by Mel Keegan
“I don’t mind at all.” Vaurien shuffled sideways a little to make space for him. The ancestral Resalq was taller, broader even than Mark.
“I thanks.” Midani sat and put his hands under the table, out of the way. “I working most with Lai’a. Designing emergency protocol. General Shapiro and Doctor Mark saying, you should making sure all good, while I got plenty chance for making working again, if you needing.”
The casual mangling of the language was actually pleasant, and the soft Resalq accent was easy on the ears. Travers smiled as Vaurien said, “I’d be glad to look at what you have. Do you want to bring your work over to the Wastrel? I can come over to the Carellan Djerun later, if you prefer.”
“Carellan, please,” Midani said thoughtfully.
Where he was a Resalq among Resalq, and Richard would be the one out of place, Travers wondered – though the modern Resalq were so accustomed to humans, the only time they ever stared was at a woman, who would seem the ultimate alien; and then only rarely. “How are you getting on?” He asked as Midani began to look uncomfortable.
“Getting good,” Midani mused. “Trying learning speaking more better, but is like to swimming freezer-water.”
“Ulneshlal canedre farsan … swimming against the current, as humans say,” Marin said softly, with a nostalgic smile. “Ulneshlal brua’nenleh, as they’d say in the Resalq – swimming in ice water.” He looked along at Mark, and then at Travers. “They used to say that because the Resalq like their comforts, and the worst thing anyone could imagine was to be shoved headfirst into cold water!”
“Swimming … against what, but?” Midani leaned closer. “Sounding like to voltage, power circuit, electric wires?”
“Current,” Marin repeated. And then, “Farshan. The way water flows with gravity – farshanlal, flowing naturally down. In the Slingo of the human colonies it’s the same word, different meaning.”
“Close, but,” Midani mused. “Like to how electrics flowing with wires. Current. Swimming against current.”
“Against the current,” Marin repeated. “I know, the Resalq doesn’t have the definite article. Not all human languages have it either! For instance, Russian. On the other hand, some human languages have a bunch of different words for the definite article – German, for example. Don’t feel bad if you’re confused, Midani. It took me years to even start to understand a little Resalq. You’re doing great.”
“And I’m just starting out,” Travers admitted. “Trying to get individual words. I got brua, meaning ice, and nenleh, meaning water. I never knew the word for swimming – what is it, again?”
“Ulneshlal,” Midori supplied. “Come from ulneshin. Human word is … I forgot.”
“Fish. Any kind of fish, nothing in particular like a trout or a salmon.” Marin chuckled. “Ulneshin is just a fish, and if you mean the pastime of fishing, out there on the riverbank with a rod and line, it’s ulneshinlal.”
“Ouch.” Travers winced. “I’m sure I’ll pick it up eventually.”
“Got no reason to ever learning,” Midani said with an easy shrug, a gesture he had quickly picked up from humans and modern Resalq alike. “Me, but, needing learning, for working with humans.”
Vaurien listened with an indulgent smile. “Do you want to work with humans? There’s a new Resalq colony, and many Resalq ships where you’d be more than welcome.”
“Maybe going there,” Midani said musingly, “But Deep Sky, Freespace, most is human, not too much Resalq. I wanting seeing more, going more places … all new, verdrelal?”
This word, Travers knew: understand. “That’s the spirit that brought the pioneers out here. New worlds, new horizons.”
“Preluniam,” Marin said softly when Midani frowned. “Pioneer.”
“Pie…neer.” Midani tried it on his tongue.
“After the war,” Vaurien added, “we might even come with you. I’ve had a hankering to take off into Freespace. Break trail, survey new worlds, stake a claim, leave something like the Cerberus to work the lode, make a whole ’nother fortune.”
“Like we need another fortune,” Jazinsky scoffed. “After the war we’re going to come out controlling the patents on Zunshulite and the manufacture process, not to mention the fuel source. And we’ll be the only ones who know the safe paths through Elarne. Transspace.”
“Still, exploring new territory,” Richard mused. “I’ve been thinking, that’s where I might want to be … after,” he added, “the war.” The words were so often spoken recently, they had become almost a meme, even a kind of bleak humor. Vaurien delivered them with a dubious smile.
Travers and Marin were seated with their backs to the door, and heard Harrison Shapiro’s voice before he stepped in. Travers glanced back and saw the man in the company of Jim Fujioka, who had accepted the assignment as the Mercury’s chief engineer, and Jon Kim, who had never worked harder than he was working now, as Shapiro’s aide.
Coming into this briefing they were already in conference, with Kim juggling a pair of handies and Fujioka speaking animatedly, with many gestures aft and down. It was the direction of the engine deck, which was his territory now. Shapiro listened intently, and then held up both hands to stop him. He spoke quietly, just on the edge of Travers’s hearing.
“Normally I’d just ask you to put in a requisition and Jon or I would rubber-stamp it in the morning. But we’ve no supply chain now. No chance the old unit will repair?” Fujioka’s head shook in an emphatic negative. “Then, talk to Captain Vaurien,” Shapiro suggested. “Pull the old unit out, image it. The Wastrel will have to fabricate a copy. In fact, requisition several of them, if Vaurien has the resources and time to cover the work. You can’t have too many spare parts.”
The suggestion was practical enough, and Fujioka was agreeable. He drifted away to join Perlman and Fargo, and Travers watched him peck Perlman’s cheek, sliding an arm around her waist for a moment in greeting. They had become a couple only recently. Fleet might have called it fraternization and disapproved, but Travers liked what he saw.
“Gentlemen.” Shapiro arrived at the head of the table with a smile, though it was short lived. “I saw the report from Oberon.” A shadow fell across his face, lasting much longer then the smile. “Borushek might never know what took place. There’ll be no formal acknowledgment of the engagement or the hazard you undertook, and I wish it could be otherwise.”
“The best war stories are always the ones told decades later.” Vaurien lifted his glass. “I might write a memoir when I’m as old and as eminent as Charles Vidal.”
“By which time it’ll all be declassified.” Shapiro already knew the menu; he had probably set up the ’chef himself, Travers guessed. Kim fetched a couple of plates without even being prompted, while Dario Sherratt poured from a variety of bottles, some of which were the most undrinkable rejects from Ulrand’s most disastrous vineyards – perfection for the Resalq palate.
Marin shoved back his chair and dropped a hand on Travers’s shoulder. “What’s your fancy?”
Travers had scanned down the ’chef menu when they arrived. “Almost anything, and a lot of it … make it the venison and couscous, with the wasabi relish.”
It took a few minutes for the gathering at the autochef to clear, and then Shapiro called the assembly to order. “I’m seeing half as many faces as I’d hoped for – which is a good thing. People are working. Thank you all for being here. I’ll trust you to liaise with your departments and share data as appropriate. Three questions are on the table tonight, and they can’t be difficult to answer because our time is almost up.” He leaned forward a little and looked from Vaurien to Mark Sherratt and Alexis Rusch. “Doctor Sherratt, I’ll ask for your input first, if you’ll forgive me. You have a keener grasp than any of us on the development of the Lai’a expedition. One question only: when?”
It was obvious Mark had been expecting this. He set down his silverware and looked along the table, from face to face. “According to every specialist working at
Alshie’nya, not to mention Lai’a itself, 20 days. I’m going to ask for 22, which gives us room for error.”
“So long?” Shapiro frowned deeply.
“It’s a question of data analysis.” Mark sat back now. “Using every skerrick of information we have, we’re modeling Elarne to preload the transspace navigation tank. It’s not like threedee modeling, Harrison. More along the lines of ten dimensional structuring. A large part of the difficulty is devising a way to coherently depict ten dimensions in a three dimensional environment which is sensible to the human brain – or the Resalq brain, for that matter. It’s far more complex, and somewhat slower, than you or I would wish, even given every AI we possess. Resources are not unlimited, not even Lai’a itself. The bald fact is, we must have a viable, loaded navtank which human pilots can work with. It’s too easy to forget Lai’a is a machine, and any machine is fallible. Give us 20 days, and we’ll enter Elarne with a very good chance indeed of this company coming back.”
“All right.” Shapiro was satisfied. “We have our departure date, if not the actual time. I assume Lai’a is amenable to this schedule?”
“Lai’a suggested the timeframe. It’s committed to the Elarne model,” Mark assured him. “It knows better than we do how long it will take to complete.”
“And I assume there’s no problem from your perspective, Richard?” Shapiro passed the question neatly to Vaurien.
But Richard made negative gestures. “No trouble we can foresee. Our only challenge at this time is the damage the Wastrel sustained after the engagement at Oberon. We’re under repairs, Tully is confident of being done in much less than a day.”
“Excellent.” Shapiro sampled the dry white, a Jagrethean wine. “Which brings me to the question of the super-carriers, the Chicago and the Kiev. Colonel Rusch has been liaising with the command corps of both. Alexis?”
“Signal lag,” she said succinctly, “is a bitch as always. I’ve been using drone couriers, and even they’re too slow to keep me well informed. The best I can tell you is the status of those ships four days ago. I like flying blind less than anyone at this table, but until or unless the transspace drive proves out, we’re locked into the performance of the last generation of Weimann drive, and damned lucky to have it.
“The Chicago is on station in the outer system at Velcastra, with a new command corps drawn from Fleet veterans, most of whom are Daku. Some of those officers have been affiliated with President Chandra Liang’s staff for a decade. The ship itself is in good condition; crewmembers who declined the offer of defection are on the island of Padthaway, getting a suntan, putting on a few kilos and generally lazing away an incarceration that many of us would stand in line to pay for!
“Don’t be concerned for the Chicago. She’s in the service of Velcastra now and is soon to be renamed in a formal, public ceremony. In executive documentation she’s already being referred to as the Elstrom, switching the name from the seat of government in the Confederacy to the seat of government in the Nine Worlds Commonwealth.
“The Kiev,” Rusch went on, “is a rather more delicate matter. I’ve been trading encrypted comm with trusted members of my officer corps – those who covered for me when I dropped out of sight to join the Lai’a expedition, of course.” She toyed with her fork, frowning at the way the room’s soft lights reflected off the tines. “All but two of my officers are ready to defect, and the two who are inclined to the hardline Terran policies can be, will be, taken into custody.”
“They can sit out the remainder of the war in comfort, here on the Mercury,” Shapiro offered.
“Exactly. The problem isn’t the Kiev,” Rusch said in resigned tones. “It never was. The problem was always going to be the battle group. Currently, twelve assorted frigates and destroyers plus three cruisers are serving on the blockade. Each commander, each crew, will have to reach the decision independently: to defect, to run, or to stand and fight.” She gave Shapiro a hard look. “Managing the defection of one ship, as Allan Bronhill and Valerie Sung did, was straightforward by comparison. It’s a safe enough bet that some of those ships will gladly transfer their allegiance to the Nine Worlds Commonwealth. It’s just as safe a bet that others will show us their sterntubes. None of the blockade ships could challenge the Kiev, so I seriously doubt they’ll stand and fight, though we’d be fools to rule out the possibility that one of those commanders is lunatic enough to try it.
“We need to come to a decision, and soon.” She paused and frowned from Shapiro to Vidal and back. “Obviously, if the Kiev is attacked she’ll defend herself of necessity. There’s no decision to be made there…
“But when a ship tries to make a run out of the Omaru system, do we let them go, or do we fire on people who used to be our comrades?” She was looking directly at Michael Vidal as she asked this. “Remember, if we let them go they’ll follow Fleet regulations, form up with the London battle group and we’ll fight them again at Jagreth. So, Harrison?” Rusch favored him with a wry smile. “I’m afraid you’re going to be in the responsibility seat again. I don’t think there’s anyone at this table who’d be willing to make the call, though I’m sure we’ll abide by the decision.”
Shapiro looked far from surprised. “Unfortunately, you’re telling me nothing new. It’s the question that’s haunted me since Velcastra, and there are no easy answers. If the ships of your battle group choose to turn on the Kiev and fight, well, there’s a price to be paid for lunacy or idiocy. It’s also possible several crews might simply mutiny – in fact, it would be prudent for you, Alexis, to be on every standard comm frequency, inviting them to do just this. A commander who’s insane enough to turn a frigate on the Kiev could find himself looking down the gun barrels of a group of junior officers from the Middle Heavens.”
It was Vidal who said pointedly, “There’ll be bloodshed, General.”
“Regrettably, there will.” Shapiro sighed heavily. “But when you weigh the lives of a handful of insane, hardline officers whose politics are strictly Terran against the lives of hundreds of young men and women who were conscripted months and years ago …” His shoulders lifted in an expressive shrug. “We’re calling this the Colonial War with good reason. People will die. Our duty is to minimize casualties across the board and eliminate them where possible, as we did at Velcastra, where the government of Earth, and Fleet itself, intended murder on a global scale.”
“So, if those ships try to run?” Vidal was done eating and clasped his hands in the space where his plate had been. “Fight them here or fight them at Jagreth, what’s it matter?”
“Except that at Jagreth,” Travers said slowly, “those ships are going to blunder right into the same kind of minefield that obliterated the battle group at Velcastra. If we’re trying to save lives, Mick, the Kiev should be shooting to disable its battle group. Just stop them right there on the old blockade, don’t let them get out. Ship the dissidents to some place like Padthaway and send the hardware to the docks for repairs. Omaru gains a defense fleet and we’ll save the majority of human lives.”
“That, Neil, Michael,” Alexis said in dark, almost brooding tones, “has been my own thinking. And I know it’s anathema to charge cannons and fire on your own. I know you have friends on those ships. We all have.”
“But if you want to be playing folgen with them when this is all over,” Marin finished, “you stop them in the Omaru system before the colonel in command of the London battle group rounds them up and throws them at Jagreth, with results he can’t even begin to imagine.”
“Oh, but he can,” Rusch rasped. Her eyes were hard as those of a raven. “The London has had the data from Velcastra, Curtis. They know they lost the whole battle group there. They don’t know exactly how, but they certainly know it happened … at this moment strategists will be floating hypotheses about a new Colonial terror weapon –”
Mark Sherratt made cynical noises. “They’d be right. The Zunshu gravity mine is a very terrible weapon indeed. And I’ve been meaning to
ask about the security surrounding the weapon we know as a world-wrecker. The Borushek device.” He lifted a brow at Shapiro. “I spent an hour looking at the deep scans returned by the Wastrel. Most of my party are not at this table. They’re still dissecting them. Dario?”
“There’s a year’s work in fully understanding the technology,” Dario said resignedly. “And when we understand it well enough to reverse engineer it, duplicate it, then…?”
There was no doubt Shapiro knew what the Resalq were talking about. Travers looked from one to the other, and then glanced at Marin. They waited for the general to speak, and when Shapiro did, he seemed to debate every syllable.
“The decision isn’t mine to make. It can’t be. The Zunshu weapon would give us ultimate power, not just here but anywhere.” Shapiro’s brows rose as he looked from Sherratt to Rusch and Vidal, Travers and Marin. “A weapon that arrives cloaked, invisible, in the orbit of an industrialized world with a population numbering in the billions, and tears the planet in half. No one is qualified to make any decision regarding such a weapon. It would have to be made by committee, perhaps specialists elected to represent a whole population.”
“Good Christ,” Vidal whispered. “Would you trust politicians not to deploy it? Sure, I’d trust Chandra Liang and Colonel Tarrant, and probably even Rob Prendergast. But governments fall, times change. Fifty years from now, who’ll be sitting in an office in Elstrom City, with his – or her! – finger on the button?”
Silence fell around the table. The only sound in the room was the sweet harmony of Bevan Daku, and its serenity sounded odd after the dread Vidal had outlined.
“Exactly.” Shapiro spread his hands. “I’m a career officer. If there’s one thing I’ve learned after three and a half decades in Fleet, it’s that the military is the hapless pawn of politics … and I can count the number of politicians I trust on the fingers of one hand. Fifty years from now, or twenty –?” He sat back, frowning at the food he had not yet touched, as if he had no appetite.
