SeptStar

by Blaze Ward

  A’Alhakoth nodded at those sage words.

  The Mbaysey’s arrival would be probably almost as big a cultural and social shift on Kanus as the first Anndaing ship landing had been.

  All because of her.

  Twenty-Six

  Daniel hadn’t been sure what to expect when he arrived at Ogrorspoxu, but he would have been wrong, whatever he expected.

  But then, this wasn’t like First Contact was a weird, unexpected thing to the Anndaing. They were forever roaming and meeting new people. Like the Free Worlds, the Anndaing Merchants Guild encompassed hundreds of world and eleven core species, in addition to whoever happened to wander along, like the se’uh’pal, who made the Anndaing look like amateurs when it came to going anywhere and trading with anyone at any time.

  A’Alhakoth had originally made it to Tavle Jocia on a Se’uh’pal ship, but Daniel was hard pressed to remember where their homeworld was. When he asked his ghosts, he got one of the few unanimous responses, when everyone shrugged at him together, like wheat blowing in a field on a summer day, just before harvest.

  Ogrorspoxu didn’t shrug at him, but also didn’t treat his arrival as all that great of a thing. Daniel had to wonder if the Se’uh’pal equivalent of the Anndaing Merchants Guild had kept most of human space secret, or at least obscured, from anyone else, while bringing the occasional human goods from beyond the pale.

  Hopefully, his arrival here wouldn’t mean Se’uh’pal assassins in his future for increasing their competition. Being murdered by a creature roughly A’Alhakoth’s size that reminded Daniel of a bipedal rabbit sounded too much like a cartoon, or the start of a bad joke.

  He found himself cooling his heels in a small waiting room, with assurances that Joane was in the next one. He’d undergone a quick medical exam, but that was mostly just to compare to the medical records he had brought with him from Koni Swift and SeekerStar, showing him to be in good health. None of their machines would be calibrated to handle humans, at least not yet.

  Daniel grinned that he and Joane might become the future baselines for Anndaing space.

  Talk about confusing, when other humans came along, and the men were her size and the women his. He grinned at the general rudeness of it all.

  The door opened and an Anndaing woman entered. Apparently, the white longcoat that doctors wore transcended cultures, for reasons Daniel had never explored, but it did.

  “Hello, Daniel,” she said, taking the other seat across from him.

  At least he was finally dressed. Not bored, because he could always talk with whichever one of his ghosts felt like sharing memories or knowledge with him. But at loose ends.

  “Hello, again,” Daniel replied with a smile.

  “So you are an ambassador from the humans?” she said, checking her clipboard.

  “The Mbaysey,” he corrected her. “A nomadic tribe of humans. No one person can speak for even a majority of my kind at present.”

  “I see,” she said as she checked something with a pen. “And the rest of your tribe traveled directly to Kanus?”

  “One of our crew is Kaniea,” he reminded her, although it felt more like they were just checking all the stories he had shared earlier, looking for lies and evasions now. “By sending me here directly, Koni Swift could save time on their next departure, especially since I was already fluent and could communicate.”

  She nodded mostly to herself from what he could see. Her hammer was at rest.

  “Well, you appear to be in excellent health, and your papers and credit are in order,” she replied, handing him the booklet that he had been issued. “I see no reason to keep you or your companion. There are some folks waiting out front to talk with you. Crence Miray and a friend.”

  Daniel nodded and rose as she did. He was official now, a documented Ambassador who existed in their various systems. Plus, he had gotten paid an officer’s daily share as crew on Koni Swift, so he had some money of his own, in addition to the line of credit Crence had arranged for Kathra to do things. Not enough to get stupid, but certainly enough for beer.

  He wondered if Crence would be off-planet and headed out-system by sunset, just to get that much of a head start on anyone else wanting to trade into human space that wasn’t a se’uh’pal.

  He kept that thought to himself as he exited the room and found Joane already chatting in stilted Anndaing with Crence and another shark who wasn’t as big or bulky.

  Daniel came to rest a proper distance away and bowed just enough to show off what he had learned from A’Alhakoth and Crence.

  “Daniel Lémieux, Ambassador from the Mbaysey,” he said politely. “You’ve met Joane Obiakpani, known to the Commander as Spectre Five.”

  “Wyll Koobitz,” the stranger replied with an equal bow, pronouncing it almost exactly like while to Daniel’s ear. “Representative from the Merchants Bank.”

  Ah. Important people, then. Merchants Bank was as close to a government of all the Anndaing as you could get with a group of interstellar traders operating across such a broad swath of space and not limited to any one planet’s legal system. Especially when not everyone involved was Anndaing.

  “I have arranged a meeting space for us,” Koobitz continued, gesturing down the hallway. “And Crence has made arrangements for you at a local hotel for a week, while everyone figures out what the next steps are.”

  “Please,” Daniel gestured, falling in behind the sharks with Joane and the quick grin she shared.

  Daniel hated meetings. Especially when they weren’t held in dining halls. But he also understood that he was Kathra’s personal representative in this, the first male ever accorded the privilege.

  Possibly the last one, as well, unless someone truly impressed her on some future date, but he couldn’t speak for all those men who had foolishly not chosen a career in the culinary arts.

  Pleasantly, this didn’t even feel like an inquisition, as they ended up in what Daniel would have called a salon, rather than a conference room. Several comfortable-looking chairs upholstered around an open space, decorated in various colors. Side tables holding what looked like magazines, as well as a device to call for a waiter or something.

  Rugs on the floors deadened the noise, and someone with a good eye had hung paintings on the walls. There was even a view out a window down into an interior courtyard filled with plants and a pond, which was all the more impressive when he remembered that they were aboard a station in geosynchronous orbit of the capital city below.

  A pitcher on one table looked like water with ice.

  Daniel gestured and confirmed.

  Probably safest, since anything might be poisonous when you crossed species lines and got into someone else’s biochemistry.

  “I have read the executive summary of Crence’s encounter with the Mbaysey,” Koobitz began as they all got settled. “It appears to be rather elaborate, considering what he normally files, so I found myself both pleased, and concerned. How might the three of you allay my fears?”

  Daniel found it amusing that Crence Miray looked almost as sheepish as Joane did, but for different reasons. She was reading the surface context of the words. Crence had gone deep and saw where the other man was about to start asking pointed and possibly hostile questions.

  Daniel wondered how close the two men were as allies and friends at this moment. Much would hinge on how quickly Koobitz would allow Koni Swift to run like hell for Tavle Jocia with fresh cargo even now probably being swapped for the goods Crence had been hauling before.

  “And please don’t waste my time with whatever song and dance you were thinking about,” Koobitz continued. “Especially you, Crence.”

  At least he was speaking without any heat to his words, so Daniel leaned forward and got Crence’s nod.

  “We supplied Koni Swift a detailed map of human space,” Daniel said. “A cultural map, as I understand such a term from him, touching on trade needs and capabilities as Kathra Omezi was able to identify them in her years along the edge o
f the Sept Empire and then deeper into Free Worlds Space.”

  “I see,” the man said, leaning back.

  Probably he did see now. Such a map would be incredibly valuable, but every trademaster would have access to it, just as soon as she logged in here on Ogrorspoxu and updated her files, or met a ship that had been here after today.

  Crence Miray and Koni Swift would have just as much of a lead as they could get from now, loading new cargo based on that map. And the fact that Daniel had recorded a number of conversational training videos with Joane. Those were also being uploaded now for common use across Anndaing space, where he and she would get an ongoing royalty monthly for as long as they were in use, but Crence and Dane spoke passable Spacer now, as long as you didn’t mind an accent that split the difference between Algeria and Ogrorspoxu.

  Money would talk, and Crence Miray had the vocabulary to trade.

  Koobitz turned to Crence now, flexing his hammer forward a little and zeroing his eyes down on the other shark.

  “Just how soon until you filed for departure, you old pirate?” Koobitz asked.

  Apparently, Anndaing could blush. It was weird. The gray face took on a bluish tinge, the hammer drooped at both ends, and the nose flared open.

  “I thought so,” Koobitz continued, turning to Daniel. “You are currently scheduled to remain here for a time, Lémieux. His departure will not be a problem?”

  Daniel started to say something, but Crence interrupted.

  “Having the reasonable expectation that Daniel could not make binding trade agreements with the Guild, I might have promised transport for them to Kanus,” Crence said with a sheepish smile so at odds with the cutthroat shark Daniel had just spent the last two weeks talking to that Daniel looked at him. “We would need to send an accredited Ambassador to Kathra Omezi to talk, so I figured he and Joane could catch a ride then.”

  “I see,” Koobitz replied so dryly that Joane chuckled, so she had been following things quietly. “And I shouldn’t be offended enough at you right now to send Koni Swift to Kanus?”

  Now Daniel laughed. It was like watching a comedy vid, so they must have been doing this for his benefit.

  “Someone will get first-mover advantage with SeekerStar,” Crence pointed out. “No reason it can’t be you, or someone you wish to reward. I plan on running straight through Thrabo to a place called Tavle Jocia, which is apparently a major shipyard world at an interior trade crossroads in Free Worlds space.”

  “Shipyard?” Koobitz perked up.

  “Indeed,” Daniel inserted himself. “Commander Omezi recently commissioned a new vessel there, the ship known as SeekerStar, which is now her flagship.”

  “What are human vessels like?” Koobitz asked pointedly.

  “I am the wrong person to ask,” Daniel answered honestly. “Being merely a chef by training. However, SeekerStar was built to rotate a ring around a central hub, to save the expense and effort of gravity field inducers. If I understand some of the conversations, Koni Swift is more advanced in certain areas, and less so in others. Trade that merged the two into a new whole should thus benefit both sides.”

  “And this Sept Empire your Commander is apparently fleeing?” Koobitz asked. “I noted in one of the appendices that something called a Septagon apparently appeared deep in Free Worlds space and attacked SeekerStar nearby, destroying the vessel known as WinterStar in the process. What is a Septagon?”

  “A dedicated, human warship based on a seven-sided structure,” Daniel let his face get serious as well. “Each of the facings is thirty-two hundred meters wide. From the tip of the bow to the flat of the engine wells is just over seven thousand meters. The core is seventy decks tall, with several towers in various places above that. It has a normal crew of three hundred thousand sailors. And an Axial Megacannon that is powerful enough to destroy anything they meet.”

  There was a long pause. Kathra had included all those notes, but Koobitz hadn’t read deeply enough into the report to get there. At least not yet. Daniel expected that to change by this time tomorrow, especially the part where specist humans in command of city-destroying beam weapons, with a proclivity for orbital bombardment, might be headed this way.

  What else would you like to know?

  “Oh, and they fly incredibly slowly, due to all that mass that the valence drives must move,” Daniel added. “Plus, feeding a fleet of four hundred thousand people requires a significant and complicated logistic chain, which is why Kathra Omezi decided to thumb her nose at them and head in the direction of Kanus, where there is a hope that we might find a place to live for a time. And allies when those salauds from the Sept finally decide to come after her.”

  “How soon is that?” Koobitz asked.

  “I’d like to die of old age first,” Daniel said. “But the Emperor of the Sept has not asked my opinion on the topic. I am here to establish some level of diplomatic relations, encourage the Anndaing Merchants Guild to talk to the right people, and let Koni Swift go off on a trading adventure to the Free Worlds without me, where presumably they will begin gathering intelligence for the Guild so you can make better determinations, and do so early enough to act, instead of merely reacting.”

  He paused just long enough to let those words sink in before he continued.

  “Personally,” he said, “I would like to find a library or college where I might be able to do some more research on the K’bari and the Ovanii. The former because of what Urid-Varg did to them when he passed. The latter because I translated a book of Ovanii poetry that we found on Thrabo, and want to know more about the species and their history with the Anndaing.”

  Crence had already heard the story, but the other shark just went blank, his hammer dropping and pulling forward in confusion, his eyes blinking too rapidly.

  “You speak Ovanii?” Koobitz sputtered.

  “No, I read it,” Daniel corrected him. “And a number of other languages, based on things no human should know, but which were left to me when Kathra Omezi finally destroyed Urid-Varg.”

  “I thought you said you killed him,” Crence spoke up.

  “I did, but that was just his body,” Daniel replied. “Kathra killed his soul when he came back for me.”

  A longer pause this time, as both sharks processed that tidbit.

  “How many languages can you read, and possibly speak, Daniel?” Koobitz asked in a sidelong way, like he was afraid of the answer.

  “More than is probably healthy for me,” Daniel retorted. “Find me Ovanii histories and things, and I’d be happy to earn my keep translating them and whatever else you might have lost over the centuries.”

  “And rent him a commercial kitchen,” Crence slipped in. “He’s a fantastic chef. Even Mase shut up eventually and conceded defeat.”

  “I didn’t think it was possible for Mase Jacksanch to shut up,” Koobitz stated plainly.

  Daniel and Crence smiled together. Joane chuckled.

  “And you, lady warrior comitatus?” Koobitz asked. “What is your need?”

  “I am here to evaluate your technology for the Commander and keep Daniel from being alone,” she said simply in Anndaing. “And kill anyone that threatens him.”

  Not the way Daniel would have phrased it, but it did a good job of getting the point across.

  Daniel was here representing the merchant options for Kathra.

  Joane was here for when negotiations failed and warfare became the only answer.

  Twenty-Seven

  Kathra decided that she might actually like living in this sector of space, given time. The view out her cabin window alternately showed the primary trading station and the blue and green marble below her.

  Linga ver’Shingi had carried through on his threat/promise and established a small but promising trade office on the primary station, treating her like a relative by marriage, which was probably about as good as Kaniea society could deal with the comitatus right now.

  How soon until other houses decided to offer up t
heir own daughters to possibly join the comitatus? Kathra would not relax her standards for membership, but there was no reason not to let them try. She had always planned to recruit some to expand the Clans, once she felt safe enough from Vorgash and his friends that she could.

  No Septagon would be able to come this far, except at the head of an armada so great that other species would eventually record its passing in their own histories.

  And she would hopefully have so much warning that she could either flee, or recruit sufficient forces to help.

  The Sept were a linear beast, at the end of the day. Vorgash had surprised her and Danial at Tavle Jocia, but they had come hunting her and the Turtle specifically. Presumably they had built some sort of network of forward bases, just to be able to reach that far into Free Worlds space.

  Hopefully, someone at Tavle Jocia had drawn a similar conclusion.

  To do something similar now would require an enormous effort, since she had gone completely beyond the end of any map she could find in Free Worlds space. Someone would have to bribe the Se’uh’pal for better sailing directions.

  Hopefully, that meant that they could never find her again.

  Except that she didn’t really believe that. The Ishtan had found Daniel, and not the Turtle. Had forced Daniel to lead them to the Turtle so that they could destroy it, and then him. Even reduced by a third, she suspected that they would be able to find him again, once they had more allies.

  How long did they have, her and Daniel, until trouble came again? And could the Kaniea or the Anndaing stop them when they arrived?

  Nothing she had seen could stop a Septagon. Well, that was untrue, upon reflection. Spectre Twenty-Three had been perfectly willing to fly the shattered remains of WinterStar into the side of the beast like a harpoon. That would have done massive damage, especially if her old warship had managed to somehow explode. It had been threat enough to cause Vorgash to flee.