“There’s been a change in the situation,” he said after the introductions were over. “The Barcans somehow managed to trap both Rifter fleets by extending the resonance field.”
“But the damn Barcans’re still not fighting,” Captain Agenes said. The old woman looked more impatient than the young ensign at the com console.
“Can you blame them?” Meliarch ZiTuto said, opening a hand.
These were the people Lochiel would be working with on the coming attack; she always learned everything she could of her allies as well as her enemies.
“The Barcans were xenophobic even before they started hearing about the disasters from the rest of the Thousand Suns,” the Meliarch went on. “We can be assured that any info relayed by the Rifters will show no naval victories.”
“And now they have to choose between Neyvla-khan and Hreem the Faithless as their new ‘protectors.’” Commander Thad spoke up. She was maybe thirty, first officer of the Shamsin, her throaty soprano conveying cool amusement.
“So the implication is, we can’t expect any help from the Barcans?” Lochiel asked, watching the gazes turn her way.
“We can’t even be sure they won’t fire on us,” Commander Kor-Mellish said, her face somber. “EM from Barca indicates little confidence in the Panarchy.”
“They probably figure they can strike a deal with Eusabian,” Captain Bonxer put in.
“To whom the Ban means nothing.” The new speaker was Commander Gyisquil, armorer on the Claidheamh Mor—a tall, thin man with a long, deeply lined face.
“Ogres.” Bonxer scowled. “That’s what Eusabian wants.”
Cameron swiftly outlined the tactical situation. He and his officers had evolved several plans. None of them had been very satisfactory—there had been no secure way to contact Hreem beforehand, and no way to predict how the Barcans and Neyvla-khan would react to the emergence of a ship allied with him.
“But now, since the Barcans popped out the resonance field and interdicted fiveskip, the Rifters are on more predictable courses with a smaller drunkwalk spread, so we can probably get a tightbeam to Hreem. Can you think of anything you could say to Hreem to slow down his responses, at least?” he asked. “Maybe a feint for the Barcans and Neyvla-khan to read, to set them up as well. We’ve got some new possible tactical sets here.” The plot-pane came to life.
“That could give us more time to deal with Neyvla-khan,” Refren ZiTuto put in.
Several stirred, and the back of Lochiel’s neck tightened at the cold venom in the man’s voice; she thought, I’m going to hear that from all the navy, considering what Neyvla-Khan did to Minerva. Even though she had no emotional ties to the Panarchy’s Navy save through her cousin, the vid of the slagging of the Naval Academy and Minerva had given her nightmares.
A privacy came to her from Cameron. (He lost his lifemate on Minerva.)
Lochiel acknowledged him with a flicker of a glance. She turned her attention to the tactical display, and considered the political possibilities. Hreem’s hatred for Neyvla-khan was legendary, and more than reciprocated. “I can tell him you’re part of Charterly’s fleet that didn’t have the Urian gear, so you skipped out when things went sour at Dolorosa,” she began.
Then she remembered something Shtoink had said, after their first visit to Cameron’s destroyer. The Kelly had been fascinated by lance technology—they seemed to find something about it uproariously amusing.
“Wait. How about a lance attack on the outer moon—” She squinted at the plot. “Avasta?” She turned a doubtful look at ZiTuto. Why hadn’t they considered this? “You can fit lances for asteroidal operations, right? Take over the lazplaz installation bearing on the likely engagement space to use against the Rifters?”
He acknowledged with a curt nod. “Tesla mole. Throws rock like a fountain from Haruban’s Hell. And Avasta’s perfect for that, since they moved it into that orbit about a hundred years ago. The Barcan response’d be slowed down, thinking at first that the lance impacts and tunneling were seismic activity from tidal stress.” His dark, chiseled features settled into grimness. “But we can’t get them to the moon without detection. There isn’t time.”
“It’d take too long to approach in real time, but the skip pulses of the delivery ship’d give you away,” Messina spoke up, her navigator’s mind grasping the essentials immediately.
ZiTuto acknowledged with a gesture, almost a salute.
“I don’t suppose you can disguise the signature of the lances like you can the other ships?” Bayrut asked. Lochiel nodded. ECM could alter the signature of the destroyers and other vessels to closely match the older ships characteristic of Rifter fleets.
“Too much engine in relation to their mass.” Lochiel identified the speaker: Lieutenant Commander Abramson, an expert in ECM from the Kilij, the third destroyer of the naval squadron.
“And the situation is too uncertain to wait,” added Cameron. “The Barcans could strike a deal with Eusabian at any moment.”
During the silence, several looked grim, and more than a few seemed to be exchanging privacies. Lochiel hoped they were trying out ideas, and not slanging the Rifters.
“Stealth fiveskip,” Shtoink said, while Nyuk2 and Wu4 keened in counterpoint.
Meliarch ZiTuto looked askance, his lips tight.
“No such thing,” said Captain Agenes.
“Perhaps,” replied Shtoink. The Kelly intertwined their head-stalks in a complex pattern that Lochiel recognized—only two of the three sensory clusters would be visible from any given point around them. Enigmatic mode. She was constantly amazed at the similarity in the role of gesture in both Kelly and Douloi communications. “But do the Rifters know that? Or the Barcans?”
“There’ve been rumors on the RiftNet,” said Messina.
Mutters and shifts of excitement went through the officers; a few covert looks were sent Lochiel’s way. Yeah, not a lot of trust there.
“Hreem would concentrate here, then.” Bonxer pinpointed a slice of orbits from his console. “He’d actually want to take higher orbits, to be shadowed longer by Barca from the other moon’s weapons fire.”
“Neyvla-khan would be only too happy to take the lower orbits at first, but he’s a clever chatzer,” Captain Agenes added. “He’d suspect something eventually.”
“But he’d be concentrated here, at first.”
Comments overtopping each other elicited slashing lines and evolving blots of color as the tactics emerged. It wasn’t perfect, but it removed many of the degrees of freedom available to their opponents.
“It’s too bad we can’t really do it,” Cameron said. “We’ll already have Hreem set up for a destroyer sortie, but we’d set up Neyvla-khan for decimation by Avasta, if we could grab the weapons, and the Barcans wouldn’t know where to shoot from the other moon.”
“Neat,” Kor-Mellish said, then in a lower voice, “But impossible.”
Someone sighed; ZiTuto glared at the plot pane as if willing a solution to reveal itself. Messina glared as if trying to force some sense onto the confusion of alternatives. Cameron caught Lochiel’s eye, and her boz pinged. (We’re seeing the visceral impact of Eusabian’s hyperwave on tacticians.)
Lochiel grimaced back at him.
In reality, facing opponents with near-perfect communications, the Shiavona would have to commence the attack by taking out the weapons on the outer moon, timed to coincide with a sneak-missile attack on the Rifter ships, and then, after taking out the outer resonance field, a general engagement. And no one could predict what the Barcans would do.
After an interval of fruitless speculation, Cameron suggested they break, as the watch was about to change anyway. He invited the three Rifters and the Kelly to the officers’ mess along with his executives and Meliarch ZiTuto, while the others returned to their ships.
ZiTuto produced a set of Kelly drinking bubbles, and Cameron watched in fascination as Shtoink-Nyuk2-Wu4 drank from each other’s bubbles in a triply syncopated rhythm of i
ntertwined head-stalks. He was glad the bubbles were heavily tinted: the thick, chunky appearance of whatever the Kelly were drinking, or rather ingesting, made his bile rise.
“It’s too bad you couldn’t bring your trinat,” Bayrut said.
The man’s heavy face betrayed no humor, but Cameron sensed some teasing.
“I’m sure Messina misses it.” Bayrut added, causing a blush in the gray-eyed navigator.
Lochiel’s tousled brown hair bent close so all they could see was Messina’s neat black hair; Lochiel whispered something caused Messina’s shoulders to shake with silent laughter.
Messina was almost always in the middle of the three—a human trinity, Cameron noted idly, and smiled at the unexpected reminder of the Kelly. Only humans weren’t Kelly. He wondered how the three of them balanced their relationship; he knew they’d been together for twenty years. Cameron himself couldn’t manage a single relationship for much longer than a tour of duty.
Shtoink bent her head-stalk toward Bayrut, twisted it so that first one pair of eyes regarded him unblinkingly, and then another pair. Is one of their three eyes dominant? Cameron wondered.
“Wethree could do that, yes,” the Intermittor said, and Nyuk2 and Wu4 hooted briefly.
Cameron was pleased to note that he could now tell the two other Kelly apart. He thought of them as males, although he knew they weren’t.
“But then, in all fairness, wethree would have to grant Messina’s likely request.”
Bayrut mimed question.
“Wethree should have to grace you with an advanced case of Yaffidian Bungee-Balls, rendering you unable to walk without tripping.”
Commander Kor-Mellish snorted into her drink, then inhaled and choked as general quarters blared through the ship and the comscreen lit up.
“Captain,” a young lieutenant reported. “Three ships, clustered on zero-zero, one thousand kilometers out. There was no emergence pulse—they were just there!” He looked down at his console and his eyes widened. “They’re Kelly. A third of a Fox-class tripod.”
A window offered a view of the intruders, one ship larger than the other two, inversely mirroring Kelly biology.
“Maintain status, shields up full,” Cameron snapped, turning to Lochiel’s Rifter Kelly.
A sharp scent redolent of cinnamon and burnt leaves rose from them, which Cameron was now sure was amusement.
“‘In sweet music is such art, killing care and grief of heart.’” Nyuk2 nudged Messina gently, then the Kelly made a triple deference to Cameron. “Our gift to you: there are more.”
Cameron struggled to assemble his thoughts. The Kelly ships had appeared in the heading that made them most vulnerable to a destroyer’s weapons, an unmistakable sign of benign intentions. But without an emergence pulse! And how had they found them?
Then the Kelly’s quote penetrated.
The trinat? It was generally assumed that one of the secret protocols in the Kelly-Human treaties granted the aliens the right to emplace transponders in any human system. Was the trinat, described to him by Lochiel, the link to them? Perhaps the Kelly Elder had always had an escort, which even their Rifter shipmates hadn’t known about. Even the most paranoid tech wouldn’t detect spread spectrum signals buried in the random spurts of static that emanate from any ship.
This changed everything. “Stand down to yellow,” he said. “I’m coming up. Signal the squadron, and my compliments to all tactical executives, meeting at 1600.”
“Ay-Kay, sir.” Then: “Signal incoming.”
“Put it through.”
A window bloomed with the image of a Kelly trinity.
“Captain Cameron ban-McKenzie. You may call usthree Ish, May, and Ell.” Cameron smelled the sharp scent again from Shtoink’s trinity. “Commander of the ***** tripod,” continued the Kelly onscreen, whistling unintelligibly. “I suggest the use-name Sunbird.”
“Three threes of ships,” ZiTuto said. “Their standard tactical unit. The large one of each third, the Intership, is the command vessel.”
Cameron nodded, then deferred to the Elder. After a short sequence of melodious sounds, the Kelly captain requested permission to come aboard, which Cameron granted gladly.
“Elder,” said ZiTuto as the screen blanked, “your ships. No emergence pulse was detected.”
“That is our gift—not that we can fit your ships with that technology here, but that you may know of it, which we have hidden from humans for many years.”
The meliarch turned to Cameron, his eyes wide. “The lance attack. Now it could work.”
“Only the three Interships can grapple your lances,” said the Kelly. “We could carry more Marines, in armor, sealed.” The head-stalks of the trinity writhed oddly. “We fear no human could breathe our ship’s air. The atmosphere is too intense.”
“I remember,” ZiTuto said. “We all wore breathers on the homeworld, and all of us required intensive Kelly medical intervention against allergens. But we don’t need more than three lances anyway, if intelligence about the Barcan weapons complex on Avasta is accurate.”
His face now animated, the meliarch continued. “We’ll use one standard lance to take and hold the ship bay, and two tesla moles: one detachment for the attack on the control room proper and one to secure the route between it and the ship bay. ”
“They’ll have backup control,” said Cameron. “So we’ll need a detachment to sabotage the lazplaz bearing on the engagement space once they get control back. And sufficient ships to get the Marines off again.”
“What about the Ogres?” asked Commander Gyisquil. He turned to ZiTuto. “I’ve every confidence in you and your Marines, but the truth is, you’ve never trained to go up against Ogres, have you?”
Everyone looked at Meliarch ZiTuto. Long-standing intelligence had made it clear that the Barcans relied on Ogres, or something like them, for anti-personnel defense at all their installations.
He shook his head, his expression grim again. “That’s one thing we never expected to have to do; all of the Naval ones have self-destructs. We can be sure the Barcan ones won’t.”
“And we don’t know what other capabilities they’ll have, either.” Gyisquil’s tone flattened as he struggled between civilized horror at machine intelligence and professional curiosity about how the Barcans might exploit it.
“We can help with the Ogres, too,” said Shtoink.
“We’ll discuss it further at sixteen hundred,” Cameron said. “In the meantime, you can get started on the technical details of the lance mission. For now, with your leave.” He included the Rifters, ZiTuto, and the Kelly in his deference, indicating military exigencies for the benefit of the Elder, and walked out, trailed by his executives.
“I wonder how they do it,” Commander Dawsun mused as the transtube whisked them toward the bridge. His tone was wistful; Cameron knew that the engineering exec was itching to dive into the Kelly engines to extract their secret.
“Regardless, it’s an incredible sacrifice for the Kelly to make.” Kor-Mellish shook her head.
“They’ve got as much at stake as we do,” Cameron said. “Or more. Eusabian won’t kill off the human race, even if he gets an army of Ogres; he might the Kelly.”
“Although I warrant we’d be better off dead than living in a Thousand Suns ruled by Dol’jharians,” the first officer added.
“No argument there,” Cameron agreed fervently as the transtube hatch opened to the bridge. “So we’ll have to do whatever we can to make sure we don’t ever face that choice.”
FLOWER OF LITH
“Why should I take it off?” Hreem demanded, glaring at the luckless Barcan. “They sprang the trap right after you entered atmosphere. You were part of it.”
Standing behind the captain’s pod, Norio shivered with sweet anguish as Hreem’s rage swelled.
Riolo attempted to look dignified, an attempt seriously compromised by his runny nose and heavily tearing eyes. In one of her constant acts of petty malice, Metije had snagg
ed his goggles as he came onto the bridge, and his eyes couldn’t deal with bright lights.
“Would I have returned, then?” he asked, sniffling a little and tugging at the poison collar. There was no bravado in his voice, and, strangely, little fear. Norio tried digging deeper, but the sexual undercurrent that was so much a part of the little troglodyte’s emotional spectrum defeated him again. He could read only a vague hopefulness, and no sense of betrayal.
The Barcan’s reasonable tone tripped the trigger on Hreem’s anger. He sprang to his feet and lunged at Riolo, knocking the smaller man to the deck. Hreem stood athwart his body, balancing himself on one foot with the heel-claw of the other pricking through the cloth over the Barcan’s heart. Norio shivered and sidled closer, drinking in the melange of emotions.
Lust, anger, fear, crowd-hunger . . . what a feast! The tang was almost too much to bear, like the taste of blood. He stared avidly at the small red stains spreading on Riolo’s shirt.
“The Matria will give you all the Ogres you want, if you defeat Neyvla-khan. But they will not risk the wrath of the Lord of Vengeance by taking sides.” Riolo’s voice was breathy. Norio could feel his fear mounting at last.
“Captain?” Erbee’s voice was hesitant. “I think there’s a tightbeam comin’ in.” His fingers danced over the tabs of his scan console, teasing the signal out of noise. “It’s Shiavona’s code. Tag indicates they’re inside the inner asteroid belt.”
A long pause ensued, then Hreem pulled his foot away. He pointed his heel-claw straight at Riolo’s face. Norio marveled at his sense of balance—he could point as effectively with his foot as his hand, without looking foolish.
“You’re not out of this yet.” Hreem flexed his foot, retracting the heel-claw, then his heel impacted the deck with a decisive ring. “Somebody get the collar off him. Put Lochiel on.”
The screen windowed up a fractal nightmare that slowly resolved into a round, plain, motherly female face as the computer decompressed and processed the repetitive squirt that made up the tightbeam coming in.
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