Chương 43: Part 43

Jesri glared defiantly back at Trelir, batting his outstretched hand away.

"You think you can?", she growled. Her words seemed to echo back behind her into infinite space, resonating and building within the network of linked consciousness. It stretched wide, encompassing the whole of the shell around Apollyon's star and, behind it, deep into the inky black of hyperspace. Tiny motes drifted around the inside of the shell. Some burned bright with connections to the Gestalt and others remained dim, foreign. Anja, she realized, and the Emissaries closing on her position.

She felt questing tendrils of her network reach out to investigate the Emissaries, trying to worm their way inside. Her mind's eye saw others taking their positions in networks adjacent to the simulated universe, fortifying data nodes against the Gestalt's relentless assault and preparing to strike outward. On every front they were met with meticulously laid defenses and swift counterstrikes - the true Confluence, vast and ancient, stirring itself to meet them.

"I do not speculate," Trelir replied archly.

"I know." He paced back around the table and slid out the chair opposite her, sitting and drumming his fingers against the hard surface.

"The solution space we are in now is quite limited," he said, "and I doubt very much that you have any more surprises in store. This is the peak of your trajectory, Jesri Tam. You should be proud to have risen so far, it is truly a monumental achievement for you and your kind." He leaned back and steepled his fingers.

"However, you will rise no further. You will die here, and the experience of watching your brief, futile efforts to survive will enrich the Confluence. We will take your memory with us to our eternal existence. Content yourself with this - only a few earn the distinction of such notability." Trelir's words rippled through her ears back into the network and were rejected almost immediately, the violent consensus twitching Jesri's lips into a smile.

"Yeah, no," she drawled, sitting down in the near chair.

"You can't expect us to just roll over and die. We have more of a chance now than we've ever had."

"But you don't," he said, making an exasperated gesture.

"You had no chance of victory. Not a small chance, not an improbable sliver of hope, zero. Multiply that by your recent growth and we get still zero. Please don't tell me that despite all of your newfound ability you remain unable to do simple math." Jesri shrugged, leaning back.

"It's true that none of us knows our path forward, but speaking on behalf of the group," she said, lacing her fingers behind her head relaxedly, "we've got a pretty good feeling about this."

"Spare me further talk of your feelings," Trelir sighed.

"Fine, if you insist on wasting everyone's time and resources we can continue our little contest." He placed his hand on the table, then drew it back.

"Not Go, this time. That game is expansive, rich with possibility and endless combinations. This situation calls for something a bit more limited, more savage. Something with an appropriate victory condition." Suddenly the Go board was gone, replaced by a simple eight-by-eight grid. Marble and onyx chessmen sat in neat rows, with Jesri as white. She picked up the queen and studied it, then replaced it and moved a pawn forward in a standard opening.

The Grand Design shuddered under the strain as it swung in a quick pivot before firing its engines full-bore, lumbering through a series of maneuvers better suited for a small fighter than a kilometer-long cruiser. Their shifting inertia was briefly too much for the ship's gravity to bear, and Anja gripped her armrests tightly as the brutal acceleration slammed her back in her seat.

"I don't think the ship is supposed to make that noise," David observed nervously.

"Can you guys hear that too, or is it just my connection acting up? The readings from the inertial compensation-""Not your imagination," Anja said through gritted teeth, hauling herself forward to the targeting console once more.

"They seem to have forgotten how to shoot straight, but there are more of them now. Dodging remains a challenge." The ovoid shape of an Emissary sat squarely in the middle of their lower firing arc, and she sent another barrage of fire screaming their way before the ship bucked once more to dodge its counterblow. Ripples of distorted space streaked across their bow, tearing sheets of hull plating from the exterior as they passed.

"Rhuar!", Anja said crossly.

"That one caused some damage." He shot her an exasperated look.

"Fuckin-", he grunted, tensing as the ship rolled unsteadily into another hard pivot.

"Damage them back, then! If I dodge any harder than this we'll snap right the fuck in half."

"This ship was made by Terran engineers, ensign," Anja retorted, shouting over the roar of another barrage from the railguns.

"We will fail long before it does."

"We might just," Rhuar muttered, bracing himself against the deck. His muscles strained, and the engines spoke in concert with the howling guns.

"How blasé," Trelir sighed, placing a pawn and slumping back in his chair discontentedly.

"This is literally a textbook engagement." Jesri glared at him.

"If you didn't want to see established openings you should have picked a different game," she retorted, following up with another pawn.

"And what more suitable game could I have chosen? Would you prefer checkers, perhaps?" He shook his head in disgust.

"Go was too kind to you as a metaphor. A unity of identical pieces working together for a common goal, that isn't you," he scoffed.

"But chess, it's so delightfully representative. An antiquated hierarchy of pieces, each one stubbornly limited by their individual failings. The most competent pieces on the board are ultimately slaves to the least capable. And, most appropriately," he murmured, making his countermove, "the whole side wins or loses based on the fate of one piece."

"You keep hinting that you're going to come at me," Jesri snarled, "but so far it's just been bluster." She continued with a third pawn, feeling the endless tide of humanity in the back of her mind. They threw themselves against the fortress of the Gestalt in a ceaseless wave, although a few had peeled off and were interestedly looking at Jesri's game. She let one part of her mind listen to their analysis and focused the rest of her attention on Trelir.

"Are you going to let the fight keep going without us," she asked, "or are we actually going to get to it?" Trelir sneered in distaste.

"So violent, so impatient," he tutted.

"And no, I have no intention of assaulting you here. You've taken to this form of being far too well, and the misplaced enthusiasm of your supporters in such an event would be troublesome if only by dint of their sheer volume." He sighed and shook his head.

"You've managed to become quite nettlesome, Captain."

"And here I thought you didn't like me," Jesri deadpanned, moving a knight forward.

"Oh, no, quite the opposite," Trelir replied, waving a hand dismissively.

"I've said how much I admired your struggle to rise above your limitations, haven't I? But they remain, Jesri Tam. They always will. The shortcomings of your individual form continue to bind you, cripple you, keeping you from the heights a more perfect being could reach." He reached down towards the board, but his eyes remained fixed on Jesri.

"You are shackled with chains of flesh that subvert your mind's workings at every turn. Even now, at the height of your being, we must still speak as two individuals in this sad little simulacrum. I will do you the favor of freeing you from your tragic existence, my dear Captain," he said.

"I will destroy your body and end this façade."

"Holy shit!", Rhuar yelped, flinching as a blast rippled by the bridge. Cracks spidered across a few of the viewports before shutters clanged over them to reinforce the fragile panes.

"Anja, they're really coming after us," he called out.

"I noticed," she grated, scanning through her displays.

"Tiln, report!" His face popped onto a side screen, looking harried but unharmed.

"They're leaving us mostly alone, sir," he replied.

"You seem to be their priority target. We've been able to move freely, enough to force one of them into stasis with a few well-timed volleys. Their focus on you has been quite helpful."

"Not the word I would use!", she shouted back, grimacing as Rhuar pulled them into another banking turn.

"They are keeping too much pressure on us for us to return fire effectively. Try and take a few more of them out, and make it quick! We can only keep this up for so long."

"I had some ideas about that, actually," Tiln said, scrolling through a display offscreen.

"We've got some ordnance that would be more effective than our guns, but it's intended for fixed bombardment-" Anja made a frustrated noise and glared at him.

"Tiln!", she hissed, "you are a captain. Stop asking me for permission and act!"

"Yes... sir?", Tiln replied hesitantly.

"It's just that you had previously said not to 'fuck around with cowboy trick shots' in combat situations, and based on my understanding of the term this-" He cut off as the Grand Design jolted violently and Anja gave him a searing look.

"Um," he amended.

"Never mind. If I ram my ship into the enemy, please know that it was unintentional." He cut the transmission before she could reply, and David peered at her questioningly.

"That sounds ominous," he said.

"Maybe you should have let him explain." Anja spared a murderous glance for him, but kept a view of Tiln's ship up on one of her monitors as she worked. The little craft arrowed towards the nearest of the three Emissaries penning them in, then slowed as the hull began to dance with white fire.

"Oh, shit," Rhuar groaned, sudden realization on his face.

"Anja, you should really-" He cut off with a yelp as another blast from the Emissaries lanced towards them, forcing him to execute a violent lateral thrust. Anja was tossed hard against her armrest, but Rhuar simply toppled sideways. They both regained their bearings just in time to see Tiln's ship disappear. He reappeared almost dead center in Anja's scopes, and she jerked her fingers away from the firing controls with a muttered curse.

The Ysleli ship raced close across the Emissary's hull like a blazing comet before vanishing again into hyperspace - bare seconds before a jettisoned torpedo tore open the Emissary's starboard flank. Trelir frowned at Jesri's lone knight playing havoc in the back rank of the board, now sitting proudly where one of his rooks should be. He moved his hand toward it, then rested a finger atop the adjacent knight while he contemplated the arrangement.

"The pinnacle of sentient life needs to think about their moves?", Jesri snarked.

"Come on, Trelir, you said you were going to kill me. Are you really going to leave me languishing in my fleshy prison this long?" She let her chin rest in her hands, elbows on the table.

"Would you condemn me to yet more of my somewhat-less-than-optimal existence?" Trelir didn't react, surveying the board without looking up.

"You don't fool me, you know," he said quietly.

"This bravado, this humor. You're as scared now as you've ever been. You have no idea what you're doing." He moved his knight away, exposing Jesri's piece to an attack from Trelir's queen. Jesri snorted and moved the knight to a safe space, leaning back in her chair with a sigh.

"You act like that's not the status quo," she said wearily.

"I've been improvising my way out of mortal peril for millennia. Soul-rending terror is an old buddy of mine." She stretched her arms, then cracked her neck as Trelir looked on without speaking.

"I'd say I'm actually better off than normal," she remarked brightly, "since now I've got a few billion of my best friends backing me up." She smiled as a cheer rippled back from the network, the fierce support of her linked army rebounding in a wave. He laid a long finger on his queen, looking over the board again.

"They're going to die," he said, his voice still low and calm.

"All of them. The ones who joined you, the ones who didn't. You conscripted paradise to fight a war they cannot win, and now it's lost to them forever." He moved his queen laterally, threatening the escaped knight.

"You really don't get humans very well," Jesri said, placing her finger on the beleaguered knight.

"What you built wasn't a paradise. You're not some altruist playing the steward of all life or some bullshit like that, your only interest is self-interest." She lifted her finger and moved it to one of her bishops, moving it forward to imperil Trelir's other rook.

"They know that. I showed them everything I know about you and the Gestalt, and we've all agreed that the whole bunch of you are such colossal assholes that we'd pretty much rather die than go back to your happy little paradise." She shrugged.

"If that's the way it works out, then at least we gave it a shot and made your life inconvenient as a bonus fuck-you." Trelir looked up from his study of the board with a mildly shocked expression.

"I'm always amazed at how vindictive and spiteful humans can be," he tutted.

"You'd condemn them all to die for something so petty?" Jesri's smile dropped away, leaving a hard stare.

"More petty a reason than when you did it?", she asked softly.

"What was our offense, again?" If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. He shook his head and moved a pawn to block the bishop.

"That was different," he insisted.

"It was nothing personal, as you say." Trelir's pawn toppled to the board as Jesri slid the bishop violently forward, the chorus of voices around her rising in fury.

"Well, that's unfortunate," she growled.

"Because we kinda took it that way."

"Two more inbound!", Rhuar shouted, setting his shoulders as he took the ship through a punishing turn. Furious sunlight played across the bridge as the ship pulled around.

"One minute, maybe less."

"Seriously?", David griped, looking out at the sole remaining Emissary from their original group. Three spheres of golden light twisted and writhed where Tiln's daring strikes had forced the others into stasis.

"We were almost done, too." Anja reset her targeting reticle and pushed a stray bit of hair from her eyes.

"Probably not a coincidence," she muttered.

"Tiln! Report!"

"Doing all right, sir," he replied, although his voice was tight with stress.

"Our hyperdrive isn't enjoying this, but it's holding up. We have four more torpedos, then we'll have to fall back to more conventional tactics."

"Save the torpedos for now," Anja said grimly.

"Support us for a run on the last target, I want to take him out before his friends show up."

"Aye sir," Tiln acknowledged, turning back to his crew. The two ships accelerated on a straight-line course towards the remaining Emissary, then began an evasive spiral as its first shots lanced toward them. Anja stabbed her fingers at the console and debris exploded from the Emissary's fore quarter. Grinning, she fired again - and looked at the display with a sinking feeling as nothing happened.

"Shit," she spat angrily.

"The whack-a-mole is empty. Rhuar, position us to engage with the plasma lance."

"Got it," he replied, although worry marked his face through the shipjack fugue. The ship banked again to bring the topside against the Emissary, and Anja focused a blazing column of light into the scar from her last barrage. The attack landed in a spectacular wave of billowing plasma, bright even in the radiant sunlight, but the Emissary remained active. Rhuar grunted as they were forced to dodge a pair of incoming shots, the nearer of which raced uncomfortably close by their port side.

Metal screamed, and warning lights lit up red on several displays.

"Number one engine is damaged!", David called out, busily directing his fleet of repair drones to the site.

"We're at three-quarters output." Anja didn't comment, instead training the railguns to focus fire on what she hoped were weak points in the Emissary's hull. Blazing lines stitched out from across the Grand Design as the batteries spoke, but Rhuar's frantic evasive maneuvering scattered many of the shots away from her intended target.

"I've got it," Tiln broadcast, taking the Subtle Knife in for a supporting volley. The little ship fired her forward guns in a sustained burst that sent secondary explosions rippling through the Emissary's hull.

"Be careful," Anja warned, eyeing his trajectory.

"We're about to be-" She cut off abruptly as the two new Emissary contacts burst out of hyperspace directly behind Tiln's ship, their weapons charging for an immediate volley. Anja watched helplessly as the Subtle Knife juked to the side, narrowly avoiding annihilation as the twisted projectiles stripped ribbons of metal from its flank. Atmosphere vented in a glittering fog behind them to mark their course as the ship spiraled away from the Gestalt's encirclement, but they were still too close.

Anja retargeted their guns on the Emissaries' charging weapons, watching them ramp up quickly, too quickly for her to stop- White fire blossomed over her scopes and was immediately outstripped by explosions of superheated metal from the Emissary closest to Tiln. The Cormorant streaked away from the glowing cloud, the plasma from their hyperjump blown outward as they lashed a second Emissary with their guns.

"Oh, fuck yeah!", Rhuar shouted, bouncing on his paws in exuberant glee.

"Tarl, you beautiful yellow bastard!" Guns from all three ships pummeled the remaining wounded Emissary, and soon all of their opponents had retreated into their protective shells. Tarl's face blinked into view on one of the displays, looking exhilarated. Behind him his crew worked frantically, his weary first officer bellowing orders in a hoarse voice.

"Major Tam, Captain Tiln," he said happily.

"We've been trying to find you for some time now." Despite herself, Anja felt a smile creep onto her lips.

"Tarl, good to see you," she replied.

"And good timing. We had thought you might be dead."

"Dead?", Tarl scoffed.

"Major, I am the Warfather. Some Emissaries attacked earlier, but they did no worse than delay me." He sniffed indignantly, but Anja could see the scarred plating on the outside of his vessel where near-misses and grazes had ripped his hull open. Her sensors placed his reactor output at below-optimal, and two engines showed dead and cold on her readout. She shook her head ruefully.

"Ysleli," she muttered under her breath.

"At the risk of breaking decorum, sir," Tiln said, reestablishing his connection, "I did tell you so." The bridge behind him was obscured by a haze of smoke, and Anja could see crewmen tending to casualties over his shoulder.

"So you did," Anja said tolerantly.

"Status?"

"We've been better," Tiln replied, surveying the bridge behind him.

"That last hit knocked out a lot of systems, but we think we can most of it back up in short order. Environmental controls are down, and it's beginning to feel a bit warm in here." Anja pursed her lips. This close to the sun, that would be an issue.

"Come around in our shadow while you do repairs," she said.

"If we have a few moments we should use them to regroup."

"Excellent," Tarl rumbled.

"We will join formation as well. There are a few minor repairs…" He trailed off as one of his officers shouted something in the background, and Anja saw Rhuar go stiff out of the corner of her eye.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Repairs will have to wait," Tarl said flatly.

"We have new contacts coming in, upwards of twenty ships." Anja exchanged a look with David and Rhuar.

"Twenty?", she asked quietly. Rhuar nodded.

"Twenty-three. And Anja…" He hesitated, then gave her a mournful look.

"If Tarl is alive then he completed his segment. We destroyed all of the targeted nodes, but the Gestalt is still coming."

"It didn't work," David muttered.

"Well, shit." Anja slumped into her chair, a gnawing dread growing in the back of her mind. She cast her eyes over the increasing number of red warning lamps, the dire assessments of the Cormorant and the Subtle Knife, at Jesri's vitals brightly pulsing on their small display. She wrestled the dread back, looking up at David and Rhuar, at Tiln and Tarl on their monitors.

"One problem at a time," she said dully.

"We cannot make any sort of move to strike or retreat until we deal with these new ships."

"Well-stated," Tarl said, nodding his head firmly as if she had just given a motivational speech.

"We may not have defeated them yet, but the enemy measures us as a threat worth addressing with overwhelming force." He pointed dramatically to his bridge's tactical display, on which a cloud of red dots loomed ominously.

"That is not a force to finish an ailing enemy or mop up a fleet of weaklings. That is not a fleet you send to defeat an enemy that has no hope of defeating you in turn. It is a strong, capable fleet to match a strong, capable foe. Even if we cannot see the path forward, the enemy sees its own doom in us." He bared his needle-sharp teeth in a smile.

"We only need to survive until we see it as well."

"I am simultaneously motivated and terrified," Rhuar complained.

"Anja, make him stop." Something flared in the darkness of Anja's thoughts, and a smile crept back onto her lips.

"No," she said, "Tarl is right. The Gestalt has always responded with commensurate force. The concept of building in a margin for error is foreign to a mind that knows all details and calculates all outcomes. If it sends twenty-three ships it is because it believes we stand a chance against twenty-two." She stood up from her chair and gave Tarl a feral smile.

"So I say we trust its assessment."

"So, what, you want to just kill twenty-two of them and see how we feel?", David asked.

"We're pretty beat up," Rhuar observed.

"Our combat strength is lowered - but so is theirs. I can tell, watching how they fly and attack. They may not be crippled like we had planned, but something is degrading their responses. I can't say whether it's us or Jesri and the resistance."

"Good enough for me," Anja said, trailing a hand absently over Jesri's readouts.

"Get ready to move out." Jesri stared beyond the chessboard and across the roiling surface of Apollyon's star, her mind settling on the cloud of light sailing toward the three darkened motes huddled together on the battlefield. Her forces had made inroads into the Emissary ships, slashing data feeds and hobbling predictive routines where they could - but the Emissaries were not wholly dependent on the Gestalt.

Their core operations were walled off from her relentless assault, and the flotilla pressed on despite her efforts.

"You seem distracted," Trelir said knowingly.

"Quiet," Jesri muttered.

"I'm thinking."

"You're panicking," Trelir purred.

"You're realizing what you should have seen from the beginning. You cannot touch the Emissaries, and they will destroy the remnants of your pitiful fleet." Jesri glared defiantly back at Trelir, drawing her bishop back to her side of the board.

"Even if I die," she said, "you can't stop what I started. The people I freed will tear you apart."

"They won't, because they are still people," Trelir sighed.

"Individuals who communicate better than most, admittedly, but individuals nonetheless. They've made you their leader, their core, and when you are gone they will not be able to function." He leaned in close to her, his breath brushing against her face. She recoiled from his presence, but he merely advanced further.

"You weren't ready," he hissed.

"You took people raised to operate as independent entities and tried to make them a collective. Even we couldn't make that work. It requires a mind tailored for the task, raised in the light of the Confluence, matured from its first day to be one with others."

"We're doing all right," Jesri retorted.

"You, on the other hand, seem to be a bit bothered."

"They only succeed because of you," Trelir replied, ignoring her.

"Because you're better than they are you can help them to some degree. Once you're gone, however, the entire mess will descend into a mob of panicked monkeys that can't help but hold ninety-nine percent of themselves back from the group. They will wail and scream, clash against one another in useless conflict. It will all dissolve into chaos." Jesri didn't answer, instead focusing on the force of Emissaries. They had executed another microjump and were now within direct striking range of the Grand Design.

She saw the two larger signatures twist and evade, circling outward while the smallest ship flung itself in an impossibly tight microjump towards the lead Gestalt ship. There was a confused tussle that left the Emissary reeling into stasis, its lower hull blasted to scrap. Jesri smiled.

"Twenty-two," she said cheerfully.

"Keep mocking me if it pleases you," Trelir said dismissively.

"You have only seconds to live. I will be courteous and refrain from counting them." She joined in with the growing tide of minds flocking to torment the Emissaries, flooding their data feeds with sensor echoes and providing last-minute targeting corrections that sent their shots veering wide. Two more of the ovoid ships were forced into stasis, but Jesri worried at the poor state of the surviving human ships.

All three had suffered heavy damage and even with the hordes of humanity on their side they were hard-pressed to dodge the oncoming projectiles. She saw armor peel off the spine of the Grand Design from a near-miss and winced.

"This is it," Trelir said, his voice oozing satisfaction.

"Time slows and the delicious details brighten. The solution space contracts to a point, a singularity." He moved his queen to the center of the board, placing her king in check. It was penned in on all sides, with only one move standing between it and checkmate. A pang of alarm from the linked minds pulled her attention back to the fleet battle where an Emissary had borrowed from Tiln's playbook and microjumped directly next to the Grand Design.

She saw their engines flare as Rhuar panicked, felt the growing pulse of the Emissary's weapon building up charge. They were too close to bend the weapon's trajectory away from the ship - the only choice they had was where to send the hit. The Emissary had aimed squarely amidships, which would blow the entire back of the cruiser apart. She could nudge the projectile aft, which would destroy the engines and leave them dead in the water. Fore would still break the ship in half, dooming them.

To the top was the bridge, where Anja and Rhuar would die instantly if struck. The remaining option was below, towards the belly of the ship. The secondary cargo hold, the pedestal - and Jesri's helpless body. The cloud of minds spinning through her reeled, clustering within her chest and beating like a second heart. Millions of voices shouted options, suggestions, diversions, but none of them arrived at a solution.

Slowly, with the wailing voices of billions tearing at the inside of her skull, she picked up her queen and moved it to block Trelir's. The weapon's aim skewed low, drawing a bead that would tear a gash into the belly of the Grand Design.

"You see," Trelir murmured.

"It was always inevitable. There could only ever be one outcome." Jesri's vision blurred as she felt the energy's vibrations resonate within her skull.

"For me, maybe. Not for them. They're better than you think."

"They're nothing without you," Trelir scoffed. He reached over to the board and moved his queen to take hers, tossing the captured piece contemptuously to the table.

"They will die in an instant." The weapon brimmed with energy, milliseconds from releasing its payload to tear through spacetime towards the ship. Jesri shook her head and looked up at Trelir, her eyes dry and cold even as a maelstrom raged within her, all minds focused intently on the crucial nanosecond as they searched in vain for a faulty line of code or exploitable vulnerability.

"We'll see," she said. In her mind's eye she saw the projectile race out, covering the distance between the ships in an eyeblink. Huge swathes of hull plating were shattered as it approached, atmosphere venting from a hundred ruptured corridors and holds, bulkheads twisting in gruesome slow-motion until finally- Anja heard the dim blaring of klaxons and forced her eyes open, years of military reflex overriding her grogginess.

The shuttered viewports of the bridge arced high overhead, their graceful curves lit red by the emergency lighting. She was on the floor, she realized. Why was she on the floor? Levering herself up, she looked around the bridge. Half of the displays had gone dark, and David had disappeared from his screen. Rhuar had fallen in a heap next to his duty station and was bleeding from a gash to his shoulder. He struggled to rise to his feet, his eyes clouded in a daze of feedback from his jack.

She stumbled towards her chair and threw herself into it, keying up damage reports with clumsy, fumbling fingers. A diagram of the ship flickered onto her display and her heart froze to see the red warnings spidering over it. They had taken a hit belowdecks, just afore of engineering. Critical ship's systems were spared, although the ship was currently rerouting power to compensate for several missing trunk conduits.

The WCML was gone, as were the torpedo bays, the lower aft railguns - and the entire secondary cargo hold. Panic gripping her, she flung a hand towards the small display that had held Jesri's vital signs. It sat dead and black in her hand, reflecting only her horrified face in the glass.