“Yes, that sort of thing confuses the Haphan mind. I hate Diggery and hope to see him grow. Did you follow that at least? I could pith him with a trench-spike at the base of his skull, but I can also wish his mind to be eased—in fact, the first would accomplish the second.
“In the same sense, your grace, I could watch Falling Mountain burn to the ground and not shed a tear, but I would never allow an offense against the empress. I could kill a Haphan duke, but I would not suffer a Haphan duke to be killed. It is all just moods, flighty moods. We laugh and then grow serious. We are serious and then laugh.”
“Haphans hate long, if we hate at all,” Gawarty murmured.
“That’s because Haphans have ego tied up in it. That’s Diggery’s problem too, if you’re still interested. There’s something in him that can be trodden upon. Something that can be belittled. True Tachba think little of ourselves in that way; we’re overjoyed to learn that someone has typed our name on orders. We just die too often to have illusions of importance.”
They sat through a short, and—Gawarty wouldn’t have credited it—comfortable silence together. “Something must have happened to you, for you to be here in the Observers.”
“It seems to be my sorry duty to contradict everything you say, lieutenant. Nothing happened to me at all. I had my hundreds of boys at the front, and when it was my turn to die I was stepped over and left behind, like something useless.” He grimaced. “Perhaps there is some ego in us after all.”
“Well, we’re here now,” said Gawarty. “I think I shall keep an ear open for this talk of rebellion. What shall you do?”
“I hear everything. Or rather—everything arrives at my ears. If I hear anything like you describe, I will indeed share it with you.” Cephas was, oddly, smiling at him. “That was your design, wasn’t it? Diggery, discipline, disorder, defiance, detection?”
“Yes.”
“When rebellion is whispered next to you, however, you will not hear it.”
Gawarty frowned at that.
“Your grace, you don’t know us Tachba. We may not tell untruths, but we can avoid the truth in three languages. As servitors, we behave one way around the Haphans. Underneath that, we are Sesserans who aspire to be civilized, and so we behave another way. But underneath that, we are Tachba, violent and polluted, always fighting our compulsions. It all ties together. You wouldn’t understand a word of rebellion even if it was shouted in your face.”
“I hadn’t heard that yet: ‘You wouldn’t understand.’ I suppose I had to hear it eventually.”
“Stab my neck for a clumsy oaf, I don’t want to sound like that.” Cephas pointed a finger at him. “If you take one idea away tonight, let it be this. The idea of rebellion contradicts every notion of propriety. Pretty Polly disapproves of it especially. But as I said, a Tachba can be both here and there. For a rebellion to spring up, it would merely take a twist, or a very bad offense from the imperials. Or a woman, you know what kind.”
“At least now I know I’m out of my depth,” said Gawarty. Carefully, “If you should share a confidence with me, I could be very delicate with it. A good soldier with a bad idea is still a good soldier. He could be redeemed, if he’s found in time. It doesn’t have to be a bloodbath.”
“That’s you talking, not the Haphans, and certainly not your sister, Jephesandra Liu Tawarna. She will make it a bloodbath, believe me.” Cephas gave him a direct look. “I would never have entertained this conversation if you wasn’t the general’s son. A better Haphan general does not exist on the front. But your sister metes out the discipline, not you, and she is a creature of stone. She is what we dislike most about the Haphan leash.” He thought for a moment. “She’s also what we like best about it. Neither here nor there.”
“Then we’re in agreement, or maybe we’re not.” Gawarty stood, discovering himself nearly sober again. He felt as if he’d been through a laundry wash.
“If I am to be disappeared by your Haphan murderers-in-the-night, you know where to find me.”
‘Low cunning’ indeed, Gawarty thought as he stumbled out of the club. Whoever thinks the Tacchies only have low cunning hasn’t sat across from Captain Cephas.
II
The New Enemy
Travelogue: On Kitchens & Queens
Before the Haphan colonization, the harsh seasonal changes of the northern climes of Grigory IV kept the Tachba population in check. When the waters froze and snow started falling, and the food stores shrank to nothing, any family with too many members, or without sufficient leadership to have stored provisions, would not survive to Spring to replenish the landscape with new Tachba. The annual winnowing, harsh as it was, gave the northern Tachba at least the chance of developing a coherent culture.
In traditional multi-family compounds, young girls manage the education of the children. Young boys manage livestock, work the fields, and train to fight. Adult men, when present, teach the fighting and occasionally lift heavy items. The whole affair is administrated by the adult women from the kitchens. The kitchens are warm, noisy, full of movement, with walls lined with cupboards that open to orderly rows of jugs, plates, and other breakable stoneware. All of this hints at superhuman levels of organization and planning, which cumulatively make the men irritable, disturbed, and prone to destruction, so they make themselves scarce. Each morning after breakfast, the infants are gathered in the kitchens and then pinned in place with table legs through their swaddling. The richly active environment is their first schoolhouse, and it is theorized that the activity stimulates their developing executive function.
Climates with kinder seasons and more bountiful resources never invoked a need for the kind of kitchens found in the north. In the tropical south, the women never had to apply their higher faculties to preserving, rationing, or other long-sighted projects. The children never grew up watching organized processes ten hours a day. The Moon Kingdoms never grew attuned to female leadership, never developed the role of the dashta, never formed the tradition of the manleader. To the south, the queens are an odd, unconventional quirk of the ‘barren’ north, indicative of the weakness of the northerners.
(Imperial Archives: Landing Day)
Personal log, Pramaty Quetta (Drafted, Ph.D. Student, Comparative Cultures)
(Landing Day. Establishment of the Local Haphan Empire on Grigory IV.)
Landfall. First contact.
Our one-way landing freighters touched down three hours ago at late evening, local. We are now, again, a planet-bound society.
Early reports indicate casualties in Haphan units that were attacked by roaming bands of Tachba. The Tachba are indifferent to the damage caused by our weapons. An open choke, targeted at center mass, is insufficient to stop an adult. They die, but not quickly enough.
Our rearward hospitals in the secured zones fill to capacity with wounded natives. We have more facilities on the landing freighters, but the freighters are our defense of last resort and the indigenous are not permitted entrance.
The hospital commanders formally request a reversal of this decision, due to the high numbers of natives dying from treatable wounds. The Fleet Commander responds personally on all channels: “Retrieve fewer wounded Tachba from the battlefield.”
So we cut them down, and they croak cheerily from the ground when we reach them. Their bodies surround them in pieces. They seem to not understand the damage done to them by our blasters. We have so few interpreters that we don’t fully know what they are saying. They seem lighthearted. Mostly they want water. They wave us toward their fellows…more happy creatures who are either fleeing through the bush or just about to burst back on us.
Mixed with the nice Tachba are the angry ones. Despite appalling wounds, they jump up and attack us again. They have limbs falling off and viscera spilling out, et cetera, et cetera, but it makes no difference.
Day 2. We capture our designated town and erect hasty barricades by morning. We are receiving reports of unfortunate and unseemly reprisals by other Hap
han units against the natives, but my unit still hews to the conventions of war. At the moment, we are taking bands of Tachba males into custody as they return with the daylight. They are all cheer and curiosity. They carry no ill will over “the fun in the trees last night.”
After forty-two hours on duty, I am relieved for six hours of rest. I almost flee back to the landing freighter. Too much strangeness all at once. I’ve never seen a horizon! A sky! A sun! The forests are utterly disorganized to my eyes. It doesn’t help that marauding Tachba spring from behind those trees.
The landing freighter is comfortingly austere and regular. My neuronics automatically connect to the communication network on the ship, and I receive a burst of stored traffic. How very strange to be out of network for so long, for the first time since never!
After scanning through the messages, the news of the day seems to be mostly positive. Our investiture of the continental north is progressing smoothly. Minimal casualties on our side. There are a few exceptions to this rule, including one all-points bulletin I only notice because the software flags my cousin Jamyie’s unit:
0330. Disturbance, township CB08 in C14xB12. The unit securing town is out of contact…
0440. Heavy Infantry has stormed CB08 but met no resistance. Many Haphan casualties found. Nearly complete destruction of all equipment. Survivors being recovered from barricaded and collapsed buildings.
0712. Survivors report that they heard radio traffic from the mobile medical facility before they were overrun. The wounded Tachba had been told that Haphan science might investigate and then treat the Twisting, which the Tachba call the ‘Pollution’.
Upon hearing this, the Tachba demanded immediate treatment. When refused, they drew violent and destroyed the town.
DO NOT DISCUSS ‘POLLUTION’ WITH THE TACHBA.
Nightfall, Day 3. It’s dark. The idiots are attacking again. Endless streams of these creatures assault our perimeter fence. They’re quite ferocious; they hardly look human. Children mingle with the juveniles and adults, but luckily our combat software paints them as noncombatants. The children’s mission, it seems, is to gather the detached limbs of the fallen and carry them off the field. We don’t know why but my NCO remarked how hungry the Tachba look.
In our sector tonight, two foot patrols were attacked by Tachba war parties and overcome before air support arrived. Each patrol was a complete loss. Every soldier killed, some at length, and their weapons stolen.
So now Haphan beam weapons are in Tachba hands.
The Tachba are capable observers, apparently. They mimicked our actions with the weapons and somehow managed to get them working. We think it’s a knock-on military effect of the twisting. The Tachba will probably have no problem using any Haphan weapon system they can capture.
So now we take casualties from beam weapons. This slows our progress. We have to grub for cover and crawl around, at least until their battery packs run dry.
HQ orders that no further advanced weaponry should be lost to the enemy. Well, no shit. These are the same incompetents who told us to land in the arctic north, where we’d only face a “sparse population” compared to the crowded south. Yet there seems to be no end to these people. They emerge from the gloom in endless streams to kill or be cut to pieces.
First we were frightened by the attacks, and repelled them with maximum damage. Now, as they continue, we are perplexed and sickened. In only three days, our colonization project has become the most dismal, ugly thing in existence. I can’t tell if we are bringing civilization to Grigory IV, or simply damning ourselves to eternal punishment.
From “Tachba Meet Their New Masters,” a children’s primer
Many Tachba arrived to welcome the first space-ark. Some of them even walked for days! The Tachba watched, with admiration hampered by ignorance, as the bright plasma drive lowered the graceful ark through the atmosphere. When the ark-ship landed, it loomed like a mountain over the cold, flat landscape.
The Tachba called the city “Falling Mountain.” They learned with some pride that Falling Mountain would be the capitol of Grigory IV! It would be the seat of the Local Emperor!
Through marvelous Haphan ingenuity, the space-ark decoupled itself. Over a period of weeks, its sides folded out in large segments like a colossal metal flower, slowly revealing the city already built within.
Roads unfurled like carpets across the plains, connecting Falling Mountain to the other ark-ships. Anti-quake mesh grew filaments that stabilized the ground to miles below the surface. Then the filaments hardened into geo-thermal taps to provide energy for the cities.
To the confused, benighted Tachba, this all seemed very magical! Knowledgeable Haphan linguists explained each development in the simplest possible terms.
The Tachba were pleased to learn that they would be allowed to relocate from Haphan territory, and that they would pay their relocation fee with imperial bond certificates! Soon they were hard at work mining stones from quarries, to pay off the certificates and buy more. Some Tachba even earned bonuses by submitting their smartest children to special Haphan schools.
At the time, nobody knew how many Haphans would arrive at Grigory IV. Not even the Haphans!
This is because the new cities that filled the continental north would be joined, year over year, by ever more ark-ships. Convoys are built to celebrate the birth of an emperor, and they are launched when the emperor comes of age. Then, convoy ships are built throughout the life of the emperor. The colonization only ends when the emperor is put to rest!
Barring unrest at home, the convoy to Grigory IV might continue to arrive for the next fifty years. It could lead to untold millions of Haphans, all sharing the land with the simple Tachba.
The local empress, who was none other than the illustrious Fleet Commander, was sublimely aware of how easily the Tachba could be confused. She selected the wisest Tachba from every town and told them the secret: Haphan ark-ships would continue to arrive, and the number of Haphans would continue to grow. Grigory IV was now a Haphan world.
As usual, it was the old Tachba women who did the answering. “You are welcome,” they said. “We have fire, swords, and baxxaxx saliva. We can always make more room for you.”
6
Gawarty
Midnight. Gawarty felt mired and suffocated in his heavy trench kit as he plodded down Sell Street toward the club. Only a supreme act of will and a cooling flop sweat kept him from vomiting onto the sidewalk. The parts of him which weren’t hung over were feeling very young and unequal to the task ahead.
He turned into the throughway and saw an antique steam-cart idling and an old, legless Sesseran dithering in the engine under an up-folded slab of chassis armor. Sethlan and Diggery waited in the dim light, Sethlan with a crooked cheroot burning in his teeth. Nana was there too, but only for a moment. She gave Gawarty an opaque look and disappeared back up the stairs.
“Early morning,” said Gawarty with forced heartiness. “Are we all rested?”
“Oh, yes sir. And got some drinking in besides.” Diggery pointedly glanced at Gawarty’s press, which was bright and gleaming, while the Sesserans looked like walking corpses. “Are you coming from a formal party?”
“Diggery,” said Semelon alertly, “perhaps any verbal jousting may be tabled for today. There is an attack brewing.”
“At the front? I heard no such thing,” said Gawarty, and then wished he hadn’t when Diggery grinned.
Sethlan climbed into the cart. “It’s customary to meet in the club before departure, lieutenant. If there is a briefing, you’ll hear it then.”
“I shall remember, sir.”
Gawarty climbed in with Diggery, and found that, with the doors closed and heavily barred from the inside, the old contraption was close but cozy. Diggery noticed him staring.
“It’s over eighty years old. Some old family was licensed by the Haphans and had a factory outside of town for a while.”
“It was built by the Ghamse Concern,” said the d
river. He was tying off lines, cranking pistons, and yanking shiny brass levers. Gawarty thought the driver had gone mad, but then the machine entered reverse, and metal-rimmed wheels clattered on the cobblestones. As they backed out of the throughway, the driver continued, slightly out of breath, “Which it was one of our shining moments in history, la. And a young helpie like yourself, Diggery, ignorant of the past, being our darkest.”
“With another eighty years,” Diggery told Gawarty loudly, “our steam-contraptions might even grow as reliable as a cattle cart.”
“The Ghamses were shut down after ten years, with only a thousand boiler-cars made,” the driver continued. “The engineers all killed each other over a piston drawing, and the Happies revoked the license.”
The town rolled past the gun-slit window. From this view, Emsa was a series of featureless stone walls, all stretching the length of each interminable block, briefly if ever broken by the variation of a sewage spout or a recessed door. Eventually the buildings thinned, and then disappeared all together, replaced by slowly stirring trees. They passed fields with old barns and haystacks barely visible in the moonlight. It was bucolic, with no hint of the front, until they slotted onto the minor railway that led south.
Gawarty wanted to talk. He ached to join the genial animosity bouncing between Diggery and the driver as they argued about Ghamsas and entrepreneurship, but he clamped down, refusing to let his nerves betray him. Sethlan sat still and silent, rocking with the steam cart. He might have been sleeping, except his eyes were open and fixed on the firing hatch beside Gawarty’s head.
Eventually Diggery wore the driver into submission, and he turned to them with a grin. “These quiet mornings put me in mind of our first time on this stretch. Remember, Captain? When we still had Tejj, and we added those two soldiers to the luggage rack?”
The Eternal Front: A Lines of Thunder Novel (Lines of Thunder Universe) Page 20
