Stars Forever Black: Book I of the Star Lion Saga

by A. L. Bruno

“Liars assume everyone else is lying to them,” Roberts answered. “Maybe they're so closed because they’re sure we’re as dishonest as they are.”

  “But we’re not,” Conrad replied, angry. “We’ve been as open as we can be!”

  “But not completely,” Roberts said. He sat back, pursed his lips, and nodded. “One of us is going to have to show their cards first.”

  Malley pointed energetically at Roberts. “Exactly!”

  Roberts grinned at Malley. “Well done, Lieutenant,” he said.

  “Thank you, sir,” Malley replied, doing her best to mask a smile. Okoro just grinned at Malley, then playfully bumped into her with his right shoulder.

  Conrad frowned, still confused. “What do you propose?”

  “We tell them about the Motinai,” Roberts replied. “We let them know about the war, and we explain exactly why they’re in danger.” He shrugged. “Like I said, one of us is going to have to show our cards first.”

  Conrad shook his head. “Out of the question,” he replied. “Do you really want to tell them about a race of hostile exos that want them dead?”

  Roberts tilted his head, incredulous. “Wouldn’t you want to know?”

  Conrad opened his mouth to reply, but Roberts suddenly jerked his head to one side. A female voice floated up in lilting Tenastan, and Roberts looked away, annoyed.

  “I’ve been summoned.” Roberts’ frustration nearly equaled his fatigue. He cocked his head back towards the unseen speaker again, grimaced, then muttered a few words back. When he turned back towards his holo plate his expression was one of utter disbelief. “Someone recorded us at the restaurant,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s all over the media.”

  No sooner had Roberts uttered the words than Malley and Okoro flipped up their wristcom screens and ran prepared search queries against their databases. Moments later, shaky footage shot from across a busy street showed Roberts and Adelisa animatedly arguing over a cheap dinner table. A handful of seconds passed, then a warbled audio capture of Roberts speaking synced up, just in time to catch Roberts stomping out of the restaurant, his face so red that the pale scar on his face almost looked like a lightning strike.

  “Yeah,” Roberts grumbled, horrified, “that’s going in the Christmas letter.”

  “And now we have to put out another one of your fires,” Conrad snapped, standing. The staff at the table followed suit while Roberts just shook his head, furious.

  “People,” Conrad continued, his voice hard. “Our priority is the base. Not history lessons, not mythology—the base. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” the staff answered in a ragged unison.

  “Good,” Conrad replied, ignoring the tired nature of their reply. “Mr. Roberts, you are not to discuss the Motinai with Kionel or his staff. Understood?”

  Roberts jaw set, and even in the holo-faded image his face turned beat red. Regardless, he nodded. “Understood,” he managed.

  Conrad turned to look at Malley, but she stared straight ahead, not meeting his eyes. She’s pissed, Conrad thought. I’ll be paying for this later.

  “Dismissed,” Conrad ordered. The word had barely left his lips before the SIGINT staff stepped away from the briefing room table and headed towards the hatch. Roberts’ face winked out of existence as the holo emitter shut down.

  Conrad could see Malley in his peripheral vision as she strode out of the briefing room. Her posture and demeanor said it all. Then he was alone, the sound of the air systems his only company.

  Yeah, he thought. I’m definitely going to pay for this later.

  “They’re mad because he complimented them?” Boothe asked from behind her office desk. She stared at Conrad with fatigue-shaded eyes, a stained metal coffee mug in one hand, an unused stylus in the other.

  The air above Boothe’s desk showed three iterations of the same video: Roberts chastised Adelisa, then stormed out of the restaurant, his face a barely contained mask of fury. The various pundits—Conrad privately referred to them as “The Boring Guy”, “The Shrew”, and the blonde as “Miss Port of Call”—stammered over their own words, trying to find new and sensational ways to express outrage.

  “They’re mad because we’re not telling them anything,” Conrad corrected. He sighed, Roberts’ words echoing in his ears. “And they’re right.”

  Boothe took another sip of coffee and watched until the argument looped back to the beginning.

  “Suggestions?” Boothe asked.

  “We tell them,” Conrad said. “Everything.”

  Boothe looked at Conrad as if he’d lost his senses. “No,” she declared, her voice cracking. “I will not be another Gant.”

  “This isn’t about Gant!” Conrad yelled, the words echoing off the low-hanging pipes in the captain’s office.

  Boothe looked up, shocked, while Conrad blanched. “I’m sorry, ma’am—” he started, abashed.

  Booth held up her left hand tiredly. “Say your piece, Zaid.”

  Damned meds, Conrad glowered, then took another cleansing breath.

  “We don’t have the time to play nice,” Conrad finally said. “The Motinai are coming, sooner or later. If we don’t help them now, they’ll never stand a chance.”

  “You’re talking about a people’s way of life,” Boothe said. “If we rush forward like Gant did, everything that makes these people unique will be lost. We both swore an oath to never let that happen again.”

  “And before that we swore an oath to protect humanity from all enemies, external and internal,” Conrad countered. He pointed at the bulkhead closest to the ship’s skin. “Those people down there are humans. We have to protect them, whatever the cost.”

  Boothe looked down and took in a ragged breath. Then she locked eyes with her executive officer.

  “I’ll consider it,” she conceded. “But until I say otherwise, we stick to protocol. Clear?”

  Conrad nodded. “Clear.”

  “Good,” Boothe acknowledged, turning back to the blacked out holo display above her desk. “Dismissed.”

  The rest of Conrad’s duty day was almost calm. He fielded another reminder from Doc Nesheim to get more drone pathogen passes over the planet before the fleet arrived, listened to Chief Engineer Jorgenson stammer out a complaint about systems wear, and ran the bridge crew through another combat drill. Finally, he headed to his rack, ready to catch up on some much-needed sleep. That Malley wasn’t there, a flaccid excuse in hand to enter his quarters, wasn’t a surprise. A regret, yes, but not a surprise.

  There was, however, one last duty to perform.

  It took only a few moments to compose the message, and a few moments more to route it through the ship’s secure comms. Then it was ready, floating above his fold-out desk, an amber-shaded message in a hyperlight bottle:

  271928FST DEC 56

  FM CMDR ZAID CONRAD XO TSS HYPERION DSRV1980

  TO CNC TSS PERCIVAL CV272

  EYES ONLY/NOEXO

  MSG187750

  SUBJ/RE: STATUS

  LOCALS SUSPICIOUS. CAPTAIN EXHAUSTED. SHIP & CREW AT LIMITS. REQUEST INSTRUCTIONS.

  END

  Conrad hesitated. He and Boothe had seen both hell and high water during their years together. He trusted her with his life, and he knew she did the same.

  But you owe a debt, he thought, and he grimaced. And she needs help, even if she doesn’t want to admit it.

  Conrad took a deep breath, then gestured over the “Send” icon in his mail application. There was a flash and the message vanished, the word “Sent” replacing it in space.

  Conrad closed his wristcom down and slumped back in his desk chair.

  You owe a debt.

  The thought taunted him, and Conrad looked to the ceiling. He reached into his locker, brought out a bottle of Scotch, and downed a mouthful in one quick pull.

  You owe a debt, he thought, and you always will.

  Conrad took another swig of Scotch, closed the bottle, and shut off his cabin lights.

  27


  Kionel’s Chambers

  Kionel’s Palace

  Leonathier, Tenasta

  17 Sardua 1066

  Avindair never looks tired, Roberts observed groggily. The commandant stood ramrod straight in the Kionel’s chambers, the salmon light of the Tenastan morning painting the room in soft pastels. While Roberts knew that he looked like hell—Nashita had given him zero time to clean up before he was rushed to see the Kionel—Avindair stared straight ahead, his hair tightly pulled, his uniform crisp, his beard trimmed to perfection. Even Adelisa, standing as always at Avindair’s side, was worse for the wear. While her hair still retained ringlets from the night before, everything from her comfortable clothes and flat slippers to her lack of makeup screamed “pulled out of bed”.

  We all got called to the principal again, Roberts thought tiredly. Guess it’s time to suck up and ask forgiveness.

  The Kionel stared at them over steepled fingers, his mouth tight, his eyes hooded. Without a word, he slid out a drawer and pressed a button—the click piercing the silence.

  A whir of servos filled the air, and Roberts turned to see one of the larger paintings in the space rotate along its vertical axis. The other side revealed a reflective, white screen. No sooner had it locked into place than a carefully camouflaged projector cast an image onto it.

  Roberts shouldn’t have been surprised to see Chatura the Troublemaker staring back at him again. On the other half of the screen, Roberts recognized the footage of him and Adelisa in the restaurant as shot from Jagrav’s vantage point across the street. Hidden speakers hissed into life as the video started.

  “You think our knowledge of you is an insult?” Roberts’ voice barely intelligible above the hisses and pops of what Roberts could only assume was a microphone hidden somewhere in the restaurant. Worse, the video footage had been synced up by some overzealous editor, and the result was a shaky, raw piece of reality. “We’re amazed by you!” Roberts continued on the video. “We’ve traveled the stars for three hundred years and we’ve never—not once—found a world like this or a people like you.”

  The video stopped abruptly and Chatura thrust her arm out accusingly at the video situated next to her.

  “Amazed by us?!” Chatura asked, playing to her crowd. She started ticking points off on her hand. “They’re out to dinner, it’s candlelight…” The graphic abruptly switched to a product image of the fake candles from the restaurant, “... well, close enough,” her aside bringing a ripple of laughter from her audience. “And he’s telling her that we’re amazing!” Chatura shrugged expansively. “This isn’t diplomacy. Dude wants to get laid!”

  The audience roared and the video stopped. The image warbled, streaks of static sliding along the screen’s vertical axis, and suddenly Siva Dayati perched on her set, another dress spray-painted to her body.

  “A shocking turn from Leonathier today,” Siva said, her voice steady in its lower registers, “as we learn more about the galaxy our Terran guests claim to have seen.”

  The screen switched to the same video footage, though later in the conversation. Once again, someone had added the clandestine audio into the mix.

  “Why?!” Adelisa’s recorded voice pierced the early morning. Roberts failed to suppress a bit of smug satisfaction as she flinched next to Avindair. “Why does the fact that we’re both human mean so much?”

  “Because you’re the only other humans we’ve ever met!”

  Roberts grimaced. Yeah, he thought. I’m not gonna get away from that one any time soon.

  “We’ve met so many races since we started traveling the black,” Roberts’ voice continued. “The diversity of life is astonishing. But none of them—not one—has been us.”

  The screen switched back to a deeply concerned Siva lit harshly by an overhead light.

  “If what this man is saying is true,” Siva began, leaning in towards the camera, “—and we must remember that there is no way for us to verify anything he says—then we’re not only not alone in the universe, we’re also unique.”

  She’s not wrong, Roberts thought begrudgingly.

  “And if there are so many other forms of life,” Siva continued, “then how do we know that they’re all friendly? Or is the Terran commander hiding something else from us?”

  Roberts closed his eyes, frustrated.

  “You remind us of who we are,” Roberts’ tinny voice roared. Roberts opened his eyes to see Tarkena staring impassively at what appeared to be the same synced footage. “Your ambition, your drive, your pettiness, your deceit, all of it. You’re gloriously, painfully human.”

  The video stopped, and the lights in the studio heated up above Tarkena.

  “It’s no secret that this reporter has had doubts about these visitors ever since they arrived.” Tarkena spoke the words solemnly, his expression grim. “As many others have said, we have no way of knowing what they tell us is true. Only a foolish man would see this imbalance as anything but troubling.”

  Roberts shot a glance at the Kionel. The older man had not moved. He continued to watch the screen over steepled fingers, his expression unchanged.

  “But we should also be willing to recognize the truth when we see it,” Tarkena continued.

  Roberts turned back to the screen, surprised.

  “Commander Roberts—whatever you may think of him, his people, or his agenda—is being honest. His passion for us is as evident in this clip as it is in his willingness to learn our language and to respect our customs. For that, he should be applauded.”

  Roberts’ eyebrows shot up, astonished. He thought he heard a stifled grumble from Avindair, but he was certain that he saw Adelisa look down, ashamed.

  “For once, my concern isn’t about the man in Agrath’s Room,” Tarkena continued. “Instead, it’s with how he’s being treated.” He turned back to look back at the space where the video was projected.

  “Really?” Adelisa’s voice rang as the video cut back to earlier in their dinner. “Is that why you dominate every conversation with tales of my own culture? Is that why you insist on showing us how much you know about us? Or is it to remind us that we know almost nothing about you?”

  Adelisa flinched with each word, and Roberts dipped into his military discipline to stop his mouth from dropping open.

  The video stopped, the lights came up, and Tarkena turned back towards his camera.

  “If this is how our visitor is being treated by the Kionel’s own staff, then there’s little wonder as to why he hasn’t been willing to share more with us.” Tarkena spoke the words harshly, his brow knitted with practiced concern. “If his apparent good will has been met with nothing but suspicion and hostility, then it’s nothing short of a blessing—or, as Commander Roberts would say, a miracle—that he hasn’t abandoned us already.”

  The screen abruptly went dark; the snap of the switch being thrown preceded its rotation back into place by a handful of breaths. For a moment, the room was silent. But finally, the Kionel spoke.

  “Well?” the older man asked.

  “The camera crew leaked the footage to the media,” Avindair growled. “They have been ejected from the palace and will not return.”

  “The sound?” Roberts asked.

  Avindair’s eyes darkened. “Recorded by two undercover reporters in the restaurant,” he said. “The proprietor claims he was not aware of their true nature, but I find that difficult to believe.”

  “The battle is joined,” the Kionel grumbled. “It’s too late to worry about who nocked the first arrow.”

  Avindair responded, the sound a roll of distant thunder. “We have no privacy,” he said, frustrated. Adelisa looked away but remained silent.

  She’s genuinely upset, Roberts thought. He wanted to feel vindication at seeing her distress, but instead his stomach tightened.

  “We’re all of us strangers to privacy,” the Kionel replied. “That is no excuse.”

  Adelisa flinched and she lowered her head, her hands laid flat ag
ainst the soft cotton of her comfortable night pants.

  Ah, hell, Roberts thought, and he turned back to the Kionel.

  “It can get worse, Hikasa,” Roberts said, drawing attention away from Adelisa. “Much worse.”

  “Is that a threat?” Avindair rumbled towards him.

  “No,” Roberts replied. “You don’t have the technology yet, but you’re close to a problem we faced not too long before our own first contact.”

  “Which was?” Avindair challenged.

  “They called it “social media”,” Roberts explained, eager to keep the focus off Adelisa. “As soon as mobile computers became available, entire populations became addicted to what it offered. People shared almost every part of their lives with strangers around the world. Even when they learned that the companies that made these platforms had become inordinately wealthy off what people had provided, they continued, often at the cost of their own mental health.”

  “That’s insanity,” Avindair scoffed.

  “It was,” Roberts replied. “It took major political and financial upheavals linked right back to those companies to finally get them regulated. But by that time Gant had arrived, and the last thing—” Roberts stopped himself abruptly.

  “Yes?” Avindair pressed.

  ... and the last thing you want in a wartime world is several billion possible intelligence leaks, Roberts thought. Instead, he coughed, then continued. “When we realized that we weren’t alone in the universe, wanting to know what your neighbor had for breakfast suddenly didn’t seem that important.” The lie sounded weak to Roberts’ own ears, but Avindair appeared satisfied.

  “We appreciate the warning,” the Kionel said. He stood and moved towards Roberts.

  “To the matter at hand,” the Kionel asked. He fixed Roberts with an appraising stare. “What you said to my granddaughter—is it true?”

  I could ask the same of what you’ve said to me, Roberts thought. Instead, he offered up a firm, “Every word.”

  The Kionel nodded. “And do you believe you have been treated with hostility?” he continued.