Seize What's Held Dear

by Karl K Gallagher

  They made no sound.

  “I am very proud of your service. You have done great deeds for me and the Censor.”

  The governor swallowed. Now for the hard part. “You have done so much that it would be unjust of me to ask more of you.”

  That produced a reaction. Nothing so unprofessional as sighs or flinches. Just scores of heads nodding as the trap they expected sprang.

  “The Censorial Navy traditionally deals with threats only once. This time, through no fault of yours, the threat remains. The barbarians have a strong force. They know the way to Corwynt. They could send a raid any time.”

  Yeager scanned the faces of his listeners. No surprise showed.

  “I ask that you remain here to help defend Corwynt. Not for me. You’ve given me far more than I deserve. Please. For the loyal servants of the Censor. For the hard-working subjects of the Censor. For the whole Censorate, lest it be wounded by the loss of a world.”

  He turned to face Commodore Meckler.

  Meckler recognized his cue. He stood and faced his colleagues. “We would form a command arrangement acceptable to everyone,” he said before sitting down.

  It had come out more smoothly than the snarl with which Meckler originally greeted the thought of sharing authority over ships in his province.

  Yeager stayed quiet. Pinoy had advised, “Let their consciences work on them.” That was hard for a civilian politician. His habit was to keep the persuasion going, rephrasing and repeating his arguments until the target gave in. He was afraid the silence would break him before his audience.

  An eternity of stillness, almost two minutes, passed before a captain rose to his feet.

  “Your excellency, I’m sorry,” he said. “You are correct that Corwynt needs to be defended. But my governor’s orders are explicit that I must return at once.”

  Yeager kept his voice gentle. “Would you be willing to delay your departure for a few weeks until some of the damaged ships are repaired?”

  The captain spread his hands apologetically. “I would, but our navigators aren’t confident enough to follow the route to here in reverse. Unless we follow Admiral Pinoy back we could be lost in hyperspace.”

  For a frantic moment Yeager considered ordering all the navigators in the fleet to draw charts for the portions of hyperspace they knew and exchange them. Only the flagship had enough navigators to piece together the course from here to the Monitor’s capital.

  Then he shook his head. For an ordinary subject to document hyperspace routes was a capital offense. For a governor to do it was proof he was planning rebellion.

  “Of course, I understand,” said Yeager.

  Several other officers made similar statements. Then a lieutenant commander with burns on his face and an arm in a sling stood. “Impetuous will stay at Corwynt, your excellency,” he said. The right side of his mouth smiled. “I don’t think she’ll ever go back to hyperspace again.”

  “Thank you,” said Yeager.

  That was the pattern. All the ships that could leave would. The ones staying were the ones that had barely managed to make it back from the failed expedition.

  Five ships had been evacuated and scuttled during the retreat lest the barbarians capture them.

  When the officers had been thanked again and dismissed, Admiral Pinoy came to say goodbye to the governor.

  “Thank you for leaving the two carriers,” said Yeager as they shook hands.

  “Don’t thank me for that. They’re wrecks. I told Meckler not to bother repairing them until he had everything else back on line. Wish I could have left you a couple of battleships, but His Sagacity left me no wiggle room.”

  Pinoy leaned in, lowering his voice. “I’m going to make best speed back. If those clowns can’t keep up, they can float in hyperspace until a merchant comes along to show the way. I will make it clear to His Sagacity you need a real fleet. Maybe one big enough to lead himself.”

  “Good. Just don’t get your head cut off.”

  The admiral gave him a grin almost as twisted as that of Impetuous’ CO. “I’ll make that trade if I have to.”

  ***

  “I’m sorry the children couldn’t join us for dinner, but it is nice to have a purely adult conversation,” said Helena.

  Lane Landry nodded agreement with her sister-in-law. Her husband’s brother Boris was only a few years younger than Niko, and Helena was almost the same age. This was much more relaxing than having a bunch of teens and twenty-somethings talking over the table.

  Boris’ cooking skills produced better results when he wasn’t trying to pile food in front of growing youngsters, too.

  “This steak is amazing,” Niko said to his brother. “How’d you find them?”

  Boris shrugged. “Black market.”

  “Oh.” Niko’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth.

  “It’s safe,” Boris protested. “The government was condemning farms well outside the fallout pattern. It’s perfectly good. I brought my own Geiger counter.”

  The last point reassured the older brother enough to resume eating.

  Searching for a safer topic, Boris asked, “By the way, how do you know Alys Vissen?”

  Lane’s mouth was empty. “She was on our crew for the first trip to Corwynt. Why?”

  “I’ve been watching her videos. The net said you were mutual contacts. Here, let me show you her latest.”

  Helena said, “How about after dinner?” but Boris already had his hands on the remote.

  No one ate while Alys gave her speech in the radioactive ruins. Parts of the video used her words over images of detonating bombs and warships under construction. The screen froze with the words ‘VOTE REVENGE’ stark against a black background.

  “I’m glad Marcus wasn’t here for this,” muttered Lane. Her blood pressure was up from just imagining how he’d react. She took a forkful of salad to discourage herself from saying more.

  “Nice to see Alys is working,” said Niko. “Though I have to worry about her health.”

  Boris turned off the screen. “I think she’s a volunteer, actually. They’ve got a point, you know. We have to hurt the bastards who did that or they’re just going to try again.”

  “We hurt their Navy the last time,” said Niko. “We’re more prepared for the next time. When we get back from vacation, we’ll be running another load of mines out to the Tunnel.”

  Helena burst out, “I wish it hadn’t ever opened! We were safe here. Life was good. Now there’s millions dead and we could be attacked again any time. I wish we could run away and hide like our ancestors did.”

  She burst into tears.

  Niko was across the table, too far to offer physical comfort. Lane patted her shoulder, making comforting noises.

  Boris took Helena’s hand. He looked at Niko. “Could we? Run away?”

  “A few could. We’d have to find a world. Terraform it, that’s a lot of gear. Evacuate some people there. Hope the Censorate doesn’t find it.” Niko took a sip of his wine. “All that effort would weaken Fiera’s defenses when the next attack did come.”

  Even that was giving her hope. “We might get away? Some of us?”

  Niko kept his tone level. “Some might. Not us. It’d be billionaires and their cronies and hangers-on. The ones who pay for it.”

  Lane gave him a raised eyebrow. He was dangerously close to admitting he’d been offered a chance to be a crony of a billionaire cabal. Helena would not forgive him if she found out he’d refused a chance to take her and her children to safety.

  Not that a world just starting to be terraformed was safe to live on. But there wouldn’t be Censorial warfleets.

  “I see,” said Helena. She dabbed at her eyes with a napkin.

  “Better we make the enemy pay, right?” said Boris. “We can burn their cities down to the rocks.”

  Lane was used to tolerating stupid remarks from her in-laws. Boris had an easy life that left him ignorant of many harsh realities. Niko once said, “Every time h
e says something dumb, I know the work I put into sheltering him paid off.”

  But this . . . “I’ve been to those cities,” snapped Lane. “Most of the people in them hate the Censorate more than you do.”

  “Those people built the enemy fleet. And armed it.” Boris seemed surprised at being contradicted at all.

  “Yes. With guns to their heads. That’s not a metaphor. Censorials can execute a native with no due process at all.” She hadn’t been on Corwynt long enough to see that happen, but between whispered tales and the cringing way people acted around any Censorial, she believed it.

  Boris insisted, “We have to fight back against the enemy.”

  “Fight the real enemy. Not our fellow victims. Take the boot off their neck. Let them fight on our side. They will. Hard.”

  Lane glanced at her husband, wondering if he was about to come to his brother’s defense. He seemed to be enjoying the debate.

  “So, do what? Land troops on an enemy planet?”

  “Why not? We have all these soldiers. Instead of Concord peacekeeping operations, let’s send them to a real war. Hurt the enemy. Liberate friends.”

  When Boris didn’t reply, she added, “And I’d like to get to know my daughter-in-law.”

  This pulled Helena back into the conversation. “Marcus really did marry one of the enemy?”

  “More or less,” said Lane.

  Niko growled, “Wynny’s not a Censorial. She’s a Corwynti. Hates the Censor.”

  “They eloped by local custom,” said Lane. “Her parents want to have a real wedding. We were planning it when the negotiations broke down.”

  “We’ll have it,” said Niko in a more cheerful tone. “The next time the two of them are on the same planet and we have a week of peace.”

  ***

  Welly Smat was feeling honest to goodness stage fright. When the university asked her to teach a dialect class, she’d visualized a regular classroom with maybe twenty students. This was a thousand seat auditorium.

  At the rate students were streaming in it would be full by the time she was supposed to start lecturing. Less than half of them were undergrads. When they’d said they were selling tickets for the class, she hadn’t realized they were being offered to the public.

  The Dean bustled up with a smug expression on her face. “We’re completely sold out. There are people outside trying to buy tickets from the ones in line. More hoping to sneak in. There might be enough demand for a second series.”

  Welly stepped toward her. “I’ve never talked to so many people.”

  “Just look at the middle of the first two rows. Ignore the rest. You’ll be fine.”

  People filled the back corner seats. The Dean began her introduction. “Our speaker tonight is distinguished alumnae Welly Smat. She was one of the fearless crew of the exploration ship Azure Tarn, who made first contact with humanity outside the Fieran Bubble. Welly used the skills she’d learned majoring in Linguistics to decode the dialect spoken by our long-lost kin.”

  She continued in elaborate terms, making Welly sound like a professional adventurer instead of a working stiff.

  Welly kept her face straight. ‘Fearless’ almost made her snort. She’d been terrified most of the time.

  When the Dean finished, she tapped the mike clipped to her collar. It went dark.

  Welly’s mike lit up. Now the auditorium’s sound system would amplify her voice. “Hi, I’m Welly Smat. Welcome to the Corwynti Dialect. Corwyntis actually speak English, but in the nearly thousand years we’ve been separated they’ve developed an accent so strong it sounds like a different language. I’ll teach you how to recognize the accent, and how to speak it yourself.”

  When she’d taught in person classes before, people looked enthusiastic at this point. This crowd looked . . . puzzled.

  “Have any of you taken my online class?” she asked.

  A forest of hands went up. Looking side to side, it seemed to be everybody.

  Welly froze. That was all she was prepared to teach.

  “Do some Q and A!” hissed the Dean.

  “So, what questions do people have?” she said desperately.

  A front row undergrad blurted out, “Why is their accent so different?”

  The linguistics classes she’d taken on this campus came to Welly’s rescue. “Drift is normal for languages. Our accent stays locked because we have recordings of English speakers going back to Earth. We consider that the right way to talk, so our speech resets to that reference accent, or rather one of several accents depending on culture.”

  A woman in the third row raised her hand. Welly had noticed her while waiting for the class to start. She was lovely, of indeterminate age, and in a silk suit far too elegant for a college campus. “How do the Corwyntis really feel about the Censorate?”

  “They’re terrified. Watch a Censy walk through a crowd. Everyone just slides out of their way. Not just the Security thugs, even clerks.”

  Welly paused as an example sprang to mind. “On the narrow sidewalks they stand against the edges to let the Censy go by. A Corwynti friend pulled me out of the way to make room for one. I wound up leaning against the railing, looking down a two-hundred-foot drop.”

  She rubbed her forearm. Dilwyn Goch had apologized for grabbing her so hard . . . once the Censy was out of earshot.

  “Next question. You in the black jacket.”

  The man stood. “How can you be friends with the enemies of our people? They killed millions!”

  Welly flushed. “Corwyntis aren’t our enemies! They’re what we would be if the Censorate had won!”

  Black Jacket yelled, “Traitor bitch!”

  He continued with obscenities and accusations.

  Welly, unable to handle the abuse, just said, “Get out! Get out!”

  The man kept raving.

  The woman in the elegant suit turned to a burly undergrad in the row behind her. “You heard the teacher. Get him out of here!”

  Her wave lifted him out of his seat. He took a few steps toward the raver before hesitating. By then she’d rounded up some more young men. The group advanced toward Black Jacket. Other men in the audience stood up to join the confrontation.

  Black Jacket pulled a knife from his pocket. It unfolded with a click. “Don’t touch me! Don’t you dare touch me!”

  Welly’s attention was pulled away from the impending fight by a commotion in the back of the auditorium.

  A couple of people were trying to hold the doors closed, shouting, “You can’t enter without a ticket!”

  The doors burst open, knocking the ticket-takers to the floor. Black-shirted people streamed in. The one in front’s shirt bore the words ‘DO IT’ flanking a mushroom cloud.

  The Revenge Party was here.

  The invaders began a chant: “Death to traitors! Death to traitors! Death to traitors!”

  Ticket holders shouted abuse back. Fistfights broke out.

  Up front, a brave undergrad flung himself on Black Jacket’s back, knocking him over. More men piled on. One yelped and staggered away, blood dripping down his face.

  “Ms. Smat, we need to get you out of here.” It was the woman in the elegant silk suit. She didn’t wait for a reply, just took hold of Welly’s arm and towed her to the front corner.

  “Wait! That’s the emergency door.” A classmate of Welly’s had been expelled for taking a short cut through one.

  “This is an emergency,” the woman said in the tone of one who makes rules, not obeys them.

  Welly concentrated on keeping her feet as she was thrust outside. The wail of the alarm was barely noticeable over the shouts, screams, and chants.

  The night was relieved by campus safety lights. Welly followed the woman across the street.

  A man’s voice called, “Kidnapping our teacher, Jinni?”

  Welly looked back. He was tall, slim, and dressed in the kind of suit a banker would wear. Expensive with no interest in the whims of fashion.

  The woman let
go of Welly’s arm. “I’m trying to keep her safe from that lynch mob, Peddie. You’re welcome to join us.”

  “Are you friends?” asked Welly.

  “Enemies,” said the man.

  “Please, professional colleagues.”

  “Professional rivals,” he said grudgingly.

  The woman said, “Let me introduce us. I’m Jinni Chu, policy analyst for the Justice Party. Pedro Rodriguez is my counterpart at the Allegiance Party.”

  Welly shook each one’s hand, reeling from going from her life being in danger to social pleasantries. These people represented the two dominant political parties of the Sulu Republic. She’d cast some votes for each.

  “I’m glad to meet you,” said Pedro, “though I’m sorry for the circumstances.”

  That was enough for Welly to place his accent. He was from the Tagalog-speaking community down south. They were the base of the Allegiance Party.

  Jinni said, “We’re only two blocks from the student coffeehouse. Shall we talk there?”

  The analysts tried to put some questions in on the walk, but the sirens of police cars whizzing by blocked them.

  Only the band posters had changed since her student days. Welly ordered her favorite drink—hot chocolate with a shot of espresso—and joined Jinni at the small round table she’d picked. When the mug was half empty, Welly asked, “Why would the Revenge Party attack me?”

  Jinni sighed.

  “You discuss the Corwyntis as individual people, not as a faceless mass of enemy,” said Pedro. “That’s the greatest rebuttal to the Revenge Party platform.”

  “You don’t need me for that. Doesn’t anyone listen to the Landrys?”

  “I’ve heard many speeches from Landry Elder and Younger,” he said, “as well as a few words from the elusive Mrs. Landry—”

  “First Mate Landry,” Welly corrected.

  “As you say. Their assertions are deflected by pointing out the younger is thinking with his tool, and his parents are backing him up. You are a more impartial observer.”