"Mister Devlin," Harry Cozen said on local comms. "Welcome to the negotiations. You’ve earned your place in this historic moment. All of you have. Thanks to you, it’s not a matter of debate how dangerous we are as a species. No; not anymore. We’ve quite proved it. My congratulations to you all. Medoc, Max." He nodded at the pilots. "All of you did a brilliant job. You too, Tig Meester. I see you there, coming out the aft airlock." They were all speechless. And Cozen appeared jubilant.

  Ram said, "What is this ship we’re inside, Mr. Cozen. Where are we and what is that thing?" He pointed to the step pyramid still, somehow, rising from the ring over 50 meters off. The steps were low enough for human legs to climb.

  "That?" Cozen began walking towards it again over the rough gold surface of the ring. "That is…"

  "You don’t know."

  "We’ll know when we get to the top."

  Ram said, "The top? Why? How do you know that?"

  "Well, bloody look at it you fool! Is astronautical engineering the only thing they teach at Staas Academy now? It’s a Ziggurat, Mr. Devlin. It’s the architectural expression of hierarchy. Clearly whatever we want is at the top."

  "Why?"

  "Because…" Cozen wrought all the sarcasm he could from the gravel of his voice. "The top is closest to god." He winked and then pointed at the light at the center of the uncanny ship, floating directly above them, like a noontime sun. "At the top of that Ziggurat is the future of our species," Cozen said, "a future we've worked hard to secure."

  She took the sidearm from Ram’s holster before he could stop her. Dana stepped back with the Honma & Voss Itar and leveled it at Harry Cozen. "You know what this gun can do," she said. She glanced at Medoc and Max. "I could cut all of you down in a single stroke so don’t try to stop me." Her gloved left hand turned the ring on the left side of the weapon. She changed the user regulated discharge rate to maximum.

  "Careful, Dana, I think you ju-"

  "I know what I’m doing, Ram."

  "What exactly are you doing, Ms. Sellis?" The H&V Itar had been made as a terror weapon, but it hadn’t had any effect on Cozen yet.

  She said, "I’m getting answers, Mr. Cozen. We’re not going up there until I get them."

  Cozen sighed then "What is it you want me to tell you, Lt. Commander. You already have your answers. You’ve always had them. From the very first day of the war you’ve had them. You know how Mohegan died and you knew who really attacked who first because you were there. You were there and you saw all the evidence for yourself. You're no fool. You already made your choice about what we did. You made it back on Moriah. Don't question it now."

  He’d all but told her it was true, but she needed to hear it. "Mohegan…" she almost couldn’t get the name out. "You were the one to sabotage Mohegan and murder the first ten casualties of the war, not the enemy. The crew of that junk died because of something you did, not the Squidies. And on Moriah… you faked the attack on us the same way. You set us up to board that ship and murder the Squidies inside."

  "Gaining us invaluable technologies," Cozen added, "including interstellar travel. It was a bold gambit, I think, and it’s worked out quite well. Thank you for your support, Ms. Sellis."

  "I wouldn’t if I’d kn-"

  "You knew the truth and you’ve known it all along." She shook her head no. "Yes," he said. "You have. You know it’s true because I’m not clever enough to fool you entirely even if I wanted to. It was important that I brought a crew like yours that first day of the war, that first battle on Moriah. Others might have questioned me for all the loose ends in the narrative, but not your crew. Not you, Ms. Sellis. Not Hardway. You all knew and you’ve all been with me from the start. Your loyalty and your trust have been integral to the success of this war."

  "No." She shook her head inside her helmet. "No." And then, she raised the gaping muzzle of the H&V Itar just the fraction of a centimeter that told Ram she’d put the red dot between the two green dots and rested the little, glowing constellation across the middle of Harry Cozen’s face. She was now preparing to bore a hole through the middle of him and out the back.

  "You’re not going to shoot me," Cozen said. "I wish you would, though. You think I enjoy being who I am? I’d welcome non-existence with profound relief. But I’ve got a job to do. For you. And Mr. Devlin, and all the people that think I’m a monster. They’re right. I am. But you won’t shoot me for the same reason I don’t put a bullet in my own head. I'm your monster and Humanity needs me. It needs me to do what good people like you and Devlin can’t conceive of. Mr. Devlin understands this. He knew. And he helped me." Cozen saw the shock on her face. "Ah... I see he never told you. I'm surprised."

  She looked Ram's way then and he almost couldn't look back at her.

  "That’s right, Mr. Devlin knew as well. He had no proof, but he knew, just like you did. And he didn’t kill me. He helped me because he knows Humanity needs me. Asa Biko knew as well. He wanted to kill me after the war because he thought we wouldn’t need a monster like me after that, but he's wrong. You'll need me and you always will."

  "No," she said, "we don’t. There’s plenty of monsters to take your place now." Her nostrils flared.

  "This bluff is pointless. You’re a good woman. You don’t murder people. You’re not like me."

  It looked as if she was raising the muzzle of the gun to spare him, and he opened his mouth to say something more, but as soon as he did, she held the trigger down on the Honma & Voss and sliced the 5cm, x-ray beam across him like a fiery sword. It hit him in the crook, between his shoulder and his neck. She slashed down across his chest, and through clouds of steam and vaporizing suit and meat, Ram saw the beam exit his body at his right hip, leaving Harry Cozen in two, smoking pieces that fell to the golden surface of the ring together. He thrashed briefly against the golden metal surface of the ring in a steaming puddle.

  Inside his helmet, Harry Cozen's face looked surprised. It was the only time Ram could ever recall seeing him wear that expression. When he was still, Dana Sellis held the gun out without a word and blinked as Ram took it from her.

  *****

  Ram, Biko, and Dana climbed step by step to the top of the Ziggurat, closer to the light above them, where Cozen had said Humanity’s future lay. At the top, the three of them stood on a square less than ten-meters wide, featureless, made of the same, rough golden metal as the rest of the structure and the 40-kilometer-wide ring from which it had risen.

  "There’s nothing here but our shadows," Biko said.

  Ram looked down at his shadow, and then up into the light above them, up at the ball of nuclear fusion at the center of the ship. "It's alive. This isn't a ship," Ram said. "This isn't a ship. It's more like a...suit. It's a giant exosuit."

  The light above them intensified. Not only did it get brighter, but it acquired what he could only describe as a feeling of physical weight. It felt as if it was pressing down on them with force, as if it could knock them down to their knees. Then, suddenly, it seemed as if some kind of resistance had been breached because the physical weight of it that strangely material energy lifted from his shoulders, but now, it was inside his helmet and inside his skull. It was behind his eyes.

  The voice that spoke came from between his own ears and it was his own voice, hijacked, stolen, used as a sock-puppet. It wasn’t communication like Ram knew. It was more like a thought forced through his mind in his own words: "Who is in charge?"

  He heard Dana's voice and Biko's say the words too over local suit comms. It was in their heads as well. The thing like a pygmy star at the center of this ship, was no mere reactor or power plant. It was the passenger. They all stared up at it now with rigid limbs as if on the threshold of some kind of fit. Half his muscles were clenched as if he was holding a live wire.

  "Who is in charge?" it demanded again. Ram resisted letting it drag the thought from his mind, but he heard the others over local suit comms.

  They said, "Ram Devlin."

  Dana's and Biko's bodies relaxed as they were released from whatever had held them. They fell to their knees as the light worked its way deeper into Ram’s head. It boomed at him in Harry Cozen's stolen voice. "Why do you refuse to communicate with me? Are you afraid I'll hear you plotting to kill me?"

  Something analogous to a darting wind snatched the thought from Ram like it was a handkerchief in a hurricane. "Yes."

  "Do you know why you are here?" That thing like a wind blew through Ram’s mind and left him half-shattered and hyperventilating, thrashing in the light from above that held him prisoner. "You don’t know. Harry Cozen knew. Now, you will understand. I am the entity you will address as Thrall. I represent the Ortani Imperium, an order spanning galaxies and aeons. The species you call the Squidies fought for us. They helped maintain our order in this region. For this, the Imperium shared technologies with them and gave them dominion here...dominion which you have more than resisted. You killed them. Nearly all of them. You are a young species with primitive tools, but rarely if ever has the Imperium witnessed a species so technologically advanced by its own means display such barbarism. That is the reason I now offer Humanity the chance to fill the role the Squidies filled in service of the Ortani. Humanity will be more than a slave race. You will be allied with the greatest empire ever known. For enforcing our will with your military prowess we will make you mighty and many species will serve you. They will pay tribute to your world."

  Ram tried not to let that wind blow through his mind and rip his thoughts from him, but there was no keeping it out. He heard himself crying out pre-verbal sounds and half-choking on his own spit. The entity known as Thrall pulled back from his mind. "You still want me dead. Why?"

  He coughed as he spoke. "If we become what the Squidies were to you, it will mean endless war. Conflicts will begin and end, but war will never cease for Humanity."

  "Your vanquished enemy served the Ortani Imperium for 1356 solar years. Until you killed them."

  "And how long do you think Humanity will serve?"

  "Longer. Much longer. This affair is concluded. The treaty between us is made. The Imperium will now arm you and give you more powerful technologies and make you so mighty this entire galaxy fears you."

  Ram thrust his next thoughts at Thrall like a pike. "We don't need you. You’re right about us. We are brutal and we excel at making war. We’re good enough at it that I’m willing to bet on us," he said. Those were Harry Cozen’s words once. Now, they were Ram Devlin’s. "I’m willing to bet we can beat whomever you throw at us. We don’t need your Imperium. We have nothing to fear from you. We already killed the best you had."

  Ram let Thrall deep enough into his mind then to read the thought he’d been hiding down deepest of all, the thought he'd secreted away: He'd already armed the one, remaining gravity bomb in the Boomslang’s ordnance bay.

  "The primitive device you wish to hide from me cannot do me harm."

  Thrall sorted through Ram's thoughts at will, but the connection the emissary had forced between them wasn't entirely a one-way street. When Ram's thoughts of the last gravity bomb and his plan to detonate it had been snatched from him, what came back to him, what he sensed from Thrall was like a shuddering vibration along the line that connected them, a ripple in the light that Thrall shined into his mind. It was like a shiver of fear...a twinge. In this context, whether it came from a human or an alien, it indicated a bluff.

  "Allegiance with the Ortani Imperium and making war to preserve our order is Humanity’s future. You will accept it."

  "I will not steer Humanity to war without end. I will not. I won’t. We are going home now. Prevent us from leaving or interfere with us in any way, and I’ll detonate the gravity bomb. You know I'm telling the truth. Its radius of effect is far larger than this vessel."

  "Refusal means war with the Ortani Imperium. Have you not yet apprehended my power?"

  "You?" Ram said. "You're just middle management."

  "This will not end war for your species. You will be conquered."

  "We may suffer war for a few more years, but there’s a chance for peace at the end of it. I’ll fight for that peace and so will the rest of us."

  "Others of your species will be more receptive. There are others like Harry Cozen."

  It released him then and Ram’s legs wobbled under him so badly that Biko and Dana had to catch him. It was only then he realized they’d been steadying his thrashing limbs and holding him up while Thrall rifled through his mind. "Tell them I will be coming soon." The thought boomed inside Ram’s head as Dana and Biko limped him down the steps of the Ziggurat. "Go now and tell them. Go."

  Ram got his legs back after ten steps down and from there, they ran straight to the longboat.

  Medoc and Max were already set to go. After Ram, Biko, and Dana made it in the airlock, the pilots lifted off and turned the boat so hard on its thrusters that the airlock spun around the three of them.

  Once inside the cabin, Ram looked for the opening in the hull they’d come in and suffered a moment of panic when he couldn't find it. The 300-meter circular hole leading out of that gargantuan vessel was still open, and now, when they looked out the aperture they’d entered through, instead of impenetrable tarry blackness, they saw the stars and freedom. Medoc accelerated for it as hard as they could while Thrall's words thundered in all their heads, "Go. Tell them I am coming."

  After they crossed the threshold and were outside that vessel's hull, Ram turned to the cherry. "The bomb."

  The redsuit nodded. "It's good."

  It only took a few gestures in the air to light up the improvised firing circuit in his helmet's visor. The illusion of an imaginary, free-floating button was projected a half-meter out in front of him. It was ten centimeters wide and it glowed a soft green. "This guarantees war with them," Dana said. "They’ll be no way to go back."

  "That's the idea." If he didn’t do this, then the Staas Company’s Board of Directors and the UN would vote to take Thrall’s proposal in a heartbeat.

  The imaginary button flashed only once after Ram pushed it, and then, without any further confirmation, it disappeared. "Is that it?" He glanced back to the vast vessel behind them. "Nothing happened."

  Tig said, "You push the big, green button and initiate the firing sequence?"

  "Yes!"

  "Then...it fired." The redsuit said it without a shred of doubt.

  Medoc shouted, "It's gone!" The gargantuan vessel had vanished entirely.

  Two seconds later, Max spotted it some 49,000Ks away from where it had been. "There it is!"

  It seemed to blink back into existence low over the atmosphere of the bloody gas giant, but it wasn't a sphere anymore. The hull was still intact, but it had been distorted. The surface appeared wrinkled now, covered with ridges and valleys like dried fruit. That was the only damage it showed from the outside. Ram thought the pulse from the gravity bomb might have killed the living thing at the center of it because the vessel seemed to lose all will. It drifted like a mindless rock. It fell into the bloody gas giant's gravity well.

  Only minutes later, it sank into the upper atmo like a setting moon. The lightning storms started when it got close. They continued through its descent and for long minutes after it was lost from sight. Ram hoped the final, punctuating flash deep down at the bottom of the planet's atmo marked the vessel's impact with a solid core.

  "It's over," Ram said. "Set a course for Hardway."

  "It's not over," Biko said. "Not by a long shot."

  Epilogue

  Privateer warships and haulers as big as two city blocks soared over Ram's head and rose into the gray, North Atlantic sky. Rivers of rainwater sluiced off them and fell upwards as they rode the Staten Island Spaceport's artificial gees to orbit. Commodore Ram Devlin watched the ascending hulls mostly just to feel the rain on his face a little more before he had to go back. It had been so long since he'd had his feet on the Earth that he'd forgotten he liked rain.

  The Staten Island Spaceport was barely Earth, but at least the Staas Executive Compound had a walled garden with dirt and grass and plants to stand in. Compared to a Privateer ship, this was a nature retreat.

  He was lucky the Staas Company's Board of Directors had been willing to come to him and meet at the company's high-security wing of the Staten Island Spaceport. The SIS had artificial gravity to ease the strain on the spacers like him who'd been living at .3 gees for years. You could gene-cut against muscle-loss and beef up human bones all you wanted, but going from .3 gees to a full gee was nearly crippling.

  For once, he considered himself lucky to be involved in something so secret because the Board didn't mind showing up in person to hear about it. It gave them a chance to tightly manage the counter-surveillance and ensure Ram's final report to them about the events in the Squidies' home system would be kept a secret.

  Regarding the destruction of the what was now estimated to be 92% of the Squidies' entire population, the only question he was asked pertained to the likelihood of there being any Squidies lurking out there with revenge on their minds. He pointed to the alien dreadnought and the last of her escorts, to the orbital battlestations, and to the Squidy vessels encountered since the genocide on the homeworld moon. All of them had been boarded without incident, and in not one instance had a single Squidy been found alive. All appeared to have died by their own hand. This fact, partially explained by what he'd been told by Matilda Witt regarding the aliens' belief in some kind of afterlife, led him to conclude that it was highly likely no Squidy remained alive anywhere at all. The members of the Board of Directors only nodded grimly. The Squidies weren't the threat Humanity had to worry about. He'd told them all about Thrall and the Ortani Imperium and the Board had believed him when he said the Imperium would be coming.

  They reiterated their commitment to being ready for that day and promoted him.

  "Commodore Devlin, it's time." The woman who stepped out from inside to tell him when his hopper had arrived wore a Staas Security uniform. He swore he'd met her before. She wore her blond hair short and when she stood facing him, she seemed aggressively posed somehow, like she was trying to pick a fight. Once he came inside, he saw she faced off with everyone like that. It was the shape of her body and her posture. She reminded him of a bulldog. Or a bulldozer.

 

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