The Armageddon Inheritance

think upon the things your Nynnhuursag has said to me, and almost I can understand them. But I am no longer a Protector, Hohrass. I have failed to end, which cannot be, yet it is. I have spoken with nest-killers, and that, too, cannot be. Because these things have been, I no longer know what I am, but I am no longer as others of the Nest. It does not matter what such as I pretend; what matters is what the Lord of the Nest knows, and he knows the Great Fear, the Purpose, and the Way. He will not stop what he is. If he could, he would not be the Nest Lord.”

“I am sorry, Brashieel,” Hohrass said, and Brashieel believed him. “I am sorry this has happened to you, yet perhaps you are wrong. If other Protectors join you as our prisoners, if you speak together and with us, if you learn that what I tell you is truth—that we do not wish to end the Aku’Ultan—would you be prepared to tell others of the Nest what you have learned?”

“We would never have the chance. We would be ended by the Nest, and rightly ended. We would be nest-killers to our own if we did your will.”

“Perhaps,” Hohrass said, “and perhaps not.” He sighed and rose. “Again, I am sorry—truly sorry—to torment you with such questions, yet I must. I ask you to think painful things, to consider that there may be truths beyond even the Great Fear, and I know these thoughts hurt you. But you must think them, Brashieel of the Aku’Ultan, for if you cannot—if, indeed, the Nest cannot leave us in peace—then we will have no choice. For untold higher twelves of years, your Protectors have ravaged our suns, killed our planets, slain our Nests. This cannot continue. Understand that we share that much of the Great Fear with the Protectors of the Nest of Aku’Ultan. We truly do not wish to end the Aku’Ultan, but there has been enough ending of others. We will not allow it to continue. It may take us great twelves of years, but we will stop it.”

Brashieel stared up at him, too sick with horror even to feel hate, and Hohrass’s mouth moved in one of his people’s incomprehensible expressions.

“We would have you and your people live, Brashieel. Not because we love you, for we have cause to hate you, and many of us do. Yes, and fear you. But we would not have your ending upon our hands, and that is why we hurt you with such thoughts. We must learn whether or not we can allow your Nest to live. Forgive us, if you can, but whether you can forgive or not, we have no choice.”

And with that, Hohrass left the nest place, and Brashieel was alone with the agony of his thoughts.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“You think it’s really as grim as Brashieel seems to think?”

Colin looked up as Horus’s recorded message ended. Even for an Imperial hypercom, forty-odd light-years was a bit much for two-way conversations.

“I know not,” Jiltanith mused. Unlike his other guests, she was present in the flesh. Very present, he thought, hiding a smile as he remembered their reunion. Now she flipped a mental command into the holo unit and replayed the final portion of Horus’s interview with Brashieel.

“I know not,” she repeated. “Certes Brashieel believes it so, but look thou, my Colin, though he saith such things, yet hath he held converse with ‘Hursag and Father. Moreover, ’twould seem he hath understood what they have said unto him. His pain seemeth real enow, but ’tis understanding—of a sort, at the least—which wakes it.”

“You’re saying what he thinks and says are two different things?” Hector MacMahan spoke through his holo image from Sevrid’s command deck. He looked uncomfortable as a planetoid’s CO, for he still regarded himself as a ground-pounder. But, then, Sevrid was a ground- pounder’s dream, and she had the largest crew of any unit in the fleet, after Fabricator, for reasons which made sense to most. They made sense to Colin and Jiltanith, anyway, which was what mattered, and this conversation was very pertinent to them.

“Nay, Hector. Say rather that divergence hath begun ’twixt what he doth think and what he doth believe, but that he hath not seen it so.”

“You may be right, ’Tanni,” Ninhursag said slowly. Her image sat beside Hector’s as her body sat next to his. And, come to think of it, Colin thought, they seemed to be found together a lot these days.

“When Brashieel and I talked,” Ninhursag continued, choosing her words with care, “the impression I got of him was … well, innocence, if that’s not too silly-sounding. I don’t mean goody-goody innocence; maybe the word should really be naivete. He’s very, very bright, by human standards. Very quick and very well-educated, but only in his speciality. As for the rest, well, it’s more like an indoctrination than an education, as if someone cordoned off certain aspects of his worldview, labeled them ‘off-limits’ so firmly he’s not even curious about them. It’s just the way things are; the very possibility of questioning them, much less changing them, doesn’t exist.”

“Hm.” Cohanna rubbed an eyebrow and frowned. “You may have something, ’Hursag. I hadn’t gotten around to seeing it that way, but then I always was a mechanic at heart.” Jiltanith frowned a question, and Cohanna grinned. “Sorry. I mean I was always more interested in the physical life processes than the mental. A blind spot of my own. I tend to look for physical answers first and psychological ones second … or third. What I meant, though, is that ’Hursag’s right. If Brashieel were human—which, of course, he isn’t—I’d have to say he’d been programmed pretty carefully.”

“Programmed.” Jiltanith tasted the word thoughtfully. “Aye, mayhap ’twas the word I sought. Yet ’twould seem his programming hath its share o’ holes.”

“That’s the problem with programming,” Cohanna agreed. “It can only accommodate data known to the programmer. Hit its subject with something totally outside its parameters, and he does one of three things: cracks up entirely; rejects the reality and refuses to confront it; or—” she paused meaningfully “—grapples with it and, in the process, breaks the program.”

“And you think that’s what’s happening with Brashieel?” Colin mused.

“Well, at the risk of sounding overly optimistic, it may be. Brashieel’s a resilient lad, or he’d’ve curled up and died as soon as he realized the bogey men had him. The fact that he didn’t says a really astounding amount about the toughness of his psyche. He was actually curious about us, and that says even more. Now, though, what we’re asking him to believe simultaneously upsets his entire worldview and threatens his race with extinction.

“We’ve had a bit of experience facing that kind of terror ourselves, and some of us haven’t handled it very well. It’s worse for him; his species has built an entire society on millions of years of fear. I’d say there’s a pretty good chance he’ll snap completely when he realizes just how bad things really are from the Achuultani perspective. If he makes it through the next few weeks, though, he may find out he’s even tougher and more flexible than he thought and actually decide Horus was telling him the truth.”

“And how much good will that do?” Tamman’s holo image asked. “He was only a fire control officer aboard a scout. Not exactly a mover and shaker in a society as caste-bound as his.”

“True,” Colin agreed, “but his reaction is the only yardstick we have for how his entire race will react if we really can stop them. Of course, what we really need is a larger sample. Which, Hector,” he looked at MacMahan, “is why you and Sevrid will do exactly what we’ve discussed, won’t you?”

“Yes, but I don’t have to like it.”

Colin winced slightly at the sour response, but the important thing was that Hector understood why Sevrid must stay out of the fighting. She would wait out the engagement, stealthed at a safe distance, then close in to board any wrecked or damaged ships she could find.

“That reminds me, ’Hanna,” he said, turning back to the biosciences officer. “What’s the progress on our capture field?”

“We’re in good shape,” Cohanna assured him. “Took us a while to realize it, but it turns out a simple focused magnetic field is the answer.”

“Ah? Oh! Metal bones.”

“Exactly. They’re not all that ferrous, but a properly focused field can lock their skeletons. Muscles, too. Have to secure them some other way pretty quick—interrupting the blood flow to the brain is a bad idea—but it should work just fine. Geran and Caitrin are turning them out aboard Fabricator now.”