by J. N. Chaney
“Well, here we are,” Mol said.
Thorn nodded inside his helmet. “Here we are. Well, Hab, you’re up for checking out this tech.” He pointed at a nearby metallic dome, from which the snout of a nasty-looking beam weapon protruded. Thorn immediately regretted it, though, as the motion lifted him from the surface and started him slowly drifting away. He almost panicked, but his safety tether going taut and abruptly stopping him kept him grounded, figuratively and literally.
“Oh, yeah, this is no-g,” he said, trying to sound flippant. “Forgot about that.”
Mol chuckled as Thorn pulled himself back down to the surface with his tether. “Wasn’t that fun?”
Thorn shot her a glare. “A barrel of laughs.”
They spent the next hour slowly moving around, investigating the weapons platform. The rock into which it had been installed was almost two klicks long, far too large for them to cover more than a small area. Hab focused on the tech, taking readings and measurements with instruments clipped to his vac-armor’s harness. Tanner had sent Thorn along to determine if there was any magic involved.
As they closed in on the hour, the maximum duration their air supplies allowed, Thorn had pretty much concluded there was nothing magical about the platform whatsoever. It was rock, and tech, and that was about it.
Thorn hadn’t detected even a hint of any sort of sentience in or around the rocky mass, either, and told Hab as much.
“Yessir, that’s pretty much my conclusion, too. This whole rig is autonomous,” the engineer replied.
Mol, who’d been examining the installation from a pilot’s perspective, cut in. “The missile launchers don’t seem to differ from ours, but these beam weapons are really something.”
Hab, who had maneuvered himself close to one of the menacing-looking turrets, replied with enthusiastic agreement. “Yeah, I concur. They’re masers, I think. Not as potentially powerful as a laser, but whoever built this looks like they’ve got the tech down tight. We’ve got to take one of these things home with us to study.”
“Okay, well, you’ve got a rock hammer, so start chiseling away,” Mol said, and Thorn laughed.
“We’ll be back to pick you up in about, oh, two hundred years.” He said, then found himself looking at the Witch Nebula.
It formed just a fuzzy spot of pale luminescence, partly eclipsed by the bulk of the Gyrfalcon. Most anyone else wouldn’t have even noticed it, certainly not with the naked eye. Thorn did because he had an intimate connection to it. The nebula had been created during his spectacularly failed attempt to return his daughter, Morgan, from the dead. It represented a sort of memorial to good intentions gone very, very wrong.
At least the damned thing wasn’t hooked into his mind the way it once had been. Before he’d taken measures to deal with it, Thorn had always known where the Witch Nebula was. He could be deep inside the bowels of the Hecate and unerringly point to it. That connection had been parasitic, the thing’s perpetual presence in his mind an anchor forever dragging him down into a dark pool of guilt, regret, and second-guessing. He’d finally ended that and restored his powers—his mojo, as Mol called them—in the process.
But he still instantly recognized the Witch Nebula when he saw it, even if just out of the corner of his eye.
Where are you, Morgan? Are you safe? Are you even still alive?
“Lieutenant Stellers?”
Thorn jumped. Mol and Hab had returned from their particular EVAs around the alien weapons platform and were swapping out their tethers for the haul back to the Gyrfalcon. Thorn hadn’t even noticed them approaching.
“Admiring the view, sir?” Mol asked.
Thorn took a final, lingering look at the Witch Nebula, then pulled his gaze away. “Just wool-gathering.”
“Not a good habit to get into in the black,” Mol replied.
“You’re right. It’s not,” he said, following his own tether back to the self-seating stanchion Mol had driven into the rock. He let the work-tether reel itself back into the housing on his harness and hooked up his own safety tether. As he did, he saw something moving against the stars.
It was the Jolly Green Giant. Bertilak had brought his ship in close, only a few tens of klicks away, in case they needed quick help. The Hecate had stood much further off, almost ten thousands klicks higher, maintaining top-cover to the little operation.
He, Kira, and Bertilak had tried so hard to find Morgan, but to no avail. Thorn could only look at the stars and think that she had to be out there somewhere. He didn’t really think she was dead, believing he’d know it if she was.
Thorn caught himself and started after Mol, back toward the Gyrfalcon. Getting caught wool-gathering on an EVA once was a little embarrassing. Twice, and it was a problem, because it took his head out of the game. And when the game was all about the safety of yourself and your companions, that just wasn’t acceptable at all.
“So their armor is better than ours,” Hab was saying. “Its ablative coefficient is about twenty percent higher than our best stuff. And their masers are way beyond any beam weapon I’m aware of us having in development. Otherwise, sir, their tech seems pretty comparable to ours.”
Tanner glanced around the bridge, where he’d brought Hab, Mol, and Thorn for their debriefing. The Captain preferred to run after-action reviews in the company of his full bridge crew, reserving more discreet and constrained debriefs for only the most sensitive discussions.
“Comments or questions,” Tanner said.
“I have a question. Who the hell are they?” the XO asked.
Tanner leaned back in his seat. “That’s the question of the day, isn’t it?”
“Probably whoever’s bio-markers we detected on that belt,” the Tac O said, but Hackett raised a finger.
“One of the things our ultra-complicated scientist school teaches us is that it’s dangerous to jump to conclusions like that. Unless we find similar traces on components from that weapons installation, we can’t really say that. Oh, and by the way, thanks for the introduction to being aboard a warship during battle. That was loads of fun,” Hackett said, grimacing.
“It only gets more fun from here,” the XO said, smiling.
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Tanner leaned forward again. “These aren’t going to be solely our questions to answer. Fleet informed us about half an hour ago that the Max Planck is now coming in company with a flotilla of ships from the Third Fleet, led by the battleship Argus. We’re to hold here until they arrive in two days.”
“Funny how discovering a treasure trove of new alien weapons tech catches the sudden interest of Fleet,” the XO muttered.
Thorn listened as the exchange went on. He’d already made his report, which had been easy. There was nothing magical about any of this. Tanner had asked him to glean whatever residual information he could by scrying the weapons platforms, so that was next on his list—
Thorn?
Kira?
Yes. Hope this isn’t a bad time.
Eh, just in a debriefing with Captain Tanner.
Oh, shit, I’m sorry—
Don’t be. I’ve done my bit. Anyway, we found some really interesting stuff, he said, I think what we found is a heluva lot more important than we realized at first.
More important than—wait, what did you find?
Someone is stealing water from the Nyctus worlds, but only after killing every squid on the planet. We’re talking extinction level events, and they’re doing it with tech I haven’t seen. It’s not far beyond ours, just different, and we don’t know who it is, Thorn sent.
So the Nyctus have another enemy out there? Good, she said, a smugness hardening her tone.
Agreed. But, as Tanner says, just because they don’t like the Nyctus doesn’t mean they’ll be especially fond of us, either.
Yeah. True. Anyway, just a heads up. I just got a call from Damien—you remember him, from the Allied Stars diplomatic corps? Anyway, the Danzur have specifically request
ed that you, me, and him travel to meet with them. You should probably expect the tasking from Fleet to come through sometime in the next day or so.
Why me?
Oh, maybe because you made an entire armada magically appear on their doorstep? That kind of thing tends to leave an impression.
Yeah, but I’m no diplomat.
And I am?
Thorn blew out a long-suffering sigh, then immediately felt the attention of everyone on the bridge lock onto him like targeting scanners. He’d apparently just cut the Tac O off in mid-sentence.
“Problem, Lieutenant?” Tanner asked.
“Yeah, I know Osborne can be annoying, but you probably shouldn’t be so obvious about it,” the Nav O said, giving the Tac O a sidelong grin. He flipped a rude gesture back.
Thorn looked sheepishly around. “Oh. Um, no, sir. Sorry about that. Kira—Lieutenant Wixcombe—just informed me that I can expect a tasking from Fleet to go play nice with the Danzur for a while.”
Hackett gave a puzzled frown. “Just informed you—wait. Across light-years? You can do that?”
“Be prepared to throw scientific certainty out the airlock when you’re dealing with Stellers here, Specialist,” Tanner said.
“But scientific certainty is what I’m all about.”
The XO offered her a sardonic smile.
“It does take some getting used to, yeah.”
6
Thorn stopped just short of the Venture’s airlock, which had rattled, thumped, and sealed itself to the Danzur station’s docking port. He turned to Kira.
“So, one more time. These Danzur are in love with administrivia.”
Kira smiled. “They eat, drink, breathe, and sleep it, yes. And they’re very picky about it.”
“They put the hyphen in anal-retentive,” Damien put in.
Thorn pressed his lips into a thin line. “So I get to spend time with a bunch of detail-obsessed bureaucrats. Great. I can hardly wait.”
Thorn turned back to the airlock, waiting for the green pressurization indicator to light up. He, Kira, and Damien had spent most of the Venture’s flight here discussing the Danzur and their interests, agenda, and motivations. As far as Thorn was concerned, it hadn’t been especially stimulating conversation. Like he’d told Kira, he was no diplomat, nor did he have any interest in becoming one.
More to point, though, was what they hadn’t talked about. They’d almost entirely avoided the subject of Morgan. After Thorn, Kira, and Bertilak had tried and failed to find her, they’d almost entirely dropped the subject. Thorn thought he knew why. Kira probably believed that she was dead—again—and simply didn’t want to rip open the wound of her loss. Thorn wasn’t convinced, though. He might no longer be tethered to the Witch Nebula the way he once was, but every time he looked at it, he felt—
Something. He couldn’t even say what. But whatever it was, it told him that Morgan was still out there, somewhere.
Which is where he should be. He should be on the Hecate, or with Bertilak, contributing to the war effort. Yes, being here was contributing to the war effort, too, because the Danzur could prove to be valuable allies, or at least kept out of the war. It just didn’t feel like it, though.
The airlock indicator turned green, and the inner door slid open. The Marine who stood guard hit a control, and the outer door rolled aside. The Danzur airlock beyond was already open, with several of the small, bear-like aliens standing just beyond.
Damien took the lead, switching on a beatific smile and striding confidently forward.
Thorn saw why the man had become a diplomat. He was charismatic as hell.
The Danzur greeted them with formality. Damien was a little more relaxed about it, introducing himself, Thorn, and Kira in turn. That told Thorn that he’d probably never dealt with these particular Danzur before. And that made Thorn suspicious. It hadn’t been that long, only a few months since Damien and Kira had last been here. Why had they changed their representatives?
“I am Bundar,” a Danzur with reddish fur and a white blaze on his face said. “Deputy Assistant Undersecretary to the Head Director of the External Relations Secretariat.”
Thorn glanced at Kira. Since I have absolutely no idea what that means, does that make him important?
Kira returned a faint smile. Honestly, I have no idea. We just tend to treat all of them as though they’re important. It keeps them happy.
Ah. Insert eye-roll here.
Bundar and his retinue led the three of them to a meeting room Kira and Damien both seemed to find familiar. As they sat, Damien spoke up.
“Since we dealt with him so much in the past, I thought we might be meeting with Tadrup,” he said.
“Tadrup has been reassigned, but I will pass along your regards,” Bundar replied. The way he said reassigned made it sound much more like punishment than reward, Thorn thought. He only vaguely remembered Tadrup, whom he’d met after he brought the Reserve Fleet here. Somehow, Tadrup had screwed up or fallen out of favor, it seemed.
Thorn mentally shrugged it away. He’d long ago learned that one universal constant, right up there with absolute zero and Newton’s universal gravitation, was politics.
“Please do that,” Damien replied, smiling a smile that at least looked utterly sincere.
Once they were settled, Bundar turned to Damien. “Once again, thank you for attending to our request for a delegation from your esteemed Allied Stars. Our two peoples have come a long way in a short time. Now, though, it is time to start formalizing and detailing our relationship.”
“We agree,” was the answer Bundar got, but it came from Thorn, not Damien.
The Danzur turned to Thorn, stared a moment, then looked back at Damien.
Thorn had to make himself not chuckle. Okay, whatever else he was, Damien was clever. It had been his suggestion to spring Thorn on the Danzur as their spokesman. They’d probably asked for Thorn to accompany the delegation to learn more about him and his capabilities. And that was because they were at least unnerved by him and his ’casting and might actually be afraid of it.
It made him perfect for leading the discussion on behalf of the Allied Stars.
Bundar finally got his mental feet back under him. “We are glad you agree. To that end, we have a request.” His question was directed at Damien again.
“And what would that be?” Thorn asked, leaning onto the table.
Again, Bundar hesitated, caught between talking to Damien and Thorn. He actually did a double-take that made Kira pretend to cough so she could cover up her grin.
Bundar turned to Thorn. “We would request that a formal, permanent liaison officer be stationed here as we work toward establishing full diplomatic relations. To that end, we request Kira Wixcombe be named to the post.”
Now it was the humans’ turn to take a moment and digest what was happening. On the face of it, it made sense. The Danzur were familiar with Kira, and she had probably earned some degree of respect from them. But Thorn, Kira, and Damien didn’t quite trust the aliens, at least not yet. They’d been low-key allies with the Nyctus for who knew how long and, as far as they knew, hadn’t entirely broken off relations with them. They’d even demanded, at one point, that Thorn be handed over to them. Apparently, they’d been planning on trading him to the Nyctus in exchange for—something, but Damien and Kira had never really figured out what.
Even more telling, the only reason that the Danzur were now at the table and willing to talk with any semblance of sincerity was because of Thorn’s brute-force show of strength. When he brought the entire ON Reserve Fleet into existence almost on top of the Danzur homeworld, the aliens hadn’t just been surprised, they’d been utterly stunned. Even the most potent defenses were of no use if an enemy fleet could just materialize wherever it wanted.
And the icing on the cake? The ON had used a similar tactic to obliterate a Nyctus planet before the squids could even begin to respond.
The Danzur were afraid of Thorn, of the ON, and of the Allied S
tars. But fear only went so far as a motivator, Thorn knew, before it would twist into bitterness and resentment. And from there, it was only a short step to hostility.
And now, in the midst of all of this, the Danzur wanted Kira to be stationed here, far outside of ON space.
Thorn glanced at Damien, but the diplomat seemed content to leave matters to Thorn, at least for now. So Thorn turned back to Bundar and smiled.
“We’d be thrilled to have a permanent delegation here. We can’t guarantee it would be any individual in particular, but we’ll certainly ensure we send our absolute best people,” he said.
Damien gave Thorn an approving look and a slight nod. Apparently, he was better at this diplomatic stuff than he’d given himself credit for.
Bundar bobbed his head in an enthusiastic nod. “That is excellent news. However, we would much prefer that Kira Wixcombe be a key part of that delegation. She has earned our respect, and that is not easy to do.”
Not without filling out the proper forms, anyway, Thorn thought. But he turned to Damien, tapping his forefinger against his chin as he did, as though in thought.
Damien recognized their prearranged signal.
So he drew in a breath and launched his assault on all that is sensible and true. He began to speak like a diplomat. “With greatest respect, I would like to discuss some key points as they pertain to our acceptable channels of communication, more specifically the method by which we record and disseminate—"
Just a few words in, Thorn knew that Damien was going to speak at some length, without saying anything useful. Now that was true diplomacy, Thorn mused, but it was also the point. It gave Thorn and Kira a moment to Join and converse.
So what do you think this is all about? he asked.
Kira paused a moment before replying, apparently considering the question. No idea. I developed a good rapport with the Danzur, and especially Tadrup. But if he’s on their shit list for some reason, I’m not sure why they’d want me as their liaison.
