Starcaster Complete Series Boxed Set

by J. N. Chaney

  “So they’d eventually die.”

  “I guess they would, yeah. But I suspect they’ve got a good few hundred years left in them, so I don’t think we’re on a clock, here. At least, not that particular clock.”

  “And what about the rest of this stuff?” Bertilak asked, waving his hands around the interior of the lifeboat.

  Thorn touched another statue, one much smaller than those he’d seen in the dead Meksun city, but no less spectacular. It was just one of dozens, maybe hundreds of objects stacked around the interior. Some of them, like the statue, were obvious cultural artifacts. Others were more cryptic. And some seemed to be containers, presumably holding more things. It wasn’t all neatly organized. The objects were jumbled haphazardly, as though loaded in a great hurry.

  “I think it’s probably what they could salvage of their own cultural heritage,” Thorn replied. “Everything they thought they could save so their identity as a people was preserved.”

  He had a momentary flash, maybe a flicker of psychic resonance from the ship. Instead of just him and Bertilak and the empty quiet, Meksun briefly bustled around him, frantically trying to jam whatever they could into the lifeboat. Some of them argued, apparently over whether or not something was worth the space it would take up. A pall of chaotic desperation hung over the scene like a funeral shroud. And then it was gone as quickly as it had happened.

  “Thorn, are you alright?” Bertilak asked. He suddenly stood directly in front of Thorn. “You went completely blank there for a few seconds.”

  “Yeah. I had a bit of a vision, I guess, of the Meksun loading this thing. It wasn’t a happy time.”

  “I can only imagine.”

  They investigated a bit more, then decided to take the whole lifeboat in tow and bring it back to ON space. The Jolly had been outfitted for this eventuality, having a universal docking cradle attached to her underside. Normally used for salvage ops, it would grapple the lifeboat and snug it securely into place, effectively turning both it and the Jolly into a single ship.

  First, Thorn found the lifeboat’s drive and made sure it wasn’t active. It pained him to do so, but he used a Scorch effect to burn through several conduits, severing the drive from its power supply. They couldn’t, however, risk having the drive light up while the lifeboat was slung under the Jolly. Then, he turned his attention to a second, even more important task.

  He had encountered the sterility pathogen on the dead Meksun world and vividly remembered the repugnant way it resonated with his magical senses. He did the same thing again to see if it was present on the lifeboat and if he would need to thoroughly excise it from himself and Bertilak before they returned to human space.

  And it was present, scraping against Thorn’s perceptions with an acrid wrongness, something that shouldn’t exist, but did. Fortunately, though, it was also contained inside one of the containers, sealed into another container, that was sealed into a third, all of them chilled to only a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. He took a moment to wonder why the Meksun had preserved a sample of it.

  But the answer was obvious. Like it or not, it was now a part of their cultural heritage, too.

  He turned to Bertilak. “Let’s get things packed up and start for home. Before you do, though, I want you to disable the Jolly’s transponder, even once we’re back in ON space. We can reactivate it when we reach the Tobruk.

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re bringing back something that could wipe us out as a species, and in the most horrible way possible. I’d honestly rather have nobody else know it.”

  20

  “So these people are called the Mek-sons?” Morgan asked.

  “Meksun. And, as far as we know, they’re the only three left,” Thorn replied, turning his attention again to the airlock leading into the Hecate’s hangar bay. Mol had launched the Gyrfalcon and taken station off the destroyer’s flank, leaving the bay an empty, cavernous space. Based on the initial pass done through the archives that had been loaded aboard the lifeboat, the Meksun apparently shunned confined spaces as much as they could. Consideration had been given to using the enormous hangar deck on the Memphis, or the even bigger one on the Tobruk, but Urbanek had settled on the Hecate. It was Tanner’s flagship, so it was prestigious enough for a first contact and the start of diplomatic proceedings. More to the point, they knew almost nothing whatsoever about the Meksun. If things went horribly wrong, then the Hecate was expendable. The super carriers weren’t.

  “Just three? I hope they’re not all girls or boys,” Morgan said. “Then they couldn’t have babies. And they have to have babies so they don’t go ex—er—shoot, I forget the word!”

  “I think you mean extinct. And not necessarily,” Kira said. “But it’s complicated, and now’s not the time, Morgan. We’ll talk about this later, okay?”

  “More importantly, do not talk about babies around the Meksun. Don’t even say the word babies, or offspring, or anything like that,” Thorn added, giving Morgan his best dad look. It wasn’t as potent as Kira’s mom look, but it still got Morgan to nod.

  “Okay dad. I won’t. Promise.”

  Morgan had inadvertently touched on a troublesome topic, though. The three Meksun had been awoken from cryo-sleep in accordance with the instructions included in their lifeboat. They’d then immediately been quarantined and treated by ON medical personnel specializing in xenobiology. The priority had been determining if they were carriers of the sterility prion plague, but luckily, they weren’t. Even so, the issue of reproducing and regrowing their race was a sensitive, potentially explosive one. Urbanek had firmly taken it off the table, at least for now.

  Fortunately, they’d also included a language key, which had shown that they actually spoke four different languages, each apparently intended for a different type of conversation. For instance, one language seemed to only be used when expressing a strong, negative emotion, like anger or sorrow. What was apparently their language of commerce and business turned out to be similar to the tongue of the Imbrogul. That allowed basic translation, but there were still major parts of it the translators couldn’t crack.

  The solution had been to bring in the Imbrogul to help, which was why, when the airlock opened, the first figure to step through was Ondric. Thorn smiled at the Imbrogul leader, whom he befriended during his surreptitious visit to their homeworld. Ondric returned the smile, and a whiff of something like fresh rain tinged with lavender. It was the smell of good-humored approval.

  The three Meksun followed next. Thorn watched the stately beings with something like awe, keenly aware that this was, as far as they knew, the entire species. His brief, dreary sojourn on their dead world had somehow sparked a feeling of kinship with these people, despite this being the first time he’d ever actually met them. He’d considered it his personal duty to mourn for them, to ensure they weren’t forgotten. Finding three of them still alive had frankly filled him with a surprising joy.

  Urbanek and Tanner, followed by Damien and Densmore, brought up the rear of the little group. They filed into the hangar, and the Meksun immediately unfurled and extended their wings slightly, as though relaxing.

  Urbanek spoke to the Meksun. “I’m pleased to introduce Thorn Stellers. He traveled to your world and retrieved the encoded cylinder you left there. He, and Bertilak over there, then found your lifeboat and brought it back here.”

  Ondric softly translated as Urbanek spoke. The translators did their best but only managed occasional words, like greet and appreciate. Ondric had explained that the Meksun spoke an archaic form of Imbrogul, one that was virtually dead outside of scholarly, linguistic circles. His people were hurrying to construct a proper translation key, but for the moment, he was the translator.

  “We are pleased to greet all of you and particularly wish to express our thanks to those who have worked so hard to help us,” Ondric said when the Meksun had finished talking.

  The conversation plodded awkwardly on. Thorn learned that the thre
e Meksun were named Trill, Issa, and Serss. None of the names gave any sense of gender, but Thorn wasn’t sure how gender worked for these people, or if it even mattered at all.

  Morgan’s voice suddenly rang in his mind. Dad, why don’t we just talk to them this way?

  Because we don’t know if they’re capable of it, Morgan.

  Sure they are! I’ve been talking to Issa. She’s really nice. She hopes we can help her people so they can have babies again.

  Oh. Shit.

  Morgan, we specifically told you not to bring that up—

  It’s alright, a new voice said. It wafted through his head like wind chimes. Your daughter’s innocent questions actually make facing the terrible thing that happened to our people a little easier to bear. You should be very proud of her.

  Oh, I am. We just didn’t want to cause you any pain.

  None of the pain we feel has you as its cause. Quite the opposite. You are our saviors, or are trying to be, anyway.

  Thorn cut into the cumbersome discussion still crawling back and forth between the humans, Ondric, and the Meksun. “Excuse me, Admiral. It turns out the Meksun are capable of telepathic communication. It might be easier if we use that as our main way of communicating with them, until Ondric can provide us with a working translation key.”

  Urbanek narrowed his eyes and looked doubtful, but Densmore stepped forward. “Morgan, you can hear all of us speaking telepathically, right?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Can you—I don’t know, host everyone in your mind? I think the rest of us can only speak one-on-one.”

  Sure. Mom, Dad, you guys there?

  Thorn and Kira swapped a look caught somewhere between exasperation over Morgan’s casual innocence and pride over the same thing.

  I am, Thorn said.

  Kira nodded. Me too.

  And, uh—sorry, I don’t remember your name. Mom usually just calls you that damned woman.

  Densmore laughed, both in-person and psychically. Is that right, Wixcombe?

  Maybe when I’m really angry. Sorry, ma’am.

  Don’t be. I’ve been called far worse. I suspect you’ve called me far worse. And Morgan, you can call me Alys.

  Uh, can the Meksun hear us? Thorn asked, and immediately received an answer.

  We can. It’s a most undiplomatic conversation. And an utterly charming one, Issa said.

  Urbanek crossed his arms and glanced at Tanner. “I’m starting to feel obsolete, Galen—you know, having to actually speak out loud and all.”

  The ensuing conversation happened quickly and efficiently, with much more nuance than Ondric’s imperfect translation was able to provide. The Meksun recounted the invasion of their territories and attacks upon their planets. At first, they had managed to stand their ground and even repulse most of the joint Bilau and Nyctus attacks. Their navy, it seemed, was at least a match for their attackers, and even superior in some ways. For the first two or three human years of their war, they did well. They even appeared on the brink of winning overall and driving off the interlopers.

  That all changed, though, when the Bilau and Nyctus deployed their bioweapons. The Meksun knew now that several different strains had been unleashed on them, but that the sterility prion plague had been the true payload. The others, various types of ailments, had just been distractions. And the ruse had worked. By the time the Meksun scientists had established the sterility prion as the real threat, it was too late.

  I can’t even begin to imagine what that must have been like, Thorn said, his tone somber.

  We’re so sorry this happened to you, Kira added.

  We thank you for your words, Serss replied. But it is your daughter that truly lifts our spirits and gives us hope. It has been a long time since any of us have been able to experience the innocent honesty of a child.

  Make sure you treasure her, because she is a gift, Trill said.

  Yeah, Dad, Mom. I’m a gift, so you gotta treasure me.

  A warm tingle hummed in Thorn’s mind. The Meksun were laughing, he realized. He, Kira, and even Densmore joined in.

  Fortunately for Urbanek’s sense of usefulness, Ondric finally received a full translation key from his people. Once loaded into the translators, normal conversation with the Meksun became possible. Now, the three aliens sat with Thorn, Kira, Damien, Urbanek, and Densmore around a table that had been set up in the Hecate’s hangar bay. Although sat wasn’t quite right, at least as far as the Meksun were concerned. They more squatted, their posture somewhere between kneeling and a crouch, with their wings folded straight back behind them.

  One of the first questions came from Serss. “What has happened to the artifacts stored aboard out lifeboat?”

  “They’re all intact,” Damien replied. “We did some passive scanning of them to make sure there was nothing dangerous we should know about. And we retrieved whatever data we could from your lifeboat. But the actual artifacts themselves are right where you left them, untouched.”

  “It was all we were able to retrieve. Eight thousand years of civilization, reduced to the contents of a small spaceship,” Trill said. Even without the translator, Thorn would have recognized the resigned sadness in his tone.

  “You’ll probably be able to retrieve a lot from your planets,” Thorn offered. “From what I saw, a lot was undamaged.”

  “That will be a long-term goal, at best,” Trill replied.

  “We have no immediate desire to return to our worlds. Even the thought of doing so is simply . . . too painful,” Issa said.

  Serss nodded. “They are the graves of eleven billion of our people. They should remain undisturbed.”

  “Well, on behalf of the Orbital Navy and the Allied Stars, I’d like to once again offer our sincere sympathy to you,” Tanner said. He intoned it like it was a prepared speech, which it probably was. When he went on, though, he was back to the naturally brusque tone Thorn had come to know so well.

  “Which leads to what seems to me to be the most immediate question. What would you consider to be justice for your people?”

  The three Meksun stared at him for a moment, then conferred softly among themselves. It was Trill who finally replied.

  “Is there a point to seeking justice? What was done to us was truly monstrous, but nothing that might be just will restore our people or undo what has happened.”

  “Not even remotely suggesting it would,” Tanner replied. “However, we find ourselves in the midst of winning one war but facing a second, against the Bilau. And they’re the ones who seem to have been the instigators, and the lead in using this damned bioweapon. The Nyctus are guilty, too, but mainly by association.”

  “And what happens to the Bilau will definitely be informed by what they did to you,” Densmore put in. “Genocidal crimes against sentient life can’t go unanswered. They demand justice. And you need to be part of determining what that justice is going to look like.”

  Thorn raised an eyebrow at Densmore. He’d come to know her as the ultimate pragmatist. To her, the ends almost always justified the means. But here she was making an impassioned speech about abstractions, about what was right and wrong. Moreover, it wasn’t simply put on for effect. Genuine emotion rang in her voice.

  The Meksun conferred again, then Trill turned and raised a hand, six long, delicate fingers splayed out. He then clenched three of them, leaving the other three extended.

  “You’re correct. To let this go unpunished is to invite it being done to someone else. And we would wish that on no one. So here is what we would have as justice. What should be done to the Bilau is what they did to us. They should be reduced to three, just as we are. No more.”

  Thorn shifted uncomfortably in his seat. What Trill was proposing was tantamount to genocide, which was exactly what Thorn had said he would not condone. But it was hard to be idealistic and just come out and say that in the face of the truly monstrous thing that had been done to the Meksun. His thoughts raced for a moment, before settling on what seemed like
a reasonable, personal compromise. Or, at least, a half-assed one.

  “I just want to restate that I won’t take part in genocide. But I also won’t argue with the judgement of the Meksun. If that seems to make me a moral coward, fine. I’ll learn to live with it,” Thorn said.

  Thorn braced himself for outrage from the Meksun, but Trill simply nodded. “We understand. Again, we don’t advocate this dire fate for the Bilau lightly, nor do we expect it to actually set anything right. We don’t advocate it for ourselves at all, in fact, because that would be vengeance, not justice.”

  Serss spoke up. “We advocate it, instead, on behalf of all sentient life, so that it’s clear that genocide will not be tolerated by those of a right and good mind.”

  Thorn let out a relieved breath. He’d envisioned this turning into a bitter, acrimonious argument, but the simple, logical stance of the Meksun put his mind at ease.

  “This is a time when the universe will be balanced and the right thing is shitty, the wrong thing is worse, and the best thing, I agree, is to remove an evil at any cost,” he said. He turned to Kira.

  “I don’t presume to speak for you, of course. And we certainly don’t want Morgan involved. If anyone is going to have to stand witness to whatever happens, it will be me.”

  Kira returned a thoughtful look, then nodded. “I’ll take care of Morgan. You do whatever you need to do, Thorn. And if you need me there to pick up pieces afterward, then I’ll be there.”

  Despite the formal setting, Thorn reached, took Kira’s hand, and briefly squeezed it.

  “All the morality and ethics of this aside, if the Bilau get the chance, they’ll do this again. We can’t allow that to happen.” He turned to the Meksun. “Will you share your cryo-sleep technology with us?”

  “We will,” Trill said.

  Urbanek nodded gravely, then turned to Densmore. “Have your people set aside a facility on Farthest Star Three. The blackout ring. We’ll freeze the last three Bilau and store them there.”