Within the Dictymorphs, their cells communicated with each other through a chemical process that flowed through the cell walls as quickly as impulses flowed through human or Klethos nerves. The scientist in her was fascinated by this. In some ways, this was superior to a nervous system. If a major nerve in a human being is cut, paralysis is the result. If you slice through a Dictymorph, then the chemical messaging can simply flow around the severed area until the adjacent cells were able to close the wound back together.
While fascinating, the teams’ job was to find a way to defeat them, not marvel at their biology. One of the proposed weapons was the projectors carried by the Confed soldiers which were based, on a theoretical level, on the Klethos pikes. These were supposed to interfere with the chemical messaging and halt the cellular data streams, and it worked in all their simulations. The Dictymorphs should not have been able to stand up to them.
Should have, would have.
The bottom line was that they hadn’t, and soldiers died—and she contributed to that. An hour ago, the Confederation consul himself had gone ballistic over the conference feed, and Sky had sunk down in her seat, hoping not to be seen and just letting her seniors take the blast.
The consul had signed off, turning his representation over to a lower, but still lofty worthy, and now the debate was focused on the poor showing of the Klethos during the battle.
Sky had been surprised by that. They didn’t flee the battle or something drastic, but they just hadn’t fought with the same ferocious intent as they’d previously exhibited. The two separate Klethos battalions had brought down five of the Dictymorphs, suffering significant losses, but the integrated Klethos had done next to nothing.
Not quite. They might have killed one with three more driven off.
A Federation colonel had the floor, and he was ranting about the Klethos turning soft, and if they’d just have been more aggressive, then the battle would not have turned into the rout it was.
Given the topic, Sky didn’t think anyone was going to call on her. She might be considered one of the foremost experts on the Klethos, but she was in the Dictymorph division. She pulled up one of the battle scenes on her PA, running through it several times. The Klethos squads with the Marines weren’t shirking. The fighters moved in, taking the fight to the Dictymorphs, but there wasn’t any of the determination they simply oozed whenever they’d fought before. It didn’t make sense.
When something didn’t make sense, Sky had to worry it like a terrier on a rat, trying to pull out the connection.
The Klethos, at least the warrior class and the d’relle, seemed to have two speeds. The first was a calm, almost lackadaisical demeanor. Not much seemed to excite them. Their second speed was the running-amok warrior whose only goal was to destroy the enemy. For the d’relle, they seemed to express this groove through their hakas, as if they had too much energy to contain. It also probably served to strike fear into their opponents and gave battle the ritualistic factor that the Klethos loved. The warrior class also had their more formalized versions of the haka, but there were other rituals they performed, previously unobserved by humans. In many ways, it seemed as if the warriors were kept deep inside of each Klethos, where they wouldn’t interfere with Klethos-lee daily life. The warrior aspect was then summoned forth like a demon, ready to rend and kill when needed, and announced their arrivals through the sheer exuberance of their dance.
Sky asked her AI to splice together a feed on the Klethos that left nothing out, then sped through it in reverse, trying to see something, anything, that might account for their lack of ferocity. There wasn’t anything, not from their appearance in the hangar bay through the launch down to the planet, not from the assembly area through the attack. Nothing stuck out at her.
Maybe what isn’t there is the problem? What am I missing?
She set the feed back to the beginning, fast forwarding it again, the figures jerkily dancing in their sped-up motion.
Dancing?
Something tugged at her mind, and with an almost audible snap, it fell into place. They hadn’t danced at all. There had been no lisspyth, or what the humans called their haka.
As far as she knew, the Klethos always performed a haka before battle, but the eight Klethos she followed, of which only one had survived, none had danced.
Unless they did it before they got to the hangar? No, that doesn’t make sense. Too early.
The accepted theory for the Jekyll-Hyde thing the Klethos warriors had going was to ensure social compatibility. It could be difficult for a society to get along if crazed warriors were always in the mix. Sky had once read a student’s dissertation, however, that postulated that the physical drain of the warrior state was not something that could be kept up indefinitely. Male elephants in musth burned an inordinate number of calories, so the Klethos warrior “musth” could have the same effect. They turned it on and off as an evolutionary tool to save energy.
That made sense to Sky, and if that student had been correct, then that Klethos squad would not have warriored-up while still up on the ship. So why didn’t they later on the planet’s surface, and did that account for their lack of alacrity during the attack?
She switched to one of the two Klethos battalions, following them from their arrival en masse at their LZ through the battle and to the departure of the survivors. As they approached the Line of Departure, a percentage of the Klethos seemed to make abortive jumps and gestures that looked like abbreviated hakas as if only part of their warrior had emerged.
Lieutenant Colonel Boswell, did we give the Klethos orders not to perform their hakas?
Two rows in front of her, the Federation officer picked up his PA, then looked around, finally catching her eyes.
Not exactly. We told them they couldn’t take the time. We had to take the fight to the Grubs immediately after landing, but I never paid attention to that, he wrote back to her. We’re trying to keep them in mutually supportable formations while not giving the Grubs time to react. Why?
Nothing yet. Just working on a theory. I’ll get back to you.
She was getting close to something, a thought that fluttered like a moth just beyond the reach of the candle’s light. If the Klethos hadn’t been specifically forbidden to perform their haka, then something else was happening. She should have seen more of the little jumps and gestures among the fighters. But since they hadn’t, she had to think that they didn’t dance because they were not in their warrior mode. But why weren’t they? That was the million-credit question.
Unless . . . she paused, trying to will her subconscious to reveal itself.
Unless the haka is not a sign of their warrior self but the cause of it?
She paused again as her heart rate bumped up.
It can’t be that easy.
Maori warriors of old used hakas to put fear into their enemies, but it was also used to get the adrenaline flowing, to pump up the blood. Rugby players around the galaxy kept the practice alive over the centuries.
What if the haka is not a sign that they are ready? What it if isn’t something that merely helps the process? What if it is necessary?
Sky felt the certainty that she was on the right track, and she needed more data input than her PA could easily give her. She needed full access to the research AIs. Mindless of the debate still raging and suddenly flush with more energy than ten bottles of Joltz could have given her, she got up from her seat and slid out of the conference hall.
If she was right, then by forcing the Klethos into the human military mold, they were dooming them to failure.
Chapter 13
Skylar
Skylar stared at “Diane,” trying to read from the d’solle’s face what she was thinking.
Archbishop Lowery, who was sitting beside her, had gone out on a limb for her on this, breaking the impasse between EC Baker and Peyton Janus. Janus had rejected her theory after only a cursory glance, telling her to get her focus back on the Dictymorphs. Baker, on the other hand, had
seen merit in it, and after consultation with the military staff, decided to take it to the archbishop. The archbishop thought there was enough there to warrant an approach the Klethos command quad to get their feedback.
This had been the first time Sky had been the main speaker at such a high-level meeting within the task force, and she’d been more than a little nervous. She was working from conjecture, after all, and she could be wrong. If her fellow humans thought she was wrong, the worse that could happen was that she’d be fired and sent home. But they were dealing with an alien race, aliens in an alliance that was not doing well. Sky didn’t know if the quad would agree with her premise, and if they didn’t, what their reaction might be.
Sky was sure, now, that the hakas and other battle formalities were needed for them to reach the degree of force of will necessary to achieve battlefield success. By forcing the proverbial square peg in the round hole, the square peg was useless and the hole remained unfilled.
Over the last day, while Sky and the others argued the concept, the military shifted to her view. The problem with that vision, however, was that hyped-up Klethos warriors in a battle frenzy would have a difficult time in fighting alongside more level-headed humans. As Lieutenant Colonel Boswell said, if her theory were true, then mixed units would be both impractical and a liability.
The recommendation of the workgroup was to keep human units human and Klethos unit Klethos, but fight them complimenting each other. Let the humans come up with the tactical plan and provide secondary forces with the Klethos becoming the shock forces to crush the Dictymorphs.
This has hardly been a unanimous recommendation. Janus had crafted a strong dissent, signed by Dr. Creighton Spiller, Sky’s counterpart in the Klethos division.
Now that she’d finished her presentation to the quad, Sky wondered if they’d been right. An impartial observer could take her theory as an insult to the honor-driven Klethos. In some ways, she was inferring that the highly-advanced Klethos were savages of some sort, incapable of the understanding martial arts. The Klethos had come to the humans for assistance, yet she was advocating that they fight not only in separate maneuver units, but that they bear the brunt of the danger. The more she looked at the unmoving d’solle, the more she was afraid that Janus had been right.
The pause grew longer, uncomfortably long, before Diane asked, “It is your contention that humans and Klethos cannot effectively serve in integrated units?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she said, reverting to a junior-senior posture despite the fact that honorifics were not used with the Klethos.
Her nose began to itch something awful, but she refused to lift her hand to scratch it.
“Furthermore, you believe that the Klethos-lee need to conduct lisspyth in order to effectively battle the kshree,” she asked, using the Klethos term for the Dictymorphs, a sound that was more of a click and whistle than anything a human throat could make.”
Sky looked around as if looking for help, but she was on her own here. If she was wrong, no one was going to come to her rescue.
“Yes, that is our theory, based on limited observations,” she said. “If we are in any way mistaken, we would welcome your input.”
“Please wait while we contemplate this revelation.”
Humans were not sure when a d’rolle said “we” if that was the royal “we” or if a quad could somehow communicate between themselves without speaking.
At least she didn’t erupt in anger, she thought. Still time for that, though.
She risked a glance at the rest of the humans. When she caught Lieutenant Colonel Boswell’s eyes, he gave her a slow wink.
“Doctor Ybarra, what you have just said is very revealing. We wish there to be no misunderstanding, so if I may paraphrase your telling, humans only now know the essence of lisspyth to the Klethos-lee?”
Sky looked around again, waiting for someone to jump in. Diane, as did all Klethos with contact with humans, spoke excellent Standard, but that didn’t mean there was complete understanding. Words had meaning, but so did inflection, body language, and tone, none of which the Klethos used in ways that conveyed meaning to humans.
“This is the theory now, yes.”
“We do not understand,” she said.
Sky was about to try and rephrase the theory when the Klethos d’rolle continued, “The lisspyth is our very essence, no more or less as is breathing. We need the lisspyth in order to function. How you cannot understand this after more than a century of your years is beyond comprehension. Your Ryck Lysander understood it. Your gladiators understood it. How can you not?”
The archbishop cleared his throat, and for a moment, Sky thought he was going to jump in, but when he didn’t, she said, “We know of the lisspyth,” she said, her voice catching on the sibilant S’s. “We have much the same with our hakas. But they are not part of our essence, as you say. They are . . . they’re a celebration, a warning, sometimes.”
There was another uncomfortably long pause, then, “You have given us much to contemplate. How can a lisspyth not be an essence? But that answers a question. We’ve been unable to understand why you humans want to handicap our warrior class. This may be the answer.”
Handicap? They’ve been thinking we wanted to handicap them?
“Ma’am, if we are handicapping your warriors, why did you agree to that?” she asked.
“Our war with the kshree is not going well. Unless something changes, there can be only one outcome. You humans are the only race we know with honor . . .”
There was a flurry of tiny motions from several of the seated humans as they accessed PAs, and Sky knew why. According to what they’d been told by both the Trinoculars and the Klethos, the Klethos had eliminated 17 other species of intelligent life. Unless Diane meant the meager remnants of the Trinoculars, she could have just revealed that there were still other intelligent species out there.
“. . . and our d’rolle decided to approach you to discover if you can be the instrument of the change that can signal our survival.”
When she said “d’rolle,” there was a subtle difference in the word, and both the linguists and the AIs would be analyzing that to death, Sky knew.
“We came to you asking for assistance, and if you believed that we needed to handicap our warriors, in honor, we had to agree and carry out the experiment.”
“But your warriors have been getting slaughtered,” Colonel Ng said.
“Our warriors have been dying ever since we pulled ourselves out of the primordial swamp, Colonel. But yes, our losses have been dramatic without inflicting more damage upon the kshree.”
“How long would you have continued like this,” Sky asked. “Fighting without your lisspyth?”
“Our recall, and the ceasing of cooperation, Doctor, was imminent.”
“And now?” she asked, her breath caught in her throat and afraid of the response.
“That recall is now on hold. We wish to see how your segregated maneuver units can achieve success.”
A deathly silence fell over the room.
Shit, they were about to pull out.
Sky knew that a large percentage of humanity would welcome that. They didn’t agree to the war, and they wanted humans out of the fight. Sky knew, however, that would only postpone the inevitable. The Dictymorphs, the Grubs, as the troops called them, would one day reach human space. Humanity’s best chance lay with allying with the Klethos-lee and together, defeating the threat.
“Diane,” the archbishop said, taking over from Sky. “I am glad to know that our effort is still to be ongoing. I thank you and your team for taking the time to meet with us. We are going to break away and come up with a more detailed plan. I trust if my team has questions, they may contact you?”
“We are here for that reason, Archbishop.”
“Very well. In that case, let’s close this meeting. I will personally keep you informed,” he said rising to his feet.
Diane nodded, and in unison, the entire quad rose, and i
n their fashion, left the room without the social pleasantries that humans loved.
As soon as they hatch door closed behind them, the Archbishop turned first to the pick-up on the table and asked, “Lauralee, did you get all of that?”
Lauralee? As in Tsagaanbaatar, the UAM Secretary General? She was listening to me speak? Sky wondered in awe.
“Yes, I got it all,” the voice out of the speaker said. “Very interesting development. I’ll have Harris brief the heads of state. Oh, Doctor Ybarra, can you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am, I can hear you,” Sky said, her heart racing.
“Good job, very good job.”
Sky was gobsmacked as she stuttered out her thanks.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do and not much time. This is within our charter, so we won’t need HOS approval for this. Terrence, Caesar, I want you two to honcho this personally,” he told EC Baker and General Reicker. “Get a working group together and give me something by fifteen hundred tomorrow that I can forward to the Grand Council.”
The room immediately went into motion as people were called in for the working group. Sky hovered, ready and able, but while Janus was selected for the group, she was left standing.
“Kind of sucks, huh? This was all your idea, and now the big kids want to take over,” Lieutenant Colonel Boswell said as he stepped up beside her. “Not to worry, I’m not playing varsity on this one, either.”
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