by David Drake
"Will it attack us?" asked Tambo.
The Gha did not bother to check with the pilot before answering. "No. Federation ship will watch only." He waved a huge, clawed hand at the viewscreen. "This is Guild business. Federation not interfere."
After Tambo explained to his superior, Trumbull nodded. "It's a straight-up fight, then." To the com officer: "How good's your Latin?"
She smiled. "Well, sir—it's just about perfect."
Trumbull grimaced. "Christ," he muttered. "I'm going to have to learn that damned archaic tongue, after all."
Then, with an irritated shrug: "Contact that fleet and warn them off."
"Yes sir. How should I identify us?"
Trumbull hesitated, before turning to the historian.
"Give me some good old Roman term," he ordered. "Something vague, mind you—I don't—"
Ainsley understood immediately. Smiling, he replied: "Just use SPQR."
Tambo chuckled. Trumbull said to the com officer:
"Use it. Tell them we're the—the SPQR Guild—and we have already established prior rights to all trade and commerce with this system." Growling: "Way, way prior rights."
The com officer followed his orders. Three minutes later, a burst of Latin phrases appeared on the com screen.
Lieutenant Sanchez clucked disapprovingly. "Their Latin's really pretty bad. That's a ridiculous declension of the verb 'to copulate,' for one thing. And—"
"Just give me the message!" bellowed the commodore.
The com officer straightened. "The gist of it, sir, is that our claim is preposterous and we are ordered to surrender."
Trumbull grunted. "I was hoping they'd say that. I've never even met these people, and already I hate their guts." He leaned toward his executive officer. "Any recommendations?"
"Yes, sir. I'd send the Quinctius. With an escort of SSBNs."
Trumbull nodded. "I was thinking the same way. We may as well find out now if our lasers are as good as they're cracked up to be. And I'll be interested to see how the missiles work. The galactic computer claims kinetic weapons are obsolete, but I think it's full of crap."
Trumbull began giving the necessary orders to his operations staff. Tambo, seeing the Gha commander's stiffness out of the corner of his eye, turned to face him.
He wasn't sure—Gha were as hard to read as the Romans said they were—but he thought Fludenoc was worried.
"Are you concerned?" he asked.
The Gha exhaled explosively. "Yes! You must careful be. These very powerful Guildmaster craft."
Tambo shook his head. "I think you are wrong, Fludenoc hu'tut-Na Nomo'te. I think these are simply arrogant bullies, who haven't been in a real fight for so long they've forgotten what it's like."
He did not add the thought which came to him. It would have meant nothing to the Gha. But he smiled, thinking of a college fraternity which had once tried to bully four small Romans in a bar.
Don't fuck with real veterans.
"We've been doing this a long time, Fludenoc," he murmured. "All those centuries—millennia—while we were out of contact with the galaxy, we've been fighting each other. While these Doges—God, what a perfect name!—got fat like hogs."
VIII
The battle lasted two minutes.
Seeing the huge ancient battleship sweeping toward them, with its accompanying escort of three resurrected Trident missile submarines, the Guild dodecahedron opened up like a flower. Ten laser beams centered on the Quinctius itself, including a powerful laser from the "Titanic" at the center of the Doge fleet. The three remaining Guild vessels each fired a laser at the escorts—the Pydna, the Magnesia, and the Chaeronea.
Powered by their gigantic engines, the shields of the human vessels shrugged off the lasers. Those shields, like the engines, were based on galactic technology. But the Doge Species, with the inveterate habit of merchants, had designed their equipment with a cheeseparing attitude. The human adaptations—robust; even exuberant—were based on millennia of combat experience.
The Pydna-class escorts responded first. The hatches on their upper decks opened. Dozens of missiles popped out—driven, here, by old technology—and then immediately went into a highly modified version of Transit drive. To the watching eye, they simply disappeared.
"Yes!" cried Trumbull, clenching his fist triumphantly. Not three seconds later, the Guild fleet was staggered by the impact of those missiles. As the commodore had suspected, the Doge Species' long neglect of missile warfare was costing them heavily. Human electronic countermeasure technology was vastly superior to anything the Guild vessels possessed in the way of tracking equipment. Most of the incoming missiles were destroyed by laser fire, but many of them penetrated to the shield walls.
Even galactic shields were hard-pressed against fifteen-megaton nuclear charges. Four of those shields collapsed completely, leaving nothing but plasma to mark where spacecraft had formerly been. The others survived. But, in the case of three of them, the stress on their engines had been great enough to cause the engines themselves to collapse. Their shields and drives failed, leaving the three ships to drift helplessly.
Now the Quinctius went into action. Again, there was an exotic combination of old and new technology. The three great turrets of the ancient battleship swiveled, just as if it were still sailing the Pacific. But the guidance mechanisms were state-of-the-art Doge technology. And the incredible laser beams which pulsed out of each turret's three retrofitted barrels were something new to the galaxy. Human engineers and physicists, studying the data in the Roman-captured Guild vessel, had decided not to copy the Doge lasers. Instead, they combined some of that dazzling new technology with a revivified daydream from humanity's bloody past.
Only a ship as enormous as the old Missouri could use these lasers. It took an immense hull capacity to hold the magnetic fusion bottles. In each of those three bottles—one for each turret—five-megaton thermonuclear devices were ignited. The bottles trapped the energy, contained it, channeled it.
Nine X-ray lasers fired. Three Guild ships flickered briefly, their shields coruscating. Then—vaporized.
Thirty seconds elapsed, as the fusion bottles recharged. The Guild ships which were still under power were now veering off sharply. Again, the turrets tracked. Again, ignition. Again, three Doge vessels vaporized.
More seconds elapsed, while the Quinctius' fusion bottles recharged.
The communication console on the bridge of the Scipio Africanus began humming. "Sir," reported Lieutenant Sanchez, "it's the Guild flagship. They're asking to negotiate."
"Screw 'em," snarled the commodore. "They're nothing but pirates and slavers, as far as I'm concerned."
Tambo grinned. "You want me to see if I can dig up a black flag somewhere?"
Trumbull snorted. "Why not? We're resurrecting everything else."
The operations officer spoke: "The Quinctius reports fusion bottles fully recharged, sir."
Trumbull glared at the surviving Guild ships. "No quarter," he growled. "Fire."
IX
The World Confederation's Chamber of Deputies reminded Robert Ainsley of nothing so much as a circus. He even glanced at the ceiling, expecting to see a trapeze artist swinging through the air.
"Is this way always?" Fludenoc asked quietly. The Gha, towering next to the historian, was staring down from the vantage point of the spectators' gallery. His bulging eyes were drawn to a knot of Venezuelan delegates shaking their angry fists in the face of a representative from the Great Realm of the Chinese People.
The Chinese delegate was imperturbable. As he could well afford to be, representing the world's largest single nationality.
Largest by far, thought Ainsley sardonically, even if you limit the count to the actual residents of China.
He watched the bellicose Venezuelans stalk off angrily. Most likely, the historian guessed, they were furious with the Chinese for interfering in what they considered internal Venezuelan affairs. That was the usual bone of contention betw
een most countries and the Great Realm. The Chinese claimed a special relationship—almost semi-sovereignity—with everyone in the world of Chinese descent, official citizenship be damned. Given the global nature of the Han diaspora, that kept the Chinese sticking their thumbs into everybody's eye.
The Gha repeated his question. Ainsley sighed.
"No, Fludenoc. This is worse than usual. A bit."
The historian gestured toward the crowded chamber below. "Mind you, the Chamber of Deputies is notorious for being raucous. At the best of times."
Somehow—he was not quite sure how it had happened—Ainsley had become the unofficial liaison between humanity and the Gha. He suspected that his long and successful work reintegrating the Romans into their human kinfolk had given him, in the eyes of the world at large, the reputation of being a wizard diplomat with weird people from the sky. Which, he thought wryly, was the last thing a man who had spent a lifetime engrossed in the history of classical society had ever expected to become.
On the other hand— Ainsley was not a man given to complaining over his fate. And, fortunately, he did have a good sense of humor. He eyed the huge figure standing next to him. From his weeks of close contact with the Gha, Ainsley was now able to interpret—to some degree, at least—the body language of the stiff giants.
"You are concerned," he stated.
Fludenoc exhaled sharply, indicating his assent. "I think—thought—had thought"—the Gha struggled for the correct Latin tense—"that you would be more—" His thought drifted off in a vague gesture.
"United?" asked Ainsley, cocking an eyebrow. "Coherent? Rational? Organized?"
Again, the Gha exhaled assent. "Yes. All those."
Ainsley chuckled. "More Guild-like, in other words."
The Gha giant swiveled, staring down at the old historian next to him. Suddenly, he barked humor.
Ainsley waved at the madding crowd below. "This is what a real world looks like, Fludenoc. A world which, because of its lucky isolation, was able to grow and mature without the interference of the Guilds and the Federation. It's messy, I admit. But I wouldn't trade it for anything else. Not in a million years."
He stared down at the chaos. The Venezuelans were now squabbling with representatives from the Caribbean League. The Caribs, quite unlike the Chinese delegate, were far from imperturbable. One of them shook his dreadlocks fiercely. Another blew ganga-smoke into the Venezuelans' faces. A third luxuriated in the marvelously inventive patois of the islanders, serene in his confidence that the frustrated Venezuelans could neither follow his words nor begin to comprehend the insults couched therein.
"Never fear, Fludenoc hu'tut-Na Nomo'te," he murmured. "Never fear. This planet is as fresh and alive as a basket full of puppies. Wolf puppies. The Guilds'll never know what hit 'em."
He turned away from the rail. "Let's go get some ice cream. The important business is going to take place later anyway, in the closed session of the Special Joint Committee."
The Gha followed him readily enough. Eagerly, in fact.
"I want cherry vanilla," announced Fludenoc.
"You always want cherry vanilla," grumbled Ainsley.
The Gha's exhalation was extremely emphatic. "Of course. Best thing your insane species produces. Except Romans."
X
After the first hour of the Special Joint Committee's session, Ainsley could sense Fludenoc finally begin to relax. The Gha even managed to lean back into the huge chair which had been specially provided for him toward the back of the chamber.
"Feeling better?" he whispered.
The Gha exhaled vigorously. "Yes. This is much more—" He groped for words.
"United?" asked Ainsley, cocking a whimsical eyebrow. "Coherent? Rational? Organized?"
"Yes. All those."
Ainsley turned in his seat, facing forward. Behind the long table which fronted the chamber sat the fifteen most powerful legislators of the human race. The Special Joint Committee had been formed with no regard for hallowed seniority or any of the other arcane rituals which the Confederation's governing body seemed to have adopted, over the past century, from every quirk of every single legislative body ever created by the inventive human mind.
This committee was dealing with the fate of humanity—and a number of other species, for that matter. Those men and women with real power and influence had made sure they were sitting at that table. Hallowed rituals be damned.
Not that all rituals and ceremony have been discarded, thought Ainsley, smiling wryly.
He was particularly amused by the veil worn by the Muslim Federation's representative—who had spent thirty years ramming the world's stiffest sexual discrimination laws down her countrymen's throats; and the splendiferous traditional ostrich-plume headdress worn by the South African representative—who was seven-eighths Boer in his actual descent, and looked every inch the blond-haired part; and the conservative grey suit worn by the representative from North America's United States and Provinces, suitable for the soberest Church-going occasions—who was a vociferous atheist and the author of four scholarly books on the historical iniquities of mixing Church and State.
The Chairperson of the Special Joint Committee rose to announce the next speaker, and Ainsley's smile turned into a veritable grin.
And here she is, my favorite. Speaking of preposterous rituals and ceremonies.
The representative from the Great Realm of the Chinese People, Chairperson of the Special Joint Committee—all four feet, nine inches of her—clasped her hands demurely and bobbed her head in modest recognition of her fellow legislators.
Everybody's favorite humble little woman.
"If the representative from the European Union will finally shut his trap," she said, in a voice like steel—
Mai the Merciless.
"—maybe we can get down to the serious business."
Silence fell instantly over the chamber.
"We call her the Dragon Lady," whispered Ainsley.
"She good," hissed Fludenoc approvingly. "What is 'dragon'?"
"Watch," replied the historian.
* * *
Two hours later, Fludenoc was almost at ease. Watching Mai the Merciless hack her bloody way through every puffed-up dignitary who had managed to force himself or herself onto the Committee's agenda had produced that effect.
"She very good," the Gha whispered. "Could eat one of those stupid carnivores we ride in a single meal."
"—and what other asinine proposition does the august Secretary wish us to consider?" the Chairperson was demanding.
The Secretary from the International Trade Commission hunched his shoulders. "I must protest your use of ridicule, Madame Chairperson," he whined. "We in the Trade Commission do not feel that our concerns are either picayune or asinine! The project which is being proposed, even if it is successful—which, by the way, we believe to be very unlikely—will inevitably have the result, among others, of our planet being subjected to a wave of immigration by—by—"
The Chairperson finished his sentence. The tone of her voice was icy: "By coolies."
The Trade Commission's Secretary hunched lower. "I would not choose that particular—"
"That is precisely the term you would choose," snapped Mai the Merciless, "if you had the balls."
