Killing Titan Read online

  “What’s happening in there, Vinnie?” Joe calls out.

  The steward of the archive is withdrawing, no longer serving as an interface, an interpreter. It wants me to move on.

  I hear the birdsong again. It’s starting to make sense. I get impressions on a broad spectrum. Background details, snippets of directed voice—psychological coloring. The new presence might be on one of those massive ships or weapons out there. Wherever she is, she’s a user. She’s alive. And that means she can ask me questions and make accusations.

  I don’t want to understand. I want to shut down. I’d almost rather die than complete this fucking quest. But I’m not going to die, not right away. Not in time to avoid the truth.

  I begin to understand almost all of the pretty song that is the other voice:

  We [are told] we share inheritance. Difficult to accept. We [see] you. You arrive ready to fight. We [see] your vehicles and have [stopped them from becoming threats]. [Who are you], why have you come here?

  I sense the urgency. We’re surrounded. They’re extremely wary, but desperate—like us—and achingly curious. There has been so much pain and loss. They don’t know our origins or our intentions, but they still have hope. I sense that they have fought against their own kind. They’ve suffered great hardship to reach and survive on Titan and tap into the archive. They, too, were touched by the ancient memory of Bug. Likely they, too, had comrades who turned glass. I wonder if Coyle met any of their dead, and if so, why she didn’t tell me.

  Because I am still alive. Because honor and duty still matter to me. To us. And that’s messing with me big-time. But I also have a duty to this mission, to the people who thought I should be here, that DJ should be here. That we could learn and help them understand the mysteries and deceptions.

  Expose the big lie.

  So I bear down and focus on the other user. I don’t use words—so little time. Instead, I show this new presence the Drifter, the crystal pillar, the green dust smeared on our skins. I show DJ in an ecstatic mood, rejoicing at the ancient connection.

  I try to convey the experience of Captain Coyle.

  And I show the new presence Bug.

  Back in turn arrive visions of a precisely parallel experience. The colors and outlines are difficult—I have to focus on one of four separate views that otherwise cross and confuse. The four images come from four eyes. Some of their kind were once smeared with green dust. Their genetic music is the same as ours—the dust worked on them as well.

  We are also alike in being aggressors. We’re like cocks set against each other in a ring. If we are victims, we are willing enough—ideally suited for entertaining distant worlds.

  I cannot escape the truth of who it is I am talking to, what it is that confronts us across the deep saline sea, through the ionized membranes, from within those larger and more powerful weapons. Nobody on our Oscar is going to like these new truths. My own reaction is gut-level, instinctive. I feel revulsion. But if I shoot back my disgust, my grief and resentment at our own losses, my wish to defeat and even exterminate all of them—the total effect of my Skyrine training and esprit de corps—

  The other user could just give up on us—let loose the ice and crush us.

  Somehow, I filter and control my negative instincts. I feel that the other is doing likewise. She does not in any way enjoy addressing me, and her doubts are if anything stronger than mine. She and her warriors have come far, for many different reasons, to fight on Mars and on Titan. Nearly all of their warriors are female. Males form the upper ranks and rarely engage in combat.

  But their doubts have changed many of them. The information from the archive, and the evidence of their returned dead, have driven them as well to betrayal and treason. Like us, they have skeptics who wish to resume the war. They need another and very different perspective. They need objective confirmation.

  We hear Borden’s voice explaining that Box has arrived and dispersed its seeds. The seeds are gobbling up whatever was left of the station, making new weapons—dozens of them.

  “Reinforcements are here!” Jacobi says with relief.

  “They’re not here to help us,” Joe says. “They’re here to hunt us down and kill us all. And then they’ll do their best to kill Titan. Believe it!”

  Who’s more powerful and more dangerous?

  The enemy in front, the humans above?

  DJ moans. His voice rises to nightmare screams. Then he goes quiet. The suit has done something to flatten his distress. He’s out of the game.

  But as long as I can keep my connection open and keep exchanging information, I’ll be useful. As long as their skeptics don’t get the upper hand—a distinct possibility—

  We’ll live.

  “They’re holding fire,” I say. “If the forces from Box get to us—”

  “The hell with that!” Jacobi shouts. “This is cat-and-mouse. We got to break loose and head back to the station.”

  “I don’t think so,” I say. “They want to keep us alive. They need us.”

  “Who wants that?” Ishida asks, her voice dark and dangerous. “Who needs us? Who the hell are you talking to?”

  “Antags,” I say.

  The reaction in the Oscar’s cabin is electric. What should have been obvious all along has been cloaked in many layers of denial. Now doesn’t seem the best time to give them the really acid news—about our being fighting cocks. Dupes. Naïve victims of an ancient con.

  “You knew that!” Joe calls out to them. “It’s what we expected—it’s the reason for Division Four and everything else we’ve done. Why else would we come here?” He sounds angry. How long has he known? Even before Mars? Maybe he’s one of the Wait Staff. Who the hell is Joe Sanchez? He’s been in so many places at so many convenient times… throughout my life.

  “Because we wanted to access the old knowledge!” Tak says. He’s said very little throughout our journey in the Oscar. “To wipe out the enemy. Power, that’s what we wanted.”

  Joe says, “Vinnie and DJ are our scouts. I go with what they recommend.”

  “DJ’s out of it,” Tak reminds him.

  “Maybe, but Vinnie is reporting back. We either trust him, or return to the surface and defend ourselves against the weapons dropped by Box. You still think they’re here to rescue us?”

  The others are silent on that.

  “They’re here to find us and kill us. I guarantee they won’t show any mercy. If we start a fight down here, we also die. If we listen to Vinnie—maybe we live.”

  It’s hard acquiring so much tolerance all at once. I’m not at all sure I wouldn’t prefer to fight Antags again and die. Still, I keep sending—keep visualizing and trying to interpret the return feed. The other user’s feed is turning nasty. I keep seeing battle in space and on Titan, on Mars—I keep seeing dead Antags, friends and lovers, commanders and soldiers.

  And dead humans. Lots of dead humans.

  She’s testing me.

  “We don’t have time,” I say. “They expect a solid answer.”

  “What do they want?” Jacobi asks, voice hoarse.

  I ask, and receive a kind of picture: humans and Antags standing in a cabin. No armor. No weapons. Separated by mere meters. Can we just talk to each other?

  Can we even breathe the same air?

  “They want a face-to-face. On their terms, on their ships.”

  “How you going to arrange that?” Ishida asks. “They going to crack us open and scoop us out like lobsters?”

  “New machines descending,” Borden says across the cold fluid. “We need actionable. What’s Venn doing?”

  “He’s communicating,” Joe says sharply. “He’s doing what you brought him here to do! We got problems down here.”

  “I say go back and surrender to our own kind,” Jacobi says. “At least they’re human.”

  Borden says, voice far away, “I’m in command.”

  “Fuck that!” Ishida says. “Turn around and go back.”

  I hear
Kumar’s voice from Borden’s vessel: “That would be suicide. They are killing all who deny the Gurus.”

  What we’re engaged in is a fratricidal war. And the Gurus put us up to it. How in hell can I convey this to Tak and Jacobi, to Ishikawa and Ishida? To Ulyanova? Ishida lost half her body to the war! Most who already suspect these bitter truths—Borden, Kumar, possibly Mushran—are on another ship, along with Litvinov.

  The Antag vessels are still holding. We have maybe thirty minutes before Box’s reinforcements arrive and all hell comes down on both of us.

  Joe says, “It’s on you, Vinnie. This is why you were born.”

  That does it. I want to shrink up inside my suit, dry up into a little nut. But the other user is still touching parts of my head. Still trying to find common ground. And providing scenarios, little road maps of how we can proceed. If we don’t attack.

  “They can take our machines inside theirs,” I say. “They can get us back to the surface, away from Titan.”

  “You mean give up without a fight?” Jacobi asks, outraged.

  “Take us where?” Ishida asks. “To their planet? Never go home again?” Those seem like optimistic appraisals, actually. Kumar, Mushran—Borden. They’re all agreed. Makes me sick to think of who agrees with me.

  “Guarantees?” Joe asks, though he knows better.

  “None at all,” I say. “But it’s why I was born, like you said—right?”

  “Yeah,” Joe says, and communicates with Borden. The shouting in our cabin is fierce. “Do it, Vinnie. Let it go!” Joe says. I tell the other, my Antagonist counterpart, to open up their ships and take us inside.

  All of us.

  We surrender.

  Then our ballerina speaks up. She’s having difficulty interpreting the rapid back-and-forth. “I get this straight,” Ulyanova says. “They are enemy? I say, kill them. I say die trying!”

  The next part is going to be very, very hard.

  Don’t miss the conclusion to the

  War Dogs Trilogy

  Coming Fall 2016

  Also by GREG BEAR

  Hegira

  Beyond Heaven’s River

  Psychlone

  Strength of Stones

  The Wind from a Burning Woman (collection)

  Corona

  Songs of Earth and Power

  Blood Music

  Eon

  The Forge of God

  Tangents (collection)

  Sleepside Story

  Queen of Angels

  Eternity

  Anvil of Stars

  Bear’s Fantasies (collection)

  Heads

  Moving Mars

  New Legends (anthology)

  Dinosaur Summer

  Foundation and Chaos

  Slant

  Darwin’s Radio

  Collected Stories of Greg Bear

  Vitals

  Darwin’s Children

  Dead Lines

  Quantico

  City at the End of Time

  Mariposa

  Hull Zero Three

  Halo Forerunner Trilogy

  War Dogs

  Killing Titan

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  Contents

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  WELCOME

  DEDICATION

  PART ONE

  ICE MOON TEA

  MADIGAN MADRIGAL

  ONE FINE DAY IN THE BUGHOUSE

  A LOCAL’S GUIDE TO THE RED

  ANOTHER FINE DAY IN THE BUGHOUSE

  BUNDLES OF TROUBLE

  DAY 98

  DAY 100

  DAY 102

  DAY 120

  IT’S A LIFE

  DAY 123

  SNATCH AND GO

  OH FOR COSMOLINE

  DAY ONE

  BATTLEGROUND

  FIREWORKS

  MESSAGE UNCLEAR

  ACROSS THE DUSTY DESERT

  ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURES

  BAD MOON RISING

  A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE

  OLD AND IMPROVED

  FAMILY UNIT

  CHOSEN BY THE TEA

  JOURNEYS NEVER END

  BUG DREAMS AND OTHER ODYSSEYS

  AND NOW A WORD FROM OUR SPONSORS

  AD ASTRA OR ELSE

  PART TWO

  BATMAN AND SILVER SURFER SAY…

  THE BIG VAMOOSE

  COBWEBS

  COOK’S TOUR

  PART THREE

  TITAN

  STATS

  LAST CALL

  DOWN TO A DISTANT SEA

  INSTAURATION ONE: MADIGAN MADRIGAL REDUX

  GOOD MORNING, MOON

  TITAN F.O.B.

  FISSURE KINGS

  NO NO NO FUCK NO

  UNDER PRESSURE

  OLD AND COLD

  ALSO BY GREG BEAR

  ORBIT NEWSLETTER

  COPYRIGHT

  Copyright

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2015 by Greg Bear

  Cover design by Kirk Benshoff

  Cover images © Arcangel Images, © Shutterstock

  Cover © 2015 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Orbit

  Hachette Book Group

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  First ebook edition: October 2015

  Orbit is an imprint of Hachette Book Group.

  The Orbit name and logo are trademarks of Little, Brown Book Group Limited.

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  ISBN 978-0-316-22399-7

  E3