World Hammer

by Craig Delancey

  Tarkos thought about that a long time, before he said, “Mine too.”

  He went back to his quarters, and closed the door, and laid down on his bed. The pillow smelled like Eydis, and this, finally, made the tears come. He wept like a child, like he’d not wept since the day his father had died. By the time he stopped, exhausted and numb, he could no longer smell her.

  _____

  Tarkos awoke to Eydis’s voice.

  “Amir?”

  He jerked up, looking around his dark quarters.

  “Pala?” For one beautiful moment, half conscious, he thought it had all been a nightmare, and she was there, in his room, waiting for him in the dark. But the lights slowly grew brighter, triggered by this motion. He sat alone.

  “If you hear this, Amir, then you’ve been on the ship for more than twelve hours without me. I assume that means I’m dead. I placed a transmitter under your mattress, in case this happened.”

  Tarkos swung his feet down onto the floor, ready to begin searching for the transmitter, but then Pala’s voice stopped him in place.

  “Please don’t blame yourself,” she said, the voice coming—he now realized—from the speakers in his cabin’s ceiling. “I came on this mission willingly. You and I argued, but we argued over whether I would report to Earth, not over whether I would go to the World Hammer.”

  Tarkos shook his head, wishing he could argue with her now, and get himself furious again at her slippery, unfair methods when debating him.

  “I’m going to ask you a favor, Amir,” her voice continued. “In my quarters are my notes from my work on the Well of Furies, the Ulltrian’s abandoned home world. You must return those notes to Earth. All that I learned about Ulltrian technology and Ulltrian programming is there. It can help with the war. Earth will share it with the Alliance, you can be sure of that. But you have to trust me when I say that Earth is best suited to study that data. And only Earth.

  “There’s something else. In a black box at the foot of my bed is a data crystal. This is an atomic-level accurate copy of some encryption codes that the Ulltrian’s used for high priority systems. The codes are ancient, but they could still prove useful. The Ulltrian’s might still be using those codes, or something like them. They are too arrogant, and they are so interested in biology they neglect their computers.”

  Tarkos smiled in the dim light, blinking back fresh tears. “So that’s how you stole its ship,” he said.

  But the transmission continued on. “Give those codes to Earth. Give the Alliance a copy if you must, but give the original to Earth. You have too little faith in our skills. We human beings made many, many mistakes. And the Alliance has been good for us, I admit it. But we are the best coders in the Galaxy, Amir, outside of the Lost Zone. You need a little wildness in you still, to be able to code like the Alliance needs now. So humanity can make a difference in this war. Give us a chance.”

  She sighed, and her voice became hushed. “We didn’t know each other long, Amir, and our lives would have been impossible to combine, but I think I would have loved you. Very much. Take care of yourself. Stay alive. And save Earth. Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye, Pala,” Tarkos whispered. “And I will watch with both eyes. I will watch for both of us.”

  _____

  Tarkos found Bria on the bridge, rechecking the coordinates for the star drive.

  “We have orders to return to Qualihout?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Bria said.

  Tarkos checked the ship data fed to him through his implants. “But you’re laying in a direct course for Neelee-ornor.”

  “Yes,” Bria said.

  “Commander…?”

  Bria looked up at him. She usually hated to explain herself, but now there was only compassion in her four eyes. “Pala Eydis said Ulltrians will attack all worlds,” she said. “But special attack for Neelee-ornor.”

  Tarkos frowned. “We could go to Sussurat, instead. Or Earth. This cruiser would be a good planetary defense ship.”

  Bria huffed. “Yes. Good ship.”

  She seemed to consider it a long while, with both her huge green eyes and her fierce black eyes fixed on Tarkos. A four-eyed stare, the Sussurat show of respect.

  Tarkos sighed. “But we should go where the Galaxy needs us to be.”

  Bria blinked agreement. Tarkos sat down next to her as she programmed the last steps of the course for Neelee-ornor. The ship lurched into FTL.

  “Commander,” Tarkos said.

  Bria looked up at him.

  “I know this is hard for you, and I know you think I’m just a barbarian of a barbaric race.”

  Bria closed her top eyes to deny this, but Tarkos kept talking. “But I need you to talk to me, Bria. I need to be able to trust the Alliance again. I need to trust you. And this may be a stupid human thing but I’m a stupid human: we have to talk, Bria, or I can’t tell the difference between you and that machine and that damn OnUnAn.”

  Bria stared at him, her mouth open, her huge tongue moving slightly against her massive white fangs.

  “Tell me about your daughter,” he said, his voice a whisper. “Tell me about her.”

  Bria flinched. Tarkos tried to stay calm, but his heart began to pound. He had no idea how his partner would respond. She hated to talk about herself even when not, as she was now, full of pent up rage.

  Bria opened her claw and reached forward. For a moment, Tarkos thought she meant to wrap her nails around his throat. But instead, she tapped at his shirt, where the glass vial lay just beneath the cloth. “If tell about seed,” she said.

  Tarkos realized he’d been holding his breath. He exhaled. “Deal.”

  Bria turned her huge head to the front of the bridge, to stare out at the onrushing stars on the cracked screen. Her jaw worked a while, as if chewing on different words, struggling for what to say next. Finally, she managed, “What to tell?”

  “Tell me her name,” Tarkos said. “Tell me how you like to remember her. Tell me about the greatest thing she ever did.”

  “Treuntilliasussarius,” Bria said. She leaned back in her seat and the metal creaked under her huge weight. The stars streamed by, silent and attentive. “Had dark fur, green eyes, and long teeth. Blinked at no one. Loved the tallest trees of Sussurat. Wanted to be, like her mother, a Predator….”

  EPILOGUE

  Captain Nereenital of the starship Savannah Runner waited outside the black door set in the black wall. He hesitated, with one hoof tilted up on its edge, his ears perked forward in expectation but also held sideways in concern. Behind him, above him, even below his feet, his ship’s translucent hull revealed long shimmering vistas of open space. But here before him stood one of the few opaque doors on the ship: the entrance to the quarters of the Special Advisor to the Harmonizers, the warrior Preeajitala.

  Like other Neelee, Captain Nereenital loathed closed and constrained views. All Neelee had the same fear—they had evolved from plains-running herbivores, and still required long horizons, infinite escape routes, to feel safe. All Neelee except, it appeared, Preeajitala.

  As a guest on Nereenital’s ship, Preeajitala had lived for days with the walls of her quarters blackened, no view available to her but the six close walls, each just ten strides from the other. Yes, Preeajitala did it for security, to hide her communications. And yes, she could illuminate the walls with artificial views, landscapes of the great plains of Neelee-ornor, or any other world of their vast Neelee colonies. But that wasn’t the same. A Neelee could always tell the difference. Or, anyway, knowing that a view was false was enough to render it cramped.

  Nereenital suspected that Preeajitala lived in this claustrophobic state to prove to the ship’s crew that she was tougher than any of them. It unsettled the Captain, because he felt it as a subtle challenge. He had to go within, and act as untroubled as her. To do otherwise would be to admit to inferiority. And yet, how terrible….

  He tapped a hoof on the glassy floor to spurn himself on. He flexed his skin, making
his fur puff. He was the leader of a thousand crew, captain of a Neelee flagship, and a member of the Galactic Council. He should fear nothing. The door slid open when he touched it, to reveal a dim room. He stepped quickly into the Special Advisor’s quarters.

  The walls were dark, covered with a simple green pattern like leaves. The floor was dark as soil, but the ceiling had been set to show the small snatches of stars above the ship, as if peaking through a forest canopy.

  Nereenital pressed his mouth closed, a Neelee frown. So she maintains a pinched forest view while alone, he thought. She truly is mad.

  He took long slow breaths, as the door behind him slid closed. He suppressed the desire to stare upwards, at the stars, instead of meeting the eyes of Preeajitala, who stood expectantly behind a desk. She was a slight Neelee, with unusually dark fur and green, deep eyes. Nereenital would have found her very attractive, if he had seen her only in a hologram. But he knew better. Her way of holding her ears—pertly attentive but slightly aimed away—insulted him. It seemed to say, I’m am quite aware of what matters here, and you are not it. And, even setting aside this arrogance, her coldly calculating stratagems purged her of any appeal. To touch her would be like touching a weapon. He shivered again now, in her presence, as if she too were a wall standing too close to him, blocking his view, closing off options.

  But his voice barked out strongly. “We have received a report from the Executive Fleet contingent that followed the Harmonizers to the World Hammer.”

  Preeajitala bowed her head in expectation.

  “The Ulltrians have abandoned the system,” the Captain continued, “in several hundred ships, moving in diverse directions. They destroyed their cities before they left.”

  “The Harmonizers?” Preeajitala asked.

  “The Harmonizers survived, as did the Kirt artificial intelligence Tiklik’al’Takas, and some of the OnUnAn ambassador. The human Pala Eydis is dead.”

  Preeajitala closed her eyes a moment in a sign of respect. “So we do not know what the Ulltrians will do next,” she said.

  “Perhaps we know more than they hoped. A single Ulltrian remained behind, with a space gnasher.”

  “As in the ancient times,” the Special Advisor said, “to collect enemy soldiers for their experiments. Or to die trying.”

  “In this case: die trying. The Ulltrian killed the human Pala Eydis before Commander Briathursiasalientiormethesess killed the Ulltrian. But the report contains one… very surprising element. The Ulltrian ship’s mind is intact.” And now Nereenital did look up at the image of the stars above, as if expecting to see the ugly Ulltrian ship there. “The space gnasher’s systems have not been wiped. The Executive are collecting all the data that had been held in the ship’s systems.”

  Preeajitala lifted her ears straight up. “How did this come to be?”

  “The human Pala Eydis seized control of the Ulltrian ship and shut down its defenses.”

  “I have studied the history of the ancient war,” Preeajitala said. “In a hundred years of battle, that never happened. Every captured Ulltrian ship cleaned itself, destroyed itself, before it could be studied. Every one. Could this be a trap?”

  Nereenital shook his flanks, trying to cast off the feeling that he couldn’t breathe in the choked space. “Perhaps. But the Kirt Engineers of the Executive landing team believe that the human is responsible. They report she was skilled in systems control—indeed, not only far more skilled than we suspected any human could be, but more skilled than any of our own code warriors.”

  Now it was Preeajitala’s turn to press her mouth tightly closed in a frown, surprised by the news of the human woman’s prowess.

  “And there is another thing,” the captain said. “The Harmonizers did not stay to report to the Executives.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “They docked with their starsleeve, and then set course for Neelee-ornor.”

  Preeajitala blinked a long while, surprising the captain, who had never seen the Special Advisor hesitate. “I suggest that we go to Neelee-ornor also,” she finally said, in a voice soft with thoughtfulness.

  “I have come to tell you that we head there now.”

  Preeajitala clacked a hoof loudly in thanks. Nereenital walked to the door.

  “The humans are proving continually surprising,” Preeajitala said, before the captain could leave. “As surprising as the Sussurats. If they can learn to control themselves, and if they can learn to see and value the depths of time, they will be a great race.”

  “I only hope that they can forgive us,” the captain said.

  Preeajitala raised her nose slightly in a gesture of inquiry.

  “The Harmonizers are bringing back a monument plate that contains a treaty.”

  Preeajitala showed her teeth and tongue, a bitter smile for the Neelee. “As we suspected: the Ulltrians saved it and then left it for us to find. They will want to create disharmony in the Alliance. It also means that the Harmonizers will soon know what the Alliance did at the end of the war.”

  “Or they already know,” Nereenital said. “But there is another fact of interest. The Harmonizers report that they bring back a second monument plate. A plate describing a contract regarding genetic data.”

  Preeajitala’s eyes grew wide with surprise. “Whose data? With whom was the contract made?”

  “The Harmonizers did not say.”

  “I must investigate this,” the Special Advisor said. She turned her back to him, to face the wall. Data began to stream down through the image of the forest.

  The Captain looked up at the real time image projected on the ceiling. The stars smeared as the Savannah Runner leapt toward the world that was both capital of the Alliance and the place where he and Preeajitala had both been born. Neerenital wondered if he belonged to a cursed generation, that would see both the Alliance and their homeworld die. But he did not speak of this to the Special Advisor. She would do her duty, and he would do his. He turned his back to her, and started for the bridge, as his ship sped toward the deadly strife that awaited them all.

  The End

  The Predator Space Chronicles continue in

  Evolution Commandos: Ice Sky Storm

  THE PREDATOR SPACE CHRONICLES

  The Predator Space Chronicles will appear in periodic installments for the next several years.

  If you have not yet read or heard the story of the meeting of Tarkos and Bria, visit EscapePod and listen for free to “Asteroid Monte” at:

  http://escapepod.org/2012/02/23/ep333-asteroid-monte/

  Additional information about Predator Space Chronicles can be found at the author’s website: www.craigdelancey.com.

  To be added to the Predator Space email list, which will send you updates when new Predator Space material becomes available, send an email with the subject “Add me to the list” to: predators@craigdelancey.com.

  OTHER WORKS BY CRAIG DELANCEY

  GODS OF EARTH

  Thousands of years after a war against the gods drove humanity nearly extinct, something divine stirs. It awakens the Guardian, an ancient being pledged to destroy the gods—a task it believes long-accomplished. Through deep caverns, he makes his way to the desolate surface of the Earth and stalks toward the last human settlements, seeking the source of this strange power.

  Far away, the orphan Chance Kyrien is turning seventeen and will be confirmed as a Puriman. Ambitious, rebellious, but fiercely devout, Chance dreams only of being a farmer and winemaker…and marrying the girl he loves, the Ranger Sarah Michaels.

  But violence and destruction turns Chance and Sarah’s peaceful world upside down. Aided by his loyal friends and the Guardian, the young man must travel through time and space to battle the last remaining god. For the destinies of Chance and this final deity are fatally intertwined, and only one of them can survive.

  Multiple Hugo and Nebula Award Winning Novelist Nancy Kress says of the novel: “Gods of Earth begins with Chance Kyrien, a simple winemaker in a
rural village, and then opens up to a vast, complex future populated by men, machines, gods old and new, and creatures that are none of these. To save this world, Chance must conquer space and time, the gods that humans fashion from both, and the god-like power within himself. Craig DeLancey has created an astonishing, genuinely original fantasy world of exciting action and thought-provoking questions.”

  Available on 47 North Press as a trade paperback, ebook, and as an audiobook read by Nick Podehl.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Craig DeLancey is a writer and philosopher. He has published dozens of short stories in magazines like Analog, Cosmos, Shimmer, The Mississippi Review Online, and Nature Physics. His novel Gods of Earth is available now with 47North Press. He also writes plays, many of which have received staged readings and performances in New York, Los Angeles, Sydney, Melbourne, and elsewhere. His short story “Julie is Three” won the Anlab Readers’ Choice award in 2012 and his short play “My Tunguska Event” was a finalist in 2011 for the Heideman Award, given by the Actors Theatre of Louisville. Born in Pittsburgh, PA, he now makes his home in upstate New York and, in addition to writing, teaches philosophy at Oswego State, part of the State University of New York (SUNY).

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, and events herein are products of the author’s immensely potent imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual business establishments, places, events, or persons living or dead or undead is coincidental. However, the author does take all credit, and lays claim to all relevant copyrights and patents, for descriptions of future conditions and technologies that later prove to come true.