Pax Multi

The shuttle from the orbital station to the meeting place extended sleek, filament wings, snap hardened them with a sweep of smart materials, and then began to drift down into the upper atmosphere of Charon. Heat began to gather on the wings -- flames licking around them, sweeping along the edges, crawling like vines. Lou watched them grow and wondered what exactly had gone wrong with his life.

Well.

Obviously, the first mistake had been being born...

He glanced over at the only other occupants of the shuttle. There was his father, the priest, his mother, Amy, and...

He blinked.

"God Fucker?"

The gangly AnCom that he had expected to be four light years and subjective years in the past grinned at him. "Hey," he said, cheerfully, then clambered to his feet, walked over and sat down at the chair beside Lou.

"What...the...what are you...

how

did..." Lou spluttered.

"Dude," God Fucker said, shaking his head. "My weight on the lighthugger was, like, a rounding error in its mass capacity. I just polled the AnCom community, didn't get enough downvotes, and I was on." He smiled. "They agreed with my reasoning: You, my dude? You need a

friend

."

Lou blinked at him.

"...a friend."

"Yeah," God Fucker said, nodding to him, before reaching into his vest and tugging out a small packet of fruity snacks. He started to pop them into his mouth as the shuttle continued its glacially slow descent into the atmosphere -- reducing turbulence by adding time.

"You want to be my friend?" Lou asked, still feeling as if he had just woke up into an incredibly surreal dream from an already surreal dream.

"Yeah," God Fucker said. "You seem chill -- like, way more chill than you'd expect for a real for honest actually fucking solid gold prince."

Lou found himself smiling, despite everything. "I'm sorry, I'll try and stick a bigger stick up my rump...I don't want to, uh, miss you out of the chance to actually get the full princely experience."

God Fucker laughed. "That's the spirit -- don't forget being spoiled. And vain!"

Lou grinned -- but a tiny, sneaky, whispery part of his brain that he didn't like started muttering. It sounded a great deal like his fencing instructor, Marc:

We Neopolitans enjoy thinking of the AnComs as a collection of useless layabouts and hedonistic fools -- but they're more than capable of every kind of human interaction that we are. Sneaking, lying, disassembling, spying, espionage. Everything you could imagine from our noble houses, you can expect to see from the AnCom. But they will do so for reasons that will seem alien or confusing, and that is what makes them so...very...dangerous.

"Seriously, though, you're willing to blow...decades of life back on Earth to just be my friend for, what, the three days before I piss off my new wife and get eaten?" Lou asked.

God Fucker -- Lou, unable to think of him like that anymore, started to drop his name to GF -- laughed. "Dude, I'm immortal. Ten years? Twenty years? Who cares -- my medichines are going to keep me going until the sun burns out, and I've got a backup that I update every week. Worst comes to worst, I lose a few days if I croak out here, maybe a few months if things go really really

really

wrong and the entire human civilization out here gets toasted, I loose a few years. That's a big chunk of time to loose, but it's not

eternity

." He paused. "Besides...you...you got seriously hosed, dude. You're going to need a friend."

Lou blinked. He...suddenly wanted to cry. He looked out the window, at the wing again. More flames were streaking along the edges of the wing -- clouds roiled past the windows. "It's not going to be that bad," he said -- trying the words out and feeling how utterly false they were.

"Dude, you're getting married to the biggest mass murderer in the entire galaxy, as far as we know," GF said, shaking his head. "...also, like, how the

fuck

did your dad even convince the Bugs to go along with this? They're a hive mind, right?"

Lou nodded. "I...haven't asked."

"It all smells like a fucking set up," GF muttered. "I mean, I know you probably think that's just some paranoid AnCom bullshit..."

"That's not paranoid," Lou said, looking at GF. His voice was more controlled, his eyes weren't brimming with tears. "Thinking three, six, ten steps ahead is what we in the Neopolitan Star Kingdom do best." He frowned and mentally kicked himself -- hard. He had been taught all the deep games and the complex strategies used by the great houses. He

knew

this. He just had to apply it to his own father and his own future. Which...he sighed. He hated it. But he had to do it.

"Oh?"

"Okay...think about it," Lou said, quietly. "How does the United Human Polities work? It's a compromise between all the factions, to keep the peace since the Meme War. That means that there are systems that keep even very small polities, like the Star Kingdom, relevant. Like, how we weight votes based on inverse populations. And the way that the biggest faction, the AnComs, allow their members to vote with other polities." He smirks, slightly. "Like, half of the Federal and Neopolitan power comes

purely

from manipulating AnCom votes."

GF nodded. "Yeah, I have a few mutuals and all they do is share feeds about the shit going on in the Federated States. It gets

wild

in their territory."

Lou nodded. "And I bet there are just as many who are fascinated by the marriages, the spying, the duels, the secret affairs..." His cheeks heated and his eyes flicked, quite without him meaning too, from GF to his parents, who were speaking quietly. "...all that stuff. Right?"

GF nodded again. "I mean, you do know the Duchess of Leone's sex tape leaked, right?"

"No, it didn't," Lou said, blushing. "It

was leaked

, I guarantee it."

"Okay, wait, Amy was telling me that you said that you royals had to be all...you know, chaste and shit."

Lou shook his head. "We're also taught about the power of hypocrisy. Hypocracy is one of the most potent human abilities in the galaxy."

"Holy shit, I thought some AnComs were fucking cynical..."

"The Star Kingdom isn't about ignoring the parts of the galaxy, about the parts of

life

, that we don't like," Lou said, his voice growing a bit heated. "We don't pack mortality into a box and pretend it doesn't exist, we don't edit our brains to get rid of stuff like guilt or doubt or jealousy. We...we just try to

be

." He blushed, slightly. "We try to use what humans are to our best advantage." He sighed, then sat up a bit in his seat, his mind whirling. "So. Problem: The Star Kingdom is on the downward spiral. Nobles and commoners alike drift to less demanding factions. Solution: Make sure that we

remain relevant

once the war is over and you no longer need a bunch of weirdos who spent their entire lives studying every single war humanity ever fought against itself out on the front lines, recreating Cannae and Dara. Nevermind." He said, before GF could even ask.

"So, this marriage shit is...a...publicity stunt?"

"Yeah, basically," Lou said, leaning against the wall. "Shit, it got

you

to fly across four light years just to get involved. How many social media followers do you think you're going to gain when you get home?"

"Dude, I'm already fifteen million up and-" GF stopped. "...oh."

"Even if the Bugs and I...even if none of this works, even if it's a literal farce, Dad can spin it as hard as he can in any direction he wants. Milk it for tragedy, make the Bugs into monsters, make me popular, whatever." He sighed, slowly. "And the Star Kingdom keeps getting a bunch of votes from AnComs in UHP politics and...the kingdom continues."

"That's...fucking

cold

."

Lou shrugged one shoulder. "It could be worse."

"How?"

Lou paused.

"I have no idea."

***

Charon had a nitrogen rich atmosphere and soil that had been fixed with nutrients and minerals over the millennia by the only real life form that had evolved on the planet before the arrival of humanity. Thus far, with about five solar systems really charted and a few dozen with flyby probes shot through them, humanity had determined that life was common and multi-cellular life was common...but common didn't mean universal. On Charon, under the warmth of three suns (two, now that Proxima Centauri ...changed), life had never needed to go much further than single celled lifeforms. Due to the lack of large geographic separation points and plate tectonics, the planet's surface was very stable. Stability meant that sitting around and creating a few kinds of biochemicals and squirting out nitrogen was all that the lifeforms on Charon had needed to

do

.

That was, until humans had come.

The first colonists had been renegades, separate from the United Human Polities. They had fled after the catastrophic ending of the Meme War, their original ideologies ripped apart in a haze of autophagic basilisk hacks and self replicating data destroying semi-sentient warprograms. They had arrived with a scattered, twisted version of history stored in their slow-boat computers, a taste for human flesh, and a decided lack of long term environmental planning in mind. That was why they had planted in the fresh, fertile soil of Charon...trees. Redwoods, oaks, yews, birch, a wild array of flora that hadn't even been intended to live near one another on

Earth

, let alone in the vast, untamed wilds of Charon.

The colonists had been wiped out by their own scarred culture -- it turns out that ritualized cannibalism inculcated by a war criminal's idea of a practical joke was not the most stable foundation for a planetary religion. The scant few survivors after the initial civil war died off, one by one, in forests that didn't produce foods they could use. Various indigeinous and first nations peoples from Earth's past could have survived just fine. But the colonists hadn't had the foundational knowledge, the techniques, or the time.

And so, with the last human laying as nothing more than slowly desiccating bones, untouched by even the most indiscriminate Charon microbe, the forests had begun to work their own slow, spreading progress across the planet's surface. There had been deaths, crossbreeding, wild chaos. The cruel pressure of evolution had forced changes -- but in the end, when the UHP had come to the world a century later, they had found a rudimentary ecosystem. It had utterly destroyed the entire ecosystem that had been on Charon's relatively flat super continent (without natural barriers or many oceans to stop it, a century had been more than enough time for the trees to spread and consume.) But among some members of the Polities, there hadn't been much of an ecosystem to preserve...

Now, as Lou stood on the large, flash-constructed landing pad and looked out at the forests that surrounded the gleaming metal, he felt faintly cheated. Four light years and a dip in a cryogenic tank, and the only thing that made him think he was anywhere but right back in Geneva was the fact he had to wear a breathing mask -- and the two suns that he could see overhead, shining down on the planet. The breathing mask was relatively flimsy and wasn't even connected to a gas tank. All it had to do was filter out the excess nitrogen and increase the oxygen intake by drawing in extra air with every breath, using clever mechanical systems that he barely noticed.

"Nice place," GF said, cheerfully, while Dad and Mom got off the shuttle. That was when Lou noticed the heavily armed and armored combat QHC -- they were housed into heavy, beetle like combat bodies, their weaponry looking like sleek bumps and ripples in their forms. But Marc had taught Lou how to recognize railguns and heavy laser cannons and the missile tubes for seeker weapons. He pursed his lips, then looked around again, trying to spot...well...any sign of the bugs.

"Son," Father said, walking over and nodding to him. Then he frowned, looking at GF. "Who is this?"

"This is...Godfrey," Lou said, nodding. "He's one of the AnComs who, uh, he was at the Geneva meeting and he has come along."

"Yup, that's me," GF said, cheerfully. "I've actually done a pretty comprehensive study of the Bug War and what we know about Bug biology." He nodded. "Your little trick around Wolf 359 was incredible, if you don't mind me saying."

"Yes, well..." Father chuckled. "I had a bit of advice from Belisarius."

Lou nodded. "What...where is..." he paused.

"Amy has been handling the interpersonal communication with the hive mind," Father said, nodding. "We've been learning a lot more about the actual workings of the hive mind -- but teaching it how to speak more than the most rudimentary terms has been difficult."

"Does it even know what a wedding is?" Lou asked.

"It knows that rituals are important for us," Father said, nodding. "It knows that we are...singular. Though, I'm not sure how much of that it understands. That is part of why I organized this, you know." He leaned against the railing around the spaceport, looking out at the forests. "A single acorn, planted here centuries back, has created all of this. Even the war, even the antimatter, even the Bugs, haven't erased what that single action has done. You are going to be that acorn, Louis. You will, by example and gentle persuasion, teach the Bugs what it truly means to be human. Not just our guns and our tactics -- but our warmth. Our compassion. Our love." He smiled.

Lou felt like he was two people at once. On the one hand, there was the Lou who wanted, desperately, to

be

that tiny acorn, planted underneath the soil, growing into some vast tree that would keep mankind safe for the future. But on the other, there was the Lou who knew that this smiling, charming man was as cold blooded as any king in history. All those ideals and speeches were so good. But...

He sighed. "I'll do my best, father."

"I know you will," Father said.

"Wow." GF said, quietly. "That was some heaping bullshit."

Father slowly turned, looking at GF. He frowned, ever so slightly.

"You want to teach the Bugs, get a team of xenoanthropologists and diplomatic specialists," GF said, crossing his arms over his chest. "This? This is bad comedy."

Lou opened his mouth to interject, but before either he or father could respond to GF's condemnation, a tree crashed down in the distance, with a rattling crackling spray of splinters and distorted rumbling sounds. Lou could see the movement in the woods -- branches shift, trees moving. The combat bots all shifted in their stances, turning to face -- and then the first of the Bugs emerges from the woods. They were darting, fast, sleeking things that made Lou's eyes almost want to slide off them. It wasn't that they weren't obvious. They were. But each one was colored brilliant white and black colors, cleverly interlocked so that, as they moved together like a swarming blanket of chattering flesh, they created a wild confusion of colors and shapes. It began hard to figure out where one bug began and one bug ended.

The wave of creatures stopped as one, in a single, eerie demonstration of their coordination. Now that they weren't moving, Lou saw that they were what human infantry called hellgaunts: Sleek, doglike creatures with narrow triangular snouts and four limbs that they used for running and two that they used to grip weaponry to their chest. The weapons were also alive -- wriggling, bony masses of flesh that the infantry had named wormguns.

Cause...

They fired worms.

More accurately, they fired bone tipped worms with complex biochemical reactions in their rectums, allowing them to propel themselves on streams of compressed, caustic chemicals that stung human flesh and eyes. On impact, the worms burrowed straight for the nearest vital organ, then exploded.

"Eesh..." GF whispered. "Does it all have to be so...glistening?"

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

The trees rumbled. Shook. And then four of them were shouldered out of the way by an immense, bipedal shape. "Oh fuck," GF whispered and Father crossed himself, reflexively. It was a Terror Talon, the Bug's version of a main battle tank. Bipedal, with immensely powerful digitigrade legs and a top land speed that matched most hovertanks, the creature bristled with biological weapons. The two massive hooked blades in the end of arms muscular enough to drive those blades through solid composite armor. The stumpy limbs with wormguns at their ends, aiming in every direction. The back mounted parasitic creature called the rocketvore, which was capable of breeding and launching guided biological munitions that could be anything from acid bombs to mind control pheremone.

The Terror Talon thumped past the swarm, which flowed away from its hoof-like feet moments before they touched the ground. The fact that none of the hellgaunts had to look at where they were moving, and that there was no jostling and no hesitation just made it creepier. Soon, the Terror Talon was standing right at the edge of the spaceport. It's face, inhuman and terrible, with six blinking insectoid eyes, craned down and a voice came from its abdomen, speaking past the armor plating like a man at the bottom of the well. "WE PRESENT."

Lou spent the rest of the ceremony in a kind of dissociative state.

The priest spoke of faith, of duty, of differences becoming one, of the better future that could come from this. The Bugs listened and Amy stood beside it and murmured quietly to it -- if it had ears, she was speaking into one of them. But Lou wasn't entirely sure. He wasn't sure about a lot of things, for instance. Like, if he was going to

live

for the next few hours.

Then the heard the words.

"You may now kiss the bride, and under the eyes of the Chalice and the Holy Ghost, be married from now until death."

Everyone was looking at Lou. His mother and his father, seated at their comfortable chairs. The combat robots. The cameras in floating drone bodies. The curious AnComs who had come down to the surface. Even the hellgaunts. To his credit, the Priest was looking as if he was reconsidering what he had just said -- as if he had done this kind of service so often, across so many years, that the words had just...popped out without him even noticing them. He was opening his mouth and closing it, but Lou hardened his own distaste, and instead turned to the massive Terror Talon. He wasn't precisely sure where to kiss it, and so, he tentatively held out his hand.

The Bug didn't move.

He touched the edge of one of the massive bladed arms that hung at the sides of the creature, then leaned forward and kissed the flat edge of the blade. It tasted faintly like licking a bone after you chewed off all the meat on it. He stood up again, then nodded.

"I...pronounce you man and wife," the priest said, and polite clapping came from the guests.

"WE LEAVE."

The massive Terror Talon turned and began to stomp away. Lou felt a moment of relief, knowing that it was fleeting, knowing that this was far from the hardest part. Then he noticed the tentacle looping around his belly. It was slimey. Of course it was slimy. He had enough time to sigh, and try to look composed before he was yanked off his feet and dragged away, swing up and behind the Terror Talon. The last thing he saw of the rest of the wedding guests was GF holding up what looked like a communicator.

"Catch!" He shouted, and threw, and it landed among the hellgaunts. Then there was nothing to see but trees.

***

Lou found that even terror had its limits.

For about...ten eternities, he was terrified. For the next bit, he was apprehensive. Then he was bored. The Terror Talon that had a hold of him wasn't squeezing him hard, nor was it being particularly uncomfortable. Indeed, he was actually pretty comfortable, wrapped up tightly in a tentacle and kept in a kind of gimbled grip that meant that every step of the creature's legs barely felt like anything more than a gentle swaying. But there was not much to see, beyond trees, then the large flat plains filled with d

crushing

their way across a planet. This was because the planet had never been tectonically active enough to even have mountains or hills in the first place.