He dragged a hand down his face, emotion animating it anew. “So I return to my initial statement—given both our pasts, this isn’t easy for either of us. But I would never do such a thing today, and dammit but you know that.”
Her mother had tried to warn her marriage was about give and take, about compromise, about respecting the other person’s position even when you didn’t agree with them. For some strange reason her mother had been concerned Alex would be incapable of managing such things. She chuckled quietly.
“If there is something you find amusing in all this, please let me in on the joke.”
“I was remembering something Mom said to me, about how Dad infuriated her on an almost weekly basis, but he never disappointed her.” She met his distressingly harsh gaze and nodded. “All right. I promise I won’t go behind your back again, and will instead face the wrath of your expressions of pained patience and exasperated frustration.”
He tried and failed to stifle a laugh. “There’s no wrath to my expressions.”
“Oh, yes, there is. And so many, varied kinds.” She took his hands in hers, grateful he didn’t jerk them away. “I realize I still occasionally revert to old habits. I’ll try to do better. I will do better.” Her forehead dropped to rest on his. “Just out of curiosity, would you have come with me if I had asked?”
“Depends on how determined you were.”
“So yes, then.”
He sighed, but wrapped his arms around her and drew her closer. “Eventually, yes.”
40
IRELTSE
* * *
Caleb leaned into the massive desk dominating the center of the office. “Pinchu, this is a two-hundred-petajoule anti-matter weapon. Do you even begin to comprehend what that means?”
The Tokahe Naataan lifted his elongated chin so high Caleb could no longer see any of his eyes. “It means it will exact a righteous vengeance upon the Nengllitse for the deaths they caused.”
“It means it will level a city—and I don’t mean cause widespread damage like what they inflicted here. I mean eradicate it. Every building, every object and every Nengllitse Khokteh for…” he waited a beat for a size conversion “…fifty kilometers in all directions. Our people outlawed these weapons two centuries ago after discovering the colossal, indiscriminate death they wrought.”
“This is not your world, Caleb Human, and we are not your shikei. We have a different history, and a different measure of justice.”
“Believe me when I tell you I know a great deal about justice—about vengeance. Let me ask you: do you want to kill their children? All of them?”
“They killed my child.”
A gasp escaped Caleb’s lips, and he was rendered momentarily speechless. He had begun to subconsciously ascribe human values to their culture same as Alex had, simply because they appeared civilized. Because they walked and talked and ate and slept, lived in homes, were born small and grew up.
While he didn’t doubt there had always been individual humans who harbored such abhorrent thoughts, it had nonetheless been a mistake to assign Pinchu and the Khokteh human values. He retreated a mental step from the situation.
Pinchu took advantage of the brief silence to reaffirm his stance. “This is the weapon the Gods have ordained for our use. They judge our cause virtuous.”
Alex nearly came across the desk then, but Caleb thrust out an arm to hold her back. They had resigned themselves to the reality that trying to convince Pinchu his ‘gods’ were in actuality aliens running experiments on a multiverse of pocket universes, of which his was only one, would be a futile endeavor. Nevertheless, he could sense Alex shaking from holding in the urge to tell Pinchu the unvarnished truth, or whack him upside the head with one of the Khokteh spears, or both.
He stepped in before she lost the struggle with restraint. “And what do you think your enemies will retaliate with next? The escalation isn’t going to stop.”
“It will if we decimate the Nengllitse.”
Alex’s mouth fell open. “Genocide, really? Damn.”
He leaned more forcefully toward Pinchu. “No, it won’t, because the Tapertse, logically assuming you’re coming for them next, will get their benefactor gods—” which are probably one and the same as yours “—to bestow on them an even stronger weapon. Pinchu, if you want to protect your citizens, ask your gods for a shield the size of a city—a shield that can defend against the next, more powerful attack. Do not use this weapon.”
Pinchu stood and adopted a proud stance behind the desk. “Caleb and Alex Humans, my friends—I hope I may call you such—I thank you for your insights and the companionship you extended to my family and my citizens, in spite of our initial poor treatment of you. Were Cassela still with us, things might be different…but she is not, and never will be again.” He paused to compose himself.
“What you speak would sound like wisdom to your kind, I have no doubt. But this is my planet and these are my shikei, and I know the path which needs to be taken. You may stay for as long as you wish, but I do not want to place you in harm’s way to a greater extent than I previously have, so I understand if you feel you must leave.”
Caleb checked Alex. Her expression was a violent maelstrom of emotions, but she shook her head, likely not trusting herself to speak further. He turned back to Pinchu. “We’ll leave soon, then. You are right—your war is not our war, and we have our own mission. Your hospitality has been exemplary.”
“After the first rough patch, yes?” The Tokahe Naataan made a tentative laughing sound. “You are welcome to return should your travels bring you near in the future. If or when that time comes, I pray you find us victorious.”
“I pray we find you alive.”
Pinchu merely nodded in what was, perhaps, resigned acceptance of his eventual fate.
Alex stuffed her clothes in her pack with a fervor normally reserved for rants about politicians and bureaucrats. Which in a way, Caleb supposed, this was. “Of all the stupid, moronic, fucking reprehensible decisions—Valkyrie, come pick us up at the house. I want to be elsewhere now.”
‘Understood. ETA twelve minutes.’
She glanced up at him. “Aren’t you going to pack?”
He was leaning against the wall, ankles and arms crossed, watching her. “I’m already packed. I never unpacked.”
“All right…you’re ready to leave, aren’t you?”
He lifted his shoulders in assent. “I’ve been standing here trying to think of anything else we can do, any other way to get through to him, but…there isn’t any other way. He’s grief-stricken and to our eyes not thinking rationally, but you saw everyone at the temple yesterday, and today at the Center. His subjects are behind him. They support the decision, which makes me suspect maybe this is less grief and more standard operating procedure.”
“It’s barbaric. It’s beyond the pale.”
“Only because we haven’t experienced and had instilled in us the pain of decades—centuries—of attacks by the enemy.”
She frowned. “You agree with him?”
“No. Absolutely not. But I need to at least try to conceive of how the Khokteh could have reached this point while still otherwise being the civilized, generally logical, likeable species we’ve found them to be. I need it to make sense.”
She breathed out sharply and hefted her pack onto her shoulder. “I’ve never understood why most people act the way they do—no reason I’d understand the asinine decisions of aliens. Let’s go.”
But when she reached the door her pace faltered, and she looked back at him. “These pocket universes? They’re fake, manufactured playgrounds for the Metigens. They’re just sidespaces to the real space—the universe through that big, shiny source portal at the heart of this maze.”
Her gaze dropped to the floor. “They damn sure feel real, though.”
41
NENGLLITSE
* * *
From four kilometers up, the Nengllitse capital looked no different from the o
ne on Ireltse. Oh, there were a few subtle variances in the architecture, and the greater distance from the system’s sun resulted in unique topography and foliage. But the zoomed-in visual scanner revealed tiny dots of Khokteh traversing the streets, going about their lives in much the same manner as those they’d left behind on Ireltse.
Comrades of those below had shot at them personally a few days earlier, so Alex recognized full well they weren’t lily-white, innocent victims. Their military killed Cassela, a marvelous creature she’d only just begun to know as a friend, and over twelve hundred other citizens of Ireltse.
But if there was anything the last year had taught her—if there was anything Caleb had taught her, the Metigen War had taught her—it was that perspective was everything. If you wanted to understand your enemy, you must understand that they were the hero in their own story. The leader of Nengllitse, whoever it may be, believed he or she had the right of this war as zealously as Pinchu did.
‘Alex, the Ireltse forces are approaching. We should retreat to a safe distance.’
“Right.” She took a last look at the sunny afternoon and bustling city on the surface, then eased the Siyane up through the atmosphere. They didn’t want to be anywhere near an anti-matter strike when it came. Nengllitse possessed planetary defenses, but with the cloaking shield they’d sailed past them without difficulty on their descent and did so again now.
Said defenses lit up brighter than a Christmas exhibition, however, when the Ireltse forces arrived, and in seconds a low-orbit military battle ignited. She hovered above it, transfixed in a kind of morbid horror as orbiting cannons fired repeaters at the advancing warships while the ships bathed the cannons in laser fire.
When the viewport lit up an effulgent canary yellow, Caleb grabbed the controls and yanked the Siyane up another half megameter. She glanced at him, but he merely raised an eyebrow in challenge…which she didn’t.
The Ireltse had come in overwhelming strength, and they neutralized the automated planetary defenses in minutes. Multiple formations descended through the atmosphere, and a massive cruiser brought up the rear. It was impossible to miss the tacked-on, bulky weapon housing suspended beneath the undercarriage near the bow.
One shiny new anti-matter weapon, ready for use.
Her hands went to the controls. “The fighting has moved in-atmosphere. We can draw slightly closer—I promise I’ll leave a large buffer between us and them, but I have to see.”
“I know.”
She gave him a tight smile and eased back down until they were skimming the stratosphere. The pinprick explosions of ship-to-ship combat and building impacts could be seen through thin, wispy clouds. Doubtless the Nengllitse military was now mobilized and meeting the Ireltse forces in the skies above the city in a mirror image of the battle on Ireltse.
Abruptly the city below flashed white like an old photo negative. A shockwave roiled outward in all directions, obliterating everything in its wake, including most of the Ireltse ships—Pinchu apparently had not appreciated exactly how powerful the weapon truly was, his statements notwithstanding. Or maybe he’d considered the ships and their crew a necessary sacrifice.
The whiteness gradually faded away, and an ashen gray curtain lifted to reveal the devastation the strike had fashioned. The city center was a crater over four kilometers in diameter, every building in it annihilated. The rest of the city had been flattened—nothing stood high enough to be picked up by the scanner. Thousands of buildings were leveled to their foundations, the material they had been constructed of simply gone, eradicated in the matter-anti-matter collision. Along with the Khokteh who occupied them.
“How many dead, I wonder?”
Caleb’s voice was flat and toneless. “A hundred fifty thousand? Two hundred?”
She leapt up from the cockpit chair, sending it spinning. “Valkyrie, get us out of here. Head for the portal.” She walked in a daze into the main cabin, all the way back to the kitchen, where she promptly backhanded the half-empty glass of water sitting on the counter. It sailed across the cabin to slam into the wall and send water spraying onto the couch, the weight machine and the floor.
A moment later Caleb’s arms encircled her waist from behind as he kissed her hair—but she didn’t want to be comforted right now. She twisted roughly in his grasp to face him. “Let’s go see Mesme. I have a few things I’d like to say to that yobanyi pizda.”
“What happened to ‘never ask a question until you know the answer?’ ”
“I’m not intending on asking questions—I’m mostly intending on yelling. You’re welcome to do a little asking when I periodically stop to catch my breath.”
He exhaled, long and slow. “I have to admit, right now I’d like nothing more than to stick the alien in a confined space for a couple of hard hours of questioning. Not sure I’d start off the interrogation by calling Mesme a cunt, though.”
“Well, that makes one of us.” She wrapped her fingers around the excess material of his collar and curled them into a fist; his shirt had committed no offense, but she needed the smallest outlet for the rage churning inside her.
“Did they manipulate humans like this, too? Do they do this to everyone? Is my father dead—is your father dead—because the Metigens wanted to run an experiment and measure the results?” Her teeth ground painfully against one another. “Are we all just puppets dancing on their strings?”
“Baby, you and I will never be anyone’s puppets.”
“I hope like hell that’s true…but if it’s not, I’m taking your sword to the strings.”
42
AURORA THESI (PORTAL PRIME)
Enisle Seventeen (Portal: Aurora)
* * *
Though they had only spent a few hours there more than half a year ago, it felt somehow comforting to return to the sparkling lake tucked into the mountains on Portal Prime. Why, when everything about Mesme made her the antithesis of comfortable?
Because here was where desperation had become hope. Where helplessness had become purpose.
The cloaking shield turned out to also shield them from the tech repulsion field, saving them days of hiking. The device powering the planet-wide cloaking whirled a dazzling white aura in the meadow past the lake, and the water glowed with the last remnants of photoluminescence from the night before.
Mesme was nowhere in sight.
Alex stepped off the Siyane’s ramp into the thick grass. She’d forgotten how lush the valley was; for a moment the serenity of the environment threatened to brighten her somber mood and ease her indignation. She’d calmed down somewhat since witnessing the massacre at Nengllitse—enough to be willing to listen to what Mesme had to say—but the fury simmered just beneath the surface, ready to flare if she didn’t like the alien’s responses.
Valkyrie, however, murmured excitedly in her head. I am most excited to see and meet this Metigen of yours.
Wait until you want to throttle the life out of it.
Caleb joined her, and they approached the shore of the lake hand-in-hand. She gazed up at the sky. “Mesme, I know you know we’re here. Don’t be shy.”
They were greeted by silence. When they reached the water Caleb gestured toward the path leading to the gap in the mountain. “Maybe it’s taking a nap—you know, in its house.”
“You love the fact it built a house, don’t you?”
“It’s intriguing. The act implies a depth and complexity of motivation beyond what Mesme presented to us. It’s…quirky. I realize you don’t feel the same way, and after what it put you through, I don’t blame you. But given what we’ve seen lately, I think that apparent complexity of motivation is all the more relevant.”
She shrugged. “At best I prefer to keep Mesme at a long arm’s length. At worst…there aren’t words for what I want. You’re right—its motivations are complex, but to me this means even if it did help us once, I cannot trust that they’re all in alignment with ours.”
The path opened up into the small glade, which a
lso looked exactly as she remembered. The flowers outside the house were in bloom and showed every sign of having been tended to recently. She approached the front door while Caleb checked around back. “Mnemosyne?”
Lacking other options, she knocked on the door. Again, no response. After a second knock went unanswered she nudged the door open, and when Caleb came around to the front shaking his head to indicate he’d come up empty, she stepped inside.
The interior was spartan in the extreme. A table and chair made of the same wood as the walls sat in the main room, and a wide opening led to a slightly separated room on the left. There were no other rooms—no kitchen, lavatory or closets. She went through the opening to the left.
“Oh, my.”
She stared curiously at the object tucked into the far corner of an otherwise empty room. It was long, about three meters, and covered in a fine mist; the temperature of the surrounding air dropped as she neared.
Her exclamation had drawn Caleb’s attention. “It’s a stasis chamber. It has to be.”
She nodded in response and knelt down beside it. The design was elegant and perfectly smooth, with no apparent seams or moving parts. A virtual readout displayed data in a language she’d never seen—it bore no resemblance to the machine language used by the planet’s cloaking device and the Metigen superdreadnought she and Valkyrie had sabotaged. She didn’t recognize any of the material it was constructed of or see any mechanism which could be powering it.
She reached up and began wiping away the condensation off the top. Caleb dropped to his knees beside her and did the same. It was with equal parts anticipation and trepidation that she peered into the pod.
Large black eyes dominated a teardrop-shaped head. Pasty grayish skin stretched over a thin, skeletal body with disproportionately long arms and legs. An androgynous torso held the limbs together but was otherwise unexceptional, with no visible sex organs.
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