“Tracers. Find us, usin’ ’ ’em.”
She shook her head. “They don’t care enough. Just shoot our people when they get in the way. Not like mechs—least not yet.”
“You worked for mechs.”
“Sure—only way we’d survive.”
“Where I came from couldn’t trust mechs that much.”
“They got crazy. Started bustin’ up each other.”
Killeen said cautiously, “That question I asked back there…I didn’t understand all he said.”
“Just integrate your people’s electromag-tags, hailing codes, stuff like that.”
“But look, there’s planning—”
“We go in separately, once the team’s penetrated into the tunnels.”
“What about supporting fire?”
“Manage it yourself. Each Family backs up its own.”
Killeen said skeptically, “Seems it’d be better if—”
The Cap’n of the Treys gave him a tired, sardonic look. “I kinda like it this way. His Supremacy says do it this way, fine. That way I can pull my Family out fast, if things go bad.”
“But coordination—”
“Look, this plan’s the word of God.”
The Cap’n said this in a voice that was suddenly flat, factual. Killeen opened his mouth to reply with a cutting jibe and saw that behind them walked three officers. When he glanced over his shoulder they seemed to be taking an interest in what he would say. He shut his mouth and nodded woodenly.
He reached the Bishop formation just before His Supremacy began speaking. The words came to them over general comm, broadcast by linked capacities of a triangle of officers assembled just below His Supremacy on a small knoll.
Even though Killeen had been told that the Tribe numbered well over two thousand, the sight of so many people turned out in ranks, nearly crossing the valley with their columns, was impressive. He had not seen so many since a grand holiday at the Citadel, when he had been a boy younger than Toby was now. Then the occasion had been festive; now a solemn, grim air pervaded the comm. Hoisted Family flags fluttered and snapped in the wind, patched and sunbleached.
His Supremacy began with a convoluted history of their valiant battles, so filled with names and honorifics that Killeen could make no sense of it. Certainly it told him nothing of how the Families had fought, and Killeen began to suspect that His Supremacy in fact cared little for the essential details of maneuver and command. This emerged soon, as the man waved his hands wildly and described the evils of their enemies, his face congested with rage. The Cybers did not accidentally resemble demons from the pit, no—and soon they would return there, banished.
“Rebuke and scorn, do they face! Defeat and castigation!”
His Supremacy drew himself up and, even though Killeen kept a cool and skeptical part of himself withdrawn, the force of the man’s ardor began to penetrate.
“Death comes to us all! But it cannot sting. The grave has no victory! It is where we are rewarded.”
The vast crowd stirred as more long, rolling sentences washed over them. Killeen felt himself moved by the rhythmic, chantlike sweep. For the first time he understood how His Supremacy had held together a Tribe that had suffered shattering defeats and now faced an incomprehensible enemy of casual viciousness.
“—at whose coming, to judge the All that Is, I shall stand upon the right hand—”
The very air seemed to flicker with new intensity, hot filaments running on the breeze.
“—render the things of metal and flesh into base matter! Shatter these minions of history’s last battle against us! For we arise from the natural substances of the universe, and are at one with it, and enjoyeth its fruits without artifice or corruption of spirit. We are the product of God’s own evolution. Monsters shall not fall from the sky and have these holy rewards, not if we hallow the ancients’ names.”
Distant rumblings, as if mountains rubbed a coarse sky.
“—for after the final liberating battle we shall go faring forth. We shall call to the most holy and majestic Skysower and be fed and brought forth!”
Illuminations shot through the clouds. Something silvery stirred high up.
“—to deliver us from the evil of this place. These devourers of worlds will fall, as the mechs fell before them. Believe in me—”
A cyclonic churn parted the banks of mottled clouds. Killeen felt the crowd begin to notice.
“—on Earth…as it is…in heaven!”
Striations of blue descended, curving along long arcs. Traceries frenzied the air. A rush of heat beat down from a sky that seemed emptied. Yet Killeen’s sensorium quivered with pale, swift intricacy.
“Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done. Malevolence focused by supreme will, we entreat you—”
A gathering presence loomed in Killeen’s sensorium—yet the air showed only translucent, skittering feelers of luminescence. Killeen remembered suddenly seeing such immense flickerings before. They had lit the distant skies the night after the cyborg released him.
“What—what?” His Supremacy croaked. His rhythm broken, he gaped at the display above.
And a voice Killeen knew came fluttering, at first almost lost in wind-whisperings:
I seek a particular human. Give sign if you can perceive this. I speak on magnetic wings, and bring tidings from the very center of this realm.
His Supremacy’s voice boomed, full of undisguised surprise and joy. “I am here! I have brought your word by sword and daring—”
