by A. D. Bloom
He said, "We might win that fight now."
"Better to avoid it."
"Earth can't have the Weirdling artifact," said Hank. "But tell Pavic I have a way everyone can win."
"Alright," she said as he drank. "But remember this was your idea."
35
After he stepped off the ramp with Auntie Kill to the chitin-on-chitin drumming of her monks, her bodyguards led him back to his human-friendly chamber set deep in the hive, with the flat floor and the filtered, temperature-controlled atmo.
They left him at the hatch and he entered to see the apartment empty. It was the last place he'd seen Scilla. The sketchbook was there. He imagined she was on whatever ship Hank Devlin was on.
Martin Samhain sat in the incomprehensible silence and peace of that solitary chamber, and the quiet rang in his ears. His heartbeat thumped too loudly and he imagined noises on the far side of the chamber or around the bend in the passage where he couldn't see. He chewed the Shediri pear from the bowl someone had left for him just to kill the silence. When it was gone, he sat and leaned back on the long couch and stared up at the vaulted ceiling.
He didn't realize he'd lost consciousness until he was there, peering out the veil and into the void that was no void at all, peeking out at all the other seemingly self-contained entities wrapped in their cauls just like him. He fought to widen the hole to free himself, to escape and drum out his heartbeat on the skins of all the things like him floating together in the dark so they might know they were anything but alone. He'd clawed and ripped a hole just big enough to push two fingers through when he heard the Weirdling's creation calling out to him. Six levels above and on the other side of the hive, it shouted its anticipation. Another feast was on the way.
36
The Doxy
High orbit over Otherworld
The airlock leading out onto the top tier deck of the Doxy opened and framed the carnage for Ram. The battle with the Xihute had turned most of the lower orbital space over the planet into a graveyard. Foundered hulls still burned from inside including the battle carrier. It stared back at him with the single, red-rimmed and gaping wound where the Weirdling's ancient weapon had hulled it. Not a single alien lifeboat had escaped from that immense carrier. Already, the tugs were moving in cautiously around it to push it out to a safer orbit before it augured in for impact and snuffed out half the life on the planet.
Before zooming in, his naked eye picked out the remains of the other ships, the alien cruisers and fighters, the Legion fighters, Otherworld corsairs, and DIY gun rafts. They dotted the vacuum. His helmet projected the exosuit transponders still active and orbiting with them. There were too many to count and the translucent red alphanumerics indicating the identities of the dead all overlapped and blended together.
The bodies recovered by the longboats, skiffs, and gravity pinch rafts lay on the uppermost flight decks of the Doxy. They'd been arranged in ranks and files like soldiers standing in formation, but their bodies had nearly all frozen or been fixed by rigor mortis into unruly poses. Their clutching, bent, or broken limbs and spines refused to mimic the lines of the rows in which they'd been arranged.
Ram had thought he was late, but then, he saw Chun, Biko, Dana, Garlan, Hank, and Margo were already waiting in a group not less than 15 yards to the stern. "Anyone have an ETA?"
"Soon they tell us," said Chun.
Ix arrived first. His 58 short legs seemed to ripple under him as he and his two aides approached from the airlock set in the top level superstructure 20 meters towards the stern of the ship. Inside his helmet, the Shediri's jagged jaws opened and closed in silence until the translator spoke in Ram's ear. "Earth representatives not yet arrived. Interrogative: Why?"
"They're not answering hails from our bridge," said Garlan. "We don't know."
The battleship Westmoreland and her escorts had already steamed in from Ekkai. Her blackened, ablated, and crater-pocked bow hung low like a threatening moon over the continents of Otherworld. The ring of guns around her bow plate grinned at them.
"They got here just 15 minutes ago," said Chun. "I swear they came in and set their orbit like it was a targeting run. They fell into geo-synch over New Madras as if the sailor at NAV had been told to maintain an orbital path suitable for bombardment of surface targets."
Eight UNS destroyers held station around Westmoreland. She was Revenge class - 800-meters from bow to stern. Sixteen railguns with barrels big enough to fly a junk down ringed her 600-meter bow plate. With her gunports open you could see the last of the magnetic vectoring rings, pitted and marred with plasma burns from sustained fire. The forest of 6x140s and small railgun turrets that populated her hull striped her with shadows.
"That battlegroup was only hours away during the Xihute attack," said Dana without trying to hide the bitterness. "They're only here now to take the Weirdling tech from us."
"They're here for our help." It felt like a lie when it came out his mouth like he didn't believe it himself.
Asa Biko said, "The harbormaster at Bofor's Station is sending more tugs. We're thinking of keeping the Xihute wreck in high orbit. It's big enough to shield more than a few ships from fire or even mount a few guns on."
"I can't believe you made a deal with Balthus Pavic," Ram heard more disgust in Dana's voice than disbelief. l
"I didn't," he said. "A proposal for negotiation is all I made. I had to."
Hank said, "Oh for god's sake, stop apologizing. This is the only chance we have. You said it yourself. We're making the best of an impossible situation. It's what we always do." Ram knew Hank was right. So did the rest of them, but you wouldn't have known it looking at their faces. They stared at Hank with betrayal in their eyes. "You think there's two sides, but there's only one. We're all on it."
The armored doors set in the middle of Westmoreland's small batteries opened. Ram zoomed in with his helmet to see the longboat crossing the threshold. It turned on four, small, outboard nacelles and corrected its course to make for the Doxy.
"Westmoreland is commanded by Captain Ernst," said Chun. "I can tell you two things about him. His career began after the war with the Imperium started so he's never fired on human beings before."
"What's the other?"
"He always follows orders."
"Stealthed ship," said Biko, pointing towards the planet's pole where a longboat now closed on them. That it had appeared out of nowhere was only unusual because of the vessel's size. The n-space energy shunts up and down the hull weren't dissimilar to the ones they'd built for the junks and corsairs with the help of the Shediri, but those systems required enormous amounts of power. Even a corsair needed batteries to supplement what the reactors couldn't produce. That must be a very special longboat indeed. It had no transponder signature beyond Staas Company ID, but it clearly meant to land on the Doxy before Captain Ernst's boat.
*
Ix hosted the meeting inside a maintenance bay built into the side of the superstructure. A few dozen of the half-half-meter-long whiptail bugs had gathered high up on the walls and ceiling of the ovoid, chitin-walled compartment. Once the two parties had entered through separate locks and removed their helmets, Captain Ernst and the UN Spec Ops team he'd brought with him looked up into the red-lit dim nervously as the atmo bugs whacked their tails against the bulkhead to pump out extra O2 for them.
One of their guests was smaller and skinnier than the rest and kept his helmet dark with the interior helmet lights off. That's Balthus Pavic. "I'm Ram Devlin," he said to Captain Ernst who tried to reply, but only coughed. "That'd be the neon content in the atmo getting to your throat." Ram turned to Hank. "You have anything for that, Hank?"
Even coughing, Ernst managed to catch the gently lobbed bottle without too much trouble. After he took a swig, he said, "Wasn't that kind of risky? I could have dropped it."
"It's an auspicious beginning for a relationship based on trust," said Hank.
Ix gestured them to sit at a ring of Shediri sea
ting mounds locked down in the center of the curving deck. The bug chatter-clacked at them. "Please seat now," said the translator. "Drink Shediri bile next."
Ernst paled. "What did it say?"
"Ix jokes," said the bug's translator. He hissed and pointed with two of four arms at the lone figure in a black, unmarked exo-suit that had yet to remove his helmet. "Please be seated."
Balthus Pavic stepped through the soldiers to the front with Ernst as he finally unlatched and removed his helmet. "I'm pleased to meet you. Forgive me for not removing my helmet earlier. I was using the visor to view some data. I'd be quite happy to take a seat." And with that, Pavic straddled and slowly squatted himself down onto the Shediri seating mound bug-style. Ram had expected a monster, but the Director of 4SI was only a man. He had the same cutting glint in his eye as Hank. No doubt he was just as committed.
Ram seated himself opposite the spymaster, and Balthus Pavic nodded politely. The two meters between them didn't feel like enough. It wasn't because he thought Pavic had sent Samhain to kill him. Plenty of people had tried to kill him. Pavic radiated a frightening sort of emotionless threat like a piece of heavy machinery that might barely notice crushing human bodies.
The Staas Intelligence Director said, "We'd very much like to have the Weirdling technology you found. Are you sure you don't want to give it to us?"
"You can't have it."
"We could take it," said Captain Ernst.
"You can try; how thick is that armor?"
Chun said, "Not as thick as a Xihute battle carrier."
Pavic raised his voice to a turbine whine. "Gentlemen! Let us not descend into barbarity. It would be of advantage to none. I will state for the record that my surveillance proxies have witnessed the power of the Weirdling's weapon and I know a most tragic conflict would surely unfold were we to allow this meeting to degenerate. I will not permit that. I did not come here to witness such a regrettable thing. Fortunately, a solution may be negotiated that is to the satisfaction of both sides. I am here with the full blessing of the Staas Company Board of Directors as well as the Secretary General’s Office and I am here to negotiate a treaty. I'm sure both sides have certain conditions and we will discuss them at length in the coming days. Let me open our negotiations by giving you the one thing I know you want most - a promise against Staas Company and Earth government reprisals. Done."
"That's not our first priority. We can defend ourselves now."
"Neither will we attempt to take the Weirdling technology from you by force or by guile. This is a promise. Staas Company will no longer hold monopoly on exports and will no longer be responsible for Otherworld's administration."
"What do you want?"
"I want to negotiate the peace...and more. Mr. Martin Samhain still works for me, but here with the artifact is where I want him. I propose a mutual defense treaty that obligates Earth to defend Otherworld and Otherworld to use the Weirdling weapon against our enemies on any and all fronts."
The next seconds were filled only with the pattering sound of the whiptails whacking the chitin above. "We'll fight the Xihute and the Imperium," said Ram. "That goes without saying. Anyone else, it's on a case by case basis."
The old man shook his head. "No. Unacceptable. You must fight any and all enemies. You don't get to pick and choose. Your son informed me you'd be wary of this condition. He also told me that in the end, it wouldn't matter."
"Did he?"
"He informed me that you never want to do what you have to do. But you do it."
"Hank wasn't able to explain to me why you're here. Why not someone from the Secretary General's Office? Why you? Why the Director of 4SI?"
"This is my initiative. I've lobbied and pulled in favors nobody wanted to give to make this possible."
"Yes, but why? Why do you care what happens to us?"
"I'm sure Mr. Samhain told you the story of Houston. Some do not care to avoid a recurrence of such events, but I do. The solution then was heavy-handed and shortsighted and cost us all dearly. Around the tale of Houston, new rebellions were born. Blood will have blood, Mr. Devlin you know it to be true. But today, it does not have to be so. Today, I have taken the initiative to create another option." Balthus Pavic inhaled deeply and exhaled in silence as Ram stubbornly waited for the answer to his question. "If you need a simple reason why I should care, then call this effort and the generous terms my apology for Houston. We have all suffered since that day on which more than just the people of Houston died. Trust for government died, and for my directorate in particular. Please, Mr. Devlin. We are not doomed to repeat the past. Take my deal."
"But Staas Company..."
"They will protest and it will all be for show. I have convinced them that the Company won't loose nearly as much this way in the short or the long term. The Secretary General's Office agrees, of course."
Hank said, "He's giving us everything we wanted for this planet. Staas Company will be out of our hair. For god's sakes; as a privateer you were going to fight the Xihute, the Imperium, and anyone else that attacked Earth anyway."
"Be quiet, Hank." It came out louder than he wanted it to.
Pavic sighed. "Do not let your emotions cloud your judgment at such a critical juncture. We all have the perfect world we want. And then, there is what must be. Harry Cozen knew it. Your son knows it. I think you know it."
Ram Devlin took off his glove and extended his hand to Balthus Pavic. "Don't make me regret this."
Epilogue
Heavy rain splashed off Martin Samhain's shoulders and spat in his eyes. It fell on the constantly mutating boundaries of the Weirdling artifact and sprayed in a ghostly echo of its last shape. The Hst'ok warrior monks gathered around it hissed and clicked a song to the Weirdlings' ancient weapon. They fiddled with both pairs of their chitin-covered arms, rubbing the exoskeletal ridges. When the monks all did it together and did it fast, the sound of individuals combined into a warbling tone as if they'd produced some kind of wave interference pattern in the thick Otherworld atmo. He almost thought he could see the shape of the sound itself standing out against the randomness of the falling raindrops' paths.
Martin Samhain looked up through the streaking drops as the Weirdlings' living weapon rumbled its own hungry song. He'd never claimed to understand anything about the Weirdlings, but...what kind of species would craft a tool like this and make it a living thing? He wondered if it wouldn't have been happier with Scilla Price wielding it and if there was a reason it had chosen him over her other than the Weirdlings' introduction. Scilla would have been overjoyed, he thought.
Auntie Kill and her bodyguards emerged from the open blast doors of the hive and stepped out into the rain. She walked without trying to shield herself from it. Once you're wet, you're wet, he thought. As she approached, he realized the thought had been hers. Loud thinker, that one. Before 2165 she'd had a different name. Like her adopted son, Hank Devlin, she was a purposefully cloned individual with an implant and all the memories of her previous incarnation. Once, her name was Matilda Witt. Her mind was too full. Like Hank Devlin's it brimmed over. The rain beaded on her face like tears.
She said, "What's wrong, Mr. Samhain; you have a haunted look about you."
"It's hungry for more," he said. "The artifact, I mean."
She seemed to find that amusing. "How lucky for it to end up in our little corner of the universe. It will have what it hungers for. If there is a god of war, Mr. Samhain, I submit to you that he is the only one that never goes unfed."
"Humans, aliens, it doesn't matter. It's still us. It's the same thing. Even when we win, it's always us we kill."
"I know, dear boy. I and many others have discovered this ourselves. Now, you will come to understand the cruelest, most tragic part. Knowing this won't change what you have to do. None of the people you see in front of you signed up for good times and a spotless soul. We do what we do because we have to do it, not because we like it."
"I'm not crazy about killing things
."
"Some things taste good and some things taste bad. The Shediri make their guests drink that horrible-tasting bile to prove how far they'd go for them. Action is truth."
"What the hell does that even mean?"
She grinned and hissed softly like the Shediri always do to punctuate a point. "Don't act so disappointed with your fate. We need you here. And you like being needed."
"Technically, I still work for Balthus Pavic, you know."
"Yes, she does too."
"Who?" he said, but he knew even as Auntie Kill nodded up over his head and behind him where the lights of the descending tour boat waxed brighter. It trailed steam as it set down not fifty meters away in a cloud that quickly obscured it.
"Like you, Scilla Price will be staying on with us indefinitely. She'll be keeping your boss in the loop. It's part of the agreement."
"She is? Really?"
"Nobody told you, my dear boy? Yes. As you can tell, I'm overjoyed." She was not.
Hank Devlin appeared first at the hatch and greeted his mother. Scilla was on board, but she stayed in the cabin. He saw her wave from the first porthole behind the cockpit.
Auntie Kill said, "Isn't she coming out?"
"I can only stay for a few minutes, mother. I have a business proposition to discuss with you. Perhaps we could find somewhere more private?" The two of them began to make for the main doors. "Mr. Samhain," Hank said then, turning to him. "Go have a drink on the boat."
The steps were slippery. Once through the open lock, he saw Zi'vt on the pilot's mound to his right. Scilla Price sat to his left. She drank from one glass and held another out to him. He shook his head. "I know you like a nice glass," she said. "Is it because I'm the one offering?"
