The glow had washed out any chance of reading Greymouth’s words. I knew it was out there, almost close enough to touch, that the threads surrounding our two bodies were probably cross-mingled, interconnected. I wondered if it was still trying to communicate with me. Could it still understand my voice, even if there was no way of responding in kind?
“Greymouth,” I said. “Listen to me. I don’t think you can answer me now, but if you’re still out there, still hearing me … I’m sorry for the things that happened. I can’t know if any part of that was true, what you said about the evacuation fleets, about the messages being misinterpreted. But I choose to believe that it happened the way you said. A terrible mistake. But there’s hope, isn’t there? Not for either of us, I know. But for our two species. One day they’ll realise the mistake, and …” I trailed off, repulsed by the shallow platitudes of my words. “No. Who am I kidding. They’ll just go on making more of us. More Battle-Mothers. More Eight-Warriors. More fleets, more phalanxes, more holdfasts. More war-fronts. They’ll run out of worlds to shatter and then they’ll turn to stars, and nothing that happened here will ever have mattered. I’m sorry, Greymouth. So sorry.”
There was no answer, but then again I had expected none. We had been distant enemies, then closer enemies, and for a short time we had been something other than enemies, although I suppose it would be stretching a point to say that we had become friends. Allies in adversity, perhaps. Two unwilling souls pitched into the same crushing predicament.
I thought about fear, and wondered how it was for Greymouth. Fear was a strange thing. You might think that a fearless soldier would be the best soldier of all, willing to accept any hazard, even the likelihood of certain death. But a fearless soldier knows no restraint. A fearless soldier will throw themselves into the fray without a moment’s consideration, even when their actions are militarily valueless. A fearless soldier is a weapon without a safety lock.
No. Our leaders–our Battle-Queens and Two-Minds–must surely have come to the same independent conclusion. Fear is useful. More than useful: necessary. Spice your soldiers with a little fear and they make fewer mistakes.
Greymouth felt it. So did I.
“Yes.”
It was the soundless expression of an idea, but it was not at all like the inner voice of my head. The word had bloomed sharp and bright as if a small mine had just gone off inside my skull, lighting it up from within.
“Greymouth?” I asked.
“I think we sense each other, Battle-Mother. How odd it is to have your thoughts flowering inside me.”
“How is this possible?”
“I do not know. But if the native organism has penetrated both our suits, both our bodies, and formed a connective network between our nervous systems …” Greymouth’s chain of thoughts quenched out.
“It’s all right. I don’t have a better theory. And I think you must be right. But if that’s the case then the network must be doing a lot more than simply wiring our minds together. It must be processing, translating idiosyncratic representations from one internal schema to another. Bridging vast gulfs of mental representation. How is it doing that? More to the point, why? What possible evolutionary pressure could ever have selected for this capability?”
“It is happening, Battle-Mother. Perhaps the wisest thing would be to accept it. Unless, of course, you are merely a figment of my own terrified imagination.”
“I don’t feel like a figment. Do you?”
“Not really.”
“I was thinking about being alone,” I went on. I was speaking, for now, but I had the sense that before very long even speaking would be superfluous, as the network extended its consolidation of us. “I didn’t like it. It was better when we were able to talk.”
“Then it is very fortunate indeed,” Greymouth said, “that one of us did not kill the other.”
8.
My faceplate displays were nearly all dimmed-out, locomotive and life-support power nearly drained. In a very short while the struggling refrigeration system would fail and the atmosphere’s heat would lance its way through to me. I hoped it would be fast.
“We will die here,” Greymouth said, his thoughts bursting into my head like a chain of novae, each flare stained with a distinct emotional hue. Acceptance, regret, sadness, a kind of shivering awe. To die was a strange enough thing, even for a soldier. To die like this, in the black crush of a superjovian, on a tomb of floating rock, one enemy bound to the next by a glowing tracery of living matter: that was a strangeness beyond anything we had been prepared for.
“Maybe they’ll find us some day.”
“Maybe they will not.” But after a silence that could have been minutes or hours, for all that I had any clear grasp on time’s passing, Greymouth added: “I hope that they will. I hope that they will find us together here and think of what became of us. Your side or mine, I do not think it will matter. They will see us and realise that we chose not to kill. We chose not to destroy. That we chose this better path.”
“Do you think that’ll change their minds?”
The nova flare conveyed a prickle of emerald green, what I had begun to think was wry amusement, or bitter irony. “If minds are capable of changing.”
“Do you think they are?”
“Ours have changed.”
“Yes,” I said softly. “They have.”
“Then there is hope, Battle-Mother. Not much, but more than we had any right to expect.”
“Greymouth,” I said. “Can you still move? Just a little?”
“Not much of me. And any movement will only draw power from my central reserve.”
“I know. It’s the same here. I’m down to my last
