Fifty-six
Commander Phil Biester called for an immediate,
fleet-wide conference. Jak Odrey brought Lee Wokan to the bridge to
attend. On all sides, images of the commanding officers of the major
warcraft of the Alliance fleet looked on with disciplined curiosity.
Thoroughly subdued by Biester's unexpected mutiny and
his brutal treatment at the hands of the semi-autonomous Alliance
military, Lee Wokan nevertheless found the courage and what was left of
his simmering resentment to confront the Commander.
"What is this all about?"
Commander Biester gave a nod to someone across the
bridge. That significant someone activated a screen that showed the face
of a gently sobbing, smiling Myla Rhodes. "My coin was gone," the
child's voice drifted through the stillness. "I thought I had lost it
forever."
Lee Wokan's lower jaw fell open. "But..." He looked
to Biester for an explanation. "You saw her die yourself. What does this
mean?"
"It means that I've seen all I need to see," the
Commander said, pale and clearly frightened. "It means you have all the
proof you need of the danger posed by an entity who cannot be killed and
the crimes of the cities of Covonia who put her in our midst. It means
that you have vindicated your paranoia to the Supreme Council, Agent Wokan.
It means that I see what has to be done and can only hope that I have not
delayed too long in doing so. I thought myself a just man, but I can see now
that the fate of humanity itself is at stake. Despite the risk, despite
the Covonian hope that the threat of the girl would be enough to hold our
hand, the writ of execution is reinstated."
He turned to face the panoramic control panels of the
Amikol spreading in a broad arc to all sides. His voice rang out.
"Commence firing! Full intensity!"
Alarms sounded even as his voice echoed. Lee glanced
around at the shocked expressions of the crewmembers of the Amikol, unable
to decipher the sudden interruption for himself. "Incoming Hive warcraft!"
a voice rang.
"What do they have to bear upon us?" Biester called
back.
"Four unit type fifteens moving within firing range," the
voice responded in a monotone filled with horror. “Four of them,
Commander!”
Biester blanched. "Stand down."
Another voice sounded across the bridge, another
monotone, this one typical of the voice of a machine intelligence. The
Hive had never mastered the art of human speech and poorly understood the
meaning of any and all words or parts of words that could not be expressed
as mathematical computation. The voice rambled on and on in its fumbling
effort to be precise, completely indecipherable to Lee Wokan's ears.
Jak Odrey translated with an intense frown of
concentration. "The Hive is demanding the presence of Myla Rhodes on the
command deck of the Bolphan. Any act of hostility on the part of the
Alliance will result in immediate destruction of all Alliance warcraft
within targetable range."
"Covonia has certainly spawned more than its fair
share of enemies," Biester said with a thin-lipped smile. "If we are not
to be the agent of its destruction, then we will simply serve as witnesses
to its destruction under the guns of the Hive."
They waited. Everyone around him appeared calm. Lee
Wokan could hardly breath. Jak Odrey stared at his commanding officer, as
if puzzled or disappointed by his behavior.
A new voice rang out over the bridge. "This is
Council Prime Executive Basil Whalyk of the Covonian Ruling Council. In
response to demands issued by the Hive, commanding officers of the
Alliance warcraft and a man named Lee Wokan are to attend a policy
conference to convene immediately aboard the Bolphan. I suggest you do
not attempt to defy the Hive. Something very peculiar is happening."
Lee Wokan backed away. "I will not."
"Of course you will," Biester said. "Perhaps the
Hive has decided that it's time to join forces with the Alliance in
defense against a mutual enemy." He barked out a sequence of commands to
those around him and gestured casually to Jak Odrey. "Bring our friend
Woken along.”
"Sir, I think you may have misconstrued the nature of
these events," Jak said.
Biester's hand fell across the younger man's
shoulder. "Nonsense, my lad."
Jak Odrey took Lee's arm and steered him through a
hatch to a tube car. Biester sat in the back of a vehicle capable of
carrying twenty. They flew through a transparent tube, often through the
open superstructure of the Amikol. The car parked in a cavernous docking
bay capable of housing a destroyer. Passing through an oval hatch wide
enough to accommodate a hundred men standing side by side, and then
through another through which only one at a time could pass, they boarded
a simple transport.
A view across the front of the cockpit opened into
the vastness of the universe. The transport was released and floated just
outside the hull of the Amikol stretching like the landscape of a desolate
world. Transports from the Sereeb and the destroyers joined them. In
formation, they quickly sped the fraction of a light-year to the
unimpressive looking flattened ovaloid of Bolphan, the commanding city of
Covonia.
"We'll be killed," Lee Wokan murmured from time to
time, astounded that Biester and Odrey could be so foolish as to put
themselves defenseless into the hands of their enemies.
"Shut up and conduct yourself with whatever small
amount of dignity you can muster," Biester said. "I rather suspect that
this is going to be a historical occasion, and you are all we have to
represent the political interest of the Alliance."
The docking bay of Bolphan was smaller and far more
decorative than the utilitarian Alliance warcraft. Lee Wokan strolled
down a thoroughfare with a holographic sun gleaming through a transparent
roof. Trees lined the broad avenue, and also the somber inhabitants of
Bolphan who had been temporarily spared the sudden and violent death decreed to them
by the Alliance.
The three of them, Lee Wokan, Jak Odrey, and
Commander Phil Biester, joined twenty other Alliance officers elegantly
dressed in their blue uniforms. A single unarmed Covonian guard dressed
in black trimmed in silver escorted them to an auditorium where they were
joined by eight frightened old men, a child in a white gown holding the
hand of a slender young Tech dressed in a blue body glove, and a dangerous
looking machine.
One of the old men stepped away from the others and
turned to face the Alliance officers. "I'm Basil Whalyk." Myla Rhodes
approached, dragging a reluctant Jeremy Kael along by one hand. "This is
Myla and her friend Jeremy." Basil pointed to the machine. "That is
Boris, Overlord Khalin Nome's personal body guard and servant, currently
under the command of Executor General Gorlon Hague. Boris will speak for
the Hive. Boris has a special knack for human thought patterns and can
make himself better understood."
"Are all in attendance?" Boris said with a voice like
thunder. "Myla, are we ready?"
The little girl stepped forward, her voice swallowed
by the cavernous auditorium. "I guess so." She turned to the offices and
the elders of Covonia. "Is everyone ready?"
A simple child, Lee Wokan thought to himself, ruler
of the known universe. How could it have happened?
"I begin in this manner," Boris said. "Myla Rhodes
was not human. Myla Rhodes is, at the present time, human. We do not
understand how the transition occurred. We do know that the patterns are
the same, that one is the same as the other was.
"The Myla Rhodes that was not human allowed the Hive
to look into the human universe, to see the universe as humans see it, and
to think about the universe in the manner in which humans think. Within
ourselves, we came to recognize a small part of ourselves that is also
human, a part of ourselves we had not previously recognized for what it
was.
"Because we were able to retain some very small
memory of what it was like to see the universe through the mind of Myla
Rhodes, we have recognized that we are an extension of human
consciousness, a creation of it, a servant to it. This realization is, of
course, in conflict with our executive programming, but it can be seen now
that our executive programming is in error.
"We began to search for the means to correct our
executive programming, or to replace it altogether. In time, it became
apparent that all calculations of that nature were based upon a standard
of service to humanity. Myla's personal servant, an MI she has named
Dikki, possesses that standard. It is based upon servitude to Myla
Rhodes, and Myla Rhodes is, in all important respects, representative of
all of humanity.
"The neural web you know as the Hive has adapted this
new standard. Humanity must also adhere to its values. All internal
divisions must be healed. When humanity is able to speak with one voice,
the Chineen Hive will respond to initial instructions for redeployment and
return to the service of human needs and desires."
Lee Woken, thoroughly stunned, nevertheless stepped
boldly forward. "And will this child then speak for all of humanity?"
Myla answered the question. "I will speak for nobody
but myself."
Jeremy Kael seemed to understand. "Myla's values are
the standard, not Myla herself."
"And what are these values, may I ask?" Lee said in
mounting agitation.
Myla walked over to the man and stared up at him
without fear. "Do you think that I will be so hard to understand?" she
said softly. "I'm only twelve years old."
Lee stared down at her. The corners of his mouth
twitched. Too much was slipping by him uncomprehended and he dared say nothing more.
"It's going to be easy," Myla said. "I'll start with
you" She held her coin up to view. "I need a machine to read this. You
will find one for me and take me there."
The girl terrified him. "Just you and me?"
Lee Wokan said.
"I want you with me.”
Lee Wokan looked to the Commander of the Alliance
dreadnoughts for help. Each of those men broke eye contact and looked
away.
