Chipper added, “Yeah, I told you I’m not shooting anything today.”
They flew on.
Fifteen minutes later, the helmpanels bleeped with simultaneous alerts.
“Air pollution increasing ahead,” said Chipper.
“And we got airborne contacts behind,” said the pilot. “Not coming for us, though. Two bogeys on heading for Spire City. Slavers musta called in air support from somewhere.”
“Let me know if those contacts turn our way,” Chinyama ordered.
Berderhan checked the XO wasn’t looking before making a duh face at Chipper. In a pleasant voice, she said, “Might be troop carriers. Reinforcements.”
“I have the air pollution reading on my tab,” Chinyama replied, confirming something Chipper could already see. “Centered near the coordinates we’re heading for.”
If the Xenthracr have industry there, Chipper thought, any stranded Tluaanto shuttle crew are long dead.
The Lioness gained altitude again. Another lone mountain loomed above the forest a hundred or more klicks ahead.
“That hill there is low and wide and flat on top,” said Berderhan. “Caldera?”
Chipper zoomed in. “Yep. Can see the opening. Hollow inside.” The air behind the low mountain was stained brown.
“Active volcano?” Berderhan asked.
He ran a seismic scan. “Nope. This whole region’s stable. Except for whatever that is past it.” He focused the camera on the dirty cloud beyond the caldera but it appeared as nothing more than a smudge. “Industrial activity, looks like.”
The terrain elevation continued rising as they neared the dead volcano. The forest thinned out at its base, leaving low-growing bushes to claim its outer slopes. Berderhan whipped the Lioness down into the caldera faster than Chipper would have—faster than he could have—braking into a hover a hundred meters above the bottom. The crater floor was a kilometer wide, most of it taken up by a muddy lake. The rim rose to between seven and eight hundred meters high.
“Scope that out,” Chipper said. North and fifty meters below the crest of the rim, a structure jutted from the hillside, a brick façade framing an entrance portal. It hinted at tunnels or compartments within. The bricks had retained their dark tones but were weathered. Grass runners climbed their sides and drooped from the top. The Lioness’s arrival had startled a half dozen bird-analogs from the lake surface, but no other life was apparent here. That structure, however, suggested that the site had once been a center of activity—and perhaps still was.
Chipper squinted into the patches of dry weeds on the slope above the façade. The sun was lighting up something there. The object’s red-brown hue contrasted sharply with the washed-out tans, greens and grays around it. Chipper snapped off a couple of close-up images and enhanced one, frowning at it. The object in the weeds was a collapsed set of metal struts, long left to rust. A square plate suggested a footplate for one of the struts. The arrangement made him think of a toppled transmission tower.
“Also scope that out,” said Berderhan, bringing the hovering T15 around to face a black smear across the crater wall. The burn scar was speckled with wreckage, some of it reflecting sunlight, all of it fresher than the pile of metal Chipper been studying.
“Our Tluaan shuttle,” said Chinyama.
Chipper felt pressure against his shoulder. Vazak had come forward to lean in and gawp at the debris. She said, “My domain ship, yes. No one live from that.”
“Definitely no one live from that,” Berderhan confirmed. She offered the warrior a sympathetic grimace. “Sorry about your loss.”
Vazak flared her nostrils and flicked her ears before returning to her own chair. Chipper guessed her body language had been a kind of Tluaan shrug. Either she felt no personal loss for the people who’d died down there, or she didn’t understand Berderhan’s words or sentiment.
“Next stop, the source of that air pollution,” Berderhan announced and lifted the ship out of the great bowl.
Several klicks past the volcano, someone had been chewing up the earth. Open cut mines lay like open wounds exposed to the sky; humpbacked vehicles crawled within the wounds like maggots. Knobby mounds packed a gully to the east. Chipper couldn’t tell if these were buildings or more vehicles, but they gave off dense fumes suggesting smelting and fabrication. The rest of the local air pollution was excavation dust churned up by the crawlers.
After five minutes of observation, Berderhan’s boards chimed again. “And here they come. Those two bogeys have turned our way now, and they’re moving fast.”
“Fast like fighter-interceptors,” confirmed Chipper, checking his scans. “ETA seven minutes.”
“Someone’s tipped ’em off, called ’em in.”
“The same as last time,” said Chinyama thoughtfully. “It might mean they don’t have sensors as good as ours. They’re relying on ground assets to peg us and direct them.”
“What’s the decision, XO? Stand and fight, or run like hell?”
“Head west for the coast then southeast over the ocean. See if they follow.”
“If they do?”
“If you can lose them, do so. If you need to engage, you have autonomy.”
“After that?”
“We go look at the dirt moon. Then their orbital.”
And then home, Chipper thought. He wriggled in his chair, flexing his back, rubbing some blood flow into his legs. I could do with a massage and very hot shower.
The second moon was larger than the first, its surface pocked by eons of meteorite impacts. They took some readings and a few still images, but it was devoid of activity and they quickly swung around toward the orbital.
Like cheap or old-fashioned human stations, this facility had been put into spin around its central axis to effect some semblance of gravity within it. Its surface was bumpy, prickling in places with short spines. On approach, Berderhan commented that it looked like a hive, as if it were made out of mud and sticks.
“Same as their spire town,” said Chipper. “And their mining plant.”
“Maybe both were Qesh-built, but the Xenthracr now occupy them,” Berderhan mused.
“I think not,” said Chinyama. “What we’ve seen in the city, in the forest, in the artifact and in that hillside entrance suggests the Qesh build from brick. This kind of construction indicates the work of insectoid minds. I think they’re sealing their creations with a rendering, perhaps a resin of some sort. Makes sense as it could double as armor shielding and insulation.”
No one responded to that. It was certainly different in design to the small satellites in low orbit around the other side of the planet.
When they had pulled up twenty klicks out from the side of the orbital, they observed the dewdrop shape of a vehicle approaching the sunward end.
“Cargo hauler?” Chipper suggested.
Chinyama said, “Could be. One thing we’ve learned on this trip. There’s definitely a lot of Xenthracr here at Kh’het3.”
Alarms shrilled suddenly.
“Yup,” said Berderhan and pointed through the canopy. “There definitely is.”
Ranks of arrowhead-shaped craft swarmed from the non-sunward end of the space station. They swung toward the Lioness, maintaining an even formation like a school of Oceanean baal-fish, closing distance fast. As they closed distance, something flashed from the station and a stream of what looked like tracers slashed across the void toward the Lioness.
“Rail gun!” Chipper yelped.
“Hold onto your panties, ladies!” Berderhan cried and wheeled the T15 around. She punched in the drives.
Hard-G slammed Chipper into his seat back and held him there.
Her voice thick with exertion, Berderhan told the Lioness computer, “Pilot command: target closest incoming contacts. Five missiles only. Away!”
Despite the pressure against his chest and the blood rush in his ears, Chipper thought he felt the vibration of the top-mounted turret pivoting and recoiling as it loosed its arsenal. A mo
ment later, the acceleration eased, releasing the giant fist from around his ribcage, allowing him to suck in a full breath. Berderhan got her arms off her chair to play with the joystick and helmscreens again. Chipper reached out and cycled through cam-feeds until he found the one pointed aft. The station bobbed and weaved in and out of view as the Lioness evaded deadly barrages of laser fire from the fighters. He couldn’t see the small craft against the starfield now but puffs of white and orange marked the deaths of a half-dozen Xenthracr pilots.
“Twenty of the bastards still after us,” Berderhan said. “Ten missiles left. I’m gonna have to burn hard to keep our speed ahead of theirs. At least three more times. This is gonna get bad before it gets better, folks. You okay back there?”
“Do what you have to,” Chinyama told her, voice strained.
“Vazak?”
“…Fun,” she managed, but sounded as winded as the XO.
From his own experience with simulators, Chipper knew the initial evasive maneuvers had been preprogrammed, with Berderhan having tapped in their go-code as she’d whipped the craft around. While the computer had now downshifted from very high-G to—he checked a display—3G, it was still hurting. And from the look on the pilot’s face, she was ready to punch in the next burn.
“Now wishing we hadn’t come,” he told her.
She managed to turn her head and offer what might have been a sympathetic look. It was more like a grimace of pain. “Wishing I’d brought my Devilfly. Better dampeners.” Her hand hovered above a command on a side screen. “You ready?”
“Nope. Do it anyway.”
She did.
And it hurt.
April 17th, 3014, Old Earth Calendar
15
Exactly how many times had he taken a seat at Assured’s Ready Room table in the last few weeks? Chris Gregory had lost count. He watched the other invited taking their places. Pan, Chinyama, Fowler, Nkembe, and Grace. Buoun and the three Tluaan councillors. Although it was 0800 shiptime, no breakfast would be served at this meeting. Not under such serious circumstances. Once upon a time, Gregory’s greatest complaint was that he spent his whole life in meetings. But it was no longer the meetings that were torturous; it was the reasons for them.
Is this a meeting? Or a council of war?
On the wallscreen behind him was Chipper’s captured image from the Lioness trip: a gun-toting Xenthracr overseeing a stream of Qesh slave-workers. A slave overseer? A security guard? A photograph could represent a thousand things, depending on context and backstory.
Keep it simple, Chris, he told himself. Occam’s Razor. That’s two very different species in that photo. With no apparent reason for symbiosis. That Xenthracr’s not a guard. And what would it be guarding Qesh from, anyway?
Pan cleared his throat and turned to Nkembe. “Before we discuss other matters, I believe you have research data to share?”
“Thank you, Captain.” She folded her hands in front of her, speaking in a slow-paced, methodical manner that allowed Buoun to keep up comfortably. “I’m quite excited by these results. As some of you know, DCHC naval staff are encouraged to pursue studies in other fields. This enhances critical thinking skills and broadens a crew’s knowledge base. One of my nurses, Ensign Moore, has been studying bioluminescence in Oceanean medusa fish. This was all in the file I sent to you,” she told Buoun.
“I have learned the relevant words,” he replied after translating.
“Excellent. In Ensign Moore’s studies, she learned that a medusa fish’s photocytes—cells that produce light—have cilia all around the cell membranes. Cilia are hair-like structures which cells use, amongst other things, for helping them move about and react to their environment. It didn’t make sense to Moore that a photocyte cell embedded in deep tissue would be ciliated. In a paper she has been writing, she asks why medusa fish photocytes are designed this way. Are you all with me so far?”
The humans nodded—with Fowler stifling a yawn. The Tluaanto councillors all said, “Sahss.”
“It will get more technical, but I promise you there is a reason for everything I’m telling you. It all relates back to the Xenthracr pilot. Ensign Moore discovered that the medusa fish photocytes’ cilia can stretch and bend. When they do so, they sometimes form an electromagnetic dipole capable of producing or receiving electromagnetic signals. Essentially, the cells inside medusas are covered in tiny radio antennae.” She smiled as Tluaan ears literally pricked up at that piece of news, and humans leaned forward with interest. Fowler wasn’t yawning now. “You can see where this is going. Skin samples from the Xenthracr pilot show extremely similar arrangements of cilia in one subset of cells. Cells whose purpose are not otherwise clear.”
“No comms and no sensors in their fighters,” Pan said in wonder. “They don’t need them. Something transmits data directly into their brain.”
“Not specifically their brains,” said Nkembe. “But you have the gist of it, yes.”
“Amazing,” Gregory gasped. “This is why it took their fighters some time to locate the Lioness in their atmosphere. Someone had to call it in. The two fighters we woke up out in dead space—someone on the planet picked us up on instruments and directed them to get us.”
“Or they have an observation station out there in the dark somewhere,” Fowler added.
“It also explains the captive’s dormancy,” said Pan. “No one’s telling it what to do anymore. It’s too far away from orders. It’s cut off from its hive.”
Councillor Vren was speaking, and her point was the same as Pan’s when translated. “The prisoner does not move or react because there is no higher mind present to instruct it.”
Goosebumps raised the fine hairs on the back of Gregory’s neck. “This is incredible. Instead of passing on orders and data via electrical, sonic, and chemical markers, they use biological radio signals.”
“It is certainly fascinating,” said Naat, “but it also underlines a danger we face. If there is a controlling mind or minds somewhere on Kh’het3—and that is entirely within keeping with many, many arthropoid species—we cannot negotiate with them as individuals. Someone or something has marked the Qesh as slaves and marked us as enemies who must be destroyed.”
“Well, we don’t know that,” Gregory started, but Pan interrupted him.
“I think it’s a fair assumption to work from.”
“The Lioness was chased by fighters based in that orbital,” Chinyama said. “That’s one potential location for whoever or whatever controls them.”
“If we move Assured in closer to launch any kind of liberation mission for the Qesh, Xenthracr forces will be better coordinated against us,” said Pan.
“If we move closer in?” said Naat. “Captain, Ambassador, I want to propose something else entirely. You and your crew have endangered yourselves enough on our behalf. Now that we know the potential strength of the Xenthracr presence here—and it does not seem relatively strong—we believe we can, as you say, ‘handle’ this situation ourselves. Particularly if Domain Ocean join their efforts to ours.”
Gregory straightened in his chair. Okay. This is a big change from “Can you protect our people from the big bad Xenthracr?”. What the hell is he playing at? He said, “Go on, Councillor.”
“Please help us in one final way. You can leave our Warrior Vazak here with Scientist Chlalloun. You can return Pi and me to Chaatu system to pick up two small battlecraft like your … Lioness. And pilots, warriors, scientists, and maintenance workers. Councillor Vren’s domain is welcome to join us in this. Captain, Ambassador, my proposal is that you kindly bring our forces here to Kh’het before commencing your long journey home to your own territory.”
Pan kept his face blank as he stage-whispered, “Good God, we’re just taxi drivers to them.”
Buoun did not translate this, so Naat continued. “The Xenthracr are in our region and they are our enemy. We now believe that we can remove them from Kh’het, as is our responsibility. We will reward your friendship,
of course. Please return to the ‘Parliament’ with our offer of medical technology to combat your great enemy, bacteria and viruses.”
“Taxi drivers who get tipped well,” Fowler quipped to Pan.
Gregory leaned forward. “Grand Councillor, we are most definitely interested in trading for the medical technology you mention. But you’re saying you no longer want us gathering information about this star system?”
“That is not the case. We will share all the information we find. With you and with Domain Ocean, our respected allies. It is simply that we no longer wish to trouble you.”
“Acting as your personal FTL transport is a little bit of trouble,” said Pan.
Again Buoun chose to ignore that and Naat pressed on. “We do not wish to endanger our human friends any longer. Help Domain Space and Domain Ocean to resupply our mission in Kh’het system and we will fully support the Confederation’s wishes for long-term peace between the four domains. We will trade happily and generously with you.”
God, I’ve seen some clumsy negotiating, but this takes the teacake.
Pan gave Gregory a coy look and said, “Permission to speak freely, sir?”
Gregory pushed back from the table and crossed his arms and legs. “Have at it, Captain.”
“Councillor Vren, what do you think of this idea?” Vren had been studying a spot on the table for the past minute or so. She gave Pan’s question a hmmph of indifference and flicked her ears. Nothing more. “Fine, then. I’ll tell you all what I think. For the past few days, the honorable Grand Councillor has begged us to render urgent assistance to his expedition here. Then he begged us to disintegrate some hostile star fighters on the way in. Now, suddenly, he can’t wait to get rid of us. Could there be something on that planet you want, Councillor? Something you don’t want us to have?”
Pi and Naat displayed agitated posture and throat coloring that Gregory now recognized as frustration, or anger. Buoun’s ears flicked with embarrassment or stress, his gaze cast down.
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