by Rick Partlow
“Air’s damned thin up here,” he said, instead of chewing me out. He took a demonstrative sniff. “Like the Rockies.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t want to try running a marathon here,” I agreed. Not that I intended to run any more marathons after the last one fucked up my knee. Wait. The anti-aging injection was supposed to have rejuvenated my body…maybe I could try running long-distance again. I was so caught up in pondering the question, I nearly didn’t catch what Olivera said next.
“The Helta have arrived,” he said again, looking even more annoyed than before. “The Truthseeker is in orbit.” He tapped his earpiece. “Joon-Pah is heading down on his shuttle.”
“Shit,” I muttered, looking back the way we’d come, squinting at the setting star. “I know what Caldwell ordered—”
“What the President ordered,” Olivera reminded me.
“—but it’s going to be hard keeping this a secret. It’s not like our news broadcasts are encrypted or anything, and they just beam out into the universe. And the Helta engineers at the Lunar orbital station aren’t exactly on lockdown. Not that they sit around watching TV or surfing our internet, but they’ll find out eventually. Hell,” I snorted, “the only reason they don’t know already is that we fed them that bullshit about taking the ship out for an early test run. And we can’t hold them prisoner.” I shook my head. “This is all going to blow up in our faces if we aren’t honest, at least with Joon-Pah.”
“As shocking as it might sound, I agree with you. But I’m a military officer, obligated to follow legal orders, and so are you. So, no matter what we might think of the logic behind this, we can’t tell the Helta about the Chinese.”
“Yes, sir,” I acknowledged.
I wasn’t happy about it, but he was right. I was in the military, and while that meant I got to have a hand in events that made a difference for the whole planet, it also meant doing shit like this that didn’t sit well in my gut.
Olivera wandered off and I let him, not wanting to talk to him about it anymore because he wasn’t going to give me permission to disobey a direct order from the White House and nothing else was going to make me feel better. Anu Neeme Klas took his place and I nodded to him, feeling awkward and wondering if nodding actually meant the same thing here or if I’d just told him to go fuck himself. He regarded me with yellow eyes and I suddenly knew what a wounded elk felt like when the pack closed in. He wore a sleeveless vest made from something like tanned hide, and his shoulders bulged out of it, a lot more muscular than mine and also much hairier.
“I do not know your literature,” he said, or at least that was what the translator told me he said. “But I believe you called me a half-man, half-wolf. A man is what you are, if I understand correctly. And we have wolves.”
I gulped, suddenly wishing I was wearing my Svalinn armor instead of a Class-A dress uniform. And wishing I hadn’t agreed to let Brooks have the first crack at pulling security, leaving Pops for the second shuttle down, during the actual conference. I glanced at the squad of Rangers clustered at the rear of the gondola, wearing theirs, their visors up, talking quietly with Dani Brooks. I supposed they’d try to stop Wolfman Jack from ripping my throat out, but they were a good thirty yards away and those fangs looked awfully sharp. I did have my Glock 17 holstered inside my jacket, but killing the Skrith ambassador might throw a wrench into the whole being voted into the Alliance thing.
“I didn’t mean it as an insult,” I said, though I decided not to tell him I had meant it as a joke, because who the hell knew what sort of sense of humor Eddie Munster had. “I didn’t realize how it would translate. I apologize.”
He cocked his head to the side and sniffed, doglike.
“I do not know if I understand the concept of this apology you speak of,” he said. “If the translator,” he touched a device attached to his vest, “is explaining correctly, then it is something I am free to accept or reject.”
“It is,” I agreed. “Though we consider it good manners to accept an apology given honestly, in good faith.”
“I do not reject it,” he said, “but I am unsure if I will accept it yet or not.” He sniffed again. “I will let you know.”
I sagged against the railing as he walked away.
“Oh, Andy,” Julie said, sidling up next to me. I hadn’t realized she’d been close enough to hear, but from her amused smile, I could see she had. “Making friends everywhere you go.” She patted me on the arm. “It’s why I love you.”
“Thanks. Can I just go back to shooting Russian mercenaries? Right now, it seems so much safer.”
“Cheer up,” she said. “I understand that once the Helta party touches down, there’s going to be a dinner in our honor.”
I cast a doubtful eye at Anu Neeme Klas. “I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m the main course.”
***
“Wow, this place is really something,” Garcia said, not even trying to keep the awe out of his voice.
And he was right. The grand banquet hall at the Skrith government palace in Highland was, perhaps, the most impressive piece of architecture I’d ever seen. Not that I was the best judge of such things, since a lot of the places I’d traveled to in the Marines had been devastated from years, if not decades of war and terrorism, and as a civilian, I lived in Las Vegas, the kitsch capital of the world. But even a Philistine like me could tell this was something special.
The chamber looked as if it had been chiseled out of the rock by hand, then polished to a mirror-bright sheen, the twists and curves of the support columns almost shimmering in the light of crystal chandeliers. Yes, I said chandeliers. I mean, they weren’t shaped or decorated like any chandelier I’d seen on Earth, but they were hanging light fixtures with mirror-bright beads of glass and I couldn’t think of anything else to call them. I also couldn’t figure out what they used for a light source because there didn’t seem to be any power leads running to them and their soft glow seemed almost like a chemlight than anything else.
And the Skrith had built this. I couldn’t imagine it, and maybe that made me prejudiced, but architectural genius wasn’t the first thing that came to mind when I saw fangs and hairy faces. And that was just the females. I actually wouldn’t have minded picking Garcia’s brain on the subject, since I was sure he’d read up on the Skrith as much as he could before and during the trip, but we hadn’t yet made it to the dining area when the Helta delegation entered the hall, announced by one of the Skrith at the top of his lungs in what could have been a howl but the translator insisted was a formal greeting. And while all the Skrith still tended to look alike to me, I could definitely tell the Helta officer leading their party from the others.
“Andy, my brother,” Joon-Pah enthused, taking my hand in his. “The Elders smile upon us that we meet again so soon.”
It was a human gesture he’d learned during his time with us, not something the Helta would have done on their own. In fact, I’d come to understand it meant something very different to them, involving a challenge for dominance, and I hoped he hadn’t taken it personally the first time I tried to shake his hand. Did bears on Earth ever shake hands? I didn’t think so, but I was hardly an expert on any bears, much less the Indian sun bears from which the Helta race had been engineered.
“Glad you’re here, Joon-Pah,” I said. “I was beginning to feel a little out of place.” I turned off my translator with a touch on the side of the tiny speaker affixed to the lapel of my dress jacket. “These guys are weird,” I confided, trusting he had learned enough English to catch my meaning.
He laughed, or what passed for laughing among his people.
“Yes, they are quite that,” he agreed. “But they are valuable allies and, as you’ve no doubt already seen, quite accomplished civil engineers.”
“Captain Joon-Pah,” Garcia said, interrupting us and adding a greeting gesture in the Helta tradition, “it’s a pleasure to meet you. I am Assistant Secretary of State Roberto Garcia and I hope to be working closely with y
ou and the Helta government for some time.”
“Depending on how the election goes,” I put in sotto vocce, earning a dirty look. Joon-Pah looked at me with a plea in his eyes. “He’s Delia Strawbridge’s replacement,” I supplied.
“Ah, such a tragedy what happened to her,” Joon-Pah said, returning Garcia’s gesture. “I trust she was honored by your government for her bravery and sacrifice.”
“She was, and she is,” Garcia assured him, taking the shift of conversational gears with aplomb. “In fact, the decision has been made to name one of our new cruisers after her.”
“The Horse With No Name?” I blurted, and was grateful that I’d at least kept from flat out asking if it was the one the Chinese hijacked.
“Yes,” Garcia agreed, the tight smile and baring of teeth, the slight widening of his eyes warning me wordlessly not to say anything else about it. “It’s one of the highest honors our government can afford.”
“Then let us assure her sacrifice was not in vain,” Joon-Pah said. “With this meeting, we will make official the inclusion of Earth in our Alliance.”
Joon-Pah’s junior officers and entourage didn’t say a word to us nor did he offer to introduce them, which was also a Helta thing that had taken some getting used to. It wasn’t, as near as I could tell, a slight to the junior officers, it was just part of their culture. I still couldn’t help but feel bad for them, like they were being left out of the conversation.
“Honored guests,” one of the Skrith said, a female this time. I could mostly tell by her clothing, which was different from the males, being looser and covering the upper arms. “I greet you in the name of the Alpha, and I welcome you to our meal. May it bring you good health and a strong hunt.”
I’m not sure what I expected from the Skrith dining area, but it hadn’t been this. Three wild pigs had been slaughtered and roasted in pits carved into the stone floor, potatoes, squash and other roots and fruits and vegetables I couldn’t readily identify cooked on a bed of grass piled around them. There were no plates, and I suspected they’d only included the cushions clustered around two of the pits and the knives scattered at intervals around the roast pigs as a courtesy to their guests.
The Skrith waited patiently for the rest of us and for once, even Garcia seemed at a loss. He looked at me, then at Oliver and finally over to a party of half a dozen Skrith who I assumed were government officials or military officers though I couldn’t say for sure—they were all dressed identically, gathered around their own barbecue pit. They stared back, their eyes yellow and slitted and unreadable.
“Fuck it,” I said, crouching down in front of the pig and picking up a knife.
I was from Tampa—I’d eaten roast pig before. Usually I used a fork, but I knew where to cut. The knife sank into the right shoulder, strands of meat falling away from each other, and my mouth began watering immediately. No tongs, no serving fork. I shrugged and grabbed a second knife, using the two in conjunction to pull off a few inches of meat then tilting back my head and dropping it into my mouth.
“Oh, my God,” I said around the succulent strands of pork. “This is the best. You guys gotta try this.”
“You’re a pig, Andy,” Julie said. She knelt beside me and somehow managed to do the same thing without dripping juice on her dress uniform.
“No, that’s the pig,” I pointed with my knife.
Satisfied that their guests were eating, the Skrith fell on their own roast pork like, well…wolves. Right down to the snarls and snaps and at least one of them growling at another who tried to take a bite too close to her section of the carcass. Garcia and Olivera paled at the sight, but I just shrugged. It reminded me of a Baptist church social from my youth. Them people can eat.
“I feel bad for Colonel Brooks,” I said. She and the other Rangers had been assigned to guard the feast from the outside, and we hadn’t cared to ask the Skrith if they minded, not since what had happened to our party on Helta Prime. “She’d love this shit.”
The Helta were picking carefully and daintily at the fruits and vegetables around the edges of the roast. It was almost comical, but it seemed a bit rude and pointless. Of course, this was another culture, and not a human one, so I was probably misreading it.
“Hey, Joon-Pah,” I said, “how come they give you guys a pig of your own when they know you’re all vegetarians?”
“It’s very simple, really,” Joon-Pah told me between bites of a roast potato. “They don’t like us and this is what they consider a subtle joke at our expense.”
“Subtle?” I repeated, an eyebrow shooting up. “If this is their idea of subtle, I think I should send them some videos of an old TV series called ‘Jackass.’ It would probably be right up their alley.”
“Andy,” Julie said softly in my ear, nudging me with her elbow.
“Sorry,” I said, “I know I’m not being diplomatic, but damn, that just seems…petty, doesn’t it?”
“Andy,” she repeated, her gaze flickering up over my shoulder. I winced.
“He’s standing right behind me, isn’t he?”
“Your name is Andy?”
I turned at the voice I thought I recognized as belonging to the only Skrith I’d talked to, but then again…Anu Neeme Klas was the only Skrith I’d talked to.
“It is,” I told him. At least I could tell it was a male from the clothes. I stood up to face him and his height was right, at least. “Major Andy Clanton.”
“What is your position here, Andy Clanton?”
“I’m in charge of ship’s security,” I said, grateful I didn’t have to guess if this was the right person.
“Security?” His expression might have been confusion, but it could just as easily have been indigestion for all I knew. “You provide safety for the ship?”
“I provide safety for the ship’s crew when they leave the ship,” I clarified. “Like now.”
This expression I could read. I’d seen it on my dog’s face and I knew it meant amusement.
“You think you could provide safety for them here, among us?” he wondered.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, nodding. “I could keep them alive long enough for those people we left outside to get in, and just that one squad could probably take any force you could throw against us.” I shrugged. “Okay, I admit, holding out until the shuttle could come get us would be problematic, but we’d figure something out. Humans are pretty resourceful.” I wasn’t looking at Garcia, but I would have been willing to make a four-figure bet that his eyes were bugging out of his head.
“So we have heard, though I am still not sure how much of it I believe.” He motioned toward the remains of the pig. “Do you enjoy your meal?”
“It’s excellent,” I said, eager to find something to say that wouldn’t be controversial. “You know, I love the Helta and all, but I gotta admit, they got that whole vegetarian thing going and your food is so much better.” I grinned. “Since we’re both meat-eaters, we should get along fine, right?”
“I have studied your history, Andy Clanton. I am not impressed with your propensity for war. It reminds me too much of the ones who even now seek to conquer what they could not possibly need. You kill for sport, you make war because you desire power for its own sake. You have used nuclear weapons against your own people. I do not see how we could be more different.”
“That’s not strictly accurate, Anu Neeme Klas,” Garcia said, jumping into the conversation like a paratrooper on D-Day. “I’ve studied you, as well, and our people have many similarities. You value sport as much as we do, some of it just as violent as any of our wars.”
“I do not object to your violence,” the Skrith corrected him, “I object to your motives.”
“That’s not all of us. We are as varied and diverse within our own species as you are from the Helta. We have sports called football, and mixed martial arts, and boxing that are very similar to the rituals your people go through to challenge yourselves, to prove your worthiness.”
“Do n
ot compare yourselves to us, hairless ape,” Anu warned him, the hair at the back of his neck bristling, his lips peeling back from his fangs. “We are not you, and you will not soil our name by the association.”
I put a hand over the handle of my Glock and got ready to call for Brooks and her Rangers, but the Skrith managed to bring his temper under control, his breath slowly returning to normal.
“I apologize,” Garcia stammered, clearly unused to his oily salesmanship failing this spectacularly.
“And I do not accept your apology, human.” He stepped closer to Garcia and sniffed at him. “You smell of fear and desperation and you would say anything to garner our support. But we do not accept what the Helta have done in our name.” His yellow eyes pinned Joon-Pah. “They are supposedly our equals in this Alliance, yet when they needed aid, they broke our traditions and went to the Source, thinking they know better than the Elders. Why would they not come to us?”
“My brother,” Joon-Pah said, coming to his feet. “Believe me, we value you as partners. The Tevynians were rolling over all of us, Helta and Skrith and Chamblisi and Vironian alike. They were months from conquering the whole Alliance!”
“We should have let them conquer it if defeating them meant handing our fate over to senseless beasts such as this!”
“Jesus Christ, you’re a whiny fucking hypocrite.”
The words had clawed their way free despite my best efforts to hold them in, but I sighed with relief at their escape. This time I could see Garcia’s face, and Olivera’s, and if they’d been disturbed by Skrith eating habits, they were both absolutely horrified this time.
“Clanton,” Olivera growled, but it was too late.
“Let me ask you something, Anu Neeme Klas,” I said, royally pissed off. “How many thousands of years were you on this planet before the Helta came along and dropped star travel and fusion power and everything else in your lap? Ten thousand? Fifty? A hundred?” The Skrith made no attempt to answer. “It’s damned convenient when you have tens of thousands of years for your civilization to grow, for your society to mature before you get anything more advanced than the fucking wheel. But that’s not how it was with us. We developed our own technology whenever it happened naturally. And if we discovered destructive weapons and society-altering inventions before our species was ready for them, then that was just tough shit for us, and millions of people died before we managed to get a handle on it.”
