by K. Eason
Rupert inclined his head. His fingers, which had been folded, tightened down to a clench. “It is a corsair in the Confederation navy. I’m afraid I am not privy to more detail than that.” He did know, however, that Never Take Our Freedom had been docked at Lanscot station, and that for it to have arrived here now, it must have departed almost immediately after Favored Daughter and Bane.
Kahess fetched up in front of Rupert. He found himself on the business end of her scowl for the second time in as many hours. “What do they want?”
“I have no way to know for certain.” What Rupert was certain of was that, even if Never Take Our Freedom had come here to arrest him, they would soon discover The Monster; and that a corsair was no match at all for a dreadnought, and that without help, Never Take Our Freedom might join G. Stein in floating dead in space. (We must note that Rupert did not entertain for an instant a hope for Never Take Our Freedom’s destruction, even though such destruction might, at least in the short term, prove personally beneficial.)
On the hologram, The Monster was already reacting to the gate’s automatic, unsubtle announcement of a new arrival to the system. The dreadnought had not made much of a shift in orientation yet—it had Sissten to think about—but there had been a shift in readings: several of the numbers beside the ship’s blip rose precipitously, which indicated systems powering up.
“The better question to ask,” said Crow, “is what the veeks think of this Confederation ship.”
“What do you suppose they think?” snapped Kahess. “They’re hostile and suspicious. They think we’re all already allies.”
At that moment, Adept Kesk arrived, and smoothly inserted herself between Kahess and Rupert, at right angles to each, as if she were merely joining a casual conversation.
“Captain,” she said, in tones designed to be reasonable and which would, in fact, only irritate, “there is nothing to worry about. The Confederation ship is some distance from us, and even when it arrives, it is hardly a threat.”
Kahess stared at her. “I am not worried about an attack,” she snapped. Rupert could hear that she held onto her GalSpek with the most tenuous of grips. “Not from that little thing. I am worried about the dreadnought’s reaction. And what Sissten is going to do. We are very close to both of them, Adept, should they decide to resume shooting at each other.”
“The Tadeshi have no reason to fire on us,” Kesk said, a little less assuredly. “And you said the vakari were incapacitated.”
“I said the vakari claimed incapacitation.”
“Captain’s right, Adept,” said Crow, apparently immune to the blistering stare Kahess leveled at him. “The Protectorate might be lying about what they can do. But that dreadnought’s a bigger problem, if they think we’re friends with the Confederation. They might shoot at us. Or, if they take on the corsair, Sissten may fire at them.”
Rupert was hoping in fact that the Tadeshi did assume an Empire-Confederation alliance, partly because he hoped to make that possibility a reality in further negotiation, and partly because he thought that an imagined alliance among Confederation, Harek Empire, and some segment of tenju might give the dreadnought commander reason to leave the system altogether.
Captain Kahess had backed off of blistering and was now looking at Crow with a mixture of dislike and approval. “Right,” she said. “As the Battlechief says.”
Crow grinned without any kindness at all. “Tadeshi’re also midway through a boarding raid on Sissten. Let it play out.”
“Play out,” muttered Kahess. “Until they find what they want? Or rather, discover they can’t find it? And what does the Confederation want?” But she was looking at Kesk, now, as she asked it. “I mean, why come here, now?”
“Indeed,” murmured Kesk. She side-eyed Rupert. “A fair question. Captain, what will you tell the vakari?”
“Nothing, for the moment. They cut communications when they spotted the corsair.”
“And the Tadeshi?”
“Still refusing our hails.”
No one mentioned hailing the Confederation ship. There was not yet a point to trying. Never Take Our Freedom was still some distance, and thus some time, from real-time conversation capabilities. Never Take Our Freedom’s captain would be noticing how crowded the system was about now, or very soon, and—Rupert hoped—applying the brakes more strenuously, rather than speeding into the attack.
Crow folded his arms. He no longer wore his battle-armor; like Hworgesh before him, he wore simple, practical, close-fitting clothing. That his collar (short, banded, not the sort that would bind or itch, which the Vizier envied) bore a few more shiny bits than Hworgesh’s had was the only indication of rank. An informal people, Rupert decided. That made him nervous. Informal people were prone to breaches in protocol, and sometimes appalling honesty (also very much like Grytt, which was why she was not out here playing diplomat).
Crow cleared his throat in what sounded like a precursor to just such an utterance. Kahess glared. Kesk tilted her head politely. Rupert held tight to his professional detachment.
“I say—with respect, Captain, it’s your ship—we hail the Confederation vessel. The Tadeshi’ll know we did that, if they’re monitoring our transmissions. Might make them think.”
“Or prompt them to fire at us,” Kahess muttered, but Rupert did not need to read an aura to know she didn’t believe it. “We could do that too, though. Tell them we’re neutral here.”
“Except you are not,” said Rupert, and found every eye suddenly on him. His attention tunneled to three xeno faces, while the ambient noise of a working ship tunneled into the background. It felt very quiet, suddenly, in this patch of bridge.
“The Tadeshi are the Confederation’s enemy. One imagines,” said Rupert, feeling his way into xeno politics with a little thrill and a great deal of caution, “that if you wanted an alliance with the Free Worlds of Tadesh, you might have sought one already. Your presence at Lanscot suggests a different inclination.”
Crow grunted approvingly, and Rupert made a wish to the multiverse that Crow be present at all high-level negotiations, because that man hid nothing at all.
Adept Kesk considered a moment. “Captain. I believe you should continue attempting to negotiate with the vakari for the princess’s return. To that end, we need to re-establish contact. Perhaps the comm station requires a bit more supervision.”
It was a dismissal, and one Kahess did not like. But she bowed stiffly to Kesk, skewered Rupert and Crow with the same suspicion, and stalked back to the primary console.
“Are you proposing a formal alliance, Vizier?” Kesk asked, when Kahess had gone out of earshot. “Because you should know”—and there was weight on her should—“that your government has already made that request.”
Which had not gone especially well, Rupert supposed. Or had been in its early stages. Or a thousand other ors to which he was not privy, but someone carrying the title Vizier should certainly be.
The adept knows I am not who I claim to be, he thought, on a small surge of panic. And then, but does that matter?
Because even if there was reticence on the Harek Empire’s behalf to ally itself with the Confederation—fair, since the Confederation was small, and at war—there was now Rose.
A counterfeit (no, think acting, and trust Maggie would legitimate the title) Vizier retained sufficient rank to negotiate broader alliances, and to decide what sorts of incentives he might offer. He had yielded up the dead clipping and the documentation with only the barest twinge already. Now he shot a glance at the conference room door behind which his remaining incentive sat with Zhang and Jaed and Grytt.
“And yet,” said Rupert, “there have been developments in our relationship, Adept, since our departure from Lanscot, which can surely justify an acceleration in our negotiations.”
Crow snorted. “Got something they want, do you?”
Rupert wished he knew what the Confederation’s negotiations with the tenju looked like. While he supposed the Empire might want Rose to itself, he supposed equally that the tenju—whatever affiliation—would object to that exclusivity, possibly violently and to the detriment of the Confederation’s somewhat stretched, and stressed, navy. And besides, Crow—assuming a battlechief could negotiate treaties, so many assumptions—had a relationship already with Rupert’s remaining incentive and, more vitally, that incentive’s companions. He had fought alongside Thorsdottir and Jaed. Piloted with Zhang. They had escaped Sissten together. Rupert hoped that sort of experience forged the same emotional bonds among tenju (tribal affiliations, not empires, not confederations: that bespoke small, tight allegiances, personal rather than idealistic) as it did among humans. If it did, then Crow might be the first of the Confederation’s new allies, with the Empire to follow, so as not to be left out.
“Adept Kesk, Battlechief Crow: let us repair elsewhere, I think, to continue these discussions. It concerns,” he added, as Kesk seemed on the verge of protest, “the matter we discussed earlier, Adept, and the root of the Confederation’s interests here. I have further information that may be of interest.”
* * *
—
Koto-rek did not make it a full step before Sissten’s communications console let out a strident shriek, closely followed by an urgent speech from the officer peopling that post.
The sub-commander stopped and cocked her head in a listening posture. “Another ship has entered the system.”
“Who?” Rory did not notice the look Koto-rek gave her, for what Thorsdottir and Zhang would have called the “princess tone.” She was already moving toward the display, the better to see for herself.
Koto-rek thrust out an arm, reminding Rory that she was, at best, a guest and, more likely, a prisoner. The sub-commander’s attention was divided between the holographic display and the rattling hiss of vakari speech as the comm officer made their report to Zaraer.
“Human,” she said. “It came in through the gate. It’s—” She shook her head slightly, and pitched her voice to cut through and across the ambient excitement. Rory heard the word Confederation tangled among the vakari syllables.
She wished, yet again, that she had been able to deploy a translation hex. She would have liked to know why Zaraer rounded so quickly, but only after Koto-rek finished speaking, and why he was looking at her.
Well. She would probably find out. He was coming this way. (The reader here may notice a parallel between Rory’s experience of Never Take Our Freedom’s arrival and the Vizier’s, which is to say, angry captains demanding explanations of their foreign civilian passengers. Thus do we observe cross-species similarity in the tendency to react with anger and suspicion to the unknown, at the unknown.)
Rory tested the aether for probability and found it unsatisfyingly noncommittal. Well, that was all right. She could hazard a guess. A Confederation ship. Her mind raced through possibilities—why it was here now (herself? Surely not. To acquire Rose? But how would the Confederation know about that?), what it wanted (the same set of possibilities as the first question), if it knew what it was flying into (almost certainly not).
“Princess,” Zaraer flicked her title at her like a whip. Rory was gratified to see that although several crew members flinched at his tone, she did not.
“Acting-Captain?”
“A Confederation ship has just entered Samtalet space. Why is it here? Are they here for you?”
“I can’t say.”
Zaraer gave her a look that promised, if he had time and opportunity, he would make her say. Rory’s skin prickled cold, even under layers of skinsuit and hardsuit.
“Then what use are you?” He rocked back on his heels. The effect made him taller, so that Rory was forced to look up, and still she saw mostly the mottled underside of his throat, the blunter edges of his jaw plates, flared slightly. The acrid scent of vakar was stronger now—sweat? some other glandular effluvia born of anger?—and made her eyes burn. Acid, a part of her brain hypothesized, and marked that thought for later. Then Zaraer raised his left hand in what seemed to be readiness for a strike. She had seen how vakari pummeled their prisoners. She had rather hoped he’d ask an actual question, first.
“Sss.” Koto-rek raised her own arm in more of a forestalling gesture. “Listen! She is useful. She is willing to negotiate for the weapon’s return to us, if the alwar have it, on the Confederation’s behalf.”
Zaraer bared his teeth and snarled something in his own language. Koto-rek reciprocated, blue teeth and a hiss that made Rory’s scalp go tight and cold. For the first time, she saw color in Zaraer’s chromatophores. Red, to match his teeth.
At that very moment, Sissten shuddered. A vibration commenced under the deck. One of the officers turned and said something sharp (there was no other way a vakar could speak, evidently) to Zaraer.
Who, blessedly, turned away to shout a query at the crew, his arm dropping back to his side, the rage (or at least its visible manifestation) draining out of his cheeks.
“We have a return of engine function,” Koto-rek murmured. “We will be maneuverable soon. Wait.” She cocked her head. There was some sort of excitement among the bridge crew. “We will have limited maneuverability, though we are incapable of void-travel at the moment. And we may have whitefire batteries restored as well.”
Rory took advantage of the distraction to take a step back—as much as she could, in this confined space—and lean against the bulkhead. It, like the deck, was vibrating sufficiently to register through her hardsuit. That seemed excessive for engineering that was working correctly. Perhaps the ship was in the early stages of shaking itself apart. Or that hole into the void had slopped over its containment hexes and was oozing all over the engine room.
Koto-rek seemed unworried about unsynchronized vibration, and avidly interested in the bridge-crew conversation. Rory refrained from asking for updates. Koto-rek would, or would not, enlighten her; in the meantime, she took advantage of the absence of vakari regard, and did some regarding of her own. The gash in Koto-rek’s armor did not appear to be leaking any longer. Her only ally on the vessel would not expire from blood loss, at least.
Then Zaraer turned around. The acting-captain seemed calmer now, for which Rory was grateful. “The Tadeshi are withdrawing their troops from our deck,” he said to Koto-rek, although he clearly meant for Rory to understand, since he used GalSpek. “The dreadnought is starting to move. To, to turn.” Perhaps not so calm: his GalSpek slipped on the edges. Rory wondered how it was command had fallen to him, and not Koto-rek, who seemed significantly more in control of her temper, if not her emotional complexion.
Then Koto-rek scuttled Rory’s notions of calm. Her voice was nearly as sharp, her facial pigments running a red-shifted spectrum. “Withdrawing without the weapon?”
“Evidently. They clearly intend to engage the Confederation vessel.” But now Zaraer did not seem so certain.
Koto-rek hissed objection. “But why retreat? That ship is small. It is of no consequence. It came through the gate. That means it is hours away. The dreadnought could launch a high-velocity rock along that ship’s approach vector and force it to adjust and delay its arrival still longer, or if they were fortunate, destroy it. To leave us unattended—do they believe us already beaten, that they can return at their leisure? Princess?”
“The Tadeshi are acting as if they are disadvantaged,” Rory said. “That suggests they believe the Confederation ship is, if not formally allied with the Empire and the tenju vessels, at least friendly with them.”
“Is there an alliance?”
“Sss. That does not matter now, Zaraer.”
Rory made note of the dropped title, and the way Koto-rek’s gaze did not drop from Zaraer’s face, and surmised that there had been some shift in attitude she did not quite understand.
T
hat did not mean she could not use that shift to her advantage. “As I have confessed to the sub-commander, I have been intentionally uninformed about current politics. What I do understand, however, is Tadeshi tactics. If they boarded your ship intending to retrieve their weapon, and are now willing to leave without it, then they will be certain that you do not benefit from their failure. I strongly suggest reinforcing your defensive hexwork now, Acting-Captain.”
Zaraer stared at her. Then he spun and shouted something at his crew, who began a mad flurry of pointed elbows and stabbing fingers.
Rory swallowed. Zaraer’s acridity left her mouth dry and foul-tasting. She tried to gather some spit and stifled an urge to cough.
“At this range,” Koto-rek said, “even if our hexes are fully powered, a projectile from a vessel that size will cause significant damage. Damaged as we are . . .”
Rory required neither probability nor fairy gift to finish that sentence. “Then you need to ally now with the alwar. The Tadeshi won’t fire until their hoppers are clear of this ship.”
“What do you think the alwar will do? Interpose their ship to defend us?”
“I don’t know. Let’s ask them.”
Zaraer shouted, brief and furious. Koto-rek tilted her head the other direction. “We do not have sufficient power from the engines to breach their defensive hexes, nor to evade an attack, no matter how he demands it. The crew is telling him so.”
“Then tell the alwar you found me. Tell them you’ll give me back, in exchange for their help now. Maybe they can fire on the dreadnought, draw their attention. That will buy you time to get out of range, or, or—whatever you intend. Get your weapons online. Get Tadeshi defenses down.”
Koto-rek’s gaze was as blank and black as a place between stars. “Is there an alliance between the Confederation and the Empire?”
“Not to my knowledge.” Truth, and also not necessarily reflective of political reality. Koto-rek would know that. “I didn’t lie, Sub-Commander. I can negotiate. Let me talk to the alwar as a representative of the Confederation. If there is an alliance, I’ll draw on that. If there isn’t, there still must be a reason they want me, and I’ll use that. I promise that I will retrieve what we took from G. Stein and return it.”
