Blood and Fire Page 3
Human colonists—carriers of the memes—were caught in the middle, as usual. Humanity changed. Adapted. Evolved. Mutated. And redesigned itself accordingly—creating new memes and new explosions of trade and colonization. Humanity’s memes drove it outward, forcing it to become something new on every planet it touched. Humanity spread throughout the galaxy like a rapidly evolving intelligent cancer.
On some worlds, a particularly seductive meme took hold—the idea that if humanity now had the power to redesign itself, then humanity should redesign itself. Imagine ... a truly efficient and capable human being. Imagine a human who was “more-than” human. The “More-Than” meme was more than just “another good idea.” For some, it became a cult, an obsession, an ideology—a religion. For some, it became a holy war.
Some of the More-Thans seceded from the Covenant and headed out beyond the frontier—sand not just beyond the frontier, but to the far side of the rift, a natural barrier to further human expansion. Humanity—unimproved humanity—would be unlikely to challenge the rift. Or so the More-Thans believed. They were wrong, but they believed it anyway.
The Morthan meme, mixed with the isolationist meme, was a dangerous combination. And those who espoused it were clearly unfamiliar with the evolutionary consequences that befell isolated populations on islands, in preserves or separated on distant planets—or perhaps they felt that because they understood the laws of nature, they were somehow immune to their effects.
Countering the Morthan meme was another one: the meme of Alliance, the idea that the human family, despite all its diversity and difference, was still evolved from the same basic stock and was therefore still a family, and that whatever new shapes or ideologies might occur across the galaxy, the fundamental relationship of a common heritage was enough of a foundation on which to build an Alliance of trade and cultural exchange.
As disastrous as the meme of isolation was to the Morthans, equally disastrous was the meme of a universal family of humanity that could include and celebrate every separate form of behavior and belief. Memes are survival-oriented. Memes tolerate only memes that are sympathetic or complementary. Memes cannot tolerate antithetical ideas.
But memes don’t die, humans do.
Humans, as the carriers of ideas, as the servants of ideologies, shed their blood whenever two memes came into conflict.
And the conflict between the Alliance meme and the Morthan meme promised to be the most terrible of all.
Brik
Not all Morthans believed in the goals of the Morthan Solidarity. This did not automatically mean that they believed in the goals of the Alliance either, but there were some who had fled Morthan space and applied for asylum. Some of the refugees ended up as civilian advisors. Others, for reasons of their own, enlisted to serve in the Allied Star Fleet. Lieutenant Commander Brik was one of those Morthan officers.
Brik stood three meters tall, almost too tall for the corridors of a destroyer-class liberty ship. There was room for him to stretch to his full height only on the Ops Deck, the engine room, the Cargo Bay and his private quarters. Everywhere else, he moved in a near-feral crouch.
The more traditionally human members of the Star Wolf crew often speculated on Brik’s motivations. To most of them, he remained an incomprehensible enigma. Why would any Morthan want to live and serve with human beings? If Morthans believed themselves to be “more than human,” then wouldn’t such a role be demeaning and degrading?
In point of fact, Lieutenant Commander Brik had not too long ago held that very view—that service with human beings was an extremely repugnant duty, almost a personal disgrace. But he also was smart enough to recognize that the prejudice he felt was more the voice of his upbringing on a Morthan world than a product of any direct interaction with human beings. So with great difficulty he had put aside his prejudice in favor of a more useful curiosity about the nature of humanity—an act of will power that had initially left him trembling with fury but had now subsided into just another knot in his second stomach, something he could live with. He was still discomfited by humans, but not for the reasons humans believed.
Brik’s original distaste had now been supplanted by something even more uncomfortable. Honest interest. For all their faults, insecurities, inaccuracies, inabilities, neuroses, psychoses, pathologies, beliefs and other failings, humans were still ... interesting. Part of Brik’s interest lay in the fact that human identity represented the undeniable ancestral origin of Morthan identity. It was humans who had come up with the idea of a superior bioengineered species. It was humans who had begun the process of creating the Morthans—at least until the fifth generation, when there were finally enough mature Morthans motivated to take responsibility for their own future.
Brik had come to believe that for Morthans to control the direction of their own evolution, it was essential to understand the source material. Knowing what made humanity successful was as important as knowing where humanity could be improved. So Brik’s curiosity was rooted in a very selfish motivation.
At one point, Brik had been concerned about the possibility that he might end up developing a certain degree of affection for his human comrades-in-arms. And for a while, he had even toyed with the possibility that this might be a useful domain of personal experimentation. However, after his single attempt at fathoming human sexuality he realized that this was probably not a fruitful avenue of research for him. The experiment—undertaken with, and at the behest of, Lieutenant J.G. Helen Bach, one of his security officers—had been a near-fatal disaster.1 Near fatal for Lieutenant J.G. Helen Bach, that is. The curious lieutenant had paid for her misadventure with ten days of downtime in Med Bay.
The consequences for Brik were not physical—but shortly thereafter several salacious rumors about his physical prowess began to circulate through the ship, and although no one ever said anything to him directly, Lieutenant Commander Brik was painfully aware that he had become something of a legend among the crew. Particularly the female members of the crew. His relations with Bach had been strained ever since, to say the least.
Eventually, Bach applied for a transfer, which Korie—as acting captain—had denied. Then Brik applied for a transfer, although not for the same reasons. Not knowing how to deal with the sexual relationships, human gossip or the prurient interest of a bored crew, he felt just vulnerable enough that he recognized he could become a serious danger to the rest of the ship. He wasn’t certain he could control his own deadly impulses—at least not until Korie called both Brik and Bach into conference and ordered them to find a way to work together. Or else. He did not specify what the or else would be. He did not even acknowledge the specifics of the situation. He simply said, “You two are assigned to work together. Find a way to do that. Now. You’re both rational, intelligent beings. You’re both mature enough to work security—the crew looks to both of you as role models for shipboard discipline. We have a new captain coming aboard in three days. I intend to turn this ship over with the highest possible confidence rating. You are officers trained to handle problems at your level and pass only solutions upward. If you start passing problems up to me, you won’t like my solutions. I promise you.” And then he added, “Fortunately, I don’t like either one of you enough that I’ll have to feel bad about the consequences. Is this clear? Good. Now go do your jobs and let this be the end of it. Dismissed.”
Officially, the fleet preferred that crew members abstain from having sexual relationships, lest it complicate the chain of command. Unofficially, commanding officers only acknowledged personal or sexual relationships when they interfered with the smooth running of the ship. A reprimand of this type would be a serious blemish on the career of any officer on whose record it appeared. To his credit, Korie kept his reprimand off the record and his remarks were never entered into either Brik’s or Bach’s service log.
Once Korie had ordered Brik to comply with Fleet discipline, Brik’s personal dilemma was resolved. He knew how to follow orders. He knew how to fulfil
l his duty. He knew how to be responsible: push all personal concerns aside; they no longer exist. End of dilemma. Bach followed his lead and their professional relationship resumed in an atmosphere of cold, crisp politesse. Neither of them ever mentioned the matter again, nor did Korie.
For his part, Brik used the episode as a confirmation of his earlier suspicion that attempts at affection with ancestral-form human beings would be a mistake. Ancestrals were irrational beyond anything he had previously conceived. In the domain of sexual relationships, they were clearly insane. Psychopathic. Criminally deranged. Not to be trusted without a keeper.
Nevertheless, when ancestral-form human beings put aside sexual matters, they were almost civilized. And in that regard, Brik had to acknowledge that they were obviously capable of extraordinary self control—perhaps even more self control than most Morthans. Morthans didn’t have sex. Morthans didn’t have hormonal storms driving them crazy. Morthans didn’t have these same kinds of overwhelming physical urges. So Morthans didn’t have to control them, didn’t have to know how to behave appropriately toward others. Morthans were trained early how to behave—distrust everyone and everything. Learn that and you know how to survive and succeed for the rest of your life.
But humans—ordinary humans had all these other operating modes. They made jokes. They flirted. They told the truth. All of these modes were alien experiences to Brik—so alien, in fact, that he was beginning to suspect that ancestral-form humans were far more unfathomable to Morthans than Morthans ever would be to them. And for that reason, he began to suspect that the Morthan Solidarity might actually lose the war.
It was a curious thought. Morthans lose?
Militarily, Morthans were clearly superior—but interstellar space was a great equalizer. A torpedo could be launched from a small ship as well as a big one—it could destroy a big ship as well as a small one. So the advantage lay not in strength, but in speed and tactics.
Humans had speed, but Morthans had tactics.
Given that equation, the smart money would bet on the Morthans—but more and more Brik was beginning to realize that the essential irrationality of human beings made them tactically impossible to predict, and possibly impossible to defeat. And if that were so, then the unthinkable might actually be true—human beings might be superior to Morthans.
All those different operating modes. Humans had more different ways to be, more different ways to think, than Morthans did.
Very troubling.
Because if this were true, Brik could not afford to dismiss affection or sexual relationships. If this particularly uncomfortable thesis had any validity to it at all, Brik had to continue his investigations. No matter what the personal cost.
Indeed, his personal commitment to expanding his knowledge of dangerous things demanded that he return his attention to these investigations. The thought bothered him immensely and he inflicted severe damage on both of his workout robots while he dealt with the discomfort.
His exercises gave him a way to maintain—and beyond that, he could safely postpone any further inquiries into the matter of emotional attachments because Korie had effectively ordered him to. “Do your job” took precedence.
At least for now.
Preparation
For a long while, the crew of the Star Wolf had been resentful of Korie’s treatment. They had complained—with considerable justification—that the executive officer drove them too hard. But later, after several missions and several close encounters with the enemy, after several opportunities to see how well the ship functioned in a crisis, the crew’s attitude had changed dramatically. They still complained about how hard Korie worked them—but now they did so with a considerable degree of pride. Their unofficial motto was, “Yes, but he’s our son of a bitch.”
Captain Parsons had come aboard the Star Wolf well aware of Korie’s reputation. She knew his record, she knew what fires fueled his engines. She had expected a humorless man, a grim one, a martinet—someone like his mentor, Captain Richard Hardesty, only younger and without the augments. What she found was someone much more complex.
At first, Korie seemed to her much less than she had expected. But then, perhaps she wasn’t certain at all what she expected. What she found was a young man who was deceptively soft-spoken and respectful of her authority. Possibly he had grown more relaxed with his situation over the past year. And possibly the tales of Korie were somewhat exaggerated. In either case, she found him intriguing—particularly the depth of his knowledge about his starship. She suspected that he could take it apart and rebuild it single-handedly, if given enough time. And add a few improvements in the process. So far, she hadn’t found any situation he couldn’t handle. And she doubted she would.
She caught up with him in the officer’s mess, where he was poring over a set of schematics.
“How’s your team doing?”
“They’ve had thirty hours training, Captain. They’ve had the last six hours off so they can be thoroughly rested and ready when we go in.”
“What about yourself?”
“I’ve had my sleep for this month.”
“We’re going to have some very long days coming up ...”
Korie nodded, still preoccupied with the diagrams. “I can handle it.”
Parsons stepped in close and whispered, “I know you can handle it. But I don’t want you playing superman all the time. You’ve got to learn how to pace yourself or you’ll burn out before you’re thirty.”
“I’m thirty-two,” Korie said.
“Then you’re overdue. We’ve got six hours until we begin final approach. Go take a power nap—”
“I don’t need—” Korie stopped himself. “Aye, Captain.” He switched off the display, pulled his headset off and picked up his coffee mug and sandwich plate. He ducked through the hatch to “Broadway,” the starship’s main corridor. Captain Parsons watched him go, pleased that Korie was learning how to follow orders.
She’d been worried about her executive officer’s strong will and independent nature. That was part of his “legend” too. It was no secret among his fellow officers that Jon Korie had earned his captain’s stars three times over. That the admiral had not yet given him a ship of his own was rapidly becoming an embarrassment not only to Korie, but to everyone serving with him as well—not to mention other captains whose names had come up later than Korie’s.
In fact, Korie didn’t know it, but Parsons had refused this posting when she discovered her executive officer would be Jon Korie. But Admiral O’Hara had told her to put her objections aside and take the ship. It wasn’t that Korie was unready for command—he’d already proven that—but there were other factors at work. And in the meantime Korie needed the opportunity to practice the virtues of patience and cooperation. Parsons’ supervision would be a useful and important role model for him.
Parsons suspected that Korie had already figured it out. Korie’s mental agility was part of his growing “legend” among those who had served with him, and it was part of the scuttlebutt around Stardock that Jon Korie could tell you how far out of alignment the hyperstate grapplers were just by tasting the soup in the galley. Parsons had not yet seen Korie demonstrate this particular skill, but after a few weeks of watching him oversee the maintenance of the vessel, she would not have been surprised. The man was the most totally dependable officer she had ever met. Almost a machine.
Neither was it a secret why Korie was so driven. Korie’s wife and two sons had been on Shaleen when the Morthans attacked. They were presumed dead. Afterward, Korie had received a delayed-in-transit message from Carol indicating that they were trying to evacuate to Taalamar—but Taalamar had been destroyed by an avalanche of asteroids, launched by teams of Morthan commandos. The Star Wolf had been part of a massive (but insufficient) evacuation effort. In what few records survived from Taalamar, there was no evidence of the arrival of his wife and children. Emotionally, Korie had lost them, been given a nugget of hope, then lost them again.
At Stardock, Korie routinely and methodically worked out with robots designed to look like Morthans. He pummeled, kicked, beat, attacked, bit, punched and butted the robots with his head, oblivious to his own risk of injury. Several times, the gym attendants had considered restraining or sedating him. But Korie was only one of thousands who felt the need to kick the living crap out of a Morthan, and the workouts with the robots were considered a valuable therapeutic exercise for everyone.
At all other times, Korie’s demeanor was singularly professional, but it did not require a quantum mechanic to figure out why Korie was so obsessive about keeping the Star Wolf functioning at optimum military readiness. Whenever the ship came to port, whether Stardock or any other safe harbor, Korie had Chief Petty Officer “Toad” Hall out negotiating for upgrades, spares and additional weaponry, whatever he could find, wherever he could find it. The Star Wolf had even taken aboard a shipment of six defective torpedoes—rather than let them be recalled, Korie and Chief Engineer Leen intended to rebuild the units to their own specifications.
As long as Korie’s obsessions were sublimated into such potentially useful outlets, Captain Parsons had no objections. Indeed, she actually enjoyed watching Jon Korie work. He was a complex and interesting man—and he had the effect of energizing everyone around him. Parsons had written the admiral that she had never been on a ship that hummed with so much directed activity, and she felt this was directly due to Jon Korie’s determination, now shared by the crew, that the Star Wolf would outlive the blemishes on her name.
“There are a lot of advantages,” Parsons had written, “to serving on a big ship, a ship like the ‘Big E.’ It’s the biggest, the best, the boldest and the brightest. Wherever you go, you’re regarded as the pride of the fleet and the hope of humanity. But the ‘Big E’ doesn’t get sent out to the front lines because the Fleet can’t take the risk of losing her. The psychological shock wave that would send across the Allied Worlds would be devastating. So it falls to the smaller ships, the liberty ships, to plow the dark between the stars and take the ultimate risks. This is where the real heroism is found—among the men and women who know that they are not going to be celebrated wherever they go, among those who are doing their jobs because they know the value of their actions to the Fleet. Despite the risks, despite the lack of appropriate reward, despite the lack of glory and fame—these are the people who are going to make the difference for all of us. What is truly remarkable about all of them is what they bring to their work—not just a sense of obligation, but more than that, a genuine affection for their duty.