She rubbed her hands against the cold, wishing she’d worn a thicker jacket. It was mid-August, but the winds blowing down from the glaciers covering the Great Lakes made summers here decidedly Nordic these days. But the ice was in retreat now, leaving behind a very different geography from what had been before.
Callum and Yuri had both gone in for the full rejuvenation process, spun off from the cocoon re-life procedure – itself a legacy from Neána biologic technology that she’d brought to Earth all those years ago. Jessika could only grin ruefully at the vanity her gift had enabled. Kandara, she was surprised to see, hadn’t tuned her appearance back to a perpetual twenties like the boys. She seemed content to settle in her biological forties, still imposingly physical, but with a whole tribal elder vibe going for her now. It helped that everyone on the planet knew who she was thanks to the legend of the Saints, and now her gatekeeper role in the alien assessment committee set up by the Alliance Parliament. People would stop and stare in nervous awe when they saw her, as if she might banish them to the other side of the galaxy as she had so many species.
I wonder if she’d do that to me? Jessika hadn’t confided to her friends – and certainly not to Kandara – but since the destruction of the Olyix enclave, she’d thought she was becoming more knowledgeable. There was information in her mind she was sure hadn’t been there before. Not some massive download triggered by the success of FinalStrike, but an awareness of more than she’d known before.
So perhaps Kandara was right all along, and there is some deep Neána control routine in my subconscious. Or maybe I’m just becoming as paranoid as ordinary humans.
‘You’re looking good,’ Jessika told Kandara. ‘Still got your peripherals?’
Kandara’s expression was contemptuous. ‘A couple of upgrades, yeah. I’m sure the corpus guys are doing a great job out there, blowing all the surviving Olyix shit up, but who wants to take the risk?’
‘They’ll never get close to us again,’ Yuri said. ‘Forty-two human settled worlds established. And fifteen hundred designated Alliance star systems beyond that, with another three thousand elected for potential bioforming. Now that’s what I call a solid boundary.’
‘You mean buffer zone.’ Kandara smirked.
‘Those stars might be part of the Alliance,’ Callum said, ‘but they’re going to belong to aliens once they’re fully bioformed. You don’t think that cages us in at all?’
‘Now that’s the Callum paranoia we all know and love.’
‘We have wormholes and portals stretching almost halfway around the galaxy,’ Kandara said. ‘We are not and never will be “caged in”. Stop thinking in pre-spaceflight terms.’
‘News from the frontier,’ Jessika said. ‘Another eight human habitat constellations have emerged to make contact in the last six months.’
‘I know,’ Yuri said.
‘Of course you do,’ Callum said, and saluted mockingly. ‘Adjutant-General, sir.’
‘Hey, they’re my headache,’ Yuri shot back. ‘We have to assess what kind of culture they’ve developed. Emilja was a little too successful with her breakaway neolibertarian movement. There are some very strange ideas on how people should live out there.’
‘Well, let’s just thank Mary she’s not around to hear you call it that,’ Kandara said.
‘Could be worse,’ Callum said. ‘They could be like the Jukuar.’
Even Jessika shuddered at the memory of last year’s crisis – the first quasi-military action the Alliance had been forced to launch upon one of their own.
‘Mary!’ a thoroughly pissed Kandara snapped, staring at Callum. ‘One mistake, out of over three thousand evaluations. Okay?’
‘It wasn’t a criticism,’ Callum mumbled.
‘How was my team supposed to know the adults could produce sub-species? The original Jukuar batch we revived agreed to the diplomatic framework of the Alliance, with all the non-aggression articles. Binding articles! They didn’t need to birth a soldier caste.’
‘Scorpions,’ Yuri said.
‘What?’
‘You all know the morality tale. Scorpions do what they do because that’s what they are. Jukuar families have their soldiers because that’s their nature.’
‘Yeah, well, we know that now,’ Callum said.
‘You can’t blame them.’
‘To analyse the Jukuar genetic code to an extent that showed us they have a selective sub-species breeding ability would be phenomenally difficult,’ Callum said. ‘We’re having enough trouble bioforming worlds for aliens with even moderately different biochemistry to ours. We’ve got to synthesize organisms from scratch to provide them with the nutrients they need.’
Kandara gave Jessika a thoughtful stare. ‘Be nice if we had some help. Any sign of the Neána showing themselves?’
‘No,’ Jessika said. ‘Not yet, anyway. But they will. One day.’
‘Well, they certainly know what we’ve done,’ Kandara said. ‘Every planet humans have settled in this crazy old Alliance of ours is broadcasting their opinions loud and clear across the galaxy. It makes the old solnet allcomments look sane. We’re well and truly in the post-Fermi Paradox era now.’
Callum chuckled. ‘So much intrigue, so many politicians demanding a democratic voice. He would have loved this, you know.’
‘Yeah,’ Kandara agreed. ‘He would.’
‘Damn right,’ Yuri said. ‘He was a DC man to the core.’
‘True,’ Jessika said, and looked around. To the south, along the markers for West 59th Street, the first few foundations had been sunk into the frosty black silt, displacing the old concrete pilings. Carbon girders were already rising up, assembled at impressive speed by genten construction remotes. ‘Do you remember when we were up there?’ she asked. ‘On the Connexion tower roof, looking down at all the people praying on this terrace?’
‘The birth of the incredible Calmissile idea,’ Kandara said.
‘Oh, bloody hell, will you ever let that go?’
Jessika laughed. ‘The missile that won the war.’
‘Is this why we’re here?’ Callum asked.
‘No,’ Jessika said. ‘We’re here to remember him. Because no one else will.’
‘He’s one of
