by Jean Johnson
Movement, Ayinda warned her in text at the bottom of her screen. Allied ships are adjusting position to drift behind the station.
Acknowledged, Jackie typed back.
If that thing gets hit, it could blow up those ships as well as take out the 14, Robert typed to her. Are you sure this is the right course?
We cannot risk being captured. Might as well save the others, Jackie typed back.
The Salik came back on-screen just as the timer countdown started flashing, accompanied by a message from Ayinda. They have not changed course, sir. Fifteen seconds to no return.
“We outnnnumber hhyew,” the Salik on the screen started to say, nostril-flaps flexing as he pronounced the V’Dan words as best he could. “Hhyew are sssoft, like the K’hn Khatta. We willll attack annyway—”
“No. You do not outnumber us,” Jackie countered, typing, Stay on target. “I gave you fair warning. You chose to stay and advance, rather than flee and live. You are out of time.”
Two seconds later, light flared back at them from three different angles, station cameras sharing the view of the lead ship exploding with silent, deadly, brilliant orange force. Chunks spun and tumbled outward, all of them blasted away from the station. It was hard to tell sizes, but she was fairly certain the largest chunks weren’t more than a couple decks deep. Hydrobombs were ruthlessly efficient.
Unfortunately, they were also limited in supply. She needed to get the enemy to go away, not stay and slug it out.
The Salik on her viewscreen was not one of those on the destroyed vessels. The alien ranted and rasped, whistled and snorted in his native tongue, no doubt cursing her and making yet more threats. The V’Dan had reassured them that it was safe to assume all Salik encountered were male, for reasons of biology and reproduction, so she had no problems labeling him a him. Jackie ignored his ranting, speaking over the alien.
“To the remaining Salik ships, I give you fair warning,” she calmly stated into her headset mic. “You have less than one mi-nah to depart before the next vessel is destroyed. Please leave immediately.”
The Salik switched back to heavily accented V’Dan, slitted pupils wide and fixed on her face, strange, split-jointed tentacle-arms flailing violently as he ranted up at the camera. “I will dessstrrroy hhyu! I will perssonally bite off your fffingerlingsss!”
“Please leave immediately,” she repeated, speaking over him, “so that I do not have to deal with the mess and tedium of wrecking our allies’ shipping lanes for months to come with chunks of your debris. Your refusal to leave is making things very untidy.”
Stay on target? Anjel typed to her screen.
Confirmed, Jackie typed back. Stay on target until they actually move away.
Light lanced out from one of the enemy ships. Robert yelped and clutched at the controls; the beam struck the tank module they hid behind. Water spewed out rapidly, evaporating into a fine mist . . . that slowed . . . and stopped. No explosion, and the laser did not actually penetrate the near side; the tanker was thin-hulled compared to a warship, but not that thin-hulled.
On her screen, the chief alien blinked, stubby eyestalks swiveling up and to the side, no doubt to peer at a secondary screen of his own. Nictitating membranes flicked out twice, sliding over those bulbous lenses and back, clearing his vision. “It . . . it did not explo—”
Light flared through both the viewports and the monitor screens in the cockpit currently watching the external views of the five-lobed enemy ships. The video feed connecting her to the Salik vessel snapped with static and went blank. Jackie tapped the broadband-broadcast control and addressed the remaining vessels, transmitting blind.
“. . . I dislike repeating myself, gentlebeings, but I shall do so one more time. Please remove your ships from this star system. Please do so immediately. And please stop shooting at our fueling unit. It will not explode because it is just water. If you remain and continue to approach or attack, I will continue to destroy your ships one after the next until there is nothing left but grief and debris.
“You do not outnumber us. Your ships and your strengths dwindle, while my firepower remains the same. You have roughly one-third of a mi-nah left to decide whether you want to live or die.” She closed the link on her end. “. . . I think that’s all the negotiating I care to do for now. Thank you, everyone, for maintaining bridge silence.”
“We have movement!” Ayinda announced a moment later. “Lateral movement.”
“Colonel?” Anjel asked quickly, since they were almost out of time on missile number three.
“Abort target. Loop around just in case it’s a feint, though,” Jackie ordered.
“Looping the remaining missiles, aye, sir . . .” the copilot and gunnery officer muttered. The others remained silent on the bridge. “They do seem to be going away . . .”
“. . . Confirmed, sir. They’re headed away from the station,” Ayinda stated several seconds later.
“Colonel MacKenzie?” Anjel asked her again, this time a different unspoken question.
Jackie knew what the other woman wanted. “Break off the attack, but keep pathing those last two missiles between us and them. Just in case.” She started to say more, but her console chimed. The Salik, pinging them again. She glanced at Li’eth. (Psychologically, would it be better for me to stay silent, or to answer them?)
He mulled that over, then spoke aloud. “Stay silent. Don’t answer them, Colonel. If you answer, they could consider it a taunt, a reason to turn back around and attack all of us anyway.”
“Acknowledged,” she replied. “Thank you for the advice, Grand Captain.”
(I want to crush in their teeth and break all their bones . . . but I know we don’t have the resources for a prolonged fight,) Li’eth admitted.
(No, we don’t,) she agreed. Easing her shoulders with a little movement, Jackie breathed deep and slow to ease some of the tension. Everyone in the cockpit watched the Salik leave, until they were moving too fast and too far away to easily track.
The station pinged her. So did three of the other ships. Jackie sighed. “And now comes the part where I apologize for not obeying the majority choice of the others in this system to cooperate with the enemy’s demands.”
“Oh, the joys of diplomacy,” Robert quipped, adjusting their trim to continue to keep the tanker between them and the retreating Salik. “That’s why I’m a pilot. You do realize we’re going to be stuck in this system while the locals get around to doing a survey of the water tanker’s hull, to make sure it’s safe to continue extracting water from it, right?”
“Yes, I do realize that, Robert. We also have to bring the torpedoes back and get them stored for launch again. But let me see if I can soothe some frazzled nerves and coax them into cooperating with the fueling checks since we still don’t know what we’d have to look for,” Jackie murmured, hands moving to answer the station’s call. “Greetings, Su-Chellis Mining Station. You have reached the Terran vessel Embassy 1. Now that the enemy is gone, with no loss of Alliance life, what would you like to discuss with us . . . ?”
CHAPTER 8
SEPTEMBER 6, 2287 C.E.
AVRA 28, 9508 V.D.S.
KAI KUUL ISLE V’DAN IMPERIAL ARMY BASE
BA-KAN-TUU
Freshly showered, freshly clothed, and freshly fed—with fresh food, which had tasted blissful after sixteen days of transiting space with nothing but prepackaged Terran meals to eat—Li’eth joined Jackie in exiting their temporary quarters. It was time for their tour of the facility granted to the Terrans who had set down on this world a few weeks ago. The actual buildings were pure V’Dan Imperial Army in their construction, gray-painted, no-nonsense, and functional, but the temperature and humidity were Choya-comfortable, warm and damp, which meant they had elected to leave their formal jackets behind.
Though they had only been here six or so days in advance of the Embassy 1�
��s arrival, the Terrans had already plastered colorful printouts on the walls to liven up the military monotony. Not just of local maps, or signs written in Terran underneath the ones in V’Dan, or to explain what some of the objects around them were, but lots of images from their homeworld. Trees wreathed in morning-lit mists, lakes surrounded by snowcapped mountains, some sort of bird soaring on the wind, that sort of thing. Walking up the hall, the two of them passed a corner marked with a picture of a huge, bulbous, vaguely familiar white-and-black creature jumping up out of a deep blue sea.
(That’s a picture of an orca,) Jackie reminded him, catching his brief confusion at the edge of her thoughts. (You should remember them; I know you met a few. They’re members of Cetacea, the whales and dolphins, one of the nine-tenths species on Earth. Orcas are nicknamed “killer whales,” but technically . . .)
(But technically they’re actually a dolphin, yes. I remember now. I was distracted at that point in the tour because I was missing you,) he recalled. (Oh . . . Saints preserve me, I forgot the name of the V’Dan officer. Help me remember it before we get there?)
(Captain Superior Ro-Shel, and Captain Agneau is the Terran counterpart taking us on our tour,) Jackie supplied.
(How do you even remember all these names?) he asked her, subthoughts tinged with both awe and annoyance, most of the latter aimed at himself. (We’ve dealt with thousands of people, literally thousands since you and I first met, but you manage to remember everyone. I know I’ve dealt with a lot of people as a prince and an officer, but I am amazed at your prodigious memory. How do you do it?)
(Part of being a polyglot is an epic memory for words,) Jackie reminded him. (Names are words, and they often have an attached meaning—Jacaranda is a type of flowering tree, Mac means Son and Kenzie means Fair One, so MacKenzie means Son of the Fair One. Some people have a prodigious memory for sports scores and statistics, but I can barely remember what the different sports are like, never mind keep in mind more than a mere handful of team names attached to sports types. I somehow saved all of my memory’s recall capacity for laws and customs and the names and faces of people. That, and in public service, it is vital to remember who someone is and why they should be remembered. They appreciate being remembered.)
(I do know that. It’s a strong diplomatic tool. I used to be better at it, before heading into the military, where everyone gets to wear a name tag,) he added, touching the bit of scarlet-and-cream ribbon that actually had his makeshift name, Ma’an-uq’en, woven into it. Vertically, unlike the Terrans’ horizontal version. They reached the lobby area where their two guides awaited them, one V’Dan and one Terran. Li’eth switched from internal musings to handling the business of the day, greeting the two officers out loud. “Captain Superior Ro-Shel. Captain Agneau. Thank you for waiting while we got some sleep.”
“It sounded last night like you had a long flight of, what, sixteen days?” the short, green-spotted V’Dan officer stated. The blotchy marks staggered here and there on Ro-Shel’s hide were only a few centimeters across, and were an olive drab on his light brown skin; the two colors clashed a little with his Dress uniform. Li’eth thought the other man would have looked better in the V’Dan version of camouflage than in a formal uniform, or even in a cream version more suited for a post that dealt with the Gatsugi on a regular basis. Unfortunately, both of them were stuck in full crimson.
“Their transit took sixteen days, with more time spent resting than in actually moving,” Captain Agneau confirmed. She stood there at Parade Rest with her hands tucked behind her mottled-gray-clad back, her felted, rounded cap tilted at an angle on her head. Her own complexion was more olive than Jackie’s, and her dark curls had been cropped short in a feathered wave under her gray wool cap. If the grays of her camouflage uniform hadn’t been so varied, her own skin tone would have looked odd against the most predominant color, too. “It’s always better to start new tasks when rested.
“By the way, thank you for that language transfer yesterday, Colonel. It’s already helped immensely, as you can tell,” Agneau added.
Jackie nodded. “That’s one of the reasons why I’m here. As for the flight, it would’ve only been twelve days by one of your faster-than-light ships, Captain Superior, but there weren’t any V’Dan ships headed between V’Zon A’Gar and Ba-kan-tuu of a size that could carry us.”
“You’re lucky you could get so many of our ships to carry your soldiers everywhere,” Ro-Shel stated. He tipped his head. “I don’t know if either of you heard since the news just came across about fifteen mi-nah ago, but Grand General I’osha on V’Ton-Bei has declared a victory in rounding up and neutralizing the Salik insurgents on that planet. We have your troops to thank for it, and everyone knows it.”
“The message came through while the Ambassador was showering,” Li’eth stated. “I told her as soon as she came out. Speaking of possible victories . . . ?”
“Yes, let’s go see if your troops on this world can pull off another one,” the captain superior agreed. He turned, gesturing for them to follow. “This way, please.”
Letting the two males take the lead, Jackie eyed Agneau as they walked. “Romanian?” At Agneau’s nod, Jackie switched to her native tongue. “So, how have these people been treating you? Feel free to be completely honest; nobody else here speaks Romanesțe. Even if they’re recording this, the V’Dan won’t be able to translate it for a few more years.”
“Always a good thing to know—and I love brass who prefer honesty,” Agneau added dryly. “Nothing personal, of course; I won’t spontaneously hug you or anything . . . We’ve had disparaging remarks nearly every single day, but very few of them since landing have had to do with that striping nonsense—we got some of that on the ship ride over, but their commanding officer read her crew the riot act on day five after receiving repeated complaints about it from us, and it mostly died down. Here, they’re more skeptical of the Dalphskin’s potential . . . and my troops and I find we cannot really fault them for those doubts,” Agneau told her, shrugging lightly. “The brass back home have a great deal of faith in our abilities, but those are based on the conditions found back home.
“The overall salinity of the oceans on this world is a little lower, the temperature and pressure gradients are therefore different, and, of course, we don’t know whether or not the local biome is going to treat the ’skins alright. We certainly don’t know if some local thing will come up, sting one of the suits, and dissolve it mid-deployment, or worse, lock it up midcombat with whatever passes for the local version of jellyfish venom. To be bluntly honest . . . I feel like we’re selling these people an untested product, and I can’t complain about it to anyone because we have to keep up a positive, helpful spin on everything we do and say.”
“I understand the feeling. We know we can help,” Jackie agreed. “We just don’t know how much, yet.”
“Exactly. Worst-case scenario, we all die out there on our very first fight,” Agneau stated bluntly. “That’s our worst fear because it won’t help. In fact, it’ll ruin everyone’s morale, here and elsewhere. But our V’Dan liaison on the ride over pointed out something very helpful two days into our trip here.”
“Oh?” Jackie asked.
“This world isn’t completely surveyed, yet. Even with all their high tech, this planet’s about the same size as Earth, it’s only been settled about 150 years, and it’s 95 percent water, or something. The locals are still finding new species all the time, including larger and thus potentially dangerous life-forms.”
Jackie saw the implications immediately. “So . . . the Salik might not realize that a Dalphskin suit is not a local life-form?”
“Exactly. We’ve been spending all our spare time watching films of everything the V’Dan planetary scouts have observed, and practicing our movements to look like the local life-forms as they explore new territory and search for food. We have an advantage in that the Dalphskins are designed f
or movement in a fluidic medium, and that pretty much sums up the shape of every fish we’ve ever seen, including the few alien versions the V’Dan politely shipped to Earth to help us understand all the various alien ecosystems out here. So with that in mind, we’ve broken out the ‘natural weapons’ packets when programming the growth of each suit on the way here.”
“I’m not as familiar with what those contain,” Jackie demurred, turning to follow Li’eth and Ro-Shel into a large bay overlooking a slough of tanks filled with underlit gels and large lumps of pearlescent-gray torpedo-shaped flesh. She switched to V’Dan. “Captain Agneau, why don’t you outline what the Dalphskin weapons systems are for Grand Captain Ma’an-uq’en and me? That way, we can have a better grasp of what tactics you plan to employ in trying to make the ’suits look like they’re just an unknown local life-form on this world.”
“Certainly, sir. We already have creatures on this world that have a combination of calcium carbon in their shells—that fact was confirmed before we took off for this world,” Captain Agneau added, gesturing at the racks of equipment off to one side. “So we’ve manufactured spikes and blades blended from calcium and ceramic composite, strengthened with the aid of carefully wrapped and layered carbon fibers. Those rolling lockers over there contain the fin blades and punch spikes, which can be replaced whenever they inevitably break in combat . . . provided we can get our Selkies back to base intact.
“That row of tanks over there with the small bladders growing in it, those contain a special ink that when squeezed and released can obfuscate most forms of infrared imaging—it contains the same translucent metallic microcrystals that are used in standard thermal films for windows, in fact,” the Special Forces officer continued. “It’s a bit expensive to produce, very limited in supply at the moment, and we’re still trying to find a local supplier among the Choya who can duplicate it. But we’ve already tested some with the local Alliance scanners, and it looks like it’ll be excellent for obfuscating a fast escape. And, of course, it’s very easy to activate when having to make that fast escape since it’s tied into the jet propulsion system.”