Honor

by Kevin Killiany

  And this was the first of twelve satellites, though—if things went according to mission specs—it was the only one they were going to have to field strip.

  The Zhatyra system was unusual in that it had two class-M planets, both of which had developed sentient life. Corsi wasn’t up on the details, but knew Zhatyra II, floating directly behind her, had a preindustrial culture while the most advanced nations on Zhatyra III were analogous to mid-twentieth-century Europe. The orbits of the two worlds were such that twice a year they were close enough to affect each other’s tides.

  The effect was small, only detectable with sophisticated seismic scans. And it was twice during one of the planet’s years, but not the other’s.

  Corsi shook her head, clearing the cobwebs.

  “What have you got there, Pattie?” she asked, realizing her partner had been silent for several minutes.

  “I’m changing my assessment from one heavy laser barrage to several individual laser hits,” the structural specialist said. “The damage indicates remarkably consistent and massive bolts, but metal fatigue and decay around the hits varies from two years to a few weeks.”

  “So whoever’s been shooting our satellite has been coming by every few weeks, firing one shot and then going away again over the last couple of years? That makes no sense.”

  “Even more interesting to me is how they were able to detect one, and apparently only one out of a dozen, cloaked anthropological satellites to shoot at in the first place.”

  “Might be a—”

  The satellite exploded.

  After the fact, Corsi’s mind had replayed the vision of a massive column of coherent light coming from deep space somewhere beyond Pattie’s work bee. But that hadn’t registered in the first heartbeat.

  With the exterior shielding removed, the laser beam had struck the fragile interior of the satellite. The exposed sensor arrays, data storage cores, and isolinear networks had exploded in an expanding cloud of gas, shrapnel, and droplets of molten polymer. An armor panel, propelled by the expanding cloud, slammed into Corsi before she could react. Its speed had not been great, but its mass was sufficient to swat her out of orbit like a fly.

  “Pattie!”

  “Here, Commander,” Pattie answered promptly over the comlink. “Waldo Egg lost two and I think half arms, but pod is tight. Louisa evidently anticipated explosions.”

  Corsi nodded inside her helmet. Zhatyra II rose and fell as she tumbled. It wasn’t getting appreciably larger, but she knew she was falling. She applied thrusters minimally, conserving fuel as she oriented herself for atmospheric entry.

  “What’s your status?”

  “It appears the blast gave me a retrograde boost. Waldo’s thrusters aren’t up to regaining orbit, so it looks like I’m taking a long spiral to Zhatyra II. You?”

  “Taking a direct route,” Corsi said.

  She was glad neither would be drifting alone in space. Intellectually she knew it was no more dangerous, perhaps even less dangerous, than waiting for rescue on the planet’s surface, but the idea of hanging alone in the emptiness in nothing but an EVA suit…

  Bringing her left forearm up, she tapped the shuttle interface. Time to send an emergency signal.

  Nothing.

  “Pattie,” she said, retapping the command sequence, “I can’t get a response from the Shirley.”

  “The stern bay was wide open and facing the satellite,” Pattie pointed out. “It’s possible the internal systems were damaged.”

  Corsi cursed. “Nailed all four targets with one shot. What are the odds on that?”

  “I don’t believe it was a weapon. I was scanning when it struck the satellite. I believe it was an interplanetary communications laser.”

  “With our geosynchronous satellite directly over its target?”

  “Apparently. Close, at any rate. Projecting along its path, I’d say the intended destination was somewhere near that ring of volcanoes.”

  Corsi squinted at the globe below. Nothing but mottled grays and greens.

  “You’ve got better visuals than I do.”

  “Sending you coordinates.”

  “Got ’em.”

  The numbers were very close to where Corsi’s fall was taking her. She fired her thrusters, bringing her trajectory more in line.

  “You going to make a complete orbit coming down?” Corsi asked.

  “Two at least. Though I have enough thrust to slow for atmospheric insertion, I may go a bit farther. Hard to say. Louisa never mentioned how Waldo was coming down on a planet.”

  “I’m going to try for that ring of volcanoes,” Corsi said. “If you can get close, maybe we can meet up. Otherwise, just button down and hang on till the cavalry gets here.”

  “Will do.” Pattie’s voice began to break up as her pod arced over the horizon. “Good luck.”

  Chapter

  13

  “Are you okay?” Corsi asked for the dozenth time.

  The three K’k’tict had been completely blinded by the planetary communications laser striking its dish a hundred meters in front of them. Each was now tightly clutching the one ahead with a lower hand as Corsi led them through the underbrush. With their upper hands pressed over their damaged eyes, they were nowhere near as silent as they’d been. Corsi exaggerated the arc of their path, putting as much distance as possible between her charges and the wood chopping party while still keeping their objective in sight.

  When they reached the others, the waiting K’k’tict teamed up in pairs, one on each side of a stricken comrade, and rushed them through the ferns toward home.

  Corsi kept pace for a few dozen meters, but her injuries and common sense made her slow to a walk. She waved on the few K’k’tict who’d stayed with her, assuring them she would catch up.

  “Corsi to Blue,” she said as soon as she was alone. “Come in, Pattie.”

  She had not been alone since recovering her combadge and had kept the verbal transmitter disabled. Wouldn’t do to have strange voices pop unexpectedly out of the air. But there had been no response to her nonverbal signals and she thought it was time for a more direct approach.

  Nothing.

  Tabling any worry about her companion, Corsi considered their tactical situation.

  She now remembered she was on Zhatyra II. Which meant the invaders were from Zhatyra III. Neither race had warp capability and the Prime Directive was in full effect. Actually, the people of Zhatyra III should not have had space flight. Their presence was as improbable as mid-twentieth-century Europe colonizing Mars.

  No, that wasn’t true, strictly speaking. Zhatyra II and III passed very close to each other every…She couldn’t remember the interval. At least once a year for the outer world, she recalled. Close. Zhatyra II would be a tempting target dominating their night sky for months at a time—quite a motivator.

  The communications laser wasn’t a mystery. Many cultures, whether because of the spectral behavior of their primary or their planet’s magnetic field or any of a dozen other factors including they just never thought of it, managed a high level of technology without developing radio. For a visually oriented culture laser communication was the logical extension of the semaphore.

  The size of the laser and the violence of the beam were impressive. It indicated tremendous power being used very inefficiently. They couldn’t be firing something like that from inside their atmosphere. Did Zhatyra III have a moon? Probably.

  Two things, maybe three, were clear. First, the invaders were here to stay; they didn’t have a choice. Second, their method of colonization was to reshape the world they’d found to fit their own image. And third, for whatever reason, they were coming after the K’k’tict. Given what she estimated was the invaders’ rate of progress chopping their road through the forest, they’d be to the edge of the world, and an easy walk from the tree town, in a couple of days.

  Her rescuers were going to have to make a choice, and soon, between fighting and getting out of the way. Moving tw
enty thousand plus individuals would not be easy, but from what she’d seen, the K’k’tict weren’t likely to fight.

  These last two suppositions, the impending genocide and the K’k’ticts’ refusal to fight, were confirmed by Copper when she found him reclining in the shade of a notch cut into the base of one of the roots. His eyes were bandaged, covered with leaves that no doubt held in place a poultice of some sort.

  “We befriended the first of the Tznauk’t when they arrived,” he said. “They were beyond the edge of the world, but foragers had seen their silver leaf fall.”

  World was banyan forest and silver leaf was glider, Corsi deduced. The first landing without a runway must have been rough.

  “We met as many as we could so that we could know one another, but they did not understand,” Copper said. “They have a [consensus of one], which we do not fully understand. He is named Tzuntatalc.”

  “Their leader,” Corsi supplied.

  “[Consensus of one].” Copper nodded. “A difficult concept.”

  The K’k’tict made decisions by consensus, Corsi realized. They didn’t have leaders. That certainly fit with her wandering tour. Every K’k’tict in the tree town had been given a chance to observe her so that each could make up his or her mind about their guest.

  But what did that mean about the ruling class being pampered in the cave? Something else to find out after the current crisis was over.

  “When you say they did not understand you,” Corsi said, trying to find a handle on the situation, “do you mean they didn’t understand your speech or did not understand your intent?”

  “Both.” Copper sighed, remembering. “In the beginning I believe the Tznauk’t did not recognize our speech as speech. We tried speaking to them in their own language, but they use many sounds we cannot make. Our first efforts were clumsy. They were amused until we became more successful.”

  Copper stopped speaking and simply sat, the weight of his upper torso on the elbows of his folded lower arms, and rocked. After a while Corsi realized he’d finished.

  “What happened after you were successful?”

  “They became afraid.” Copper sighed again, a heavy sound.

  “That’s when the Tznauk’t began killing K’k’tict,” Corsi said.

  Copper said nothing, rocking.

  “Do you know why the Tznauk’t are coming here, toward your tree town?”

  “Yes.”

  Corsi watched him rock for a long ten-count.

  “Could you—” She stopped herself, recognizing she’d almost invited another dead-end yes. “Would you explain to me why?”

  Copper stopped rocking, turning his bandaged face toward her as though regarding her through the poultice. “They know of our birthing caves,” he said at last, his voice heavy. “Of the place of emergence. They know we can live nowhere else.”

  Corsi gaped.

  Spot’s “tease her name” since her emergence.

  She’d wondered why she’d never seen any K’k’tict young, never realizing she’d been taken on a tour of their nursery. They gave birth or laid eggs or whatever the process was called in the mineral spring cave. Dozens of spheres that looked like glass globes, which became something like fish, then something like tadpoles and then “emerged” as chiptaurs. The ones she had taken to be attendants were what? In day care?

  Head Nurse hadn’t been fat; she’d been pregnant.

  On the heels of that thought came the realization that the K’k’tict metamorphic process, whatever it was, must be violent. At each stage of development, the larger the inhabitants of the pools, the fewer there had been.

  She set that speculation aside and focused on the situation at hand.

  “Are there other caves?” she asked. “Other birthing places?”

  “We know of no other.”

  Corsi realized moving the K’k’tict away from the Tznauk’t’s landing site was out of the question. They could not abandon their young and they had no place else to go.

  “Do the Tznauk’t know the location of the birthing caves?” Corsi held on to one last hope of misleading the invaders, gaining the K’k’tict some time. Time for what she wasn’t sure. Negotiations?

  “Yes,” Copper said simply. Then, anticipating Corsi’s follow-up question: “They asked. We told them.”

  Corsi scrambled to her feet and stalked away. It was that or call Copper a suicidal idiot to his face. When death had landed on their doorstep, they had gone out and invited their own destruction.

  If the K’k’tict would give back her phaser she’d solve their problem—decisively.

  No, she wouldn’t, she admitted a few steps later. The Prime Directive was clear. Events on this world must be allowed to follow their natural path. She could not interfere. She could not…

  Could not reveal the existence of advanced technology or life on other worlds…

  “Cortzi?”

  Corsi spun, startled.

  Spot was seated, eyes bandaged, in a patch of darker shade at the base of a root column. As with Copper, others were sitting in attendance, but moved off as Corsi approached.

  “How did you know it was me?”

  Spot swung her head close to the ground. “You are the only one who walks on two legs,” she said. “Nothing thumps about like you.”

  “Why will your people not fight?” Corsi asked when she was settled beside her former nurse. “If you do not, the Tznauk’t will destroy your birthing cave. The K’k’tict will be no more.”

  “Then the K’k’tict will be no more,” Spot said. “We share life. We are one spirit. How can we harm our own spirit?”

  “This isn’t a time for philosophy,” Corsi couldn’t keep the edge of frustration from her voice. “This is a time for action, for survival.”

  “If we harm others, we do not survive,” Spot answered. “We share life—”

  “You won’t share life for very long,” Corsi cut her off angrily, “if you don’t do something to stop the slaughter!”

  “But we shall do something to stop the…hurting.”

  “You will? How?” Corsi snapped. “Because unless you’re disguised Organians, I don’t think you stand a chance.”

  Spot batted at her left ear.

  “I do not know what that is.” She sounded hurt. “But we are preparing, those of us who will meet the Tznauk’t.”

  “Meet the Tznauk’t?” Corsi tried to soften her voice. “What are you talking about?”

  “We know where they will enter the world,” Spot said as though speaking to a child. “We will meet them there and tell them the truth. When they understand, the hurting will stop.”

  “The truth?” Corsi demanded, as annoyed by the tone as the fact that her friend was talking nonsense. “What truth?”

  “We share life,” Spot repeated. “We are one spirit.”

  “Wait a minute. Say that again.”

  Corsi turned off her combadge and heard Spot recite the same two phrases of clicks and ticks intoned by everyone she’d been introduced to on her first tour of the tree town. They had meant nothing then and they had no power now.

  “The Tznauk’t have no universal translators,” she said when hers was back on. “They will not understand you.”

  “We have been practicing their language,” Spot explained. “They taught it to many when they thought we were animals that mimicked sound.”

  The young K’k’tict uttered two phrases of slurred sound. The universal translator could make nothing of them. Corsi could not tell if Spot had indeed spoken in the language of the invaders. Or, remembering the natives substituted tz for the s in her name, whether what she’d said would be intelligible to the Tznauk’t.

  “That is what you are preparing for?” she asked. “To recite words in a foreign language to those who would kill you?”

  “Oh, no,” Spot said. “We are preparing to die.”

  Chapter

  14

  Bart Faulwell grinned as he listened to Fabian Stevens try to sw
ay Carol Abramowitz and Soloman to his choice of lunch spots.

  Actually, it would be lunch for Bart and Stevens. For Soloman it was breakfast time and Abramowitz was looking for a late dinner. While transporters made it possible for members of a globe-spanning effort to meet for a meal, they did nothing to simplify the choice of restaurants.

  At the moment the four of them were strolling under a noonday sun in Trizist, a pleasant enough town though its only claim to fame was a single aqueduct junction just visible over the rooftops to the south. Plus a library stocked with reliable copies of scrolls from several neighboring towns lost to the Breen bombardment.

  The local architecture had a square and stolid look, though the blocklike buildings were topped with upswept gables—perfectly balanced, of course—and incongruous bits of gingerbread. The absolute symmetry dulled the spontaneity a bit, but Bart still found the effect pleasantly whimsical.

  He noticed he was the only one enjoying it. Stevens and Abramowitz were deep in their debate over restaurants and Soloman had his nose to a padd, evidently counting on his companions to keep him from banging into things.

  Pleasant as the architecture and climate were, however, lunchtime fare in Trizist tended toward raw vegetables, jerked meat very similar to venison, and a stew thick with barley and simmered until it was almost solid. Having sampled it yesterday, Bart came away fairly certain he would choose it over survival rations, but it would be a near thing.

  “There’s plenty of reasons for having lunch in Brohtz,” Stevens insisted, focusing his argument on the cultural specialist as the harder sell.

  “There are?”

  “Rastentha soufflé!”

  “Again?” Bart shook his head at Stevens’s enthusiasm. “I think it’s time we gave rustic Brohtz a rest. The cuisine of Franthc is, I’m told, very like Earth Asian barbecue.”