Refuge

by Glynn Stewart

  Regardless of her resistance, Sleeps-In-Sunlight was the Vistan’s Great High Mother now.

  “You can call me by my name,” Sleeps replied. “I am surrounded by extraordinarily intelligent and competent leaders and officers and scientists, and not a one of them can see anything but the Great Mother of Shining Rivers.”

  “You are the Great Mother of Shining Rivers, Sleeps-In-Sunlight,” Sings told her gently. “You are the Great High Mother of us all now.”

  She’d been impressed by the emotional control that Sleeps mustered and the generally level and measured state of the young Mother’s chirping. It was almost a shock to hear the Mother’s chirping accelerate into distressed anger.

  “Please. Not you.”

  “As you wish,” Sings conceded. “This is the role you accepted, Sleeps-In-Sunlight. The role our people needed.”

  “And I will meet that need,” Sleeps said firmly. “I will rise to the challenge and I will protect our people. I may fail, but it will not be because I did not give our people and our world all that I could.

  “But grant me this boon, First-Among-Singers, and remember that I am Sleeps-In-Sunlight as well. There are few others I can ask it of.”

  Sings-Over-Darkened-Waters bowed her head.

  “As you wish. I am following all of our affairs from here. What do you need?”

  “The first habitat has arrived, yes?” Sleeps asked. “When will it be ready for us to move people aboard?”

  “Give us a day to check over its systems and make certain it’s safe,” Sings promised. “The Matrices are confident in their work—and even they want us to inspect it before we start moving millions of people aboard.”

  “We are arranging the first candidates already,” the Mother told her. “There is some argument, but I believe I have carried the day. Those who have lost homes and have nowhere to stay now will be first to go up.

  “Once we have evacuated the refugees, then we will move the people whose homes remain but cannot be easily refitted to protect them against the storm to come.”

  “I agree,” Sings said calmly. “The shuttles needed for the task will be completed soon. It is an undertaking such as our people have never engaged in before.”

  “And it is only one step of several,” the Mother trilled. “Even our greatest wars and challenges fade into insignificance, compared to the evacuation of an entire world. And we will evacuate everyone, Sings-Over-Darkened-Waters. That is what I need from you today.”

  “The Chosen Mothers of Iron Peaks will not speak to me,” the commander of the Star-Choirs admitted. “They blame me for the fate of our world.”

  “They are wrong,” Sleeps snapped. “But it is irrelevant. I believe we have found the one person they cannot ignore. The one being they will at least meet with.”

  “That can’t be right,” Sings objected as she realized what her new Great Mother meant. “They don’t like other Vistans. Why would they meet with a Stranger?”

  “I don’t know,” Sleeps-In-Sunlight conceded. “What I do know is that the Chosen Mothers have agreed to meet with Captain Catalan. The terms are…regrettable, and Captain Catalan will object to them.

  “But we have no choice. I need you to convince him to go.”

  “I will do all I can,” Sings-Over-Darkened-Waters promised. “He understands duty. He will meet with them.”

  23

  “No. Not a bloody chance. You literally cannot do this.”

  Octavio waited calmly for Lieutenant Major Rachel Summerfield to get through her initial reaction to the discovery that the leaders of the holdout state on the surface wanted to meet him.

  Just him. Alone. No escort. No Marines. Just him.

  The lanky blonde woman commanded the single platoon of thirty Marines aboard Scorpion. Normally a senior Lieutenant’s command, the warp cruisers had been assigned more experienced Marine officers in Exilium service.

  That was partially because the Exilium Marine Corps had those officers. They’d had problems reducing the strength of the Marines they’d brought to Exilium with them. Those troopers hadn’t wanted to stand down, even as the Navy had been able to cut its strength in half just by letting everyone who wanted to go be a colonist leave.

  The result was that the EMC had intentionally taken on a top-heavy cadre structure, with a lot more noncommissioned and commissioned officers than their actual line strength called for.

  That meant that Captain Octavio Catalan had a Lieutenant Major with twenty years of experience commanding a platoon of Marines whose most junior member was a fifteen-year veteran. If he made it through the crazy stunt he was about to pull, those Marines would be why.

  “I don’t have a choice, Summerfield,” he pointed out as she finally petered to silence. “The elected leaders of Iron Peaks—these ‘Chosen Mothers’—won’t meet with the Vistan leadership.

  “They’ve agreed to meet with me, as an outsider. Someone outside their traditional fears and concerns. But since I am an outsider, they aren’t comfortable with me bringing weapons or bodyguards.”

  “So, they’re going to have to give up something somewhere,” Summerfield told him. “Protocol and regulation are clear. You can’t go down to the surface alone.”

  “Last time I checked, I was in command of this vessel, Major Summerfield,” Octavio pointed out. “You don’t get to give me orders.”

  “On this one thing, I do,” Summerfield replied. “You’re not a Marine or a technician. You’re not some bloody redshirt from a bad science fiction serial. You are the commanding officer of a warship of the Exilium Space Fleet, and I, sir, am responsible for your safety.

  “It is explicitly in my authority to refuse to let you leave the ship if I believe the threat level is too high, and in this case, it’s too bloody high.”

  “You’re not wrong,” he conceded. He’d have to check the regulations. He honestly wasn’t sure if his Marine commander could keep him aboard ship legally or not. “But it doesn’t matter.”

  Not least because the Marines would have a hard time physically keeping him aboard ship. He might not be able to fly a shuttle himself, but Scorpion had no shortage of shuttle pilots.

  Even with half his people on the surface, training Vistan pilots.

  “Ninety million people, Major,” he said calmly. “That’s ninety million reasons why I have to go. You’ve presented one why I shouldn’t.”

  “That’s bloody shit and you know it.”

  The Captain winced at the graphic curse and glared up at the Marine.

  “Cut the bullshit,” he ordered, turning her own language back on her. “I’m not going to pretend you don’t have a legitimate concern. Hell, Sings-Over-Darkened-Waters raised the same concern. She was expecting me to refuse to go.”

  “Then maybe you should refuse. Sir.” Summerfield returned his glare in equal measure. “We can’t keep you safe if we’re not allowed to be with you.”

  “The choice, Major, is between risking my life or abandoning ninety million people. I will not do the latter,” he told her. “I am the Captain of an Exilium warship, yes. I am also currently the Republic’s ambassador plenipotentiary to these people.

  “I need to go down. I need to meet with the Chosen Mothers of the Iron Peaks. You are going to let me do so. Am I clear?”

  “You can’t order me to let you get yourself killed, sir,” she countered. “There are only two people on this ship who can override you. Our head doctor can relieve you if she thinks you’re medically unfit for command, and I can refuse to let you leave the ship. And right now, I’m not convinced I shouldn’t do just that.”

  “Seriously?” Octavio stared at her. “Ninety million lives and you’re going to sit there and tell me you value mine over theirs?”

  “That’s my job, sir,” she told him. “I agree that we need to do something, sir, but sending you into potentially hostile territory with no weapons, no guards and no backup strikes me as bloody suicidal.”

  “Ah.” He raised a hand.
“I see at least one area where we can agree. I may have agreed to go in unarmed and unescorted, but I said nothing about backup.

  “You’re not winning on me not going, Major. You’re not winning on me getting an escort or on me going armed—and frankly, nobody wants me to be armed.”

  Naval officers had to qualify with firearms to get their commissions. They were expected to maintain that skillset through their careers, but it wasn’t actually a requirement. Octavio suspected he was far from alone among the Captains of the ESF in being only barely competent with a sidearm at this point.

  “But I don’t want to go in without backup—and you’re right that is a damn bad idea,” he said with a chuckle. “So, blank check time, Major. Given our resources, what can we do to back me up?

  “And given what we might be able to beg, borrow and steal from everyone else in this system, what would make you willing to let me do my damn job?”

  The end result felt ridiculous to Octavio, but he’d agreed to let Summerfield set the tone of the backup. So, he went along with it, even as it felt like overkill.

  His shuttle dropped from Scorpion and entered atmosphere above Shining Sunset. That was a good six hundred kilometers from their destination, adding half an hour to their trip unless they wanted to break the sound barrier and cause havoc along their way.

  The reason for the extra distance was the two dozen atmospheric fighter-bombers that launched from the Shining Sunset military bases. They fell in around the shuttle, matching its barely subsonic speed as the formation sped toward Iron Peaks.

  Two more Exilium shuttles were engaged in a more distant escort, sitting in a low orbit above the Iron Peaks themselves. They might look distant to an uneducated eye, but Octavio had spent time in flight engineering during his career.

  Their theoretical specifications said those ships were ten minutes from landing at assault capacities. He’d cleaned up the damage after a pilot back in the Confederacy had decided a situation was critical enough to require a three-minute orbit-to-ground assault landing.

  It said something about the shuttles that most of the damage had been vomit.

  If something happened, his Marines would be on the ground to extract him in five minutes, and while Octavio would be unarmed and unescorted, that didn’t mean his shuttle was empty.

  There were ten Marines in full power armor behind him. Octavio hoped they would be unnecessary, but he couldn’t disagree with anything Summerfield had insisted on.

  “Twenty minutes to our destination,” she reported as she stepped back into the passenger compartment. “Iron Peaks has granted air clearance to our escort, though I get the impression they’re expecting everyone to turn around and leave once we drop you off.”

  If it was just a show of force, that was what they’d do. Since Summerfield was a professional paranoid, however, she and the Shining Spears’ fighter-bombers were going to stay right there while Octavio met with the Chosen Mothers.

  “You know, all of this just might end up offending them,” he told Summerfield. He’d mentioned that in the planning session, too…and her cold smile was much the same as it had been then.

  “We didn’t bring enough force to actually threaten the Iron Peaks, just enough to make sure they’d regret trying to hurt you,” she said. “If they want to start a war, the Shining Spears have a lot more trouble waiting for them.”

  Octavio winced. He’d seen the shuttle’s scanner reports as they came in. The airbase that had launched the twenty-four planes escorting them was huge, and the fact that the Shining Spears had absorbed most of the surviving militaries had increased their ability to keep planes at home.

  They may have only launched twenty-four aircraft for this escort, but there were hundreds of planes ready to go.

  He hoped the Iron Peaks didn’t want to make trouble—and not just because any trouble would mean he was either a hostage or dead.

  24

  Octavio stepped out of his shuttle with a cautious glance around to see if anything was waiting for him, mostly in terms of traps, assassins and ambushes. Summerfield’s paranoia had managed to sink its claws into him, too, he concluded.

  There was nothing, only a raised symbol that he studied for a moment before realizing it was a directional indicator.

  “I think we’re clear here,” he said back into the shuttle. “Take off once I’m past the safety barriers and follow the plan. I’ll be in touch.”

  The plan in this case was to orbit at one thousand meters, accompanied by the Vistan jets. The shuttle pad wasn’t as well designed as the ones he was used to, but there was a safety barrier about fifty meters away and an attached bunker along the line the icon pointed him to.

  The door slid shut behind him and he set off across the landing pad. The bunker doors slid open as he approached, and a small honor guard of Vistan soldiers trooped out.

  They weren’t wearing anything a human would have regarded as a dress uniform, but their movements and posture were recognizably parade-ground. The six soldiers fell in around him in near-silence, the air broken only by the quiet chirping of their breathing and the attendant sonar.

  A dozen other Vistans were waiting for him just inside the bunker, three of them wearing the surprisingly simple robes that he’d seen Sleeps-In-Sunlight in. It seemed those were the mark of rank as a Great Mother, since the rest of the party was clearly looking to them for guidance.

  “I am Captain Octavio Catalan of the Exilium Space Fleet,” he introduced himself. Once again, the speakers on his shoulders trilled the equivalent two-toned speech of the translation.

  “I am Chosen Mother Dancer-In-Darkness,” the central Chosen Mother told him. Her skin was grayer than any Vistan he’d met yet, including Sings-Over-Darkened-Waters. From his understanding of Vistan biology, she was ancient.

  “These are Chosen Mother Glorious-Singer and Warmest-Waters,” she continued, indicating the other two Mothers with her. “We have been tasked by the Dome of the Chosen to greet you and bring you forward.”

  “We were not warned you would bring an army,” Warmest-Waters hissed. She was the youngest of the three, with the least amount of mottling to her skin. Still older than Sleeps-In-Sunlight, he judged, which said fascinating things about the leader he’d associated with.

  “What army?” he asked. “I come alone and unarmed, as promised.”

  “With a squadron of jets from the one who would make herself Great High Mother,” Warmest-Waters replied, gesturing upward. “This was not agreed to.”

  “Peace, Warmest-Waters,” Dancer-In-Darkness snapped. “We asked for the impossible and he gave it to us. Allow them their precautions.”

  She gestured for Octavio to follow her.

  “Come, Captain Octavio Catalan. There is ceremony when a Speaker-For-Mothers comes to us, and we have much to discuss.”

  The vehicles waiting for them would have been recognizable on any human world. The proportions weren’t quite right, but they were unquestionably cars. Four wheels, engine, storage compartment and transparent top.

  Some things were apparently universal. Six cars waited for them, alongside two open-topped vehicles clearly intended for the armed escort.

  Each of the Chosen Mothers was escorted to a separate vehicle, as was Octavio. The hangers-on piled into the first and last cars, and the soldiers into the open-topped transports.

  The city of High Mountain felt very different from Shining Sunset. The first Vistan city he’d visited had been coastal, built into the water in a way that left no illusions as to the amphibious nature of his hosts.

  High Mountain was halfway up a mountain. Aqueducts delivered water from mountain lakes and glacial runoff, but the waterways running through the city were clearly artificial and constrained. The higher up they went toward the Dome of the Chosen, the wider and more easily accessible the water streams became.

  The houses around those streams were larger and more decorative, too. It was obvious they were moving into wealthier areas, and that wealth
had many benefits.

  What High Mountain shared with Shining Sunset was the omnipresence of police. Armored Vistans were on every corner, and here they weren’t guarding food trucks.

  The concern that had made its way back up to Catalan from the surface was whether or not Iron Peaks would be able to feed their citizens. Their system was a semi-oligarchic democracy, and seizing the food supplies wouldn’t have been an option as it had been for the Shining Mother.

  There was no one in the back seat of the car with him, which he found both disconcerting and strange. It suggested a possible threat, but it also seemed weird that no one had taken the time to have a quiet conversation with him away from the ceremony.

  The Vistans might not be human, but from what he’d seen, their politics were relatively similar. There was less nepotism, but that was only because favoritism was harder when any given politician had between two and ten thousand individuals who were equivalent to a human’s siblings.

  If the Chosen Mothers wanted to conduct everything in the eye and ear of the public, however, he didn’t object. His job was to convince these people to work with the rest of their planet to save themselves.

  The convoy pulled in at the front of a mixed array of fountains and steps that would probably have been a water feature in a human building. Here, it appeared to be the main entrance.

  There was a crowd of people come to see the strange alien. There were formally arrayed honor guards and what looked like dancers.

  Ceremony.

  Octavio had spent his formative years as an officer working for Isaac Lestroud. He wasn’t fond of ceremony…but with ninety million lives on the line, he’d survive.

  Until they had work to do, at least.

  The dancers finally moved away as Catalan followed the three Chosen Mothers across the last step. Vistan dancing, it turned out, was as much an auditory affair as an actual physical one, and he had a new headache since he’d arrived.