INTERPOSIT FIVE

The Lithoi were angry; their plans were slipping out of control and that meant their Contract might not be honoured. Their last two flying eyes had been shockingly and unexpectedly destroyed in New Eucla. Yes, the artificers could build more but that would take time. Their sleeper agents, concealed in Transports, were being flushed out along the Australian coastline, and remorselessly killed. It had proved essential to order them back to the base, and they'd have to walk with no flying eyes to return them. Of all the fifty sleeper agents deployed, no more than ten or twelve might get back alive. If they could get past the dingo packs, that is, since the feral canines seemed to have an especial grudge against the Lithoi.

The loss of a few dozen from a crew of five hundred didn't matter especially, their concern was over how little control the Lithoi could now exert, thanks to their secrecy being breached.

Accordingly a panic session had been convened. Arkan 22, the nominal head of the Lithoi mission, spoke rapidly to the others.

'We have considered a cull of human survivors in the past, especially since their numbers in the Northern hemisphere began to increase. It is imperative that we implement a cull now!'

Miskan 54, the human expert, hissed in agreement.

'To delay would be dangerous. Without our covert control, surviving human colonies may become threatening.'

'An engineered plague, then,' decided Arkan 22. He slowly turned to look at the biological supervisor.

Nilkan 34 ducked his head, a Lithoi gesture of submission. In this case, apology.

'We would need to create it from scratch. None of the old cultures are viable after such a long delay from their first use.'

'Ensure it is more destructive than the last disease,' added Miskan 54. 'Much more.'

'Agreed,' added Arkan 22. Anger in a Lithoi didn't die down quickly. 'Inevitably some humans will survive. In the hundred years it will take for the Northern hemisphere to become completely viable, they will breed back up to the required level.'

Orskan 94 put in a technical objection.

'We do not have a delivery system any longer. The flying eyes spread the initial disease cultures.'

Arkan 22's tail thrashed in anger (to a Lithoi; to any other observer he merely twitched, slowly).

'Then the artificers will have to build more flying eyes! No rest for them.'

'I would also suggest a more short-term solution for the littoral communities,' added Mirkan 54. 'Missiles, with cobalt warheads. We cannot wait and allow them to interfere.'

'No!' hissed the leader. 'Cobalt pollutes excessively. Simple fission warheads will do.' He swivelled to look at Orskan 94. 'Have the artificers work on a dozen such missiles.'

Later that day, deep in the machine shops of the Lithoi's base, Orskan 94 hissed and seethed to himself. It was all very well Arkan 22 giving orders like "no rest" but in practice that meant unwilling shifts of the low-caste workers making mistakes thanks to exhaustion, very probably making things less successful than if they worked normally. And he was supposed to carry out both projects simultaneously! Which meant both went slowly, and doubtless Arkan 22 wouldn't like that, either.

Nilkan 34, having a higher caste status and a correspondingly higher position in the ship, had his concerns, too. He could cook up some frightful disease, certainly, and do it quicker than those lower caste spanner-wielders could build a flying eye, and that was the problem; they'd end up storing a deadly viral agent aboard their baseship.

Well, necessity made it so, he reasoned. They had done it before, with their original created disease, the one that humans called "The Phage". After all, there was simply no way humans could damage the baseship, even if they knew where it was ...

Arkan 22 had his own concerns. The panic meeting had been an unseemingly quick resolution to their problems, only eight hours long. Against that, nothing in the way of missiles or launch systems could be deployed outside until the plain had dried sufficiently because the low-caste workers would suffer terminal shock if they had to manoeuvre on ground that visibly contained water. Then there was the mysterious asteroid impact itself. It had occurred hundreds of kilometres south of them, nowhere near the base, so he felt right at having dismissed it as a natural occurence, despite what Miskan 54 might think.