Framed in the doorway was a Diamond Than, almost pure white, with just a hint of blue along the edges of the exoskeletal plates. She affected almost none of the traditional trappings of royalty, save for a simple gold band around the head. She strode across the room toward Dylan, who came smartly to attention and saluted.
"At ease, Captain." She extended a hand, which Dylan took gracefully. One of her bodyguards ushered her away, and toward the chair at the head of the table. "Please, sit."
The congregation of Than and Humans obeyed. Passing of Shadows sat at the far end of the table, opposite the Overdiamond, and the Andromeda's crew took positions down one side.
Radiance of Twilight was the first to speak. "Captain, it is a pleasure to finally meet you. It is something of a shame that the circumstances were not better. You have asked for some of our records. I am here because……well, because the subject of the records is – would be, if it ever became public knowledge – a source of shame for my people. I have a duty to ensure it does not become one. I trust the Admiral has impressed on you the sensitivity required?"
"At length, your Majesty." Dylan inclined his head.
"Then, Admiral, please begin."
Passing of Shadows stood, and began to speak without notes.
"The logical place for us to begin is after your encounter with the Bokor. At the time, you forwarded to my subordinate, Breeze of Evening, a log of your activities. You will recall that that log contained a recent itinerary mapping your movements in the area, that we might assess their possible spread."
"We noticed your visit to an old High Guard weapons depot. When our scouts arrived, they reported nothing in system but dust consistent with a destroyed asteroid. We surmised, therefore, that you had stumbled upon the nova bombs and had taken measures to prevent their proliferation. A wise decision, if I might digress a little." Passing of Shadows looked at Dylan, his posture and body language conveying more than a little respect.
"Now, I suspect that you came to a conclusion about the nova bombs' purpose. However, I can assure you that, whatever the conclusion, it was incorrect." He paused, seeming to consider which path to take next. "If I may jump a little, I will return to your report on the Bokor. Now, your first impression is that the Than attacked the drift with biological weapons, a view which was discarded later. This is where the story really begins."
"In one sense, Trance, you were right," he said, inclining his head toward her. "They were biological weapons. But they were Commonwealth biological weapons, not something of our doing alone. And this was not an attack. It goes back far longer."
"At the time of the Fall, things were not going well. We needed a tool to eliminate Nietzscheans. Conventional weaponry was too slow; nova bombs have…undesirable side effects. But then we began to consider their genetic makeup. They were engineered, unique, distinct from normal humanity. And with that realisation, we began to wonder: why not a precision engineered custom organism?"
"Of course, this presented us with still more difficulties. Nietzscheans are renowned for their immune systems. Who was to say, then, that they might not evade our new strain? And so we set about giving it…well, we called it intelligence by way of a joke. It turned out to be a little prophetic. Oh yes, our new organism was canny. We tested it, in small doses, in the lab. We even produced a vaccine, to see if it could be done. It could, but it just walked over it. It could detect the efforts of the immune system, and fight back."
"How we clapped ourselves on the back, thinking 'this will surely turn the war against them'. And it might have done…except by the time of the first stand-up test, our new organism had an agenda of its own. We could never have predicted how it would react to life in large colonies – or in sentients. We never even considered it. We launched a canister of it into a planet called Ymgarl, an almost barren rock with a few thousand Nietzscheans living on the surface. We were gratified by the life-signs dropping off the sensors so quickly. We thought it was a triumph. In the interests of a thorough test, our ships remained in orbit for a day or so, monitoring the epidemic. We anticipated a few survivors......just not their nature."
"When the first survivor's ship rose from the surface, we moved to intercept. We were not prepared to light the fire yet; it was thought that we should collate the data from our test first. Oddly, our sensors showed no life on board, so we boarded it, hoping to find some clue as to why. It was here, captain, that we first met the Bokor."
"Understand, captain, when they left the lab, they were nothing more than efficient killers, just another P5 pathogen in a universe full of them. But it would appear that they were more efficient than we thought. The sample we managed to recover…it had acquired the Nietzschean self-preservation instinct, presumably from one of its hosts. We had equipped it with the ability to deal with the immune system on a genetic level, we just didn't think it could be used for anything else. And…when they grew, once the population reached a certain…critical mass, if you like, they began to think."
"You know Breeze of Evening." It was a statement rather than a question. "One of his ancestors was a High Guard crewman on the vessel that fired that canister. His descendents, and descendants of the other Than crewmembers, have been tracking down and destroying the Bokor wherever they could be found ever since. We called it Project Pandora, after a legend from your history. We released the evil on the world…equally we must be the hope it can be destroyed. This is why you found those nova bombs, captain. They were stockpiled for one thing, and one alone: to stop the Bokor. We couldn't be sure how far or how fast they would spread, so we planned for a…worst-case scenario – a total overrunning of Nietzschean space. You found only one of the dumps…at the time, there were more than a hundred, some even bigger than the one you discovered."
Dylan wore an expression halfway between anger and disbelief. It did not go unnoticed among the assembled Than.
"Captain…you think this was ill-considered? Inhumane, possibly? The Bokor are even more inimical to sentient life than the Magog. And Magog stay dead when shot. If the Bokor had spread faster, more widely, you would have no concerns about interstellar stability, sentient rights, or even the Magog themselves, because every sentient in the Known Worlds would be a reanimated corpse. Is that the world you wanted to inherit? The universe you want to reunite? You know the phrase 'the end justifies the means'? You have seen the Bokor, captain. You know them. I ask you, what would you have done? There is another earthly saying that applies well – 'the lesser of two evils'. We had released one devil from its cage……if it was necessary to dance with another in order to return it, then we would do so, and let it call the tune as well."
Passing of Shadows paused, as though to regain a little strength after his tirade. "As it stands, it never turned into an epidemic. We caught most of the escaping ships, and it never really had the opportunity to spread. But at the time, captain, we looked straight into the abyss and the abyss not only looked back, but it laughed at us too. I think, in retrospect, that the Fall was preferable to an advancing Bokor-fuelled horde. That is how serious our situation was," he concluded.
Dylan reclined, his head bowed in thought. To take one evil to destroy another, and a third evil to destroy the second when it all goes wrong… There was little he could say, and a tiny, nagging part of his consciousness told him that Moon over Water, Breeze of Evening and Passing of Shadows were all right, that he hadn't wanted to know. Beka, normally quite resilient to bad news, was sat bolt upright, mouth agape. Even Trance looked agitated.
Then the Hegemon spoke. "You see our dilemma, captain. This is why so much secrecy was necessary. It is unfortunate that any of these events came to pass, but one must consider – what is the phrase? Objective circumstances. We must deal with the universe as it is, not as it should be, or as we would like it to be. I hope you are satisfied, captain. It is not something of which we are proud. I am not really qualified to judge, but I doubt the Commonwealth soldiers and scientists behind it were proud, either. It was a last-ditch effort, captain, something that had to be done. Such efforts are rarely anything to be proud of, but they are necessary."
Dylan's voice was low, resigned: "The Commonwealth was supposed to be a force for good, a force for unity……it was supposed to be a lot of things. But then, if it had been truly successful, the Fall would never have happened. One evil to fight another…"
An unhealthy silence descended over the room, each of those present brooding on the possibilities presented by the twin evils of the Bokor, and the total destruction of a thousand systems. Again, it was the Hegemon who broke the silence.
"Captain……you think of the Commonwealth as a light in the sky; some kind of ideal order to which we can all aspire. It was, captain. And it can be again. Do not let the actions of a few, and the necessary reactions of the remainder, blind you to that. This was a black day for the Commonwealth, captain, make no mistake, but it was a black day that was the necessary outcome of a blacker night. Our gambit failed; you've seen the results. If there is some way, some means to make it better, then it should be seized with both hands, lest we fall so far into that same darkness that there is no longer any way out. Captain, what has been described here is past. Not a good past, or a proud past, but a past nevertheless. We must move forward sooner or later, and I think this time is good."
Dylan looked up, surprised. "But Moon over Water – he said – "
"Whatever he said, captain, he told you he did not speak for me. Now may not be the time for the Than to join a new Commonwealth, but we can at least stand with it as allies. And, if the occasion presents itself later on……well. We will talk."
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