by B. V. Larson
Jasmine came into my office and frowned at me. My boots were on my desk, and I knew that annoyed her even though the nanites took care of the dirt that sprinkled from them. There wasn’t much dirt on a spaceship anyway unless you landed to walk around on a planetary body, which we hadn’t done since leaving Earth.
I put my hand up and touched the mute button. Captain Grass was still going, but I didn’t cut him off. I wanted to let him get it all out of his system.
“What’s up, love?” I asked her.
She pointed to my com-link. “Are you still talking to that Captain?”
“Yeah. I planned to give him a full hour, but I’m getting bored now.”
“A full hour? What’s he saying?”
“Honestly, I have no idea anymore.”
Her eyes slid to the beer in my other hand. She nodded. “Well, you have another call. Something urgent is coming in from Eden-6.”
“Urgent? Who is it?”
“Professor Hoon.”
I frowned for a second, then recalled the name and winced. “Not that lobster we left on the water planet? What does he want?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But since you’ve given Captain Grass over thirty minutes, don’t you think you owe it to Hoon to at least find out?”
I sighed. Being the leader of a galactic alliance, or empire, or whatever it was I was running, wasn’t always a good thing. People were desperate to talk to you every day about something—and they were almost always a pain in the ass.
I begged off with Grass finally, having heard more than enough about the winds on lakeshores that had first ruffled his fur as a kid, or whatever he was telling me now. He sounded a little disappointed, but less so when I told him truthfully I had another urgent call coming in.
With trepidation, I switched over to Hoon’s channel. He was a Crustacean, a race of intellectual lobsters that we’d first encountered in the Thor System. When we initially met up with them, they’d fought alongside the Macros against us. Like many races, they’d been subjugated and served the machines.
I tried not to judge them too harshly for this. I’d sold our souls to the alien robots myself, once upon a time. But they hadn’t signed on to our rebellion too quickly. They fought us tenaciously at first. Then they’d given us platitudes and tried to be neutral. Only when they’d realized the machines weren’t going to allow their species to survive did they join us.
It had been a disaster. Trillions had died on the three lovely worlds they inhabited. Their scattered survivors had been transported to Eden-6, the native world of the Microbes, where they’d begun a new life on that planet of endless tropical seas.
“Hey, Professor Hoon!” I said, going with enthusiasm from the outset. “Great to hear from you. I understand your people are doing very well on your new home planet, and I want to congratulate you on your successful migration.”
Hoon’s translated voice was odd, and it burbled slightly when he spoke. “I find your attitude self-serving, Colonel Riggs.”
I rolled my eyes. “Just trying to be friendly. I’m always happy to take a social call from a friend. Now, what can I do for you?”
“You can return our true homeworlds to us.”
I squinched my eyes. “That’s going to be a little difficult. As you know, they’ve been irradiated and are now uninhabitable.”
“We are quite aware of that. We are also aware of your unauthorized removal of the crust of one of our worlds.”
I winced. So that was it. Someone had let the cat out of the bag on that point. I knew they were big on the sanctity of graves and birthplaces. I could only imagine how they felt about the steam-rolling of a billion hectares of their land whether it was irradiated or not.
“Your attitude has changed since the last time we met, Professor,” I said. The last time we’d spoken, he’d been servile, treating me as a conqueror.
“We’ve learned much about you personally, your species, your history and your culture over the last year. We now understand that your depredations were not clever and elaborate plots. The truth is an even greater humiliation. We’ve discovered that you, in particular, are nothing more than a lucky incompetent: An accidental prodigy, who somehow drifted to the top of your species’ social stratum during a time of unprecedented crises.”
His words were true enough to cause me pain. Under normal circumstances, I would have told him off and cut the channel. But, somehow, I found I couldn’t. This fellow, among all the annoying aliens I’d ever encountered, had some good reasons to chew me out. I felt compelled to listen to him.
“It was not enough that you oversaw the destruction of our species and all three of our homeworlds. In addition, you saw fit to remove a sizable portion of the mass of one of them for your own odd purposes. I can’t believe that—”
I got a bright idea about then, and I went with it.
“Professor!” I interrupted. “I understand your grievances, but I have some good news. I’d like to make you an offer.”
“An offer?” he asked suspiciously.
“I’d like to give you command of a Star Force ship. You might be aware of a certain Captain Grass who operates a carrier in this system. If you were given a command of a comparable nature, I’m sure you would—”
“Your suggestion is laced with insults.”
I frowned. “How so?”
“To compare me to the befurred fools that live on several of the planets in this system is beyond the pale, Colonel. We aren’t ignorant rutting savages that have barely risen above the status of hunter-gatherer tribes. Why would we be—”
“Participation in a joint military has no appeal for you?”
“When we rebuild our military, it will be wholly independent.”
We’ll see about that, I thought to myself, but I didn’t say it aloud. Let the crawdad have his dreams.
“I understand,” I said. “What can I do for you, then?”
Professor Hoon fell silent for several long seconds. I got the impression he was conferring with others. I hoped he didn’t ask me for something I couldn’t give, like another planet or a fleet of ships they could own and operate independently.
“Access,” he said. “I would like the status of an observer aboard your ship, Colonel.”
I made a face that I normally reserved for suddenly-encountered foul odors.
“What exactly do you mean?” I asked him.
“Let me come aboard your ship to observe you personally. I’ll avoid interference with your duties. I simply would like to be aware of fateful decisions you might make in the future.”
I mulled it over. I didn’t think for a moment he would “avoid interference”, at least not if I was about to scrape the topsoil down to the bedrock on another of his dead worlds.
“All right. I’ll send a small ship to pick you up. You can accompany me to your former home system. I’d like to show you what we’re doing out there—and why we’re doing it.”
“You seek to vindicate yourself?” he asked incredulously. “Very well. I accept your challenge. Send your minions to pick up my person. But keep in mind that we’re watching you, Colonel. We know now of your severe intellectual and judgmental limitations. We can no longer be fooled with simple distractions.”
“It will be a pleasure to have you aboard, Professor,” I said with all the false politeness I could muster.
He then proceeded to grumble a bit about the presumably substandard quality of his accommodations, even though he hadn’t seen them yet.
“I assure you, sir,” I said. “You’ll get a prime cabin with an aquatic ecosystem built in.”
After he’d finally signed off, I alerted my crew concerning the impending visitation.
Admiral Newcome objected with vehemence. “But sir, we can’t entertain a civilian at this time. We’re heading into a war zone.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And I’m hoping that after the experience is over, Hoon will appreciate just what it is we do for him and all the other bioti
c species in this part of the galaxy.”
“I’ve listened to him speak, sir,” Newcome said. “I would count that as a faint hope.”
It took two days for Hoon to arrive. I didn’t swing by his planet or slow down. I just had a fighter land, pick him up then accelerate after us at max burn to catch up. By the time we reached Welter Station, he’d finally reached my ship.
“Hoon!” I shouted, arms outstretched in greeting.
Hoon was a lobster and probably the least huggable-looking guy I’d ever laid eyes on, but I did my best to greet him as an old friend.
At my side were my command people: Jasmine, Marvin, Gaines and Admiral Newcome. Jasmine was tapping at her wrist tablet. The rest looked on with frowns or bemusement.
Hoon froze as he got off the fighter and eyed me with stalks that were enclosed in a liquid-pumping suit. Crustaceans had spacesuits that were somewhat different than ours as they were an aquatic species. Water is much heavier than air so they had to wear tight, formfitting suits with circulating liquids only around their gills and various membranes that had to stay wet to function properly. The rest of the suit was wet inside, I was told, but more like a thick latex skin than one of our suits that didn’t normally hug our skin so tightly. Ours were more like bags full of air.
“So soon you challenge me?” Hoon asked. “I had not expected this. Will the combat be between you and me alone, or do you require three back-up fighters, as well? I’m not sure if I should be honored that you fear me so greatly.”
I faltered, frowned, and lowered my arms. My com-link was blinking, and I tapped open a private channel from Jasmine.
“Lower your arms, Kyle!” she said. “That’s how Crustaceans challenge one another to a fight: they hold their claws upraised!”
My arms dropped fully to my sides immediately. I began to smile, but thought the better of it. Hoon was wildly suspicious, and anything I did might be misinterpreted.
“Sorry!” I said. “Humans often challenge one another as a way of greeting. When they’re comrades, it means nothing but respect between warriors.”
“You claim to be ignorant of the implications of your own actions?”
“No,” I said, becoming annoyed despite my firm vows not to. “I’m trying to explain cultural variations of behavior that might be misinterpreted. I’m sorry if your people are too provincial to comprehend that other cultures might behave differently than your species’ culture does.”
“Apology accepted. Let us proceed to the bridge. I will begin my inspection there.”
I paused, not sure how to take this guy. I was already quite certain I never should have let him come aboard.
-23-
When we finally got to the Thor System, everyone on the bridge was tired of Hoon and worried about what his reaction would be when he saw exactly what we’d done to one of his lifeless water-moons.
“I’m not overly concerned,” I told Newcome.
“But sir, this is a serious diplomatic situation. There aren’t too many technologically advanced biotic species on our list of allies—in fact, the only ones that come to mind are the Worms and the Crustaceans.”
“You discount our best allies, then,” I said. “We’ve got the Centaurs firmly in our camp. We once popped one of their habitats and killed millions of them. Now, we’ve given them back three worlds in this system, and they’re repopulating rapidly. They love us.”
Newcome made a face. I was starting to recognize his expressions, and this one either indicated he smelled something foul or he found my arguments simplistic. I figured it was the latter in this case.
“Colonel,” he began, “I do discount the other races. The Centaurs are a fine folk, but they’ll never be able to build their own fleet of ships. If they hadn’t been given technology by the Nanos, they’d still be galloping around on their prairies, chewing grass.”
“I don’t appreciate that kind of interspecies bigotry in Star Force, Newcome.”
“It’s not bigotry! We have to be realistic about what our allies can and can’t do. You yourself said that you should never have given Captain Grass a command of his own.”
I had to admit he had me there. “What about the other biotic species? The one that’s more technologically advanced than any of us?
“The Blues, sir? They count all right—but as enemies, in my book, not allies. I don’t think they forgive easily, and they aren’t going to help us beat the Macros, no matter what they promise.”
“Hmm,” I said thoughtfully. “All right, I’ll concede to your points even though I don’t like to hear them. What do you think we should do with the Crustaceans?”
“Try to keep them on our allied list. We can’t afford not to. Of all the species we’ve met, I’d say they’re the most like us technologically and culturally.”
I stared at him for a second. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Who else would you put in that category?”
“The Worms, of course. I like those crazy bastards. They like a good fight, build sensible ships and just look at their history—no one else has gone undefeated by the machines the way they have.”
Newcome mulled that over. “But they’re so strange. They’re invertebrates with a bizarre language. Keep in mind that they really prefer to communicate with three-dimensional statues rather than simple pictographs.”
“That is all the more evidence of their intellect.”
“They threw out your last delegation after killing most of them.”
I shrugged. “We screwed up. Listen, I’m not going to tell you that the Worms are easy to deal with. They’re hotheaded and downright mean. But we’re in a fight to the finish and there’s no one I’d rather have in the foxholes with my troops than the Worms.”
“They’re barbaric, even savage at times.”
“Exactly,” I said. “When the chips are down, they get serious, just the way we do. I don’t think the Worms love us, but they respect us and understand us. And I feel I understand them.”
“Uh, he’s here, sir,” Newcome said, lowering his voice.
I turned and saw Hoon crawl onto the deck. His survival suit might have had a small leak as he seemed to be trailing water, and the bridge suddenly smelled like high tide.
“Professor,” I said, nodding to him. “Welcome to my command center.”
“It’s quite small,” he said, swinging his eyestalks this way and that. “This cannot be your fleet headquarters. Am I correct in assuming you haven’t recovered from your last disastrous campaign?”
I frowned. This was a typical bit of attitude from the Crustaceans. They tended to insult you constantly in backhanded ways. They might ask if your personal stench was a little sharper than usual, or helpfully suggest that you should look for your brain in your other suit.
“Let me show you around,” I said, gritting my teeth as I forced a smile.
He followed as I showed him the holotank, the command table, and the side centers. We had several of them, including a crew of seven who ran the ship while we were in battle. The fleet navigational center was one of our proudest achievements. We had excellent minds there, and they were always able to come up with a fast, accurate estimate concerning the feasibility of any scenario I asked them to study.
These last people seemed to interest Hoon the most.
“Scholars then, I presume?”
“Yes,” I said. “There’s no one at this table who doesn’t have at least a doctoral degree in science or engineering.”
Hoon scuttled up and examined them. They tried not to retreat, but it was difficult.
“All humans? Tell me, how many years of study does it take to become a professor on your world?”
“It varies,” answered one of our engineering chiefs. “To achieve our highest level of education it generally takes nine to ten years.”
Hoon made an odd sound. A polyp on the side of his suit opened and spat a thin stream of liquid. The spraying substance was thicker than normal seawater and it stank
like brine.
“Absurd!” he said. “Our lowest-ranked professors are required to study for at least seventy-seven of your standard years before they’re allowed to attempt their final exams. At that point, they usually fail to impress their peers and are kicked out of the institution.”
My nerds looked at one another, impressed despite themselves. I was annoyed.
“Humans learn fast,” I said.
Hoon wheeled on me. “Ah, I see the inference. We’re therefore weak, defeated vermin, with shells only worthy of being crushed.”
“I didn’t say that. We gave you a planet to live on. Rebuild your civilization.”
“We are rebuilding, but we require more territory.”
I shrugged and crossed my arms. “The oceans on Eden-6 are vast. They should hold your species for centuries.”
“There are many problems. Too many areas are off-limits for our colonies due to the microbial infestations. There are Star Force bases, as well, on the best of the islands.”
I was frowning by this time. Sure, there were two intelligent species on one world, the Microbes and the Crustaceans, but I knew they couldn’t be in conflict yet. Hoon’s kind just weren’t numerous enough. But that wasn’t his real problem. He wanted to make a land grab—or rather, a sea grab. He wanted to kick the Microbes from their ancestral seabeds before he even needed them.
“The Microbes aren’t an infestation,” I told him. “It’s your species that has been imposed upon them. Look at them as hosts, and be glad they’re willing to put up with you.”
Hoon’s eyestalks bobbled.
“Perhaps I spoke in haste,” he said. “Let me make a formal request: Award us the entirety of the world we now dwell upon, and you can destroy our old homeworlds if it pleases you.”
I shook my head. “I can’t do that. Where would the Microbes go?”
Hoon’s attitude shifted once again. He wasn’t the best ambassador in my opinion. He was much too arrogant and had a bad temper.
“We’ll not be put on a reservation forever!” he said. “Humanity has already stolen two worlds and retained a foothold on ours. The superior species deserves the greatest share of any habitat.”
