by Rick Partlow
"Holy shit," Reggie Nakamura said reverently, as if he were praying instead of cursing.
Cal tore his gaze away from the spectacle to look around him. Reggie was thunderstruck, looking as though his brain couldn't accept what his eyes were telling him. Rachel's face held a look of awe and wonder and he nearly smiled at the way she still saw life as a miracle. Pete's expression was unsurprised, and Cal supposed that was fair; after what they'd seen in the Northwest Passage corridor, perhaps he shouldn't have been surprised either. Deke was watching the display with keen interest in his eye, but also with the slightly jaded demeanor of a man for whom the miraculous had become the mundane. Kara's lips were tight in a frown, the look of someone who'd lost control of the situation and didn't like it one bit. Tyya-Khin though...
Cal wasn't totally certain, but he thought the young male's face showed a perception of possibilities, and perhaps for the first time in quite a while, a glimmer of hope.
"They'll try the lasers next," Deke said in clinical assessment.
And they did. Almost before the flaming orange energy signatures had faded from the green glow of the shield, the atmosphere above the city erupted in what looked like nothing else as much as the largest lightning strike any human had ever witnessed. The sky was afire, ionized to plasma and superheated until twin trails were burned into a vacuum by a pair of lasers, each fed from the raw output of a cruiser's fusion reactor. When the beams faded, air rushed in to fill that vacuum with a clap of thunder as loud as a nuclear strike...and yet the city remained untouched. Above it, the green glow had turned a full spectrum of the brightest rainbow Cal had ever seen, the energy dispersing without one erg of it ever touching the surface.
Cal turned to Trint, trying not to let himself feel the suspicion and wariness that gnawed at the back of his mind.
"Now what?" he asked his friend.
"Now we can talk," Trint said, hands spread in what Cal knew was a gesture of satisfaction. "And now, perhaps everyone will listen."
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Trint let the cacophony of voices wash over him like a wave, none sticking, all sliding off with no emotional content. It was the only way he could keep his irritation from transforming to anger. He stood at the center of the conference room in the Commonwealth base's Op center and watched this Captain Einarsson bellowing half in anger and half in fear at Kara McIntire, his words lost in the sheer flow of emotion behind them. Kara, for her part, seemed to be holding her emotion inside, but it was there: fear and suspicion fighting with grief and pain and relief.
He might have found these hard to read on his own, but he'd discovered in just the last few hours that the Predecessor AI was very skilled at reading human emotions from cues such as body language, thermal scans and voice stress analysis, and it was more than happy to help. It was more difficult reading the emotions of the human Fleet captains in charge of the two cruisers in orbit, since they were only here in telepresence, their holograms projected above the conference room table where the others sat. A tall, striking woman with her head depilated completely, even the eyebrows, and a shorter, more average looking male, they'd said little, seemingly content to let Einarsson rant and rave while Kara tried to reason with him.
The Tahni in the room---besides himself---had mostly remained silent. There was Tyya-Khin, still seemingly somewhat in awe, as well as the human-appointed city governor and the Matriarch. Her presence had surprised even him, but she'd apparently decided that this was too crucial an event to stand on ceremony.
Trint allowed himself the indulgence of a barely-audible whistle of exasperation and decided to tune back into the human Captain's words for a moment.
"...is tantamount to treason!" he was yelling, his face a brilliant shade of crimson. "If you think that the aura of General Murdock's reputation will salvage your career after this, Major, you're sorely mistaken!"
"Major McIntire," the female ship captain---her name was Sato, he remembered---asked, leaning forward at her station with hands clasped in front of her, "where is General Murdock?"
"I haven't seen him or spoken with him since he left for Inferno," Kara McIntire said, her face solid stone. "His last orders were for me to take charge of this situation in his absence."
"He'd be better off staying there," Einarsson snapped. "It's where they'll hold his court-martial once it becomes known that he allowed this...thing to exist," Trint noted that the human was looking at him when he said that, "despite all laws and military regulations to the contrary. Why are we not burning this thing to the ground instead of talking to it?"
"Captain," Caleb Mitchell spoke up for the first time since the meeting had begun, and there was a cold anger in his voice, "perhaps you should attempt a more respectful tone, given that the 'thing' you're speaking about is standing right there, is perfectly capable of understanding you and is in control of a Predecessor weapon that could quite likely destroy this whole planet."
"Perhaps I can save you all some time and breath," Trint spoke up. "This is what is going to happen: all Commonwealth military presence will be off of this world within the next thirty days. I'm giving you that long because I know it will require much logistical adjustment, but not one minute longer. After that, a Commonwealth diplomatic presence here will, of course, be most welcome. As will any commercial enterprises that may wish to work in concert with the independent Tahni government."
"We can't do that!" That was the male of the two hologram representations, a human called Montoya, his back stiff and his voice strained. "We don't have the authority!"
"I'd suggest you find someone who does," Trint told him, his voice unthreatening but cool. "These terms are non-negotiable. This planet is under my protection and your forces will leave, either voluntarily on board your shuttles or one atom at a time."
"And we just leave the Tahni to rebuild their military under the protection of your Predecessor technology?" Captain Sato asked him, her voice scornful. "This is an act of war!"
"The Tahni will have no military," Trint clarified for her. Now it was Tyya-Khin and the Matriarch who looked at him askance, but he continued unfazed. "This planet will be completely disarmed, aside from a police force which will carry only nonlethal weapons. I and my ship are the only defense this world needs. Any attack on Tahn-Skyyiah will avail nothing, and the attackers will be immediately destroyed, no matter who they are."
That turned the human military commanders thoughtful, apart from Einarsson who still seemed enraged.
"You're saying..." Captain Montoya began.
"I'm saying," Trint interrupted him, "that my vessel will remain here, in orbit around this world, for longer than your civilization will survive. It will not leave here, therefore it will not be used to project power to any other world. And as I will not allow the Tahni any offensive weapons, you need not worry about them using this practical invulnerability to re-arm and attack you."
"And we're supposed to take your word for this?" Einarsson asked scornfully.
"Use your head, Einarsson," Deke Conner snapped with stored-up impatience. "We'll have a permanent garrison insystem, probably out by the largest gas giant. If the Predecessor ship leaves, we'll launch a strike, obviously."
"I would expect no less," Trint confirmed, nodding in a human gesture. "The situation is very stable, and could work in your favor. If your leaders are as obstinate and full of righteous indignation as you, Captain Einarsson, then the worst case scenario is that this planet will be quarantined and the Tahni will at the least be able to live their own lives, uncontrolled by you." He lifted his hand and flipped it over demonstrably. "On the other side, if they are reasonable, this system could become a hub for trade and diplomatic relations. It will be open to all who are allowed to come, as long as they come in peace."
He lifted both hands, palms out. "Either way, this will be your decision. What is not your decision is that your forces will leave. You have been here long enough. The war is over."
Now the Tahni Matriarch did spe
ak. She stood, supporting herself on a long wooden staff for she was truly and unabashedly old, her hair white and thinning. She hobbled forward, ignoring the humans, and stood directly in front of him. The lines in her face cut deep and her eyes were so far beneath her brow ridges that he could barely see them.
"You are of the Imperial Guard," she said, her voice strained and breaking. "All in this city would consider you an abomination, a sin against the Path; those who do not care for the Path so much these days would consider you an ugly reminder of the Emperor and the war. So why do you do this for us?"
"You're my people, Lady, whether you wish to admit it or not," Trint told her. "If I have the power to make my home a better place, and to make the Tahni better people, how could I not do it?" He looked at Caleb Mitchell and nodded. "I have learned this from the humans, from the best of them."
"Will you rule us then, in their stead?" the city governor asked, staying as far away from the Matriarch as he could and still remain in the same room. He was an unpleasant, puny little man who Trint was sure had used his position with the human puppet government to increase his own fortune. "Are we trading one master for another?"
"I have no wish to rule anyone," Trint assured him, amused at the thought. "I'm hardly qualified. I would suggest that we convene a council of our elders and choose someone on whom they can all agree." He glanced over at Tyya-Khin. "Perhaps someone who has already demonstrated repeatedly a willingness to sacrifice himself for his people."
"What about all the men and women he and his resistance killed?" Kara McIntire asked quietly. It wasn't an argumentative tone, but there was hurt in it. She'd lost someone for whom she felt responsible, Trint thought. "Who gets held to account for that?"
"You've told me," Trint said after a moment's consideration, "that the one responsible for all of this is the traitor Kah-Rint, and you already have him as your prisoner. He is yours to do with as you will; we do not claim him." He bared his teeth in something that looked somewhat like a human smile but for a Tahni was something much, much less pleasant. "Or, if you wish, you can leave him to our justice. Our punishment for traitors is likely harsher than yours."
* * *
Kah-Rint woke with a start, shivering, wet and cold. He sat up in the coffin-like confines of the open hibernation pod and hugged his arms to himself, feeling his own bare skin before he opened his eyes and remembered where he was. This was the mercenary's freighter, where he'd been taken on their shuttle. They'd stashed him in hibernation and that was his last memory, but a quick check of his corneal implant's microcomputer showed him it had been nearly two weeks.
He was naked in the small, dimly-lit chamber, but he suddenly realized that he was not alone. A human female stood before him, petit even for one of their undersized breed. She watched him with arms crossed, face expressionless. There was gravity, so he understood that they were either under thrust or in Transition Space. Under way then, from somewhere to somewhere.
"You woke me," he said in their human trade language, English. It was a harsh and grating language that sounded like a metalworking tool to his ear, but he had mastered it long ago. "And you are here alone, so it is not to transfer me to detention on another ship, or to a shuttle. What do you want?"
"What do I want?" the small female asked contemplatively. "A good man---or possibly woman, I haven't quite decided---who I wouldn't mind spending a few decades with, maybe a child, a nice place by the water. Peace, love, happiness, what everyone wants. I certainly," she clarified, stepping closer to him, "don't want to be dealing with you. But I'm a soldier, so I do what I'm told, not what I want."
He made an expression of amusement. She was attempting the human version of humor, which he had never once found anything but juvenile. But it was in a bitter tone that told him maybe she'd been sent here to make a deal. Deals he understood.
"And what were you told to do, soldier?" he asked her, swinging his legs slowly out of the open chamber, letting his feet touch the spongy, absorbent surface of the deck and hesitantly putting weight on them. They felt numb and tingly from the extended period in hibernation.
"First of all, I was instructed to tell you that your plan failed utterly," she said, and this was, he could tell, with some satisfaction. "The Thaddeus Moore was retaken far short of Earth and the surviving members of the boarding force were recently dropped off by this ship at a colony world with a Tahni enclave. All the duplicates you put in place have been quietly and permanently removed, and due to some circumstances no one could have foreseen, Tahn-Skyyiah is about to be a disarmed but independent world, free of Commonwealth military occupation."
She smiled thinly. "So, everybody wins. Except you, of course."
He felt a surge of rage and hatred in his belly and fought to rein it in. Losing his temper would accomplish nothing here and now. So, he'd not accomplished his revenge completely. Still, many humans and Tahni had died, and perhaps that would have to be enough. They still needed him for something, or he wouldn't be alive. He staggered an unsteady step toward her.
"And after you've told me this, what were you to do?" Kah-Rint asked, keeping his tone even. "Threaten me with a show trial that would make me the scapegoat for all the conflict, life-long detention in one of your Reformeries?"
"There'll be no trial, show or otherwise," she corrected him. "The government wouldn't dare acknowledge what you did; that would force it to reveal the genetic duplication technology and how easily you used it to replace our military officers and they would never admit to that."
"Then what do you want from me, female?" Kah-Rint snapped, growing impatient and uncomfortable in the chill of the hibernation chamber. He needed a warm bath.
"I don't want anything from you," she told him, shaking her head. "Neither do my superiors. They simply want you gone. Disappeared." The last said with a cruel grin.
"Then why are you talking to me?" he demanded, finally losing his temper.
"Because my friends wanted you to know you failed," she explained calmly. "Before I killed you."
The words hadn't registered with Kah-Rint's brain before the female produced a handgun from the small of her back, moving with incredible speed. He opened his mouth to try to talk his way out of this, as he had so many times before.
The darkness of the barrel loomed like eternity, before sudden brightness consumed it.
* * *
Kara McIntire didn't look up as Deke entered; she just continued staring into the nothingness of the blank wall above their bed, as if the answers she sought resided there.
"What's wrong?" Deke asked, sitting down next to her at the small table that was the only other furniture in the Guest Officers' Quarters room they shared in the base Ops center. His expression was concerned and he covered her hand with his. She squeezed it, but still didn't look up. "You sounded pretty weirded out when you called me."
Deke had been helping to arrange the transport schedule for the cargo shuttles, trying to get everyone and everything cleared out before the end of the thirty day deadline. The word that had come down straight from President Mehta's office was that Trint's demands were to be met immediately. In fact, the President and most of the Commonwealth Senate seemed to have been damned happy to have the Tahni off their hands at last. The whole story was being carefully handled, of course, and once the spin control experts got through with it, no one would know about any Predecessor ship or Imperial Guard cyborg ultimatum. No, it would be the pure magnanimity of the human Commonwealth that led to the end of the occupation of Tahn-Skyyiah.
"I got this message," Kara told Deke when she could work up enough mental fortitude to speak. "It was a prerecorded module stored in the memory of the local Instell ComSat and set to broadcast a signal coded to my headcomp if it wasn't cancelled by a certain time. It..." She shook her head. She thought about just sending it to Deke via headcomp, but that seemed too...impersonal. Instead, she sent it to the holotank built into the tabletop, then touched the control to play it.
"Hello
, Kara," Antonin Murdock's image said, his eyes soft, his smile genuine. "I'm recording this before I head to meet Reginald on Inferno to finish our business with the duplicates. This sort of thing can be tricky and it's quite possible neither of us will live through it. And there are some things you'll need to know." He shifted his weight, leaning back in the acceleration couch of his courier. "I'm including a list of the duplicates just in case we don't finish them all. The task will fall to you if that happens. They're all here, on Inferno, except for one who's been sent to Tahn-Skyyiah. If we're successful, he won't be a problem. The duplicates are unstable long-term, I'm afraid, mostly due to the conditioning that forces them to follow the instructions programmed into their memories." A wry expression passed across his face.
"A few months ago, after I picked all of you off that Predecessor base in the Northwest Passage corridor system, you and Deke asked me how I'd managed to survive Robert Chang's attempt on my life. I'm afraid I wasn't completely honest with you." A pause, as if he were hesitant to say the next words aloud. "I didn't survive it. The Antonin Murdock you knew was killed when his ship was destroyed. I'm a genetic reconstruction of that man. His memories were copied on board Belial, when he went to meet his contact."
"What the fuck?" Deke said, hand slipping off hers as he sat back in his chair.
"Robert Chang, Cutter, did this not just because General Murdock was a threat to his plans, but because he knew that there would come a time when he had to leave you behind, Kara. He knew if things worked out the way he wanted, he would be departing human space and leaving you and your friends to the mercy of whatever circumstances he had created with his machinations.
