The Blockade

by Jean Johnson

  “It’s short for A’sha-rayn,” Ka’atieth explained.

  Li’eth smiled, amused. “You already told me your personal name, remember?”

  “Ah, right. Well . . . no putting your feet up on the back of my seat,” she ordered. “I don’t care if you outrank me. It’s annoying, and you’re not going to do it.”

  “I won’t. And I try not to be too annoying. My little brother . . .” He let the implications take over.

  “That does raise a good question. Why haven’t Their Highnesses gone into the military?” Nakko asked. His hands and eyes moved over the controls of the shuttle, both above and below the main viewscreen. His actions warmed up the engines, making them whine and the bulkheads thrum quietly, but it was clear he was familiar enough with his duties to hold a conversation while getting things ready.

  “Policy,” Li’eth explained. “One child at a time in the military. That’s in case there’s a war, and the bloodline is threatened. The Empress, knowing of the passages in the Sh’nai Book of Prophecies about me, delayed my going into the military a few years by having me serve a rotating apprenticeship with various high-ranking officials. I think, now at least, it was because she knew or at least hoped I’d be involved in diplomacy afterward and would need a good feel for how our government works.

  “As it was, I was just a few months away from being released from military service when the Salik attacked, and that was that. Mah’nami and Balei’in cannot be considered the most direct heirs because of it, but at the same time, they are free from any obligation of having to stay and fight. That would allow them to scatter and preserve the bloodline in distant lands. The rest of us . . . My elder sisters and I have to be under direct orders to flee; otherwise, we have to remain in a position that’s ready to assume the War Crown and take command.”

  “Ah, right. Four millennia ago, um . . . during the Internecine Wars,” A’sha agreed. “I remember it from my history lessons. The bloodline was almost wiped out because everyone in the immediate Imperial Family was in the military, and they kept dying off in all the fighting. One way or another. Wasn’t one of your ancient predecessors hanged for desertion?”

  “Beaten, hanged, and set ablaze by his officers, who were not happy that one of the War King’s descendants could be such a coward. Our bloodline was almost wiped out because everyone in the immediate Imperial Family were congenital idiots and went to war with themselves,” Li’eth countered bluntly.

  Nakko gaped at him.

  Li’eth, seeing his shock, shrugged. “It’s the truth. The immediate bloodline withered due to idiocy brought out by inbred congenital defects, and thus eventually passed to a collateral branch that hadn’t inbred itself into violent psychopathy. They gained a large enough following, took over the Eternal Throne, and that was when the breeding and inheritance-by-competency laws were established for all the upper Tiers.”

  “Then I suppose your collateral branch is going to get the freshest blood possible added to it, since the Grand High Amba—” She broke off, frowned at a blinking light on her side of the cockpit screens, and touched a control, activating an open commlink. “This is Shuttle 205-671. What’s up? We’re not being denied exit clearance, are we?”

  “Turn on comm channel 3!” a male voice exclaimed through the comm speakers, palpably excited. “The Terrans have reactivated their communications systems again! We’re getting a signal straight from the Winter Palace. Is His Hi . . . Is the Grand Captain on board, yet? He needs to see this!”

  All three of them exchanged startled looks. The leftenant superior quickly switched on the viewscreen and accessed the channel in question. Master of Ceremonies appeared on the screen. Behind him and somewhat obscured but still visible . . . his mother, the Eternal Empress, could be seen. Alive, and with a certain markless, tanned Terran woman lounging at her bedside.

  “Thank all the Saints . . .” Li’eth breathed, deeply relieved, studying both females.

  “We’ve just been cleared for takeoff. Hang on, Highness,” the leftenant told them, pointing at a green light on one of his lower screens. A moment later, the lighting turned red, indicating the atmosphere had been retracted, and a chunk reverberated through the deck plates. The warship had released their docking clamps. Nakko eased up and guided the shuttle in a slow curve forward and to their right, toward the ponderously opening blast doors. “We’ll get you back home safe and sound, I promise . . .”

  V’DAN

  Master of Ceremonies finished his invocation, and Empress Hana’ka began to speak with crisp enunciation, as if to prove she was fully in command of her mental faculties even if she was laid up by her injuries. Jackie subtly leaned a bit more on the bed railing, folding one arm in front of the other. She meant it as an impression of familiarity, and thus of implied friendship and support, but also because as time wore on, her dizziness sapped at her energy.

  In the middle of a gesture, Hana’ka touched Jackie’s fingers with the backs of her knuckles. On pure instinct, Jackie shifted her hand, clasping the Empress’ fingers. A subtle squeeze from Hana’ka and the way her hand lingered let Jackie know that her response was the correct one. It also gave her contact with the Empress’ mind; she tried screening it out, but Hana’ka’s thoughts were filled with echoes of the younger woman at her side.

  For a long moment, the Terran telepath had a hard time sorting out those thoughts. Surface ones held pre-echoes overlapped with what Hana’ka was actually saying. A second layer behind it was her mind racing to make sure each word was laid with the care of a mason mortaring stones in place; Hana’ka believed they had to be perfectly placed for the best strength and impact. A third layer worried over what Jackie and her people would think of such careful phrasing, which had to be stated just so to have an impact in V’Dan law but which had not yet been established solidly in its translated meanings in Terran law.

  Underneath that lay a swirling mass of anger and disappointment at her eldest daughter, anxiety for her eldest son’s absence, worry for her other children, her mate, her fears for her people in the face of a Salik attack that had gotten through to the Winter Palace itself—that last one terrified her, deep down inside. Admiration for the Terrans, their courage under fire, their courtesies, her personal remorse that they were still being dismissed and disdained . . . but also a constant hesitation, like a mental stumble, over their childlike faces. And a determination not to see them as children anymore. That determination within the Empress made her squeeze Jackie’s hand subtly once again.

  Jackie squeezed back equally gently. She would never speak to anyone of what she sensed, but she did silently acknowledge understanding the older woman for a moment before carefully strengthening her mental walls. It was coming up to her turn to speak, and she readied herself to say what her fellow Terrans wanted her to say, what the V’Dan hoped she would say, and what the Alliance needed to hear.

  Master of Ceremonies, standing off camera to one side, pointed at her. Jackie faced the V’Dan commscreen pickups, not the Terran ones.

  “The Terran United Planets accepts the apologies of the Eternal Throne for the insults which V’Dan have given to our people,” she stated formally. “We are grateful your Empress sees and acknowledges the very real cultural differences between our kind. We strive to be fair in our dealings, to be respectful and understanding, but we will not compromise in requiring respect given in return. This apology and compliance comes from the V’Dan Empire, and to the V’Dan Empire we will give our cooperation and the resumed loan of our communications capabilities.

  “To the other members of the Alliance, however . . . we are limiting access to those capabilities until each of your governments also agrees to our terms. You will treat us with respect. You will treat us as a sovereign and separate nation, a sovereign and separate culture, and a sovereign and separate power. You will neither assume nor presume we are V’Dan. We respect our own rights and differences as we res
pect your rights and differences, and we require the same in return.

  “You will have our assistance in this war against the Salik. I have touched their minds,” Jackie confessed, “and found them to be a very serious threat. I have, with each of their permission, also touched the minds of select K’Katta, Gatsugi, Tlassian, and Solarican envoys over the last few weeks of our stay here on V’Dan, and have not found you, as a whole, to be any threat to Terran lives and Terran interests. We appreciate this deeply as one sentient culture to another.

  “We understand the necessity of peace because we understand the value of cooperation. The Salik think in terms of deception, stalking, and predation. They will not stop until they are forced to stop. Since I believe in giving others second chances,” she added, glancing at the Empress, who smiled slightly, wryly, “and as my government does as well . . . we will coordinate our forces and technologies with the Alliance’s efforts to help you win this war and help you contain that Salik threat.

  “With that in mind, my government has authorized the following actions, contingent upon each system’s local leadership agreeing to cooperate with Terran requirements in exchange for Terran communications capabilities . . .”

  CHAPTER 3

  SHUTTLE LEAPING KITTEN

  V’TON-BEI ORBIT

  “Praise the Moons, they’re back on our side! It’s not just for being able to talk star to star, either,” Nakko told them. The Empress was spending a few moments formally thanking the Grand Ambassador, and the shuttle was on autopilot for this part of the trip. Orbital mechanics were not easy to fly through. “I saw some of those little Terran ships and their bomb-things in action in orbit, back around the Motherworld. They were amazing. Giant chunks of Salik warships, just . . . gone! With their communications giving us the chance to coordinate our counterattacks, and their massive firepower—”

  “—That firepower was their communications devices,” Li’eth corrected, cutting off the leftenant’s enthusiasm with a grim look. “They blew up more than a dozen of their satellites defending V’Dan from the Salik, and they can’t make them all that fast. Shipping them to the homeworld takes added time, too.”

  “No! We need those things,” the leftenant protested, twisting to look at Li’eth. Trusting to the computers to navigate them between parking orbits via a course plotted by the V’Ton-Bei Orbital Control system, he chose to argue his point. “They can’t just blow them up!”

  “They can, and they did, and in doing so, they saved the homeworld. Now quiet, please. I want to hear what else the Empress is sayi—”

  “—The Salik!” Ka’atieth shouted, pointing off to starboard.

  The other two in the cockpit snapped their gazes that way. Bright columns of orange light lanced through the night even as they did so, crossing the half-lit curve of the colonyworld on their port side. Nakko whipped back around to grab at the controls and disengage the autopilot, swerving their view and even their inertial momentum with a wild maneuver to try to get away from the incoming ships. He swore with rising fear and volume as he did so. “V’shova v’shiel v’shakka v’cara u’vieth u’v’shova u’v’kanna u’v’shakk-ath . . . !”

  Li’eth didn’t even have time to think about that unholy collection of improper high nouns. The lasers were alarming enough on their own; their shuttle was too small to have hull plating strong enough to ward off those energy cannons. But the lasers were only the start. Projectile weapons would soon follow, ranging from hull-shearing explosives to grappling torpedoes meant to haul a vessel within boarding range.

  Small as it was, the Leaping Kitten might pass unnoticed by someone choosing to aim for a larger, higher-yield target, but some of those projectiles, if not all, would have proximity detectors.

  Some of those—movement! Eyes straining, Li’eth saw little flutters of darkness sweeping across the sky, briefly blocking out the light of the stars—incoming! Horrified, he threw up his hands, pulling up everything he could from within himself to save them from destruction, to save himself from—

  AVRA 5, 9508 V.D.S.

  SIC TRANSIT

  “. . . Of course, with the Eternal Empire backing these things officially and firmly, the Terran ground troops that were originally promised will be expected to resume their deployment shortly,” Empress Hana’ka continued as soon as Jackie finished the short but poignant list of Terran demands. “Our troop transports should be arriving any day, and with the Terrans’ inoculation efforts for their algic reaction needs focusing on their professional soldiers—”

  “Allergic reaction,” Jackie corrected smoothly. Automatically, actually; most of her attention strayed now to the increasingly exhausting drain to her left. At least the Empress appeared to be focusing her eyes properly by now, and the biokinetic heat in Jackie’s hands had eased and faded completely. Which meant she had no idea what was causing that drain to her left instead of a drain to her right.

  “Allergic, thank you,” Hana’ka acknowledged smoothly. “With those histaminic needs taken care of, we will be able to feed and house your people’s soldiers as they fight for their cousins, and for a chance at a veteran’s homestead on each colonyworld defended. As per our earlier negotiations, each veteran’s homestead rights will be considered firstworlder-colonist rights, albeit at one-quarter the amount of land normally claimed by firstworlder settlers, in exchange for top veteran care for any . . .”

  Panic slammed into Jackie in a gasp and a flex of her hand, releasing the Empress’ fingers. It came out of nowhere—it came from her left, like a spear thrust into her side. No, like a harpoon, one that flexed out its barbs and yanked her back to her left, toward her missing half. She had a split second to react under the impact of that overwhelming fear, and in that moment of flexing, of grappling, sensed a great peril that had to be answered.

  Lurching leftward with her mind even more so than her body, Jackie whipped that panic into a packet and flung herself far away. She leaped on instinct through the void between one fraction of a heartbeat and the next, through a gap in reality that flared in blinding white, cloaked everything in streaks of gray, and slammed into a half-dark reality dotted with colored lights and nonmedical angles. Slammed back into reality, she bubbled as big and as hard as she could.

  Something roared against her shields, flooding everything in an eye-burning shade of peach-white. An instant later, something else whommed into her telekinetic shield, with such force that she had no time and no way in which to find a physical anchor to stabilize the force of the blow. The world tumbled around her, cracking her head and shoulder against a hard surface. Protective instinct threw up a second, smaller bubble within the greater one. A moment later, a hand caught her, dragged her across a lap, hip bruising painfully against the corner of a hard armrest.

  She didn’t even have to register that the hand made it through her very physical shield; it was attached to the one mind she needed. The world—the whole universe—stopped lurching to her left, snapping back into a comfortable, solid whole. Nauseatingly whole, from the force of the psychic jolt. Dragging in a breath of less-than-fresh air, she forced her eyes back open through the dizziness of rejoining her Gestalt partner.

  Debris tumbled around them, bouncing off an invisible barrier beyond the forward viewpoint. More explosions struck her outermost shield, the one she had thrown up beyond the ship around them, but it held. For now. There were two others in the cockpit of what had to be a V’Dan ship since they were clearly Humans, a brown-haired, green-spotted woman who wasn’t Countess Nanu’oc, and a pink-crescented darker-skinned man with black-and-pink hair. Both gaped, their gazes snapping back and forth from her to the windscreen view of space and back.

  “You . . . you . . . !” the man whispered.

  “You’re the . . . the . . .” the woman stammered, pointing.

  “Ambassador?” the man squeaked, twisting to look back over his shoulder at her.

  Li’eth,
holding her on his lap, regained some of his own energy and wits, but for a different reason. “Yes! She’s here! And you need to fly us out of here!”

  “Yes! Please!” Jackie managed to add politely, tacked on to the end of his harsh demand and her own fervent wish. Her head still spun with the abrupt change in surroundings, affecting both of their thoughts. Realizing that her own confusion and astonishment wasn’t helping, Jackie wrenched her thoughts under the calm control she had learned through years of psychic meditation. “Get us somewhere safe. I don’t want to have to do that again.”

  Not that she even thought she could. All Gestalt teleportations were to one’s partner, whether that was toward or away from whatever grave danger threatened to affect one of them. Now that she and Li’eth were together . . . they were very much vulnerable. Nowhere—and no one—to flee to a second time.

  The man with the pink curves on his golden-brown skin blinked, shook his head, and faced forward. “U’v’kenna v’u’v’shakk-ath . . . I’ll do as you command, meioas!”

  “You’d better buckle up, Grand High Ambass . . . Saints, I can’t believe you’re here!” the woman with the green spots exclaimed. “How by the demons did you get here?”

  About to answer, Jackie reluctantly untangled herself from Li’eth and . . . slumped to the deck plates on her knees, the moment she lost physical contact with him. She almost lost the protective bubble wrapped around the outside of the shuttle, too. Clinging to it, she let her body be a distant second place in her most immediate concerns.

  Equally dizzy, Li’eth reached for her shoulder; she had to grab for the edge of the far seat when the shuttlecraft swayed around them, dodging an incoming ship, but could feel his touch through her uniform. That helped somewhat with her sense of balance, allowing her to get to her feet and inch over. She felt blindingly dizzy by the time she got strapped in and flung out her left hand. Li’eth grabbed it firmly, restoring his own equilibrium as well as hers.