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"But Dahak's business is with all of us, I suppose," Horus continued quietly, "and my fellows and I accept that. We've grown old, Commander. Our lives are largely spent. It is only for 'Ta
"That's very eloquent, Horus," Colin said, tone carefully neutral, "but—"
"But we must work our passage, is that it?" Horus interrupted, and Colin nodded slowly. "Why, so we think, as well.
"When Anu organized his mutiny, Commander, Commander (BioSciences) Ina
"Anu's professed goal was to seize the ship and flee the Achuultani, but the plain truth of the matter was that he, like many of the crew, no longer believed in the Achuultani." Colin sat a bit straighter, eager to hear another perspective—even one which might prove self-serving—on the mutiny, but he let his face show doubt.
"Oh, the records were there," Horus agreed, "but the Imperium was old, Commander. We were regimented, disciplined, prepared for battle at the drop of a hat—or that, at least, was the idea. Yet we'd waited too long for the enemy. We were no longer attack dogs straining at the leash. We'd become creatures of habit, and many of us believed deep in our souls that we were regimented and controlled and trained for a purpose that no longer existed.
"Even those of us who'd seen proof of the Achuultani's existence—dead planets, gutted star systems, the wreckage of ancient battle fleets—had never seen the Achuultani, and our people were not so very different from your own. Anything beyond your own life experience wasn't quite 'real' to us. After seven thousand years in which there were no new incursions, after five thousand years of preparation for an attack that never came, after three thousand years of sending out probes that found no sign of the enemy, it was hard to believe there still was an enemy. We'd mounted guard too long, and perhaps we simply grew bored." Horus shrugged. "But the fact remains that only a minority of us truly believed in the Achuultani, and many of those were terrified.
"So Anu's chosen pretext was shrewd. It appealed to the frightened, gave an excuse to the disaffected, and offered the bored the challenge of a new world to conquer, one beyond the stultifying reach of the Imperium. Yet it was only a pretext, for Anu himself sought escape from neither the Achuultani nor from boredom. He wanted Dahak for himself, and he had no intention of marooning the loyalists upon Earth."
Colin knew he was leaning forward and suspected his face was giving away entirely too much, yet there was nothing he could do about it. This was a subtly different story from the one Dahak had given him, but it made sense.
And perhaps the difference wasn't so strange. The data in Dahak's memory was all the reality there was for the old starship—before it found itself operating completely on its own, at least. He'd noticed that the computer never used a personal pronoun to denote itself or its actions or responses prior to or immediately following the mutiny, and he thought he knew why. "Comp Cent" had been intended purely as a data and systems management tool to be used only under direct human supervision; Dahak's present, fully-developed self-awareness was a product of fifty-one mille
"I believe," Horus's heavy voice recaptured Colin's attention, "that Anu is mad. I believe he was mad even then, but I may be wrong. Yet he truly believed that, backed by Dahak's power, he could overthrow the Imperium itself.
"I can't believe he could have succeeded, however disaffected portions of the population might have become, but what mattered was that he believed he had some sort of divine mission to conquer the Imperium, and the seizure of the ship was but the first step in that endeavor.
"Yet he had to move carefully, so he lied to us. He intended all along to massacre anyone who refused to join him, but because he knew many of his adherents would balk at that he pretended differently. He even yielded to our insistence that the hypercom spares be loaded aboard the transports we believed would carry the marooned loyalists to Earth so that, in time, they might build a hypercom and call for help. And he promised us a surgical operation, Commander. His carefully prepared teams would seize the critical control nodes, cut Comp Cent from the net, and present Senior Fleet Captain Druaga with a fait accompli.
"And we believed him," Horus almost whispered. "May the Maker forgive us, we believed him, though if we'd bothered to think even for a moment, we would have known better. With so little of the core crew—no more than seven thousand at best—with us, his 'surgical operation' was an impossibility. When he stockpiled combat armor and weapons and had his people in Logistics sabotage as much other armor as they possibly could, we should have realized. But we didn't. Not until the fighting broke out and the blood began to flow. Not until it was far too late to change sides."
Horus fell silent, and Colin stared at him, willing him to continue yet aware the other must pause and gather himself. Intellectually, he knew it could all be a self-serving lie; instinctively, he knew it was the truth, at least as Horus believed it.
"The final moments aboard Dahak were a nightmare, Commander," the old man said finally. "Red Two, Internal, had been set. Lifeboats were ejecting. We were falling back to Bay Ninety-One, ru
Horus smiled wryly as Colin blinked in surprise.
"Yes, Commander, we were double mutineers. We ran for it—just this one ship, with barely two hundred souls aboard—and somehow, in the confusion, we escaped Anu's sca
"Our plan, such as it was, was simplicity itself. We knew Anu had prepared a contingency plan that was supposed to give him control of the ship no matter what happened, though we had no idea what it was. We speculated that it concerned the ship's power, since he was Chief Engineer, but all that really mattered was that he would eventually win his prize and depart. Remember that we still half-believed his promise to leave any loyalists marooned behind him, Commander. And because we did, we pla
"But, of course, it didn't work out that way," he said quietly, "for Anu's plan failed. Somehow, Dahak remained at least partially operational, destroying every parasite sent towards it. And it never went away, either. It hung above him, like your own Sword of Damocles, inviolate, taunting him.