Wars

by Alex Deva

  STARSHIP DOI: WARS

  by Alex Deva

  www.alxx.se

  The sequel to the well-reviewed Starship Doi

  With much gratitude to

  Diana Sima (Romania)

  for creating the beautiful cover art

  and to

  Helena Frännhag, PhD (Linnaeus University, Sweden)

  for her excellent proofreading,

  and for various stylistic suggestions.

  Visit the website,

  listen for free to the first four chapters while you read:

  www.starshipdoi.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 2018, Alex Deva.

  This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

  2018

  I.

  “I think I'm in love,“ said the alien.

  He was perched on top of a tree, one of millions in a huge forest that covered hills and valleys and mountains in all directions, as far as the eye could see.

  “Why, fletcher Keai,“ said the voice inside his head. “I didn't know you cared.“

  “Not with you, Control,“ he answered, feigning irritation but smiling inwardly. “Didn't you see what just happened?“

  “Sorry,“ answered the voice. “I had to go pee. I have to say, this human body really sucks. I mean, I get that you have to wear one; after all, you are a fletcher, you live right on their planet, it makes all the sense in the Universe. But why me?“

  The alien raised his human eyebrows.

  “Do you doubt the methods of the Builders?“

  “That you and I are supposed to bond better if we share the same physiology? That I am like a buffer between you and the Council, meant to translate and convey to them what you're up to, on a rock far away that I shall never set foot on?“

  “Something like that, yes.“

  “Well, I get it, of course. And it still sucks. But never mind that. What's this I hear about you being in love? How would you even know what that feels like?“

  The alien was silent. He climbed down, agile as a… as a being from another world, so very different from any earthly animal and yet so human in appearance, and landed on the dark brown forest floor, disturbing a bunch of leaves and throwing a hedgehog into a fit of panic.

  “How many fletchers have you controlled before me?“ he asked the voice in his head.

  “You're the first,“ came the answer. “And you? How many starships have you manned before?“

  “This is my fourth,“ said Keai. “Anyway. You wouldn't get it if I explained.“

  “What? That some fletchers dig themselves so deep into the race they mine, that you begin to develop the same responses?“

  “You know that we must adapt to the race we're mining. As do you — as a buffer, for the Council, as you said. That's why, right now, we communicate using a human language, with its own words and idioms.“

  “Yes, so you can get in character better.“

  “No. So I can become human.“

  There was silence.

  “Do all fletchers get so involved, or are you some kind of special?“

  “Yeah, I guess you're just lucky.“

  “Oh.“ Another small pause. “So, was it this thing? The woman and her child fighting those half-naked men? Which one did you fall in love with?“

  “You're looking at the recording? Good. The woman and her child are locals. They live in a village next to a river not far away. The men are invaders. They belong to a group — a tribe — that just travel from place to place and plunder.“

  “Yes. I'm aware of the current sociopolitical events on Earth.“

  “Good. Do you know how humans die?“

  “They die like us, only a lot more often and easier.“

  “Do you know what rape is?“

  “Can I just watch the recording? Please?“

  A woman and a child ran like ghosts in the woods. They both wore clothes made of flax fibre, with grey, faded pants and shirts; their feet were wrapped in animal skin nearly all the way to their knees. They both had shoulder-length hair, light brown. They both had sheaths hanging around their necks that normally housed a blade with a wooden handle. They both held their blades in their right fists as they ran.

  They were both dirty with blood.

  They ran in unison, never more than one or two steps apart, gasping hard, expending energy as if they had unlimited supplies.

  The three people who hunted them were riding horses. They were naked down to the waist and painted in bright colours, with human bones knitted into their hair, screaming manically and wielding bronze axes around their heads. They split up, trying to outflank the runners. Two went one way; the third went another way.

  The recording showed them from above, as the alien had watched them flying above the treetops. He had chosen that high vantage point because it made it easier to understand what the woman and the child were doing.

  “They're leading them on,“ observed the voice in the alien's head.

  “Yes.“

  “They're choosing thicker parts of the forest when the animals get too close, and then... they actually wait for them to close in if they fall too far behind.“

  “Exactly.“

  “Wow. Why? Is that what they usually do?“

  “No, Control. It really isn't.“

  “So why are they doing it now?“

  “Wait and see.“

  The woman and the child arrived at a clearing in the middle of the trees, and carried on running to the middle of it, where they turned and faced their followers. The woman took the child's hand and squeezed it briefly, then told him something.

  “What did she say?“

  “I don't know,“ said the alien.

  “What? Is that what she said? ‘I don’t know’?“

  “No, I really don't know,“ he repeated. “I heard it, but I don't know what it means.“

  “Are they not speaking the local language?“

  “It doesn't matter. I speak every language on this planet.“

  “Of course. A name? An interjection?“

  “It might've been a name. But I've never heard it before. Still, I haven't been here all that long. Anyway, look at what happens next.“

  The boy took off to a side and instantly vanished into the trees, without glancing back. His mother stood waiting for their followers, who burst into the clearing with piercing yells.

  She stood calmly, with her legs slightly apart and her hands hanging at her sides, waiting for the men, evaluating the distances, planning, thinking.

  “She'll die to save her child,“ said the voice from another planet.

  The three riders looked around for the missing child. The one with the most paint on his chest whistled to one of the others, who set off in pursuit.

  The remaining two warriors started circling the lone woman, mocking her, spitting, licking their lips, yelling at her and at each other. And yet she stood calmly, looking forward, her chest pumping slow, deep breaths.

  “Odd,“ said the voice. “No, wait, I know this one. She is praying, right?“

  “I have no idea. If she is, she's doing it silently.“

  The senior warrior charged, swinging his axe and leaning on the right side of his horse, calculating his swings so that he could strike the unmoving woman in one upwards blow. His horse sped up across the few dozen steps that separated them.

  The bronze axe swung, and
the woman didn't budge.

  The bronze axe swung again, the horse just a few steps away, and the woman didn't budge.

  The bronze axe swung for the third time, and she eschewed inhumanly fast, and incredibly little, and the axe hit nothing but air. Then her right arm flashed, and left a deep gush on the back of the rider's leg, starting behind the knee and going downwards about the length of a palm.

  “Wait. What...?“

  “Play that back, slowly.“

  The previous three seconds happened again. The horse charged furiously, the rider grimaced hideously and the other warrior kept his distance on the other side of the clearing; the woman looked still as a statue, and then she moved — no, vibrated.

  The image froze and zoomed in. The woman's eyes were closed, her face relaxed, her right cheek rippled with the pressure front wave of compressed air in front of the large axe, which glided a literal hair's width from her skin.

  The image zoomed again, and the angle changed. Seen in great detail, the imperfections of the hand-made bronze axe brushed against the short, micrometer thick hairs on the woman's upper ear.

  “Could you do that?“ asked the alien, quietly.

  “In this body?” answered the voice. “I don't think so. I don't even want to consider it.“

  “Me neither.“

  “What happened next?“

  “He died,“ said the alien.

  “He died?“ There was a pause. “Wait... did she cut a… what is it, an artery?“

  “No. She cut two.“

  There was a longer pause.

  “This woman was attacked by two people each twice her size, riding on fast, large animals, had a great heavy sharp thing swung at her head which she dodged with molecular precision, then in the same move she stabbed, found and sectioned not one, but two arteries in the leg of the man who was hurtling past her.“

  “Yes. Humans have one big artery in each leg, which splits right behind the knee. She severed both of them completely. He bled to death in less than two minutes.“

  “What did the other man do?“

  “Look.“

  The viewpoint resumed its position high above the scene. The images showed the woman turning towards the remaining man, ignoring the painted chieftain as if he wasn't even there anymore. Looking completely incredulous, the warrior halted his horse and opened his mouth, but made not a sound. His wounded companion slumped forward, then fell off the horse. Stupefied, the other man moved his eyes between the woman and the dying warrior, his jaw falling lower and lower. The dying chieftain uttered something, then stopped moving. The other froze; his horse snorted and shook its head. Then, in utter bewilderment, looking around unsurely, he wet his lips and did his best to formulate an articulated thought.

  The woman made a sharp, raspy noise from her throat, like a loud bark.

  Both horses jumped on their hind legs as if a river of fire had suddenly exploded in front of them. The rider tried to grab a handful of mane, failed, then fell on his back, right on the broad side of his axe. The horses took off in gallop, scared out of their animal wits by something that appeared to be completely invisible to everyone else but them, including two alien beings who could usually see and hear a lot more than horses could.

  “How did she do that?“

  “I don't know. I have no idea.“

  “This isn't exactly canon, is it?“

  “No, it's not.“

  “Are you sure?“

  “Not judging by that man's reactions. Look at him.“

  The half-naked warrior tried to sit up, disoriented. He uselessly reached with one hand after his horse, reflexively protecting his face with the other one as mud and grass exploded backwards under the animal's big hoofs. Frightened and dizzy, he slowly got up on one knee and looked around.

  The woman moved towards him. She started running in fluid moves, pushing the ground hard with her toes, lifting her knees high, eyes forward, knife deftly switched to her left hand.

  The warrior looked at her, abandoned his big axe together with all attempts at thinking, and quickly produced a knife of his own. It was a long, slightly curved, scary looking affair, more like a short sword than a knife. He held it in front of him, point forward, ready to thrust, in a reflex gesture which he clearly hadn't premeditated.

  The woman kept running. The warrior thrust his blade forward, holding it with both hands, dug his knee into the ground for support, and started screaming something in his own language.

  “He's cursing,“ said the alien.

  “How very useful,“ said the voice.

  “Normal human response. It actually helps them, biochemically.“

  “How very interesting,“ retorted the voice dryly.

  The woman came on at full speed and, just as it seemed obvious that — against all common sense — she was going to throw herself onto the warrior's blade, she didn't.

  “Slow down.“

  Slowly, as if the air had had turned to thick molasses, the woman's left leather-clad foot planted itself into the ground with an audible thud, as she transformed her forward momentum into circular movement.

  At the same time, she threw her knife.

  But not at the man. She simply allowed it to fly upwards with the tiniest flick of her wrist, as her entire body pivoted around her forward foot. As she graciously avoided the man's sharp sword, she kept on swivelling. Brown strands of her wet hair lifted in arcs, and liquid drops departed in gracious, ever wider spiral trajectories. When her back was turned at the warrior, her right hand glided gently a hair’s breadth over the sharp edge of his sword, and arrived at his wrist, which she gripped softly, as if it were a baby's fragile joint.

  Effortlessly she helped the man forwards, merely aiding his own existing momentum, and then let him go. Her same hand met the falling knife in mid-air, predicting its trajectory with complete confidence. When her turn was complete, she used her tangential momentum to stick the blade into the man's back, just to the left of his spine. It went in about half way.

  Finishing its own revolution, her left hand arrived at the same place, and with its flat she hit the handle of the knife, pushing it in all the way to the hilt.

  Her entire ballet took all of seven and a half tenths of a second.

  They replayed the scene in silence.

  “I think I'm in love,“ repeated the alien.

  II.

  As the voice of Joey Tempest filled the spaceship, Aram pondered that he hadn't had a conversation in his mother tongue in over two thousand years.

  The last time he’d heard his native Dacian language he'd been on a narrow road leading from the Roman citadel Apulum. He'd chatted with his old uncle and with a pair of centurions on horses. They'd talked about emperors and tribes and the weather.

  And then he was on a starship.

  Aram sighed. From shepherd, to space pilot, he thought for the hundredth time.

  “We're headed for Venus,“ announced Joey Tempest proudly.

  The sound came from everywhere. The cockpit was just big enough for one person. He didn't know, and didn't really care, how the music player worked. It wasn’t some alien device; it was a human machine. A gift, of sorts. A team of German researchers had revived Mark's HTC One (an ancient device for them; a daily accessory for Mark until just recently; and an object as futuristic as the alien spaceship he was flying, for himself) and managed to extract the Brit's music collection out of it.

  Aram had instantly fallen in love with glam metal.

  The lively drums, the gruff guitar riffs, the strong bass accents, the soaring voices and the amazing guitar solos were completely out-worldly for the ancient twenty-four-year old. He had learned that the band he was listening to was Swedish; he had some knowledge of the Vikings, but for the life of him he couldn't figure out how those plundering bastards could've created something as magical as heavy metal.

  But the lyrics were even more puzzling.

  “Fuck's so interesting about Venus?“ he muttered to himself.<
br />
  He checked his surroundings and called up the ship's holographic map. It popped up right in his lap. He zoomed and panned around the solar system and looked for the second planet from the Sun. Dacian runes mixed with Greek and Latin letters floated around it.

  It was a hot white hell. He read an atmospheric pressure nearly a hundred times that of Earth's, and surface temperatures in the upper three hundreds. Why the Swedes would want to go to Venus was a mystery to him.

  He shrugged.

  “Monnet, this is Effo,“ he said.

  “Go ahead,“ instantly replied a voice in a Slavic accent. Aram turned the music down.

  “Yuri, have you guys ever been to Venus?“

  Yuri Petrovich Petrov was a Russian major on the Eurasian space cruiser ESS Monnet. He was a big man with a large, round head adorned by blue eyes, a perpetual smile and a thick moustache, and he had instantly taken a liking to Aram. As soon as they'd met, Petrov's superiors noticed the click and, more or less officially, assigned the jovial major to be the Eurasian contact person for Aram.

  The latter would've maybe preferred a certain female captain, but he wasn't about to say it.

  “Why do you ask? Is anything wrong with Venus?“

  “No, I was just wondering.“

  There was a small pause as the Russian considered.

  “We sent a couple of probes, right at the beginning of the Space Age,“ he answered after a few moments.

  “Nothing there worth going to, right?“

  “No, I don't think so. Not that we know. Again, why?“

  Aram sucked his teeth. “Never mind. How are the repairs going?“

  “Better, now that the Yanks stopped putting holes into everything and everyone we fix.“

  The Dacian gave a short laugh.

  “How's your recon mission?“ asked the Russian in turn.

  “No sign of the Eight,“ said Aram, checking again.

  “OK. We're waiting for you home in another hour, as planned.“

  The casual mention of the word “home“ didn't go unnoticed by the Dacian, but he chose not to comment. An official agreement had never been reached, and the Eurasians were still trying everything to convince the crew of Starship Doi that they belonged on their side.