Chương 18: The Swarm

Auctoritas Station, Terra Imperium Stellarum September 25, 2847 Altair Janus Solaris, twenty-sixth emperor of the Imperium Stellarum, left a pair of imperial guards outside the airlock and stepped into the situation room on Auctoritas Station, to find it already awhirl with activity. At the center of the room, a projected holographic map of the Imperium hovered over the recessed floor, just above eye level.

Twenty-three systems, extending out from Terra at the center of the map in an uneven explosion of blue light, encompassed twenty-seven settled worlds, three Alu'kan ringworlds built around stars which should never have supported life, three Torean ark-fleets, and dozens of moons, asteroid mining bases, orbital stations and shipyards. Those lights, Altair knew, represented nearly seventy billion sapient lives.

On the upper edge of the map, five systems shone cerulean, shaded with just enough green to let an observer pick them out from the rest at a glance. Those were the worlds of the LeShaii, the most recent species to join the Imperium, and the reason that he'd been called to the situation room. But before addressing the current crisis, he couldn't help but let his eyes drift to the wedge of red light that cut toward the heart of the Imperium, ending just thirty-one light years from Terra at Wolf 1069. The Singularity.

The very sight of it stuck in his craw: five breakaway systems whose continued existence destabilized the very foundations of the realm his ancestors had spent centuries building. Before his thoughts could twist his lip in that long-held, simmering anger, Altair smoothed his face and turned toward the small group of men and women who awaited him.

"My apologies for interrupting your day, Emperor," Admiral Jack Nakagami began, stepping forward to offer a hand to his liege. Nakagami, despite the best telomere therapy the Imperium's doctors and gene therapists could devise, was showing his age. The son of a Mikaboshi-born mother and a spacer father, Altair knew that he'd spent a miserable childhood enduring the scorn of the Nightside upper class for his mixed heritage.

It had driven the man off-world and into fleet, and the Imperium couldn't have been more fortunate. Without Nakagami's leadership during the Singularity War, there might not even be an emperor. Altair not only took Nakagami's hand in his own, he reached around with his left hand to pat his old friend on the shoulder. It was a level of intimacy that few, outside of his own family, had earned.

"What have we got, Jack?" he asked. Around the room, the admiral's staff officers worked at their stations, collating data and running projections as they tried to anticipate the old man's needs.

"Probable Swarm contact here," Nakagami said, reaching up to take hold of the projected map with his hands. Optical sensors placed around the ceiling and walls of the room read his movements and seamlessly translated them into instructions, and the map zoomed in to center on LeShaii space.

"LHS 1140, a red dwarf with a single inhabited planet."

"Hav'eth," Ambassador An'cet said, stepping forward.

"An ocean world with a sprinkling of islands grouped into three major archipelagos. It is where my people first encountered the Alu'ka, actually. They were scouting it out for their own use."

"Ambassador." Altair stepped in to take the LeShaii's hand in turn.

"I presume that I'm going to have to break that habit and get used to addressing you as 'senator' in the near future."

"I'm not certain whether I should congratulate you, or not," Jack Nakagami said.

"You'd have to shoot my knees out to get me to sit down in that senate chamber. I asked the ambassador here to join us because we haven't even started integrating LeShaii officers into our chain of command yet, your imperial majesty, and we've only got spotty intel on Hav'eth."

"I would have preferred that we had a decade or so to get ourselves into shape before this happened," Altair admitted. An'cet nodded.

"The first LeShaii are only just entering imperial military academies," he agreed.

"Your daughter among them, if I recall," Director Wik Void Skimmer said. The Torean head of imperial intelligence had a disturbing way of being so quiet and unobtrusive that, until the moment he spoke, Altair often forgot he was in the room.

"Attending the same school as our princess imperial." An'cet inclined his head, and the projectors splayed blue light across the opalescent shell that adorned his skull.

"That is so. I am told that they are sharing a room, in fact."

"So am I," Altair grumbled. In fact, he'd already received the first recording from Cassie complaining about that. He'd hoped that putting the two girls in close proximity would help to build a relationship between the imperial family and the newest member species of the Imperium, but perhaps that had been putting too much faith in his hot-headed daughter's interpersonal skills. Still, plenty of roommates began life at odds and settled into being friends.

He'd seen to it that Rear Admiral Townshend would leave them right where they were for the first year, at least.

"What can you tell us, Wik?" Altair asked, reaching out to drag a wheeled chair away from the conference table along one side of the room. He settled back into the cushioned seat with a sigh. He hadn't made noises like that twenty years ago—but then again, he hadn't had an aching back twenty years ago. Wik Void Skimmer reached up to snap his fingers, and a young human woman stepped forward.

"Monica Yarborough is our senior analyst in the sector. She's been working closely with her counterparts among the LeShaii. Miss Yarborough, you may proceed." Wik, An'cet, and Jack Nakagami all took their own seats at the conference table, settling in to listen.

"Thank you, Director," Yarborough said. She gave the impression, Altair thought, of extreme competence and professionalism. She wore a skirt-suit in charcoal gray, with her nut-brown hair pulled back into a tight bun, and she wore a set of wire-frame smart lenses that perched just at the tip of her nose. The glint of light from inside the frames hinted at scrolling text, but it was impossible to see just what she was referencing.

Yarborough lifted her tablet from the conference table, tapped at the screen, and supplemented the projected map with half a dozen informational boxes and pictures.

"Most of what we know about the Swarm come from our LeShaii allies," Yarborough began.

"First contact between the two species occurred so far in the past that we might more accurately consider it mythology than history, and early sources are unreliable at best. Religious texts, for instance." An'cet nodded, though Altair wondered what the man was thinking. What would it be like, the emperor mused, to be able to reach out and grasp the thoughts of another person? To satisfy that primal curiosity?

It was probably a good thing that they hadn't even begun research into whether it might be possible to create human psychers. The last temptation an emperor needed was the ability to pry into the thoughts of his subjects. The LeShaii ambassador tilted his face in Altair's direction, somewhere between a nod and a glance.

"I can understand how those early texts would appear unreliable, when one is considering them from an outside perspective. But I will point out that our ancestors' depiction of the Swarm—or the Na'xir, as we call them—has remained remarkably consistent when measured against more recent accounts."

"I will concede the point, Ambassador," Monica Yarborough said.

"The Na'xir Swarm—I think that may be the best way to refer to them—is, at its core, a species evolved from ancestors similar to Terran arachnids, rather than insects." Several of the images that she'd summoned expanded in size while she spoke, answering to the touch of her fingers at her tablet.

"All castes of Na'xir have certain biological and anatomical qualities in common," Yarborough continued.

"An exoskeleton, for instance, instead of the internal bones we're used to in most Imperium member species. They have eight legs, two pairs of which have evolved to be used for locomotion, while one pair is used for fine motor control and manipulation of tools. The pincers are for combat." Stolen story; please report. Altair noted that Yarborough had said 'most' member species, not 'all.' He mentally adjusted his estimation of her security clearance—and Director Void Skimmer's faith in her capabilities—upwards.

"Unlike Terran arachnids, Na'xir form hive groups more similar to bees or ants," Yarborough went on.

"A queen lays eggs based on the needs of the hive. My apologies, but we don't have any media of a Na'xir queen. But we do have images of warriors and workers." Altair couldn't help but lean forward in fascination. There was nothing human-like in the faces of the Na'xir. In fact, their heads could hardly be said to possess a face at all. There were two wide-set eyes, facing forward like in so many predator species, rather than to the side, and set back into the protective embrace of the carapace.

The mouth, if it could be called that, consisted of wicked-looking, scissoring chelicerae.

"Just how big are these things?" he asked. A man without his genetic modifications might have begun taking notes, but the emperor was confident in his augmented brain's optimized ability to process and retain information.

"The warrior caste grows to two and a half meters or more, and over two hundred kilos," Yarborough answered.

"The workers are much smaller and lighter, so that their wings can support flight on most worlds we would classify as habitable. Twenty kilograms, or thereabouts. It's an astonishing amount of morphological variation within a single species." She reached out to the holograms floating above the desk, grabbed one, and pulled it forward.

The frozen image captured within the hanging frame immediately began to play, and though the quality was bad, Altair could see membranous wings buzzing as one of the workers flew above what looked to be tropical greenery.

"The pattern of behavior is consistent with LeShaii records," Yarborough said.

"Ten ships warped into the edge of the system and coasted in toward Hav'eth on their leftover momentum. With no burn, they were in system before anyone detected them, and launching drop pods. Orbital defenses were overwhelmed within four standard imperial hours."

"Our people are fighting on the ground while the cities are evacuated," Ambassador An'cet stated, with a tone of subdued, grieving certainty.

"We don't have a firm casualty estimate yet."

"And whatever numbers we get will be days behind," Admiral Nakagami said.

"If we get anything new at all—that assumes we have ships in-system who haven't bugged out yet, are collecting data, and can make it to the gate at L2 without the swarm blowing them to space-dust. I don't think we can count on knowing any more than we do now until we have a carrier-group in system." Altair leaned back and let out a long breath.

"Who do you want to send, Jack?" It wasn't a question of whether they'd intercede, of course, but only how. Ambassador An'cet's relief at his words did not escape the emperor; even after all of the agreements they'd made, there must have been some anxiety remaining when it came time for the Imperium to actually stand by their new allies. But Altair would be damned if he let innocent people—of any species—be slaughtered when the Imperium could do something to stop it.

Nakagami tapped at his tablet, and a new breakout box appeared, projected into the air above their heads.

"Send me that breakdown on the fifth fleet's readiness," he grumbled to one of the aides waiting in the background, and the young man nodded.

"Here we are. Rear Admiral Wai has a carrier group at Bian, as part of our commitment to protect LeShaii space. His flag is the Galerius, and he's got seventy-five mechs ready to go on that thing. He's even brought a few Riptides, which as you know is not standard deployment, but he's Alu'kan and they love those damned things. Works out well for us this time. Two cruisers, three destroyers, and two frigates. Should be enough to turn back a border raid and retake the planet."

"My math says that's eight of our ships to ten of theirs, Jack," Altair pointed out.

"Does that mean we're going in outnumbered?"

"You want to field that one, Miss Yarborough?" Nakagami asked.

"Our intel doesn't indicate that the Na'xir field anything like our carriers," the intelligence analyst said.

"You're better off thinking of their ships as similar to Torean Ark-ships. They're built to transport a hive, including the queen and space for her to lay eggs. The records we have of LeShaii naval battles against them give us a good deal of confidence that we'll be able to achieve orbital superiority with one of our carrier battle groups."

"Alright," Altair said, leaning forward until he could cross his arms and lean on the conference table.

"If we're going to do this, I want – A chime rang out across the room, the light above the door into the room changed to a bright purple, and Altair felt his heart jump. Still, when he spoke, he kept his voice level and gave no sign that anything was out of the ordinary.

"Anyone who is not cleared for contact with the Navigator's Guild will vacate the room immediately," he commanded, and made a decision.

"Ambassador An'cet, please remain." He honestly wasn't certain what they'd cleared the man for at this point; the Na'xir had come at perhaps the worst possible time, right in the middle of all the chaos that came with integrating a new species into the Imperium. Save for Altair himself, An'cet, Nakagami, Director Void Skimmer and, as the emperor had guessed, Monica Yarborough, every member of the admiral's command staff departed.

It took a few moments for the corridor to be cleared, during which Altair waited patiently. At one point, the ambassador opened his mouth as if to speak.

"Better to wait," Altair told him, with a gentle shake of his head.

"We'll continue in a moment."

"They have to move out anyone along the route," Nakagami explained.

"No one who isn't cleared for it is permitted to see a representative of the Navigator's Guild." An'cet frowned.

"I am getting the impression that I have misunderstood something," the LeShaii said.

"I was under the assumption that the guild was simply the organization which built and maintained the gates. Wouldn't any representative be –" He broke off, and Altair took it as a signal. The Emperor of the Imperium rose from his seat and faced the entrance to the situation room. The purple light continued to glow, and then the door hissed open.

The mechanism which advanced into the chamber walked on five articulated, mechanical legs, each rising and lowering with a soft clicking and whirring sound as they carried their burden forward. A cylindrical tank more than two meters tall, of tempered alumino-silicate, was illuminated by soft lights set at the base of the device. Hoses ran up to filters which kept the salt-water inside flush with oxygen and nutrients.

The creature within raised a single arm to touch the inside of its tank, and looked out with two large, dark eyes.

"It is a pleasure to speak with you again, Guild Representative Chasach," Altair said, stepping forward.

"Please, join us. We were just speaking about a response to the Na'xir Swarm assault on one of the LeShaii worlds." A small speaker built into the base of the tank produced an artificial voice.

"The circumstances could be better, Son of Ascania. We honor the alliance of our ancestors and come at your need. We tend the ways in the darkness." Chasach's skin shifted to cool, peaceful blue tones, which Altair knew enough to interpret as an expression of trust, faith and respect. The human eye was not sensitive enough to follow the precise shades as they flickered through Chasach's skin, but decades as emperor had taught him enough.

"We also honor the alliance of our ancestors," Altair said, repeating the ritual words which had been passed down to him.

"We stand in the light, so that your people might shelter in our shadow." With one hand, he indicated the conference table, and Chasach's apparatus trundled along to join the gathered advisors.

"Ambassador An'cet, Guild Representative Chasach is a member of the fifth member species of the Imperium. His people's alliance with my family goes back over five centuries. I am retroactively granting the ambassador the security clearance to be part of this conversation, Director Void Skimmer."

"I'll make a note of it," Wik said.

"I'm surprised a border raid brought you out, Representative Chasach," Admiral Nakagami said, once he'd settled back into his chair.

"I don't recall your people being particularly concerned when we went up against the Singularity, and that was a much larger conflict." Chasach's skin shifted from blue to a shade of vibrant red. Courage. Tenacity. Vigilance.

"That was a political disagreement between humans," his speaker declared, the voice just unnatural enough to be jarring.

"This is different. Do not be overconfident."

"Excuse me, representative, sir," Monica Yarborough said.

"Have your people had contact with the Na'xir in the past? Any historical records you have could be incredibly valuable to our intelligence operations." The red of Chasach's skin deepened to a vibrant, pulsing color, somewhere between blood and a smoking, raging fire. Altair wasn't certain he had ever seen the shade before, not in a single one of his conversations with the representative of the Navigator's Guild.

"Exterminate them," Chasach said.

"Destroy their ships. Burn their eggs. Hunt down each and every warrior and let no worker escape. Find the queen, dig her out of her hive and slay her. Send their ships into the nearest star. Hunt them until there is nothing left." Altair couldn't help but gape. He'd never heard Chasach speak like this before—not even close to it.

"That doesn't sound like a border skirmish, representative," he said.

"Not even a war. It sounds like a genocide."

"No." Chasach's skin continued to pulse violently.

"It is an extermination."