by David Weber
Unhappily for those racist bigots, Thikair’s people hadn’t. Which didn’t prevent the Council from regarding them with scant favor. Or from attempting to deny them their legitimate prerogatives.
It’s not as if we were the only species to seek colonies. There’s the Shentai and the Kreptu, just for starters. And what about the Liatu? They’re herbivores, but they’ve got over fifty colony systems!
Thikair made himself stop grooming his tail and inhaled deeply. Dredging up old resentments wouldn’t solve this problem, and if he were going to be completely fair (which he didn’t really want to be, especially in the Liatu’s case), the fact that some of those other races had been roaming the galaxy for the better part of seventy-four thousand standard years as compared to the Shongairi’s nine hundred might help to explain at least some of the imbalance.
Besides, that imbalance is going to change, he reminded himself grimly.
There was a reason the Empire had established no less than eleven colonies even before Thikair’s fleet had departed on its current mission, and why the Shongairi’s Council representatives had adamantly defended their right to establish those colonies even under the Hegemony’s ridiculous restrictions.
No one could deny any race the colonization of any planet with no native sapient species, but most species—the Barthoni came to mind—had deep-seated cultural prejudices against colonizing any world which was already inhabited. Unfortunately, there weren’t all that many habitable worlds, and they tended to be located bothersomely far apart, even for hyper-capable civilizations. Worse, a depressing number of them already had native sapients living on them. Under the Hegemony Constitution, colonizing those worlds required Council approval, which wasn’t as easy to come by as it would have been in a more reasonable universe.
Thikair was well aware that many of the Hegemony’s other member species believed the Shongairi’s “perverted” warlike nature (and even more “perverted” honor codes) explained their readiness to expand through conquest. And to be honest, they had a point, because no Shongair ever born could resist the seduction of the hunt. But the real reason, which was never discussed outside the Empire’s inner councils, was that an existing infrastructure, however crude, made the development of a colony faster and easier. And even more importantly, the . . . acquisition of less advanced but trainable species provided useful increases in the Empire’s labor force. A labor force which—thanks to the Constitution’s namby-pamby emphasis on members’ internal autonomy—could be kept properly in its place on any planet belonging to the Empire.
And a labor force which was building the sinews of war the Empire would require on the day it told the rest of the Hegemony what it could do with all of its demeaning restrictions.
That was one reason the Shongairi had been so secretly delighted when the more pacific members of the Council had decided that anyone as bloodthirsty as “humans” deserved whatever happened to them. In fact, Thikair was of the same opinion as the Emperor’s senior ministers—the majority of the Council members who’d approved KU-197-20’s colonization had seen it as an opportunity to neutralize the humans before they could become a second Shongairi. Better, in their opinion, to have only a single expansionist, bloodthirsty, hyper-aggressive species to deal with. Besides, a lot of them had probably salved their consciences with the reflection that conquest by the Shongairi would at least short-circuit the humans’ almost inevitable self-destruction once they got around to acquiring nuclear capability. Looked at from that perspective, it was actually their moral responsibility to see to it that KU-197-20’s unnaturally twisted development was aborted by an outside force while it was still primitive.
And if it happened that, in the process of being conquered, the humans should most unfortunately be rendered extinct, well, it wouldn’t be the Hegemony’s fault, now would it? No, it would be the fault of those vile, wicked, insanely combative Shongairi, that’s whose fault it would be! And however regrettable such an outcome might be, at least the civilized races would be spared yet another batch of bloodthirsty deviants.
But the Shongairi saw humans in rather a different light. The majority of their client races (it would never have done to call them “slaves,” of course) were as thoroughly useless in a military sense as the Hegemony’s more developed herbivores. Most of them weren’t exactly over-blessed with intelligence, either. They could be taught relatively simple tasks, but only three of them could be trained, at least without significant surgical intervention, using the neural educator technology the Hegemony took for granted. And none of them had any of the hunter’s aggressiveness, the drive—the fire—that fueled Shongair civilization. Workers and drones, yes, but never soldiers. Never warriors. It simply wasn’t in them.
But the humans, now . . . They might have some potential. It was obvious from the survey team’s records that they were hopelessly primitive, and from their abysmal tactics in the single battle the survey team had observed, they were just as hopelessly inept. Still, they were the first species to come the Shongairi’s way who might possibly—with serious long-term training—make useful slave-soldiers. According to the survey team’s admittedly no more than superficial physiological data, it might even be possible to teach them using neural educators without surgically inserted receptors. While they would never be the equal of the Shongairi as warriors even if that were true, they’d at least make useful cannon fodder. And who knew? A few generations down the road, with the right training and pruning and a suitable breeding program, they really might at least approach Shongair levels of utility.
The Emperor had made the importance of exploring KU-197-20’s utility in that respect clear before Thikair’s expedition departed. And the fact that the weed-eaters and their only slightly less contemptible omnivore fellows had so cavalierly handed the planet over to the Empire only made the possibility that it would prove useful that much more delicious.
None of which did much about his current problem.
“You say it’s possibly a Level Two,” he said. “Why do you think that?”
“Given all the EM activity and the sophistication of so many of the signals, the locals are obviously at least Level Three, Sir.” Ahzmer didn’t seem to be getting any happier, Thikair observed. “In fact, preliminary analysis suggests they’ve already developed fission power—possibly even fusion. But while there are at least some fission power sources on the planet, there seem to be very few of them. In fact, most of their power generation seems to come from burning hydrocarbons! Why should any civilization that was really Level Two do anything that stupid?”
The fleet commander’s ears flattened in a frown. Like the ship commander, he found it difficult to conceive of any species stupid enough to continue consuming irreplaceable resources in hydrocarbon-based power generation if it no longer had to. That didn’t mean such a species couldn’t exist, however. Alien races could do incredibly stupid things—one had only to look at the pathetic excuses for civilizations some of the weed-eaters had erected to realize that was true! Ahzmer simply didn’t want to admit it was possible in this case, even to himself, because if this genuinely was a Level Two civilization it would be forever off-limits for colonization.
“Excuse me, Sir,” Ahzmer said, made bold by his own worries, “but what are we going to do?”
“I can’t answer that question just yet, Ship Commander,” Thikair replied a bit more formally than usual when it was just the two of them. “But I can tell you what we’re not going to do, and that’s let these reports panic us into any sort of premature reactions. Survey’s always off a little when it estimates a primitive species’ probable tech level; the sheer time lag makes that inevitable, I suppose. I admit, I’ve never heard of them being remotely as far off as the scouts’ reports seem to be suggesting in this case, but let’s not jump to any conclusions until we’ve had time to thoroughly evaluate the situation. We’ve spent eight years, subjective, just getting here, and Medical is already half a month into reviving Ground Commander Th
airys’ personnel from cryo. We’re not going to simply cross this system off our list and move on to the next one until we’ve thoroughly considered what we’ve learned about it and evaluated all of our options. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Sir!”
“Good. In the meantime, however, we have to assume we may well be facing surveillance systems considerably in advance of anything we’d anticipated. Under the circumstances, I want the fleet taken to a covert stance. Full-scale emissions control and soft recon mode, Ship Commander.”
“Yes, Sir. I’ll pass the order immediately.”
. III .
Master Sergeant Stephen Buchevsky climbed out of the MRAP, stretched, collected his personal weapon, and nodded to the driver.
“Go find yourself some coffee. I don’t really expect this to take very long, but you know how good I am at predicting things like that.”
“Gotcha, Top,” the corporal behind the wheel agreed with a grin. He stepped on the gas, and the Cougar four-by-four (officially redesignated years ago as an MRAP, or Mine Resistant Ambush Protection vehicle, largely as a PR move after IED attacks had taken out so many Humvees in Iraq) moved away. It headed for the mess tent at the far end of the position, while Buchevsky started hiking towards the sandbagged command bunker perched on top of the sharp-edged ridge.
The morning air was thin and cold, but little more than a month from the end of his current deployment, Buchevsky was used to that. It wasn’t exactly as if it were the first time he’d been here, either. And while many of Bravo Company’s Marines considered it the armpit of the universe, Buchevsky had seen substantially worse during the seventeen years since a deceitfully honest-faced recruiter had taken shameless advantage of an impressionable youth—a family friend, no less!—to fill his recruiting quota.
“Oh, the places you’ll go—the things you’ll see!” the recruiter in question had told him enthusiastically. And Stephen Buchevsky had indeed been places and seen things since. Along the way, he’d been wounded in action no less than six times, and at age thirty-five, his marriage had just finished coming unglued, mostly over the issue of lengthy, repeat deployments. He walked with a slight limp the physical therapists hadn’t been able to completely eradicate, the ache in his right hand was a faithful predictor of rain or snow, and the scar that curved up his left temple was clearly visible through his buzz-cut hair, especially against his dark skin. But while he sometimes entertained fantasies about sitting down with “Uncle Rob” and . . . “discussing” his inducements to get him to sign on the dotted line, he’d always reupped.
Which probably says something unhealthy about my personality. Besides, Dad would be really pissed with me for blaming it all on someone else! he reflected as he paused to gaze down at the narrow twisting road so far below.
On his first trip to sunny Afghanistan, he’d spent his time at Camp Rhine down near Kandahar. That was when he’d acquired the limp, too. For the next deployment, he’d been located up near Ghanzi, helping to keep an eye on the A01 highway from Kandahar to Kabul. That had been less . . . interesting than his time in Kandahar Province, although he’d still managed to take a rocket splinter in the ass. Which had been good for another gold star on the Purple Heart ribbon (and unmerciful “humor” from his so-called friends). But then the Poles had taken over in Ghanzi, and so, for his third Afghanistan deployment, he’d been sent back to Kandahar, where things had been heating up again. He’d stayed there, too . . . until his battalion had gotten new orders, at least. The situation in Paktika Province—the one the Poles had turned down in favor of Ghanzi because Paktika was so much more lively—had also worsened, and they’d been moved to help deal with the situation.
At the moment he was on his fourth deployment, and he and the rest of First Battalion, Third Marine Regiment, Third Marine Division (known as the “Lava Dogs”), had been operating in Helmand Province, conducting operations in support of the Afghan Army. Although, in Buchevsky’s opinion, it had been rather the other way around as far as who was supporting whom was concerned. Still, like most professional members of the United States military he’d gotten used to the sometimes inventive fashion in which operations’ purposes were described to the public. In this case he even understood why it had to be described that way. And despite his own lingering concerns over the corruption of the national government, the overall situation really had improved a lot. The local governor in Helmand seemed to be working hard to provide the people of his province with genuine security, and most of the Afghan soldiers they’d been working with this time around seemed motivated to keep it that way. For that matter, they were even acquiring the rudiments of genuine fire discipline! They weren’t as good as Marines, of course, but then, who was?
His lips twitched at that thought, which he reminded himself to keep to himself. At the moment, Bravo Company—his company—had been detached from Battalion and sent back up into Paktika yet again, this time tasked as backup for the Army’s 508th Parachute Infantry while the Army tried to pry loose some of its own people for the job.
Despite all the emphasis on “jointness,” it hadn’t made for the smoothest relationship imaginable. The fact that everyone recognized it as a stopgap and Bravo as only temporary visitors (they’d been due to deploy back to the States in less than three months when they got the call) didn’t help, either. They’d arrived without the logistic support which would normally have accompanied them, and despite the commonality of so much of their equipment, that had still put an additional strain on the 508th’s supply services. But the Army types had been glad enough to see them and they’d done their best to make the “jarheads” welcome.
The fact that the Vermont-sized province shared six hundred miles of border with Pakistan, coupled with the way the political situation in Pakistan had once more become “interesting” (in the Chinese sense of the word) and the continuing upsurge in opium production under the Taliban’s auspices (odd how the fundamentalists’ onetime bitter opposition to the trade had vanished when they decided they needed cash to support their operations), had prevented Company B from feeling bored. There was always a large-scale trade in opium, and the recent upsurge in weapon-smuggling, infiltration, and cross-border attacks by the jihadists based among the Pakistani hill tribes hadn’t helped, either. Still, the situation was beginning to show signs of stabilizing, and Buchevsky still preferred Paktika to his 2004 deployment to Iraq. Or his more recent visit to Helmand, for that matter.
Now he looked down through the thin mountain air at the twisting trail Second Platoon was here to keep a close eye on.
All the fancy recon assets in the world couldn’t provide the kind of constant presence and eyes-on surveillance needed to interdict traffic through a place like this. An orbiting unmanned reconnaissance drone wasn’t very good at intercepting a bunch of mujahedin backpacking in rocket-propelled grenades, for example. It could spot them, but it couldn’t suppress the traffic. Not even helicopter-borne pounces could do that as well as troops permanently on the ground with good lines of oversight . . . and infantry wasn’t likely to be downed by MANPADs, either. Not that anything was ever going to make the job simple. It was probably easier than the job Buchevsky’s father had faced trying to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail—at least his people could see a lot farther!—but that wasn’t saying very much, all things taken together. And he didn’t recall his dad’s mentioning anything about lunatic martyrs out to blow people up in job lots for the glory of God.
He found himself thinking about the odd twists and turns fate took as he gazed down at the serpentine trail. His father had been a Marine, too, serving two enlistments as a combat infantryman before he got his divinity degree and transferred to the Navy to become a chaplain. Buchevsky the Younger, as he’d been referred to by his dad’s buddies, had grown up on one Marine or Navy base after another, so if anyone should have known the truth when Uncle Rob spoke his seductive lies, it should have been Stephen Buchevsky.
Face it, he told himself. You did know what you
were getting into, and you’d do the same thing today. Which probably proves you are an idiot, just like Trish says. He smiled sadly, thinking about that last conversation. You could’ve gotten out, just like she wanted. God knows you’ve put in more than your share of time in places like this! And she had a point about what you owe the girls, too. You knew she did. That was why you got so pissed at her for playing that card. Because you knew she was absolutely right to say it . . . and you were too much of a coward to admit it. You’re just lucky— damned lucky—she wants your daughters to grow up knowing their daddy. How many cases have you seen where it went the other way?
He thought about the perversity of his own nature, but he knew the real reason he’d reupped so many times and why he was where he was. His dad had put it into words years ago, when Commander Buchevsky had finally retired and taken over a small church in his South Carolina hometown.
“Son,” Alvin Buchevsky had said sadly, looking somehow like a stranger out of the uniform he’d worn as long as his son had been alive, “you’re not just a lifer, you’re a combat arms lifer. You’re just never going to be satisfied doing anything else, and that’s the way it is. I’ve seen it in plenty of others. In fact, to be honest, I was afraid I saw it in myself, once upon a time. Might be I really did, too, looking back on it. That’s the real reason I was so relieved when I realized I had a genuine call to the ministry.”
The Methodist pastor had looked up at his towering son and shaken his head.
“You’ve got that protective bug, too,” he’d said. “That crazy notion—probably your mom’s and my fault—that you’re supposed to fix everything. Just don’t have it in you to not answer to it, either. And you’re good at leading Marines, and you’re good at killing people you think need killing. I don’t say you like doing it, because I know you don’t, and I hate what I know that’s costing you. But the truth is you’d never be happy leaving ‘your job’ to someone else—someone who might not be as good at it as you are and got more of your Marines killed because they screwed up where you might not’ve. I know better than most that sometimes people like you are exactly what we need, too. There’s always going to be plenty of bad people in the world, and that means we need people like you to stop ’em. You know I’ll never condemn you for it, either. Never love you any less. But what you do . . . it can be hard on a man’s soul, and it’s hard on his family, Steve. It’s awful hard.”
