“It would not be technically difficult to develop some other method to achieve the same ends, especially with the many humans which must have been captured on other planets and brought to the… I think it’s nine… Narlav worlds to serve their new masters,” Paranak conjectured. He swivelled and looked at Kirrina, realising at last what effect his words would be having on her.
“Perhaps the battle did not continue as one-sidedly as the small part we have been witness to,” he added hastily. “Perhaps the Narlavs lost much of their fleet, once the Arshonnans discovered the error in their tactics. Perhaps my people were forced to abandon their attempt to wipe out your species.”
“It’s all right,” Kirrina said quietly. “I don’t have any unrealistic hopes now, not any more. If by some miracle a few Arshonnans escaped to this planet, and are still undiscovered, I will be as surprised and amazed as you.”
“And what will you do with your own ‘Vershonnan’ then?” Paranak asked gravely.
“Our own ‘outsider’?” Kirrina translated the term while she considered the question again. “We will protect him as our own brother, won’t we, Richard?”
“Yes. You need have no concerns regarding that, my fearsome friend. Our own Narlav is no Vershonnan to us. He is part of our family. Our own honour would be satisfied with nothing less.” Richard squeezed the leathery skin on Paranak’s sloping shoulder in a typically human gesture, then belatedly remembered the Narlav ways and slapped him on the side of the head as well, for good measure. “What would your own people consider you as, now you have defended us against your own?”
“They would not consider our action as defensive, and they would be right,” Paranak admitted freely.
Richard nodded and smiled a little, his hand still stinging from his gesture of approval. “I think you saw some of that revenge you thought the Arshonnans capable of in both Kirrina and myself.” He had considered the destruction of the eight Narlav ships over and over since the brief and incredibly one-sided action had been completed, and he had confessed to himself that his direction of and participation in the swift kills had been governed entirely by emotion.
“Don’t blame yourself, Richard,” Kirrina interjected. “My hate-filled thoughts, suddenly released after the discovery of Arshonna’s obliteration, flooded your mind and overruled your more compassionate feelings.”
Richard shook his head firmly. “You can’t take the blame so easily; I know I was in command of my faculties. Perhaps my fault was far greater, as I was not so consumed by the discovery of the Narlav destruction of Arshonna, but I still directed the attack.” He moved over and leaned on the back of her chair again, taking one of her hands in his and caressing it slowly. “What still amazes me is how we managed to carry out such a rout against what looked like overwhelming numbers. To gamble our lives on the assumption that we could complete each action – destroy each ship – before the image of our attack reached the next group of ships, was crazy, based as it was on the one previous success we had experienced. There’s no question; I would have directed our hasty withdrawal, had I been thinking coldly and logically.”
“This ship would be rated slightly higher than the original Patrol Craft design if Arshonnan engineers analysed it; I did some modifications when we merged your old Scout Craft with it. That could have helped tip the balance in our favour. But to answer your question about me fully,” Paranak continued, once their interruptions were completed. “I believe I would be considered dead, or insane, my mind not capable of coherent thought, less worth even than human slaves. I recognise now that my people incorrectly consider humans as animals, to be used and thrown away, but in addition, I know now that I am likely the only Narlav to ever become aware that you humans are almost as intelligent as Narlavs, and fearsome warriors, too – if you would only stop apologising for your actions.”
Kirrina grinned at his obvious reluctance, even after the mind sharing they had experienced together, to let go of the concept of Narlav superiority. She recognised that this factor would go a long way towards explaining the Narlav race’s rationale for their actions. Of course, the humans on Earth aren’t much different; they have a great arrogance, and consider the Earth is theirs to use or abuse as they wish.
“My people’s greatest error lies in this denial of humanity’s achievements. I do not know how we Narlavs could be capable of so great an error in judgement.” His arms folded and unfolded repeatedly as he considered the impossibility of such an occurrence in his race. Yet he knew it had indeed happened.
Kirrina got up. “Once an opinion is formed, sometimes it seems impossible to change. I do not know if I would have even thought twice before killing you when you were lying unconscious in the Moss Room in Citadel… if I had known then what I know now about the Narlavs.” She pondered the point for a moment and finally shook her head slightly. “I don’t think so.”
***
Richard laid back on the rough equivalent of grass that covered the gently sloping hillside scene. He stared up at the little fluffy clouds floating past, high overhead, and wondered for the hundredth time what it would have been like to live on such a peaceful planet, instead of just pretending that this marvellous simulation was real, and the hills did indeed stretch for miles in all directions. His eyelids started to droop, an after-effect of the excitement of the past twenty hours.
The rustle of something that reminded him of autumn leaves brought him back to the present abruptly, and he sat up. There, standing a few yards before him, like a character from an Elizabethan movie, was Kirrina. Her hair was caught up in an intricately fashioned style, her dress was coloured like copper and had a high, frilly collar, and the wide skirt beneath it spread out until it touched the ground in a circle some five feet in diameter.
He smiled, knowing that she had already become aware of his impression of her spectacular outfit.
“I thought you’d like it. I did it for another reason, though. I thought maybe it represented me as I really am.”
Richard tried to catch her thoughts, but failed to discern them as clearly as he had hoped to. “Old fashioned?” He continued to focus on her with his newly discovered mind powers – comparatively puny, compared with hers, but still astounding to him, making it seem at times that he was a stranger to himself.
“In a way… I have decided that I must not be a true Arshonnan, not after the way I reacted to the Narlav ships. I must be a throw-back to the old times, when life was harsher, and executions were commonplace.”
Richard considered this for a moment. “That doesn’t fit in with the way you made friends with Paranak. There you acted in a way which demonstrated adherence to the highest ideals required in any Arshonnan code of conduct.” He walked closer, but stopped when he found his feet touching the wide-rimmed outfit. “I still want to marry you.”
Kirrina blushed. “I tried not to let you pick up on my thoughts then. You are getting harder to block all the time!”
Richard grinned, pleased with himself and relieved that he had managed to defuse her concerns before they grew out of control, out of proportion. “And you still want to marry me?”
“If I said ‘no’, you’d know it wasn’t true.”
“Then let me look a little longer at you. I think I could drink this view forever!” Richard regarded her tenderly, and savoured his incredible fortune – to have survived, and to still be with his true love.
“You know, I keep thinking about this place,” she looked back with a mixture of affection and grief. “Apartment building fourteen-seventy six was on the island of Colomol. I think it was one of the most wonderful spots, although from what I read, some nights back on Outpost Twenty-Seven, when I couldn’t sleep due to the constant ‘jet lag’ from the overly long day,” (and perhaps for other reasons, including her anxiety over his uncertain recovery) “people who lived on the other islands thought the same about their home ‘countries’. Just over the hill behind us, there’s a beach that stretches for forty miles either way, an
d when the tide is out, there’s sand enough for the very best sandcastles.” She grinned as she recalled her ‘memories’ of Richard and Colin playing on the beach as young and carefree brothers.
“The next island is about twenty miles away, and has a similar shape to Colomol – kind of like a wriggling snake, so the ocean between is quite sheltered and mild. I know, you’d think that making sandcastles was just for the kids, but there were many artists who went out and created portraits, animal images, or abstract designs in that very workable sand. They would put the most incredible effort into their art, even though it would be washed away in a few hours. News crews would scan the beaches from Aircars just before the tide came back in, and record three-dimensional images of all the latest works.” She turned and looked across the wide valley to the distant dark green hills.
“Over in that direction the ground is fractured and rocky and there are the most amazing cliffs, and caves, and rock pools. That is, when the tide is out – when it’s in, the sea pounds against the cliffs with a rage, even on calm days, and that’s because the next island is a thousand miles away, across an ocean with weather like your Atlantic. Or there was…”
Richard looked, trying to imagine what she had described. After a few minutes, he walked around in front of Kirrina, stepped a little closer and took both her hands in his. Her emotions rushed into him in full flood, and he felt for a moment that he was on one of those wild cliffs.
“Sheldrif and Melleny – my parents, so long gone – probably walked for hours in this valley, sometimes going to one coast, sometimes to the other. They probably thought they would be back in a year or two, and take up residence in their apartment again. They might have guessed they’d be delayed a bit, or perhaps even that there could have been some accident during their explorations and that they could have both been killed, but not that their entire world would be destroyed. You can’t ever tell what will happen next, can you?”
Richard knew he did not need to answer this one. So much of their experiences in life were of loss – his family, and hers. Why, she did not even refer to her parents as Mom and Dad – she never really knew them. Her mother, not at all, and her father, only by the vague memories of a five year old.
Thoughts and feelings swirled around between the two virtual lovers, and a thousand ‘what ifs’ stirred their injured hearts, until at last a kind of peace seemed to grow.
“We are still a part of this story of theirs. A kind of living history.” Richard spoke his thoughts for extra clarity, and because he felt that voicing them validated his opinion, somehow. “We’ll try and make our lives a part of their sacrifice.”
“They’d like that.” Vague thoughts of running along a windswept cliff came across to him, a kind of reassurance that his fiancée was ‘moving on’ from her recent emotional battle.
After some considerable length of time, he spoke again, with mixed feelings.
“I hate to have to ask you to get out of that beautifully appropriate gown, but it would be an impractical outfit for running.”
Her eyes widened at his perceptiveness, and a smile started to form.
“If you did – well, and put something else on, of course – and came back ready to play me a championship game, I’d be really ready. This time I know I’ll beat you for sure; now I can pick up on your thoughts so well, I’ll be able to anticipate your every move!”
“My every move? Just a minute.” Kirrina let go of his hands and raised hers to touch her shoulders. She did one complete, graceful turn on the ball of her right foot, then stopped and listened, her head tilted to one side, to the sound of her skirt as it followed a couple of seconds later. “I do hope that dresses are acceptable on Frontier Post Nine!” She curtsied and walked off to change.
Richard hurried to complete his preparations, and as he did so, he found himself agreeing with her wholeheartedly.
***
Paranak lay perfectly still on his incliner and reviewed the visual record of their battle against the Pakak and Warrnam with intense interest. As each ship was separated into the atoms and energy of which it was comprised, he studied the impact points of the Negatruction beam carefully. He was very impressed with the improvements represented by the change from green, bead-like bolts of energy to purple, almost ray-like lengths of subtly curving power. Power ratings being equal, a ship equipped with such a weapon system should always win, as long as the attack can be taken close enough to the enemy to maximise the advantage such an increase in accuracy and speed will bring.
The last ship was of particular interest to him, partly because this attack had been carried out at greater range and had almost failed, but mostly because this was the one in which he had first killed an enemy. Many warriors, he corrected himself, aware that the Pakak was probably manned by a full complement of sixteen officers and crew, just as his own ship had been.
Now, only now, can I truly declare myself a warrior! He felt the excitement of his new status, then moved his hands downward as the one disappointment that remained seemed to stick in his immense throat. Paranak had analysed the Drive signatures from the record of the battle and discovered that the ships that had dropped so complacently into the Arshonnan system were not from Kontar, as he had theorised they would be. If only I knew which planet these Narlavs were from… I cannot make a claim before my leaders without knowing that. Paranak whistled faintly, suddenly amused by his concern with such frivolous formalities. My leaders would not wish to know I had started a war with another dominion, especially a war beyond our usual, civilised limits. If it were known that I had a hand in this, who knows what new destructions might be unleashed. He moved his hands downward once more as the seriousness of the situation struck him more fully.
He tried to work out who would have come into star systems which were probably in the Kontar Narlavs’ territory, but his limited knowledge of the other dominions and the locations of the worlds they possessed, prevented any definitive conclusions. I had speculated that they came because my fellow-warriors from Craklav had met with them concerning our next fight over Trad, and had mentioned the missing ship during their discussions, and also because ties between the Narlavs still on Kontar, and those who are descended from the ones who left that world many years ago to colonise Craklav, are still quite strong. Now it becomes clear that this involves other Narlavs, from the other dominions that I know almost nothing about. Paranak unconsciously folded and refolded his arms behind his curved back, unsure what such a discovery could mean, and undecided as to what effect such a revelation should have on his strategy for the future.
Vershonnan! He emitted a penetrating whistling sound from his ultra-wide mouth. I am truly an outsider to my own people, and now I go to meet others of my sworn enemy, others I should wish to destroy. But instead I find myself wondering what kind of warriors I will find among them!
He reached out and started to perform checks on the systems he had both installed and mastered in the technologically superior Patrol Craft, integrated with the older Citadel in a way he (and Kirrina) had configured – a distinctive combination of Arshonnan technology and Narlav logic, paired with the Earth-influenced thought-processes of this fiery orphan. He conceded that he was truly excited by the prospect of his adventure, glad that circumstances had forced him to an understanding of Kirrina and her human and undeniably feminine ways, and most of all, proud that he was doing something that no Narlav had done before, in his unique struggle for personal excellence.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Eliminators: Arshonna’s most powerful source of energy! – Ibernal
Isaac Hardy leaned back in his cracked chair and heard the worn pivots squeak again. Some things never change. He shook his head in wonder as he considered the bizarre sequence of events that had persuaded him to work alongside his least favourite category of scientific researchers, the military nuclear weapons testers.
“This is Monitor Advanced Control,” he continued into the microphone. “All systems seem to be on
the green. Let’s go for another three percent – ramp up over thirty seconds.” He confirmed his request by turning his power indicator to the appropriate position.
“We concur, MAC.” The shielded line carried the voice of the Test Facility Director into Isaac’s rather shabby forward observation bunker with the faintest of crackles and the inevitable penchant for acronyms.
Isaac watched the displays as power ramped up to thirty one percent. The new Eliminator reactor was performing precisely as predicted; the mix of terrestrially produced frameworks and mounting panels, etc., and spares from the Narlav stock that had come to Earth with the Railcar, or Wonderloaf, was reacting exactly as the original did. Output was stable, and the radiation detectors could find nothing outside the fourteen-inch perimeter that Latt had indicated was a necessary safety precaution. Within that rather nebulous area, Isaac understood that neutrons followed curved paths, falling back into the reactor under the influence of the gravitational field integral to the design. Once the cover is on, it will be just like a huge battery!
Isaac checked that the auto transmit control was off, then sighed heavily. He was feeling intensely weary; he had travelled long hours by jet aircraft two days in a row, but of course it was not merely the travel. His first trip was to head off a total breakdown in the relationships of the Cold Lake team, which almost happened anyway as his flight was delayed by blizzard conditions, and his second, to be able to push the testing of the replica Eliminator reactor beyond the ‘safe bounds’ of his own theoreticians – experts he had educated and chosen so very carefully.
“I just hope I haven’t missed anything,” he muttered to himself.
Isaac’s observation bunker was situated 2.4 miles from the location of the reactor. It was connected to the Main Command and Analysis Centre, or ‘M-CAC’ as the military preferred to call it, some ten miles further back, by a mass of shielded cables. Cut-backs in the nineties had cancelled the installation of fibre-optic links that were to have been used with the underground nuclear weapons tests, which in turn had been cancelled anyway, some years before, resulting in a distinctive, museum-like atmosphere in each hut or laboratory. And especially in this venerable bunker! The decision not to modernise had, in turn, restricted the amount of data that could be transmitted to his heavily protected bunker. After his introduction to the concept of the total elimination of matter to produce energy, at the hands of one who had worked with functioning examples for seven years, Isaac’s first instinct was to arrange for the use of the old above-ground bomb testing site for the prototype’s proving run-up to full power. ‘Cos if only a few grams get processed incorrectly… wham!
Passage Page 42
