you.” She brushed at imaginary dust on his lapel. “Then again, I can see why she’s so obliging. You always did look rather splendid in uniform.”
Edward glanced down at his Royal Navy tunic. There were no Royal crests, just three discreet medal ribbons—earned long ago. “I’m just doing my bit. Though they are all depressingly young at the base. I think they regard me as some kind of mascot.”
“Oh poor Edward, the indignity. But not to worry, Zandra and Emmeline are terribly impressed.”
He sat on the leather settee and patted the cushion. “Come on, sit down and tell me what’s wrong.”
“Thank you.” She stepped round the small mechanoid that was sniffing at the wine stain, and sat beside him, welcoming his arm around her shoulders. The secret of a successful royal marriage: don’t have secrets. They were both intelligent people, which had allowed them to work out the grounds of a sustainable domestic arrangement a long time ago. In public and in private he was the perfect companion, a friend and confidant. All she required was loyalty, which he supplied admirably. In return he was free to gather whatever perks his position presented—and it wasn’t just girls; he was an avid art collector and bon viveur. They even still slept together occasionally.
“The Liberation is not progressing as well as could be,” he said. “That much is obvious. And the net is overloading with speculation.”
Kirsten sipped some of the chablis. “Progress is the key word, yes.” She told him about the decision she was faced with.
After she’d finished, he poured some more wine for himself before answering. “The serjeants developing advanced personalities? Humm. How intriguing. I wonder if they’ll refuse to go back into their habitat multiplicities when the campaign is over.”
“I have no idea; Acacia never ventured an opinion. And to be honest, that part is not my problem.”
“It might be if they all start applying for citizenship afterwards.”
“Oh God.” She snuggled up closer. “No. I’m not even going to consider that right now.”
“Wise lady. You want my opinion?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“You can’t ignore the serjeant situation. We are utterly dependent on them to liberate Mortonridge, and there’s a hell of a way to go yet.”
“A hundred and eighty thousand people de-possessed, seventeen thousand dead, so far; that leaves us with one-point-eight-million left to save.”
“Exactly. And we’re about to enter the phase which will see the heaviest fighting. If they keep advancing at their current rate, the front line will reach the first areas where the possessed are concentrated the day after tomorrow. If you slow them now, the serjeants are going to start taking heavy losses just before that. Not good. I’d say, keep things as they are until the front line hits those concentrations, then shift to General Hiltch’s outnumbering tactics.”
“That’s a very logical solution.” She stared at the wine. “If only all I had to consider were numbers. But they’re depending on me, Edward.”
“Who?”
“The people who’ve been possessed. Even locked away in their own bodies, they know the Liberation is coming now; a practical salvation from this obscenity. They have faith in me, they trust me to deliver them from this evil. And I have a duty to them. That duty is one of the few true burdens placed on the family by our people. Now I know there is a way of reducing the number of my subjects killed, I cannot in all conscience ignore it for tactical convenience. That would be a betrayal of trust, not to mention an abdication of duty.”
“The two impossibles for a Saldana.”
“Yes. We have had it easy for an awful long time, haven’t we?”
“Shall we say: moderately difficult.”
“Yet if I want to reduce the death rate, I’m going to have to ask the Edenists to take it on the chin for us. You know what bothers me most about that? People will expect it. I’m a Saldana, they’re Edenists. What could be simpler?”
“The serjeants aren’t quite Edenists.”
“We don’t know what the hell they are, not any more. Acacia was hedging her bets very thoroughly. If they’re worried enough to bring the problem to me, then it has to be a substantial factor. One I cannot discount from the humanist equation. Damn it, they were supposed to be automatons.”
“The Liberation is a very rushed venture. I’m sure if Jupiter’s geneticists had been given enough time to design a dedicated soldier construct then this would never have arisen. But we had to borrow from the Lord of Ruin. Look, General Hiltch was given overall command of the Liberation. Let him make the decision, it’s what he’s paid for.”
“Get thee behind me,” she muttered. “No, Edward, not this time. I’m the one who insisted on reducing the fatalities. It is my responsibility.”
“You’ll be setting a precedent.”
“Hardly one that’s likely to be repeated. All of us are sailing into new, and very stormy territory; that requires proper leadership. If I cannot provide that now, then the family will ultimately have failed. We have spent four hundred years engineering ourselves into this position of statesmanship, and I will not duck the issue when it really counts. It stinks of cowardice, and that is one thing I will never allow the Saldanas to stand accused of.”
He kissed her on the side of her head. “Well you know you have my support. If I could make one final observation. The personalities in the serjeants are all volunteers. They came here knowing what their probable fate would be. That purpose remains at their core. In that, they are like every pre-Twenty-first Century army; reluctant, frightened even, but committed. So give them the time they need to gather their nerve and resolution, and then use them for the purpose for which they were created: saving genuine human lives. If they are truly capable of emotion, then their only hope of gaining satisfaction will come from achieving that.”
Ralph was eating a cold snack in Fort Forward’s command complex canteen when he received the datavise.
“Slow the assault,” Princess Kirsten told him. “I want that suicide figure reduced as low as you can practically achieve.”
“Yes ma’am. I’ll see to it. And thank you.”
“This is what you wanted?”
“We’re not here to recapture land, ma’am. The Liberation is about people.”
“I know that. I hope Acacia will forgive us.”
“I’m sure she will, ma’am. The Edenists understand us pretty well.”
“Good. Because I also want the serjeant platoons given as much breathing space between assaults as they require.”
“That will reduce the rate of advance even further.”
“I know, but it can’t be helped. Don’t worry about political and technical support, General, I’ll ensure you get that right to the bitter end.”
“Yes ma’am.” The datavise ended. He looked round at the senior staff eating with him, and gave a slow smile. “We got it.”
High above the air, cold technological eyes stared downwards, unblinking. Their multi-spectrum vision could penetrate clean through Mortonridge’s thinning strands of puffy white cloud to reveal the small group of warm figures trekking across the mud. But that was where the observation failed. Objects around them were perfectly clear, the dendritic tangle of roots flaring from fallen trees, a pulverised four-wheel-drive rover almost devoured by the blue-grey mud, even the shape of large stones ploughed up and rolled along by thick runnels of sludge. In contrast, the figures were hazed by shimmering air; infrared blobs no more substantial than candle flames. No matter which combination of discrimination filters it applied to the sensor image, the AI was unable to determine their exact number. Best estimate, taken from the width of the distortion and measuring the thermal imprint of the disturbed mud they left behind, was between four and nine.
Stephanie could feel the necklace of prying satellites as they slid relentlessly along their arc from horizon to
