by Tim C Taylor
“Morale is everything,” Aelingir growled. “This mission is extremely risky, and those who carry it out need to believe in someone. Arun McEwan, the Human Legion believes in you. I consider myself a competent officer, but I’m only a soldier. You are an icon. An inspiration. You must lead the team that will escape to orbit with the secret of how to penetrate the corrosion barrier, allowing Admiral Indiya to relieve the ground forces. My place is here, fighting the enemy until the end.”
The human laughed, a dry sound in the alcove used as a command post. Aelingir prided herself on having developed a deeper understanding of human ways than any Jotun commander, but their laughter mocked her with its capricious nature. Was Arun displaying the laughter that accompanied a serendipitous discovery, while simultaneously signaling that the desperate plight they faced had not been materially improved? Or was his the laughter that announced that most evasive of human concepts: irony?
“If I rode the ship up past orbit,” said McEwan, “I wouldn’t even need to live through the experience. Maybe all Indiya’s techs need is a scrap of New Order hull to reverse engineer a solution.”
“That is correct,” Aelingir answered. “It is also obvious.”
“It was the connection with my brother that’s so ironic.”
Ahhh, so it was irony…
She raised an eyebrow in the human way to indicate her lack of understanding. “Fraser McEwan? The Free Corps mutineer?”
“No, Zeno. As far as I can tell he was my youngest brother, still in the shipboard crèche with my mother during the attack on Akinschet.”
Zeno McEwan… Aelingir’s AI had the requisite information ready before the inquiry had formed in her mind. Jotun bio-engineers had given Zeno and others prototype hormonal effectors – implants similar to Aelingir’s own that would allow the humans to decide their own mood. It was a standard augmentation for all White Knight vassal races – an efficient way to bypass distractions such as fear and sexual desire, and relax the societal pressure bomb of forcing large numbers of individuals to cooperate over extended periods of time without the full range of stimuli and in cramped conditions in spaceships or… underground.
Her fur shook at that last thought.
After millennia of development, Aelingir’s own wrist implants were barely sufficient to keep a lid on the screaming terror of underground war – and with Earth’s surface so vulnerable to nuclear strikes, it seemed the Legion’s war would be underground from this point. But Zeno’s group had developed their equivalents far beyond anything Aelingir could do, just as Admiral Indiya and her group of experimental subjects had independently achieved.
Zeno and the other children had died near the frontier mining outpost of Akinschet, but not before plotting a course that would carry their ship to distant Earth, where their augmentations were reverse engineered by local techs.
“You are not like your brother,” Aelingir said. “The Earth humans developed an entire society on nano-level social interaction, but when the Hardits invaded it did them no good at all. Where are their implants now? Ripped away! Useless! But if you succeed in delivering the secret of defeating Tawfiq’s corrosion shell, then the Legion will triumph over the New Order. With Earth under Legion control, the stipulations of our treaty with the White Knight emperor would finally be honored. The Human Autonomous Region would be allowed to flourish, the freedom of its citizens assured. No sacrifice is too great for such an outcome.”
McEwan raised an eyebrow; he was issuing a challenge. “You’re right, my friend. I agree.”
Aelingir hissed, though quickly taking the edge off the aggressive sound. The relish with which humans embraced incongruity was the most annoying on a lengthy list of grievances she had with this nonetheless fascinating race. How could McEwan issue a challenge at the same time as agreeing with her?
The human’s face relaxed into the smile of amusement. Aelingir snapped her jaws in anger.
“Easy,” said the human. “We’ve been driven deep underground, my friend. You are Jotun. You do not perform your best without sky or vacuum over your head.”
Releasing a hormonal packet from her nano-effectors that would, hopefully, head off the rising desire to decapitate the human, she replied, “Like all Jotun soldiers, my augmentations limit the phobia, but, yes, it is true that I do not like being beneath ground. However, I do my duty. I fight underground because that is the theater of battle now.”
“Yet you have human, and Trog subordinates – even the Hardits loyal to the Legion – all of whom have lived almost their entire lives either underground or in the sealed claustrophobia of starships. I agree that the shuttle mission is so important that it can demand any sacrifice of us… even that of yielding command to a subordinate. If I am to seize this last chance with all of my limbs, my friend, I only have two left. I need you to add your six to mine. That would make a respectable average.”
Aelingir flicked her ears in amusement.
“What’s so funny?”
“Friend McEwan, my people have looked favorably upon yours for centuries because of your resemblance to our own kind. You are like limbless, hairless, poorly developed Jotun children whose insistent cries for help we cannot ignore no matter how annoying you are. I think you’ve just grown up.”
Reinvigorated Jotun eyes regarded the human, reexamining Arun McEwan with new levels of understanding. They would probably both die very soon, and that was disappointing because Aelingir thought she could glimpse a future in which human and Jotun faced the galaxy’s challenges together in an alliance of mutual respect.
“You should lead the shuttle mission,” she told General McEwan. “It is your place. However, I shall take operational control. It is highly likely that we shall both perish, but if our mission fails then our deaths will make little difference to our stranded forces.”
McEwan shrugged. “We’ve all got to go sometime, Aelingir, and I’ve seriously outstayed my welcome.”
It was only then that Aelingir saw McEwan’s spirit chill and felt the brittleness of his resolve. The human glanced up at his colorful aide, Lissa, whose presence was so unimportant that Aelingir had forgotten she was standing there.
McEwan slumped in his chair… and… Aelingir discerned that this had resulted from the sight of the Wolf woman! She rapidly reevaluated the significance of Lissa’s presence.
Aelingir had long suspected the two were indulging in a wholly improper relationship. It was a weakness, but she’d told herself that McEwan had earned a little latitude if sexual play helped him cope with the burden of command. The two people regarded each other with expressions laden with impenetrably human meaning.
Aelingir rumbled in her throat. “General McEwan. I see that life has a way of pushing itself uninvited into our existence, even if we thought we had dismissed such things long ago. I shall leave you two to say your goodbyes.”
“I’m not leaving him,” snapped the Wolf. “I’m coming with you.”
Aelingir bared fangs. “I did not doubt it,” she said angrily.
The Wolf human glared back at her, and Aelingir had to shield behind the hormonal packet she’d issued earlier to restrain herself from striking the human for such a gross lack of respect.
Perhaps Aelingir didn’t understand these humans as well as she imagined. In fact, the more she regarded the two, she realized the Wolf’s instinct to protect her mate was what had prompted Lissa’s astonishing display of insubordination. Perhaps after all these years, humans were still slaves to their instincts. But these two were bristling with tension when they should be comforting each other. What must Aelingir do now? Issue a formal request that the two comfort each other with sexual touching? Or were they shouting inwardly at her to leave them alone so they could do precisely that?
“When General Aelingir told us to say our goodbyes,” McEwan explained to his lover with a fiercely irritating grin, “she was saying she doesn’t expect us to live through this day.”
“Indeed,” said Aelingir. But half-
heartedly because her attention was on the Wolf. At first, she had assumed the woman’s expression to be a defiant glare but… there was more to it. Far more. Heat radiated from Lissa’s eyes. Not metaphorically – fiercely exothermic. Her eyelids were steaming, her eyes melting…. But…!
McEwan followed Aelingir’s gaze to the Wolf. “Oh, drent,” he snarled and reached into his chair to bring forth a device from which he sprayed water to cool his aide’s eyes.
Why does McEwan have such a device to hand?
The heat was not melting Lissa’s corneas as Aelingir had first imagined. It was more unsettling than that. The darker black and brown pigmentation of the woman’s irises were being pushed aside from within by an intense lilac coloration. Unlike the limited human visual perception, Aelingir could see this woman’s eyes blazing away deep into ultraviolet.
This Lissa… Aelingir noticed for the first time that she was large for a Wolf female. And oversized Wolves had been appearing with increasing frequency in recent years.
“You’re both wrong,” said the woman with the blazing lilac eyes.
McEwan reached up and squeezed his lover’s hand.
“We will not die this day,” she said.
If this Wolf was really whom Aelingir suspected, then the words she spoke in this state gave vital intelligence about possible futures. “Do you mean,” Aelingir asked, her heart pumping hope into her arteries, “that the ship will successfully breach the barrier?”
“No,” said the woman calling herself Lissa. “We will all board the ship, we will all survive, and the ship will be completely destroyed.”
“I don’t understand,” said Aelingir. “You humans don’t just tolerate contradiction, you relish it. But I am Jotun. Incongruity and error are the same things to me. There are no escape pods. I cannot see how all three outcomes are possible.”
“That’s the thing about visions,” said McEwan, and the pride in his companion was evident in his grin. There was more in his face too. He was excited by the thrill of danger, the prospect of leaping into the unknown. “Visions give you hints, but don’t fully make sense until after the event. I don’t understand either, but I don’t need to. I’m human. I’ll figure it out as I go along.”
Aelingir snapped her jaws with such wild abandon that the two humans clutched each other in dismay.
“I felt it…” she tried to explain, but the words did not come easily. How could they? The concepts they needed to encompass were unique. “Just for a moment, I felt that most human of emotions: the thrill of ignorance.”
Arun raised his thumb in the air, which she knew to be a human gesture of validation. The feeling of trans-species connection to this human warmed her, precious beyond belief.
“And now our secret is out,” said McEwan.
“Your companion? I will not speak of this nor speculate as to her identity.”
“Nothing contact lenses won’t fix,” said the woman who called herself Lissa. “I’ve heard scores of Jotuns explain why they took pity on humanity because we look like helpless Jotun children.” She leaned in toward Aelingir and whispered. “The big secret is that it’s been working in both directions all along.”
“That we Jotuns are like strong human adults?”
“Yeah,” said Lissa. “You’re like overgrown humans with steel bars stuck up your asses. General, I do believe I just spied some rebar poking out. I think it’s working loose.”
“Then,” said Aelingir after an awkward pause, “I believe there is hope for my people yet!”
Aelingir laughed so hard, she hugged her mid-limbs around her chest to stop her ribs hurting.
Jotun Marines rushed into the corner of the bunker, carbines ready.
“We must finish this campaign quickly before the infection spreads from my heart to my brain,” she told her soldiers. “Even if we live through this, I fear that none of us will survive intact.”
“You are sick, General?” asked the detachment’s leader. “Should I summon a medical team?”
“It’s too late for me now, Ensign. This disease has no cure. I am infected by humanity. You are too, all of us. You just don’t know it yet.”
— Chapter 61 —
“Wait up a moment,” said Priya. “Just… just a moment.”
Blake, still dressed in his police uniform, half turned his head toward her. “You’re a liability, Priya.”
Resentment seethed in her breast. “And you enjoyed your cover just a little too easily,” she spat back.
“You got sixty seconds to get it together,” the task force leader told them both. She was a tough nut with an ability to snap hard human necks without so much as a grunt of effort. She called herself Desiree.
“And for your information,” Priya told Blake, “I’m necessary for this mission. Without me, we wouldn’t be here. We would never have gotten this far.”
Here… Another spike of near-panic passed through her when her words reminded her where here was.
A mix of guile, hacking, dead bodies, and ironclad chutzpah had brought them deep within the Capitol Spaceport, which was essentially a private shuttle port for Tawfiq and other New Order VIPs not far from Victory Mall.
And through that last series of blast doors just ahead was Tawfiq’s personal shuttle.
Desiree had said during the planning stage that if you’re going to risk all, you may as well think big. Stealing Tawfiq’s shuttle was pretty freaking big.
Priya gave a grin she didn’t feel inside. “Let’s do it.”
She and Desiree shouldered the heavy wheeled contraption they’d brought all this way and set it back in motion along the corridor, preceded by Blake.
“I didn’t mean what I said,” Blake told her.
“I know. You’re just a dick,” Priya replied. “But it worked. Funk over, I’m ready. Our luck’s held so far. No reason it won’t stay good.”
“This is the day humanity turns things around,” Blake said. “Hardits don’t know it yet. But they will.”
——
The final door slid away, and they were through into the launch silo where a shuttle stood upright, ready to blast its VIPs into orbit. In front of them, a gantry walkway extended out into the silo where it connected with the shuttle’s open cargo bay hatch. For now, Priya was less concerned with the walkway’s destination, and more with the fact that it was fifty feet in the air above the silo’s blast-resistant base, and in common with Hardit architectural conventions, it didn’t bother with anything as human as a hand rail.
She shook her head, angry with herself. They were trying to steal Tawfiq’s shuttle, which was the most freaking dangerous thing possible on the planet, and the thing that was making sweat drip down her back was her fear of heights.
She looked up. Another extendable walkway thirty feet above extended from the silo wall into the upper reaches of the shuttle to provide VIP passenger access. Tawfiq must have walked along that gleaming walkway. Many times.
Seeing she wasn’t at the top of the silo eased her vertigo. A little.
Priya lowered her gaze submissively and kept pushing. She didn’t know the full extent of the mission team, but it was already obvious from the diversions and sniper fire that had gotten them this far that the three of them with the wheeled cart were not alone. She resisted the temptation to search the upper reaches of the silo for signs that human snipers had taken up overwatch positions.
Only another fifteen feet separated her from the open hatch into the waiting shuttle, but there were no Hardits to be seen. Where was security?
“Don’t speed up,” ordered Desiree. “Keep it cool.”
Easy for you to say, thought Priya, as the Hardits finally reacted to the intrusion. An upper segment of the silo wall detached, revealing a hovering platform bearing two Janissaries with HAP-7 ‘Flesh Rippers’ pointed their way.
The humans halted, a mere ten feet from the portal into the shuttle. The hovering platform bearing the guards flew in a lazy curve down toward their position, com
ing to a halt alongside the gantry walkway. Bolts clanged as they locked the platform into place.
Typical Hardits. They took one sniff of Blake in his human police uniform and decided he was the one in authority, and that she and Desiree could be safely ignored as slave beings of no consequence.
Not wishing to be executed for failing to acknowledge her inferior status, Priya kept her head bowed, but with a series of precisely defined blinks, she changed her vision in one eye to see the feed from a camera mounted in the wheeled box. Through the feed she saw the two Hardits shining a retinal scanner into Blake’s eyes, and silently thanked the resistance leader who had assembled the team for bringing along a genuine police officer who would match the New Order’s meticulous records.
The Hardit with a flash of white fur along the side of its reddish-brown muzzle gave a series of growls that the translator hanging around its neck repeated in English. “Explain the presence of humans here.”
“Please forgive the imposition of our scent,” Blake replied, “but the blessed supreme commander requested this box be placed in the shuttle and stated that its contents made even the container’s outer surface too disgusting to be touched by Hardit hands.”
The two Janissaries possessed all-over fur, a snout full of fangs, three yellow eyes and a tail. Aliens they might be, but the way they looked at each other was a startlingly human reaction. Blake’s story sounded like baloney and so it was, and yet… Tawfiq was notoriously whimsical – and who would dare to go against her orders?
Without saying a word, the Hardits answered that unspoken question: not them!
The guards regarded the box with a new intensity. Being Hardits, the most intense scrutiny was from their sensitive noses.
“Caustic cleaning chemicals, and scented bleach,” said the Hardit. “This item stinks. Why?”
“To remove the stench of humanity,” Blake replied
The Hardits appeared unconvinced by Blake’s lie. The truth was that as the Resistance team had made its way through the spaceport, they’d had to repeatedly cleanse the box of the Hardit blood they’d spilled getting here.