And helped start life on Earth—all by mistake.
Inquire.
“You thought you were losing?”
Yes. We were losing.
Inquire.
“Did you lose?”
That was long, long ago, and the builders of the archive have long since passed on.
A painful subject, I sense, even to an objective archive. “They’re dead?”
Passed on.
I can still conjure up a clear picture of Bug. Ugly and covered in baroque carapaces, a united pair of creatures—brains and brawn. This image, the statistical portrait of an entire culture, has until now served as a representation of what the green dust awoke in the Drifter. Somehow I’ve drawn reassurance from its example—however strange and distant. But I never thought of Bug as a warrior. An explorer, a thinker, a strangely friendly presence—but never as a hero, and certainly not a tragic hero.
“What’s happening in there, Vinnie?” Joe calls out.
The steward of the archive is withdrawing, no longer serving as an interface, an interpreter. It wants me to move on.
I hear the birdsong again. It’s starting to make sense. I get impressions on a broad spectrum. Background details, snippets of directed voice—psychological coloring. The new presence might be on one of those massive ships or weapons out there. Wherever she is, she’s a user. She’s alive. And that means she can ask me questions and make accusations.
I don’t want to understand. I want to shut down. I’d almost rather die than complete this fucking quest. But I’m not going to die, not right away. Not in time to avoid the truth.
I begin to understand almost all of the pretty song that is the other voice:
We [are told] we share inheritance. Difficult to accept. We [see] you. You arrive ready to fight. We [see] your vehicles and have [stopped them from becoming threats]. [Who are you], why have you come here?
I sense the urgency. We’re surrounded. They’re extremely wary, but desperate—like us—and achingly curious. There has been so much pain and loss. They don’t know our origins or our intentions, but they still have hope. I sense that they have fought against their own kind. They’ve suffered great hardship to reach and survive on Titan and tap into the archive. They, too, were touched by the ancient memory of Bug. Likely they, too, had comrades who turned glass. I wonder if Coyle met any of their dead, and if so, why she didn’t tell me.
Because I am still alive. Because honor and duty still matter to me. To us. And that’s messing with me big-time. But I also have a duty to this mission, to the people who thought I should be here, that DJ should be here. That we could learn and help them understand the mysteries and deceptions.
Expose the big lie.
So I bear down and focus on the other user. I don’t use words—so little time. Instead, I show this new presence the Drifter, the crystal pillar, the green dust smeared on our skins. I show DJ in an ecstatic mood, rejoicing at the ancient connection.
I try to convey the experience of Captain Coyle.
And I show the new presence Bug.
Back in turn arrive visions of a precisely parallel experience. The colors and outlines are difficult—I have to focus on one of four separate views that otherwise cross and confuse. The four images come from four eyes. Some of their kind were once smeared with green dust. Their genetic music is the same as ours—the dust worked on them as well.
We are also alike in being aggressors. We’re like cocks set against each other in a ring. If we are victims, we are willing enough—ideally suited for entertaining distant worlds.
I cannot escape the truth of who it is I am talking to, what it is that confronts us across the deep saline sea, through the ionized membranes, from within those larger and more powerful weapons. Nobody on our Oscar is going to like these new truths. My own reaction is gut-level, instinctive. I feel revulsion. But if I shoot back my disgust, my grief and resentment at our own losses, my wish to defeat and even exterminate all of them—the total effect of my Skyrine training and esprit de corps—
The other user could just give up on us—let loose the ice and crush us.
Somehow, I filter and control my negative instincts. I feel that the other is doing likewise. She does not in any way enjoy addressing me, and her doubts are if anything stronger than mine. She and her warriors have come far, for many different reasons, to fight on Mars and on Titan. Nearly all of their warriors are female. Males form the upper ranks and rarely engage in combat.
But their doubts have changed many of them. The information from the archive, and the evidence of their returned dead, have driven them as well to betrayal and treason. Like us, they have skeptics who wish to resume the war. They need another and very different perspective. They need objective confirmation.
We hear Borden’s voice explaining that Box has arrived and dispersed its seeds. The seeds are gobbling up whatever was left of the station, making new weapons—dozens of them.
“Reinforcements are here!” Jacobi says with relief.
“They’re not here to help us,” Joe says. “They’re here to hunt us down and kill us all. And then they’ll do their best to kill Titan. Believe it!”
Who’s more powerful and more dangerous?
The enemy in front, the humans above?
DJ moans. His voice rises to nightmare screams. Then he goes quiet. The suit has done something to flatten his distress. He’s out of the game.
But as long as I can keep my connection open and keep exchanging information, I’ll be useful. As long as their skeptics don’t get the upper hand—a distinct possibility—
We’ll live.
“They’re holding fire,” I say. “If the forces from Box get to us—”
“The hell with that!” Jacobi shouts. “This is cat-and-mouse. We got to break loose and head back to the station.”
“I don’t think so,” I say. “They want to keep us alive. They need us.”
“Who wants that?” Ishida asks, her voice dark and dangerous. “Who needs us? Who the hell are you talking to?”
“Antags,” I say.
The reaction in the Oscar’s cabin is electric. What should have been obvious all along has been cloaked in many layers of denial. Now doesn’t seem the best time to give them the really acid news—about our being fighting cocks. Dupes. Naïve victims of an ancient con.
“You knew that!” Joe calls out to them. “It’s what we expected—it’s the reason for Division Four and everything else we’ve done. Why else would we come here?” He sounds angry. How long has he known? Even before Mars? Maybe he’s one of the Wait Staff. Who the hell is Joe Sanchez? He’s been in so many places at so many convenient times… throughout my life.
“Because we wanted to access the old knowledge!” Tak says. He’s said very little throughout our journey in the Oscar. “To wipe out the enemy. Power, that’s what we wanted.”
Joe says, “Vinnie and DJ are our scouts. I go with what they recommend.”
“DJ’s out of it,” Tak reminds him.
“Maybe, but Vinnie is reporting back. We either trust him, or return to the surface and defend ourselves against the weapons dropped by Box. You still think they’re here to rescue us?”
The others are silent on that.
“They’re here to find us and kill us. I guarantee they won’t show any mercy. If we start a fight down here, we also die. If we listen to Vinnie—maybe we live.”