An Ancient Peace

by Tanya Huff

  Torin hummed a noncommital response and stared out at the distant red giants. The control room grew as quiet as possible for a small area holding six adults. The chairs creaked as Craig and Ressk shifted their weight. Fabric rustled as Alamber twitched at his sleeves. Binti leaned against the rear bulkhead, arms folded, sniper patient. Werst cracked his knuckles. Torin contemplated tossing him out the air lock. No one made the obvious observation.

  They were waiting for her to make it.

  “So . . .” She shifted around enough to catch reactions. “. . . the coordinates for the H’san home system aren’t a secret.”

  Binti drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Either Presit . . .”

  “And her pilot,” Werst pointed out.

  “. . . lied . . .”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “. . . or Colonel Hurrs lied.”

  The colonel was Intell. If it got the job done, he’d declare blue was orange. That’s why officers had noncoms, to keep them from getting lost in the big picture, and Torin had been very good at her job. “He wasn’t lying.”

  They took her word for it.

  “It seems the more important point . . .” Alamber dropped into an empty chair. “. . . is that the coordinates to the H’san home system aren’t a secret to everyone else. Just to the Younger Races.” He frowned. “Or maybe just the military.”

  “No.” Torin was sure. “Colonel Hurrs thought stopping this was important enough to run an unsupported black op. He’d have pulled information off civilian channels if the military channels were blocked.”

  Ressk nodded, nostril ridges opening and closing. “He said searching for the coordinates had started attracting attention, but he didn’t say from who.”

  “We didn’t ask,” Werst snorted. “That was stupid.”

  Werst wasn’t wrong. Torin trusted officers to tell her what she needed to know to get the job done. Without the power of the Corps behind her, she needed to stop doing that.

  “Well, given that the Younger Races are still at the kids’ table, it’s a good thing Presit was on Abalae,” Binti said.

  “And it’s a good thing Presit’s cousin was flying the supply ship,” Werst growled, his emphasis on “good thing” nearly burying the words in irony.

  They all considered coincidence.

  “Good thing it was Presit, because we have history.” Alamber stretched out a long leg and pushed at Craig’s boot with his. “You have a shitload of history. Given the given, she wouldn’t hesitate to confront us.”

  “In fairness, she wouldn’t hesitate to confront anyone, but, yeah.” Craig met Torin’s gaze. “Tidy.”

  “Very tidy,” she agreed.

  “Too tidy. And when things are too tidy . . .”

  Duct tape cracked under Torin’s grip. “Plastic aliens.”

  “Stop breaking the ship.” His hands were warm as they pried her hands off the chair. She accepted the excuse to be held. “It could be a coincidence.”

  She searched for an apparent causal connection. In the Corps, gunnery sergeants were considered all but omnipotent, but just because she couldn’t find a connection, that didn’t necessarily mean there wasn’t one. “It could be.”

  Coincidences happened.

  Unfortunately, she’d stopped believing in coincidence when she found she’d been fighting a war the hyper-intelligent, shape-shifting, hive-mind plastic fukkers had engineered. That was one of the things she resented most about them, that she’d lost her ability to believe some things just happened.

  “So what do we do, Boss?”

  “Our job. And if given the chance to fuk over the little plastic aliens, then that’ll be all pleasure.”

  On the first night in Susumi space, heading for the right red giant if they could trust Presit’s coordinates, Torin sat in the pilot’s chair, the scarf she’d bought on Abalae across her lap, the recorded sound of wind in trees blending with the hum of the Susumi engines. She stared down into the shimmer of translucent browns and oranges and thought of her dead. Of Marines she’d carried out. Sergeant Glicksohn. Private Haysole. Private First Class Guimond. Of Marines she’d had to leave behind. Captain Rose. Lieutenant Jarret. Technical Sergeant Gucciard. Thought of them being called Visitor by shopkeepers and facilitators, by people who’d never lived through an orbital bombardment or had any idea of how many had died to keep them safely ignorant.

  Calluses caught on fine fabric as the scarf spilled over her fingers.

  And she thought of the Elder Races still keeping secrets. Of professing peace and denigrating war even as they’d sent the Younger Races out to die.

  SIX

  “IT’S WATER, MAJOR.” Nostril ridges slowly opening and closing, Verr frowned at the readout on the canteen she’d just dipped into the pool. “No salts. No minerals. No fish shit. No organics of any kind.”

  Marine canteens contained the best purifier available, which was why Sujuno had acquired them. Although this underground pool was the first water they’d seen—orbital scans had shown no surface water at all—she didn’t regret the cost. She had no idea where the sanLi the Katrien had brought their supplies in from, but it seemed distilled had multiple meanings and every drop of the water brought in on the supply runs had gone into the canteens before it had gone into her team. Fortunately, the enclosed tech was among the minimal tech that continued to work. “Is it safe to drink without purifying?”

  “It’d be safe to use in a regeneration tank. It’s pure water. Pure,” Verr emphasized as though worried she wouldn’t be believed. “One hundred percent H2O.”

  Sujuno stepped forward and indicated the kneeling Krai should turn the canteen until she could see the readout. “Trust the H’san to set up a filtration system for an open body of water thorough enough to result in improbable purity and then abandon it. Get all available containers filled as quickly as possible.”

  “All of them, Major? I only ask,” Verr continued when Sujuno frowned, “because we’ve accumulated a lot of empties.”

  “Do you have somewhere else to be, Lieutenant?”

  “No, but . . .”

  “If you trust that water is going to remain pure or isn’t going to drain away, then you haven’t learned the lesson the H’san are teaching in these catacombs.”

  Verr’s nostril ridges closed. “Life sucks and death is no reason to stop expecting the unexpected?”

  “Close enough.” Sujuno nodded toward the pool and repeated, “As quickly as possible.”

  Dion was certain they’d nearly reached the weapons cache. While she had no faith in either his intelligence or scholarship, she’d seen for herself that there was only one stanza left after they found the mark that would lead them out of the inverted bowl. The author’s style—by way of Dion’s translation—leaned toward overwritten, poetic declaration and from the beginning the clues had come one per stanza. More importantly, she could feel it. Instincts honed through eighteen years fighting the Confederation’s useless war told her they were close.

  Experience gained during those same eighteen years told her close only counted in intercourse and WMDs and those who didn’t take advantage of fresh water got no sympathy when they died of thirst.

  As Verr barked out orders, Keo picked up the case of collapsed containers and followed Wen and Broadbent toward the water.

  If the cavern maintained the planetary schedule the rest of the necropolis had been locked to, they had three hours of light remaining.

  So far, they’d activated none of the cavern’s defenses. She sincerely hoped no one was stupid enough to believe there were no defenses.

  Circling the pond, searching for the mark, Dion had barely covered a third of the distance around the cavern, Toporov a meter behind to ensure there’d be no independent action from their investor’s eyes and ears. From where she stood, Dion appeared to not only be exam
ining the exterior wall of the cavern but each plinth as he passed it, bending low. She couldn’t fault him for his thoroughness even as she wanted to scream about the time he was taking. There’d been a mark on a sarcophagus already, so stairs within a plinth weren’t out of line.

  He ignored the bodies posed on top of the stones.

  Sujuno had seen and ignored a lot of bodies over the years she’d fought in the Confederation’s useless war, but these, displayed like trophies, kept drawing her gaze.

  The Mictok and the Ciptran exoskeletons sounded hollow when she tapped them with the hilt of her knife. The mammals, however, were plush fur over desiccated flesh over rigid bone. Both Krai had taken a single sniff of the Trun’s haunch where she’d cut a triangular opening, simultaneously slammed their nostril ridges closed, and declared them revenk. Inedible. Possibly a first for an organic substance. Not even the H’san corpses had gotten that response.

  As the sound of Nadayki’s boots descended the stairs, quick, staccato jumps from step to step ringing out his annoyance, Sujuno leaned on the bench by the Mictok’s plinth. Leaned, because given the H’san physiognomy, few other species could sit on the benches comfortably. Sprawl, perhaps, but she didn’t sprawl. Up above, the Mictok’s eight eyes gleamed, but at least they didn’t look moist.

  “I’ve searched everywhere, the walls, the ceiling, the door, every fukking step of the whole fukking set of stairs—there’s no control panel on this side.” The young di’Taykan sagged against the far end of the bench as his hair sagged down against his head. “We can’t go back.”

  The only visible entrance or exit from the cavern was the one they’d come through.

  To find death a thousand times, travel only forward.

  The first stanza. It was one of the more specific instructions Dion had been able to translate. The others had gone back when the Katrien had landed with water and Toporov had gone back to dispose of the Katrien, but she had only gone forward, remaining at their farthest point of egress as Dion searched.

  To find death a thousand times, travel only forward.

  It could easily be a metaphor. It could just as easily not be. She wasn’t going to risk it.

  “We don’t want to go back.”

  “Yeah, but before we always could. There’s a big difference between can’t and don’t want to.”

  She disliked Nadayki’s tendency to whine, but not enough tell him to stop and have to then deal with his mistaken belief that she paid any attention to his opinion at all.

  Luck had put the remaining eight of her team on the right side of the door. The stone carving they’d assumed large enough to prevent the door from closing completely had barely slowed it, splitting cleanly in half as though there’d been a fracture designed into it for that very purpose. She wasn’t yet ruling a deliberate fracture out. Modern H’san were all about the sanctimonious sweetness and light. Ancient H’san, however . . . Their thought processes were . . .

  She glanced up at the Mictok on its plinth. . . . peculiar. On the bright side, the crack of the stone splitting and then the extended percussion as half of it bounced down the stairs hadn’t evoked a response from volume sensitive security in the cavern. They continued to speak softly, but at this point, after so long in the catacombs, it was habit rather than necessity. Fortunately, all of the team’s essential, as well as most of their optional, gear had been moved down into the cavern and piled back on the sled before the door slammed shut.

  As she had no intention of leaving without the weapons they’d been hired to retrieve, she considered the closed door unimportant. They’d continue moving only forward.

  “You know we’re trapped in here, right?” Nadayki switched from Federate to the most common of the five Taykan languages. Given his low birth, it was the only one he knew. “I mean, I’m pretty sure Dion is making up half the shit he’s been spewing about the H’san, so our odds of him finding a way out are not high. We’re probably going to die in this cave. Sure, not of thirst . . .” He waved at the pool. “. . . but eventually even the Krai will run out of things to eat. We’re going to die surrounded by what may or may not be dead bodies on display and then be eaten by short and hairless times two and you and I are the only di’Taykan around who understand about touch.” His undertones added a request for comfort, properly pitched from lower class to upper, although he didn’t move closer to her. The manipulative little shit had learned that much at least.

  “I don’t care.” She answered in Federate. Taykan had seventeen different words for touch. The most basic, the one Nadayki used, meant touch that calms. “If you have needs, there are three Humans and two Krai in here and, in my experience, Humans are always willing to play.”

  “Yeah, but they’re not . . .”

  Turning only her head, she met his gaze. The green faded from his eyes as more light receptors opened. His hair flattened. He was young enough, he wore his need on his face as well as in his scent, and any other Taykan would have responded to it. Any other di’Taykan would have responded enthusiastically. Sojuno drew in a deep, defiant breath. She wasn’t any other Taykan, di or otherwise, and her responses were her own. She would not break her vow to her dead. It wasn’t enough that Nadayki had also lost his family and could be open to joining a new line. Nor that he was male—which meant nothing now, but would when he changed to qui. He’d bragged of the reason he’d run from his home, the deaths he been responsible for considered collateral damage in proving his cleverness, and he’d crowed about surviving the ruin of Vrijheid Station when his thytrins had died. She’d needed certain skills, certain outside-the-box skills for this job, and he was certainly able, but the moment they were paid, he would be as nothing to her for the sake of his dead thytrins.

  For the sake of her dead thytrins.

  She dug her fingers into her thigh, feeling the nails bite through the fabric.

  For the sake of her dead.

  “Dion better find that fukking exit,” Nadayki muttered, when the silence extended. He stood and headed toward the water, his hair flipping back and forth in short, jerky arcs.

  Sojuno agreed with the sentiment if not the petulance of the delivery. She felt her hair brush her cheek and willed it still.

  “This, all this . . .” Dion waved an arm, the gesture general enough he could have been been indicating the entire cavern or any of its contents. “. . . the H’san considered an honor. The bodies displayed on the plinths? Fortunately for us all, I know more about the ancient H’san languages than any other member of the Younger Races. One line on every plinth translates as your dead are our dead and then the others, the other lines, they name each race and give a short description. A short, poetic description. Well, not on the plinth under the H’san, of course.”

  He looked so smug Sujuno almost broke her vows and slapped him. If it came to it, she decided, rubbing her temples, she’d order Verr to do it. Verr would enjoy it.

  “On the H’san plinth,” he continued, “it says only we stand with you until we are needed.”

  Broadbent frowned, folding parallel lines into the pale expanse of his forehead. “So when they are needed, they won’t stand with you?”

  Dion rolled his eyes. “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Don’t call me stupid.” Broadbent shifted his weight, his hands curled into fists. Slightly under average height for a Human, he hadn’t a gram of fat on his body, only lean muscle. While not the brightest star in the cluster, he’d done his job competently enough, content to follow orders without question, reminding his superiors of the old joke: What do you call someone who finished basic at the bottom of the group? A Marine. A lifer, a career corporal, he’d been lost after he’d put in his twenty and available to be taken advantage of by anyone who could give him a job he understood.

  She’d needed strong bodies who’d do as they were told, who wouldn’t be missed if they disappeared. Broadbent had fit her hiring
criteria perfectly and she enjoyed his uncomplicated obedience.

  Ignorant of how close he was to a broken nose, at the very least, Dion waved off Broadbent’s protest. “Then don’t ask stupid questions.”

  “Told you, don’t call me stupid!”

  “Private! Stand down!”

  He rocked back on his heels, Toporov’s big hand splayed out, holding him in place with a touch. She could almost feel the warmth spreading over Broadbent’s chest and she wrapped her right hand around her left wrist, skin to skin.

  “Professor.” Sujuno smiled when Dion turned toward her and saw, from the corner of her eye, both Krai cover their teeth. He demanded the title when directly addressed. She doubted the validity of his claim. “Answer Private Broadbent’s question. What do the words on the H’san plinth mean?”

  “I don’t think he . . . Well, yes, I suppose he was, wasn’t he, although . . .” His gaze locked on her smile for a moment. Then he shook his head and looked away. “I believe that we stand with you until we are needed means that once they’re needed, they stop standing.”

  “They stop standing? And then what?” Keo asked, stroking the heavy band the exoskeleton laid across her collarbone. “They sit?”

  “I assume they fight.”

  Even Nadayki laughed at that, and he’d never worn the uniform.

  “I’m obviously not speaking of modern H’san,” Dion huffed. “Were the ancient H’san not fighters, I wouldn’t be here leading the hunt for their weapons. And what’s more,” he continued, “given minute differences in the carvings, I am undoubtedly the only living scholar who can tell you that the H’san maintained this cavern for centuries after forming the Confederation.”

  “Yeah, well, good thing they stopped before we showed up,” Verr muttered. Both Krai had climbed to the top of the bench and were curled together in one of the larger hollows, Verr sprawled across Wen’s lap. “Waste of fukking food.”

  Wen snickered and slapped a foot against his bonded’s hand.