“They’re not armed, aren’t they?”
“No, but they can haul in relays in the hold and destroy them manually.”
“That sounds like a slow process.”
“It is, if you have only a few ships. There are over ten thousand Trader ships. Not all will be able to come in time, but the majority will.”
Shit. This was happening. This was a race against time.
The crew was full on preparing for a jump. Unnecessary processes were shut down, anchor belts and tethers properly attached, workbenches stowed and uniform buttons done up. I didn’t know why the buttons were important, but enough of the crew were doing up their buttons for it to be noticeable.
A warning started blaring to secure loose items and use belts. A countdown number flashed in the middle of the window behind Ledaya’s command chair.
I knew what to expect and still felt cold with nerves.
The countdown reached zero. For a moment it seemed like nothing happened and my heart filled with panic that the Aghyrian ship had yet again disabled the Exchange.
Then everything went white, and slowly reassembled itself in rainbow colours.
The scene outside the window had changed. Immediately below was a decent-sized disk displaying the eroded pink surface of Asto, crisscrossed by channels. The projection in the middle of the command room had adjusted to reflect our new locality. I could see many little specks that I presumed to be other ships. The space station, too.
“Are those all military ships?” I asked Thayu in a low voice. “Or are they Trader ships?”
“No, the Traders are at the LaGrange points.”
Damn it, I hadn’t realised how big Asto’s fleet was. I could likely see only a small part, too.
“Where is the sling?”
“It’s still on its way.”
Ledaya made another announcement to the crew, and the frantic activity resumed.
“He’s ordering everyone to stay in their seats in case the ship needs to move quickly. We’ll be doing an orbital sweep and will be firing at any bit of debris we find.”
The crew was certainly very busy. Other ships were busy, too. One by one, the white lights turned blue. Someone was making good progress at Asto’s leading LaGrange point. The white dots at Ceren’s leading LaGrange point were almost extinguished, too—wait. There was a white light that didn’t belong in the projection. A white dot at Ceren.
I said, “Look there.”
But people had already seen it. The captain, too. He was talking to someone—Ezhya or Asha—making wild gestures. Yes, he had destroyed the relay. Yes, he had checked. Yes, he had fired twice just to make sure.
And yet there it was: a white node, not just live, but communicating with the few relays at Ceren’s leading cloud.
Shit.
Alarms started blaring. Lights were flashing. Crewmembers were talking in their earpieces. Compared to what you might expect a scene of panic to look like, it was still calm and ordered, but the pronouns were all imperative. You do this. You do that. You hurry up.
A couple of white lights in Ceren’s cloud went blue.
But something else was happening in the cloud around Asto: a couple of the dots were growing filaments, like fungus. The threads connected with other dots.
Ledaya was shouting orders now. Some lights turned blue, but more and more of them sprang into being, connecting to the growing network of nodes, linked up with blue-white filaments of light.
The network grew. It connected to the nodes in Asto’s orbit—and some winked out again because they were still being destroyed. But it grew outwards inexorably, and grew, and grew—
Until the whole thing resembled the web-like projection of the Exchange network that you could see when you stood at the observation window at the Exchange: a web of strands of light that were constantly moving and jiggling.
And pulsing, like the beating of a heart.
For two flashes the entire network pulsed in unison.
Then the flight deck went dark, and the windows went dark. Of course. They only looked like windows but were viewscreens. The screens went dark. The instruments stopped blinking and transmitting. In that deep silence, a wave of . . . something made the ship hum and shudder.
“We’ve lost contact with command,” someone said into the darkness, which might have been the understatement of the century. I thought the voice was Ledaya’s but I couldn’t be sure.
And then, a moment later, “Yes . . . yes. We’re working on it.” It was Ledaya indeed. He lit a small light on his workbench that cast his face in an eerie glow from underneath.
Then he said, “Fleet Command reports that the Aghyrian ship has jumped.”
Chapter 27
* * *
THE CREW worked frantically to re-establish power to the command room. First the light came back on in the cabin and then the viewscreens flickered back into life.
The scene out there was surreal. Ceren was just big enough to form a little half circle. Asto was a brighter and much larger half-disk. Both were side-lit by Beniz and Yaza, which, from our position, were much further apart than they were when seen from Barresh.
Against the backdrop of ink-dark sky glittered thousands and thousands of bright specks, which moved in the same direction we were moving. The closer ships resolved into distinct shapes. They were, as far as I could see, mostly Asto military, the square and clunky vessels that few people ever saw and that mostly hung around in the dark depths of space.
The crew also managed to bring the projector back to life. It showed a vibrant white-green dot that trailed filaments of light.
That was the Aghyrian ship. I guessed those wisps were the anpar wake, even if I’d never seen this. The operator enlarged the area and then enlarged the view at the giant viewscreens.
The dark, giant behemoth that was the Aghyrian ship floated between Asto and the suns.
It was massive, many times bigger than the largest ship in Asto’s fleet. Fifty thousand years ago the generation ship had left, having refused help to the beautiful, green, dying planet. Today it was back, looking on its homeworld’s scarred surface.
Most of the crew in the control room would not have seen it before. People sat silent behind their workstations, staring at it. Coldi military would be strongly discouraged to show emotions, but their utter silence and pale, quiet faces were scarier than shouts and panic would have been.
They would have heard Asha’s statement that normal weapons couldn’t destroy this ship. There was no doubt in their eyes. It was plainly obvious. They had no weapons to destroy it, except perhaps the sling, but it wasn’t due to arrive for the best part of a day.
The navigators had managed to re-establish contact with the fleet and were talking to other ships in low voices. I could see the details flicker over the screen.
“Our leader speaks,” Ledaya said, amplified through the command centre.
There were some clicks and hisses of static and then a voice resonated through the area. A voice that had spoken sternly to me and had offered me protection before I left, protection that might be futile depending on what that ship did.
Ezhya said, “People of Asto and all who have loyalty to me. Today we stand before a challenge that is bigger than any we have faced in the history of our civilisation. I may ask things of you that I have never asked before and that, hopefully, I will never have to ask again.”
He used miyu pronouns all the way. All people in the command room listened. Not a single glance went to the instruments or screens. Ezhya had their undivided attention.
“While I am with our fleet, I look upon this intruder and know that our impressive arsenal of weapons may not be enough to deal with this ship. We do not know what they want but we know that they have not come in peace. I am calling on all my people to help defend our beautiful world against the menace. I have given orders to appropriate people to take action. If you find you are subject to an order that appears to be outside your normal routine, this is wh
y. The orders may seem extreme, but I’m hoping that they will be no more than precautions.”
“He’s ordered all the citizens to seek shelter in the aquifers,” Thayu whispered to me.
Shit.
“We have a number of advantages. We are many, and our numbers continue to increase. We have recalled as much of our fleet as feasible. We have full cooperation and assistance of the entire Trader Guild. The Exchange is operational. The Kedras military is on its way. Hedron has sent ships, due to arrive soon. And we have the captain of the ship as hostage. We will be using all these advantages to their fullest extent.”
Ledaya glanced at me from where he sat.
“Meanwhile, I expect your full loyalty. As people, we have been through difficult times together, and we will get through this together. We are one. Iyamichu ata.”
The whole command centre exploded with the reply as more than a hundred voices shouted, “Iyamichu ata!”
I merely repeated the words, but Thayu shouted, and Sheydu and Veyada, and Deyu, her eyes glittering.
The shout made the air vibrate as if the very metal of the hull rang with the sound of many voices. A number of people raised fists.
Ledaya called out, “Iyamichu ata!”
And again the crew replied as one. Serious faces. Raised fists.
It gave me goosebumps.
Asto was going to war.
As the crew sank into frenzied activities, Ledaya gestured me over to the command module. I undid my seat belt and floated over to him.
Ezhya’s face was still displayed on the screen in front of the captain. Ezhya, too, sat in some kind of ship. Not a very large one, I thought. Possibly his own.
Ledaya moved aside so that I could face the screen.
Ezhya nodded when I came into view.
He said, “You have the captain there with you.” It was not a question.
“We do indeed.”
“Tell him to put that ship into a stable orbit. Tell him that he will have one last chance to speak to us. Tell him that any move towards the planet will be seen as hostile and will draw fire.”
I wasn’t going to mention the fact that we had nothing to destroy the ship with. He knew that. I saw it in his eyes. This was going to be classic Coldi bluff.
“Can the captain and his companions be brought here?” I asked Ledaya.
“They can.” And he ordered, “Bring the hostages. Blindfolded.” A cabin lackey hurried off to do it. Or maybe he wasn’t a lackey. The disturbing part about the Asto military was that they rarely displayed ranking on their uniforms. Coldi knew who was ranked high and low. It was in their instinct.
I said, “Is the ship speaking to anyone?”
“No,” Ezhya said. And then: “Their engines are running at low speed. They will want to execute a series of short burns to insert themselves into a stable orbit. We’ll allow them to do that as long as they don’t come any closer. After that, I rely on you to keep him talking. They’ve made it clear they’re not interested in any form of communication with us. Keep him occupied.”
“Until the sling turns up?”
“Until they come within range of the station. The sling can’t be here before that time.”
Shit. No one came close to the station. Not even the commercial flights did, and everyone aboard those were Asto’s citizens.
“Is the station . . . armed?”
“There is a plan.” All right so he was not going to answer that. “All I want you to do is make the captain believe that we’re still interested in negotiating.”
“Yes.” I believed with all my heart that we should still try to negotiate. “As far as I can tell, the ship is slaved to the captain and one other crew member we have here. I am unsure what their tasks are. They haven’t been very helpful.”
“Talk to them. Keep them busy. I don’t care what you say to them. I don’t care what the result is. Just keep them busy.”
“What if I can broker an agreement?”
His face hardened. “The time for agreements is past. If they were going to agree to anything we offered, they already would have done so. If there was anything they wanted that we could give them, they would have asked.” The miyu pronouns unsettled me deeply, but oh, I understood. It was just that I would have considered him a friend, and now he was deciding over matters of war that would affect the lives of many. It was disturbing.
I signed off, and saw his face disappear from the screen, wondering if, when and where I would see him again and how much the world would have changed by then.
A couple of soldiers floated in through the square entrance in the base of the funnel shape of the command room. They pulled with them a platform with a plain flat base, unlike the mushroom-shaped one where we had been given seats. This particular one was probably used for moving freight through the ship. There were no seats, no stalk, only hooks on the “floor” to tie down the cargo so that it didn’t go drifting into space. Four people “sat” on this floor, secured around the waist, wrists and ankles by brightly-coloured cargo straps: Kando Luczon, Tayron Kathraczi, Lilona Shrakar and Marin Federza. Their eyes had been covered by blindfolds.
“Do they really need to be blindfolded?” I asked Thayu in a low voice.
“You know the rule: no one sees the room of the upper command in Asto’s military, unless you’re upper military.”
Kind of silly, but pointless to discuss. This was not my territory and not my terms.
I felt chilled that Ezhya’s use of pronouns of war triggered my association to do the same.
I detached myself from the seat and floated through the control room. To one side—it was pointless to speak of left or right anymore—navigation crew were monitoring the progress of the ship, in particular in the giant formation of military ships that floated with us. Thayu had once explained the intricate systems of controlling where everyone jumped and how fast they moved when large sections of the fleet were in motion.
I grabbed the edge of the platform that held the hostages and swung myself up. I attached my tether to the hook I recognised to be destined for that purpose and reeled in the wire so that I didn’t go floating into space.
One day I was going to be an expert on this.
To be honest I was astonished that I’d so far been able to hang onto my breakfast. Running ragged on high adrenalin apparently suppressed motion sickness.
“I’ve been given one last chance to come to an agreement with you about our future interactions,” I started. “Ezhya Palayi of Asto has given you his position. Your ship is allowed to stay in orbit at its current distance from Asto for the duration of the negotiations, but—”
“What negotiations?” Kando Luczon turned his head towards me. His eyes were covered but his mouth was set in a stubborn line.
My mind flooded with a sudden revulsion and a feeling of deep hatred. This man had been given the most amazing life, a dream that people had died for: to make a jump in time and see what the future brought. He could have used it to help people, to warn people or simply to tell interesting tales. But no, all this man had ever done with the astonishing gift he’d been given life was be an utter dick. Frankly I was out of patience with him. “You’re right. The time for negotiations is over. My allies keep telling me that, but I guess I was too stubborn to see it. I understand it now. Once I would have wanted to help you and your crew. I would have given you a place to live in safety—”
“We are not interested in anything you can offer us.”
Frustration boiled over. “Then why did you come here? To disrupt our peaceful lives and to manipulate some of us into fighting against each other? How long has this been going on? Twenty, thirty years? Why? Do me a pleasure and tell us that.”
“We made mistakes.” His voice sounded prim.
“And you come here to make them worse? What do you care anyway? It’s not your life anymore. None of us here are your problem or remotely your property. I was moved by your plea of an old man wanting to see his home once more, b
ut I can see it for the lie it is. I don’t believe anything you say anymore. The best thing you could do is leave us alone because if you stay here, things will end badly.”
“Those people out there, they have nothing that can damage our ship.”
“I would not want to put that to the test. Have you seen the size of the fleet out there? Do you know how many people are watching you? Do you know that they will try and try again until they can find a little hole, and they will rip it and make it bigger until it’s so big that no one can plug it.” That was how Coldi society worked: they kept trying, they waited until someone made a mistake. Above all, they worked together, as one.
“You still have nothing that could damage our ship. We refuse to let ourselves be dictated. We will go exactly where we want.”
This was predictably not going well. Lilona was vigorously shaking her head. It didn’t matter. Keep him talking, Ezhya had said, so that’s what I did.
Marin Federza sat next to Lilona, holding her hand. He said, “It could be that the captain might consider retreating in exchange for permission to live on one world.” What he said was nonsense. We already knew that he wasn’t interested, but damn it, Federza appeared to understand what I was trying to do. I had never considered that possible.
I added to his words, “My colleague here is right. We could provide a community for all of the crew to live in, give them care and clothing and food—”
“We don’t need worlds to live on. We don’t need anyone’s permission. The ship has been self-sufficient for generations.”
“But it isn’t!” Lilona cried out. “We’re sick, and we’re made to believe, every time things get worse and we become weaker and more sickly, that this is normal. Yes, we can live to very old ages, but we are too weak to enjoy it. I can’t walk as fast as everyone. I feel sick all the time. I’m one of the healthier people, but compared to everyone here, I’m so weak. We get told that we’re all healthy, but we can’t even reproduce naturally anymore.”
Ambassador 4: Coming Home Page 27