by John Ringo
Tulo'stenaloor twisted his head one hundred and eighty degrees and said, "Walk over our backs. No one will complain."
This wasn't precisely true, Aelool discovered, as he stepped gingerly from one broad, scaly, yellow back to another. Many of the Posleen, soldiers first and foremost, seemed to be operating off of the ancient military principle, "Don't sleep when you're tired; sleep when you can." These had duly nodded off, heads hanging low or resting on the backs of others. More than once, in his progress towards the hatchway that led to the ship's bridge, Aelool's body weight was enough to awaken them, snarling and spitting. More than once, a Posleen senior had had to call off the just-awakened ones' snapping jaws.
It was with a considerable, even a profound, sense of relief that Aelool reached the limits of the Posleen mass and was helped down to the deck, held gently in firm claws. It was only when the hatchway closed behind him that the Indowy began to tremble, as his body had been demanding to tremble ever since he'd spotted the Posleen refugees on the planet below.
Muttering an Indowy curse at the fate that had brought him to nest among so many carnivores, Aelool proceeded up the corridor—still lit, here, with the Himmits' preferred blue-green—until he reached a tube that led upward to the bridge or downward to a portion of the ship with which he was unfamiliar.
Stepping into the tube, Aelool shot upwards; this technology, at least, was something Himmit and Indowy shared. He stopped as suddenly as he'd begun. Though the tube continued upwards, somehow it—or the computer that controlled it—had known where to bring the Indowy to a halt. Stepping off, Aelool saw a circular hatchway a few meters ahead. This dilated immediately. He stepped forward and through.
"Welcome, Indowy Aelool," said the captain, lying across a sort of quilted couch with one of his heads at each end.
"I see you, Captain Argzal." Aelool looked at the bridge's view screen. "I see them, too. A pity you couldn't hide."
"The humans have gotten much better in space, Aelool. We are fortunate to have gotten as far as we have without detection."
A voice came from a hidden speaker somewhere on the bridge. "Unidentified ship, this is Captain Yolanda Sanchez, Fleet Strike light cruiser Ramon Magsaysay. Heave to. Cease all forward movement. Do not attempt to go hyperlight. Do not attempt to engage stealth. Prepare to be boarded."
"Well, we can't allow that," Aelool muttered. "Under the circumstances, the humans would skin us and our passengers alive."
"My contract does not cover my being flayed," the Himmit said.
"Nor does mine. Can I speak to this Captain Sanchez?"
The Himmit made no sound, but ran a finger over a small plate on one side of his command couch. "You may speak now," it said. With the same motion the view of the stars disappeared, being replaced by the face of a brown-skinned woman with large eyes, a delicate chin and very high cheekbones. Large or not, the eyes seemed quite feral to both the Himmit and the Indowy.
"Captain Sanchez," Aelool began, "is it possible that we might speak privately?"
"An Indowy on a Himmit smuggler?" the human captain observed. "That's one for the books." She hesitated only a moment before adding, "Yes, give me a moment."
Aelool caught sight of a bustling bridge before the screen went blank, temporarily. When it shone again, the background had changed to something much less busy, something almost homelike, as a human might consider home. Sanchez, this time, appeared seated at a desk clean except for a computer monitor. A fair-sized tank of tropical fish was mounted into the wall behind her, the tank being surrounded by various trophies, pictures, and mementos. Aelool imagined that some form of miniature intertial dampening system probably kept both water and sealife contained during maneuvers.
"What's your excuse?" Sanchez began, brusquely. "You are aware, are you not, that the Earth is under interdiction until the Posleen infestation is cleared out?"
"It is as an agency of that clearing out," Aelool answered, "that we are on this mission." This was, of course, at some level true. It was also, at another level, a bald-faced lie. Aelool turned to Argzal. "Captain, can you focus your viewing devices just on me?"
Some things were not suitable for reduction to electronic memory. This was not because they could not be so reduced, but that electronic memory was, by its nature, hackable memory. Thus, the Bane Sidhe, the "Killers of Elves" who formed the resistance within the Galactic Federation to Darhel tyranny, often used written media, pictograms, and the like, for things which must be kept utterly secure. One of these, a geometric design drawn by machine on a thin sheet of GalPlas, the Indowy removed from somewhere inside his tunic and spread across his chest.
Sanchez's already large eyes widened still further at whatever suddenly appeared on the monitor on her desk. Aelool knew what she was seeing there, orders to allow the bearer of the certificate he had shown to proceed unmolested, coupled with an order to maintain silence, which orders would disappear from her ship's computer within an hour. The orders had been deeply embedded in that computer, awaiting the design Aelool had shown to activate them. Over the course of time the subroutine that would cause those orders to disappear would likewise infect every computer in the Fleet, likewise causing them to eradicate all trace of the orders. The Bane Sidhe could not have known, after all, which human ship or ships might intercept. Thus, they'd infected them all.
"I . . . see," Sanchez said. "This is most . . . irregular, Indowy Aelool. Nonetheless, they appear official, and carry the highest classification." Sanchez nodded her head, as if to herself and only slowly and reluctantly. "You may proceed, Surreptitious Stalker. But I shall inquire about these orders."
"Captain," Aelool answered, keeping tension from his voice by sheer will, "if you would take well meant advice? Do not inquire."
Tensions were high in the cargo compartment. With not just one but two human light cruisers with their guns brought to bear on the Himmit ship, Tulo'stenaloor wouldn't have given a esonal's chance in an abat hole for the likelihood he and his people would survive another ten minutes. When the screens changed to show a human face, the sense of dread and doom only increased.
"Now that," observed Goloswin, "is one vicious looking human."
"Indeed," Tulo'stenaloor agreed, his crest automatically erecting with the threat the human's presence implied. "And most unusual to find one of their females, their bearing sex, in command of combat forces."
"How do you know it's a female? They all look alike to me."
"The projections on the chest," Tulo explained. "Though some don't seem to have them; still, where present they're a good indicator."
"Himmit," Tulo called, "can you translate what's being said, please?"
"Yes," Argzal's voice answered.
". . . This is most . . . irregular, Indowy Aelool . . . Nonetheless, they appear official, and carry the highest classification . . . You may proceed, Surreptitious Stalker . . . But I shall inquire about these orders."
The face of the vicious looking human female cut out, to be replaced by a view of space, where two human light cruisers began to turn away from the Himmit ship.
"We got away with it?"
"For now, Goloswin," Tulo answered. "If this is the closest call we have, I will count us lucky."
"That was shitty luck," Argzal mused. "We should have been able to avoid them. Strange that they could detect us. I wonder what other little techno-tricks you Indowy have given the humans of which my people are unaware."
Aelool offered the Himmit nothing but an inscrutable gaze. Changing the subject, he said, "It is time I go back to our passengers. The ship won't support feeding them, not more than a score or so, anyway. The rest must go into hibernation."
"Indeed," Argzal agreed. "And I would have to be asleep myself not to notice that you did not answer my question. How do you propose to put them into hibernation if they refuse?"
"Simple," the Indowy answered. "If they refuse, I'll just tell them that you'll open the cargo hold to space."
"Oh, that shoul
d win their trust and affection."
Trust, as it turned out, wasn't an issue. The Posleen didn't refuse, nor balk, nor even question. "It only makes sense," Tulo'stenaloor had commented, gazing around at the sardine can-like conditions in the cargo hold. "Leave us like this and we'll be killing and eating each other in no time. Still, it's going to be strange subjecting ourselves to stasis while under someone else's power. Then again, it's not as if we're not already in someone else's power. You could, I imagine, just open the cargo hold to space if we refused."
Aelool said nothing to that, either. He did, however, wonder, Do we all have a common ancestor, or even a creator, that we think so much alike even when we usually act so differently?
Before he'd even finished the thought, Tulo had shouted out some orders and the Posleen were, in the main and sheeplike, shuffling to the stasis chambers.
In the end, Tulo left out of hibernation only a relative few. These included his guard, Brasingala, Goloswin, the tinkerer, plus Exo, Essone, Esstwo, Essthree, and Essfour, a single cosslain, the late mesergen's assistant, to act as a general servant and bring them their meals. In addition, Tulo'stenaloor had kept awake one of his operational commanders who had managed to rejoin his headquarters after his own horde was destroyed. The last left awake was Binastarion, refugee from the fighting on Earth near where the two minor continents were joined at a narrow waist, and himself missing an eye and an arm. Binastarion's position, since he had thrown his stick and given up the path of fury, was ambiguous. A human might have called it, "Senior Advisor." Two more of Tulo's long time senior pack chiefs, plus his Rememberer, completed the company.
These thirteen, Tulo and his twelve, remained awake. Outside of the company, but still present, Aelool stood just in front of Tulo, as much for the sense of safety as for any other reason. There, while Tulo'stenaloor, himself, might devour him in two bites, he could at least feel safe from the remainder.
Each Posleen had a bucket of a mush-like substance in front of him, set there by the single cosslain, the former assistant to the Mesergen. It was nourishment, and perhaps a bit better than what was exuded from their own ships' galleys, being both less bland and of a more satisfyingly chewy texture. Even so, they knew they would have to find their happiness elsewhere.
"If Jesus had a twelve man A-Team," the Indowy muttered, quoting from a song he had heard the Armored Combat Suited troopers of Fleet Strike sing on more than one occasion.
"What's that?" Tulo asked, over the Indowy's shoulder.
"Oh, I just noticed that the number twelve figures prominently in the writings and history of the humans, as well, Tulo."
"We are thirteen, Indowy," Tulo corrected, "not counting yourself."
"Ah. My mistake. So you are. How wonderful for us, then. So do the humans, sometimes, number themselves as such and the number is considered to be extraordinarily portentous."
I wish I could read that little snack's facial expressions better, thought the chief kessentai.
The other eleven key kessentai and kessenalt formed a rough circle (for the single cosslain standing out of the way could hardly be said to count and Brasingala almost instinctively took a position behind and to one side of Tulo, the better to guard his chief's back). With Tulo at what the human's would have called "the head of the table" or "twelve-o'clock," the others were, going clockwise, Exo, Essone, Essfour, Goloswin, the Rememberer, Chorobinaloor, Gorasinth'zula, Binastarion, the one-eyed and -armed, Esstwo, and Essthree before rounding back to Tulo'stenaloor.
"You wished to address us, Aelool," Tulo announced. "Here is your chance."
The Indowy gulped, a habit his people and the humans shared. He then, while trying to show no unseemly reluctance, stepped out into the middle of the circle.
Well, Aelool thought, if one of them tries to eat me the odds are good that the others will try to beat that one to the punch. I might get away in the confusion. And here's hoping that Argzal had one grasping digit poised over the stasis beams he's told me he has focused on our guests.
"I claim edas," Aelool began. Edas was the Posleen word for debt or obligation. It was their practical high level currency. "I claim edas for your lives I have saved, for your people I have rescued from extinction, and for your civilization, the kernel of which I have shielded. Do you accept this?"
I knew this was coming, thought Tulo'stenaloor. Anything too good to be true, just like the thing the humans call a "free lunch," isn't.
It was the Rememberer who answered for the group. "We accept edas, alien, as it shall be computed and allocated by the net, accounting for your lawful preferences. This is the law," the Rememberer added, glaring around the circle for any that might gainsay him. He didn't mention that the net was, until they could reacquire some artificial sentiences, quite defunct.
There were no takers to the Rememberer's challenge in any case. Ravenous, murderous, genocidal, homicidal maniacs the Posleen, as a race, might have been. Yet, still, the law was the law and they would obey it.
"I claim then, first, that both my person and my people shall be inviolable by you and yours and your descendants to the last flickering of the final star."
"We accept," answered the Rememberer, for all kessentai present. "Let the net so record. Let it also be recorded that we cannot speak for, nor owe obligation to pay edas for, any of the People of the Ships not present in this ship."
"Understood," Aelool agreed. "I claim second, that if I or any of my people should call for you to come to our aid, this you must do, you and your descendants until the last star flickers out."
"We accept."
"Lastly, I require of you that you must forego revenge against the humans who, after all, did no more than you yourselves were trying to do, to survive."
At this condition the Rememberer froze, its crocodilian lips drawn back from clenched teeth. Nor was it the only one to balk. The others—except for Binastarion—made similar grimaces, or reached for boma blades, or reached forth claws as if to rend the Indowy into little bits.
"WE ACCEPT!" thundered Tulo'stenaloor, his iron voice freezing the rest in place. "With the proviso that we may still defend ourselves from any humans who come hunting for us."
"This," agreed Aelool, "is fair." If the humans should ever learn to track you, where you're going . . . and how you're getting there.
The Surreptitious Stalker neither glided between the stars as did Indowy and Darhel ships, nor tunneled quite as did the ships of the Posleen. Rather, in the parlance, it "skipped." That is to say, it made a series of relatively small jumps between points, often using what the Himmit called the 'Hidden Path,' none of them so long and thus energy intensive as to be likely to be noticed. This was often a fairly slow method. Its big advantage was that it was relatively stealthy. Only in the short interruptions while preparing a new jump were the ships of the Stalker's class detectible, and then only for so long as it took to begin the new jump or end one. Even then, the odds of there being another ship nearby when they materialized were exceedingly poor, especially given that the Hidden Path did not use normal ley lines between major stars.
Of course, the doctrine for Himmit scout-smugglers called for them to make only random progress towards their destination, appearing first here, then there, then somewhere else not all that noticeably closer to their target. Thus, the journey to the system of Diess, the fourth planet of which had been the scene of the first truly major engagement between Posleen and human forces, took months as the humans measured time. When the ship emerged into normal space after its final jump, no one expected it, nor could have expected it.
"I recognize the constellations," Tulo'stenaloor said to Brasingala, gesturing at the view screens, now showing a three hundred and sixty degree field of view. "This was where I first began to understand the human threat, and our own weakness when facing them. Of course," he added, 'I never understood them well enough, or in time, for it to do any good."
"You understood better than the rest of us, Lord," Brasingala said. "An
d sooner. You did the best that any of us could. More than this, the spirits of the ancestors never ask."
Tulo sighed. "Less than victory has seen us huddled as refugees in an alien ship."
Brasingala shrugged his oddly jointed double shoulders, repeating, "You did the best you could, Lord."
"Will my descendants think so, Brasingala? When they are hunted from planet to planet like vermin, will they think so?"
"I am your descendant, Lord, and I think so. Besides, we don't know that they will be so hunted."
"No . . . but it's a likely guess. Sometimes I wish . . ."
"Lord?"
"Oh . . . sometimes I wish we had remembered our ancient contacts with the species that became Man, gone forth in the friendship we once knew, met them with open arms."
"We knew the humans, Lord?"
"Of old, Brasingala, of old."
"I didn't know that."
Tulo reached up one claw to scratch his muzzle. "They did, if they cared to draw the analogy. Among our own people, it's not something generally known, but if one searches out the histories and the three disciplines, and consults some of the scrolls of the Rememberers, one cannot avoid the conclusion that we knew the humans eons ago. There is no other species that matches both the physical, the intellectual and the moral descriptions. For their bizarre reproductive behavior alone they would stand out as unique."