The Course of Empire

by Eric Flint

  "Maybe," Tully said. "Maybe not. Rafe has some ideas about stopping them, and the Subcommandant's at least willing to listen." He helped Caitlin ease the exhausted professor onto another seat by the curved wall, where he'd be out of the way.

  "Ah," Yaut said, skimming through the records. "Here it is. Commandant Kaul has left also, along with, of course, the Subcommandant in charge of the flotilla. The ranking Jao officer left on the planet's surface, aside from yourself, is Pleniary-Superior Hami krinnu Nullu vau Dree. She has been assigned to a bunker in the moiety called 'England.' I will transmit a command for her to report to you here, along with her staff and service."

  "Good," Aille said. "Check the logs and see who else remaining on the surface might be of use." His skin itched almost unbearably and he had to resist the urge to disrobe and scratch. "Until then, I am in desperate need of a swim."

  Caitlin looked up from Kinsey's side. "Governor Oppuk certainly had enough pools in this monstrosity, if he didn't punch holes in the bottoms before he left."

  Aille's whiskers drooped in baffled-misunderstanding. "Why would he destroy something useful in that fashion?"

  "Because he wouldn't want anyone else to enjoy it!" Caitlin said. Aille reflected that if her ears had proper range of movement, they probably would have been pinned in blatant disgust.

  Yaut looked up from the holo display, his fingers tented. "I wish to do more checking on assignments," he said. "I will join you later."

  "I'll stay too," Aguilera said, "if that's all right."

  Aille nodded before he realized what he was doing, then wondered at how easily he was picking up human bodyspeech.

  Caitlin took up the lead, with Tully on her heels. "I may know where the biggest pool is," she said, "the one in that huge reception hall. I think I spotted the entrance several halls back."

  Aille let her precede him. Tamt stalked through the dimness at Caitlin's side as naturally as though they had grown up swimming the same pools. Tully followed the two of them, along with Belk and Wrot. A small service, Aille thought, but one of surprising quality. Perhaps even great quality. If he survived the coming time, he might recruit more, but this was a most excellent start.

  Chapter 33

  Tully paced the length of the pool room while Aille plowed through the water. Waves lapped against the rocky sides of the pool and the ceiling crawled with reflected light. Despite its origins, and the stifling heat, this was a peaceful room. Had the situation been different, Tully might have been tempted to swim too.

  Instead, it galled him to be hanging around, ineffectual, while somewhere out there in space a fiery doom approached. He needed to be doing something, anything!

  What were the rebels up to, now that Jao forces were withdrawing, he wondered. Did they have any idea of the danger Earth faced? Would they believe it, even if they were told? He was sure he would not, if he had not stood on that Ekhat ship himself and seen those creatures reduce one another to spare parts rather than bear the shame of having been exposed to aliens.

  A Jao entered the vast echoing room, an unfamiliar male. Caitlin looked up from where she sat on the floor, arms resting on her knees, then rose and went to meet him. She had disappeared long enough to bathe and change into clean clothes, and now looked composed again, even elegant, in only a simple pair of jeans and a blue University of New Chicago T-shirt. How did she manage that? he asked himself.

  Aille, who was knifing through the waves with the energy and speed of a dolphin, had not yet noticed the new arrival, so Caitlin greeted the Jao with a graceful flutter of her hands, which Tully knew must signify something about the status of both speakers to a Jao. "Vaish," she said, which he thought meant something like "I see you." "I am a member of the Subcommandant's personal service. May I assist you?"

  The Jao seemed familiar. Tully looked closer at the sketchy facial markings and realized he did recognize this particular one after all. It was Pleniary-Adjunct Mrat krinnu nao Krumat, a mid-level officer from the Pascagoula base. One of the better ones, from a human perspective.

  With a splash, Aille climbed out of the pool, then shook the water from his nap, showering the three of them. Tully surreptitiously dabbed at his wet face with the back of one hand, though Caitlin appeared not to even notice the water dripping down hers and soaking into the neck of her T-shirt.

  "Vaist, Mrat krinnu nao Krumat," Aille said. "Your haste is appreciated. The flow of this situation is very swift and we have a great deal to accomplish." He cocked his head. "Did you bring the experts from the refit facility I requested?"

  "I did." The Krumat's eyes managed a dull flicker before going flat-black again. "They wait outside, ready to be of assistance. Supervisor Nath is here also."

  "Aguilera has an interesting theory. He thinks we can use refitted Terran submersibles to attack the Ekhat as they emerge from the framepoint."

  The pleniary-adjunct's shoulders slumped. "Why should anyone think those primitive constructions might succeed where a fully armed Jao ship could not?"

  Still dripping, Aille slipped into his harness, and Tully found himself reaching automatically to adjust a twisted strap. He was getting too damned good at playing this role.

  "Humans excel at visualizing ollnat, things-that-never-were," he said, "as we do not. Listen to his ideas and then give me the benefit of your experience."

  "I strive to be of use, Subcommandant," Mrat said, "as do we all."

  * * *

  Aille convened his experts in the vast reception hall, letting them swim when they arrived so they would be refreshed and ready to work. The walls soon echoed with their voices as they settled down to debate his radical proposals.

  Pleniary Hami krinnu Nullu vau Dree, an older, stalwart female missing most of one ear, arrived from England. She brought with her an experienced staff, one of whom was actually a wiry older human male by the name of Monroe. He had been with her for some time, it seemed, though Hami had kept him largely out of sight.

  The most useful addition, though, had been Chul krinnu ava Monat, the Terniary-Adjunct from Pascagoula who had been developing plans for using the human submersibles once refit was completed. He and Aguilera, along with Mrat and Nath and Kralik, retreated off to the side to study diagrams and figures, arguing stress ratios with gestures and in a patois neither wholly Jao nor English.

  Once done with his initial discussion with Hami, Aille turned his attention back to his informal panel of experts.

  Terniary-Adjunct Chul looked up from a small rotating light-display as he approached. "We think we can damage or even destroy an Ekhat ship while it is still within the photosphere, before it has been able to form the plasma shell. We cannot use lasers or normal missiles inside the sun, of course. But using human-style kinetic energy weapons—the crude and simple projectile ones, not missiles—it may be possible to attack effectively."

  His whiskers waggled. "Very difficult, of course. The pilots would have to bring the attacking ships insanely close. Still, if that fails, we could probably destroy the Ekhat by ramming them with the refitted submersibles. The human ships are very massive. Of course, the kinetic energies involved would be so great as to destroy any of our ships also, you understand, no matter how robustly designed. That's almost certain."

  Aille pondered the notion. "How would we retrofit the submersibles with such kinetic weapons in the time available?"

  Chul gestured at Aguilera. "He has a proposal."

  The human stepped forward. "I thought about it some more. We could use the boomers, the big submarines. Just weld tanks onto the former missile hatches and use them as improvised turrets. They'd still be inside the forcefields and we could feed them a cool air supply as well as communications." His face made one of those peculiar human grimaces. "I doubt if it would stand up for very long. Those forcefields of yours aren't really designed to stay inside a sun, just to protect you long enough for the passage through the framepoint. For sure, there'd be some leakage. It could very well be a suicide mission for the peo
ple manning the tanks."

  Kralik nodded soberly and locked his hands behind his back, assuming a square stance that seemed to mimic focused-attention to Aille.

  "None of us are eager to die," the jinau general said. "But the alternative is to let these damned Ekhat rain fire down on our whole world and cook us to ashes for reasons that nobody will ever understand. We can either die down here, cowering, or die out there fighting. There's not much difference in the end except if we're successful. Then our deaths would mean something."

  "Will enough human jinau volunteer?" Aille asked. "Not many Jao can fit into those submarines, beyond the pilots. None, in the tanks you propose to attach to them. And if you simply order the soldiers aboard, they are likely to be too afraid to fight effectively. That would be true even for Jao, on such a mission."

  Kralik stiffened his shoulders in some posture Aille could not quite read. "Yes, they will. I'll lead them onto the ships myself, and I'll be in one of the turrets. I started off as a tanker, so why not end that way? I'm willing to bet—no, I'll guarantee—that there'll be more than enough volunteers to fully man every one of those boats. Twice over, in fact."

  Wrot assumed the posture of gratified-respect. An instant later, Nath and Hami and Chul mirrored it. After hesitating, and with some awkwardness, Mrat did the same.

  Aille studied the postures, then exchanged glances with Yaut. His fraghta's own posture was a rarely used one, that of truth-finally-accepted.

  Yes, thought Aille. It was indeed so. The posture of gratified-respect was reserved by Jao for the recognition of expected honor. Respect, of course, that one in their midst had satisfied vithrik, but no surprise that they had done so. They could do no other, after all.

  He had never seen a Jao on this planet extend that posture to a human. No one, guided by Narvo, expected honor from humans. Those postures, so quickly and easily taken, signified that, like he himself, Wrot and Chul and Nath—even Mrat—had come to recognize how badly the Jao had blundered here, misled by Narvo.

  Such a waste. Aille was quite sure that, in their own quiet and uncertain way, Wrot and Nath and Hami and Chul had come to that realization before he'd even arrived on the planet—long before, in the case of Wrot, and probably Hami. No doubt there were many other Jao across the planet who had done likewise. But with Narvo's ferocious rule, and no clear counterposition by one of sufficient status, they had kept their opinions to themselves.

  That, too, was a gross dereliction of Narvo's duty. Oppuk had not only failed to complete the conquest with association, he had also disrupted association within the Jao themselves. Gone native, in the worst possible way, killing the messengers.

  * * *

  So be it. The lines of association with Pluthrak in this room were strong and powerful—with the Jao as much as the humans. And now, finally, Aille understood his proper course of action. All of it, from beginning to completion. It was clear and transparent, a more limpid flow than he had ever experienced.

  The dance continued. It was time for the next swing. Outward, ever outward. He had always known, after all, that advance-by-oscillation was dangerous. What he had never realized was that it could also be exhilarating.

  * * *

  "It sounds like a promising strategy," Aille said, "but if we follow this course of action, we will be disobeying Governor Oppuk's explicit orders. It is not right that others, only following my lead, should accept that risk. So I will take the responsibility entirely upon myself."

  Yaut stiffened, understanding suddenly what Aille intended, then relaxed almost at once. It was most gratifying to see that quick support from his fraghta.

  "He will send word to the Naukra and demand that you be declared kroudh," Hami said.

  "He will not need to. I will declare myself kroudh. And will demand that he—or Dano, if he refuses—transmit my posture to the Naukra. And the Bond."

  All the Jao present except Yaut slipped into stunned-disbelief.

  Wrot was the first to recover, his ears quivering with delight, then Hami. Hami was more solemn than Wrot, of course.

  "It is a shrewd move," she said, "very shrewd. That will relieve anyone who follows you from responsibility, but—with your status and prestige—they will surely do so nonetheless. Narvo has made itself too many enemies here. Most kochan are quietly incensed at the dissociation. Even Dano, I suspect, is unhappy. Subtle as a Pluthrak, indeed."

  She now bestowed upon Aille the posture of gratified-respect. "You will probably not survive, of course, when the Naukra convenes. But neither will Oppuk, most likely—and, if nothing else, you will have stripped him of his honor. Narvo will be greatly shaken. Shaken loose from Terra, for a certainty."

  Aille waved a hand in dismissal, deliberately using a human gesture. "That is for later flow. I will probably not survive until then, anyway. I will pilot one of the submersibles myself, leaving you here in command of the ground forces."

  He turned to Caitlin. "Explain to me what would most increase association, in these circumstances."

  He wasn't sure she would understand, but she did. After glancing at Kralik, she said: "The human custom is to reserve shelter for the children. Then the females and old ones. It is less important now, for the females, since our customs have been changing in that regard for some time. But the children are essential. Even if only some of them, as a symbol. And they will need to be accompanied by their mothers, or, if they are motherless, some other related adult."

  He nodded, again deliberately using a human gesture, and issued rapid orders.

  To Nath and Chul and Aguilera: "Begin refitting the submarines."

  To Mrat: "You are now in command at Pascagoula. See to it that Nath and Chul and Aguilera are obeyed instantly and fully. Put down immediately any who object, be they Jao or human."

  To Hami: "Order the Jao soldiers out of the shelters, all but those needed to maintain the equipment. Tell them to return to their regular military compounds. Put down any who resist."

  To Caitlin: "Instruct your father to organize the transfer of human children to the shelters, however many is possible. He can do that on his own authority directly, in this continent. Tell him to establish liaison with the other regional districts so that the human authorities there can begin doing likewise."

  To Kralik: "Since most of the Pacific Division will not be needed on the submersibles, have your subordinates organize your division to provide the needed security for the shelters. Jinau troops would be much better for that than Jao regulars. There will probably be some chaos."

  "Yes, sir. But we'll also need to get volunteers with submarine and tank experience. There's no time to train anyone from scratch. I'm not sure I'll have enough experienced men in my division alone."

  Aille considered. He had a point. "Very well. I will place you in overall command of all jinau forces in North America. Among the three divisions, there should be enough experienced soldiers, yes?"

  Kralik nodded, and began to turn away.

  "One moment, General. You will need a promotion. What is the next rank up, in human parlance, from 'major general'?"

  " 'Lieutenant General,' sir."

  Aille stared at him. "You will forgive me, Kralik, if I still often find human customs purely bizarre. In what possible sense does a 'lieutenant' outrank—? Ah, perhaps you can explain to me later. 'Lieutenant General' it is."

  Now, Aille turned to Tully.

  "I suspect the Resistance forces around the globe are going to take advantage of this crisis. You had best resolve it quickly, or things are going to get out of hand."

  Tully's chin was very high, the light in his eyes unreadable. "What about this?" He held up his wrist with the black locator band. "I can't 'resolve' anything on my own. I'd need to get to the Rockies—quick—and talk to . . . His name's Rob Wiley."

  "You have held your own vithrik for some time now," Aille said as Yaut approached. "How does it feel?"

  Electricity crackled between the three of them, as though they were all linked
in some unlikely fashion. Though the flow of the situation had been swift up to that moment, suddenly it was slow and deliberate. Tully poised on the brink, clearly caught between one impulse and the other, undecided.

  Yaut flipped Tully's wrist over and applied the deactivator disk. The black band released into a long coiling strip and clattered to the floor. Tully stared down at it and rubbed the white flesh that had lain hidden beneath it with his other hand.

  "You are a member of my service," said Aille, "trusted above all others. We have need of you in this moment and you have the opportunity to be of use as no other among your kind can."

  Tully looked from Yaut to Aille, his face tight, his eyes narrowed. He was breathing at a much more rapid rate than usual. "Okay," he said finally, "I'll do what I can." He kicked the black band into the pool as though it were a living thing capable of attack. "But a radio call won't do it. I have to see Wiley in person. He'd never believe I wasn't being coerced, otherwise. The Rockies are a long way off. How do I get there?"

  Aille and Yaut stared at each other. Bizarre customs, indeed.

  "You are a member of Pluthrak's service," growled Yaut. "Requisition what you need. Command whomever you must. How is this difficult?"

  Perhaps the most bizarre thing was the way Tully laughed, all the way out.

  Chapter 34

  Being shut up on the ship put a dangerous edge on Oppuk's temper. He was accustomed to having the resources of his palace at hand, the many luxuries acquired down through his interminable assignment on this tawdry world. Of course, he availed himself of the tiny pool on his vessel, but it was inadequate, to say the least. The salinity and mineral mixture were badly skewed from his personal preferences and he had no expert aboard, indeed, none even within the system, who could satisfactorily adjust it to mirror his home seas back on Pratus.

  Nostrils flaring, he shook the execrable water out of his nap. "This slop is not fit to soak a corpse!"