Reaper's Crossroad

by Timothy Ellis

  And I suddenly thought of how what was there could be totally inadequate, but managed to keep my face from showing it. I went on.

  "I assume I pass the Ralnor on to you if they show up to talk?"

  "Should they talk to us or the alliance?" asked Ravi.

  "Us," said David. "They adjoin our space, and only one of our about to be allies also shares a frontier with them. They should be negotiating their own treaties with the Ralnor. If we manage to get any treaty with them, we can invite them to have an embassy on Terminus, and be invited as an observer to our alliance meetings when appropriate."

  "I'll leave things to you then."

  "What do you see next in a military sense?"

  "I can't see any way of avoiding going to Keerah."

  Fifty Two

  Aline laughed the whole way through pillow talk.

  Both of us were very glad to be done with the evening, but I had to admit, their faces when I told them about going to Keerah were shocked enough to be really funny. Fortunately we both held it in until we got back to my suite.

  Gunbus was ready to go in the morning, and we left after the team had finished training and breakfast. I'd told Jack to talk to Jane about a beach for the other teams to relax on, and suggested they use the opportunity for combat drops. I knew from Jane already there was plenty of food, drink, and entertainment waiting for them.

  Lacey received the same message, but I suggested the pilots get a lift with the marines. If he actually followed the suggestion, things could get interesting. But the look he gave me suggested he'd rather drop through the atmosphere with just his suit and a set of leg thrusters. I can't say I disagreed.

  The island Jane took us to was quite big, the beach making a lot larger running track than Thorn's island did. A landing pad for up to frigate sized ships was already in place, and Jane landed us neatly in the middle of it. The building we found was indeed a mansion, but inside, other than standard kitchen fittings and entertainment electronics, it was if it had never been lived in. Which it hadn't. I had to do a formal door opening with the key, before we could get inside, and afterwards stored a code in my PC. At the same time, I gave Jane another code, and sent one to my father.

  Cargo droids began bringing in beds and chairs, and boxes containing sheets and blankets, towels and bathroom stuff. Butler droids under the direction of Jeeves started working to make the empty house into a home.

  We had a quick look around, but the main beach out the front was so inviting, nothing could stop the twins from stripping off, and diving into the mild surf. Everyone quickly followed.

  A gig landed next to Gunbus a short time later, and George and Miriam quickly joined us in the water. It was hot, without being too hot, with enough humidity to keep your skin wet even out of the water.

  Needless to say, I was the first one out, hopping my way up the sand to where I left my briefs and socks, shook the sand out of and put the briefs back on, and shifted my belt into shorts. Jeeves appeared with a beach chair and umbrella, and I took the load off. A ginger ale appeared on a small table before I was even settled.

  I'd figured Jane would alert me if anything needed my attention, but I pulled up a hollo screen and began checking jump points. The Keerah had all three staked out with defensive fleets, but were otherwise quiet. But it looked like their buildup of forces was continuing. I gave them a couple of days at the most before they decided to hit us again.

  The Ralnor had settled into a watch this space mode, and since their fleet hadn't been reinforced, I was assuming they'd turned back any fleets still on their way. A good sign.

  All four jump points were in use by civilian freighters, and the stations were doing what looked like normal business. According to the station nets, retail and office space on all four was being leased rapidly, and stores and services were opening constantly, or were having premises renovated in preparation for opening.

  The Trixone jump point was a mess on their side. It looked like they'd sent a fleet through the jump point, had it returned to their side, colliding with the next fleet due to go through. Damaged ships were still cluttering up the jump lane. More fleets were holding position further away.

  There were no traders though. I wondered if this was because the local traders now thought this area was too dangerous, or if there had never been many.

  For the first time I wondered if I was wrong to concentrate on the Keerah first. The Trixone looked like they were going to be an equal or even larger problem. But for now, we only had to worry about them at one jump point, where the Keerah were camped out on three, and could hit a fourth if they wanted to.

  The planet turned out to have a longer day than was standard in space. We stayed on ship time though, knowing adjusting wasn’t worth it for this visit. We ate lunch on the beach, swam and sunbaked for a normal afternoon, and ate freshly caught seafood for dinner.

  The whole day long, I waited for the other shoe to drop. It didn’t. I tried to relax, but didn’t achieve it. Everyone could see me trying, and failing, but no-one mentioned it.

  The vid came in after everyone else had gone to bed, but found me still sitting on the beach waiting for the sunset. It was the Ralnor general.

  "Admiral Hunter. My superiors have informed me they've had reports from the civilians we left behind, indicating all is well, and your people are behaving acceptably. They mention a tendency to be insulting in a humourous manner, but a willingness to take it back as well. So far, so good. But perhaps an explanation of what a furball is might help understanding."

  I started chuckling.

  "I've been ordered back to the station with a diplomatic team, with the objective of negotiating a cease fire. We will arrive in approximately twelve of your hours, aboard a scout ship. Please allow us through your defenses."

  "As a secondary objective, we also wish to negotiate a ceasefire with the system you call Karn, and would appreciate you setting up a meeting with them as well. Or at least providing an introduction. I hope to see you when we arrive."

  The vid ended with the customary salute. I reluctantly stood, and headed for my ready room on Gunbus. Once there, I shifted back into uniform, and opened a vid sitting at my desk.

  "General. Great news. Unfortunately I will not be able to meet with you on your arrival, but your counterpart, a four star general, will meet you on my behalf, along with a diplomatic team. You will be shown through to a station called Terminus, and provided with suitable accommodation for the duration of your stay."

  "I'm not aware of the status of females in your society, but in ours, females are equals in all things. But Karn is a matriarchy. My suggestion is you have a female lead your diplomatic team when you meet with them. Otherwise they may simply refuse to do more than say hello, and might not even say that. I look forward to learning more about your people once we have peace between us."

  "I shall be available to speak with you again, once negotiations have begun. If after you arrive you have any needs not being met, bring them up with General Wellington, and they will be attended to. Feel free to send us any requirements before you arrive. We do have a Ralnor advising us on such things as seating comfort, food and drink, but this will be the first time we've hosted an official party. So by all means send us any requirements or preferences you have."

  I paused.

  "A furball has several meanings. We have a number of domesticated animal species, all of which have similar fur to your people. With a cat, a furball is all the loose fur it coughs up. So such a meaning might be intended as an insult. A furball is also an endearing name for an animal you like how they look, so in this context could in fact indicate the person likes you. In space, some pilots call combat a furball. Like a lot of our words, they translate differently according to context, and can be either endearing or offensive depending on the context, and body language delivering it. Translators of course may not do them justice, but you'll get the hang of us in time."

  I smiled while I paused again.

&nb
sp; "I look forward to our next meeting. Hunter out."

  I sent it off, followed by messages to Vonda and David. I also made sure Jane was on the same page, and thus the station AI's were as well.

  When I finally walked into the small suite which was mine and Aline's, I found she was still awake and waiting for me, artfully arranged on the bed, wearing nothing at all.

  "What took you so long?"

  I told her.

  "The hoppers are coming. Oh joy. Come here you."

  Fifty Three

  The following morning I opened people rifts to and from Haven.

  One set went to my accommodation tower, where all of us lived when not on a ship, and the other set went to the military tower, where the training floors were. BA led the team on several laps of the island, before getting Aline to wake me up to do the rifts. For all I knew they went anywhere but where they wanted them, as I definitely wasn’t awake properly, and I went back to sleep straight after. There were no complaints though.

  Aline woke me again just before lunch time, and we sat on the beach watching the sunrise. I felt totally out of sync, and was beginning to think I should have done the rifts the night before, and slept on the station. But there was no doubt I’d needed the extra sleep.

  Bleary eyed and looking like I had a hangover, without the hangover part, the sunrise was magnificent, and marred by the unexpected happening.

  A dropship boomed rapid travel above us, and quickly came into view dropping towards the sea in front of us. It was dropping far too rapidly for its height, and although it slowed near the end, the sea swallowed it like a swimmer diving in from the high board.

  "What the fuck was that?" asked Aline.

  "Dropship."

  "I could see that. Why was it doing a suicide drop?"

  "Submarine training?"

  "Seriously?"

  "Not really. That had to be seriously bad for the stomach."

  "Assuming they survived."

  "That too."

  We waited for about a minute, before the dropship rose up out of the water, and landed a short way up the beach. Amanda and Aleesha were first off the ramp, and they looked pumped. Which figured. Only they would enjoy something that close to killing you.

  Behind them was a tiger, who walked shakily down the ramp on all fours, flopped legs outstretched down on the sand, and actually kissed it. He stayed there a short time, before slowly rising, brushing loose sand off his muzzle. He rose up onto hind legs, and strutted across to us as if nothing had happened.

  Jeeves had a tiger chair waiting for him, and he collapsed into it. Hobbes didn’t look green, but a white and black striped tiger was never going to get a green hue, no matter what happened.

  The last person down the ramp was wearing 'slinky red', with no insignia, and looking odd, dark glasses. He looked a little shaky, but the twins slapped him hard on the back at the same time, with huge grins on their faces, and he fell face first into the sand. They laughed, set him back on his feet, dusted him off, and pulled him over to us.

  His mouth dropped open when he recognized me, but he quickly came to attention, and saluted me.

  "At ease. Mr. Ecclestone I presume?"

  "Yes sir."

  "At ease!"

  He relaxed, but still looked a little shaky. Jeeves dropped a chair behind him, while two other chairs appeared in the arms of other butler droids.

  "Sit."

  He looked surprised, felt behind him, found a chair, and sat. So did the twins.

  "First live drop?"

  "That obvious sir?"

  "Just a tad. Just as well there's deep water off this island."

  "Apparently. I was aiming for the open section of landing area."

  "You missed."

  The girls were laughing. Hobbes looked confused.

  "I'll do better sir."

  "Has Jane updated your PC and suit yet?"

  "Who's Jane?"

  Which answered that question.

  "She's Admiral Jane, one star, and you'll meet her in due course. So you're still actually a civilian?" He nodded. "But the medical must have gone pretty well?"

  "It did," said Amanda. "We thought we'd take him for a test drive, before anything became official."

  "And," added Aleesha, "the opportunity to scare the crap out of a tiger was too good to miss."

  Hobbes looked pained. I wondered why he'd come down with them. Except with a little thought, it was obvious they hadn't told him there was a rift.

  "Lunch is being served," said Jeeves. "Would you like it here, or in the main dining room?"

  "Here," said Aline, and the others nodded.

  Lunch was pleasant enough, although the recruit was obviously unprepared for lunching with an admiral, and had to be prodded into saying anything. I shot Amanda a few looks, and she returned them with grins. The tiger seemed to enjoy the local seafood, as was I, even though seafood was not my thing. Not knowing what you were eating, and just going by taste, seemed to make a difference. I had to trust Jeeves wasn’t going to poison us.

  Angel was also enjoying the new tastes it seemed, and after eating, made herself comfortable in the sand at my feet, and went to sleep.

  Strangely, the twins passed on coffee, and made ready to depart. Ecclestone took the hint, but Hobbes remained where he was.

  "Mr. Ecclestone."

  "Sir?"

  "I'm not sir until you officially sign up."

  "Yes sir."

  I sighed.

  "You do not have to dock the dropship manually, regardless of what the colonels tell you."

  "Colonels?"

  Amanda mouthed "spoilsport" at me. Only now did I noticed the twins were not wearing insignia. Just the same plain 'slinky red' as their pilot.

  "Colonels. Even I use the AI for docking."

  "AI?"

  "Go. I don’t want to know how you ended up here, but if you seriously do want to fly for me, you need to be talking to other pilots, not marines."

  "Ah, yes sir. Any suggestions as to who?"

  "Talk to Lieutenant Commander Tapping. She had the team one dropship pilot position last. Or any of the other dropship pilots. Ultimately, these two will decide if you're good enough to dropship pilot for the teams, but theirs is not the only voice in the decision, and dropship pilot is not your only choice."

  "It's not?"

  "No. Keep up with the simulator flying. Not everyone there is a civilian. If you can take some of the better pilots in there, you might find they are active fighter pilots, and might recommend you for a squadron. The emphasis is on dropship pilots at the moment, as we lack a few of them, particularly for the Colonels' team. Hence them taking you for a test drive, so to speak. But it's up to you. If you want to fly a specific ship, hang out for it."

  "I will. Sir. Thankyou sir."

  I waved them off, and the three of them jogged over to the dropship, and it flew off. I turned to Aline.

  "Could you tell he was blind?"

  "No. You?"

  "No. And he hadn't had any of the upgrades being worked on for him either.

  "The pilot was blind?" exclaimed Hobbes.

  Both of us laughed. And I swear there was a green tinge this time.

  Fifty Four

  Aline took herself off.

  Having seen the landing, she'd no doubt opted for using the rift instead. She didn’t say where she was going, but interviews for her team were the most likely as far as I knew. I wasn’t intruding. Forming her team was part of her own training, and not in my hands.

  It left me with a tiger still coming to grips with how mad humans could really be.

  "What can I do for you Hobbes?" I paused for a moment, and he didn’t answer. "Actually, isn't it about time we started calling you by your real name?"

  "I don’t have a real name."

  "Come again?"

  "I've been doing some research, both on the databases on the ships we captured, and more recently on the stations you took. My family does not exist in any wa
y now, except as a footnote to a purge conducted some two hundred of our years ago."

  "That doesn’t mean you don’t have a name."

  "In our society, it does. Having your name stripped from you is a grave dishonor, as is being the last survivor of a dying name."

  "It's not your fault."

  "It doesn’t matter. I've talked to the whites you took captive. They all agree I am nothing."

  "On the contrary, you're the end product of the very best your people were capable of. So don't let the very worst drag you down to their level."

  "I'm still the last of my family."

  "Perhaps you’re the first?"

  His eyes went wide, obviously not having considered this.

  "How could that be?"

  "The higher beings saved you, and brought you here. Like all of us, there must have been a reason for this. Maybe you are supposed to be a lightning rod for your people changing back to a more compassionate society?"

  "Or I'm supposed to die trying."

  "No need to get morbid. Stay positive, or the cosmos will deliver what you fear most."

  He nodded, but I knew saying it and doing it were two different things. I changed the subject.

  "How are the Keerah prisoners?"

  "Not happy. But thankful to be on a planet now instead of caged up. Most of the orange and blacks just want to go home. The whites are still planning how to escape. Since they still have no contact with each other, they aren't getting very far with plans."

  "How did you get there?"

  "Syrinx did one way rifts there and back, and made sure no-one could follow me."

  "Good thinking. I don’t like them being captive any more than they do, but until we get some sort of treaty with your people, I can't risk them giving away any secrets they may have found out."

  "I doubt there is much they can pass on which isn’t already known now. There are undoubtedly spies among the civilians on the stations you took. Even if the station AI's control communications off the stations, they will find a way to get things out, like how well your armour works, and how their troops were taken down so easily. Probably already done, just by manual handling of the messages by traders."