Alien Salute

by Charles Ingrid

  Jack looked at the city, thinking that the Dominion capital was everything Malthen was not. Clean. Beautiful. Unfettered. Green streaked the walkways and park areas as if the forest had returned, unconquerable, to the pavements. The domed rooftops of the many buildings glittered in cobalt blue or in the green patina of weathered bronze. Pink and white tile. And windows, everywhere windows, as if the restriction of mere walls were too much to bear. He liked what he saw. He looked forward to the following day.

  Pepys said, “Good timing. The Thraks have formally declared war. Now let’s see if we can get the Dominion to join with us in answering them.”

  A shiver of anticipation ran down the back of Jack’s neck.

  The chamber was huge. In hushed tones, Baadluster said, “It’s said to have been patterned after the old Terran Congress.”

  Home World. A beginning so far away that, in the end, only it might be safe from the Thraks. Jack felt himself squaring his shoulders back as he stepped into the wing, awaiting his introduction.

  The senators and representatives were anything but quiet. Many sat, listening to the speech being presented to them, but equally as many conferred in groups, sitting or standing. There were young men and women at com lines, taking notes or transmitting messages, calm islands in the benevolent chaos. Overhead were the trade logos and city state banners as well as world flags of the Dominion, the Outward Bounds, and the Triad Throne.

  Jack sucked in his breath, calming himself, and rethought his decision not to wear his armor. He missed the edge of Bogie’s righteous anger but not the subtle power struggle that underlay their communication. Diplomacy was going to be difficult enough. He caught sight of Senator Washburn, a prism of activity, settling a wing of senators in their seats, hovering over each one and speaking confidentially before moving on to the next.

  He also saw Pepys, sitting in the visitors’ gallery. The red-haired emperor had worn his regal robes, and was outfitted as Jack rarely saw him, in red stones and gold threads that made him look like a barbarian throwback. In the midst of all his splendor, he looked a bigger man than he was. Five WP men rayed around him in formation. Jack recognized three he’d had dealings with under Winton’s regime; he felt his lip curl in instinctive dislike.

  At Jack’s side, Baadluster intoned, “I’ll be leaving you now. I must join Pepys. You’re sure you’re set? Have the speech with you?”

  Jack nodded. He palmed the disk lightly, thinking that he still did not feel comfortable with the contents hammered out by Pepys and Baadluster. Senator Washburn stood up straight and looked at them. Their time must be close. Baadluster hissed something under his breath and faded away from Jack’s side.

  Jack’s tension left with the minister. He looked across the hall, wishing that he could somehow find and isolate Amber’s face in the ocean of faces, but knowing he could not because she had been left behind. As he saw the security and broadcast cameras panning the hall, he knew she’d not have felt at ease here. Anyone appearing here would be forever stored in too many master systems. As he looked up into the domed roof and eyed those cameras, a thought occurred to him and began to slowly expand.

  One of Washburn’s aides came up behind him. “Almost ready?”

  He looked at her. Expectancy shone from dark eyes set off by warm brown skin. He nodded.

  She took his hand. “Just feed the disk into the podium as you step up. The speech comes up on that transparent screen down there… the words are color-coded to be invisible on the broadcast. Looks spontaneous, but isn’t. You can move your eyes slightly, the screen moves with you to a certain degree. Unless, of course, you have your speech memorized.”

  He nodded again.

  She smiled widely. “Say something,” she said. “The senator will have my head if you’ve lost your voice from stage fright. Destinies are decided in here.”

  “Damn all Thraks,” Jack rumbled in amusement.

  The aide laughed. “Good enough for me.”

  The audience hall began to applaud and the noise moved in waves, baffling off the acoustics of the chambers. At first, Jack thought they might have been heard, then he saw that Senator Washburn had gained the podium and was preparing to introduce him.

  The thought that had begun grew until it seized him, and he scarcely heard Washburn’s speech leading up to his introduction.

  The aide pushed at his right elbow lightly. “That’s it, you’re on.”

  Jack stepped out of the wings and moved toward the podium. A hush rippled across the floor following applause for Washburn’s words. What has Washburn promised them in me? he thought briefly, as he stepped onto the dais. He felt a catch deep in his throat, a momentary flutter of nervousness that he shrugged off. The AV equipment responded to his weight in front of the podium and flashed READY, awaiting his disk to be fed in.

  The audience had quieted, awaiting him, and as he hesitated, they began to clap again, as if urging him to relax and deliver his words. He looked across the floor, where Pepys’ planned splendor caught his eye once more, and then a grim determination settled over him along with a deadly calm.

  He held up his right hand, four-fingered like a badge of courage, and knew the cameras were broadcasting close-ups of him, and the speech disk winking in his palm. To hushed murmurs, Jack flexed his hand and the disk folded into an unusable mass. He tossed it to the foot of the dais.

  Instantly, the air became electric. The audience knew whatever they were about to hear was not a prepared speech. Uncontrolled. Alive. Anticipation snapped toward him, and he knew he had better not disappoint them. Baadluster half rose to his feet in the visitors’ gallery. Pepys dragged at his sleeve and brought him back to his seat.

  “Congressmen and representatives, ladies and gentlemen, and honored guests.”

  His voice brought quiet to the chambers. Even without the sound system, he would be heard clearly. No one, short of an assassin with Amber’s powers, could stop him now.

  Joy filled his voice as he began to speak.

  “I have been introduced to you as a commander in the Dominion Knights, the battalion newly reformed by Emperor Pepys. I’m his sworn man, a soldier who wears battle armor. Many of you will listen to my testimony with bias, believing what you have already been told is the truth.

  “You’ve been lied to.”

  Voices raised in pandemonium. To one side, Jack could see Washburn pounding a gavel for silence. Pepys sat up straighter in his booth, his auburn hair a crackling halo about his grim face.

  “I swore to Pepys, but before him, I was sworn to another. A man whose name since his death has come to mean defeat and shame. I’m an honorable man, but I can hear you asking how can a man be loyal to two masters? If you’re not, you’re all damn fools.”

  “But I know where I stand because I never swore to the man, but to what he offered.”

  “First let me tell you who I really am.”

  “I was born on Dorman’s Stand.”

  Another burst of noise and disbelief. The senators still standing about in the back galleries began to move closer, finding seats. He could see an aide racing across the upper balcony, in pursuit of what, he wondered briefly, as the audience calmed yet again to hear him.

  “You heard me right. There’s been no human born on Dorman’s Stand in the last twenty-five years. It fell during the Sand Wars. It’s a sand planet, lifeless for our people. But I was born there, and I remember the way it used to be, and I grew up there following in my father’s footsteps until it came time for me to believe in another man.” A fleeting, wry smile, passed over his lips. “I was a raw recruit then.”

  “I enlisted as a Knight under Emperor Regis.”

  This time, there was no wave of noise. Instead a deadly silence fell over the people before him. He caught sight of their faces and knew he had them.

  “I’m probably the last living true Knight still in commission.”

  Baadluster and one of the WP men abruptly left the visitors’ gallery, but Jack felt a keen e
dge of joy, for it was too late now.

  “I enlisted to fight the Thraks, thinking we could stop them. I was sixteen and and you must understand what it was like to be me then.”

  He took them back, among the finely threaded memories Bogie had given him, because he had no choice. Otherwise they would never believe him. He was unsure if they believed him now. He only knew that no one stood any longer, and that even the aides at the com lines had turned to him, listening, their lips and fingers stilled.

  “And so, I swore to Emperor Regis.

  “And so it is that I’m here today. For if we had not been betrayed on Milos, if the Knights had not been left without backup, we could have held Milos. We could have stopped the Thraks then and there.

  “But Regis wasn’t secure in his power, evidently, and there were factions working to unseat the old warrior. We Knights became the pawns in a petty struggle and Milos was the mortal blow.”

  An incoherent shout interrupted Jack. He paused and looked toward the wing from which the sound had issued, but no one followed it up. He took the opportunity to press his fingertips along his brow, mopping up a few drops of sweat he hadn’t known had rested there. He took up the unseen challenge.

  “How do I know? Because I was there. I was one of the thousands scheduled to be left behind. The fleet was ordered out and the Thraks swept in. I was one of only a few hundred to make it to the three transports that somehow managed to come in. All three of them were hit heavily by Thrakian fire while trying to lift off.”

  His gaze swept them now. He challenged them. “I can see you remembering. Facts, you might tell me, easily scanned on any library computer. Perhaps. But I lived them.

  “Two cold ships never made it past the League offenses. A third did… so heavily crippled it went adrift, its cargo locked in cold sleep. Eventually, its damaged systems could no longer function. Backup systems faltered. Those asleep died.

  “Seventeen years later, the ship was found and one man remained alive—alive, but not untouched.”

  Jack held up his scarred hand. “I suffered frostbite. Cold sleep fever. And they tell me I could have been saner. I lost an entire lifetime while the Thraks took the planets they wanted, and Emperor Regis became a defeated old man who fell prey to art assassin.

  “I spent four years in the Knights. Seventeen asleep. And the last five years learning the truth.

  “The truth, ladies and gentlemen, is that the Thraks have no regard for your right to life. The truth is that we once had the means with which to stop them. To teach them respect for dealing with us. And we have those means again. I swore, not to Regis and not to Pepys, not to an emperor.

  “I swore for peace through war.

  “I stand by my oath.

  “And I ask you to give me back the means with which to achieve it.”

  With those words, Jack stepped back.

  There was an absolutely stunned silence. He dared to look at Pepys, knowing that both the expressions on his face and the emperor’s would be covered by close-ups. The emperor sat motionless in his booth.

  Haltingly, the applause began. It grew in spurts, hampered by the sound of the audience getting to their feet. They stood in waves until not a man was left sitting.

  Not even Pepys.

  Chapter 19

  A goddamn pacifist.”

  Jack sat down wearily, throat dry after hours of interviews following the Congressional speech. “Why else would you make war?” he said quietly and tried to ignore his emperor pacing before him.

  Pepys came to a stop. His face went through several expressions before settling on a frown. His mouth likewise opened for retort, then closed. He looked to Baadluster.

  “All is not lost,” the minister said. “They’re still debating out there.”

  Pepys shook his head, his frown obscured by a cloud of fine red hair, and stalked away again, his ceremonial robes practically afloat. He cast a look of loathing at Baadluster as he passed him.

  He stopped at the far end of the room as though he had needed to put a distance between himself and Storm.

  “I am your emperor,” he said, his voice modulated with effort. “Why did you not tell me?”

  Jack looked up. His eyes of rainwater blue met Pepys’ cat green ones. “I thought you already knew.”

  Pepys made a gesture with his hand, the side of it cutting air as though it were a sword. “How can I trust you?”

  “Or I you.”

  “Don’t fence words with me! You weren’t found by one of my ships or I would have been told.”

  “I’m a Dominion Knight,” Jack said. “That should be enough. I am what I am, and I do what I’ve been trained to do. No more. And no less.”

  “That’s all I get? That’s all? I could have you removed as commander.”

  Jack inclined his head. “If that’s what you want. But I don’t recommend it.” He stood up. Under the lines of his dress blues, his frame carried the powerful muscles it took to wear and use a suit of battle armor. “Now you know me for what I am. Remember that I have always known you for what you are.”

  Pepys’ body had been seething with indignation under his ceremonial robes, but the tone of Jack’s voice froze him in his place. Baadluster cleared his throat as inconspicuously as he could, yet the emperor shot him a hard look and the minister shifted away from him slightly.

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “No,” Jack said, as he moved closer. “But I think it’s time we understand one another. Winton feared me, but for the wrong reasons. The Thraks didn’t have me. If I was in the hands of the Green Shirts, then they couldn’t accomplish what they wanted to. It had already been done, my emperor, by seventeen years of cold sleep, locked into a debriefing loop. I have lived and relived an eternity of betrayal. I know who I hate.” Jack paused. His hands flexed. “Give me the freedom to go after the Thrakian League.”

  Pepys had been holding his breath. He relaxed now, nearly imperceptibly. “And then?”

  “Reclaim Claron. Winton had it firestormed to rout me out. He duped you into okaying his actions because of the survey showing Thrakian infestation.”

  Baadluster said, “What kind of accusation is this—” but Jack gestured, cutting him off.

  “Winton used freebooters. They can’t be controlled.”

  Pepys sighed. He pulled out a chair and sat down, suddenly. “I bear the onus,” he said. “All right. Terraforming for Claron. However long it takes, whatever the expense.”

  “In exchange for what?”

  “Your silence? No.” Pepys took a deep breath. “I am, in spite of all you might suspect of me, still the emperor of the Triad Throne. You can’t prove what Winton ordered, I know that, but that does not mean I condoned it. Then or now. Let’s just say I’m doing what I am doing to gain your loyalty.”

  A tiny muscle ticked along the line of Jack’s jaw. He straightened. “I am a Knight. You either already have my loyalty or not. I can’t be bought.”

  “No,” Pepys answered him, smiling tightly. “Perhaps not.” Anything further he might have said was interrupted by Senator Washburn bursting into the room. He was followed by a slender young man in the uniform of an aide.

  “This is my son, Brant,” Washburn blurted. He inserted his square, massive frame between Pepys and Baadluster. “Jack! Jack, my boy, I couldn’t have done better myself!” He turned to Pepys. “Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! His tongue would snap if he tried to lie! And a pacifist at that.”

  Pepys said irritably, “What is the news, Washburn?”

  “What else could it be? Pepys, you astound me. No wonder you sit on the Triad Throne. If you’d given us a warmonger, we’d be out there arguing still… probably until the end of the session. But when you gave us a peaceful man who knew the time had come to fight—well, you lasered the opposition in their tracks.”

  Baadluster interrupted. “We have the appropriations?”

  “Yes! Yes! We have a probationary war, gentlemen.”

 
Jack watched them from across the room. He had won the battle for Claron, but he felt curiously hollow inside. It was not victory enough. Amber would probably have agreed with Washburn’s assessment of his tongue and lying. He had learned long ago not to lie if he could help it.

  So he simply had not told all of the truth. Pepys seemed reassured, but he would not be if he knew Jack’s thoughts. First the Thraks. Then the emperor.

  Chapter 20

  Drop in twenty minutes.”

  Jack rubbed the back of his neck and tried to ignore the computer voice. He keyed back, “Just get us in there.”

  The fleet pilot came on with arrogance in his voice. “You think this is easy?”

  “I think,” Jack formed his words deliberately, “that the bulk of the enemy is dirtside and if you want to fight a war, you’ve got to get us where the action is.”

  The warship waggled, and every man in staging found it hard to keep his footing. A buffeting followed and Jack knew that last burst had been close.

  The pilot made a noise of contempt and closed off the com line.

  The man suiting up nearest Jack paused. He frowned. “They never give us any respect.”

  Jack shot back, “Just do your job. We get in there, clear the sector so the shield crews can be dropped and get pylons built and the shields back in place. That’s what we’re here for. Do your job and the respect will follow.”

  The soldier’s face paled a little under Jack’s harsh tones, but he nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  Jack lapsed into uneasy silence. He looked across staging and realized he knew very little of the men fighting with him this run. Who would watch his back? Garner, across the bay, his spike of blue-black hair standing up defiantly, had his back to his commander and was instructing a green recruit on the niceties of a first drop. Jack could not hear what was said. He touched the cherry picker that held his own suit.

  *Boss. Are we ready?*

  “Nearly.”

  *It’s been a rough campaign.*

  “I know.” This was Jack’s third drop in five days, but they were going to regain Oceana and get the shields back up, dealing the Thrakian League another severe loss.