by Jean Johnson
Finally, Agneau’s voice broke through their interactive silence, switching from Terranglo to V’Dan. “. . . Three minutes to insertion, people! Three mi-nah to the encounter point!”
Li’eth looked up and around. Several more V’Dan soldiers had entered the room and were standing in clusters near some of the Terrans manning their makeshift workstations. A pair of Choya lurked nearby as well; he wasn’t quite as familiar with their insignia types, but from the looks of things, both were officers. No doubt they had gathered here for observation and stood clad in thermal suits to help keep themselves warm in the relatively cool air preferred by his fellow Humans, wearing the moisture packs their people required when spending extended periods of time on land.
They were an intelligent race, creative, wise, and reasonable to deal with on average. However, it still amazed Li’eth from time to time that they’d gotten into space at all. Indeed, of all the races in the known galaxy, the Salik and the Choya had taken the longest to advance technologically, because of the incompatibilities of needing lots of water for living needs and requiring fire for smelting and forging metals.
Agneau, having switched back to Terranglo, ordered the main screen on the far wall be switched from the real-time map display to the lead scout’s view. The image went from bright colors and clearly defined terrain and group features to a slightly murky, bluish view of an underwater world streaked by crepuscular rays from the local sun. From the look of the underside of the ocean surface—oddly distorted by the camera viewpoint—a wind appeared to be stirring a bit of chop, swells and peaks maybe as tall as a forearm, though it was difficult to actually gauge sizes.
The view also included an overlay of tactical blips and Terranglo acronyms in various thinly lined figures and lettering, things that no doubt made sense to the soldier in the suit. Now the colors were Terran in style on the lead swimmer’s display screen: green for ally, red for foe, and yellow for neutrals or unknowns, such as the school of fish-analogs they scared into swimming quickly away . . . Apparently, they were only using Alliance coloring conventions for the soldiers staffing the command center. That made sense to Li’eth; when it came to the drilled reflexes necessary for combat, it was best not to change anything without a lot of time for practice, and the Terrans had not had nearly enough time.
Seeing his gaze focused on the main screen, Captain Agneau told Li’eth and their observing guests, “The helmets have camera lenses in several different directions. Normally, when we walk around upright on land, our eyes point ahead in the direction we usually travel. Unfortunately, when we swim, which is usually done horizontally, our eyes point down, which is too awkward for streamlined forward motion. These helmets allow projections onto the face shield from various different angles, which are combined into a single image that provides a nearly complete sphere of awareness for each Selkie.
“So while technically the corporal’s eyes point down at the ocean floor, we’re actually looking at what he’s looking at, a massive, panoramic view morphed into what we call a ‘fish-eye wraparound.’ Each camera emplacement technically holds two lenses mounted at each location. The best cameras are mounted on the top of the helmet-head, which would be the forward-pointing ‘face’ of the Dalphskin suit. Special contact lenses worn by the soldiers then combine the dual views into a three-dimensional image they can process with great spatial accuracy—not everyone can become a Selkie, because the stereoscopic version of this all-inclusive view churns a lot of stomachs until one can get used to it, but these soldiers have all passed the test.”
“Those cammeras are annn advantage even my ownn peoplle don’t have in underwater maneuversss,” one of the Choya officers stated. A male, Li’eth realized, for while the Choya was tall and muscular like a female, his somewhat tapered skull boasted only a single crest. “The anngles of our heads and eyes line up for ssstreamlined swimming when we let our heads tilt, but we arrre not a fast sspecies underwater; for millllennia, we have always rrrelied more on technology and don’t need to have an easy long-distance view. Thesse helmetss may be better than what the Salik cannn do, even with their eyesstalks.”
“We have rrrelllied too much on warrrmsuitss as our only underwater technnnology,” the other officer agreed, her four crests flattening a little. She stood only a thumblength taller than him. “Consstantly dealling with land-dwelllers, sssmug in the belief we were borrn for water maneuvers, forgetting we were borrrn toolll users as well . . .”
“I can see where that would lead you to not augmenting anything seriously. For the V’Dan,” Ro-Shel stated, glancing at Jackie, “it was quite obvious even before the Terrans’ arrival that our joint species evolved to maneuver on land, a nearly two-dimensional setup, not the three dimensions of living underwater. Your people’s helmets, Grand High Ambassador, excited everyone here. As soon as our people saw all that these diving helms of yours could do, we put our V’Dan techs to work, and the Choya’s, too.”
“They are all frantically sswimming to make dive helmetss for our people with a sssimilar setup, based on the things our joinnnt colonisssts have on hand,” the first Choya speaker, the male, added.
“I saw you also put in a request to buy some of this Terran tech,” Li’eth observed, nodding at the tablet screen in his hand, and its half-finished requisition forms.
The Choya female spread her slightly webbed hands. “The V’Dann have a sssaying: Why rreinvent a candle flame beyond the shortessst annd most immediate of needs, when sommmeone already has a hearthfire roaring a few doors away?”
“We just need something to fill in the gap between then and now,” Ro-Shel confirmed, nodding. “We grew a bit too complacent, relying on surveillance torpedoes, which the Salik can target and destroy far more quickly than beast-looking things they might want to hunt.”
“Shh!” Agneau warned them, pointing at the main and lesser screens. “Contact!”
Secondary views along the outer images of the scene being projected showed dorsal, vendral, starboard, and port views, and even a small fluke-cam image from what lay behind. For a moment, they had a glimpse of several oblong, almost beluga-like creatures on those lesser viewpoints, but the main screen held the focus of the watching soldiers.
There was little indication of exactly how fast the Selkie with the camera was moving, other than the fact that tiny pale dots streaked past rapidly. At least, until the first Salik vessel came into view. Splashing through the choppy waters overhead, the hull swelled from a faint pale shadow to an actual large hull within moments. The scout “startled” and shied sideways, swooping and swirling, spinning the view so that they had a glimpse first of darkness below, then watery blue light somewhere above. The others scattered as well, their images swirling and swaying on the lesser screens set up in the command room, their blips on the tactical overlays moving remarkably like schools of aquatic life.
“Enemy sighted,” a voice came from one of the speakers, speaking in Terranglo. “Hull shapes conform to known military oceanic vessels. Sergeant, I have painted the lead ship. Repeat, the enemy’s gate is now the lead ship.”
“Copy that, and . . . confirmed, Hamsaunsang. I have the lead ship painted as the enemy’s gate,” someone else replied. Li’eth wanted to ask what that meant, other than that it had been targeted for some reason.
“Sergeant, I am also seeing circles and lines up by the waterline—Salik writing, I think?” the Selkie reported. “C First B Beta to Base, can anyone back home translate this stuff?”
“Ambassador?” Agneau asked Jackie.
“I don’t speak Sallhash yet,” Jackie replied, shaking her head. “I’ve touched their minds, but I never did a language transfer; I just went off the images in their heads. But I can transcribe what’s going on in Terranglo for them if someone else does know it,” Jackie replied.
“Can’t you just pick up their thoughts?” one of the V’Dan techs asked. “Aren’t you like a powerful holy one?”
“I’d have to have a specific visual target at this distance to even try to pick up their thoughts, they’re so far away right now. A language transfer with a xenospecies is flat-out impossible at this distance, even for a Gestalt,” she explained. “Not with a brand-new species. The only reason why I learned V’Dan in three hours is because the Grand Captain is a fellow Human and has a disciplined mind.”
That made Li’eth’s face grow a bit warm. His mind hadn’t been disciplined before she had swept in and showed him how to take control of his psychic abilities, rather than be dragged along awkwardly in their intermittent wake.
Ro-Shel pulled out a communicator from his pocket and activated it, murmuring instructions into the pickups. Agneau in turn hissed a name, tapping her ear with one hand and fluttering her other hand at Jackie. An aide came over with a headset and beckoned her to join a crewman at one of the tables. Jackie sat as she fitted it on, and at the tech’s nod, began translating into V’Dan. A few moments later, a soldier in V’Dan camouflage hurried into view, oriented, and joined the pair.
Li’eth kept his own attention clear. Skipping from screen to screen among the banks of monitors, he tried to get a sense of what was going on. The Selkies were good; fully wrapped, with the mirror-silvered faces of the helms showing like strange, alien eyes through several gaps in the Dalphskin wraps, they looked like a pack or pod of traveling animals. Their darkened helm lenses looked like strangely placed eyes, and what had to be the intake gills for the bathysphere helms kind of looked like mouths.
Strange, exotic beasts, the Selkies swam in and out, some darting closer to their companions than the others; in fact when two got too close, they looked like they made little threat-displays and backed off from each other. The biggest ones also herded the smallest, almost as if they were juveniles. It looked very convincing to him . . . and brought up a new concern. One that prompted him to speak to his allies in Terranglo.
“You do realize that if the Salik think your ‘Selkie’ beasts look like intriguing enough prey—and they are large and fast enough to be a challenge, so they probably do—then that means the Salik will send out hunting packs,” he warned Agneau and the others, using their tongue so as not to alarm their Choya allies. “Your people are at serious risk of attack.”
“We’re actually counting on that, Grand Captain,” a new voice stated, a dark-skinned woman with buzz-cut hair and leaf-shaped pins similar to the ones Jackie had worn for a while. A Major, that was the rank.
That made her Major Tai-Khan, head of the Selkies and highest-ranked Terran outside of Jackie on this planet. Captain Agneau technically served as her second-in-command. Li’eth stood politely in respect for her authority, as he had stood when first introduced to her upon their arrival last night. Today, Tai-Khan wore a loose outfit of military-gray tee shirt and pants with slip-on shoes, clearly ready to strip and don her own Dalphskin suit at a moment’s notice, and just as clearly not uncomfortable in the cool air of the hall.
She also did not speak much V’Dan, having deferred the telepathic language transfer to her second-in-command last night. Her focus, she had explained, needed to stay on her troops and on her mission, not on being an intermediary between two worlds. Li’eth could respect that and didn’t mind sticking with Terranglo to speak with her.
Nodding politely to Li’eth as she moved up beside him, the Major continued. “The plan is to try to lure out some packs of Salik hunters, try to play with the xenopsychology profiles you gave us against them. This is not just a skirmish sortie to engage and distract the enemy from continuing their attack. This is also a test scenario to discern how well they fight underwater and to see how well we can distract them from their goal.”
“May-jor Tai-Khaann,” the second Choya who had spoken stated, four crest ridges flexing briefly in greeting.
Li’eth realized that was a good sign; the Choya tended to be physically conservative around alien races, since a polite gesture toward one species could be a potentially rude one toward another. Smiling with teeth exposed was one such thing. A flexed crest was another; among the Tlassians, it served as a sign of irritability or alarm in the priest caste, much as the neck flares of a warrior caste did, though among the Choya, it was simply a way to greet each other. Seeing it now probably meant the officer considered this friendly territory for such things.
“Second Elbow Turrik,” Tai-Khan replied politely in pidgin V’Dan. “You people, ready? We not know good we be today.”
“We arre rready,” the female said. The officer gestured at one of the larger screens still boasting a map of the region with a webbed, greenish-gray hand. “We havvve deep-lurrkers and mud-stealthed torpedoes on stannndby. The rrrest are out of range. We cannot engage fully just yet. Trroopships are still swimming into positionn. Thirty mi-nah.”
“We be understand, Second Elbow. Agneau, I think he said thirty minutes—maybe thirty-four?” the head of the Selkies asked her first officer, switching back to fluid Terranglo with a hint of an accent Li’eth couldn’t place. “Whatever it converts into. We can hold them off that long, yes?”
Agneau moved from screen to screen nearby, checking the squiggles and blocks of Terran writing, and nodded, coming back. “. . . We should be able to hold their attention, provided they’re not twice as fast as us. Especially with everyone circling back to ‘gawk’ at the ships. We might have to bring up the second and third waves, however. ETA on 1st and 2nd C is . . . five minutes, and ETA on 2nd A and B is eight, if they pick up the pace. 3rd Platoon C is twelve minutes out, and everyone in D is roughly fifteen minutes away.”
“Send out the cetacio call to converge. I want it to seem like the lead pod has encountered something of interest for everyone else to check out,” Tai-Khan ordered.
“How long will it take the Salik to suit up and go out after them?” Jackie called out in V’Dan before switching to Terranglo. “Does anyone know? Does anyone have an estimation on when we might possibly engage them, not just encounter them?”
“Fifteen, maybe twenty mi-nah if they don’t have anyone ready. Only three more minutes at this point if they do,” Ro-Shel told her. “But I’d douse myself in flk sauce if they didn’t. They’ll have their equivalent of platoons prepared for an assault.”
Nodding, Jackie went back to conversing quietly but urgently into her headset. Several seats away, Li’eth shuddered internally, disconcerted by the junior officer’s quip. Flk sauce was some sort of acidic-sweet marinade, a dipping sauce the Salik preferred for adding extra flavor to raw strips of meat. Offering to apply it to oneself . . . Not his favorite image. He still had nightmares about seeing that one captain eating his bridge officer’s hand in front of him.
Someone came around with a case of flavored drinks. Li’eth chose one that promised a mix of berry flavors. Amused by a memory of a much different bottle, he carefully read the whole label to make sure it wasn’t alcoholic, then cracked it open for a sip.
Refusing a drink for herself, Tai-Khan ordered the C Squads to move in even closer and to bring the 2nd Platoon A and B Squads in as well, wanting them to be within just a minute or two of striking distance. Blips on the tactical overlays swerved and moved toward their new positions. More lurked farther out, but they were still going to need several minutes to get into striking range.
In the command center, Humans and Choya alike waited, tense and unable to do anything physically from so far away, while the foremost two Squads circled cautiously around the hulls cutting their way through the water. A couple of the more “daring beasts” even brushed up against those hulls, testing them with a fin, and no doubt scanning with sensors buried underneath that bioengineered skin.
“. . . Movement!” one of the Terrans in the group announced over his helmet speakers. “We’ve got bogeys entering the water!”
“Confirmed, three, four . . . five bogeys off the far starboard vessel!”
“Five more
just launched off the far port side!” a third Selkie called back.
(What is a boh-ghee?) Li’eth asked his Gestalt partner. He looked from image to image on the screen, trying to find what the Selkies were talking about.
It took her a distracted moment to reply. (Military speak for possible targets . . .)
“Sergeant Onata to Base, the Salik fleet has dropped speed by about five knots, but they’re still going strong. If they’re dropping off soldiers, either they think we have hull mines, they don’t need to pick them up for a long while, or they think these frog-fellows can catch up to them.”
“Acknowledged, Onata,” Tai-Kahn spoke into her headset. She leaned over, bracing her hands on the back of an unoccupied chair. “Stay on target.”
Li’eth tensed, watching with a mix of dread and hope while the images split and swirled. The nameplate on the upper-leftmost corner of their tactical screen overlay listed that lead scout as CORPORAL M. HASMAUNSANG, C 1ST B ALPHA. The corporal did not drop his own speed but instead kept circling around back to the boats on the starboard side of the Salik fleet. That was, starboard from the direction of the enemy’s travel.
The corporal swam around the Salik soldiers now floating in the water, clad in wet suits that would help preserve some of their body heat in the water while allowing them to carry their own version of reoxygenation equipment, tools, and weapons. Corporal Hamsaunsang’s view circled every single one of those five alien bodies, appending three sets of numbers to everything even as the cameras tried to figure out what some of their equipment might be.