Pax Multi Pt. 04

The skies of Procyon II were beautiful and blue.

He sat back, resting his palms behind him, looking out at the sky -- the sun overhead is so searingly bright that it makes the clouds look as if they are each glowing waves of white flame. At the back of his mind, he knows that Procyon itself, the star, is slowly transforming into a super giant. Over the next few million years, it would sweep outwards, eventually rendering the surface of Procyon II uninhabitable.

The Procyon that stands before him is a single blot of shadow. He looks just like the medical diagram etched in gold on the front of their last -- possibly even their first -- spacecraft ever launched. Low, stooped, quadrupedal, long nosed, soulful eyes. They don't have mouths like humans, but still, they speak.

Their voice is the translated, much repaired howling radio traffic that had come from Wolf-359.

Crashing sounds. Chittering sounds. Screaming sounds. A desperate voice, speaking a language that needs no translation.

Help us.

Help us.

They're killing us.

They're everywhere.

Help us.

Help us.

Crash. Shattering glass -- so shockingly human sounding, so familiar. Then the clattering of claws. And behind the standing Procyon, the sky darkens. The clouds ripple and streaking past them come dark shapes. They're black and charred and trail fluttering tendrils that flare out organic flutes that catch the atmosphere and drag their velocity down to something survivable. They strike the ground as the Proycon points at him -- and the screaming gets louder as the biopods crack open and the hellgaunts come swarming out, their blades already dripping with blood.

Lou sat up, gasping, his entire body locked tight, glistening with sweat. His heart hammered and he saw Bea standing before him at the bed, her hands on the blankets, which she had clearly been about to pull off. He scrambled backwards, reflexively -- his back bumping against the headboard, the entire bed shaking slightly as he tried to get his breathing under control. His hands were clenched tight. Bea cocked her head, her voice sounding uncertain. "Are you injured?"

Lou's skin was crawling -- and again, he felt like he was trying to hold two contradictory ideas in his head. The first was of Beatrice -- a sweet, gentle, confounding being that he...that he felt...he was...he was married to and he wasn't sure how he felt. There were times when he had held her lighter than light body, when he had felt her warmth against him, that he had felt like he could have held her until the sun went dim in the sky. It was a feeling so deep and all consuming that it was almost frightening. And then there was the other thought. The memory of everything he had learned, all the footage he had seen, the radio messages he had heard. The stark knowledge that no matter how little Beatrice had meant to cause harm, she had. She had caused harm and horror...and...and he wanted to forgive her. But...part of him, he knew, wasn't willing to do it. Why else would he dream about the Proycians and the Lupens?

"Lou, your heart rate is faster than normal, I..." she crawled up onto the bed, reaching out and touching his leg -- and Lou almost flinched away from her. "What happened?"

Lou tried to think of what to say. "I...I had a nightmare," he said.

"What is nightmare?" she asked, sounding nervous.

"When...humans sleep, we...we have...dreams. They're collections of images and memories and sensations and feelings that we have during sleep." He gulped. "You don't know what sleep is like."

"It...is similar to when I unfocus, and let my mind spread among my entire awareness?" she asked, cocking her head and drawing close, trying to cuddle up against him. Lou tensed despite himself and instinctively, Bea drew backwards. Her antennas drooped. "Lou...are you...do you not...want? Me to..." She blushed. "I was going to...that is, I..."

Lou forced his hand out, cupping her cheek. Touching her smooth, sleek skin -- rubbery, and warm and inhuman and so very beautiful -- made him feel more centered. He leaned forward, pressing his forehead to hers, and he said, quietly. "It's very different. Nightmares, um, they're when dreams are unpleasant."

"Oh."

"It's-"

"It was a nightmare about me me."

He opened his eyes.

Beatrice looked...impossibly sad. Her eyes were cast down, her antennas drooping. "Your reactions make it exceedingly clear -- you had a nightmare about me. I am leaving." She drew backwards, turned, and literally flew out the window, her wings buzzing. Lou scrambled, then ran to the windowsill, looking out -- and she was gone, vanishing into the hazy twilight and the small forest beyond.

Lou closed his eyes, then slammed his head down upon the windowsill. Hard.

***

Lou wasn't sure if breakfast was extra stilted or if this was just how his life had been before he had met looser, more free people like GF and Amy and he hadn't noticed it until now. He sat across from his father, while mother sat to his right, and the servitor whirred around them, setting out the fine meal. Jam wobbled in porcelain plates, while lightly toasted bread sent up thin wafting streamers of hot steam into the morning sunlight. Father nodded curtly to Lou.

"Where is our new daughter in law?"

"She went back to her hive for nutrients," Lou lied with shocking ease, picking up some bread. He began to spread jam along it. He looked down at it, trying to think of how to apologize to Beatrice. Should you? A tiny part of his brain thought. She killed millions of people. Just because humans have done worse, for worse reasons, doesn't make what she did okay. Lou scowled, then set down his bread. He suddenly didn't have much of an appetite.

"Do you know when she'll be back?" Father asked. "There is a Federated ship in the system -- it's approaching Charon and according to the com-wave they sent us, it's carrying Colonel Admiral Akin Bosch. It seems the Federals want to extend their congratulations."

"Bosch..." Lou frowned. "That name is familiar."

"He served with your father at Wolf-359," Mother said, nodding.

"He's...decent enough for a Federal," Father said, frowning. "Half the fleet were Thor and Sleipnir class ships, those were Federal ships. They took the zenith fast pass, while the AnCom and Neopolitan ships took the nadir. The way the math worked out, the Federals took the worse of it." He shook his head. "But Bosch kept his head during the entire engagement, kept his men from panicking."

"The engagement was fifteen seconds long," Lou said, his voice dry.

"Fifteen seconds is a long time for a fast pass," Father said, putting down his knife. The clink of it was really quite shockingly loud in the room.

Lou pursed his lips. "I don't see what he's doing in Alpha Centauri thought. The F.S aren't exactly pleased with the peace treaty."

"They have to claim that they're unhappy, for the sake of their population," Father said, waving his hand dismissively. "But past all the bluster, they're not so different from the Neopolitans -- they respect history, tradition, humanity." He nodded, slightly. "Yes, it'll be good to see Akin again."

Lou stood up, pushing his plate away. "I will go and see if I can't convince my wife to visit. I'm sure she'll be happy to meet the Admiral. And if she cannot make it, I can at least bring her apologies." He inclined his head. "Mother. Father."

Mother held out her hand and Lou took it, kissing her knuckles. As he leaned in, she murmured in his ear. "It would be best if she had other engagements, darling." She kissed his cheek and Lou nodded, then turned and left, his hands tight behind his back as he walked out of the breakfast. Emerging into the brilliant sunlight that shone down from the dome, he was almost bowled over by Amy, who sprinted over, grabbed his arm, and dragged him away from the door. His eyes widened as the sleek QHC swung him around, pinned him against a tree, then looked to the left, her eyes narrowed, whiring.

"...Amy, what are you doing?" Lou asked.

"We need to keep you out of GF's line of sight," Amy murmured, softly.

Lou sighed, slowly. "Amy, I'm not in the mood-"

"He gave Beatrice some advice and he's going to just blunder into asking you about it in the most tactless way you could imagine," Amy said, frowning. "I'm your wingwoman, Lou. It's my job to keep you safe from that kind of mortification."

Lou sighed, again, mortified beyond belief. His eyes closed and he said, quietly. "Amy, I can handle GF being crass. And...have you seen Beatrice?"

"I mean, she's a hive mind, yeah?" Amy said. "She's got, like, two dozen bioforms around here." She paused, then looked at him. "Dude, did...oh god, what advice did GF give her?"

"I-" Lou blushed, looking away. His hands wrung together. "Nothing happened."

"...something happened," Amy said, frowning harder. "I can tell, you're terrible at lying. Did she, like, bite you or-"

"I had...a nightmare," Lou said, his mortification increasing. It was now the 'mud running down the back of his neck awful' feeling. Pits of snakes in his belly awful. "About the Procyians and the Lupens and...her." He shook his head. "S-She picked up on my nerves and immediately left."

"Oh." Amy stepped back.

"Yoooo, Lou!" GF shouted -- the two of them spun around and saw GF was jogging towards them. "Fucking AnCom porn, huh?" he asked, cheerfully. "Did she blow your mind or what?"

Amy slapped her palm over her face while Lou actually chuckled. It was a kind of wry, amused chuckle. Like, there was no way GF could make him feel any worse or more guilty than he felt right now. And compared to the fact that Admiral...

"Oh shit." Lou's eyes widened.

"What?" GF asked. "...she didn't bite it off, right?"

"No, Admiral Akin Bosch is coming to visit," Lou said. "And you two are AnComs."

"Bosch, Bosch, Bosch..." GF muttered, while Amy scowled.

"That asshole," she snarled, her fingers clenching into fists. Her eyes whirred and clicked.

"...Federal?" GF said.

"Yeap."

"I'll fab a gun," GF said, cheerfully.

"You can't shoot him!" Lou exclaimed, holding up his hands. "He's the Colonel Admiral of the entire Federated States Expeditionary Fleet -- half the ships that fought in the Bug War were FSN ships! They lost more soldiers in the war than the entire AnCom despite having a population of, what, a tenth as big?" He shook his head. "He's an ally and a member of the UHP."

GF snorted. "Thus also to tyrants, Lou. It's my civic duty to kill fascists when we have a chance. And we're out of SOL, in unsettled territory, and the war with the bugs is over. So, like, what exactly is the reason to not put a tungsten slug through his head with a coilgun on that grassy knoll right there?" He pointed at one of the hills.

"Because...you can't just murder someone who is coming under a flag of peace, under my father's invitation!" Lou said, flabbergasted. "It...honor! Duty! He may be a monster, but if we stoop to his level, that simply makes us as bad as him."

"Do you plan to commit genocide at any point in the near future?" GF asked.

"I...no?"

"Then you literally can't be as bad as him," GF said, his voice once again growing cheerful.

"I forbid it," Lou said, frowning.

"Come on, seriously?" GF asked. "Like, it's barely murder, he's got a stack like me..."

"I. Forbid. It." Lou crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes flashing. "And, honestly, GF, I expected better of you. Honor may just be a word for you, but it matters to me. And while I may disagree with my father inviting Admiral Bosch, while I may find him detestable as human being and the continued existence of the Federated States a loathsome blot in the collective human soul, that doesn't change the fact that he is here, under flag of peace, as an ally in war, who has earned the right to come here and shake my hand." He paused. "And if he insults me, my family, or my honor, I will challenge him to pistols at dawn and blow his brains out with a flintlock."

GF blinked. "...dude, you don't have a stack."

Lou grinned -- but his grin faded. "Do I have your word that you won't shoot him?"

GF looked at Amy. Amy raised her silvery eyebrows, then shrugged. GF bit his lip. "Yeah. Okay. You have my word. But I will flip him off."

Lou gave him a look.

"...seriously, I have to be polite to the motherfucker too?" GF asked.

Lou nodded, slowly.

"Auuuuuugh, this sucks. Fine." GF grumbled. "No one back home is going to let me live this down..."

Lou nodded again, then clapped his friends on their shoulders. "Now. I am going to speak to my wife." He breathed in, then out. "Wish me luck."

***

Admiral Bosch's shuttle came down with all the Wagnerian glory of the Federated States -- and that alone almost cut through the worried knot in Lou's stomach. Searching for hours for his wife, and finding nothing but trampled grass and claw-marks where her bioforms had been, had made it abundantly clear to Lou.

Beatrice simply did not want to talk to him.

He had tried to take it calmly, but as the hours had turned into days, as the FSN Invisible Hand took its holding orbit above Charon, he had grown more and more worried. Amy and GF had both offered him sympathy, but it had left him feeling brittle and raw and irritable, rather than calmed. It had still been better than the blithe acceptance of his parents. His father had said nothing on the issue, and his mother had been cutting with her cheerful: "Well, I'm glad that she understands Neopolitan marriages of state, yes?"

She had meant it as a way to make Lou feel better.

Lou had concealed the pain as best as he could and instead thrown himself into practice. First, with his rapier, setting the combat servitor that he fabricated to the maximum level of danger and throwing himself into the thoughtless violence of a free style fence, the servitor and his blade clattering together and slashing through the air. He had practiced with the early modern pistols, first using the classical style of loading, then switching to the neo-classical style that had become popular in the Star Kingdom within the past century, where one fabricated and fired the guns in a single unbroken route, seeking to strike as many targets as possible in as short a time as possible.

GF, watching, had said: "...holy shit Lou. Holy...fucking shit."

"What?" Lou had asked, turning to look at him.

"You got...ten fucking bullseyes in a row with smoothbore flintlocks..." GF gaped at him. "Without speed-augs? Target assist?"

Lou had shrugged. "I practice."

But even that pleasant work hadn't been enough to loosen his worry, nor to give him any succor. Every day, he had woken up, hoping that Beatrice had returned. Instead, he spent the entire day with the hours crawling by, every second his mind thinking of something to say to Beatrice...and nothing happening at all. And now, he was forced to watch, stand at attention, and look politely impressed as the Federals showed off.

The Federated States, like their forebears in ancient Rome, Italy, Germany. America, the Neo-Persian Front, the Scavskulls, the Yellowjackets and the Martian Union of Agrarian Terraformers, leaned hard into showy theatrics. Their shuttle was a black wedge that cut the sky like a knife, with screaming turbines and roaring jets of flames that made it look like the fist of one of the ancient gods. The massive emblem of the F.S.N on the front gleamed gold against the black fuselage, while non-aerodynamic but highly deadly looking weapon pods thrust from the wings, the belly, and the fuselage itself. The wheels screeched as they caught the spaceport and sent up gouts of smoke as the tires screamed against tarmac.

When the shuttle came to a stop, clicking and hissing with its heat differentials, the front gangplank opened and the first troops emerged, flanking Admiral Akin Bosch himself. He was a tall man, with the blond hair and blue eyes the Federated States tended towards. His uniform was all sleek grays and blacks, with a floating great coat and a high cap with an imperial eagle emblazoned on the front. His gold armbands glittered, stark against black, and his jackboots clicked -- almost louder than the whirr thump of his power armored escorts.

"Akin," Father said, smiling and reaching out -- and Bosch took his hand.

"King Benoit," Bosch said, while more Federals -- mostly officers -- emerged from behind him in the shuttle. "And this is your...son?"

He turned to face Lou and Lou caught, flickering across his face, an almost instinctive flash of utter disgust. Lou nodded, slightly. "Colonel Admiral," he said, then held out his hand. "It is an honor to meet you."

Bosch looked about himself, then smiled and it was the most punchable charming smile that Lou had ever seen. "I see that we're fortunate in not having your spouse coming to visit," he said, his voice sotto voce. "I know it must be quite a trial, to be at the forefront of peace with such a murderous species."

"Murderous is an incorrect term," Lou said, his voice as politely icy as he could make it. Behind his back, his fingers were tightening into fists. "It implies an intentionality that was lacking -- Beatrice...my wife...she chose a name, by the way..."

"Hm." Bosch pursed his lips.

"...she had no understanding of other species. Her fight against us wasn't a war. It was a misguided attempt to make herself safe from what she saw as hostile, unthinking creatures. Even after she realized we were sentient, she thought we were a hive mind like herself -- much as our early hypothesis about her species was that it was a multi-racial alliance and not a hive intelligence. When she learned each human is an individual, not merely a disposable fraction of a greater whole...she grew quite distraught and remorseful."

"Ah. And that makes it all better, does it?" Bosch asked, his voice growing cold as he started to pace around Lou. "King Benoit -- how many Neopolitan sailors did we lose at Wolf-359? At Procyon?"

Father was frowning. "Akin..."

"It wasn't her fault," Lou snapped, his temper slipping.

"Ah, of course, she killed several million humans by accident," Bosch said -- and Lou bit back his first response. Many of those millions had been killed in the war in a way that Bea didn't even grasp. She was guilt riddled over the several hundred thousand that she had...consumed. She hadn't even thought of the civilians that were turned instantly into ash by the matter/antimatter fireballs that had blotted entire cities on Charon off the map. The defenders, according to their final broadcasts, had agreed: Better instant, painless death than...consumption. She didn't think about the hundreds aboard Fenris or Thor or Odin or Agamemnon class battle-cruisers, who were ripped instantly to paste by high energy kinetic weapons or dissolved in long ranged spreads of organic acid launched from her warbodies. This moment of silence allowed Bosch to keep going: "Columbus killed as many with the plagues he introduced to the New World -- and we revile him as a monster. Or, is it only when white men do it?"

"Admiral Bosch, you forget yourself!" Father snapped.

Bosch looked ready to bring out some bit of smoothness or flippery or totally a-historical nonsense -- but before he could, his men all stepped forward, their weapons whirring and clicking as they brought them online. "Colonel Admiral! We're detecting an entire bug army out there!"

"What is this?" Bosch snarled -- but Lou turned, his heart leaping. He sprinted to the edge of the landing platform and saw that army was a slight exaggeration. It was merely a hundred or so hellgaunts, working together to carry something on their back. The something was covered in a large, bright collection of downy fluff...and he noticed that the hellgaunts themselves looked different. For one thing, their dazzle camo had been changed from white and black to green and pink, a garish combination that made his eyes ache. But what he noticed next, as they drew closer, was that they were covered in...