“I can’t believe we gave the stranger a full reception,” he heard Warmest-Waters complaining. Given how good Vistan hearing was, he knew the Chosen Mother could have whispered so he couldn’t hear.
She wanted him to hear what she was saying.
“You were the one who insisted that we meet with it,” Glorious-Singer replied. “Why so hostile now? I am no happier to have it in our sacred halls than you are.”
“We needed to hear it. We did not need to honor it as a Speaker-For-Mothers,” the youngest Mother snapped.
“Once we agreed to meet Captain Octavio Catalan, he was a Speaker-For-Mothers and deserved that respect,” Dancer-In-Darkness told them. “You disrespect our guest. We may not trust him, but the Chosen Mothers agreed to hear him.”
“And do you trust the Chosen Mothers to make the right choice when it is done lying?” Warmest-Waters asked. “I said we should hear it, not that we should consider it.”
“A division that is without meaning,” Dancer-In-Darkness replied. She turned toward Catalan. “Come, Captain Octavio Catalan.”
She knew perfectly well he’d heard everything, but he kept his movements under control as he approached the Chosen Mother. They would “see” if he shook his head or something similar. They couldn’t detect the glare he was unable to conceal himself directing at Warmest-Waters.
Politicians were the same all over.
“Are we ready to have an actual conversation?” he asked pointedly. “You may be willing to stand by and watch your world freeze, but I made promises and have work to do.”
“We are ready to meet with the Chosen Mothers,” Dancer told him.
She led the way deeper into the Dome of the Chosen and through a set of doors three times the height of any Vistan he’d met so far.
Past those doors was the inside of another dome. A sunken floor sloshed with warm water, and two dozen chairs formed a semicircle in the water. Three were empty, but the other twenty-one seats were occupied by Vistans.
“This is the Dome of the Chosen,” Dancer-In-Darkness told him. “Here, the Chosen Mothers of the Iron Peaks deliberate on the course of our nation. Thanks to Warmest-Waters and some others, we have agreed to hear you speak, to allow you to tell us what you believe the fate of our world is and how you think you can fix it.
“Speak swiftly,” she continued, gesturing him to the center of the room. “The patience of the Chosen is not infinite, and many did not wish you to be welcome here.”
The three Chosen Mothers who had escorted him to the chamber lowered themselves into their seats, and Octavio Catalan found himself facing the half-blind eyes and slowly chirping echolocation of twenty-four aliens.
Aliens waiting for him to convince them to let him save their people.
25
Octavio took a moment to organize his thoughts. He’d prepared a speech for this, but now, looking at the collection of elected Vistans, he realized he’d taken the entirely wrong approach.
“I prepared things to say,” he told them. “An entire speech of facts and explanations and statistics. I’m realizing now that it was a waste of my time.”
They couldn’t read his body language and he had no idea how well the translator picked up his tone, but he suspected his words were getting both messages across.
“You are the leaders of a country of ninety million people,” he stated. “You’ve taken in tens of thousands of refugees from the countries on the other side of these mountains—and you know they are all that survives of billions.
“You have scientists and telescopes and were linked into the Star-Choirs’ satellite networks. You know what happened. You have the knowledge to understand what will happen.”
He grimaced.
“You know your world is dying. And yet you refuse to work with the people trying to save you. So, I have no speech, no grand remarks, only one simple question:
“Why are you so determined to kill the people you swore to serve?”
He couldn’t read Vistan body language very well, but it turned out that they recoiled in shock much the same as humans did. Instead of speaking for thirty minutes, he’d spoken for less than one.
He hesitated for a moment, waiting to see if any of them had an answer. If any of them had anything to say.
“If you wish to work with us to save your people, you know how to contact us. There really is nothing more to say.”
Turning, Octavio began to walk out of the Dome of the Chosen. He was half-expecting, half-hoping, to be called back. To be asked questions, challenged…anything to suggest that the Chosen Mothers actually wanted to save their people.
Instead, he made it to the doors in silence—only for them to be flung open in his face. A dozen armored Vistan Spears marched through in perfect cadence.
These weren’t the ceremonial guards from earlier. These were soldiers in combat kit, with clamshell body armor and battle rifles that wouldn’t have looked particularly out of place in a historical drama.
One leveled a rifle on him and he stopped cautiously…and then realized the rest were ignoring him, moving forward into a chamber he’d already shocked to silence. A second line followed, two more joining the one holding him prisoner.
“What is the meaning of this?” Dancer-In-Darkness bellowed as a third line of soldiers entered. There were now more Iron Spears in the Dome of the Chosen than Chosen Mothers—and more were following.
“You’d all been so very busy,” another voice answered. “Busy buying into the Strangers’ lies. Busy considering how best to sell out our people.”
Octavio turned to face the Chosen Mothers again, watching as Warmest-Waters rose to her feet.
“We couldn’t take the risk of any of the Chosen Mothers escaping, or of permitting the gathered Mothers to sell out our country. Allowing you to speak to the alien who fascinated you so much gathered you in one place.”
He still couldn’t read Vistan expression, but he suspected that Warmest-Waters’s current posture was probably a good read for smug gloating.
“You are all under arrest for treason—and you, alien, will face the punishment for your crimes. Some of us are not blind fools, to be led into slavery by your grand deception. The blood of nine billion is on your hands, and we will not see it passed unpunished.”
A rifle butt slammed into the back of Octavio’s knees, forcing him to the ground as Warmest-Waters approached him. The Chosen Mothers were shouting incoherently behind her, the translator unable to handle that many conversations at once—but he could see their fates as the Spears bound their elected leaders.
“And I know you think your traitorous friends from the Shining Rivers will save you,” Warmest-Waters told Octavio, her voice perfectly projected to reach only him. “But we were not blind to their air fleets. The defenses of this city are impenetrable.”
Octavio was dragged out into the streets alongside Dancer-In-Darkness. The elder Grand Mother was their equivalent of Prime Minister, he guessed, which earned her special attention from the Spears escorting them.
Sirens blazed across the city now, and several aircraft circled above. They weren’t the sleek fighter-bombers of the Shining Rivers. The planes above High Mountain were immense, blocky things that carried dozens of antiaircraft missile launchers.
Radar arrays and missile launchers had risen out of the mountainside above the city as well, and Octavio felt an iron lump form in his stomach. The Vistans had continually surprised him with the efficacy of their relatively crude technology.
He doubted Iron Peaks’ antiaircraft defenses would be any different. Not least because he could see the plumes of smoke from the crash sites of the aircraft that had accompanied him.
He tried to reach for his tattoo-comp, hoping to check in with Summerfield.
A rifle butt slammed into his wrist, and an Iron Spear hissed an order his translator didn’t catch.
The meaning was clear, though. Don’t try it, punk.
“The air defenses were designed to stand off
the two largest threats at once,” Dancer-In-Darkness told him. The translator made her sound perfectly calm, but the rapid metronome of her echolocator chirps told him that it was lying.
“Shining Rivers wasn’t one of them,” she concluded. “Even with their new subjects and allies, I doubt they have the power to penetrate these defenses. Will your people?”
“Not without leveling the city,” Octavio admitted.
That wasn’t entirely true. If Scorpion had been carrying proper bombardment munitions, she’d have been able to punch out the radar arrays without damaging the city. A Confederacy battle group would have already destroyed the city’s defenses.
That was because a Confederacy battle group had a battlecruiser…and would, generally, be commanded by a ruthless paranoid.
The ESF followed CSF protocol in arming only battlecruisers with bombardment weapons. Scorpion could fabricate them, but it would take several days—and they still wouldn’t have the right launchers.
Precision was out of the question. Mass destruction was available immediately. Dropping a rock capable of leveling the city required a lot less work than building precision weaponry.
He was thinking like an engineer and he knew it. Weapons systems and technological solutions. Exilium ECM might be enough to shut down the local defenses, infiltrate EMC assault shuttles—but if Summerfield’s shuttle was gone, there were only two assault shuttles and twenty Exilium Marines in the star system.
“Will Warmest-Waters succeed in taking control?” he asked Dancer.
“No. The people won’t stand for rule by the Spea—”
The rifle butt that cut the Chosen Mother off was not gentle, and the old Vistan stumbled backward, gasping for breath.
“Speak again and I will shoot you,” the Spear threatened.
Octavio looked Dancer-In-Darkness in her half-blind eyes and nodded slowly, hoping she got the meaning.
They would wait. They would see what happened.
And when the time was right, he would feed that asshole of a soldier her own rifle butt.
26
Their escorts led them up past the Dome of the Chosen to a structure built into the side of a cliff. To Octavio’s surprise, he and Dancer-In-Darkness were put in cells next to each other, cells that opened out over the lake the city drew its water from.
When the prison had been built, the half-kilometer drop to the water had probably been enough to keep prisoners secure. At some point since, a layer of bulletproof glass had been added. Prisoners on this level could see the lake and “freedom” but could never reach it.
From there, Octavio could see an entire side of the defensive array and was quietly assessing it. Like most Vistan technology, it was crude by human standards, at least two or three centuries behind the Confederacy they’d left behind.
A human antiaircraft array would be built of a mix of railguns and pulse guns. A secondary suite of lasers would be emplaced to take down anything the aircraft launched before they were obliterated.
The Confederacy hadn’t had very many facilities protected like that. By and large, they were more concerned about attack from space—though the Confederacy Secret Police had certainly been ready to stand off attack from resistance forces.
Whoever held the orbitals held the ultimate advantage, but it was only so useful without precision munitions Scorpion lacked or a willingness to destroy entire cities.
He checked his tattoo-comp again. He wasn’t surprised to see that he was still jammed.
The reasonable thing to do, the sensible thing to do, was wait. Warmest-Waters might blame him for the Impact, but they couldn’t risk their hostage. Presumably, the rogue Chosen Mother did realize that Octavio’s people could obliterate High Mountain about ten minutes after they stopped agonizing over the ethics of it.
She might not. She did seem to think the battle with the Rogues had been a charade to fool the Vistans.
The scary part of that particular argument was that Octavio could see exactly where she was coming from. They had, after all, brought in identical ships to help rebuild and rescue people. It didn’t take much paranoia to see a scheme to enslave an entire race.
He sighed and checked the directory on his tattoo-comp. He wasn’t going to wait. For there to be a chance to a peaceful resolution, someone had to disable the air defense systems without an orbital bombardment.
He had Africano’s translation protocols to make his software work on Vistan computer systems. The locals had no way of knowing his background, no way of knowing how capable his implanted computer was.
They had no idea that they’d locked a former Confederacy Space Fleet Systems Security Officer behind a door secured with maybe twenty-second-century computing systems.
If they had, they might have stuck him with a cell with a purely physical lock—even cut the tattoo-comp out of his arm.
Instead, he leaned against the wall, running the top of his forearm over the smoothed stone. Unless they were insane, there was no wireless connection to the lock, but if he could just… There.
His tattoo-comp wasn’t as capable as the tools he’d prefer for this, but it could manipulate the current in a wire through a couple of centimeters of relatively porous stone.
It wasn’t a comfortable process for the person with the tattoo, but he could do it—and while he couldn’t manipulate the controls, electromagnetic locks only really came in two varieties. One locked with power, unlocking if cut off…and one did the opposite.
The door slid open and he dodged through. His arm was still burning from the heat of the induction as he found himself facing the same Spear who had gut-punched Dancer-In-Darkness.
His martial arts training might have been twenty years out of date, but he’d been expecting a guard…and the guard had known her prisoners were secure.
Limbs only moved so many ways, and a Vistan’s legs were big and heavy. They were definitely not designed to move the way he bent the guard’s leg before she could react. The Spear hit the ground with a snapping sound, scrabbling for the gun she’d dropped.
He got to it first, holding the weapon pointed directly at her head. It wasn’t designed for humans, but he could find the safety and the trigger easily enough.
“Now, I’m here to save your entire species and I don’t want to kill you,” he told her. “But you’re directly responsible for a good chunk of my bad day, and I will make an exception if you don’t cooperate. Clear?”
“I understand,” the Spear said very carefully. “I do not wish to die.”
“Neither did my Marines who your people killed,” Octavio pointed out. He gestured to the cell they’d put the Chosen Mother in. “Let Dancer-In-Darkness out.”
The Spear hesitated until he poked the gun at her, then stepped over to the control panel and released it.
Dancer-In-Darkness looked up at the Spear, then past her to Octavio.
“You are resourceful, Captain,” she concluded, then walked past the Spear like she wasn’t there. “Do you have a plan?”
“Could you make sure our obnoxious friend has no surprises hidden on her and shove her in your cell?” Octavio asked. “Seems likely she’ll end up there eventually.”
“It is likely, yes,” Dancer agreed. She went through the soldier’s gear and pockets slowly but competently, stripping her of ammunition and a sidearm and several objects Octavio didn’t recognize.
She pushed the Spear into the cell and then looked at the control panel.
“I don’t have control of this.”
“Give me a moment.” Octavio walked over and unfolded a tiny cord from a hidden compartment in his arm—not a standard feature of the tattoo-comp. Linking the cord into the control panel, he unleashed his software worms.
“Your computers suck,” he told Dancer-In-Darkness a minute later as he sealed the door. “Which is probably a good thing for you right now.”
“Will your people destroy the city in vengeance for our attack?” she asked.
“Not immediatel
y. Not quickly…but in the long run, quite possibly,” Octavio told her. “That decision will fall to my XO, and she will be very angry right now.”
Her chirping accelerated and Octavio smiled flatly.
“I do have a plan, but it’s not a great one,” he admitted. “Is there a central command center for the air defenses?”
“Yes,” Dancer confirmed. “Warmest-Waters will have made certain of her control of it. There will be loyal troops anywhere near the command pool.”
“I can’t even use your controls, Dancer-In-Darkness,” Octavio pointed out. “I need to get to somewhere I can physically plug in to their hardware. And I’ll need coms. My tattoo-comp can’t reach orbit on its own—it needs a relay, and your people blew up my shuttle.”
Dancer closed her eyes and her chirps slowed, softened.
“I did not wish to meet with you, Captain Octavio Catalan, but I did not wish to harm you, either. I simply did not trust you or the Shining Mother.”
“Well, unless you can find an army to stop the one Warmest-Waters has pulled together, the only hope your people have for freedom—for survival—is for you and me to get help from the Shining Spears and my people.
“Which means I need to shut down the defenses and call for help. Will you help me?”
She was silent for a good minute as they faced each other in the prison corridor.
“Are we truly doomed if we stay?” she asked. “We were building bunkers in the mountains, but we were starting to question if we would have enough space for everyone.”
“The oceans will freeze. Your sky will freeze. It will be decades before you could come above ground again, and who knows what other life would survive.” Octavio shook his head. “Vista is doomed. Only by leaving can your people survive.”
“Why would you help us?”
“This isn’t the time or place for these questions, Chosen Mother,” he told her.
“It is the only time possible,” she said. “I must understand before I choose, as my choice will bind my people forever.”
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