Humans

by A. G. Claymore

  “Your ancestor was a fool! I mean, who steals a golden penis? He gave the Ninevans a permanent cassus belli to justify any kind of aggression but completely neglected to prepare a defense against it.

  “If we hadn’t come here, you’d be just another penniless emigre noble, trying to think of a wealthy relation from whom you could beg shelter.”

  “I could offer my services as an advisor…”

  Mishak cut him off with a sharp chopping motion. “Let me lay this out for you. Your decisions, and those of your forebears, have brought you to this sorry state.

  “Gobryas and his ancestors have bided their time and, when the moment was right, launched their plans into action. He may not have taken your world but his decisions have brought the heirs-apparent into the matter and he’s managed to avail himself of our influence.”

  “No small feat for a one system minor lord,” Eth suggested.

  It wasn’t entirely proper for Eth to interject like that, or was it? Mishak paused. Would he think differently if Eth were a Quailu?

  Nonetheless, it provided him with another point. He gestured back at Eth. “That man was grown to be a slave and he has more sense than you’ve shown. I take his advice. I won’t be asking for yours.”

  He waved at the Tadmoran delegation’s shuttle. “Go home and be grateful you’ve still got a planet to run.”

  Daon stalked into his shuttle and the ramp had barely closed when the Humans started laughing.

  “You find the humiliation of a Quailu noble to be amusing?” Mishak demanded, wheeling on them.

  ‘No lord,” Eth said breathlessly. “It’s just that we had that centurion, dirtside, telling us the empire would see how we hang and…” He chuckled.

  Mishak had spent a lot of time among his Humans. He’d gotten drunk with them and he’d heard most of their jokes a hundred times. He understood where this was going.

  He nodded at the empty case on the floor. “So, getting a chance to see how the empire was hung?”

  It can be very isolating; the life of a noble and he’d been isolated further still by an overbearing father. Mishak had withdrawn to the point where he came to prefer the company of his Humans.

  Humans couldn’t read his thoughts and judge his insecurities. It seemed almost karmic that they’d provided him with the means to boost his confidence, defy his father and launch himself on the path to the imperial throne.

  He enjoyed the rare moments when he could let down his guard and connect with them. Managing to elicit such an unrestrained gale of laughter from them was a very gratifying experience.

  Still, some of them were changing. A few of their minds were closing to the empathic ability that all Quailu shared.

  They served him loyally, but the Quailu were accustomed to seeing the secret heart of those over whom they ruled. On top of all the pressures of being the crown-prince, it was one more irritant.

  Pacification

  The Ishkur, Bilbat System

  Kuri knelt and placed his hands on Sekandr’s shoulders. “You must show courage. Our people will look to you in my absence.”

  The youngster drew himself up to his full height. “You will not be absent, Father,” he insisted proudly. “You will be out there fighting our enemies!”

  Not for the first time, Kuri wished he could send his family off-world until the matter was settled, but a noble who did not share in the risk he allowed to fall upon his people was no noble at all.

  He gave Sekandr’s shoulder one final squeeze and stood. He gestured his security detail toward an open portal. “Time to go,” he said, not caring that the moment could have used a more memorable quote.

  They passed through the portal and into a fast lighter that would take him to his waiting fleet. Well, half of it.

  It was a dangerous plan and many of his councillors had argued against it. That, in itself, was probably a good recommendation, as most of them had seen very little combat.

  It had been endorsed by Sin-Nasir, and Kuri was inclined to favor his opinions in this matter. Sin-Nasir had taken a medium-sized force to fight for Tir-Uttur when the Emperor was struggling to consolidate his position on the throne. He’d made a name for himself through his shrewd manipulation of both the enemy and the battlespace.

  The trick was in the timing.

  The lighter slid up to Kuri’s flagship, an older cruiser design, but still a potent weapon in the right hands. He led the way up to the bridge, where Hunzu, his fleet-captain, was conferring with Sin-Nasir over a holo-channel.

  By rights, Sin-Nasir should have been fleet-captain but he’d insisted on commanding the decoy fleet orbiting Bilbat. It was the point of greatest risk and, though Kuri had wanted it, he’d yielded to his general’s relentless logic.

  Sekandr was a fine young Quailu but he was still too young to claim his inheritance. If Kuri died today, even in a victory, he would leave Bilbat open to endless claims from neighboring lords.

  There was no room for heroism in the fight to come.

  “Lord,” Hunzu greeted him. “Scouts report that the enemy have pathed away from their consolidation point sooner than we expected. The disarray shown there may have been deliberate. Their blockade, after all, has been remarkably well managed.”

  “They thought to catch us off guard?” Kuri asked. “We went to full alert as soon as we found them.”

  “Perhaps they think they’re being clever,” Sin-Nasir’s holographic image suggested. “I’ve seen commanders use misdirection for its own sake rather than in pursuit of their mission. In any event, I’m moving my forces to a new orbit on the off-chance they’re intending to drop-wash us.”

  The plasma released by an incoming ship when it dropped out of path-shaping could be incredibly destructive.

  Kuri shuddered. Such an opening move against an orbiting force could be devastating for the planet beneath them. He had to remind himself that the inbound force was coming from the enemy blockade and wouldn’t have time to build up much of a discharge on their way.

  Still, it represented dangers…

  “Path alert!” the sensor coordinator announced. “Multiple paths inbound, danger-close for the planet!”

  Kuri’s blood ran cold. “Main view!”

  The image in the center of the bridge showed the enemy ships surrounding the planet with more appearing. It made no sense!

  “What the hells?” Hunzu growled. “They’re not even in formation, they just…”

  “They just brought our entire economy to a screeching halt!” Kuri exclaimed. Those drops would have released enough plasma to generate electromagnetic pulses and their scattered arrival had clearly been intended to fry every bit of electronics on the surface of Bilbat.

  “It’s just a straight up fur-ball now,” Kuri decided. No clever flank assault on a committed enemy attacking force. They’d made the civilians on the surface their priority target and now they’d pay for it.

  “Get us in there,” he ordered the fleet captain. “Micro-path the entire fleet to the side opposite from Sin-Nasir’s force. One more set of EMPs won’t do any further harm.”

  It was maddening to stand there while coordinates were passed to the other ships and path-drives were brought online. Down on Bilbat, every communications device, every shuttle, every harvester and ground transportation unit had ground to a halt.

  Water would stop flowing through conduits, food distribution was effectively destroyed. Within two days, the riots and killing would start and young Sekandr would have his hands full trying to restore order.

  One of the cable trays vibrated above Kuri as the ship began shifting the Universe to put Bilbat beneath them. That tray always did that and Kuri had refused to let engineering replace it. He couldn’t put his finger on it but he found the rattling imperfection to be comforting for some reason.

  The noise didn’t end the way it usually did because the time between initiation and drop out were so close together this time. The curve of his home-world threw itself into view, dotted h
ere and there with individual ships.

  “They’re trying to come together,” the sensor coordinator advised.

  “They can’t hope to coalesce into a proper force now,” Kuri said, “unless we stay together as a fleet and give them room on the far side. Captain Hunzu, break the fleet into its four sub-squadrons, if you please, and assign them each a quadrant.”

  “Aye, Lord.”

  “Don’t let em regroup, Captain. Hunt them. Hunt them hard and we’ll go for that big bastard.” He reached up into the holo to select the cruiser that almost certainly represented the flagship.

  “How many ships did they bring?” he demanded, whirling on the sensor coordinator.

  “One cruiser, sixteen frigates and three hundred fifty two gunboats, lord,” the coordinator replied.

  “I believe they’ve pulled every ship from their blockade, lord,” the intelligence officer advised. He was standing among the sensor team, still looking up at the displays as he addressed his lord. “If we beat them…”

  “Then we don’t have to worry about another immediate attack from their blockade while we’re licking our wounds,” Kuri finished the thought.

  And we can finally send an envoy to ask the emperor for help, he thought, feeling the intelligence officer’s agreement.

  “Taking fire from their gunboats,” tactical advised. “No damage. Secondary batteries are engaging.”

  Kuri fumed as he watched the enemy gunboats disappear from his display. None of it made a lick of sense. Why did they fiddle around with looking unready when they had to know Bilbat was already on high alert? Why waste time targeting the planetary economy in such a way when it left them so vulnerable to counter attack?

  The Universe slid back into view.

  “One of their ships at this location, sire,” the sensor coordinator said. “All of our fleet have checked in and are recharging for pathing operations.”

  “Open a channel,” Memnon ordered, waving to the center of the bridge’s display area. “Put it right here.”

  A Quailu shimmered into view and bowed low. “The attack is underway, sire.”

  “Perhaps you could tell me why that is,” Memnon suggested in a cold voice. “My orders, which were confirmed just before I pathed here, were to wait for my arrival. Why were they so eager to begin the destruction that they couldn’t wait for my own participation?”

  The holographic figure straightened but it had no answers.

  “You have a signal-pair to keep you in touch with your master.” Memnon pitched it as a statement of fact. “Transfer your feed to my bridge immediately.”

  The figure hesitated for the briefest instant before realizing who he would rather have angry with him. He turned to the side and, after a few seconds, an icon appeared next to his ghostly image.

  Memnon activated it and the Battle of Bilbat was presented in all its glory. “What the hells am I looking at?” he growled.

  They were supposed to punch their way in, destroy the biosphere, and fight their way back out.

  “Reading no EM signatures of any kind from the surface, sire,” the intelligence officer advised. “Estimate a massive, global EMP assault.”

  “Those silly bastards,” Memnon ground out. His noble father continually berated him for his screw-ups, but he had to know what sort of idiots he had to work with out here.

  There was a reason, after all, that these fools were still one-system minor lords and it sure as hells wasn’t lack of ambition. These idiots had decided to change the plan and keep the planet for themselves and they were hoping to force Memnon into coming to their rescue.

  “Ops… path status.”

  “Sire, the fleet stands ready, except for one frigate.”

  “Reason?”

  “Cascade failure in their flash capacitors, sire. They require a half cycle to replace the affected units.” The ops officer quailed under Memnon’s anger. “Apologies, sire,” he stammered. “A half cycle for the mechanical work and another quarter for charge-tempering.”

  “They’ll have to shift for themselves,” Memnon decided. “Tell them to make their way to the rendezvous point once they’ve effected repairs. We need to get in there before this goes completely off the rails.”

  He enlarged the view of the battle and selected the icon showing a large cruiser. “There’s our target for drop-out. Match coordinates with the fleet and open a path.”

  “Multiple path alerts!” the sensor coordinator yelled in alarm.

  Kuri took a full step back from the holo-display as the red cones began to show where inbound plasma bursts were appearing. “Who are they?” He looked up to the color corrected image of the enemy cruiser just as it was smashed out of the sky by an incoming vessel.

  The only cruiser the enemy had brought with them was now little more than a tumbling mass of plasma and wreckage. And a new cruiser, so new that its nanites still hadn’t been scorched clean by solar winds, now lay along the axis of destruction.

  “Crossed cipher keys,” the intelligence officer said.

  “Mishak?” Kuri was certain his couriers had all been intercepted, so how…

  “Not on a red field, lord,” the intelligence officer countered. “The Lord Mishak uses gray and his father uses black.”

  “Then who…”

  “Incoming signal from that cruiser, lord.”

  Kuri gestured. “Route it here.”

  A figure appeared, wearing the newest model of combat armor, the type that cost a year’s profits for a planet like Bilbat. “Well, my lord,” the figure said tiredly, “this is a major fornicating mess if ever I’ve seen one.

  “These fools thought they’d force my hand.” The figure paused for a moment. “I suppose they have, though not in the way they’d expected. In any event, I owe you my deepest sympathies.” The figure turned to wave a hand at someone who wasn’t in the projection.

  “I don’t understand, my lord.” Kuri stole a quick glance at Hunzu but found no help there. “We owe you much for your help.”

  “You shouldn’t mistake my intervention for help,” the figure advised.

  “Gods!” the sensor coordinator shouted. “Artificial gravitational singularities just opened up in the atmosphere!”

  Kuri was suddenly flushed with adrenaline, fear and rage. He wasn’t alone. Everyone on the bridge suddenly turned their thoughts to the loved ones down on Bilbat. The planet’s atmosphere was spiraling up into the singularities and there was no way to stop such weapons. Firing at a singularity weapon merely fed the beast.

  They would burn themselves out, being mere shadows of their wild cousins, but not before rendering the entire planet incapable of supporting life. The state of panic reached a crippling stage by the time Memnon’s missiles struck Kuri’s flagship.

  His last thought was of Sekandr.

  Sneak & Peek

  Sippar System, Outer Planets

  “Full normalization,” Hendy reported from the nav station with a grin. “We are one with the Universe again, bathing in the cool embrace of the local gas giant.”

  Eth rolled his eyes. “Let’s not get all poetic, Hendy. We built a scout with a path drive. It was bound to happen sooner or later.”

  “Yeah,” Noa agreed from the aft hatch, “but only by us. You really think those hard-charging Quailu would have bothered with something like this?” He rested a hand against one of the stanchions… caressed it, really.

  It was a beautiful little ship and Eth was giving serious thought to breaking up the Mouse to build more like her. The Scorpion was the first of Noa’s designs to have a path drive.

  Building on his success with the smaller scout-ships, he’d gutted a captured frigate and rebuilt her around the original core, leaving just enough room for three pitch drives, an augmented emission management suite, weapon systems and crew spaces.

  Named for the ceremonial sword worn by the Varangian Guard, the Scorpion carried a vicious sting, but her chief weapon was her ability to slip past an enemy’s guard.
<
br />   She was coated with the same carbon nanotubules that had made her smaller predecessors so difficult to spot but it was an advantage that came with a price. The Scorpion’s hull was several times the size of the smaller scouts and the stellar and sensor radiation that bounced down between the microscopic carbon-tubules had to go somewhere.

  That it didn’t simply bounce back into space made her a ghost to the enemy, but that energy had to be contained and no system had yet been invented that could do so indefinitely.

  “Take us deeper, Hendy. Find us a zone where the temperature is a hundred fifty above absolute zero.” Eth turned to Gleb. “Open the interchange valves.” He looked back to his own display, noting the new progress bar. “How long to charge the cryo-banks, Noa?”

  “At one-fifty over absolute, I’d say about twenty minutes. We can probably squeeze a little more performance from those CB’s but I’d rather test that in a non-combat environment.”

  “You see me arguing?” Eth demanded. “We don’t have an abundance of choice. Half the empire is shooting at each other. The only reason it’s not a full civil war is the lack of organization.”

  He turned. “Speaking of combat testing – Oliv, what’s our weapon status?”

  “They haven’t malfunctioned and killed us all, if that’s what you were wondering.” She shuddered. “I don’t mind testing them for the old gal, but hanging onto the damn things until we need to fire em off is creeping the hells outta me. What if one of those MA fields develops a sense of humor and goes rogue while we’re executing a course change?”

  Mass attenuation. The ‘old gal’ was the Lady Bau and she’d taken the Arbella system where a research team had been on the verge of bringing the new tech to market. She’d sensibly put a stop to broad commercialisation and restricted it to military use until the end of the current state of unrest.

  Missiles, those using chemical thrust, were an ancient technology in an empire where micro gravity drives were readily available. One of those ancient missile designs, coupled with an MA field generator, suddenly opened an entirely new aspect in ship-to-ship combat.