Forge of War (Jack of Harts)

by Pryde, Medron

  Hal walked up to the pilots and cybers and smiled. “Welcome to the Guardian Light.” He waved a hand and several men and women wearing the hallmark Peloran faces began approaching the line of fighters. “We will take care of your ships. Now if you will follow me, refreshment is arranged.”

  Jack turned at the sound of a Peloran fighter squadron entering the bay and let out a long breath of amazement. He’d never seen one of them this close, let alone nine of them at once. They were rakishly thin, with smooth lines that bespoke thousands of years of refinements, and moved towards their landing zone with a grace that impressed him.

  “Yes,” Hal said, his voice sounding pleased. “I do enjoy watching fighters land. By the way, I know it is tradition in your military that all of your ships are female and are given female nicknames.” His smile grew amused and he spread out his arms to emphasis his proud male figure to those who turned to look at him. “I am not. You may call me Hal.”

  Jack smiled and looked at Betty. She rolled her eyes at his look. Jack turned back to Hal with a mischievous smile. “That’s great. You can call her Betty.”

  “Well, of course. That is her…” Hal trailed off and narrowed his eyes. “Ah. The song. Jester is an appropriate callsign I see.”

  Jack just smiled back. It took some truly esoteric knowledge to catch a cyber, even if for only a second. He was pleased to have found just the right piece of old music to trip the man up.

  “Please follow me,” Hal said with a shake of his head and walked towards the hatch.

  Jack double-timed it up to Hal, catching the cyber just inside the hatch. “So Hal, can I ask you a question?”

  Hal turned his head just enough to give Jack a long, calculating stare. “You already did,” he finally answered and stepped through the hatch into a long white corridor.

  Jack chuckled and scratched his chin, following Hal through. “Touché. Fine, can I ask another one?”

  Hal’s mouth gave an amused twitch and somehow Jack knew what he was going to say. “Did I stop you?”

  Jack sighed. “Touché,” he repeated. He could see that this cyber didn’t believe in waiting very long for payback.

  Hal chuckled. “You may ask, Jack,” he said as he led the Americans around a corner.

  Jack shook his head before speaking, updating his mental map of the ship. “Hal’s not a very Peloran name, is it?”

  Hal gave him a long look. “No it’s not. It’s also not the first name I’ve gone by. It is common for new Americans to change their names to sound normal to American ears. I took advantage of that custom when I came here.”

  “So you’re American now?”

  “In a manner of speaking. I started the first family here in America.”

  “Oh,” Jack whispered and looked at Betty for a moment, suddenly realizing he really wanted to know something. “Would it be considered wrong to ask why you didn’t choose me?”

  Hal gave him another long gaze. “For Peloran, yes,” he finally said. “But we are not Peloran,” he added with a shrug. “My son acts as head of household on a daily basis due to my duties here. He made the decision based on your…many issues. I did have the option to overrule him if I wished. I did not,” Hal finished, raising his chin and arching one brow at Jack.

  Jack nodded in thought, considering his next words. “And what do you think of that decision now?”

  Hal examined him again for a long time before sending a mournful gaze towards Betty. “I do not know. She has gambled much in choosing you.” Hal turned a serious eye on Jack. “More than I would gamble. The family she came from has always been…reckless. Their partnerships fail more often, sometimes spectacularly. But sometimes they succeed spectacularly as well. For her sake, I hope you are in the second group. And if you wish that too, you will have our aid.” Hal nodded, cementing his statement. “We always stand by our family,” he added with a pointed look towards Betty and turned into a hatch, waving his hand for the pilots to follow.

  Jack leaned against the bulkhead next to the hatch and pursed his lips towards Betty. “I guess he told me, didn’t he.”

  Betty smiled. “I told you we talked about this. He is of the opinion that everybody who chooses a Terran partner is a part of his family, even if we don’t realize it.”

  “Well, it’s always nice to have family, I suppose,” Jack said with a sad shrug.

  Betty sighed and placed both her hands on his shoulders. “Yes, Jack. It is good to have family.” She held his gaze, daring him to correct her, until Jack nodded, accepting her words, and the meaning behind them. She was his family now. “Good. Now let’s eat,” she added and turned towards the hatch, giving him a light pull towards it.

  He allowed her to guide him until he saw the tables and chairs filling the room and stopped cold. They overflowed with food. It wasn’t the space tofu he had read the cultured and advanced Peloran ate. Loaves of bread, platters of fruits and vegetables, and hunks of sizzling meat, some recognizable as chicken, filled the tables and his mouth instantly began to water at the succulent smells filling the room. He blinked as he recognized an honest-to-God boar sizzling and smoking in the middle of the table.

  Hal cleared his throat and Jack turned to look at the cyber. In the back of his mind, he noticed that the other Cowboys did the same, as shocked as he by the room. “As I said,” Hal noted with amusement written all over his face. “Refreshment is arranged. Please take a seat and take whatever you wish. Do not worry about eating the last of anything. Replenishment is also arranged,” he finished with a bow and a wave towards the tables. The amused smile never left his face.

  Jack looked around the room again and smiled. “Shiny,” he said and stepped forward to grab a chair in front of a particularly good-looking chicken. He slipped the chair back, sat down, and ripped a leg off the chicken. He dropped it on his plate and reached for a trout as well. Once the solid slab of fish was on his plate he picked up his bowl and filled it from a huge crock of soup made up of a number of vegetables and some form of meat he didn’t recognize on sight.

  The other Cowboys joined him at the table and they all began to eat. Jack smacked his lips appreciatively at the chicken. It was real good chicken. So was the trout and the soup that he could now tell had pieces of goat in it. It was amazing, and not at all what he would have expected of the Peloran.

  A couple minutes in, several Peloran pilots entered the room, whooping in excitement, reliving the engagement through hand motions he understood completely and exclamations that Jack couldn’t understand at all. They looked and acted like they’d just had the most amazing time in the world, and they practically bounced off each other towards the food while talking, saying what Jack figured had to be “did you see that move? Spectacular!” and a dozen other variations on that theme that pilots used.

  In short, the Peloran pilots looked nothing like the cool, calm, collected, and reserved Peloran he had met before now. In his experience, they didn’t want to fight, and he thought that was a universal trait. But here these pilots were glorying in the battle that had just taken place. They paused upon seeing the Cowboys, but then found seats and began to eat in between mouthfuls of more jabbering. More pilots spilled into the room, similarly excited, and found more places to eat, with the other Peloran. They shouted at each other, ripped meat apart, and spilled beer or ale on the table as they jostled each other.

  It was odd, seeing the Peloran this animated, this loud and lively. It didn’t match any of what he’d seen from them before.

  The door opened again and Jack turned to see who it was this time. He blinked at the single man walking in at the sedate pace Jack did equate with the Peloran. He wore all white, the fabric cut into the shape of the uniform that said Peloran as much as anything else. The man was Peloran, the only kind of Peloran Jack had ever known up to this day. Of course, that was probably because he was the Peloran Jack had grown up seeing. Aneerin, the man who made Contact long before Jack was born. Calm, careful, and reserved, Aneerin had been
the visible manifestation of Pelora to Earth for Jack’s entire life.

  The Peloran pilots shouted something that sounded like “Pentulu!” and raised their mugs into the air, splashing ale and beer on the floor and table. Jack frowned for a moment, trying to translate the Peloran words that he still hadn’t mastered. He sighed in realization that he had no hope at all of translating them when food and drink slurred his hearing.

  Betty leaned in close and whispered in his ear. “They’re calling him their great commander in battle.”

  “Thanks,” Jack murmured back as the Peloran shouted again and again, turning it into a victorious chant.

  Aneerin glanced at the Cowboys and gave a slight grimace. He raised his hands and tried to quiet his men but they continued to chant their praise of him.

  “Please!” Aneerin shouted in American. “Please!” The pilots finally began to let their chants trail off. When he could finally talk without shouting, he continued. “You did all of the hard work. I simply told you what to do.” He waved a hand towards the Cowboys. “They deserve your praise more than I. They killed many Shang this day and helped us turn the tide on their own initiative.”

  The Peloran pilots grumbled at Aneerin for a few moments, obviously disagreeing with his words, but then raised their mugs again and shouted what didn’t even seem to be words so much as an elemental howl of approval aimed at the Cowboys.

  “I think they’re feeling positively towards us,” Betty said in his ear and Jack chuckled.

  Aneerin finally managed to quiet his men a second time. “Please, they are Americans. They do not understand our language. Please speak American,” he added with a pointed look at Jack and the others.

  Charles put down his mug and shook his head. “Our cybers can translate for us,” he said with a wave towards them. “We can understand you just fine.”

  Aneerin raised an eyebrow at Charles before nodding in acknowledgement. “Indeed.” He let out a long breath and shook his head. “Forgive me for my tardiness please, I am Aneerin ap Taliesin and I wish you good health, now and forever.”

  Charles glanced at the other Cowboys for a moment before turning back to Aneerin. “Charles Edward Hurst,” he said with a wave towards himself, following the Peloran tradition of giving a full name, with no rank. “I wish you good health, now and forever.”

  Aneerin smiled and spread his arms out wide. “I welcome you all to the Guardian Light. And I thank you for coming to our aid.”

  Charles nodded his head. “You came to our aid first, so it was only natural that we come to yours in your need.”

  Aneerin smile grew softer. “Well spoken, Charles.”

  Charles bowed his head to the Peloran. “My family would say they taught me well,” he answered with a smile of his own.

  Aneerin chuckled. “And they would be right.” He raised his hands up over his head and clapped them together. “Victory!” he shouted and his pilots roared back in approval. “Life!” The pilots roared again, raising their mugs high, and Aneerin stepped up to a table to grab a mug of his own. “Honor!” The pilots roared one more time and beer and ale spilled onto the table. The Peloran leaned back and emptied their mugs in one breath, smacked their lips, and slammed their mugs on the tables with a resounding thud.

  Jack tried to echo them, but the beer in his mug was thicker than any beer he’d ever had, mixed with a honey sweet flavor. It tasted good, like everything else, but it was just too rich for him to inhale like that. He settled for slamming his mug down and sloshing its contents on the table. He suppressed a grimace at the mess he’d made. But there was that saying about what one should do when in Rome.

  He looked back up to see Aneerin staring right at him and blinked. Aneerin gave him the “come on over” wave of his hand and walked over to where Charles stood, watching both the Cowboys and the Peloran pilots. Charles met Jack’s gaze and shrugged. Jack sighed and came to his feet, grabbing a hunk of bread on his way. He bit through the crunchy outside and his mouth watered. The bread was soft and warm on the inside, fresh out of the oven.

  “Somebody here really knows how to cook,” Jack said after swallowing the bread, walked up to Charles, and tore another bite out of the bread. He glanced over to the left to see Betty and Charles’ cyber watching, leaning together to talk. Dorothy. Dorothy was her name.

  “Yeah,” Charles answered in between popping blueberries into his mouth.

  “I’ll pass your approval on to the cooks,” Aneerin said with a smile. He waved his hands towards the Peloran pilots. “So what do you think?”

  Jack met Charles eyes for a moment, just long enough to see that Charles saw the same thing he did, and looked back to Aneerin. “I expected tofu burgers and togas,” Jack finally said with a wry smile.

  Aneerin erupted in laughter at the remark. It melted into the laughter and general ruckus of the Peloran and American pilots as they began to mingle. Aneerin settled down to a good-natured shake of his head. “I do hope you were joking about the togas.”

  Jack smiled and glanced at Betty who gave him an approving look. “Maybe a bit,” he answered.

  “Good,” Aneerin said. “I’ve never much liked togas. Too…Roman.”

  Jack shared another glance with Charles, making certain the other man had caught the admission. He had. He might be the son of a rich good for nothing family, but he had brains that was for certain.

  “No worries though,” Aneerin added. “Give them a couple hours to burn off the battle adrenalin and they’ll all be back to the quiet and calm tree huggers you think of as Peloran.”

  Jack looked at the partying pilots and then at Aneerin, who appeared as calm as he always had on the television programs he’d seen. “And you?” he asked, genuinely curious why Aneerin seemed so…well…Peloran.

  Aneerin chuckled in a low tone. “Me?” he asked innocently. “Why I’m only half Peloran. The genetic imperatives of a full Peloran do not control me.” He turned his gaze to the pilots and nodded in there direction. “And these warriors have never fought before this war. The battle rush of adrenalin is still new to them. I on the other hand fought in the Great War, and have seen many battles.”

  Jack examined Aneerin carefully. The Great War had been over two thousand years ago, and the cost to the galaxy had been enormous. The Albion and many, many other races had simply ceased to exist by the time it was over, and entire sectors were still wiped clear of life if the reports were true. This man appeared no more than thirty years old, until you looked him in the eyes. The eyes showed the age and Jack let out a long breath. “How old are you?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

  Aneerin smiled and patted the bulkhead next to him. On the other side of the room, Hal turned to smile in their direction. “Even older than Hal,” Aneerin whispered back. “You could say we are really old friends,” he added with a wry smile.

  Jack swallowed, realizing what Aneerin had gambled today. “You could have died today. Why did you…?” He trailed off and waved his hands out to encompass everything around them.

  “Why did I fight a battle I may not have won?” Aneerin asked and shook his head. “We all die some day, Jack. Of course, I am not so blind to myself that I would claim I would be here if I were following my own wishes. There are times when I would settle down on some backwater world and farm trees if given the choice,” he added with a wry smile. “But the choice is not mine. I have a mission.” He pulled in a long, tired breath. “The Albion saw their deaths coming. They fought it until the bitter end,” Aneerin smiled again, a sad smile that remembered all that had been lost in the Great War. “In the end, all they wanted was for their legacy to live on. So here I am, not in a retirement community in our equivalent of southern Florida.”

  Jack glanced at Charles, saw the man’s calculating look, and shifted back to Aneerin. “What is your mission?”

  Aneerin chuckled slowly, and Jack saw the man return fully to the present. “Why, Jack, telling you that would be cheating,” he said in amusemen
t. Then he patted the bulkhead again, this time very fondly. “But you know, this ship was not always known as the Guardian Light. He had another name during the Great War. A bit more blood thirsty as I recall.” On the other side of the room, Hal smiled back at them again. “I have seen the lights of too many great civilizations die, Jack.” He patted the bulkhead one more time and gave Jack a very serious look. “Look at the name. It may give you a clue.”

  Jack blinked, glanced over at Charles whose face suddenly took on a pole axed look, and then over at Betty who just smiled at him. She knew. Of course she knew. She was Peloran. Sorta. And then a chill went down his spine as his mind connected the dots that Charles already had. The Guardian Light. The guardian of the light. The light of civilization.

  “Oh my God,” Jack whispered.

  Aneerin gave him a thin smile. “Indeed. Some missions take a lifetime to fulfill. I hope I fulfill mine before my time is up. I should greatly wish to retire and spend time with the trees on some backwater world where nobody knows my name.”

  Hello, my name is Jack. Do you know when it is the best time to mount a sneak attack? I do. So do the Shang. You wait for them to be all fat and happy. Best is right after they’ve won a great victory. Once they eat, drink, and bed Mary, they’ll be slow to respond when you hit them again. It does take a particularly calculating mind to write off the first attack wave of course. It just so happens the Shang are quite calculating.

  Hit and Dive

  Jack held the best tasting loaf of bread he’d ever eaten. He tore another chunk out of it and chewed, watching the pilots relive the battle with sweeps of their hands and whoops of exaltation. The table they sat at or stood over overflowed with amazing ale and fruit and breads and meats. Jack glanced down at the bread in his hand and swallowed his mouthful. He had formed a number of expectations from what he’d seen of the Peloran over the years and this room did bad things to most of them.