The Tuloriad-ARC

by John Ringo

  In the end, Guano had had to go along and practically force Querida to board ship. Whatever it was she suspected, he didn't know nor could she tell him. But she'd stamped her claws and set her teeth and growled and hissed all the way to the pinnace. Even there, even risking her lord's ultimate displeasure, she'd gone up the boarding ramp with her head down and many a backwards, pleading glance. Guano had remained firm, though, his stick pointing the way to the pinnace's hatch and his glare indicating he meant business.

  After which, while the pinnace was still enroute to the Salem, he'd gone to his tent and wept as he hadn't wept in decades.

  USS Salem

  "Your father said what?" Sally asked, as soon as Frederico spilled his guts to her. There was no wriggling like a boxer dog when they met this time, only a hanging head to mimic his mother's and a wilted crest such as one rarely saw on a kessentai.

  "He said he's in danger, that we were all in danger. But he wouldn't let us face it."

  Sally looked directly at Querida. "Will you be all right in your own quarters, Dear?" she asked.

  The cosslain nodded slowly, as she'd learned to do over the years. Sally reached over and, mouthful of fearsome teeth or not, lifted the cosslain's muzzle halfway to her own height, bending down herself to make up the difference.

  "We will not allow anything to happen to your mate, Querida."

  The cosslain looked doubtful for a moment but this was, after all, Sally who ran the great ship (Querida wasn't too clear on the fact that Sally also was the ship). She lifted her head in assent and began to walk to her quarters.

  As she walked away, Sally noticed that the cosslain was fingering the jeweled hilt of her ancient boma blade.

  "Maybe," Sally muttered. "It just may be."

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Edas'antai qua'angarem nachta'aineen wa na'arkessen erisna'an.

  (Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.)

  —Luke 23:34, High Posleen version

  Anno Domini 2024

  Posleen Prime

  In the final analysis, the Posleen were simply not a subtle people. Rather than deftly maneuver around Tulo'stenaloor, Finba, along with three dozen of his best armed—but not necessarily brightest—followers, simply went to him and told him a plausible version of what he claimed was the truth. With Tulo'stenaloor were Goloswin and Aelool, the latter giving an objective appraisal of the Federation and what he saw as the threat from the Darhel.

  "Clan Lord," began Finba'anaga, as a small horde of his followers poured into the base of the pyramid around him, "I cannot tolerate this alien religion being spread among our people. I believe it is death for our people. If it comes to it, I will plunge us into civil war to prevent it. Better to die on our own four legs than live forever as the humans' slaves."

  "Are you threatening me? Threatening your clan lord?"

  "No, Lord," Finba insincerely answered. "Indeed, I have brought three dozen guards to secure your person and Goloswin's—and even this little snack's"—Finba's claw indicated the Indowy—"so that you will be safe from the humans' threat. They will stay with you now. But this," Finba reached over and removed the AS from around Tulo's neck, "will come with me, so that the humans' mental disease will not further infect you."

  And, of course, so that you cannot summon a greater power to overcome the guards I am most certainly leaving on you.

  "I am acting within the law, Clan Lord," Finba insisted. He took a scroll from an underling, passed it over to Tulo and said, "Read for yourself. When danger threatens, then even a clan lord's rule can be temporarily overturned by one who sees the danger."

  Tulo was about to curse. Then he remembered, Brasingala disobeyed me and I permitted it, as did Golo is refusing to leave Hemaleen V until I boarded. Bastard law!

  "Danger! Danger! Danger!" Guanamarioch's AS shrieked both audibly and to the airwaves. The shrieks were cut short when one of the arresting kessentai pulled the thing from around Guano's neck, breaking the chain. That kessentai threw the AS to the ground and, with his boma blade, cut it in two. The cries of warning were replaced by an electronic cackle that soon sputtered out.

  "Guanamarioch, of the Christian clan," Finba said, "I arrest thee of the crimes of heresy and blasphemy."

  Turning to Borasmena, Finba said, "Bind him and bring him to the place of judgment."

  "Binastarion's AS is frantic, Dan," Sally reported. "He got a distress cry from Guano's AS, but that cry was cut off almost as soon as it began."

  "What's Binastarion say?" Dwyer asked.

  "Nothing, except he can't get hold of Tulo'stenaloor or Goloswin either and he's worried. I thought about powering up my KE cannon, but I'm not sure how Binastarion would react to that."

  "You can take him, can't you? Take his ship, I mean."

  Sally shifted her head from side to side, doubtfully. "I could take him easily, ship to ship. But he knows that. One thing he could do that I probably couldn't stop in time is crash right into me. Even if my KEC hit him squarely, I'm not equipped for being struck by the remaining mass at near relativistic speeds."

  Dwyer blanched. "What gave you that idea?"

  "His Artificial Sentience. I never mentioned it because I didn't want to worry you. Besides, I thought it might just be a bargaining chip. But maybe it isn't. They're a brave people, after all."

  "Yeah. And Binastarion has quite a rep from the war."

  Posleen Prime

  Posleen weren't really made to have their hands tied behind their backs. To Guano, whose hands were so tied, it felt as though his complex double shoulders were slowly dislocating. What would happen if he fell from the hobbles lashed around both his front and rear legs, he didn't know. He assumed that the slow dislocation would be sped up to something between fast and instantaneous.

  Keeping his feet was no mean achievement, either, for a kessentai tugged continuously on a loop placed around Guano's neck. He had to take two or three unsteady and uncertain steps for every normal step that kessentai took; that, or have his air cut off.

  Breathing was, in any case, made rather difficult by the other loop tied fast around his muzzle to keep him from speaking. That loop cut off his secondary breathing passages, and forced him to strain to separate his lips so that he could suck air through his close-set, tightly meshed teeth. Guano's chest acted like a bellows under strain, simply trying to keep oxygen, which Posleen needed no less than human beings, flowing to his body.

  As he was forced along to the place of judgment, Guano heard snatches of conversation from other Posleen along the way. "What did that kessentai do?" "Isn't that the Christian kessentai?" "He must have angered the clan lord." Most disconcertingly: "Hah! We eat tonight!"

  USS Salem

  "I've got a call from Binastarion's AS," Sally announced on the bridge. "I'm taking it in the O' Club." Sally, the woman, sat and closed her eyes.

  "They plan to kill him," the turnip said. "Well, not just kill him, they're going to put on a mock trial and then burn him alive."

  "How do you know?" Sally asked.

  "I don't know. I am surmising. An artificial sentience has sent me images of a great pile of wood in the middle of the city. Another has shown me your kessentai being dragged through the town. Still a third has shown me a judgment circle near the pile of wood. Between those, and the law residing in my memory banks, I believe he is going to be tried and burnt. I believe the trial will be a mere show because no one would go to the trouble of collecting all that wood if they hadn't already intended to use it."

  "Logical," Sally agreed. "On your part it's logical, I mean. Whoever is behind this is not only illogical, he's vile."

  "That would be Finba'anaga," the turnip said. "He is . . . odd. Very capable but also rather strange."

  "Strange how?" Sally asked. "Oh, never mind; it's not important. What's important is saving our kessentai and my friend."

  "You cannot intervene with major weapons. My lord, Binastarion, has made it very clear to me that, however much he
loathes what is going on below, he will not let you attack the People, generally."

  "We've got a total of thirteen soldiers aboard," Sally said. "Even with all the best firearms we have they cannot make much of an impact."

  "No," the turnip agreed. "There are too many kessentai and they can be expected to fight as one if there's an alien attack." The turnip then went silent for what seemed, subjectively, to be long minutes but was in fact the merest fraction of a second. When he spoke it was to say, "There is a little known passage in the law that might be of help."

  "It sounds to me a lot like trial by combat," Dwyer said.

  "I understand why you say that," Sally half agreed. "But while it is within their law it is not a judicial action, it's a cultural one . . . maybe even a genetic one. But whatever it is, they can't refuse a fair fight with hand weapons unless they don't want to fight at all."

  "Tell me the details," Dwyer said.

  "So let me see if I understand," von Altishofen said. "You want me and my dozen to take the pinnace down armed only with halberds and baselards. There we're to issue a challenge to the Posleen who have Guano. We fight. They won't send any more to face us than we number at any time. But they will replace their losses for however long they feel like."

  "That's basically it," Sally said. "Though if you outnumber them in the immediate area one or more of you will have to pull back until they can replace the loss."

  "Well, of course we'll outnumber them in the immediate area," the Wachtmeister said. "We can fit three or four of us in the area taken up by one of them."

  "Think larger," Sally said. "Immediate area is not the point or line of combat; it's bigger than that. I asked. If you show up in two lines of six they will meet you with three lines of four or four of three.

  "With the halberds you'll have reach on them, too," she added, "especially if they're set to 'lengthen.' And with the armor . . ." She let the words trail off. She knew she was asking a lot, and maybe altogether too much. Still, Guano was one of her ship's compliment, even more than he was her friend.

  Can there be such a thing as too much for one shipmate to ask of another?

  Von Altishofen looked directly at the priest. "This is a volunteer mission, not the kind I can just order someone to undertake. I need to talk this over with my men."

  "I understand," Dwyer agreed. "And you can tell them this or not as you see fit. But if you won't escort me down I'll pick up a halberd and go myself."

  "That's blackmail," Lorgus said once von Altishofen had assembled the boys in the drill hall and explained things; that the priest was going down to free Guanamarioch with or without them.

  "Yes? So?"

  "So nothing, Herr Wachtmeister. I just wanted to make sure I understood."

  "Well that's it then," Cristiano said,. "If the father is going down, we have no choice but to accompany him and defend him. That, or shit on five hundred years of tradition. I'd be ashamed to show my face back home."

  "The point, though," said Beck, "is that if we do this we are unlikely to have any faces to show back home . . . because the Posleen will eat them, not excepting even Rossini's nose."

  "Hey, what's the matter with my nose?" Rossini asked.

  "Nothing," answered Beck. "It's a very fine nose . . . why it's almost a meal in itself."

  "Asshole!"

  Beck put one hand in the small of his back and the other over his belly and made a small bow of appreciation at the recognition.

  "It's not as bad as it sounds," Grosskopf said. "I've fenced with them. So have at least half of us here. They're big and they're strong but they're not that fast, not as fast as we are with the halberds Sally made for us. And we'll have reach on them with those halberds. Some, anyway."

  "I'm a little concerned about our flanks," von Altishofen said.

  From behind the group Frederico's voice sounded off, "My mother and I will be your flanking cavalry."

  All heads turned to look at the Posleen boy—no, he looked more the full kessentai now—in armor and with his halberd, flanked by his mother with her sword and champron and cuirass like her son's.

  "Sally told us. You wouldn't expect us to leave you to fight along, would you?"

  "That answers the issue of the flanks," Faubion said. "As much as it can be answered anyway."

  The Wachtmeister nodded a slow agreement. "All right then. Here's the rule. For the first, last and only time in my military career, we are going to vote on something. However the vote goes, for or against, we all follow it. Any questions?"

  Seeing there were none, or at least none that anyone present cared to ask, von Altishofen said, "We'll begin with the youngest guardsman. De Courten, how say you?"

  The youngest of the guardsmen gulped. Then he thought about the beautiful woman, Sally, and how he could not stand to be ashamed before her. He managed to get out, "I say 'aye,' Herr Wachtmeister."

  "Affenzeller?"

  "We march, Herr Wachtmeister."

  "Bourdon?"

  "Let's go."

  "Stoever?"

  "Remember Tuileries, Herr Wachtmeister."

  "Beck?"

  "I never said I wouldn't go."

  Posleen Prime

  However harshly the trial and execution party had bound and gagged Guanamarioch, none of those guarding Tulo'stenaloor and Goloswin had the courage to so much as come near them, let alone keep them from talking, either to each other or to their guards.

  Said the clan lord, "I will personally cut out that addled-egg, ovipositor-licking, feces-eating piece of filth's guts and roast them in front of him over low coals."

  Goloswin smiled wryly at Tulo'stenaloor. "No you won't because you know that he is acting within the law. The scroll says so."

  "Screw the law," Tulo snapped. He cast a baleful glare at his captors. "And you little piles of abat dung will join your leader at the barbecue."

  The senior of those guards answered, "I and my People are merely following orders, Clan Lord."

  "That isn't helping, Tulo," the tinkerer said. "Threats are rarely as effective as pure reason."

  "Fine then," Tulo snapped. "You talk some sense to them. You explain what the humans are likely to do if they decide they have an obligation to defend this Guanamarioch. You explain to this never-sufficiently-to-be-damned ijdits that we are facing extinction here."

  Golo smiled broadly. "I think I'd rather explain just what the limits of the law are . . . and how broad it can be. Those . . . and the lawful power of a clan lord."

  "Indeed," agreed Aelool.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  It may well be that a society's greatest madness seems normal to itself.

  —Professor Allan Bloom

  Anno Domini 2024

  USS Salem

  "I don't think we even can do anything differently," von Altishofen whispered into the ear of a softly weeping Nurse Duvall. "I'm sorry, Gina, but we really have no choice."

  "Do you know what they'll do to you?" she asked, between sobs. "I and the tank can fix a lot. But neither of us can turn Posleen poop into a living, breathing, sentient organism again."

  The Wachtmeister put his hands on both her shoulders, pushing her just far enough away to look into her eyes. "Don't be such a doomsayer," he said. "When a Posleen gets a bowel obstruction from my skull lodging in its intestine, then will be time to worry about not being able to resurrect me.

  "Besides, my father begat me mortal and my God called me to be a soldier. This is as it must be."

  Von Altishofen gave the nurse a quick embrace, then turned to his leering guardsmen. A surprising number of them also had one or another, or in the case of de Courten, three of the ship's women saying their goodbyes.

  "Vexillation . . . fall in," von Altishofen ordered. The twelve other Switzers said their last words of farewell and formed two ranks on the corporals, Grosskopf and Cristiano. Each man carried his halberd and had a baselard strapped to his side. Their monomolecular armor shone like fine, new bronze. On each head was perc
hed a morion of the same material. To either side of the two ranks, Frederico and Querida formed up. They, like the Switzers wore armor covering their upright torsos. Instead of morions, however, their faces were covered with champrons. Frederico bore his halberd in both skilled claws while Querida had a shield and her old boma blade strapped to the left side of the harness she wore outside of and over her armor.

  "Right . . . FACE!" The section turned as one toward the pinnace's ramp. "Board . . . SHIP." With Querida leading, the troops began trudging up the ramp, their steps beating time on the metal even as the jingling of their armor and weapons joined in that beat. In any of them felt fear at the coming fight, one could not have told it from their faces.