Crossing the Line

by Karen Traviss

  I can’t believe what happened to Dad. I can’t believe Aras did it. The world’s ending, and God isn’t answering my prayers.

  JAMES GARROD,

  in his private journal

  “They will pay for this,” said Nevyan.

  Mestin said nothing. In the past three seasons, the blockade of Bezer’ej had fallen to the isenj, and a gethes—no, an isan—she thought of as invincible had made the greatest error of all.

  It didn’t surprise her that Shan Chail had sacrificed herself to thwart the gethes. Right or wrong, she always liked to have the last word.

  And it broke Mestin’s heart, as she knew it had broken Nevyan’s. That was another English phrase that was worthy of acceptance into wess’u because it was perfect in its description of agony.

  The Exchange of Surplus Things, the largest single room in F’nar, was packed with utterly silent matriarchs and ussissi from at least half the city states of Wess’ej. Nevyan walked to the front of the hall. Mestin remained where she was with Fersanye, Chayyas, Siyyas and Prelit.

  Nevyan trailed a scent of pungent dominance through the crowd. It was what Vijissi had called mangoes. Mestin would miss him more than she could say.

  “We have no choice now,” said Nevyan. “Will you commit your males with ours?” She was standing on a crate so she could be seen; despite her great courage and drive, Nevyan was shorter than the average female. She was Shan’s height. “I have work for them to do. And I have called on the World Before to help us deal with this threat once and for all.”

  Wess’har didn’t respond as a mob even though they were communal. There was a quiet murmur. A ussissi scrambled onto a crate to peer through the forest of tall females.

  “Think carefully before you call for assistance,” she said.

  “We can’t deal with gethes alone,” said Nevyan. “Not while they have allies in the isenj.”

  “We know the World Before through our kin there. You don’t. They are very different to you.”

  “They are still wess’har.”

  “Indeed they are, but they’re far stronger even than Wess’ej, and if you’re wrong, and if they don’t behave as you would, you may end up paying a high price for their aid.”

  Nevyan did appear to consider the ussissi’s words carefully. “Have you an alternative?”

  “No.”

  “And neither have I.”

  And the room began to empty.

  Shan would have said that they didn’t do it that way on Earth. There would have been intrigue, skirmishes, riots, angry mobs, and headlines in the news.

  But it had taken only a few moments earlier in the day for Nevyan Tan Mestin to depose her mother as senior matriarch of F’nar. She had now launched the first assault on the gethes and broken millennia of isolation from the World Before.

  There was no pain in it for Mestin. She was proud. It was the only warm thing in her at that moment to ease her mourning and fear. Nevyan stepped down off the crate as if she were embarrassed at having needed it. But her scent of dominance was stronger than ever.

  “I told Aras,” she said.

  Mestin felt relief and dread simultaneously. The two isan’ve stood in the center of the empty hall and silently accepted everything that had happened.

  “I would have found that hard,” said Mestin.

  “As did I,” said Nevyan. “You can’t imagine his grief.”

  Mestin followed her from the hall and into a late summer evening that was perfectly beautiful and scented with the fragrance of aumul’ve. The tem flies were swarming on the last warm stones left after Ceret’s setting: they would be moving further south now to follow the warm weather.

  The deaths of tens of thousands of bezeri and Shan Chail and Vijissi would take a great deal of balancing. Mestin wondered if Nevyan would start with the displaced colony or even the human base on Umeh.

  No. She would begin with Actaeon.

  The isenj would learn to pick their friends more carefully.

  It was an old long-range fighter, but it was serviceable. Nevyan had watched it climb into the clear sky the day before and now she was tracking its advance towards the gethes ship Actaeon.

  The pilot was one of her jurej’ve, Cidemnet. Mestin didn’t think it was kind to send one of her new family into battle so soon after accepting them, but Nevyan said it was important that she demonstrated she would commit her own males to the war. She sat down in front of the screen and Lisik brought them bowls of tea. It was unpleasantly bitter, and Mestin couldn’t understand what Shan had found so desirable about it. She would still have drunk it gladly if Shan had been there to share it. She missed her already.

  “We could have sent a drone missile and destroyed the ship by now,” said Mestin.

  “And we would have lost the opportunity to add an important message,” said Nevyan. “Besides, they have had time to disembark more noncombatants and civilians, whatever that distinction might mean. We’ll deal with them in due course.”

  Unlike gethes, whose wars were fought in secret, any wess’har could access the channel and follow Nevyan’s conduct of the mission. They could watch what Nevyan was seeing; they could hear her conversations with the fighter. They would also be able to hear any exchange with the gethes. They had nothing to hide.

  Mestin knew they were as baffled by her tactics as she was. It didn’t matter. Nevyan seemed grimly confident of the lessons she had learned from Shan Chail.

  She touched the console. The screen showed Cidemnet’s forward view from his cockpit, just the ochre disk of Umeh. The gethes ship in orbit around it wasn’t even a speck but the display in front of Cidemnet across his field of view showed a moving constellation of lights, ussissi and isenj vessels and the larger target that was CSV Actaeon.

  “Contact Actaeon,” she said. “Let me speak to the commander.”

  It took a while. When Malcolm Okurt’s voice crackled into the chamber, it sounded surprised. There was no image. The disembodied voice was disturbing. Then it was joined by a shimmering image of a gethes with a thin face and every fidgeting sign of agitation.

  “Am I speaking to the wess’har chief of staff?” he asked. He was expecting a soldier.

  “I am Nevyan Tan Mestin, matriarch of F’nar. Shan Frank- land was my friend.”

  Mestin thought it was an odd way to identify yourself. Okurt paused too. “Ma’am, we’re genuinely sorry for the events of the last forty-eight hours. I can assure you we had no knowledge of the intent to use such extreme measures.”

  “But you brought them here, so you must have considered it.”

  “Purely defensive, ma’am. If there’s anything we can do to help deal with the contamination, we’re at your disposal.”

  “Are you taking the piss?” Nevyan asked.

  Okurt looked completely stunned by her sudden command of colloquial English. “Sorry?”

  “Don’t lie to me. You sent troops to Bezer’ej with aggressive intent. The bezeri are dying in great numbers. Two of my friends are dead. And you talk of helping us to clean up.”

  “Our mission was to detain Frankland, not to kill her, and certainly not to cause devastation to the environment. My colleague exceeded her orders. I believe we can come to some understanding if we can meet and talk this through.”

  Nevyan cocked her head in amazement and shot Mestin a glance. The gethes really hadn’t understood them at all. “No discussion,” said Nevyan. “Who’s responsible?”

  Okurt paused again. “As commanding officer, I am.”

  “Responsibility is personal.”

  “The individuals who carried out the attack will be disciplined when they return to this ship, but the buck stops with me. You understand that phrase, I take it.”

  “I do.”

  “I’m really very sorry about Superintendent Frankland.”

  “And so are we. But only actions matter, and I regret what I must do just as you regret what you have done, and the end will not be altered by either.”

&nbs
p; Mestin was getting agitated too. Why was Nevyan spending so long talking with this creature? Cidemnet didn’t need time to maneuver. His missiles were aimed and locked: this was entirely superfluous. It was a game. Wess’har didn’t play games.

  Okurt’s face stopped moving and his voice sounded a little higher in pitch although it was steady. It was a sign of nervousness.

  “I know you have a small vessel on station observing us, ma’am.”

  “Yes, a single fighter. It’s more than five thousand years old. It still works.”

  Clearly he didn’t think one ancient, distant fighter was more than a gesture, but he was confused, that was clear. “Ma’am, are you threatening us?”

  “No. I’m targeting you. This is the act of balance for your crimes. Launch.”

  Cidemnet let loose three warheads. Okurt’s transmission cut off halfway through words that sounded like stand to and Mestin saw the three trails of light spread in the sudden image of Cidemnet’s viewplate. Actaeon now had less than the time it took to boil two cups of water to make that strange, bitter tea.

  Nevyan had not only launched an attack on the gethes, but had also sent them a message that she could do so with the least of her arsenal. Mestin now understood the game her daughter had learned to play, taught by Shan Frankland and Eddie Michallat.

  A tiny pinpoint of white light flared briefly against the disk of Umeh, then another, and another.

  “You can come home now, Cidemnet,” said Nevyan.

  26

  STAND TO—VESSEL CONTACT.

  OPS ROOM, BRIDGE: VESSEL ON SCREEN VISUAL, RED 300, MOVING LEFT TO RIGHT: PWO, OFFICER OF THE WATCH, THREE CONTACTS INCOMING, UP THE CHUFF, RANGE 450 KAY, SPEED THIRD LIGHT. BRACE BRACE BRACE.

  SECOND CONTACT INCOMING.

  BRACE BRACE BRACE

  STAND TO.

  Voice traffic downlinked to FEU Fleet Command

  from CSV Actaeon. No further transmission received.

  There were so many fragments from the shattered hull of Actaeon that isenj actually froze their constant river of movement to watch the fireballs streaking across the sky above Jejeno even during daylight.

  A couple had crashed into the suburbs of Tivsk on the next landmass. There were a lot of casualties, the sort of numbers you couldn’t avoid in crowded places. If Actaeon hadn’t been easing out of orbit, running up her engines after the last emergency evacuation to Umeh, it would have been far worse.

  It was quite a display. Eddie watched it too. It continued into the dusk. If you dissociated it from the circumstances, it was spectacularly beautiful. But he couldn’t do that sort of mind-trick, not any more.

  He kept wondering if what he had told Malcolm Okurt about c’naatat had been the root cause of this. He had been so sure he was doing the right thing. But he had told him—and Lindsay Neville—where it was, and where Shan might be found. It was an agonizing thought. He didn’t want it in his head.

  Umeh Station boiled with angry ussissi. Shan had summed it up succinctly, as she always did: take on one ussissi, and you took on all of them.

  Eddie hadn’t realized he had made such an impact on them. Apparently they admired his pluck for facing them after the destruction of Ouzhari.

  So they had sought him out first to tell him that Shan Frank- land and Vijissi were dead.

  They had become a pack. They roamed among the workers and military personnel in the biodome, sniffing and darting away. Eddie had never seen that before. It made them look like hunting animals, like mongooses on to a cobra. It seemed only a matter of time before they attacked.

  Even Serrimissani joined then for a while, weaving around and becoming one part of a single, increasingly angry creature.

  Eddie sat on a trestle made up of a sheet of greenhouse composite and two stacks of pallets that would eventually become composting bins if Umeh Station was ever completed. He should have been very glad that he had decided against returning to Actaeon: but all he could think about was Shan.

  “Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.” Eddie said it so many times that the words didn’t sound like English any more, just a mantra, a sound, a song in a foreign language. “Shan. Shan.”

  Serrimissani had gathered her belongings in a sack. She lowered her head as if something was raining down on it. “This is the last place I would want to be at this moment.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “The gethes have killed Shan Chail and Vijissi. There may be more retribution, and they may target every human here.” She took Eddie’s arm. “If you have sense, you will come with me. I am returning to Wess’ej. Come with me and beg forgiveness of the matriarchs, and perhaps they will spare you. You have done a favor for them.” She looked up anxiously. “And you have been honest. Come on.”

  “The humans didn’t kill them. Not actual murder.”

  “And would they still be alive had they not been captured?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then spare me your sophistry.”

  Eddie reached for the urine vial in his pocket and pressed it against his chest to make sure it was still there with its single ruby-beaded quill. He’d hand it over. He wouldn’t have the slightest trouble doing that now.

  Eddie had run for his life a few times. It was always several hours after everyone else had come up with the idea first. There was something about seeing a world through a camera lens that made you feel less vulnerable: added to the detachment of being a reporter, it made for a poor sense of mortality. Journalists in danger zones got killed with depressing frequency. Eddie didn’t plan on joining them, not because he was scared—and he was, oh God yes he was—but because he hadn’t told his story yet.

  He owed Shan that much. He wanted to know everything. He hoped they wouldn’t execute Ade Bennett before he could talk to him.

  “Okay,” he said. “When we get the evacuation warning, I’ll come.”

  “Warning? They will not warn you. You didn’t warn them. The vengeance will come, and soon.”

  Eddie pulled out the bee-cam. “Tight on me until further notice, divert for explosive and sudden movement,” he told it. “And upload every five minutes.” He didn’t want to die with an unfiled story in the system. He hoped the isenj link would relay his material now that Actaeon was no more than a spectacular shower of false meteors.

  He quickened his pace behind Serrimissani. At least she had come back for him; he’d had native guides abandon him in the middle of riots. As they walked, they saw ground cars trundling materials towards the Jejeno sphere. One slowed down and an orange-suited foreman leaned out of the cab.

  “Want a lift?” he asked.

  “I’m leaving,” Eddie said. “But thanks. Have you had a security alert yet?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I don’t think Jejeno is going to be the safest place to be after what happened earlier.”

  “What?”

  “Doesn’t matter. There’s a war starting. Don’t be here when it does.”

  The foreman shrugged and heaved himself back into the seat. Eddie and Serrimissani walked on, quickening their pace. Isenj were obviously starting to work out who would be next after Actaeon: there was a definite thinning out of the crowds in the neighborhoods closest to the sphere, and some isenj were carrying bundles on their flat heads, children trailing behind them in orderly lines. They knew the wess’har well enough to have come to the same conclusion as Serrimissani.

  “And where will your humans go now that Actaeon is destroyed?” Serrimissani asked. They flagged down an isenj vehicle and she chattered at the driver. “They are stranded here.”

  “Is Lin back yet? Where’s the shuttle?”

  “I would not waste concern on her.”

  “I was thinking of Mart Barencoin, actually.” Shan liked the marines. She would have wanted them kept out of the aftermath. “How can I check what’s happened—”

  “Think of your own safety.” Serrimissani reached down and pulled Eddie up into the seat, and they sat in silence until they came to t
he outskirts of the airport. The driver was anxious to get as far away from Jejeno as he could, and taking them to the terminal seemed to be asking for more time than he was willing to spare. They began a brisk walk up the main approach road, dodging isenj workers who seemed simply to be going about their tasks.

  Eddie motioned the bee-cam to get shots of them. “How many of them will still be alive next week?” he asked.

  “If the wess’har attack, they will only target the sphere. If the isenj stay clear of it, very few will die. There will be substantial disruption, though.” It sounded like a few traffic jams: but Eddie imagined water pipes spurting and power lines cut and fires raging and food shortages. And very high casualties. There was no room in this tight-packed infrastructure to have any sort of emergency without the isenj suffering too. Ual would be busy in his serene aquamarine offices.

  He thought again of Shan and wondered if anyone had broken the news to Aras. His grief would be terrible.

  “Jesus, I still can’t believe she’s gone,” he said, not caring if the bee-cam picked it up. It shot back to concentrate on his face, intruding into his own grief, a fitting punishment for his calling. “Oh God. Oh God.”

  “She was a good wess’har,” Serrimissani said. “She accepted Targassat. To die to preserve the balance of life is a commendable act.”

  It seemed that every ussissi on Umeh had the same premonition of war as they did. Anxious little faces and chattering teeth greeted them as they pushed through the lobby and out onto the apron nearest the ussissi shuttle. One had already left, packed to just above safe lading weight. They were loyal creatures if they had a personal charge to care for, but they weren’t stupid.

  “I have to make some calls,” said Eddie.

  “We must go.”

  “I need to ask Ual for a few favors. The ministry is at least fifteen kay from here. Even if they start bombing now—”

  “You have until this evening. I will stay with you, in case you become foolish and try to get more stories that end up killing you.”