Ganwold's Child

by Diann Read

He took the fold-down chair beside her bed as he had before. “Libby says he’s starting to show some improvement,” he offered.

  Darcie nodded, and muffled a cough. “Have you seen him today?”

  “Briefly.” Lujan sat back on the seat. “He always seems uncomfortable to have me there so I don’t stay long.”

  “You’re a stranger to him,” Darcie said. “Even more so because you’re his father.”

  Lujan drew his brows together. “I don’t understand.”

  “He grew up in a matriarchal culture,” she said. “Gan mothers run the clans, and they choose a new male every season. No child knows who his biological father is; it’s not important. We’d been there four years before I even heard the gan word for father. The very thought of you telling him you’re his father is strange to him.”

  Lujan considered that, his brow furrowing more deeply.

  “Everything is going to be strange to him,” Darcie said. “Some things are strange to me now. It’ll take time to grow used to it.”

  That goes for all of us, Lujan thought. He almost said it aloud, but his pager chirped and its little electronic voice said, “Admiral Sergey, please come to the Watch.”

  He switched the pager off. “I’m sorry,” he said, rising. “I’ll be back when I can.”

  She gave a slight nod in reply and watched him leave the room.

  He released a pent-up breath as he peeled off the sterilesuit in the isolation lock, then started up the main corridor.

  The Watch lay six decks up, just off the Combat Information Center. A startled petty officer began to call the area to attention as Lujan came in, but he made a negating motion and said, “As you were.”

  Captain Horsch and Commander Marcus Ullen had arrived before him. They stood waiting with grim expressions, and Lujan said, “What’ve we got, Marcus?”

  “We just received a message intercept from Issel, sir,” said Commander Ullen. “The surviving ships from its Yan fleet cleared lightskip outside the Issel system a few hours ago. According to communications from its flagship, the fleet is under masuk control and has stated intent to attack the planet.”

  Lujan arched an eyebrow at that. “What’s the possibility this message could be a deception? Could they be trying to divert our attention?”

  “I wondered that myself, sir,” said Ullen, “but I don’t think it’s very likely. The message was sent over military channels from the command post on Issel II to its orbital stations and to a fleet commander.”

  Captain Horsch shook his head, disbelief etched around his eyes. “They’re attacking Issel? That’s impossible! It doesn’t even make sense!”

  “Actually, sir, it does,” said Ullen, “from a masuk point of view. I should’ve realized it the other day when we first played Admiral Ne’s log.” He said, “Masuki don’t accept defeat. They’re probably blaming their human counterparts for betraying them, so revenge is the natural recourse. Issel is, from their way of thinking, fair game.”

  Lujan didn’t feel surprised, hearing that—except, perhaps, that it had happened so soon. “How is Issel responding?” he asked.

  “They’re taking the threat seriously, sir,” Ullen said. “They’ve initiated Attack Warning Alert and vectored several carrier groups from system defense patrols to intercept. There’s some indication that the main spacedocks are being evacuated as well.”

  “Are all of their returning ships accounted for?” Lujan asked next.

  “We believe so, sir,” said Ullen, and nodded toward Merrel. “The original estimate from Admiral Ne was about thirty surviving ships. This message gave a count of twenty-seven.”

  Captain Horsch, arms folded, still appeared skeptical. “Just how likely is it that they’ll really attack?”

  The Intelligence Chief made a wry face. “If they’re under masuk control,” he said, “it’s highly probable.”

  “And what would be their most likely targets?”

  “Probably the spacedocks or the command post moon. Maybe both. The spacedocks certainly wouldn’t be difficult to seize.”

  Horsch only nodded, and everyone stood silent for a moment, weighing the likely outcome of such attacks.

  “If you haven’t already, Marcus,” Lujan said, “relay this information to Sostis immediately. The situation has just entered a whole new dimension. We should probably expect some amendments to our current ops orders.”

  The commander nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “At this point, though, all we can do is wait, repair, rearm, and keep watching,” Lujan concluded. “I want a status report every twelve standard hours. Report any unusual signals, ships, or other activity.”

  “Of course, sir,” said Ullen.

  * *

  Lujan was still mulling it over as he pulled the sterilesuit on once more, but he put it from his mind as he reentered Darcie’s cubicle.

  She had fallen asleep in his absence. He crossed to the seat he had vacated earlier and sat down with a sigh. Picked up her nearest hand and began to examine it, turning it gently between his own.

  In another few minutes he began to fondle her fingers, twining them with his. He’d done that often during their intimate conversations before they were married. He’d done it through most of the night that she lay in labor with Tristan.

  Her hands had been smooth and immaculately clean then. As a surgeon, she’d considered them her most important tools and had always taken good care of them. That obviously hadn’t been possible on Ganwold. Calluses and cracked knuckles and small scars bore a mute account of what it had cost her to survive there.

  His thoughts wandered while she slept, but they always came back to the masuki, and to how he’d lost her. The subject had troubled him through the years because it had never been resolved. In fact, it had never been confirmed.

  Her hand tensed in his. He glanced up, saw uneasy puzzlement in her eyes, and released her hand. She folded it with the other one in her lap.

  “I’m sorry,” Lujan said. “It must’ve been a very difficult life.”

  “It wasn’t easy," she said. After a little silence she indicated his pager and asked, “Did you get—whatever it was—taken care of?”

  He managed a short smile. “For the moment. . . . Did you have a good nap?”

  “I suppose so.”

  Silence again. It always came back to the silence, the search for something to say.

  The call to the Watch slipped back through Lujan’s mind. He hesitated for some moments before he asked, “What happened to your transport, Darcie? All we ever learned was it had been attacked en route to Enach.”

  She didn’t seem startled by the question. She said, “It was attacked. By masuki.”

  He leaned forward on his chair. “Do you still remember anything about it?”

  “I remember nearly all of it,” she said.

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  Darcie drew a deep breath. “The masuki disabled and boarded the ship and killed most of the crew. I took Tris and hid in a maintenance locker—” she drew a difficult breath, “—and a bit later I heard them going through cabins, one after another, and rounding up passengers; I could hear people going up the passage outside the maintenance compartment.”

  “They were slavers?” said Lujan.

  She nodded, and muffled a cough. “Yes.”

  He suddenly wondered how masuki defined revenge, and exactly what had driven them to seek it against Issel. Was it a matter of pride, of saving face after their defeats in battle? Was there some specific loss they hoped to recoup? The cost of their ships and troops, maybe?

  Or was it the spoils of battle denied them by Issel’s failure to take Sostis? What promised payment had motivated them to make such an alliance in the first place?

  He didn’t like the obvious answers. He furrowed his brow and tightened his jaw, and Darcie said, “Is something wrong, then?”

  “No; I’m sorry. Never mind.” He straightened and,
after a pause, asked, “How did you escape?”

  “They tried to make lightskip—several times,” she said. She fisted her hands in her lap and fixed her vision on them. “They almost destroyed the ship doing it, but they finally came out near Ganwold. That’s when the Dominion legionnaires came aboard; I believe they were System Defense troops. They searched the ship then and—they found Tris and me in the maintenance locker.” She had to stop to cough again.

  He waited, wordless, patient, and when she caught her breath she said, “They had knives. Belts of boarding knives round their waists.” He saw her shudder, saw how she began to gather up the edge of the sheet between her hands. “They marched me down the passage,” she said. She never looked up. “I—ducked into the cross-corridor and fired the shield door—and then I grabbed Tris and ran.

  “I wanted to get to the lifepods.” She gripped the wadded sheet with both hands now. “That was all I could think of. The lift to the lower deck was shot up, and there were bodies and smoke in the passages, and the legionnaires were coming round the other way to cut us off. So I took a—a pistol—from one of the dead soldiers.

  “I had it—in my hand—when we got to the bottom of—the emergency stairs.” Her words came in snatches as if she were running; the vital signs monitor above her headboard showed her pulse had accelerated. “I found a masuk down there, too. He tried to grab me and—I shot him—point blank. I didn’t even think about it—I just did it.

  “I’d—no idea where we were ‘til I launched the lifepod, and then all I could think was—however am I going to care for Tris?” Her hands, kneading the sheet, had grown white and pinched-looking. “I knew I couldn’t let the Dommie colonists find us, but I didn’t know if I could trust the ganan either.”

  “Tell me about the ganan,” said Lujan.

  Darcie glanced up briefly. “They’re Ganwold’s native race,” she said. “They’re the people the planet was named for. They’re hunter-gatherers. They’re nocturnal, and they have—fangs—and fingernails that look like claws.

  “They’re—very gentle, actually—but they don’t look it. I feared them at first.”

  She sat silent for a while, gazing past the sheet she wrinkled in her lap, apparently remembering. “I don’t know why I finally went with them. Perhaps because the legionnaires were searching for us, and I knew what would happen if they found us.” She kneaded the sheet in her hands. Released a shaky breath. Didn’t look up again. “At any rate, the ganan took us into their clan. They shared their food and played with Tris and taught us how to survive.”

  “And you lived out there with them all that time?” Lujan’s tone had softened.

  She nodded. “Until Mordan’s soldiers came through the camp and torched it, looking for us.” She lifted her gaze at last. “There was no way to escape that time.”

  Lujan didn’t say anything to that. He couldn’t. Searching her eyes, he saw the lingering terror in them, a sort of unfamiliar vulnerability. He wondered if he should offer her the comfort of his arms.

  * *

  “Twelve-point-two hours ago,” said the lieutenant from Intelligence, “an Isselan spacecraft carrier group totaling ten warships intercepted the Yan fleet, which entered the Issel system about thirty-six standard hours ago.”

  Complete silence fell over the situation room; all attention fixed on the briefer.

  “The Yan fleet responded by launching fighters against the defending vessels,” she said. “Having broken the Isselan ships’ outer fighter defense, the Yan fleet seems to have overwhelmed the Isselan main defenders.” As she spoke, symbols of ships in the holotank behind her reenacted what Intelligence knew of the battle.

  The command staff followed the unfolding action through narrowed eyes. “The fighters were obviously masuk-flown or commanded,” murmured the Tactical Officer.

  “Exchange of fire ceased within six hours,” the briefer continued, “with the defending ships damaged and most destroyed. The Yan fleet also received severe damage, losing five ships, including one of its carriers. As of oh-six-thirty local time, the masuk-commandeered vessels were confirmed underway and moving deeper into the Issel system. If they maintain their last known speed and heading, ETA in Issel’s planetary space will be thirty-two standard hours from now.”

  Lujan nodded acknowledgement, and the lieutenant said, “In the Bacal Belt, Kalese sources have observed a non-merchant fleet on-loading assault troops, heavy weapons, and short-range escort fighters at Mi’ika’s three spacedocks. Kalese analysts believe this fleet was intended to reinforce Issel’s attack forces, but on-loading has not halted nor slowed since Issel’s defeats. Destination is unknown. We will continue to monitor this activity.

  “Finally,” she said, “the Isselan newsnets have announced the death by suicide of Sector General Mordan Renier.”

  A few people reacted to that with disbelieving snorts and muttered speculations about how much assistance the Sector General might have had, but the lieutenant said, “This concludes my briefing, sir. May I answer any questions?”

  “Yes,” said the holographic figure of a frigate captain. “Why are the masuki attacking Issel? I thought they wanted revenge.”

  “I’ve thought about that,” said Lujan. “I suspect Issel bought their assistance with a promise of payment in Sostish slaves, and having been denied them, they’re returning to Issel to collect on the debt.” He glanced over at the intelligence briefer.

  She nodded confirmation. “That’s our suspicion, too, sir. It would fit their pattern.”

  “How great a threat are they, really?” asked the holofigure of a female cruiser captain. “They don’t have much more than a task force.”

  Another holofigure shook his head. “They practically annihilated a whole carrier group, didn’t they?”

  “By force of numbers,” said the cruiser captain. “They’re down to twenty-two battle-damaged ships now. Unless the Isselan space fleet is considerably less capable of than we’ve always been told, it’ll stop them before they can cause much more trouble.”

  “If it can regroup in time,” said a second frigate captain. “Right now it has battle groups scattered all over the Issel system, and they don’t appear to have any long-range eyes or any central control.”

  “There is a potential threat,” said the briefer. “The fleet being formed in the Bacal Belt could as easily reinforce the Yan fleet as it would have the Isselans. If it finishes on-loading and launches as expected, it could reach the Issel system within two months. Even if the Yan fleet has been completely annihilated by then, this new fleet would have more than enough strength to conquer Issel.”

  “Good,” said a destroyer captain at the rear of the room. “If the Isselans have their hands full with the masuki, maybe they’ll keep their reach out of Unified space for a while!”

  Lujan swiveled his chair to face him. “For a while,” he said. “And then what? Once the masuk worlds have expended Issel, what will be their next target? Adriat and Na Shiv? Or Sostis? They won’t spend their limited resources exploring remote sectors of the galaxy when there are plenty of inhabited worlds to plunder in this one.” His gaze touched each face down the length of the table. “We’d be very unwise,” he said, “to lower our guard because the threat doesn’t appear to be directed at Unified space right now. If anything, the threat has just become more complex.”

 

  Buy Echoes of Issel online at Amazon.com at: https://ow.ly/mU1r4

  Other books by Diann Thornley Read:

  Echoes of Issel

  Dominion’s

  Coming soon:

  Running from the Gods

 
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