John Ringo - Council Wars 02 - Emerald Sea

by Emerald Sea(lit)

"If the triumph of New Destiny was so inevitable," Edmund replied, "Celine would not have introduced deadly poisons into the meeting. Nor would Paul be attacking us at every turn, building an invasion fleet, gathering forces on his coast. You could just sit back and let historical inevitability take its toll."

  "The people of Norau suffer under their tyrannical rule of an hereditary aristocracy, Duke Edmund," the orca replied, nastily. "It is the duty of New Destiny to free them from their feudal bondage."

  "The people of Norau voted upon the constitution," Edmund replied, tiredly. "Groups that have joined since have joined through plebiscites. We do not conscript soldiers, Change people horribly. We do not refer to the Changed as 'abominations.' "

  "So you say, Duke Edmund, but I do not see these people here. I see a duke and his family."

  "I am one of those 'people,' " Herzer responded, hotly. "I chose that life over yours, because I've seen the evil that comes wherever New Destiny touches! I will fight you with every ounce of my strength. With my last breath, I will curse you!"

  "Ah, yes," the orca replied, smiling as only an orca can smile. "His family and his chosen lapdog. I trust that Mistress Daneh is recovering from her ordeal."

  Herzer was halfway across the square before he felt arms holding him back. He struggled for a moment then shook them off and paused, panting.

  "You finny bastard," the lieutenant replied. "If it's the last thing I do I'll see your bird-picked carcass floating on the surface."

  "So you see the inherent peacefulness of the Freedom Coalition," Shanol replied to the group. "We send peaceful orcas, water dwellers, like you. And an unarmed freighter that is brutally waylaid and sunk. The Coalition sends an armed carrier, a general, and his hot-headed young lieutenant, a lieutenant that has been a party to crimes against his own people."

  This time, Herzer was able to ignore the jibe.

  "My demons are my own, fish-face," he said. "But at least I control them, not let them run at the head of the pack."

  "Pod, young man, pod," the orca sighed. "So, you see the truth of the choice. The violent philosophies of the Freedom Coalition, whose stated aim is to take over the world and rule it as they see fit. Or simple neutrality and protection from them by aid of New Destiny."

  "Yes, we can see it clearly enough," Jason replied. "Gentle lies in the mouth of the predators upon dolphins and whales or the simple truths spoken by people who have shown themselves to be our friends."

  "You may believe who you wish, Jason Farseeker," the orca replied, calmly. "But we are simple eaters of fish, just as you are. Perhaps we do not survive on sea plum, but, then again, who would, given the choice?"

  There was a chuckle from the crowd and Edmund looked around and shook his head.

  "Bruce and I have been discussing history," Edmund said. "I remember other groups, as should he, who, in their time, claimed 'inevitability.' The strange thing about all such groups, the Nazis, the Communists, the Wahabbists, the Melcon AI, is that, in every single case, those who lived under their benign leadership suffered untold hardships. The Nazis disliked various groups within their control and they were marched to slave labor and gas chambers, killing nearly ten million all told. The Communists believed that things should go a certain way, that things should be done as they commanded, and in their blindness, and often quite open-eyed, they killed nearly a hundred million people before true historical inevitability dragged them off their thrones. And everyone knows the story of the AI wars; it is far too grim to repeat. Yet, in every case, the side that claimed inevitability was brought to the ground. By free peoples, going open-eyed to their deaths, aware that they were doing so so that their children, and grandchildren," he added, looking at Bruce, "would not suffer the fates of those lucky individuals caught in the clutches of 'historical inevitability.' "

  "Yet, you speak of untold hardships," the orca replied. "How many died in Norau, Duke? Far more died in the Dying Time than in Ropasa. Because the leaders in Ropasa saw the need for a firm hand and ensured that their people were fit to survive. The people of Ropasa did not starve by roadsides, desperately searching for succor."

  "Strangely enough," Edmund said, dryly, "I remember those days. And I seem to recall that New Destiny had a far higher energy budget than the Freedom Coalition. Something about illicit access to the terraforming project power budgets. An access, I might add, that Herzer and I had a hand in ending, preventing the project from total energy drain. But by the time they were done they had taken more than half the power out of the core, putting the project back by over two hundred years."

  There was a mutter from the crowd at that. Even in the years after the Fall the Wolf 359 Terraforming Project was remembered, like a good dream at the end of the night. If there was anything to look forward to it was that at the end of the war they, or their children or their grandchildren, could continue the millennia-long project to create a new, livable, planet.

  "Lies and damned lies," the orca said smoothly. "Show me proof of this. I would be very surprised if there was any."

  "Well, I'd have to have access to Mother, wouldn't I?" Edmund replied. "And if I did, you would question the access. But I was there when Dionys McCanoc destroyed himself in a rush of power. It was I that put him in his prison of energy, a prison that was breached with the power equivalent of a nuclear weapon. Of course, he'd neglected to shield himself, so the prison became his tomb. Where, I wonder, did he get all that power? He, the New Destiny tool, who was the sole surviving member of the Project council. All the other members suffered mysterious, or not so mysterious, deaths just prior to and after the Fall."

  "You call innuendo and supposition proof?" the orca asked with a blatted chuckle. "But we stray far afield. You want these good people to risk themselves in a doomed gamble. We but wish them to maintain themselves in neutrality. In proof of our goodwill we had brought goods to help them, nets, fishhooks, traps and harpoons. Unfortunately, all of them were destroyed by the Freedom Coalition. This is proof, not innuendo."

  "And, as I said, I'm sure that it was just a friendly meeting on the sea," Edmund replied. "That your ship did not, for example, attack an unarmed clipper."

  "And if it was unarmed," the orca snarled, "how did it sink our ship?"

  "That, I'll admit, is a puzzler," Edmund said. "Honestly."

  "All I know is that they fired some sort of device off of the clipper," the orca replied. "Black and small as a yellow snapper. But the ship stopped and the scuppers ran with blood."

  Edmund turned as he heard a liquid chuckle and looked at Bast, who was staring at him with merriment in her eye.

  "Are you not glad, Duke Edmund," she said, still chuckling, "that I brought that bedamned rabbit?"

  Edmund started chuckling and ended up laughing heartily.

  "You think?"

  "Aye, methinks. A small object? Scuppers running with blood?"

  "Poor doomed bastards," Herzer said, chuckling as well. He turned to Jason and grinned. "Let's just say that we have a secret weapon. It won't usually work, but when it does..."

  "Scuppers running with blood?" Jason said, gulping. "I don't know."

  "You haven't been through territory that New Destiny has ravaged," Herzer replied. "You haven't stood before their Changed orcs, come upon the ruins of buildings, and people, that they leave behind," Herzer said, trying to check himself but realizing that the fury that lurked always just below his calm exterior was coming to the fore. "You haven't seen the feeding pots, with the legs of children turning in the boiling water."

  "Lies and damned lies!" the orca bellowed, looming over the unChanged human. "Recant those untruths!"

  "When you recant your lies, you... you... I can smell the flesh of dolphin on your breath like the evil stench of the lies you have been spouting!"

  The orca blatted him with sound and hooked his tail around, hitting the lieutenant with a blast of water that struck like a full body hammer. Herzer was thrown backwards through the water, half stunned. But he was used t
o fighting half stunned and before he had ceased to tumble his knife had appeared in his hand and he circled up and to the right, turning to try to get in on the flank of the orca.

  Suddenly the orca found two strong fingers pinching his blowhole and a long, slim, dagger pointed at his eye.

  "Take a bite out of my boyfriend," Bast purred, "and I'll drive this all the way to your brain."

  "You wouldn't dare," the orca said.

  "I've killed better orcas than you," she whispered, staring him in the eye. "And what you are is a psychopathic monstrosity. But, then again, so am I," she added and took a deep breath, letting it out in a long, unearthly sonar scream that echoed off the walls of the square.

  Herzer shivered and froze as the reverberations of the unholy, multitonal shriek washed through his body. It was the most gut-wrenching sound he had ever heard, including the death shriek of horses, which was as close as he could come to identifying it with a known sound.

  "Enough!" Bruce yelled. "Herzer, Bast, you're no longer to come into this town! Ambassador Shanol, I am forced to permit your continued presence, but one more such outburst and I will have you barred from the village as well, and your pod with you. Is that clear?"

  "Yes," the ambassador said, blowing out bubbles as a sort of throat clearing. "I... regret my outburst. But the statement that I would eat the flesh of my good friends the dolphins... you understand."

  "Fighting will not be tolerated," Bruce said. "That I understand. Duke Edmund?"

  "Herzer is one of my staff," Edmund replied. "And, I might add, has made valuable contributions to this community. But I accept that he is not to come within, say, one hundred meters of the town square. That means if we need to meet, it is a reasonable swim for one or both of us. As for Bast," he sighed. "She goes where she wills."

  "I'll not come back to this town until invited," the elf said. "But those reshanool had better stay far from me or I'll teach them what the myth of the food chain really means."

  "Agreed," Bruce said. "And Ambassador Shanol, you and your pod are to stay away from the visitors from the mainland. The first sign of any further conflict and I am going to expel both groups."

  Herzer had already sheathed his knife and now nodded at Edmund, then turned and swam towards shore followed by Bast. As he passed over one of the canyons, Antja and Elayna popped out of a swim-through and Pete and Jackson popped out of another.

  "This sucks!" Pete said angrily. "That damned dolphin-eater turns up and you just get tossed out. It's not like you struck the first blow; he hit you solid."

  "Yeah," Jackson added. "You okay?"

  "I've had worse," Herzer said.

  "I'd noticed the scars," Antja said. "But I hadn't wanted to ask. Or about the hand."

  "Well, I think it's time to tell you all about it," Herzer said. "But not here. Up on shore where fish-face can't come."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Herzer was actually glad to get out of the water. He had been losing weight, too, on the high-protein diet and constant cold. The warm sun of the Isles felt good on his back.

  "After the Fall, I fell in with a guy named Dionys McCanoc," Herzer said as the group dragged itself onto the shore.

  "Met him," Bast said. "Bastard." She sat down behind Herzer and started massaging his neck. "Let me handle the orcas, lover. But if you have to fight one, remember they're really sensitive about their blowholes. Get them by that and it's like holding a man's balls. I mean, in a fight, not, you know..."

  "I know," Herzer said, smiling. Bast could make everything a joke, which was just about the only way to live life he decided. "Anyway, McCanoc."

  "Didn't Edmund mention him?" Pete asked, as Jason dragged himself out of the water.

  "This sucks," Jason said, crawling over to the group. "I wanted to stick a spear in that arrogant New Destiny fisker."

  "Didn't we all," Jackson replied. "Bast, that was unbelievable. I never saw you move, you were just there."

  "Bast is an elf," Bast said, then raised a hand to forestall comment on the apparent non sequitur. "Everyone seems to think that elves are human. Not. Elves were constructed from ground up. No haphazard evolution for us. Look, somewhat, human, but are not. Better, stronger, faster, which is a very old joke. But also... happier. Less... serious than humans. Humans with their short lives always live in the now, which is good in a way. But elves are half the time in Dream, only way to spend a millennia or so. Me, I tend to spend most of my time in the now. Sometimes it hurts. I'll live on when Herzer gets gray and dick goes all flabby and then he dies. And I'll remember him, as I remember scores, hundreds, of others. And love them all. As long as Bast lives, they live on in one heart," she said, tapping her chest.

  "But Bast is not a human, nor a Changed human. Bast is an elf. And what is impossible, even for most Changed, is normal to elves. Be glad elves so happy. If not, there be no more humans on earth."

  "So you're not a Change race?" Antja asked. "Like the mer or the delphinos?"

  "No," Bast said, shaking her head. "We're a made race, like the dragons. And, like the greater dragons, we have abilities that were, finally, recognized as just too dangerous to let breed unchecked. So most of us retreated to Elfheim and live in Dream."

  "What abilities?" Jackson asked.

  "That is for elves, and Mother and the Council, to know," Bast said with a grin. "But know this, I can take an orca, any single orca and probably more than one, in the water, mask or no mask. I'll give you one: I can hold my breath as long as delphino. Mask is really unnecessary so far."

  "Damn," Jason said.

  "I am as fast as a mer in the water," she added. "And can keep it up as long or longer." She nodded at a rock in the sand by Jackson. "Throw rock."

  "This?" Jackson said, picking it up.

  "Throw. Hard. To hit."

  "I don't want to hit you," Jackson temporized.

  "Won't," Bast said. She waited, leaning on one arm, the other hand languidly at Herzer's side, until Jason threw. She caught the hard-flung rock out of the air and, in turn, tossed it against the bluff so hard it cracked and left half of its mass buried in the limestone.

  She stood up and pointed about a hundred yards down the beach.

  "See big rock?" she asked and took off.

  Her speed was phenomenal, especially since she was running on sand. The sand flew up behind her like a rooster-tail and by the end of the run she was striding nearly five meters at a time, bounding more like a gazelle than anything human. But she slammed to a stop at the end and then began cartwheeling and back flipping nearly as fast back to where the group was sitting with open mouths. She ended in a multiple flip and twirl that had her lowest point no less than two meters off the ground; she had jumped nearly twice her own height into the air.

  "Not human," Bast said, dropping back to a lotus position and not even breathing hard. "Look, somewhat, human, but less human than chimpanzee." She smiled at Herzer. "Will not comment on what that means for mating, morality wise."

  "The elves were created as super-soldiers, by the North American Union," Herzer amplified. "Bast..."

  "Bast was created by Nissei Corporation during height of AI war," Bast said. "Is old joke, old even then, 'cheap Japanese knockoff.' " She grinned at the joke. "But not so bad knockoff, no?"

  "Not bad at all," Jason said. "Jesus."

  "Bast, I've got a question," Herzer said. "What was that... horrible sound you made when you were holding Shanol."

  "That was the hunting scream of an orca," Jason said, shuddering. "I've heard it before."

  "There are two types of orca," Antja amplified. "There are pods that generally stay in one area and hunt fish. And then there are nomad tribes, which hunt marine mammals. They're practically identical, but the nomads use that... sound when they are hunting. And for all they look the same, they're pretty much two distinct subraces of orca. And that sound... it's eerie as hell."

  "It is indeed," Bast said. "Often thought that it was original of banshee's cry. But Herzer w
as explaining some of what Edmund and dolphin-eater were talking about."

  "Yeah, Herzer," Antja said. "I want to know what he said that set you off the first time. Something about Doctor Daneh."

  "As I said, I fell in with Dionys McCanoc," Herzer said, for a moment reliving those days and seeing the house-broad McCanoc as if he were alive. "This is... I have to give you the background, sorry. I... knew he wasn't the greatest guy in the world. No, I'll be more honest. I'd discovered shortly before the Fall that he was a bug-house nuts bastard. But... when I was growing up, I had a genetic problem that screwed up my nerves. I shook all the time, had a hard time speaking. And it was just getting worse and worse. So I didn't have many friends. And when it got worse I ended up with almost none. McCanoc... picked up on that and drew me into his circle. Generally as the butt of his jokes. But when I got better, when Dr. Daneh cured me, finally, I still hung around with him. Right up until just before the Fall, when I decided to give him a wide berth."