if he'd ever worked in a theater. It should have been in his bio, but she didn’t remember anything. Perhaps he'd been on stage in childhood.
24
As he fell in with men hurrying in front and behind him, and to either side, Heni’s feed flashed more details – conflagrations on other worlds, an uprising on a Kridalian transport somewhere in orbit, more fighting around the city – and it was clear they were dealing with a real war again. After months of occasional terrorist actions, the Raathi Front was making its play.
And Heni felt two things in that moment. A sense of the familiar stillness fell upon him. He grew calm. After months of patrolling and waiting and looking over his shoulder, war was upon them again and war was something he knew. Heni knew that he didn’t know much about the universe. He’d reconciled himself to that years ago. But this he knew – the quickening of the blood, the sudden awareness of the ground under the soles of his feet and the gun through his gloves, the small things fading away until they no longer existed and the accompanying relief that for this moment only there would be only one thing that mattered and that this thing that mattered would matter more than anything else in his life that had gone before or anything else that would come after – if there was an after.
There was also the gladness, the eagerness. In that moment, there was nowhere else Heni wanted to be. There was nothing else that he wanted but to fight and to be in the thick of it again. What else was there to life except this – death? Some men had been born to build and other men to work and other men to lead or to love. Heni knew now, as he had always known, as he never admitted to another soul – not even to Gurney – that he had been born for this. He wondered whether other men had the same violence inside them – the violence which was always there, which lay dormant at times and flared up at times, and which at times such as this rose up in exultation and readiness.
The gates of Darthur Space Base were under siege and it was as though Heni could hear rousing music of some roaring concert through his helmet. He dashed towards a position along the wall where he’d been ordered by some lieutenant whose name no longer mattered. He jumped and his boots rocketed him to the height of the parapet. He was on the ledge and he rolled and came up and flattened himself against the edge, holding his gun ready. A drone feed from a buzzing overhead camera – narrowly dodging tracer rounds and managing to stay momentarily aloft – fed him images of the fighters below. They had taken cover behind armored vehicles they’d managed to procure from somewhere, and which they had parked along the street opposite the base. Heni wanted to fire at them, but he knew what was coming. He could hear the sounds of heavier artillery being moved into place, and soon the booming of targeted mortars accompanied heavy explosions which vaporized these parked vehicles without damaging many of the buildings around. Heni watched on his feed as airstrikes were called in near city hall where the terrorists had managed to capture several government buildings. They were holding hostages, but the policy of the Kridalian Republic had always been never to negotiate with terrorists.
The airstrikes vaporized the government buildings and Heni knew that he would soon be ordered out into the streets to go house to house. The great battles at city hall and in some of the parks were already breaking up into smaller skirmishes as some of the insurgents beat tactical retreats. Both Darthur Space Base and Kriii Air Base – the Kridalian base – had beaten back their attackers. At any moment, Heni would be ordered to move.
Gurney was out on patrol when the battle started. He was walking through the Suuuk Bazaar with eleven other men, their weapons held loosely and their warning systems set to scan intermittently. Without warning, a small fleet of tiny drones rose up out of the stalls and began firing tiny darts at them. These did very little to their armor, but immediately all twelve men were crouching and aiming, trying to find a lock on the threat. Shoppers ran yelling or screamed and ducked behind booths. A few people dove into windows and doors and Gurney saw a man's throat lacerated by two darts. A woman threw her body over her child.
The drones were too small and too quick for manual targeting, so the Merians switched over and let their suits do the work, aiming tiny drone-killing lasers which popped out of thick pads on their shoulders. The drones buzzed about at random, mostly evading the lasers, but as the laser targeting systems learned, they aimed better and better. Soon, too, the drones had expended their darts. Which seemed a waste until Gurney saw that in the chaos a group of hooded men had overturned some stalls at the far end of the bazaar, walling off the road leading north.
By this time, the bazaar had been emptied. Several Kridalian civilians were lying dead in the street and the rest had fled.
The woman who had thrown herself over her child stood up. Gurney ran over to her. One dart had grazed her upper back, but she'd been lucky and it had mostly cut her clothing. The slightest hint of blood stained her shirt. The child was unharmed.
But the men who'd turned over the stalls were setting up an old-fashioned machine gun and one of them had a projectile launcher. He fired just as Gurney pushed the woman back down and stepped over and in front of them. Gurney turned and took the explosion in the center of his back. His armor absorbed it, but it knocked him over and he landed behind the woman and her child. He rolled and stood up, turning and aiming and firing as he did so. He killed the man with the grenade launcher before the man had time to fire again.
Gurney slung his rifle over his shoulder and pulled the woman to her feet.
"Hurry," he said, pulling the child up, as well. She wasn't crying, but she was clearly frightened. Gurney guessed she was six or seven, but he could rarely tell with children. He picked her up in one arm and pulled her mother with his free hand, trying to run. They made it to an alley at the edge of the bazaar just before the machine gun started firing. Gurney's eleven comrades were doing their best to pin down the men with the machine gun, but their weapons weren't penetrating the overturned stalls. There must have been some sort of reinforced plate or armor in the stalls. Clearly, this ambush had been planned some time ago. Gurney set the child down inside the alley and pushed the mother in behind her daughter. "Run away," he told them.
But there was nowhere to run. For at that moment, masked men began pouring out of the empty corners of the bazaar and popping up on roofs. Their weapons were primitive - semi-automatic rifles and laser weapons from the twenty-second century as likely to malfunction as to fire properly. But there were dozens of them. As Gurney turned back to the bazaar, he saw that his comrades had nowhere to cover. They were caught in the open. A few tried to make it to the ripped-up stalls, but were cut down where they stood. The volume of bullets and laser blasts striking their armor overwhelmed even the best protection, reminding Gurney of the grenade he’d taken in his back. He hated to check, but assumed there must now be a hole in his armor back there.
Several of Gurney's comrades made a desperate charge for the makeshift barricade where the machine gun sat. None of them made it. As Gurney watched, he fired at some of the men on the roof, but there was little he could do. The mother and her daughter were still hiding in the alley with him, clearly frightened that if they ran away they would be caught and killed.
Read chapters 25 through 28.