From Ruins

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  "Yes. You will not be pleased. Second has initiated the war."

  "He is scouting, yes. I still receive reports."

  "You misunderstand," the new male said. "He has attacked the aliens."

  The Usurper's mind stilled, then gave a great heave of red fire that overwhelmed the smog that wrapped him. "The border? A skirmish? He said nothing of it to me. Did the scouts stumble into something?"

  "No." The new male set a hand on one of the chairs. "He has attacked one of the prime alien targets. With a thrown rock large enough to demolish a major part of the planet." Jahir's heart stumbled, and he almost missed the rest. A planet? The Alliance had been attacked? "My reports on the extent of the damage are conflicting, so I cannot guess its extent. But after that Second's force made minor attacks on several other priority targets. The aliens have been aroused."

  "The aliens!" The Usurper hissed. "Who cares if the aliens are aroused? Do any of our people know about this? If the forces massing at Apex-East discover Second is already claiming the best of the slaves, treasure, and worlds, they will revolt!"

  "I have suppressed the information," Logistics-East said. "For now, that bandage is holding. But we need to put ourselves ahead of this wind, Exalted, or it will tear us from the sky."

  "I will contact..." The Usurper halted, growled. "Second was leading the war effort, and he has betrayed me. The Twelveworld Lord was supposed to take over, but now he has betrayed me. Who do I put in charge!"

  "Perhaps you might serve as replacement?" Logistics-East asked. "You are technically the Apex-Navy. In the absence of an Admiral-Offense you may serve in that capacity."

  "Ridiculous. The moment I leave the palace someone will sit on the throne and declare it theirs. I can't eliminate the Empire's cultural inconsistencies if I am playing at war on the border. With aliens! A waste of time. I will have to find someone else to elevate to Admiral-Offense. Then I can tell this male that Second's scouts have met the enemy and it is time for our forces to join him. By the time they arrive and realize Second has gone, it will be immaterial. They will stay to hunt." The Usurper considered. "Yes. That is the only answer. Maintain your hold on this information, Logistics-East, and expedite the assignment of our loyalists to the palace. Corruption is everywhere. The rot goes deep."

  "Honor has ruled us too long," Logistics-East agreed. "It is an antiquated notion. Barbaric. We are well quit of it."

  "Yes. Bring your forces down. I'll have them billeted here in the suites closest to me. They can replace the guards, who were after all the appointees of the previous Emperor and therefore untrustworthy."

  "It will be done."

  "Good. We have an understanding. Keep me apprised."

  "Exalted." The newcomer paused on his way to the door. "You are not concerned about the aliens?"

  "Who is concerned about them?" the Usurper said, disdainful. "They are fit only to be slaves and corpses. Look at the one on my wall... I hit it once, and now it is dying from the blow."

  Jahir sensed the new Logistics-East studying him with that dispassionate gaze. No curiosity at all: an alien, no matter how unexpected, was something to be itemized and remanded to a list, and then forgotten. "The fight will at least serve as a diversion for the warrior class."

  "Let them disport themselves in foreign lands. They will come home and find no place to nest. We will make a sane and rational empire once they have died."

  "Indeed. Exalted."

  After the male left, the Usurper made arrangements for quartering the newcomers, displacing a chunk of the court in the process. Jahir wondered if he realized he was creating his own problems, or if he didn't care. Would he use it as an excuse to cut down the courtiers when they inevitably protested? Probably.

  The Usurper trusted Logistics-East to conceal the data. The Usurper did not know how short-lived his relief would be. Sadly, this interview had happened in the morning, and left Jahir far too long on the wall to wonder what constituted a priority target by Chatcaavan standards. Which planet had suffered? How many had died? He tried to imagine the damage a stone thrown from space would cause, and failed. A small enough one would barely register, burning up in atmosphere. A large enough one would have ripped the world apart. His stomach tightened in pain. God and Lady, help them, he prayed, and lost himself in it until the guards arrived to drag him to his bath.

  Tsonet pried the earplugs out, removed the blindfold, was as careful with the gag as he could be, which mattered very little. Jahir was resigned to pain, desiring only that he would become less sensitive. He had never thought he would wish for scars, but scarring seemed preferable to tenderness... but what would Vasiht'h say to such a thought? He smiled a little, bled.

  "Stop that," Tsonet said, irritated. "You're going to make my job harder."

  "Sorry," he whispered.

  "And keep quiet." The Chatcaavan opened a package. "I'm going to dry up the inside of your mouth, see if I can get this liquid to solidify over the scratches in it. You won't like it. I don't want to do it either. Let's just get through it as quickly as possible. Open your mouth."

  As Tsonet held the patch to the mass of lacerations on the inside of his mouth, near the lips, he said, /You hear me, alien?/

  /Yes. And I have news for you that you must send out as quickly as possible./

  Tsonet resettled against him. /This should be good./

  It was in fact awful, but Jahir doubted Tsonet would feel the pain of the thousands of Alliance dead. /Second has attacked the Alliance./

  The Chatcaavan looked away from Jahir's mouth to squint at him. /Why does that matter? Or do you just want your friends to know that the war has started, and where?/

  /It matters because Second started this war without involving the rest of the Chatcaavan fleet, which is still awaiting the war's initiation at Apex-East. They will not be pleased to have been left behind./

  Jahir had been expecting Tsonet to comprehend the political ramifications-he had an agile mind, always churning beneath their mental touches-but not feel compassion. He should have been unsurprised to inspire neither. The wave of anger though, felt caustic, like acid splashing his skin, and he flinched from it.

  /They never care what they do to all the people they kill, hurt, or inconvenience,/ Tsonet hissed. /They take for granted that we will refuel their ships and cook their meals and bow our heads while they start enormous wars over our heads. Who will protect us when the aliens come to bomb our worlds? No one! We will die because they wanted a chance to flash their wings and be admired for it./ The male pulled the cloth free, delicately despite the wrath that made his fingers tremble. /I hate them. I hate them for killing Oviin, for demeaning us, for thinking nothing of angering an entire other nation into attacking us, just so they can have the pleasure of a fight. I hope they all die!/

  Startled, Jahir could say nothing.

  /Don't worry,/ Tsonet said. /I'm careful. They'll never know I am planning to stab them until they're dead./ Aloud, he said, "Keep your mouth open, alien. I will try the liquid now."

  Jahir held still for the ministrations, his heart still racing with the power of Tsonet's rage.

  /I will send your message,/ Tsonet said. /As soon as I'm done here./

  /Don't let them notice./

  /I won't./

  That night, Jahir found it impossible to sleep. Even had he found the energy, he couldn't reach for the Surgeon, or anyone else in the palace. Couldn't walk the halls and leave cruel dreams for those who attracted them, and kind ones for those who needed comfort. All he saw was fire, and the dying. We should have prevented it, he thought. We should have been able to keep it from getting this far. I should have seen it coming.

  Perhaps Logistics-East had exaggerated Second's acts. Jahir could hope so, while still believing even one life sacrificed to this futile war was too many. He turned his face to the ground and wept in silence.

  The work requested by the Sword required a great deal of help, which moved Deputy-East to gratitude for the many males who'd
sworn themselves to him over the years he'd spent clawing his way to the top of system security in Apex-East. He'd selected a handful of his most trustworthy per shift for his ‘special project' monitoring the communications of the fleets waiting in-system for orders. No one was surprised at his desire to eavesdrop; a fight between the system lords' ships and the Navy's was the most likely disruption in the peace Deputy-East was supposed to be keeping, so how could he not want to keep abreast of matters? When the Twelveworld Lord's forces left shortly after Deputy-East initiated their project, a tangible change went through the entire group. They understood this was more than the intriguing of bored, high-level males, and that Deputy-East had known enough to predict the necessity of their watch.

  They'd always been good, the males who'd chosen to serve under him. His team kept secrecy with the ease of those who'd been his helpmeets for years. To supervise the night shift, he selected one of his Quadrants-prime, the same male who'd kept him apprised of the efforts to sift the debris from the ambush. The same male, Deputy-East thought guiltily, that had listened to him vent his irritation on a call during which he'd been raping an emperor disguised as a slave.

  Second-Quadrant didn't know, of course. But looking at him, Deputy-East remembered and thought that good. To forget his involvement in the genesis of all this... no. It would be too easy to look away from the discomfort he felt, contemplating the changes in culture the returning Emperor would instate. He had not fallen in love with a wingless freak, like the Worldlord; he wasn't sure he wanted to be any closer to the aliens than necessary. To treat them like people...

  Too many things were not what they seemed. Deputy-East himself included. He sighed as he let himself into his quarters and considered his empty bed glumly. Perhaps he should arrange for Chatcaavan females. He'd escaped the responsibility of keeping a harem for so long he'd forgotten that without females or slaves there was no sex.

  He missed sex. Maybe the Worldlord would give him one of his gigglers.

  Tossing his tablet on the table beside his bed, Deputy-East began stripping out of his uniform, all the while wondering where males would get sex in a world without slaves, if they wanted sex without the burden of a house. He was still wondering when his call alert went off. "Deputy-East. Speak."

  "You'd better come up here. Now."

  Less than six minutes later, Deputy-East strode into a room off the command center. Second-Quadrant was leaning over the shoulder of one of the males at the monitoring equipment, wings sleeked to his back. When the door shut behind Deputy-East, Second-Quadrant looked up and offered him a spare pair of headphones.

  Donning them, Deputy-East leaned against the table, folding his arms. And listened with increasing dismay.

  "...think they can keep us here, unaware of what's going on while they win all the glory and the plunder..."

  "...convenient for them, they instated the rules..."

  "...so if they do most of the work, they're the ones who'll get most of the treasure, and the worlds in particular are going to go to the males who claim them first, and we're not there..."

  Deputy-East shoved the headphones back, catching them on his horns. "What in all the hells is going on!"

  "Word is that Second has already made the first attacks, and won several enormous victories over the aliens," Second-Quadrant whispered as the males at their stations listened, highlighting sections of the transcription and tagging them. "The system lords are discussing decamping for the front."

  "Do the naval forces know?" Deputy-East asked. "About Second, and about the system lords discussing revolt?"

  "Not that we've heard," Second-Quadrant said. "But their communications have become more terse, and some of them are in code." Before Deputy-East could ask, Second-Quadrant said, "And not the ones we know how to crack."

  "Dying Air," Deputy-East whispered. He'd once seen a glacier calve on an expedition to one of the poles, seeking adventure. The groan of the ice as it started to give, the weight of the thing as it slid... that sense of awesome and terrifying inevitability as it broke apart.... "Get a secure line up in my office. I have calls to make. And keep listening!"

  Walking to his office, rather than running, was one of the hardest things he'd ever done. His heart pounded so hard he was sure it was shaking his entire body. It felt like the drums of war. Living Air, he thought. It's falling apart now. He's got to come NOW.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The days kept passing, and Laniis still didn't know how she felt about anything. She was alive, she was doing important work, work that mattered to her, she was right in the thick of a war the Alliance had to win to survive and she was helping... all good. She was doing it with a FIA hold she trusted, one of whom she was developing a very satisfactory relationship with, and following the lead of the Eldritch who'd seen her rescued from the lowest point of her life... excellent. She had managed to make a Chatcaavan friend, who entertained her with amusing questions about how to take care of his claws or his pelt when he was shapeshifted into her form, a Chatcaavan male who called her his huntsister in defiance of who knew how many generations of tradition... fantastic. She'd even seen the homeworld of an alien species, and set foot in one of their most ancient temples, where its priest had revealed to her secrets of Chatcaavan biology unknown to almost anyone in the universe... amazing.

  But the forces that she and her Fleet peers were leading to win this war were Chatcaavan, not Alliance. Surviving this war would require her to help them re-entrench-and back on the very world she'd been so desperate to escape when she'd been enslaved there!-and the Emperor who'd ruined her was going to end up the Emperor again unless someone killed him, and everyone was hoping no one would because that would be the Alliance's death knell.

  And this was the male she didn't know whether she hated or respected. Who had taken her shape because she'd thrust it on him as... revenge? A gift? A teaching moment?

  Laniis grimaced over her data tablet and tried to concentrate on the assignment Meryl had given her, though the last thing on her mind right now was writing a new training simulation. Na'er, whom she was falling in love with... well, the most charitable emotion he felt toward the Chatcaava was wariness. But the Ambassador, whom she had trusted with her life more than once, was the Emperor's lover, which continued to make no sense to her at all. And her own actions toward the Emperor, she couldn't quantify. Had forcing the Emperor to relive her memories of his harem been punishment or torture? Had he learned anything from it? When she'd given him the Seersa shape, she'd told him she was done with him.

  Apparently, that had been a lie.

  Laniis checked her data tablet for the Emperor's location: in the gym with Healer Crosby again. He spent most of his time either there or in the Ambassador's quarters. Avoiding her, she'd call it, except everything wasn't about her. Even when it felt like it was about her.

  "Huntsister? I was sent to ask about the new scenarios? The Admiral-Offense wanted to know if they were ready." The Knife stopped at the conference room entrance and folded his arms. "You are not answering your pings."

  Laniis shook off her strange mood, or tried. "I'm sorry, I was distracted. They're not where I want them. Can I have another hour?"

  The Knife padded closer. He was wearing his Chatcaavan shape, all blue-gray scales and wings and even eyes. Laniis wondered if he was attractive by Chatcaavan standards; she liked the intelligence in his face, and his willingness to see her and the other Pelted as people, rather than beasts. But then, that wouldn't make him very attractive to other Chatcaava, would it.

  Their necks were bizarrely supple, something the Knife demonstrated by ducking his head on a level with hers in a motion as sinuous as a snake's. "Truly we are huntkin. We are both disturbed by similar winds."

  "What?" Laniis asked, ears sagging.

  The Knife pointed at the chair opposite hers; when she nodded, he turned it sideways and perched, wings tightly folded. "You know I am glad of the forces we've acquired here."

  "Yes?" she
said. Of course he was. These forces were the only hope for the Emperor, to whom the Knife had sworn his loyalty.

  "And they are ours," the Knife said. "In the sense that they wish to be the victors and see their choice for Emperor enthroned." He tapped his clawtips on the table, agitated. "But they are not ours in the sense of being well with the future."

  Laniis understood Chatcaavan better than any alien on this ship, barring the Ambassador. But this speech made her question her fluency. "You might want to try explaining that again, huntbrother."

  "That's it exactly," the Knife said. "You call me huntbrother and I call you huntsister. The Emperor would claim his Andrea as nestsister if she understood the concept, because he treats her that way, and of course he and the Ambassador are closer than kin. We have chosen to change shape. But none of the Chatcaava we have collected at the Source have been at all interested in this knowledge, despite my willingness to make introductions!"

  "You made overtures to other Chatcaava before asking any of us if we wanted to share?" Laniis asked, ears flattening.

  The Knife's eyes widened, pupils dilating. "Ah... no. I realized later it might be a problem, except it never became a problem because no one has been interested. No one! How is that possible? There are thousands of Chatcaava on those vessels, huntsister. Not only that, but many of them should be at least comfortable with the Living Air's tenets. Why then are none of them eager to learn the Change?"

  It was hard to stay angry at the Knife, particularly given the way the size of Chatcaavan eyes and the mobility of the ridges around and the thin skin under them magnified their expressions. His chagrin was almost cartoonish. Dragons were supposed to be scary, and when their faces redoubled their violent emotions they were. But when they felt softer things, they were painfully endearing. "Maybe they're a little busy worrying if they're going to survive the next few weeks to be interested in or excited by extracurriculars?"

  "This is not... an entertainment!" the Knife exclaimed. "If you believe, this... this is the knowledge you've been waiting for all your life! Thirsting for!"