Nan Gunnar dropped back into his padded chair. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with a cellulose towel. “I know, Kho-san,” he replied after a few seconds, in a much calmer town. “I know. You see, the Split will take everything that you do as an official act by Argon Prime. Or at least they will try. Whether you’re out there with your very own personal sports parachute and nothing else, or with the entire Argon fleet. Right, Danna?”
Elena looked around; she hadn’t noticed that Ban Danna had already entered the room. Danna, who had recently been promoted to colonel and since then had floated back and forth between Cloudbase, Argon Prime, and Port Thornton, gave her a friendly wink instead of a greeting.
“You have to credit Major Kho for returning her M4/Buster in perfect condition, right, Senator?” He grinned saucily. Gunnar made a sigh; the two men who were so different got along in a subliminal way that Elena did not fully understand.
“Colonel Danna, you are a great help to me, as ever,” the senator snorted sarcastically.
Danna laughed. “The mission that Major Kho is proposing is one we should have carried out long ago,” he said curtly and in a matter-of-fact tone.
Elena pressed her lips together, as her conscience suddenly responded vehemently. So far, she had told nobody about the encounter with #efaa, and she did not want to do that before completing her mission. She remained silent.
Gunnar scratched his chin and pulled his face in an unhappy grimace. “That,” he said, stretching out the word, “is indeed a problem, but—“
“As I see it, Senator Gunnar,” Elena interrupted, “it’s all about what the Argon Prime government can take responsibility for.”
“Not quite, because…,” began the senator.
Elena raised her forefinger. “One moment. The split will hold the Argon responsible for private and official actions, that is true. But that should not force the government into incapacitation!”
“Right, just because the Split will object to absolutely anything we do doesn’t mean we should simply do nothing anymore.” Danna eagerly agreed with Elena.
“Now don’t be childish, Colonel. Is that an argument?”
“Senator…”
“My goodness!” the Argon said. “Always just ‘Senator, Senator!’ Whether to return Ghinn t’Whht to Nif-Nakh is one thing! To use that as a smoke-screen to secretly search the planet for a crashed ship is another! Do you understand? Major Kho? Danna? Heavens!”
Both shook their heads simultaneously. Of course, they understood the government member’s concerns only too well, but sooner or later the senator would have to give in, because there was no viable alternative.
“The government doesn’t need to know about this mission officially,” Elena stated. Secretly, she wondered if she would argue the same way to her superiors on Earth; but that didn’t matter at all. “If the mission fails, Argon can deny any knowledge.”
The senator who had exerted himself in his outburst, sank back into the upholstery. “It is very important to you to find this Teladi, isn’t it?”
“Yes, very! And you kill three birds with one stone, maybe more. You improve your relations with the CEO, with the Borons, with the Split—if the mission succeeds, that is—and in the long run you also get the data that the Ancient Ones left behind for all of us.” Elena didn’t know if the latter was true, but she took it as almost certain.
“Colonel?”
The intelligence agent looked thoughtfully at the low ceiling for a few seconds before answering. “The risk to Argon reputation is by my estimation slight, the reward for success is great. If you want to hear my opinion, Senator, in that case we should give Major Kho every support in planning and execution. Have I ever been wrong?”
“Rarely,” Gunnar admitted with a grumble. “But it has certainly happened before.” Danna kept silent, but smiled. “All right,” the senator continued, and turned to Elena. “Major Kho, Agent Danna will assist you in planning your private”—he emphasized the last word—“journey. Good luck.”
While male Split did not on average grow much larger than medium-sized human males, although they appeared stocky and massive, their women generally towered over them by half or even an entire head. Female Split were tall and slender to spindly, their pale-yellowish skin stretched distinctly over long cords of tendons and on the upper arms also over muscle bulges. Split women had significant body strength that was hard to expect in such fragile-looking beings. By human standards, female Split appeared strangely aristocratic and aloof. This was partly due to their domineering appearance, which they used equally in dealing with their peers as they did with others. On the other hand, the high cheekbones and the strict, ascetic facial features contributed to this assessment. Even Ghinn t’Whht, who was standing in the middle of her apartment, fixing Elena with knitted eyebrows and a hand held up in a gesture of disapproval, was no exception. She looked like an angel of vengeance made flesh, or the bony consort of death, but the exact opposite was the case. She was pregnant, already in the eleventh mazura, and the slight curvature of her body already slightly showed under the flowing robe.
“The creature will immediately remove itself from my sight!” Ghinn hissed with an undertone of unconcealed hatred in her throaty voice. “I will return to Nif-Nakh when it pleases me, and it does not please me at this time!” A return to her hated master, the Patriarch of Chin, ruler over all Split, was out of the question for Ghinn. Was Brennan not escaping at that moment only because of her unfortunate intervention with the infinitely valuable jumpship? At the time she had wanted to provoke the the Patriarch to her death, and she had done so expertly. Chon t’Nnt, the special messenger and confidant of the Patriarch, had lost his life because of her lack of restraint, which she regretted more than anything else. No. The Patriarch’s tolerance for her indignation was undoubtedly stretched beyond any reasonable bounds. If she returned now, Chin would not allow her to live one mizura longer than it took to bring the little warrior into the world. After that, she could be sure that she would be put into the wreck of a spaceship and burned to death in the beautiful, deep-blue Nif-Nakh atmosphere. Best case scenario! In the worst case, on the other hand, she would be tortured, and not just a little, before she was questioned. Like all Split, Ghinn t’Whht was not afraid of pain and danger. But just as any other other intelligent being, she also strived to make the best out of any situation. The return to the ruling planet, proposed by this presumptuous human creature Elena Kho, was denied to her as long as Patriarch Chin still lived.
Elena, leaning her back against the wall in an deliberately easy-going pose, her hands behind her and one leg bent, knew little of Ghinn’s motives. Why the Split woman had freed her, Brennan, and the crew of the AP Aladna Hill from the dungeons of the government palace had always been a mystery to her. Originally she assumed that this had happened at Chin’s explicit command. But she began to doubt this assessment more and more.
“The creature is still here!” Ghinn said furiously. She slowly approached Elena, with the intent to carry her out of her apartment herself. Elena quickly pushed away from the wall. She had no doubt that Ghinn would actually carry out the task. But she did not want things to come to a skirmish. At that moment, her communication bracelet began to vibrate. Perfect timing, she thought. “Ghinn, if you still want to think it over, you can still reach me for the rest of the week through the secretary of the—”
“Cursed be the bloodline of the creature!” Ghinn shrieked and formed the associated gesture with three fingers of the left hand.
Elena hurried to leave the apartment. “Reason doesn’t seem to be a cosmological constant,” she murmured to herself. What humans considered a modern norm of behavior was evidently regarded by the Split as soft and weak; what was, however, was considered irrational for the descendants of Earth was the order of the day for the Split. Strange that they even possessed advanced technology and space travel! Elena shook her head and leaned against the wall in the hallway before the elevator. She answere
d the call on her still-vibrating bracelet, which projected a palm-sized holosphere in the air.
“Oh, endorphins be praised! Great, funny, brave star warrior Ele Na!” I am so pleased and happy to see and taste your funny, hairy face!”
Elena looked confused at the Boron for a fraction of a second. The small secondary feelers of the creature were moving back and forth in an invisible, sloshing current. Then she felt the scales fall from her eyes. Of course!
“Nola Hi! I expected you in two or three tazuras at the earliest!” It was to their advantage that the Boron scientific ethicist, who would accompany them on their flight to Nif-Nakh, had already arrived here. If she could not move Ghinn t’Whht to cooperate, she’d have to come up with a new strategy to get a landing clearance for Nif-Nakh. But the Boron was worried about other things at the moment.
“Funny, big, happy star warrior, you will end my life, erase my biological existence, and negate my existence!”
“I don’t understand—negate your existence?”
“A Split, loud, boorish, unintentionally strange and lovable in his own viciousness, announces and threatens to destroy my life and my beautiful, shapely ship, should it and I not remove my presence from the star system of this bright sun within the course of two stazuras! However, we will not do that in any case and under any circumstances! Not ever!”
Elena hit the elevator’s call button with her free hand. The light lit up. “I’m sorry. One more time, slowly. Why? And which Split?”
“His name is Uchan t’Scct! Split do not work together with Boron creatures. They kill them on sight, he claims and asserts believably.”
Elena groaned. No, reason was definitely not a constant one could count on in this part of the universe.: Uchan t’Scct was the pilot of the vessel hired on Ferd’s advice! Only three mizuras later, she stormed into the center of the AP Nikkonofune, strapped herself in, and requested emergency clearance to launch. As soon as sector control gave the launch signal, the engines of the small spacecraft fired and made it shoot skywards like an arrow.
Niji automatically fed the transmitted approach data into the navigation system of the AP Nikkonofune. The ship elegantly aligned its hull with a few gentle thrusts of the control thrusters, which gradually adjusted the trajectory to nominal values. Port Thornton, the great central station that circled Argon Prime once every eight and a half stazuras, crept inexorably toward the crosshair that Niji projected into the center of the cockpit window. Elena drummed her fingers impatiently. Port Thorton was the linchpin of all flight maneuvers in the star system around the sun, Sonra, because the station housed the Argon Prime space traffic control. In addition to this important institution, other installations were stationed there, of the Argon military as well as numerous civil offices, which dealt with interstellar logistics, planetary geodesy, general international relations, and the arbitration of trade disputes. Elena looked at the giant cylinder with growing anxiety. Nearly two stazuras had passed since the AP Nikkonofune had been allowed to take off from Airfield C in Argonia City. Bureaucracy followed wherever people settled!
The station grew noticeably bigger. Already with her naked eye, Elena could make out the many thousands of windows that covered the outer hull of the cylinder in long rows. From the hub, two red chains of light extended parallel to each other for several hundred meters into space; they looked like stringed lanterns. In reality, the fairy lights were merely holographic projections that marked the approach vector to the docking tunnel. Not that modern autopilots needed such visual confirmation; the landing beam guided each ship with millimeter accuracy and safety. But it was a good old tradition that all pilots in the Community appreciated—apart from the Paranids, who rock-solidly claimed to have absolute sight.
Elena blinked. Something wasn’t right. Now that the approach angle of the AP Nikkonofune was approaching the required levels, she realized that something was wrong with the gate leaves. She had Niji zoom in on the hub of the station with optical image enhancement. An icy shock shot through her. “Chikisho!” she whispered, “crap!”
While the lower gate leaf looked quite normal, the upper leaf was severely deformed and was canted at its anchors. Through the opening, Elena could see the double ring of the landing carousel slowly rotating in opposite directions. She swallowed hard. A voice in the back of her head insisted that whatever had happened here had something to do with Nola Hi and Uchan t’Scct—and with her, too! The landing lights changed to green and the navcomputer’s status display showed the beginning of the approach. The station obviously maintained flight operations despite the damage. Maybe everything wasn’t as bad as it looked! Elena felt her nervousness rise.
The situation that Elena encountered upon entering the Port Thornton command post was simply grotesque. High above, the Boron Nola Hi hung beneath the ceiling in his translucent environmental suit and looked down cheerfully. His tentacles fluttered through the milky material of the suit. One stride away from him stood a broad-shouldered Split below him, whom Elena knew from Ferd Harling’s archive photos: That had to be Uchan t’Scct. The Split spoke in sharp tones to a uniformed Argon whose badges identified as a Commander. Elena didn’t recognize the man, but suspected it was the station commander. A few meters away from the Split, and outside its reach, was a Teladi in black garb, who looked up and conversed hastily with the Boron hanging under the ceiling with a steam of clicking and popping sounds. To all appearances, the saurian had mastered the natural spoken language of the Boron!
Far off from all of this, a bony figure stretched more than two meters in height, who seemed to take only a passing interest in the fray. Elena had never before come so close to a Paranid; she was duly impressed. The creature had thin but strong arms, which was divided several times by joints, and ended in dangerous-looking gripping claws. The legs stood bony and gray against the ground, where they turned into hoof-like stalks. The slender head had a protruding mouth which slightly resembled a Boron’s proboscis. If one didn’t look very closely, the milk-white pupils were hardly distinguishable from the rest of the eye, but only in two of the three eyes, because the third looked gray and blind. The clothing consisted of a tight-fitting combat suit, which emphasized the bony structure of the creature. Kalmanckalsaltt, Elena reminded herself, was the name of the Paranid.
She thanked the petty officer who had led her to the control room. He smiled winningly and interrupted his supervisor’s discussion with Uchan t’Scct to announce Elena’s arrival.
The station manager shook Elena’s hand. “Commander Pohl Frederik,” he introduced himself in a clearly unnerved tone. “Major Kho from sector Earth, I presume?”
Elena nodded. “That’s right. Commander, can you tell me what happened here?”
Frederik furrowed his brow. “So far it’s only clear that this Boron there”—he pointed upwards—“switched his Octopus on manual control and then demolished of the exit leaves at full throttle.”
“And with it caused at least twelve and a half million credits of damage—shhhk!” the black-clad Teladi joined in angrily. He had interrupted his clacking rant and turned around. “Permit me, worthy colleague, Jorilas Ywimuweos Maniris II is my name, First Teladi Insurance Alliance—FTIA.”
Elena made a bow. Not all Teladi wore clothes, many simply walked around in their natural, green scale armor. But those who clothed themselves usually wore the commercial uniform of the Teladi company. This saurian here, with its red-glowing eyes, was however one of the very rare exceptions. He almost looked like an undertaker. She, Elena corrected herself in her head.
“Worthy colleague, I happened to be in negotiations here on Port Thornton when your crew member, the Boron Nola Hi, with his space…” Maniris stopped suddenly with blanched forehead ridges and glanced past Elena, who also turned her head to follow the stare of the the insurance lizard. The Paranid Kalmanckalsaltt, who until now had watched the scene with aloofness, took two steps closer; his long back curved like a praying mantis ready to pounce. This was the P
aranid combat position when they anticipated close combat. Kalmanckalsaltt had everyone’s undivided attention.
“These unholy discussions paralyze our geometric competence,” he said with astonishingly clear modulation. “They amount to nothing. The black Teladi may negotiate the monetary aspects of the accident with the General Consulate of the Boron Queendom. The question of guilt is settled.”
“Not for the FTIA, dear coll—”
The protruding eyes of the Paranid swiveled parallel to each other and fixed themselves on the Teladi insurance agent. Kalmanckalsaltt didn’t say a word, but spread his long bony arms like a hug of death and pushed his head forward a bit further. Paranids had a penchant for theatricality which often seemed exaggerated to other creatures. But not this gesture: “One more word and I will crush you like a bug,” it seemed to say. The Teladi’s forehead turned white and he remained silent, intimidated.
Elena wholeheartedly supported the Paranid’s approach. The Three-eyed seemed to have more sense than the Split, Boron, and Teladi put together! Whatever else was going on here, she wouldn’t learn it while everyone was at words with each other. She took charge.
“Commander Frederik, does your report require further clarification?”
The Argon nodded. “Yes and no… no. We have an insurance claim here and the Boron, as a diplomat from the Boron Queendom, has immunity anyway. As far as I’m concerned, you can leave the station.” He looked directly into Elena’s eyes and added: “And quite honestly, the sooner the better!”
Elena suppressed a response. It was understandable that the Commander wanted to rid of this troop of troublemakers as quickly as possible. She was just glad that no one had been hurt by this point! It would probably be even better if she stopped the mission to Nif-Nakh here and now, before anything worse happened. It was beyond question that Uchan t’Scct had threatened the Boron, which must’ve driven him to a panicked reaction. What if something like that happened way out in space? Or on Nif-Nakh? That Ghinn t’Whht refused her cooperation was in itself a reason to give up.
Nopileos: A novel from the X-Universe: (X4: Foundations Edition 2018) (X Series) Page 15
