“C’mon, Dad, give it a rest.”
“But somethin’s happening.”
“Without us, right now.”
“But the Mantis—”
“I don’t think we have to fidget about that. It’ll find us.”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure.”
“What to do? It’ll still be able to knock us over.”
“Naysay, not if those Trigger Codes work.”
Toby frowned. Killeen had told all he knew but it came out Killeen fashion, a bit fuzzy about the history and details. “They’ll kill them? Suredead?”
“Way I heard it was, it’s like a disease. It makes them sick, then dead.”
“Breaks down their functions so they get less and less able.”
“Yeasay.” He got up and paced. He limped but the irritation was worth the feeling of movement.
“We’d still best be careful of the Mantis, if it finds us.”
“But maybe we can truly kill it this time.”
“This is about a lot more than the Mantis.”
Killeen scowled. “Not for me.”
Not for me.
He had learned something in his passage through this twisted place, Killeen realized. He had been a drunk and a failure and then a Cap’n. He knew Bishop ways. These people nestled in here were different.
Warriors were of a world apart, a very ancient one that ran in parallel with the comfortable lot of humanity. He had listened to his Aspects when they talked to him of this. For the first time he actually found all the lore and history useful.
The warrior culture could never be that of civilization itself, although all civilizations in history owed their very existence to the warrior. He had learned enough to know that once humans had come out of nature, and so shared instincts that argued for flight, for intelligent cowardice, for self-
interest. To pass on your own precious genes, some would say, but it was for more than that: the Self, lonely and communal both, and knowing the tension stretched between those two poles.
When humans had first come here they had snuck around and run when challenged. Later humans got better at war. Never as good as mechs, not in vacuum at least, but they held their own. In the Chandelier times humanity had valued total obedience, self-sacrifice, hard-minded courage, honor. It had been a big remorseless engine, with ranks and orders and unthinking compliance.
Killeen preferred what his Arthur Aspect told him was the old way: fighting with relish and art and risks chosen, not ordered.
Fighting was not a way to die but precisely the opposite. You did not concentrate yourself to break through your enemy because then you took bigger losses. There was always another day. The virtues of human warriors, after the Chandeliers got smashed to ruins, were the old ones: patience, avoidance, wearing down the enemy with stealth and surprise and speed. Tradition, morale, cohesion.
Family. Bishops. You could talk about genetics and links and all but it just meant Family.
And the fight was never over.
“Cap’n!”
Killeen was steeping in his own ruminations. Still pacing. He spun with alarm and had a weapon out automatically and there was Cermo.
“You real?”
“Damn-all right I am!”
Slapping and hugging and the smell was right too. Just in case.
Down through the years Cermo had always been solid and steady, an under-officer you could rely on at your back in a scrap, and Killeen had never seen him happier. “Come here, Toby’s—”
“Jazz!” Cermo’s big laugh boomed out. “Damn big you are, boy.”
Toby grinned. “No fat on you now neither.”
“I’m not so slow now, yeasay.”
He had been Cermo-the-Slow but somehow always ended up in the thick of a fight anyway. Killeen had honestly wondered if the man had any fear in him at all. “You got here pretty quick,” Killeen said.
“Not on my own. This funny thing comes visit me. I’m out in flatass empty nowhere and it just pops up.”
Toby stopped grinning. “What’d it say?”
“Says it wants to help.”
“Something like, ‘Do not think we are neglectful of you’?”
