Primary Targets (Earth at War Book 2)

by Rick Partlow

  There was a huge reaction to that news, a rumble passing through the crowd, perhaps horror at the thought of us getting our hands on a starship.

  “It is one ship,” Joon-Pah went on, pushing past the noise and the outrage. “And they lack the ability to build more without our help. They could not use it to conquer us, but they offer its service, and their own, to protect us. They wish to join our Alliance and pledge their ship and their troops to fighting the Tevynians, to keeping them from killing and enslaving us and ending our civilization.

  “I am but a simple soldier, a man whose calling it is to protect. Perhaps I allowed that single-minded vision to blind me to other priorities, but it is my thought that all the tradition and the laws and the histories of our world will mean nothing if it falls to the Tevynian savages.” He bowed his head and threw his arms out, almost as if he were being crucified.

  “For my sins, I throw myself on your mercy. But for the sake of our very survival, I beg you to hear what I have said and consider bringing the people of Earth into our Alliance.”

  His hand had been up the whole time and I wondered if his shoulder was killing him, because it hurt me just watching. Now that he was finished, he lowered it and stared at the floor, a prisoner waiting for judgment. I raised an eyebrow. That was pretty ballsy, not to mention his expert creative reporting. I’d underestimated the captain. Maybe he and the whole Helta military were a bit of a joke, but he wasn’t a stranger to the politics game.

  “I am Gafto-Lo-Mok, the Deputy Facilitator,” the female declared, speaking nearly into the echo of Joon-Pah’s words, standing and raising her hand in a violent, sudden motion as if she held a sword in her upraised fist. “And I call Captain Joon-Pah traitor!”

  “And here,” Strawbridge whispered, “is where the show really starts.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Captain Joon-Pah has spoken well,” the Deputy Facilitator allowed, the harsh edge to her tone softening a bit, as if giving her opponent his due. “His words are smooth and soothing, showing his actions in the best light. This is no shock, for he knows what he has done has violated every law, every tradition of the Helta going back to the days of the Elders. We have not always known of the location of the Source of Life, but we have always known it was sacred, inviolable. We have always known that to desecrate it brought a sentence of death.” She swept her upraised hand around and bared her teeth at Joon-Pah.

  “These things were no secret. Nor was there any exception made for the fears of a single Helta who believed he knew better than our ancestors, who believes he knows better than the very Elders. This sort of hubris will lead us to destruction, and these creatures will be its agents!” Now she was staring directly at us, and for a fuzzy vegetarian, she could work up quite the venomous glare.

  “We have seen what these humans have to offer. The Tevynians are kith and kin to them, and they bring nothing but death, destruction and slavery to our people, yet we are to think that because Joon-Pah has a perverted affection for their kind that they will somehow prove different? Are we wayward children, seeking any who would lead us by the hand with promises of safety? I say to you that we have our guidance, that the Elders left us the wisdom we needed to thrive, and that all our problems have come from ignoring their ways!

  “Joon-Pah has told us we must forsake our ancient ways in order to survive, but I do not believe that the Elders have forsaken us. If we abide by their laws, they will return to save us! Have not our people believed this since time immemorial? We thought ourselves the equals of the Elders when we shared our gifts with the Alliance, and simply because the Elders were merciful and we were not destroyed immediately, we grew even more arrogant and assumed we could do the same with the Tevynians and there would be no consequences. We have been punished for this sin, almost more than we can bear, and yet Joon-Pah and others among you would have us repeat our mistakes in some misguided effort to correct them.”

  She turned again, giving the whole chamber a good view of the determined, fierce expression on her face.

  “If you would take advice, take it not from me nor from the traitor among us, nor from these creatures, but from our ancestors, and from the Elders before them. Put the traitor to death, along with the monsters who accompanied him, and beg for forgiveness of the beneficent creators. This is the way of wisdom. Theirs is the way of madness.”

  Gafto-Lo-Mok lowered her hand but remained standing, as Joon-Pah had. I nodded despite my feeling in the matter. It had been an effective speech. If Joon-Pah had come across as an eloquent politician, Gafto-Lo-Mok was a fire-and-brimstone preacher, my father in a bear suit. I could see the emotional waves of her words still rippling through the crowd in waves of murmuring and a few loud exclamations. They might not have liked what she had to say, but it had scared them.

  “Tradition would have me speak next,” Caan-Fan-To declared, not raising his hand as the others had. “Tradition would have me declare my support for one of these positions or the other, then allow you to vote. But instead, I would break with tradition, for it has not prepared us for what we now face.”

  He turned toward us and made a slashing gesture at Delia Strawbridge.

  “Instead, I will allow the people of Earth to speak for themselves. You will now hear the words of Delia Strawbridge, an appointed representative of the government known as the United States of America.”

  I grunted a private laugh at his attempt to pronounce “America.”

  Strawbridge had, I assumed, been coached on how to behave in front of the Council. She raised her hand in a similar manner to the two Facilitators and slowly turned in a circle as if showing her face to every Helta in the chamber.

  “Honored members of the Helta Council of Facilitators,” she said, not trusting her own knowledge of the language this time, allowing her translator to do the heavy lifting. The volume on the device had been turned up, and when she spoke, it was relayed to a speaker system concealed somewhere in the ceiling or the walls, the Helta translation of her words echoing through the huge hall. “I bring you greetings from the President of the United States and the other nations who have joined us in our coalition to fight by your side.”

  She turned in a slow circle, letting the whole audience see her, and she beckoned me to do the same. I felt like a complete idiot, but I did, turning like a runway model showing off the latest in Marine Corps dress uniform fashion.

  “Some of you are frightened of us because of our appearance. You believe that simply because we are similar in appearance to your enemies, the Tevynians, that we must also be dangerous and bent on conquest. But appearances can be deceiving. To us, your outward appearance is that of a species of wild animal native to our world, and were we to judge you simply by how you look, we would think you primitive and foolish. Yet you are not. You hold the secrets of the fabric of spacetime in your hands, and you manipulate it at will, outracing light across the universe, something we had not thought possible. Your military worries about the weapons the Tevynians have stolen, but the ability to cross the stars is surely the most wondrous thing any sentient being could conceive of.

  “And it is this for which we are most grateful, the opportunity to discover, to peacefully reach out to other life. We would not use this gift as conquerors, but as explorers. And if we must be warriors, it is only to protect you, our benefactors, from those who mean you harm. We would do this not for reward, but simply out of gratitude for allowing us to be part of something greater, something more important.”

  She kept her hand up and I could see in the pinch at the corners of her eyes that it was taking its toll, but I doubt the Helta could discern it on her face.

  “We humans are not perfect. Once, we were all as the Tevynians, all thoughtless and violent and unwilling to listen to reason. Some of us are still that way, but what I think are the best of us have joined your cause. We still make mistakes, just as you have done, but when we use force it isn’t to conquer new territory and seize it for our own, selfish need
s, it is in an attempt to help those being oppressed.”

  Sometimes when it’s none of our business and we should have just kept our noses out of it. I wanted to say that, but I didn’t.

  “If you are all perfect,” she went on, “if none of you have ever erred and paid the price, then you are free to reject us for our imperfections. But if you are willing to give us the chance to prove ourselves to you, we would be honored to be your allies. And you are going to need allies very soon. We captured a Tevynian soldier at your world, Wellspring, when we freed it from the grasp of your enemy and returned it to the Helta who live there. We managed to extract information from him that leads us to believe the Tevynians are going to throw everything they have into an attack on this system within weeks.”

  If there had been rumblings before, now there was an eruption and I wondered if there was any such thing as a sergeant-at-arms to keep order among the Councilmembers or if it was more of an honor system. The uproar lasted for a solid minute before it finally died on its own as if by some cultural cue I had missed.

  Strawbridge lowered her arm and I think I was the only one who heard the relieved sigh and saw her working the muscles of her shoulder to loosen them. Caan-Fan-To spoke but didn’t raise his arm and I supposed there was a significance to that.

  “The arguments have been made,” he said. “The choice is yours.”

  “Damn,” I whispered to Strawbridge. “That’s it? That’s pretty damn quick compared to a House or Senate vote.”

  “That’s not even opening statements for one party,” she assured me. “These people are insanely simplistic in their politics.”

  “What?” I asked her, raising an eyebrow. “Don’t you find that refreshing after a life spent in the Beltway?” The question was teasing, but I was honestly curious.

  Her eyes widened and she pawed at her comm unit, turning off the automatic translator.

  “Hell no,” she hissed. “It’s a nightmare!”

  “Why? Isn’t this the Athenian ideal everyone thinks of when they talk about how corrupt and contentious American politics are? Just two sides laying out the facts and appeals of their argument and then we vote?”

  “Major Clanton,” she said archly, “there are very good reasons why debate in the Congress takes so long. The worst miscarriages and overreaches of our history have happened when debate is truncated, when things are sped through without the contention. Laws should be hard to pass and the tough decisions should be tough to make. If they aren’t, you get dictators, whether one or 536 of them, which can be just as bad.”

  I nodded, considering her words. Unexpected depths to Deputy Secretary Strawbridge, though I wasn’t sure if I agreed with her.

  “But they’re not human,” I reminded her. “Maybe what works for us wouldn’t work for them. We can’t look at everything through…what did you call it? Humanocentrism?”

  “They’re far too human for it to be a coincidence,” she countered. “Come on, given what we know about the Elders, it’s not inconceivable they’ve interfered to make sure the Helta are as close to human as they can be.”

  Damn. I hadn’t thought of that. And I still wasn’t sure why they’d do it. What made us so special?

  “Also,” she added, “if the minority party isn’t given sufficient time to have their say, then you get unhealthy resentment and we’ve seen how destructive that can be these last twenty years.”

  “Oh, there is a way for the minority to contest a vote,” Joon-Pah assured her.

  I spun around, not realizing that he’d come up behind us, apparently free from his customary position now that the debate was over. Paranoia twinged, certain he’d been listening in, but I slugged it back down. He’d seen our political system firsthand. If any Heltan knew how inefficiently it worked, it was him.

  I was about to ask him what the method was when the opera-singer fire alarm sounded again. I hadn’t noticed the toga-clad Helta enter the chamber, and by the time I spotted the singer, the vocal klaxon had died and everyone was staring at another Heltan I hadn’t noticed before, this one dressed just as the others except for some sort of hat that seemed a cross between the ceremonial feathers of a Native American headdress and something an Orthodox priest might wear.

  “She will announce the results of the vote,” Joon-Pah told us, and I was glad for the commentary because I wouldn’t have had a clue what was going on otherwise. “The vote was taken electronically of course, but tradition demands it be announced live in front of the entire Council.”

  “The vote was yes or no,” the town crier-pope-Indian chief-looking were-bear yelled, loud enough to be heard without a loudspeaker. “The proposition was whether to accept the aid of the humans from the Source of Life, to continue to allow them access to our technology and bring them into our Alliance. The results of the vote are 513 yes, 347 no.”

  There was barely any reaction from the crowd, but my shoulders relaxed and I sighed with relief sigh.

  “Thank God,” I said. “Now, maybe we can get around to preparing for the Tevynians….”

  “Something isn’t right,” Strawbridge deduced. She was looking around, gauging the reserved response from Caan-Fan-To and his people. She turned to Joon-Pah. “What is it? What’s happening?”

  “Didn’t we win?” I asked him, shaking my head in confusion.

  “The proposition carried,” Joon-Pah said, seeming just as grim as the rest of the crowd. “But it didn’t reach the 551-vote minimum, which means it can be contested.”

  “So, it’s like, going to your version of the Supreme Court or something?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Caan-Fan-To!” Gafto Lo-Mok’s voice carried like the peal of a bell. “I challenge this vote and your right to lead this Council.”

  Murmurs, a few exclamations, not clear enough for my translator to pick up.

  “What does that mean?” I asked Joon-Pah. “Is this like some sort of no-confidence vote like they have in parliaments on Earth?”

  “I believe I know what you mean, and it is something like that, but no vote will be involved, for we already know what the results would be. This is as I told you, a way for intractable differences to be resolved.”

  “And will you fight me yourself, Gafto-Lo-Mok?” Caan-Fan-To demanded.

  “Fight?” Strawbridge’s eyes went wide with horror.

  “I have a champion,” the Deputy Facilitator said. She made a gesture and another Heltan, a male, at least as burly and muscular as Caan-Fan-To, stepped from a cluster of beanbags to the center of the floor. “Facilitator Bron-Min will represent me and those who have voted with me in this challenge. What of you, Prime Facilitator? Will you come to this fight on your own feet, or do you have a champion?”

  “What’s with this champion shit?” I asked quietly.

  “She is a female,” Joon-Pah said as if that explained it all. At my confused look, he went on. “She is at a physical disadvantage against a male of Caan-Fan-To’s size, so tradition demands she be allowed to choose another of her allies to fight in her stead. However, if one side is able to choose a champion, then the other must be given the option as well.”

  “Joon-Pah,” Caan-Fan-To said, projecting his voice, apparently unconcerned about anyone overhearing him. “What is your advice, my comrade?”

  “I would be honored to fight in your place, Prime Facilitator,” Joon-Pah told him, giving the Helta equivalent of a salute.

  “Prime,” Vandas-Gol said, just as loud although he stood right beside the male, “I would fight for you myself if such is your wish. But hear my words, I feel you should take this challenge with your own hands, your own feet, your own courage. This vote has been too close. If you choose another, there may yet be those who harbor resentment, who would continue to challenge your leadership at every turn. With one victory here, at your own hand, you could silence them so long as you hold office.”

  Caan-Fan-To was silent, and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but apparently, Joon-Pah could.


  “This is a mistake,” he advised us quietly, and in English. “He is strong still, but he has not been challenged in years, has been living a sedentary life, never working with his own hands.”

  “Then tell him,” I urged him. “Before it’s too late.”

  “It already is. He has asked my opinion, and now he is about to reject it.”

  “I will take on this fight myself,” Caan-Fan-To announced, his voice booming through the chamber. He made his way into the center circle, passing us, giving an unreadable look to Joon-Pah. “And when it is done, none may ever say that I have hidden from the consequences of my convictions! Let this be done, and let it be done quickly.”

  Joon-Pah commented in English, because, as he’d told me many times, English was much more utilitarian for swearing than Helta.

  “Shit.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “As the challenged,” Vandas-Gol said, “you have the choice of weapons. What will you fight with, Prime?”

  “He can choose tooth and claw,” Joon-Pah explained to us, “or what you might call a war-club, or a spear, or a….” The Heltan hesitated. “What is the word? Oh, yes, I think you call it an assegai, a shortened spear you use with one hand.”

  “What would you tell him to use?” I wondered. Caan-Fan-To seemed to be taking a while considering the question.

  “Tooth and claw,” Joon-Pah told me with no hesitation. “He might be embarrassed, but there is less likely to be an unfortunate accident that way. These fights are only supposed to be to first blood, but when you use a blade, the first blood could come straight from your heart.”

  “This is fucking barbaric,” Strawbridge growled. “I thought you considered yourselves culturally advanced. Even in the most violent and warlike of the governments on Earth, the ones we call rogues, they don’t fight each other for control like gladiators.”