by Tim C Taylor
“I will ask this question one, final time,” said Indiya. “To the charge of gross insubordination in the face of the enemy, how do you plead?”
“Tired. Exasperated. Irritated. I don’t like your jostling for position while General McEwan is unable to take command, and I reject your insinuation that I failed to do my duty, because that implies that the personnel under my command carried out their duties with anything less than honor and competence. We should all of us be proud of the soldiers in Army Group Sky Strike, and I would not have them slandered. Not even by you, Supreme Admiral.”
“And I,” Indiya replied, “would not have our brave Sky Strike soldiers led by a commander who has become unreliable. Frankly, they deserve far better than you. As Colonel Lee your contribution to the Legion’s cause is well documented, but as a lieutenant-general, I fear your duties have overwhelmed your abilities. I understand you are bringing your baby to term. I suspect this has clouded your judgement and made an already challenging role impossible for you.”
Xin bit her lip until the blood ballooned in the zero-g. It was better than screaming or strangling that frakking little shit. How dare she? As if Indiya, with her heart as cold as the deep void, would ever know motherhood.
The veck was doing it deliberately. The scrawny ship rat wanted to provoke a reaction. When Xin said she was tired she hadn’t been making that up. She was frakking well exhausted by decades of war. She had been fighting since she was a teenager, and she wasn’t intending to keep going until she was an old woman without experiencing something else, something more. If there wasn’t anything else, then what exactly the frakk were they fighting for?
The admiral tilted her head and arched an eyebrow. What was that, a frakking invitation?
Damn right it was! Xin crouched down, bunching her leg muscles in readiness to spring at the veck. Oh, she wouldn’t kill her or anything. She would try but there were provosts there and they would pull her off before she could do serious damage. But if she could land just one punch, give the ship rat a scar or a badly healed bone fracture that she would never forget, then it would all be worth it.
“Stop right there!”
When the auxiliary mess hall had been re-designated as a makeshift courtroom, the security setting on the hatches had been set high enough to prevent access to outsiders. Other than the provost guards, no one had noticed the hatch open.
But the figure hunched over in the mobile life-support pod jetting across the room had access everywhere.
“Cool it!” roared Arun McEwan. “Both of you!”
“General McEwan,” squeaked the admiral, “I… It’s good to see you up and about. We are conducting a preliminary–”
“I know why you’re here.”
Xin couldn’t remember the last thing to give her as much satisfaction as seeing the smile wiped from Indiya’s face.
“I heard everything,” Arun added, and then cast a withering look at Xin. “Saw everything too.”
Xin wiped the blood away from her face. Talk about awkward! She put on her parade ground face and decided to act as if Arun weren’t her lover. There would be time for that later, but for now he was a seriously pissed senior officer, and the weather forecast predicted shitstorms ahead.
“I go away for a few weeks and I come back to find you two fighting tooth and claw,” said Arun. Xin couldn’t help but notice how pale and puffy his face looked, how his eyes were so sunken they were bottomless pits of despair. “What is wrong with you? Both of you?”
“I gave her a direct order,” said Indiya. “She disobeyed.”
“No,” snarled Arun.
“She’s power mad,” said Xin. “Prevented me conducting operations, tried to stop me fulfilling my promise to you, Arun.”
“No. No. No!” shouted Arun. His outburst seemed to exhaust his feeble reserves of energy, and he visibly slumped, eyes closed. It took an age before he opened them again, bloodshot and sparkling with moisture. “I’m disappointed in both of you,” he said.
He buzzed his chair over to the admiral and delivered her a filthy glare. The ship rat was putting on a brave face but must know by now that her days were numbered, although the Littoranes would still find a way to use their favorite purple-haired religious symbol. They could embalm her, lacquer her, stick a pole up her ass and carry her around as a religious totem. Everyone would be happy.
Arun kept the rat girl dangling on his glare like a hanged woman dancing from the noose.
All too soon, though, he released her, and brought his chair over to confront Xin.
“Lieutenant-General Xin Lee,” he pronounced, “I find you guilty of insubordination, of disobeying orders in the face of the enemy. You are confined to your quarters.” He sighed, pausing for a rest, but he obviously hadn’t finished with her yet.
Xin felt her heart pound in her chest, an erratic pulse that was so strong it threatened to rip her free from the charged area that kept her attached to the deck. She realized her parade form was shot to shreds when she found she was staring at Arun, mouth open.
He was focused again, trying to hold her in a stern gaze. “We will talk when I have sorted out this mess, and you have had time to think. Dismissed.”
Xin held Arun’s gaze, and made no effort to leave. He probably thought that by looking back at him she was issuing a challenge, an adolescent boy’s staring competition. Yes, that was why he was returning her attention, unflinching, but she wasn’t interested in the pissing contests of men and boys; she was searching his face for the truth about who he now was. She was looking behind those brown eyes, hoping to find signs of the 17-year-old cadet who had fantasized about the girl from the class above him, the girl everyone said was out of his league, but who wouldn’t let that puncture his dreams.
Arun had turned out to be far more than a cute kid with a cheeky sense of humor and a refreshing innocence in a cynical world, but that kid had always lived on inside Arun’s head, the reason she had loved him back, long before the dumb veck worked it out for himself. Underneath the talk of galactic politics, war plans, and the legality of their own slavery, was still a boy who could never believe his luck that he shared his rack with the most beautiful woman in his world. That had been the secret to their success as a couple – Xin knew how to bring out the boy in Arun, how to reach inside and pull him out from the pit of despair that always threatened to close over his head.
Damn her! Damn Tawfiq for leaving behind this ruined husk of her man, and damn Indiya for her secrets and power play.
Xin closed her eyes. It was no use; he was gone. Her Arun was dead. She drew herself erect and breathed out a long sigh, contaminated with the enormity of her loss. He’s dead.
She saluted her lover’s memory in the form of this echo in the chair before her, and allowed the provosts to escort her to her quarters in Lance of Freedom.
——
“I’m sorry you’ve had to come back to this, General.”
Arun barely heard Indiya speak. The enormity of what he’d said to Xin left little room for anything else. Had he lost her for good?
“Enough!” he snapped. “Leave me! All of you.”
He didn’t breathe until he was alone in the compartment. What was he going to do with Xin? They were going to win this battle for Athena – after seizing Australia, he was sure of that now – but he couldn’t bear to lose his Xin. Not now. Not when they were so close, and not this way. And their daughter…
Arun shook his doubts away. He and Xin had fought before, but their love had always won through in the end. Before he could fix this, he had to keep going until they had won this battle, to have the Emperor and the Empire in his grasp.
He would give all of it to Xin in a heartbeat, anything to reconcile with her.
The battle came first, though. The war was not over, but… perhaps he could finish this battle sooner than anyone thought possible.
——
Xin had been smuggled to the hearing on Holy Retribution in secret, but by the ti
me she reached Lance of Freedom, the news of her status had spread to the passageways of the ship, which were lined with Navy and Marine personnel – many of whom had no legitimate reason to be there – who stood to attention and saluted her as she passed.
The message in the eyes of her supporters was clear: she might have lost the confidence of the Legion high command, but the soldiers in her command, and even many Navy personnel, would still follow her wherever she led.
When she entered her quarters, leaving the provosts to stand guard outside, a smile came to her lips.
— Chapter 43 —
Without moving her limbs, Aelingir elongated her fingers and laid the playing card on the table, letting the electrostatic charge secure it with an audible snap.
Unter of Bells.
Arun looked down at the card but saw only a stylized image of an ancient European aristocrat grasping a brightly colored bell, a picture devoid of meaning. He couldn’t remember the Jotun’s bid. Had she called Schneider, or did she do that last round?
“Sorry,” he said, and opened his hand, allowing his own cards to float away.
“Skat is a game that only works properly with three players,” said the alien. “I shall organize an AI player with an appropriate skill level, or perhaps you would prefer your personal AI to do so.”
“No,” said Arun. “Thank you, but I’m not in the mood for card games.”
“I understand completely. Perhaps a round of backgammon instead? You would be surprised at my experience with this game. I believe it to be the pinnacle of your species’ cultural expression.”
Arun shook his head, but laughed, suddenly reminded of the perplexing cross-species familiarity sessions that had been part of his training as a Marine Novice. Back as a kid on Tranquility, he had periodically sat beside a Jotun officer making a stumbling attempt at small talk, his youthful guts knotted with terror that if he said too little in reply, or the wrong words, then the powerful alien would snap out its claws and rip open his throat.
But now, as the two of them sat in a DS-26D shuttle rigged with enough explosives to atomize them, there was one crucial difference. He wasn’t afraid of this Jotun. She was a general, for frakk’s sake. And she was being nice.
“Lieutenant-General,” he said, “may I ask you a personal question?”
“Yes.”
“Are you trying to be my friend?”
“Yes.”
Arun couldn’t help but smile. To the Jotun, the single-syllable response through her translator was an efficient answer that required no elaboration. But Aelingir had been around humans for a long time and apprehended that Arun wished for a more expansive reply.
“In your adherence to duty, you have suffered physical injuries,” said the Jotun, “and yet the greater hurt has been done to your heart.”
“Aha! I understand you now, Aelingir. I thought you suggested game playing to distract us from the bomb, and the Imperial officer in the outer system with her thumb on the trigger. All this time you were really wanting to take my mind off Xin.”
Aelingir flicked her ears forward in irritation. “Is that so unexpected? You have taken a wound to your soul, and they are often the most difficult to heal. Our Jotun experience of love is not so different from you humans. Even Trogs – as you call them – have a great tradition of romantic poetry.”
“Are you kidding me? Those overgrown ants wax lyrically about love? They don’t even have gender.”
“Perhaps that is for the best, my human colleague. Their society is multifaceted enough without the additional complexities of gender. And ‘lyrical’ is not the correct word choice, because their poetry is constructed in scent pictures. I have read textual translations and they are so tragic they are sometimes too painful for me to read. They are a fascinating species.”
“My Trog friend says he regrets never experiencing love himself, and yet he is relieved because he fears love would have destroyed him. I think that explains why he’s interfered in my personal life so often.”
“I cannot comment on that, General McEwan, but your friend might have meant its words more literally than you realize. The lovemaking of its people is a highly aggressive act, and the lovers are driven to ever more violent romantic encounters until their final act of consummation segues into a fight to the death. The winner consumes the corpse of the loser, and uses the additional biomass to produce the litter of pups.”
“Mader Zagh!” It was all Arun could think to say, but as he cast a net over his memories, he brought up bewildering comments that Pedro had made that suddenly made perfect sense.
“Indeed,” replied the Jotun. “Imagine all those trillions of lovers who told each other the lie that they were different, that their love was stronger than the compulsions of their biology. They may even have believed it at the start. I recommend reading the Ballad of Sentwali, sometimes known as My Extended Death.”
“I shall look up this Troggie poetry you speak of.” He gave a half-smile. “I mean it, but I do function successfully in my role. Long enough to finish this campaign, anyway.”
“You are wrong!” The Jotun rose to her feet, and Arun felt an echo of the cold pit of terror when he had sat with Jotuns as a Novice. The powerful alien’s lip lifted a fraction, revealing a slither of fang. “My apologies, General McEwan, but you anger me with your foolish and dangerous self-delusion. There is a saying from your homeworld. The green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm. You are hardening, becoming rigid, ossified.”
“If I don’t learn to bend in the wind then one day my heart of oak will snap, and that will be the end of me. Is that it?”
Aelingir returned to her seat. “Consider the number of sentient lives now and in the future who depend on you and your judgment, General McEwan. That number is far beyond my comprehension.”
“No pressure, then.”
“There is a lot of pressure. And that is why you must learn to bend.”
“You’re right, but let’s deal with one thing at a time. Speaking of which…”
Arun woke Barney – the combat AI who lived beneath a flap of false skin behind his right ear – and told him to bring up a schematic of the star system. Euphrates dominated the inner system, with its moon that was nominally under the control of the Emperor hiding in the protective bubble of his citadel, while Legion troops patrolled his world unopposed. The shuttle holding Arun and Aelingir as willing hostages was orbiting Nile, a lifeless, rocky planet inside Euphrates’ orbit. The two officers shone most of their attention on the New Empire fleet heading out of the system.
“At present course and speed, they will be out of range in… fifty-eight minutes,” said Aelingir. “I think your gamble will pay off.”
My gamble. That was a gentle phrasing for an approach that had taken every ounce of Arun’s political capital to force through. And that was to say nothing of the Emperor who had expressly forbidden Arun to continue, with an anger that had paradoxically swung the Littoranes around to supporting Arun.
Having demonstrated their ability to capture a continental-sized chunk of Athena’s world tree, and with the secrets of the defensive coils almost decoded, the Legion could have ground out the campaign, working to isolate trunks of the world tree and eradicate them one by one. And having shown they could attack from orbit and win, they would have little difficulty in doing the same from territory on the surface.
Arun had pitched this as the basis of his peace overtures made, not to the White Knights of the New Empire, but directly to their Jotun field commanders. Aelingir had conducted parallel negotiations that involved some kind of secret clan oath that Arun wasn’t supposed to know about.
In traditional warfare in the Trans-Species Union, the most generous offer to a defeated army was to execute the leaders and enslave the remainder. Arun and Aelingir offered safe passage out of the system on disarmed ships. To ensure good will on both sides, techs from both sides placed bombs on the New Empire ships and on
the shuttle where Arun and Aelingir waited out their enemy’s withdrawal as hostages. The joint tech team developed a pair of triggers for the bombs. Either side could activate their trigger that would instantaneously set off the bombs on both sides. If the triggers moved more than ten light hours apart then they would disarm permanently.
The risk lay largely on the side of the New Empire, but Arun was not prepared to give them more, and the surviving New Empire forces took the best offer they were ever going to get. Well, nearly all of them. Arun had told the New Empire White Knights that it was above his pay grade to either spare or execute them, and that he had no choice but to imprison them to await the pleasure of the lawful ruler. Only the Emperor had the authority to decide their fate. Finally, a political fabrication he was more than happy to stick with.
Which was why he was sitting opposite a six-limbed alien who was trying to play card games and backgammon.
“Sitting with you is one of the most surreal experiences of my life,” said Arun.
“Good. It is our ability to appreciate the absurd that separates us from artificial sentience. The universe can still surprise us, and I believe it is our purpose to observe creation in all its perplexing splendor. If we ever lose that, then we should do other species a favor by building robotic replacements for ourselves and leaping into oblivion, because we will have failed as living species. We will no longer deserve our souls.”
Aelingir’s mention of souls sparked Arun’s interest. He had heard rumors that the Jotun concept of the soul was a way to understanding their loyalty, and their oaths. “Tell me again of your bond to the Jotuns of the New Empire.”
“I will not speak of this matter.”
