by Jean Johnson
Li’eth did not back down. He stared into those greenish-gold eyes without flinching, trusting, knowing his partner could and would keep their delegation safe, and spoke the words written in his people’s most ancient prophecies. “For as long as it takes you to learn how to get along with other races . . . or until your species destroys itself.”
Eyestalks swiveled. Pupils widened. Tendril-limbs curled and uncurled. Jackie, skimming the muck of his uppermost thought-images, dropped to her knees and focused her powers. “Code Mike Tango Zero One. I repeat, Code Mike Tango Zero One, authorization Alpha Juliett Mike. Twenty meters directly in front of me, on the far side of the plaza circle from my position.”
Grand High General K’plish looked her way for a moment, no doubt wondering what she had just muttered, but he did not speak Terranglo. Did not understand her command. That large mouth pursed and sucked in, echoing that mocking pwok pwok pwok sound the Salik loved to make toward their tasty prey. “That juffenile is weak, but . . . hhhew are all too tassssty to wassste.”
Hundreds of trapdoors all across the plaza snapped open. Soldiers sprang up and out, their leaps terrifyingly high, their flippered version of combat boots slapping hard enough on the cobblestones to make the ground shake with the smacking of so many impacts. Weapons lifted and aimed, they surrounded the platform, ready and willing to fire.
K’plish bared his sharp teeth slightly in a low-level warning. “Hhhew darrred come here to give usss ultimatummms. Warrr Prrrincsse,” the Salik growled. “I will eat hhyour blood-orrrgan in frrront of yourrr warrr-motherr.”
He curled two microtendrils on each side, and soldiers hop-jogged across the bridge in low bounds, moving into position to stun the delegates.
Calm inside and out, his trust in his Gestalt partner absolute, Li’eth responded not to the Salik, but to the non-Salik around him. “I suggest that now is a very good time to move low to the ground.”
With that, he crossed his ankles and sank down onto the mosaic tiles, settling next to Jackie, who already rested on her knees and her heels. Naguarr dropped as well, physiologically capable of sitting cross-legged. The Gatsugi and Choya settled with their legs stretched out, the Tlassian crouched and knelt like the Terran Ambassador, and the K’Katta . . . tucked his limbs under his body.
“Hhew do not fffight? Hhew are almost pity meat.” K’plish backed up to let the two soldiers have a clear field of fire with their black-and-beige stunner weapons. Two things happened simultaneously; the rifles failed to fire, and the Grand High General bumped into solidified air. His eyestalks swiveled backwards at the nothingness that kept him from retreating, then forward and out to either side, eyeing the soldiers trying to make their weapons work.
All eight Terran Marines, now kneeling just like their black-clad commander, smiled with bared teeth and lifted the pulsing grenades in their hands.
“Terran science, General, is protecting us from your forces . . . and protecting you and your two fellow officers from annihilation,” Li’eth explained, smiling as well. Closed-lipped, because he wanted the Salik to know he was amused, not just angry.
“Annihhhilationn?” K’plish repeated.
“Yes. You agreed to a cease-fire. Specifically, you agreed that you would not attack or even threaten this delegation. Your soldiers were not supposed to be here. They were not supposed to use weapons on us. Your soldiers will be annihilated. Destroyed. Wiped out. Their lives have been forfeited.”
The Grand High General snorted. “With what warrriors? Fffiffteen againnst fifffteen hundrrred?”
“Grand High Ambassador MacKenzie, how much longer until these soldiers are destroyed?” Tlik-tlak asked bluntly.
“About twelve more se-cah. I suggest covering any hearing organs you possess,” she added politely, and tucked her index fingers into her ears. “This might get a little loud.”
Pallan swiftly clamped her hands atop her ears, smashing them flat. The others followed suit, the K’Katta curling midlimbs under his body so that the footclaws could cross-cover the special hairs at his knee joints that sensed sound vibrations. The Marines, still clinging to their grenade spheres, still grinning one and all, stuffed the tips of their forefingers into their ears. Paea even turned to smile at Jackie, confident in her abilities. Buraq, however, looked up.
So did Jackie. The tiny dot they both sought was rather difficult to spot . . . but the ring of clouds it had left in its wake high, high above, was not. That gave her a line of attack to focus upon—and she spotted it a split second before it slammed into the crowd behind the generals and admirals near the far edge of the platform circle. They vanished faster than a blink. As did the rest of the plaza and the city, reduced in an instant in a ground-shattering smear of gray dust and reddened mist.
The noise of the impact slammed up through their bones from the ground, which literally shifted back several centimeters. Shoved, but kept intact by the layers of spheres Jackie had laced through the plaza stones. Intact, and aloft, the partial remains of the Great Mosaic floated serenely in the midst of the chaos. Two of her outermost telekinetic shields had collapsed, but the inner three still held, sheltering them with flexible surfaces that had absorbed the deadly shock wave of the ceristeel casing’s supersonic impact.
Dust finished billowing outward, revealing an awkwardly pitted crater. Some of it settled onto the surface of the otherwise invisible dome of force. A simple mental ripple shivered it off the walls, permitting them to look upon the wreckage more or less unobstructed.
K’plish swiveled his eyes all around, pupils dilated so wide, his eyestalks looked like they were topped with black orbs. His two officers, the two soldiers, also looked around them in wild-eyed shock. Unable to find the words in V’Dan, he fell back on his native tongue. “How . . . ?”
Unfolding her legs, Jackie rose to her feet. “Terrans, Grand High General, do not hesitate to bomb our own positions in order to win. That is because our Terran science is superior to all others. I have permitted you five to live because it was convenient,” she added, as his eyestalks swiveled to face her. “You will order your people to surrender, and you will comply fully with our commands and restrictions. Or we will continue to bomb everyone and everything around us until we are the only ones left who can stand.”
K’plish’s eyes tilted outward, surveying the grim truth of her words. Enough of the debris cloud had billowed outward to begin showing the smears on the ground. Those areas that had concealed access corridors for underground troops to march into place and prepare an ambush, those formerly hidden passageways beneath all those trapdoors . . . were nothing more than corrugated rubble for fifty meters in every direction but directly behind the bubble-shield Jackie had held.
Two-thirds of the Great Mosaic had vanished, vaporized at the heart of the impact site. Around the edges of the crater, tumbled pieces of alien body parts lay scattered over the landscape, dismembered by the blast. Water, spilling from broken pipes, hissed and steamed wherever it came into contact with the kinetically heated materials near the epicenter.
“Do you and your people surrender fully and completely?” she asked. “Or shall my fellow Terrans drop more? The next strike will be a ring of bombs of a similar size and strength. They will collapse all the buildings around us. The one after that . . . just one bomb, but one that will be several orders of magnitude more powerful. That third strike will destroy this entire city, and devastate the countryside. These things, I tell you not as a threat but as a fact. I tell them to you to drive home the two choices in front of you, annihilation or compliance.
“Of course, you will still be safe . . . so long as I continue to contain you within my shields,” she added dryly. “But you will have to watch your entire city be knocked down and dissolved in an instantaneous firestorm. The equivalent of a thermonuclear device detonated at a range close enough for a child to hit the epicenter with a flung stone.”
Those e
yestalks swung around the circle, then converged on her. “Hhhew . . . ssssuch powerrr . . . Perrrssonal shielld generatorrr?”
“No more delays, Grand High General. We Terrans are not V’Dan. We are the Motherworld of the V’Dan race, and we are not going to waste our time with petty maneuverings and pointless posturings,” she told him, her tone flat and mild. “Code Mike Tango Zero Two through Zero Seven, authorization Alpha Juliett Mike.
“My government gives yours just two choices, Grand High General. Surrender, or annihilation. You have twenty se-cah to decide. Don’t take any longer than that.”
His arm lashed out—and smacked into a telekinetic wall he could only feel, not see. The blade in his suckered grip didn’t fall free like it would have from a Human hand, or perhaps even a Solarican one. But he did blink, skin dimpling all over in distress.
“. . . Ssssurrenderr. Commplete and fffull ssurrrender. The Ssalik nation sssurenders to the ssuperriorr might of the Terrrrans,” K’plish said, uncurling his suckered limb from the blade.
Jackie didn’t let it clatter to what little remained of the tile-covered platform. She picked it up telekinetically and swooped it through a small, brief hole in her layers upon layers of shields. Floating it horizontally, she offered it hilt first to Li’eth as he stood.
“Code Mike Tango, abort, I repeat, Mike Tango, abort,” she stated in Terranglo, before switching back to V’Dan. “War Prince Kah’raman, the Salik nation has been ordered by its highest authorities to surrender completely and fully. Do you accept their surrender?”
“We sssurrender to hhew,” K’plish asserted. “Hhew are worthy! They arrrre nnot!”
Jackie looked him up and down, and—mindful of Salik-style psychology—told him, “You are not worthy of our time or attention. War Prince Kah’raman, the Terrans hand over the unconditional surrender of the Salik to the Alliance nations to manage. Unconditional, Grand High General, means you cannot impose any conditions whatsoever.”
She had to stop for a second as six hydrobomb casings swooped past overhead, followed seconds later by a scattering of loud, sharp cracks from the sound-breaking speeds of the aborted missiles. Waiting until the noise faded, she resumed her speech, eyeing the Salik leader.
“That, Grand High General, includes whoever we delegate to manage the punishments and reparations for all the messes you’ve made.”
Looking up into those wide-pupiled, gold-green eyes, she reached out telekinetically. She lifted pieces of the rubble, broken chunks of stone, alloyed metals, even body parts, swirling them around in rising helix spirals, making his eyestalks sway back and forth between watching the macabre dance and keeping his attention warily upon her.
“Do not make me come back here again, General,” she warned softly. “If I do, I will start taking your planet apart piece by piece with my Terran science. If you annoy me enough.”
Everything dropped, chunks, pieces, and parts, sending up a fresh, faint, outward puff of dust. The clouds hit the edges of her outermost shields and curled upward before fading.
Behind her, Li’eth spoke calmly. “The Eternal Empire and its allies accept the management of the Salik Interdiction and Blockade. We will be ruthless in destroying all known and uncovered Salik military mechanisms. Cooperate fully, Grand High General, and we will allow your colonists to visit each other and this world, under supervised transport. Resist . . . and we will be ruthless.”
“Hhew are ffictorious because of them,” K’plish snapped, nostril-flaps flexing. “Hhew hhide behind their technology!”
“That fierce and powerful female is my mate, Grand High General,” Li’eth corrected him. “She considers me worthy, and has been teaching me her Terran science. As she will teach others in the Eternal Empire. And in the Collective, and in all the other nations . . . all, except for yours. You are no longer worthy. Now, I do believe the terms of surrender include handing over all of your command codes. Including the security codes for confirming your surrender is authentic, so that all of your colonies and soldiers will know that Sallha has fallen to the Alliance.”
That was Jackie’s cue. It was also not what K’plish wanted to hear, for he bared his teeth fully, and hissed, “Ssssuck hhyour ownn eggss!”
Even as K’plish snarled, Jackie read his thoughts on the matter. She knew he would never say the words. Would never give out the authentic command codes. Would, in fact, only ever give out falsified codes. In that fraction of a moment, she knew she had a choice. A life-altering choice.
She chose. Ransacked the three officers’ minds. Within seconds, she had what the Alliance needed, and nodded.
K’plish swiveled his gaze her way, but it was too late; she had already studied him visually. Wrapping her mind around the alien, she pinned him in place telekinetically so that he couldn’t disrupt the lines of her illusion and merged a holokinetic doppleganger over his body. A moment later, the true command phrases emerged from “his” nostrils and lips in perfectly enunciated Sallhash. She waited five seconds, then released him from her grip, blending the fake image back into the reality.
The alien war leader stared at her, tendrils curled up into bulky, spiraled fists in his shock. The two soldiers and the two officers who had survived lowered themselves to the ground, their backwards-pointing knees folding, their tendril-fingers curling into the suckered equivalent of fists. Surrendering as commanded.
It was not ethical, what she had just done. What the leaders of the Alliance—and her own government—had asked her indirectly to do. She was going to get into trouble with the Psi League for doing it because it was a violation of his sovereign rights as an individual sentient. But at the same time, while it was not ethical from an individual standpoint, it was ethical from a saving-many-lives point of view. Not purely, or even more than halfway ethical, no . . . but it was expedient to end the war by faking his compliance.
Sometimes, Jackie knew, ethics had to bow to expediency. She just never thought she’d kill her career while standing in the cratered remnants of an alien city hundreds of light-years from home.
“Hhhow . . . ?” the Grand High General demanded, recovering from his shock.
“As I have said,” she repeated, and smiled coldly at him, “in certain areas, our Terran science is light-years beyond anything you know. We can do things you will never be able to do. There is no shame in being defeated by a vastly superior foe. There is only shame in refusing to recognize it.”
Nostrils flexing, the Grand High General lowered himself to his knees and rested his equivalent of buttocks on his backwards-facing heels. Defeated, not just surrendered.
(. . . You just shakked away your political career, didn’t you?) Li’eth observed in the back of her mind. (What we asked you to do in getting those codes, so that all of the Salik we broadcast this moment to will believe he actually surrendered his nation of his own free will . . . you destroyed your career.)
(Yep.) A bittersweet moment. (But I saved the Alliance decades more of loss and heartbreak, and untold millions of lives.)
“Grrrand High Ammbassador,” Naguaar stated, turning to her to say something. To make some request of her as the representative of her representation-based government.
Heart aching deep inside, Jackie managed to keep her expression mild, her voice calm. “Actually, War Prince Naguarr . . . at this point in time, I wish to formally announce my resignation in full from the position of Grand High Ambassador of the Terran United Planets to the V’Dan Empire and its allies, subject, of course, to the approval of the Premiere and the Terran United Planets Council.
“As my last act of office, I appoint Lieutenant Commander Jasmine Buraq to stand in for my position as temporary Ambassador during the cleaning up of this mess, until such time as Assistant Ambassador McCrary can consult and appoint a suitable replacement. With that said, I recuse myself from further participation in these discussions.”
Jasmine blink
ed a few times but drew herself upright and saluted Jackie, who returned it. She was still a colonel, still a superior officer . . . and might actually have to face a military tribunal over this. But given the sheer number of lives she had just saved, Jackie could live with that kind of a payment.
“My government insists you retain a portion of your position as a cultural liaison at the very least, Meioa McKenzie,” Li’eth stated. (I’m not letting you completely flush your skills and standing down the sewage drains.)
(Thank you,) she replied. Bowing her head, Jackie acknowledged aloud, “In the interest of maintaining good relations with the V’Dan and their allies, I will accept the role of temporary cultural liaison until my situation can be discussed by my government.”
“And I will be happy to consult with my new cultural liaison,” Buraq added, relief at having that option coloring her tone despite the solemnity permeating her words.
“Hheww giffe up your positionn? Hhyour power?” one of the two officers asked, finally speaking.
Commander-of-Millions Tlik-tlak chittered at him. “Terran culture is not V’Dan, it is not K’Kattan, and it is not Choyan. Be respectful to your superiors with your silence whenever you do not understand what is happening.”
“Thank you, Commander-of-Millions,” Jackie stated. “Acting Ambassador Buraq, if you will take my place, I will take yours as acting head of your security team.”
In a strange way, just saying that gave Jackie an odd sense of relief. A lightening of a burden she hadn’t realized she carried. She still felt anxiety twisting deep inside for losing her highest career but could not deny that this moment came with an odd sort of relief. Which I’ll have to think about later, she thought, as Lieutenant Buraq replied.
“Colonel MacKenzie, you may certainly do so, sir,” Jasmine agreed. Handing over her rifle as the two women crossed paths, she muttered under her breath in Mandarin, “You are crazier than a donkey eating its own feces, woman . . . but I respect you for all the lives you just saved.”