“Death by a thousand cuts, Al?”
The President turned towards Tyson Keller, his Chief of Staff. Grace didn’t care much for the man, which was unusual. Hrauwah and humans felt an almost instinctual level of affection for each other, in most cases. There was a darkness within the advisor that triggered her fight-or-flight reflexes, however. The things the man had done to ensure the country stayed together might have had something to do with her feelings.
“See something you don’t like, Ty?” Hewer said.
“I never get tired of watching Snakes die, Al. Like the great Mr. Jackson once said, ‘I’ve had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane.’ What I don’t get is this drib-and-drab business. Are you going to give them a full dose of fire and brimstone or not? Nits make lice.”
The President turned his gaze to the holotank, watching multiple planetary strikes show up on Risshah-Two’s surface. Many of those bases were near population centers. Millions were dying. Millions more had died when the other defense modules had been taken out, and during the course of the battle. Space combat in orbit led to a great deal of collateral damage. At one point, a Risshah battlecruiser had crash-landed on top of a large city, immolating its entire population.
“I haven’t made up my mind yet,” Hewer said.
“The polls were pretty near unanimous.”
“I know. If I pull this trigger, I do it in the name of every American left in the universe.” Hewer looked around. “I know what I want to do. I just want to make sure it’s the right thing to do.”
The crew was clearly not comfortable with being within earshot of that conversation, but there were more than a few nods among them, and several mutters.
“Kill them all.”
“Fuck ‘em.”
“Silence in the bridge,” Carruthers ordered.
“We could make sure they could never leave orbit,” Hewer said. “Set up space fortresses all around the planet, blast anything that looks like a space installation.”
“And who’s going to pay for that, Al? You aren’t a liberal; you understand there is such a thing as opportunity costs. A space fortress here is a space fortress that isn’t guarding one of our own planets. For what? So you can salve your conscience? We’ve already wiped out seven planets. Why hesitate at the eighth?”
The President of the United Stars of America hung his head. “You are right, Ty. I knew there was a reason I kept you around.”
“I thought it was to make you look like a nice guy by comparison.”
“That too.” Hewer turned towards Admiral Carruthers. “I hereby authorize the destruction of every Risshah population center on this planet. For what we are about to do, may God forgive us.”
For once, Carruthers didn’t have any quotes handy. The admiral spoke a series of curt orders, authorizing the release of field-encasement thermal weapons and their use on Risshah-Two’s fourteen billion inhabitants.
And thus did America join the community of Starfarers.
Nine
Year 163 AFC, D Minus Seven
RSO Rockwell wasn’t happy.
“Three days before she deigned to meet with us,” he muttered. “And not privately, but as part of a general audience.”
“I agree; it doesn’t bode well,” Heather said as the Embassy car floated through the streets or Kirosha. The locals watched the grav-limo with almost religious awe; it was the only one of its kind on the planet. Neither the Vehelians nor Wyrashat had brought grav vehicles along, probably because their budgets didn’t justify the expense. The power plants that anti-gravity engines required were out of range for most civilian applications. The Cadillac Phaeton they were taking to see the Queen had been gifted to the Embassy by the Llewellyn family, a naked display of wealth and patronage.
Heather doubted that any number of grav limos were going to keep the ambassador’s ass in Jasper-Five, though. Not after the conflicting reports he and Captain Fromm had sent arrived to their respective destinations. No amount of influence would protect the ambassador from the fact he was ill-equipped to handle the current situation. She figured that Llewellyn would receive a terse note suggesting that he resign to ‘spend more time with his family.’
It might take a while, though. The US freighter that had delivered Fromm to Jasper-Five had left the next day, carrying a set of reports that it would transmit to its the next port of call, where it would be picked up by other ships and retransmitted until it reached their intended recipients; that was how most communiques made their way between the stars. A very brief summary of the situation had also been sent via the Embassy’s ENIGMA Machine; that was instantaneous, just not as useful as one would imagine.
The Entangled N-State-Particles Information Generating Modal Agent – blame the idiotic acronym on the device’s primary developer, a physics weenie with a history fetish – could transmit information instantly across the galaxy by using quantum-entangled particles; changing one particle generated a change on the other, regardless of the distance between them. The effect had been known on Earth for decades before First Contact, but actually using it to transmit information had turned out to be tricky, even with Starfarer tech thrown into the mix. Keeping each particle pair entangled for a useful length of time required a great deal of energy and expensive equipment. As a result, transmitting one byte of information – a single letter or number – cost about ten thousand dollars, and each time you used an entangled particle in that way, you lost it. QE telegrams were shorter than their Morse Code predecessors. They also couldn’t be used within five miles of an active graviton drive, so the systems could not be mounted in starships.
The embassy had fifteen kilobytes’ worth of entangled particles in storage. It had used a bit under a hundred to deliver a terse status report:
LCLFRCSATCKUSCTS14AKIASITSTBRPTINBND
Translated, the QE-telegram read ‘Local forces attacked US citizens. Fourteen Americans killed in action. Situation stable. Report inbound.’ It wasn’t much (and not worth three hundred thousand dollars, in Heather’s opinion), just enough to let the State Department know to be on the lookout for a standard terabyte-long audiovisual report. Given interstellar traffic, the full report would have arrived to New Washington, Nebraska within forty-eight hours of the freighter’s departure. Sometime yesterday, in other words. By the time the State Department made a decision, things might have changed dramatically on Jasper-Five.
Even worse, Heather wasn’t sure the ‘situation stable’ claim was accurate. Yes, the rioters had dispersed without further violence after the convoy had made it to the Enclave; the Kirosha troops by the gates hadn’t had to fire a single shot. Even the fires in the slums had abated. Several Final Blow Society leaders had been arrested, along with a thousand rank-and-file members, but thousands more were still camped all around the capital. The Court’s unwillingness to clear them out worried her a great deal. The three-day wait before an audience was granted worried her more.
Heather had only managed to make contact with a couple more agents after her meeting with Sub-Magistrate Preel. The Seal-Bearer of the City Prefect confirmed that every outspoken member of the Modernist party in the city government had been fired or arrested. Her other agent, the servant of a Royal Guard Major, claimed that three Preserver-aligned colonels in the Guard had been quietly arrested and summarily executed. Heather had confirmed that none of those officers had been seen in public for a couple of days. A major power play was in progress between the two factions, and it seemed the Modernists still had a hold inside the Royal Guard. The Preservers had gotten a major black eye there, but they were still in the game and seemed to have cemented their hold on the bureaucracy. This audience would hopefully cast some light on the situation.
In any case, the freighter had also delivered a message to Lahiri, requesting fleet units for protection, and a QE telegram had let them know that a two-ship task unit would be on its way within the week. Once those ships were in Jasper, things would be handled gunboa
t-diplomacy style. At a minimum, the Kirosha would have to purge the Preservers if they wanted to keep the Kingdom in one piece. If they refused, it wouldn’t go well for them.
Her attention turned toward more pressing concerns as the limo reached the low walls closing off the Palace District from the rest of the city. Heather had been there enough times to notice the number of Guardsmen on duty around the complex had increased at least twofold, maybe more. Even more surprising, several tanks and combat cars were conspicuously placed on both sides of the road, surrounded on three sides by stacked sandbags, their commanders visible through the turret’s open hatches.
That’s new. They’re about ready to go to war. Only question is with whom.
Rockwell was looking at the display with a frown, clearly liking it as little as she did. On the opposite side of the passenger compartment, Ambassador Llewellyn and his wife were too busy whispering sweet nothings into each other’s ears to notice anything. The current Mrs. Llewellyn – the third of that name – had been a fairly popular soap opera actress until she’d married up; she was fifty years his junior, still looked rather fetching, and from what little contact Heather had had with her, was as vapid as one would expect, besides being downright nasty whenever her wishes weren’t promptly and wholly satisfied. Neither of them spared so much as a glance at the world outside. It must be nice to be so oblivious to reality, until reality decided to make its presence known.
The unsmiling soldiers let the limo through. A regular wheeled car flying the colors of the O-Vehel Commonwealth was right behind them, followed by a similar vehicle bearing the Wyrashat Emissary. Neither of the two Starfarers were happy, especially the Vehelians. Heather wondered if anybody in Kirosha understood the realities of their situation. Probably not. The Royal Court seemed to run largely on lies and illusions.
She looked back at the leader of the American delegation as he took a swig from a silver flask and offered it to his wife, who smiled and shook her head. The Kirosha were far from the only ones living in a dream world.
More Guardsmen were visible on the palace grounds. The feeling that she was wandering deep into enemy territory grew stronger. She wasn’t armed – while Americans were exempt from the city ordinances forbidding firearms, that courtesy didn’t extend to the Royal Palace – not that any portable weapon would change the outcome if the Kirosha decided to violate their guests’ diplomatic immunity. Having her beamer handy would have made her feel a bit better nevertheless.
The limo glided gracefully towards the Great Pyramid; the massive structure gleamed in the early afternoon’s light. The stepped pyramid was only used for ceremonial occasions, which meant the delegation wouldn’t have to worry about climbing the ungodly number of stairs leading to the top. Instead, their vehicle headed towards an attached structure at the bottom, the smaller but much more hospitable Royal Palace.
Courtiers welcomed them as their car dropped them off at the entrance to the Lesser Courtroom, a small reception area reserved for more intimate audiences. Gorgeously-attired minor nobles of both sexes fawned upon the ambassador and his wife, and even spared a few bows and smiles for such nonentities as RSO Rockwell and herself.
While waiting for Her Supreme Majesty to show up, Heather spent some time exchanging inane pleasantries with some minor nobles. She noted that few members of the Magistracy were present. She’d expected a full set of Ministers to attend, but she only she spotted a few of them. The most prominent one was Eereen Leep, a roving functionary whose role was undefined but who wielded considerable influence, sort of a minister without portfolio. Eereen was avoiding most gathered notables and spending his time with the City Prefect, the only other bureaucrat with similar status.
Her musings were interrupted by the approach of the Wyrashat Information Officer.
“How lovely you to see you, Ms. McClintock,” Breh said in English. The Wyrashat had four primary limbs and a pair of prehensile tails. Their necks were retractable and when fully extended could add as much as two feet to their height, and their skins were covered in small iridescent scales ranging in color from deep green to cobalt blue. Their heads looked vaguely crocodilian, except for their much-larger brain cases; their toothy, seemingly grinning expressions were downright intimidating.
“A pleasure as always, Officer Breh.”
“May I have a word with you while we wait for Her Supreme Majesty to honor us with her presence?”
“Of course,” Heather said.
American-Wyrashat relations had been relatively cordial. The Empire had only come into direct contact with the USA recently, after discovering a warp-valley that led to human space. Valleys, also known as ‘ley lines’ and ‘dragon roads,’ were regions of space-time where warp travel was greatly speeded up. Most space travel happened along those valleys, which made them the most important feature of galactic geography. Some nine years ago, a Wyrashat survey vessel had discovered one such valley, connecting an unimportant mining colony to Paulus, a white-dwarf planet-less system that had turned out to be endowed with no less than five ley lines connecting to several other worlds, including American-claimed Lahiri and Jasper. Having suddenly become neighbors, the two Starfarer nations were trying to develop a friendly relationship. Unlike other Class One sophonts, the Wyrashat were not brutally aggressive, so there was hope for peaceful coexistence there.
“It has come to our attention that the conflict between the Modernist and Preserve factions has reached a tipping point,” Breh said. “The Preservers have taken control of the bureaucracy even as Modernist control over the Army has begun to waver.”
The Wyrashat had better sources inside Kirosha than Heather’s, apparently. “I see,” she said. “I have heard similar things.” A quid pro quo was expected, so she shared the news about the Royal Guard colonels’ arrest and, more reluctantly, the rumor about a Starfarer visitor to the court.
“That is most interesting,” Breh said, his half-lidded expression indicating concern. “If the rumors are true, that might mean this situation may involve far more than the fate of a minor mining concession.”
“Who would stand to benefit from fomenting discord in Jasper-Five?”
“On the face of it, nobody. The Paulus warp-hub leads to Vehelian, Lahn Arkh and Hrauwah space, but to relative backwaters in each. That is changing, now that a trade route has opened up, but such things take time. Causing unrest here would only risk war with both America and Wyrashat. The most likely suspect, the Lahn Arkh, are vile but not insane; they would be foolish to start a conflict here.”
“Agreed. All of this seems foolish, but if the rumors are true, someone believes otherwise.”
Before the Wyrashat could reply, the Queen’s imminent arrival was announced.
Music preceded her: gongs, cymbals, flutes and something like a hybrid between a harp and a violin played something unpleasant to Heather’s ear, but which the locals seemed to enjoy. High Queen Virosha the Eighth was carried into the room on an elaborate palanquin made of wood, ivory and gold, borne by eight stout servants. The Kirosha in the room all squatted down to the ground and engaged in the ritual prostration their etiquette demanded. The Starfarers offered polite bows instead.
The supreme monarch of the continent and its three hundred million inhabitants was still relatively young, in her mid-thirties at most. Her vestments were light blue and gold, as elaborate as an Elizabethan court dress. Her skin was the lightest shade of pink, a mark of the Northern Kirosha, and her eyes a deep shade of purple. Neither her face nor her body language betrayed any emotion, as befitted someone raised in a court where revealing one’s true feelings was considered a sign of weakness. Even so, Heather thought the monarch was tense; her movements seemed stiff, as if she was concentrating on retaining her composure a little too hard. The Queen sat down and quietly regarded the gathering. Silence filled the reception hall for several uncomfortable moments. Finally, she spoke.
“Shame.”
The exact Kirosha word held many meanings. It was
rarely used, and almost never by someone of importance. It was either a harsh accusation or an abject admission of guilt. Its very utterance in a public function was a major breach of protocol.
“Shame,” she said again. Several courtiers gasped; the men pulled ornate fans from their coat pockets and hid their faces behind them and the women made motions of negation with their heads as their queen spoke on.
“For many years, our honored guests from beyond the stars have brought us gifts, wealth, new ways of doing things. And how do we repay them? Do we cherish them? Do we honor them, welcome them to our homes, offer them liquors and fine viands? No. We raise angry fists. We curse the names of their ancestors. We strike, burn, slay them.
“Shame.”
Some of the noblemen were in tears at the sight of their monarch abasing herself in front of foreigners.
“We can never make full amends for the crimes some fools committed in the name of Kirosha. Let this be a first step on the path to contrition.”
Heather heard a strange sound coming from the rear of the audience chamber. Whimpers, getting closer, as if a group of sobbing children were joining the reception. She tried to peer past the gathered noblemen; she was taller than the average Kirosha, but their elaborate headdresses and coiffures made it difficult to get a look at whatever was coming into the audience hall. It wasn’t until the closest courtiers saw what was being wheeled into the chamber and recoiled in surprise that she was finally able to see.
Grim-faced servants pushed six wheeled contraptions, flat wooden boards tilted at a sixty-degree angle. Four men and two women were attached to each board by nails driven into their wrists and forearms. They hung limply from their pierced limbs. Gags and tight straps around their necks made speech impossible; all they could do was keen softly, and most of them couldn’t draw enough air into their lungs to do even that much.
Their legs had been severed above the knee, the stumps crudely tied off to avoid a quick death by blood loss. The weight of their unsupported upper bodies prevented the victims from taking full breaths, slowly asphyxiating them. Bright orange blood seeped through the stumps, running down the table and pooling into receptacles set at the bottom of the boards to keep the fluids from staining the marble floors.
Decisively Engaged (Warp Marine Corps Book 1) Page 15
