by Tanya Huff
Although the Corps used drones on Crucible during the final two tendays of basic, they’d been of little use during actual combat when both sides used orbital EMPs to keep the war at a flesh-and-blood level. The plastic had wanted to learn about the people of the Confederation and the Primacy, and nothing stripped things to a base level like holding a companion’s guts in with bare hands. Torin had strong opinions on people who killed by remote control.
By the time Presit finished her opening statements, the crowd was hanging on her every word, an awed rumble rising like distant thunder. Torin had to admit, she was impressed by the way Presit played the crowd, adapting her prepared text to their reactions. When she sketched out the data sheet’s discovery, Torin and Craig’s faces were superimposed over the Threxie images to loud applause from the plaza and polite applause from the bleachers. The Mictok seated next to Craig, extended her eyestalks out far enough she could look around him at Torin. When Torin raised a brow, the eyestalks snapped back.
“You’re wearing your resting murder face,” Craig told her quietly. “Not going to help convince the Elder Races we’re harmless.”
“We’re not.”
“Fair enough.”
Torin noted those in the crowd who looked directly at them rather than at the giant image of them—all Younger Races and the odds were high every one of them had seen combat. That kind of awareness was learned behavior.
The first three speakers were politicians. The drone of their voices washing over her, Torin paid only enough attention to register threat, and, instead of listening, worked out the best way to clear civilians from the plaza in case of attack. Assuming incoming hostiles got past the defense satellites, they’d have to move quickly to achieve their objectives before fighters arrived from the CF Gartuwan, currently in orbit. If the hostiles only wanted the data sheet and had half-a-dozen functional brain cells, they’d drop on as steep an angle as their heat shields would allow, scoop, and go. Nuh Ner had nothing on the ground able to stop them, and if they weren’t taken out high, their engines would do more damage than most weapons. New game if the hostiles put boots on the ground. She should’ve brought. . . .
“Binti’s running sniper simulations with the new kid.” Craig said quietly, voice sliding under the drone. “You were eyeballing the surrounding roof lines again,” he added as her brows rose. “Easy enough to figure out why.” His thigh pressed against hers, a line of warmth in spite of the environmental controls in their uniforms that made feeling his body heat impossible. She could hear the smile in his voice. “I know you.”
He did. He knew all the ways she’d been remade by the war and all the ways she’d been remaking herself after.
“They don’t have weapons up there,” he continued, “because the Primacy never got this far in.”
“The Primacy’s not our problem these days,” she reminded him. “Humans are.”
“Some Humans.”
“True.” There were Humans on the plaza. A minority among the mixed species, granted, but how many would it take if they were armed with hidden weapons?
“You don’t expect an attack.”
He wasn’t asking. Craig knew where to draw the line between sensible paranoia and monsters under the bed. Within the Confederation, her life had been, and still was, the exception and not the rule. “No.”
“But it never hurts to be prepared.”
Torin maintained her neutral expression but returned the pressure of his leg. “It’s like you know me.” When this was over, she’d show him what that meant to her—which, given the current lack of support from up high, gave her a more interesting operation to plan than a planetary defense.
The next four speakers were scientists. Their areas of expertise tripped off Presit’s tongue, but Torin had no idea what any of them actually did. Seemed none of the scientists who’d been taken hostage on Threxie, who’d been there when the data sheet had been found, had been asked to speak. Perhaps their trauma had given them the option of refusing their invitations. Or, perhaps fieldwork didn’t provide the credentials needed for such exalted company; after all, their positions came with clear and understandable functions. After the scientists finished, a cultural historian, a Niln, stepped up to the adjusted podium, tasted the air, and gave a dramatically condensed presentation on the effects of the polyhydroxide on the last three centuries of development within the Confederation. His point seemed to be that the Younger Races had shaken things up.
Torin had to consciously keep her hands relaxed. One of the Krai officers two rows up, snapped his teeth together.
Dr. Lushin, a bicolored Trun linguist, took the podium to point out the most frequent three symbols recorded from the data sheet and what they most likely meant. The symbols were present in three hundred and forty-two images of the data sheet collected on Threxie and seven hundred and twenty images of the data sheet collected since. Torin watched them flick by at a near hypnotic speed after Dr. Lushin warned that nonbiocular species should avert their gaze.
There was only one nonbiocular species present.
“Say Mictok and be done with it,” Torin growled.
Craig held out his fist to the Mictok beside him.
She tapped it with her nearer antenna and the two Mictok in the row behind her, clacked their inner mandibles.
The Humans First who’d attacked Mining Station Trilik had been as open about their disdain for other species as the Mictok on the mining station had been about the Younger Races, and Torin preferred that to Dr. Lushin’s passive-aggressive commentary as ze sketched soft light representations of what the patterns could mean in the air over the plaza. Cracks in the perfect structure of the Confederation were entirely because of the Younger Races, her firm beige ass.
“What a loud of shite,” Craig muttered. “Even I’m hoping for an attack at this point.”
“A false alarm wouldn’t hurt,” Torin agreed. Her ass had begun to go numb. Even as a member of a ground combat unit, she’d been to her fair share of ceremonies; a subset of military personnel clung to pomp and circumstance, bands and speeches and presentations, as though they made up for the blood and the pain and the terror and cylinders of ash carried out after every battle. Maybe for them it did. Everyone coped with the consequences of war in different ways.
When Dr. Lushin finished and returned to zir seat, and Presit launched into the next introduction, Torin realized that every speaker had come from the lowest level of the bleachers. When the Mictok beside Craig unfolded her legs and took her place at the podium, Torin clenched her teeth. Presit had said she wanted the three of them in the presence of the data sheet. Apparently, in the presence of in Katrien meant part of the show.
Clever. Not even the H’san would want to deal with the fallout of stopping a live broadcast in order to prevent contact that should have happened almost a year ago. Contact that anyone who’d seen the broadcast from the prison planet and who knew about the data sheet, would have assumed had happened.
Torin suspected everyone had seen the broadcast from the prison planet by now. Given the relatively recent acquisition of the data sheet, there might still be a few members of the Confederation who hadn’t watched Presit’s program on the discovery.
The H’san played with assumptions.
They sang to the dawn. They smelled good. They liked cheese.
They couldn’t possibly have a planet of hidden weapons.
They couldn’t possibly be preventing basic research on the data sheet.
The Mictok, SciRe Vin’tic, spoke briefly about the search parameters they’d been using in an attempt to find the plastic’s home system, one eyestalk bent to keep the bleachers in sight. The math was above Torin’s pay grade, but Craig nodded along.
“We have, of course, found nothing as yet.” After a brief pause, SciRe Vin’tic dipped both antennae and hurried back to her seat.
As Presit thank
ed her, scenes from Threxie began playing again behind the podium.
Torin could see anticipation on the faces of the crowd.
Ears forward, Presit gathered that anticipation up and layered it through her voice. “And now, Gentles, we are having a great deal of pleasure in asking ex-Gunnery Sergeant Strike Team Leader Warden Kerr . . .”
“Oh, for fuksake.”
A Krai. From a couple of rows up. Torin suspected the Krai officer who’d snapped their teeth earlier, but she didn’t turn to look. She agreed with the observation.
“. . . and Warden Ryder to approach the podium.”
The sound rising from the bleachers had a common theme: This was not on the schedule.
What would happen, Torin wondered, if she stayed where she was? She was almost curious enough about Presit’s reaction to try it, but Craig was standing and she wouldn’t hang him out to dry.
Two voices rose out of the rumble behind her.
“Are we going to allow this to happen?”
“There’s thousands of people in that crowd and they now want what that reporter wants. How do you suggest we stop it?”
Crossing to Craig’s side, Torin glanced at the H’san. They hadn’t moved since they’d folded their legs and settled into what passed for sitting, neck collapsed into its lowest position. Torin wouldn’t blame them if they’d fallen asleep—which was big of her as she blamed them for pretty much everything else. She could feel the weight of General Morris’ regard from where he sat amid the military. He wasn’t the only disapproving officer up there, but his disapproval felt familiar.
The crowd in the palm of her hand, Presit spoke over silent visuals of Torin confronting the plastic on the prison planet, telling the story as she watched, making old news new again. Torin locked her gaze on the middle distance rather than see the thin, gray line of plastic emerge from her tear duct and run down her cheek. From Craig’s tear duct. Down Craig’s cheek. Hands behind her back, her feet shoulder width apart, she listened to the flesh-and-blood Craig breathe through his nose. The force of each inhale, each exhale, indicated his dislike of reliving the moment. As far as Torin knew, he’d never watched the vid.
The crowd cheered as Torin-from-then flicked the plastic from Presit’s eyes off the end of her finger into the undulating mass. Booed when the alien rose up, gray, bipedal, about a meter tall, its facial features barely formed.
The recording stopped, and the image of the data sheet replaced it—the image larger, brighter, more dangerously alien than the actual item hanging below it.
“No one are arguing that I, as well as Wardens Kerr and Ryder, are having a connection to the plastic. When it are having been in our brains, we are having convinced it to be leaving this part of space!”
Not quite, Torin amended, hands curling into fists.
“It takes time to collect sufficient data on new species.” The gray plastic alien’s mouth barely moved. “Creating extreme situations erases all but essential behaviors and shortens the duration of the study. We continued the conflict until we had sufficient data. The data must be analyzed.”
“Today,” Presit continued when the noise died down again, “we are going to be telling this piece of plastic we are not wanting it around either!”
The roar of approval from the plaza slammed against the dais.
Presit acknowledged the crowd, then left the podium and walked to the data sheet, her image joining its image above the dais. She beckoned to Torin and Craig. “Warden Kerr, you are touching it first and you are maintaining your touch. Then Warden Ryder are to be doing the same. I are touching it last as it are my brain that are bringing it to life on the previous occasion.”
“Is it safe?” A di’Taykan from five rows back in the crowd, bright blue hair even more brilliant in the sunlight. Sergeant at least, given the way her voice had carried.
“Is it safe?” Presit spread her hands, claws glittering. “We are standing with ex-Gunnery Sergeant Strike Team Leader Warden Kerr. How much safer are you wanting to be?”
The crowd roared with laughter. Torin caught the gaze of the di’Taykan and raised a brow. Her hair flipped back and she nodded. Good to know there’d be backup if the three of them touching the data sheet ended up in the shitter. The training didn’t come off with the uniform.
“Warden Kerr.”
The “invitation” from the Justice Minister had only compelled attendance, not the raising of a plastic alien out of an artifact, and a glance at the bleachers showed the occupants split about eighty/twenty between anticipation and unease. While no one had leapt up shouting for them to stop, sometime in the last couple of minutes the H’san had risen to their feet and pulled out a half-circle communicator. They did not look happy.
If the H’san wanted Presit’s experiment stopped, then Torin was fine with it going ahead.
She took the final step forward and pressed the first two fingers of her left hand against the sheet. It felt warmer than she remembered, but then it had been hanging in the sun for most of the morning.
The symbols shifted. Paused. Shifted again. Paused.
The crowd cheered although Torin doubted any of them knew what they were cheering for. There was a collective intake of breath from the bleachers, the scientists stared enthralled, and the military personnel fought to remain expressionless.
“Warden Ryder.”
Craig pressed his fingers to the plastic six centimeters above hers. As far as she could tell, the symbols responded the exact same way to his touch. Shift. Pause. Shift. Pause. She lifted her fingers; nothing happened, so she put them back down.
“And now, I are applying the final variable.” Presit’s fingers touched the plastic thirty centimeters below Torin’s. Shift. Pause. Shift. Pause.
Torin lifted her fingers again. No response.
Craig lifted his. No response.
Torin put hers back. No response.
No one watching made a sound.
The data sheet remained frozen in the configuration it had taken after Presit’s touch.
A thousand people exhaling sounded like the wind through the evergreens on Crucible. On Crucible where the plastic had turned a training exercise into combat and Torin’d had a conversation with Major Svensson’s arm.
“Now, we are all to be raising our fingers simultaneously. On three. One, two, three . . .”
A multitude of voices shouted, “Nothing happened!” Presit had made the crowd a part of this and, Younger or Elder, they were no longer content to be passive observers.
“They’re one shithead away from being a mob,” Craig said under the waves of sound.
“And you wondered why I mapped the exits.” If political presentations happened regularly, and the existence of the plaza suggested they did, there was a chance the PLE had just called for reinforcements.
“Shouldn’t have doubted you.”
“Damned right.”
Presit raised her hands and, after a moment, the noise tapered off to a low rumble of conversation. The power of celebrity in action.
“Nothing are having happened, that are being sadly true.” She didn’t sound sad. She spread her arms, silver highlights rippling through the thick fur, and smiled. “Fortunately, that are not being our only attempt at communication today. When I are being on the prison planet, I are having observed an interaction that are being relevant.”
Torin’s voice boomed out over the plaza as her image, blistered, starving, and filthy, wearing only boots and underwear, glared down at the plastic alien, and snarled, “You are one smart-assed comment away from being an entree.”
“The Krai,” Presit purred, “are being able to digest the plastic.”
The Krai had digested a lot of plastic directly following the reveal, Krai-controlled areas had been stripped of potential enemies with impressive speed. From the expressions on the faces of the s
cientists, testing that particular data point hadn’t occurred to any of them, definitively proving there’d been no Krai among them because it sure as hell would have occurred to one of the Krai.
The young Krai who emerged from behind the bleachers had clearly been waiting to be called. The pattern of mottling on his head identified him as male. The corporate logos all over his clothing said he worked for Sector Central News. He strutted out, lips pulled back off his teeth in a challenge that raised a response from both the crowd and the bleachers. The staccato sound of the hardest substance in known space snapping together split the ambient noise into pieces and it took a moment for less aggressive sounds to recreate the whole.
“It are being common knowledge,” Presit said in a tone billions of viewers knew as an introduction to the extraordinary, “that polyhydroxide alcoholyde are meaning organic and if it are being organic, the Krai are being able to be eating it. Are you being ready, Girstin?”
“I am!”
“Then please be applying your teeth.”
“. . . destroying a priceless artifact!”
Presit peered over the edge of her dark glasses toward the bleachers and pinned the protesting scientist with a patronizing glare. “He are taking a tiny bite, not making a meal.”
“Eat! Eat! Eat! Eat!”
Torin could hear half a dozen other languages besides Federate rising from the crowd, but she assumed they meant the same thing. Crowds seldom shouted have you thought this through?
The H’san shoved their communicator back . . . somewhere, and their inner eyelids flicked closed, then open. Torin would bet her pension that they’d been told to be ready.
