by Lyn Gala
“Tyce, would you like to introduce the enemy?” Ama asked. At least she was staying behind Yoss, but calling Command the enemy wasn’t helpful. He understood that she wanted to make it clear she wouldn’t feign friendship or forgiveness even if they were forced into an alliance, but sometimes Tyce hated her honesty.
“Ama, I’m fairly sure the alien who was shooting at us was the enemy. This is John Burden, a sub-commander from Earth.”
A new soldier appeared from the room behind John. The side of his face was red and blistered and one eye swollen shut. “Ribelian bitch,” he said with a snarl.
Ama pushed, forcing Yoss to allow her through. “I’m not nearly as nice as a dog.” Ama turned her attention to John. “John, what is attacking this ship?” She had her mother-voice turned on full-volume. Tyce winced, even though he wasn’t her target.
John ignored her, focusing on Tyce. “We need to talk.”
Tyce shook his head. “Not without Ama, we don’t.”
“She’s not going in without me,” Yoss said sharply.
John frowned and studied them. A sane man would’ve retreated behind his soldiers and suggest they all go their separate ways. That was what Tyce would’ve recommended. After several long minutes filled with shuffling feet and the occasional nervous cough, John nodded. “Fine. We all need to speak.” He turned to the Command soldiers. “Hold position. Call the doctor down to treat the injured.”
“Yes, sir,” the tall woman said. As John strode away, his soldiers shifted warily. The burned man retreated only to be replaced by a soldier who had guarded Tyce, the young and easily panicked one. It concerned Tyce that these soldiers hadn’t offered to escort John to the meeting or protested having their commanding officer leave with Ribelians. Tyce knew John was safe, but the soldiers couldn’t. Yet, they watched with barely hidden resentment as John passed Tyce.
Ama followed him back toward the stairs they had climbed, but Yoss held position until Tyce had retreated. Tyce half-feared Yoss might open fire on the Command people—he had a feral edge that Tyce rarely saw in him.
Ama and John waited at the top of the stairs, and Tyce moved into position to guard them from anything coming at them from below.
“Let’s talk quickly,” John said.
Ama leaned against the wall and surveyed the room. Part of Tyce wanted to warn John to be careful. Ama had an ability to get under someone’s skin and rearrange the parts until a person didn’t recognize himself. At least she’d done that with Tyce. Ama had pulled him apart until he could cut out pieces of his own psychology that he’d stopped liking.
If John and Ama faced off, he feared the damage either could do to the other.
John turned his back on Ama. “Tyce, does she speak for you?”
Ama’s expression was guarded as if she wasn’t sure of the answer. Tyce nodded. “She does. If you have something to say, you say it to her.”
Ama’s smile was little more than a hint of an upturned corner of her lips. “Yes, John. If you want to speak, you speak to me. So, what has Earth gotten into that has brought these aliens down on us?”
Chapter Sixteen
JOHN PUFFED UP. “EARTH hasn’t done anything!”
“Doubt that,” Yoss said with a snort.
John turned to him. “Tyce!” His tone made it clear he expected Tyce to defend him or defend Earth. Maybe both.
“He has a point. People from Earth tend to have a certain ethnocentrism. You and I both know that.” Even before they’d left school, they’d talked about how Earth politicians consistently misjudged—they had misjudged the Ribelians, the Anla, the whole universe in general. They assumed that everyone wanted power and land and fame. They assumed that everyone was them.
John narrowed his eyes. “I know Ribelo sanctioned terrorism instead of taking complaints through legal channels.”
Ama spoke up before Tyce could repeat their old argument. “Ribelians have their own issues. But these aliens have nothing to do with Ribelo. I get the feeling, however, that you know something about them.”
For a second, it looked as if John might’ve held out, even against Ama’s stare, but then his shoulders slumped. “I know stories. But it’s not because anyone from Earth has talked to these aliens. Not really.”
Tyce abandoned his post and pushed John back against the wall. “‘Not really’?” That sounded like a dodge.
John shoved him away. “Do you know that linguist who connected with the Rownt?”
The intelligence the Dragon had gathered included a number of news reports and popular books, so he knew exactly who John meant, although the name wouldn’t come to him right now. The soldier had served on the same planet where Tyce had turned on his unit. “I know who you mean.”
After glancing at Ama, John leaned closer to Tyce. “This can’t go farther than us,” he whispered.
Yoss swung his weapon around and pointed it at John. “You don’t get to make that call.”
“Yoss,” Ama said. He grunted and returned to guarding the stairs. She gestured for Tyce to take lead in the conversation. That implied that she considered John a tactical problem and she wanted Tyce to solve it. Tyce was deeply uncomfortable.
He went for logic. “John, we don’t have time for you to have endless internal debates. We have an alien trying to kill us. We got lucky this time by catching it in crossfire, but we can’t count on luck.” And Dragon crew wouldn’t have that advantage, not when they had scattered to hunt the enemy and distract them from the more vulnerable members of the crew .
“We didn’t get lucky.” John stood straighter, his expression a riot of anger and fear and confusion. “We’ve had them in our crossfire a dozen times. It never stopped them. Never. And yet you show up, and that thing retreats. Why?”
Tyce raised his eyebrows. “Do you expect me to explain alien behavior? I’m going to need some evidence before I can reach any conclusions.”
“Evidence: it was kicking our asses, herding us toward dead ends until we were pinned down.” John’s voice was low and angry. “You show up. It retreats. Do you have an alliance with the Imshee?”
“Imshee?” Tyce glanced toward Ama, but she shrugged. Tyce focused on John. “Our people have gone to ground. We don’t have an alliance.”
“Then why aren’t they attacking you in the lower decks? I know the Imshee are leaving your decks alone.”
Tyce hadn’t known that, but the information eased the knot in his chest. If the Imshee were focusing on the upper deck, the children were safe. “Maybe because you blasted a hole in the side of the ship and we didn’t,” Tyce said. Breaching the hull was always the most dangerous part of any ship-to-ship attack. Breach at the wrong point and an engine could go critical and blow everyone up. You’d be a momentary star in someone’s night sky and then... nothing. Black. Endless night. Or, if Amali was right, a chance to fuck up a whole new life.
A flicker of a frown crossed John’s face.
“Maybe these things know the ship design and are focusing on the command levels,” Tyce said. “Maybe we don’t understand alien psychology. I want all our people to survive, but I can’t help if I don’t know what we’re facing. Who are these Imshee and what do they want?”
John pressed his lips together and his gaze darted about.
“John,” Tyce said softly.
He closed his eyes for a moment before answering. “Lieutenant Liam Munson had contact with the Imshee when he was traveling with the Rownt. Based off his reports, Command has ordered any humans who engage Imshee to retreat. Apparently the human habit of persistence hunting worries them.”
“Worries?” Ama asked, her tone demanding an immediate clarification. Tyce knew exactly what she was thinking: people were dangerous and unpredictable when scared.
John scoffed. “Worries, terrifies, completely freaks out. Command uses sanitized language, but it boils down to a hard command to retreat from any contact before they attack out of fear.”
“So they believe they have so
mething to fear from us,” Ama said softly. “Persistence hunting. Is that a Command strategy?” She looked at Tyce, but he could only shrug. He hadn’t heard of it, but it might’ve been a newer technique, something developed after he’d changed sides.
John leaned back against the wall as if he couldn’t keep himself upright without help. “Our ancestors used it around the same time they were learning to domesticate animals. It means we keep walking after animals, chasing them away from water or rest until they are weak enough to kill.”
Ama’s mouth twisted into a disgusted moue. Apparently she was feeling a little sympathy for the Imshee’s point of view.
“So they hate us,” Tyce frowned. Tactically they would’ve been in a better position if the aliens were after the ship. True, they would still be screwed, but they might have had an opportunity to negotiate if anyone could figure out a common language. Someone in John’s crew should have had access to Rownt translation algorithms. Tyce was unsure how to approach the conflict if the Imshee wanted to kill humans. “Do we know their weaknesses?”
“No. Worse, according to Lieutenant Munson, the Rownt are wary around them because the Imshee have so much more technology than they do.”
A cold shiver went down Tyce’s spine. Everyone had seen the images of the Rownt ship hovering outside Earth’s gravity well. The damn ship was almost half as large as the moon. What they called shuttles were as large as Earth’s battle cruisers. The first contact team on Prarownt had noticed the defensive satellites, but apparently they had missed the enormous Rownt ships. Ever since Tyce had joined the Dragon and Ama had asked pointed questions, Tyce had decided that his planet’s military had serious problems with competency.
“Do you know what sort of technology they have?”
John hesitated, like a vid that froze mid-transmission. Then his face twisted with anger. “You want tactical information? And what do you plan to do with it?”
“Save my crew and yours,” Tyce snapped.
“Like you used tactical information to protect people during the war? Yeah, tell me again how much you value life.” John poked a finger into Tyce’s chest. “Go on. God, do you have any idea what happened at Landing after you turned traitor? Do you?” John’s expression twisted with rage.
Tyce retreated from John’s fury, but he couldn’t get far because Ama blocked him.
“What happened?” Her voice was soft, but this was Amali at her meddling best. She was fucking antagonizing John.
Tyce whirled around and glared at Amali . “Enough!”
“People died.” John’s voice had a low intensity that made the hair on Tyce’s arms stand on end. “People died horribly! Have you read that book about Lieutenant Munson? He went into the live-fire zone between the two armies over and over and over to retrieve weapons and gear off dead bodies. And do you know why? Do you? Because you helped the damn traitors intercept our supply ships. You did that! Hundreds or maybe thousands of deaths are on your hands.”
Guilt slammed into Tyce so hard that it was like a physical blow.
Ama asked, “If you had more supplies, how much sooner would your people have murdered the thousands of men and women guarding the Landing launch site?”
“And they died anyway!” John’s voice broke. “They were always going to die because you wouldn’t pull them back. You were so hell-bent on protecting the launch site—to keep the fight away from your home world—that you threw lives away. Ask Tyce. He wrote entire papers at the academy, entire papers about how this war could end only one way. Ribelio and the rebel worlds were always going to lose, but you,” John pointed an accusatory finger at Tyce. “You made it so much worse. People died. Hell, Lieutenant Munson almost died out there, so how many other people who could have changed the world died in that hell hole? In your hell hole? Why the hell would you do that?”
Tyce’s guts turned to ice. John was too close to the truth, and right now anger clouded his judgment, but now that he had the tail of the tiger, he wouldn’t let it go easily.
“Well?” John demanded. He shoved Tyce back into the wall. “Say something!” Now Tyce realized that all John’s earlier reticence had been a facade to hide this anger. He might not have wanted his soldiers to kill Tyce, but he had a deep well of hatred in him.
“This isn’t the right time. We have aliens on the ship.” Tyce had too much fear and guilt and anger of his own to fight, and they needed to work together to counter the Imshee threat.
“But it’s the right time for you to ask for tactical information that you can turn around and use against us?” John demanded. “Is that what you’re saying? Because from where I’m standing, you’re as big of a threat as the damn Imshee. Maybe you’re the bigger threat.”
“Then why give me a knife?”
“Because I didn’t want you dead!” John shouted back. They stood inches apart, breathing heavily.
“We can’t do this. Not now,” Tyce finally said.
Ama moved to his side. “This is the perfect time. If we can’t be honest with each other, then there is no point in trying to work together against the Imshee.”
“Then maybe we shouldn’t work together,” John’s expression closed down. “If you’d read the biography of Lieutenant Munson, you would know why you can’t be forgiven. You absolutely can’t.”
Tyce had never asked for forgiveness. Not once. But John’s words still cut far deeper than he’d expected. “I know one thing. Munson wasn’t a lieutenant then or they wouldn’t have sent him into the live-fire zone. They save jobs like that for the grunts, the enlisted, the privates who don’t have the status to protect themselves. And people can’t argue in the court unless they have a law license, which they can’t get without going to a sanctioned law school, which they can’t attend without money. It’s a rigged game. The whole fucking system is broken! And you can’t blame me for breaking it!”
“This isn’t about the universe being fucking unfair. You’re not Ribelian, and you sided with them. With them! It’s your tactics and your fault our people died!” John was spinning out of control, his arms flailing. Tyce hadn’t ever seen him this angry, and it scared him. However, he wasn’t about to back down in the face of John’s self-righteousness.
“No one would have been fighting at all if Earth wasn’t so caught up in their damn titles and rankings,” Tyce yelled back. “Maybe someone would have listened to the Ribelian complaints instead of playing fucking legal games.”
“And for you, it’s all about helping the rebels kill us! And for what? Nothing. And you knew it was for nothing.” The anger cracked, and John’s pain rushed forward as his features twisted.
“Tell him,” Ama said.
All emotion vanished from John’s face and he studied Ama for a second before turning his attention back to Tyce. “Tell me what?”
Words stuck in Tyce’s throat. What he’d done was so much worse than John knew, and Tyce wanted to hide that. He couldn’t handle any more of John’s hot hatred.
“Tyce, tell him,” Ama said softly.
Yoss added from the top stair, “Hurry up. We have enemies in the field.” He then muttered, “Idiots.”
“Tyce?” John looked at him.
Tyce shook his head. “This isn’t the time. We need to focus on the Imshee, and I need to know any information you can give me. We have people to protect.”
“I have a planet to protect.” John practically spat the words. “I won’t put them at risk by giving you information on a potential enemy. Look at you. Look at that tattoo. If you thought you could destroy Earth, you would, for spite. You throw lives away—” John turned to climb the stairs.
Tyce was frozen, but Ama caught John’s arm. “Lives were lost, but no one threw those lives away.”
John shook her hand off. “You’re no better. He has more skills—skills Command Academy taught him—but you would kill as many people from Earth as you could. If the Ribelians had ever developed nuclear weapons, you would have used them.”
Ama sighed, and John’s expression turned to stone. She wasn’t denying the accusation, and Tyce knew how that would go over. Worse, he knew the Ribelians would consider it. From their point of view, life was eternal, and ending a few incarnations might require people to atone for their actions in another life, but it wasn’t necessarily evil. Tyce had trouble even wrapping his head around their beliefs, so he couldn’t blame John for assuming the worst.
“We needed to slow Command’s advance,” Tyce said before Ama could make this worse. “Ribelo can’t live under the yoke of Earth forever. People who are born there don’t deserve to pay the price for decisions made a hundred years ago. On Earth, no parent could sign away their child’s income, their child’s right to an education.”
John turned to face Tyce, looking down from the step above him. “That doesn’t justify the deaths at Landing, at Kunlun, at Monroe.”
Tyce closed his eyes. If Amali was right, Tyce would spend centuries paying for each death or at least working through his own guilt. “Ribelo needed to hold Landing. It needed to distract Earth, and I regret every death, but the war couldn’t be won without that time.”
“You lost it anyway. Ribelo never had a hope of winning.” John frowned. For a minute, he studied Tyce and then Ama. He read something in their expressions because he tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. “What have you done?”
Tyce wanted to avoid the whole conversation, but John wasn’t letting this go. Either John walked away thinking that Tyce didn’t care about life and the two crews would have to defend themselves separately or Tyce had to admit the truth. John would never forgive him, but then forgiveness didn’t seem like an option either way. “We made sure Earth would eventually lose,” Tyce said. “We moved or destroyed all the terraforming equipment, all the heavy mining equipment.”
