Draq said, “Long ago, the Coalition councils decided that the Ghosts’… ah, ingenuity should be revived — put to use as an engine of ideas, a resource for the benefit of mankind. This was done over and over with other races during the Assimilation, you know. Why not the Ghosts?”
Pirius said, “A resource you had to conceal.”
“Yes! For security — both for humanity’s protection from the Ghosts, and vice versa. And for deniability, I won’t pretend that isn’t true. But you’re here for the Ghosts, whether you know it or not, Commissary. The gravastar idea is theirs—”
Mara said coldly, “This ’valuable resource’ can talk.”
The Ghost hovered impassively. There was no change in its appearance, yet the grammar of the group changed. Suddenly the Ghost stopped being an object, but became a person, a contributor to the conversation.
Nilis walked up to the silvered hide, his Virtual projection casting a blurred reflection on the Ghost’s belly. “It can talk, can it? I see it has a translator box on that belt.” He stood before the Ghost, hands on hips. “You! Ghost!”
Mara said, “There’s no need to shout, Commissary.”
Nilis said, “Do you have a name?”
The Ghost’s voice was synthetic, a neutral human-female voice generated by the translator box it carried, and transmitted to their receiving gear. “I am known as the Ambassador to the Heat Sink.”
Nilis seemed startled. He prodded the Ghost’s hide, but his Virtual finger slid into the reflective surface, shattering into pixels. “And do you know the meaning of the name?”
“No,” the Ghost said bluntly. “I am a reconstruction. A biological echo of my forebears. We have records, but no memory. There can be no true cultural continuity.”
Nilis nodded coldly. “Despite all our ingenuity, extinction is forever.”
“Yes,” the Ghost said simply.
Mara’s expression was dark. “What do you think now, Ensign?”
Pirius spoke without thinking about it. “The Ghosts killed millions of us.” He faced the Ghost. “I’m glad you are conscious. I’m glad you know about the elimination of your kind. I am glad you are suffering.”
The Ghost didn’t respond.
Mara’s bleak gaze was on Pirius. He had to look away, disturbed by the turmoil inside him.
Nilis seemed fascinated by the Ghost, as his scientist’s curiosity overcame his Commissary’s ideology. “If you don’t know who you are, do you at least know what you want?”
“To serve you,” the Ghost said.
Chapter 22
It took ten hours for a dropship to come pick them up from Factory Rock. Pirius Blue and his two wounded charges spent all that time huddling in the ruins of the Xeelee emplacement.
When the medical-corps orderly clambered out of his little craft, he was surprised to find them. The three of them were the only survivors of two platoons. “You must be the luckiest man alive,” the orderly said.
“I must be,” said Pirius Blue.
Cohl’s injury was obvious; Tili Three was in deep shock. The orderly said he was supposed to separate able-bodied Pirius from Cohl and Tili Three, and send them back through different “processing channels,” as he put it. Pirius refused to be parted from his comrades. It boiled down to a standoff between Pirius and the small, heavy orderly, there on the churned-up surface of the Rock. The orderly caved in, shrugging his shoulders, saying the officers would sort it out later.
So they loaded Cohl and Tili onto the dropship. By now their skinsuits had turned rigid and filled up with a greenish stabilizing fluid full of nutrients, anesthetics, and stimulants. You were actually supposed to breathe this stuff. Pirius had tried it in training and, no matter what assurances he had got about the glop’s oxygen content, it had felt like drowning. But both the wounded were mercifully unconscious; as they were manhandled, the dense fluid sloshed around their faces.
The dropship lifted easily. Pirius glanced back at the ruined emplacement, the scarred bit of ground that marked the site of the monopole factory. It was just another battlefield, in an unending war of a million battlefields. But it could have been the most important place in his entire life, for he could easily have died here. He knew he would never see it again.
The ride was short, a flea-hop to the nearest clearing station. The dropship skimmed over the ground. The casualties lay like two statues, locked into their rigid suits. The ship had no medical facilities. It couldn’t even be pressurized, so the casualties couldn’t be taken out of their skinsuits.
The orderly was cheerful; he actually whistled tunelessly as he flew the ship. Pirius shut down his comm loop.
After a couple of minutes, more dropships came into sight, other bubbles of light skimming over the asteroid’s battered surface, converging from all over the Rock. A crude traffic control system cut in, and Pirius’s dropship joined a queue. Soon they were so close to the ship in front Pirius could see its passengers, and their bewildered expressions. Ships streamed the other way, too, dropships heading back out across the Rock to ferry in yet more casualties.
The clearing station had been set up in a wide impact crater. A pressurized dome perhaps a kilometer wide sat in the crater like a huge droplet of water, its skin rippling languidly. It was marked with a tetrahedral sigil, the symbol of free Earth.
The dome was studded with airlocks, to which ships came nuzzling up. Some of them were dropships, others larger boats; there was even a captain’s corvette. The ships rose steadily toward a fleet of Spline craft which drifted far above, fleshy, patient moons. Pirius could see movement inside the dome, through its translucent walls: it was a hive of frantic activity. But there was commotion outside as well, and the surface of the Rock around the dome was covered with glistening rows, as if it had been plowed up, like a big nano-food farm.
Pirius expected his own dropship to dock with one of the dome’s ports. He was surprised when the little craft began to descend a few hundred meters short of the dome. It came down on a patch of bare dust, a landing site hastily cordoned off and marked with winking globe lamps.
The hull popped open, and the orderly, still businesslike and cheery, asked Pirius to give him a hand with the casualties. They set Cohl and Tili in their rigid suits down on the bare ground.
All around the ship, troopers were lying in the dirt, their skinsuits glowing orange or red. This was what Pirius had glimpsed from above, what he had thought looked like the furrows of a plowed nano- food farm. The furrows were rows of wounded, thousands or tens of thousands of them, lying patiently in the dirt, waiting for treatment.
“It’s always like this,” said the orderly.
Pirius began to see the process. The wounded were brought here from all over the Rock. On arrival, they were organized into these rough rows. Close to the dome’s walls, tarpaulins had been cast over the dirt, and there were even a few beds. But out here you just had to lie in the asteroid dirt, still locked in your skinsuit, without so much as a blanket beneath you.
Medical officers hurried through the ranks of the newly arrived, peering into each skinsuit, trying to pick out the most severely wounded. Some were marked by a floating Virtual sigil, and the stretcher crews would come out and take prioritized cases into the dome quickly. The whole setup was like a factory, Pirius thought, a factory for processing broken human flesh.