Farsight fixed his gloomy eyes on me. “What do you know?”
An admirably appropriate question. “Lackofa believes they are Capasin. We can fly the Crate — the small ship of theirs — and we can fight her. But if we encounter more of their ships the odds do not favor Lackofa and me.”
“More ships?” Tatchilla shrilled. “What do you mean more ships? Why should there be more ships?”
I was unsure. I was operating on instinct. I knew there were more ships, I knew it. But could I convince them?
“They play … I mean that they fight slowly. They take their time. They enjoy the process.” I was on the verge of explaining that they were very much like a species called Endrids from the game. The Endrids, too, derived pleasure from the act of killing prey. But bringing the game into this would not help my credibility.
“The number of home crystals that are missing, presumed destroyed, the leisurely way the Capasins play … I assumed there are several more ships,” I said, sounding unconvincing even to myself.
This was not good news. Tatchilla denounced the idea. She was no longer standing beside me claiming me as her own. “The issue is not this juvie gamer’s fantasies, the issue is where we should take the EmCee. We need to find a new home crystal and claim protected status.”
Just then the Polars arrived in a rush of wings and breathless questions.
“What is happening? That alien ship chased us as though preparing to attack!”
Farsight held up one feeble hand to cut them off. “Who speaks for you?”
“I am called Jardbrass,” one of them said. “I will speak. This ship is within our rightful station. This is no Dance By. You are welcome here, but you will submit to our democratic authority.”
“What?” someone guffawed. “We just saved your lives and you want to assert the primacy of your experimental system?”
“Saved our lives? We have no proof that the alien ship was —”
“You were running away,” Tatchilla snapped. “Don’t be a skimmer. You weren’t flogging the wind for that cloud bank because you thought the aliens had come to trade metals.”
Farsight said, “We have so far counted twelve home crystals known to be destroyed or at least missing, far from their presumed stations.”
That made Jardbrass gulp. But he was not prepared to go beyond his particular concern. “Just the same, this ship and the attached alien box are within our jurisdiction. You will submit to our elected council, or you may move off.”
It was unbelievable. Tatchilla came back with some obscure legal point. One of the Polars cited a long-ago precedent. And in a flash the entire perch echoed with the sound of wrangling.
People are what they are. They have their limits, I guess. I was trying to be philosophical, but it was getting hard. I was acutely aware of the fact that Lackofa was boxed up in the Crate, sweating and deep-breathing. And that Aguella was docked, wounded, no doubt feeling abandoned.
Deep worms, shut up, I said silently. Only when I saw the shocked stares and heard the sudden silence did I realize I’d said it out loud.
Too late to take it back. And anyway, I didn’t want to take it back. Squabbling wasn’t going to win the game.
“There are more Capasin ships,” I said. “They’re here to exterminate us. They’ll be back. You need to conceal your home crystal in the clouds for as long as you can. And start building weapons.”
“Who … what are you?” Jardbrass demanded.
I started to answer, but a new voice interrupted. “He’s the only one who is playing the game.” It was Menno. How had I missed those oversized wings?
“This is not a game,” Jardbrass said in a freezing voice intended to silence the uppity youngsters.
“Yes, it is,” Menno insisted, completely unintimidated. “It is a game, and the Capasins think it’s a game, and if we don’t play — we lose. It’s why they’ve come. They’ve come to play. They’ve come at our invitation.”
Jardbrass started to speak. But no words came. He collapsed all at once. The hard set of his face, his determined expression, all dissolved. “Twelve crystals?” he whispered pitifully. “It cannot be.”
“What does he mean ‘at our invitation’?” Farsight asked Menno directly.
Menno didn’t answer. He smiled at me, a haunted shadow of the cocky gamer I’d met at the Dance By.
I knew what he meant. I knew what they had done. “They’ve found a way to wave broadcast,” I said. “But it must have been fairly recently. How could wave broadcasts have traveled so far off-world and reached the Capasins?”
“We linked to a Zero-space transponder,” Menno said proudly. “We’re a century ahead of you Equatorials, you know. We can punch a signal through the background radiation. And we can bounce it through Z-space. In ten years we’d have had a full airfoil crystal and been the hub of a global uninet. And soon thereafter we could have linked directly to the Generationals and the Illamans on their home worlds. It would have been a revolution!”
“What signals did you bounce through Z-space, Polar?” I asked.
“Can’t you guess, my Equatorial friend? Simple mathematical formulas at first, for the earliest tests. But we had to see whether the system could handle heavy data traffic.”
“Mother Sky, you broadcast games! You bounced games through Z-space.”
“Yes. Brilliant, wasn’t it?” Menno sneered. “Except for the slight, small fact, that some species don’t know the difference between games and reality. These aliens are here to exterminate us because they’ve seen our games and believe them to be real. They think we make toys of other species. That we interfere with their development with utter indifference to the results. They aren’t here to do evil. They’re here to annihilate what they believe to be a race of murderers.”
This horrifying news was still ringing in the stunned silence when someone cried, “Look!”
Every head turned.
Two Capasin ships emerged from the clouds. I didn’t wait for orders; I beat wing to the Crate.
I slid down through the hatch and barreled into Lackofa. “They’re —” I panted.
“I saw them!”
“Fifty percent thrust!”
I grabbed the controls as we shot away from the EmCee. Which target? Left or right? Left was closest to the Polar Orbit High. Stop them first, then —
A beam of light sliced the nub of a wing from the Polar. A chunk of new crystal fell, dragging thirty or more Ketrans down with it. Who had fired? Behind us! On top of us!
I spun the Crate, let momentum carry us skimming beneath the belly of the ship, and fired right up into it.
At the same moment the other two Capasin ships blazed with flechettes. The tiny shrapnel caught the Polars from two sides. Maybe someone lived through that. But not enough to provide even a semblance of lift.
It was my home all over again. Only this time no desperate wings fought gravity. This time the docked males and females, juvies and oldsters, were all nothing more than ballast. Dead weight.
Polar Orbit High Crystal fell like an unstrung corpse. Simply fell from the sky.
The Capasin ship above us veered off, having now seen the peril that we represented. Too late to matter. Polar Orbit High was gone. And it was three Capasin ships against the EmCee’s force field and the Crate’s pitiful weapons.
No winning move. Nothing left but to fly away. Retreat. A valid strategy; I had seen many a species retreat from an attack, regroup, renumber, resurge.
Fly away.
“Reverse thrust,” I said.
Lackofa didn’t respond.
“It’s the only move, Lackofa. The Crate. We have to save it. It’s the only weapon we have. Our only chance.”
“They’ll kill everyone. Everyone, won’t they? Every crystal, one by one.”
“Not us,” I said harshly. “Not if we run. Lackofa, we’re it. We’re all we have now. All of the Ketran race. Now reverse thrust. Do it.”
The Capasin ships didn’t bother
to pursue us as the EmCee and we two in the Crate blew toward space. High above our lost, doomed planet we rendezvoused with the EmCee and were accepted back inside the force field.
It was the end of Ket. And, although there were still seventy-two Ketrans alive at the moment, it was also the end of my race.
“Commander, the system appears to have six true planets and nine moons. Two of the moons — both orbiting the second planet — may be habitable. None of the planets.”
I nodded. “We’ll go take a look. Fields at full power, passive sensors to maximum range, active sensors off, fighters to alert status two.”
My words became actions. The ship’s defensive force field shimmered, distorting my view of the system’s sun and the stars beyond. A probe extruded through the field to gather every bit of electronic data available. Our active sensors, what we called the “pingers,” were shut down: They could alert possible enemies to our presence. And far down in the waist of the ship three wing-tied pilots slid into the snug cockpits of heavily armed fighters, and keyed up engine and weapons power. Nine more pilots remained at ready station, prepared to go hostile in less than three minutes.
It was the seventy-ninth time we had entered a system and carried out our search for a home. The days and years of excitement were long since past. It was a routine now. It was what we did. Hope and disappointment and all the rest of the emotional baggage had slowly drained away, failure after bitter failure.
We had learned to expect nothing. We’d learned to discount every encouraging datum and to believe every ill omen. Seventy-nine systems in sixty-three years. And that was only the systems worth investigation. How many other systems had we visited solely for the purpose of mining mineral-rich asteroids, or to accumulate hydrogen?
It was what we did. It was who we were now. The Ket: less than a hundred wanderers in search of a new home.
We had encountered several sentient species. Some space-faring, most not. Some pitied us. Some attacked us. But we’d learned to defend ourselves in these last sixty-three years. We began with the Capasin Crate, copying its weapons. Then came improvements, innovations.
The MCQ3 had mutated over the years to become the Searcher, and the Searcher was a very different ship. A close examination would still reveal the original crystal formation at the heart of her, but most of what had been added was dull titanium and mineral-polymer composites. The original Z-space engines had long since been replaced, and new, fast sub-Z engines had been added as well.
Two stubby wings gave us an airfoil for penetrating atmosphere. And the weapons arrays beneath each wing, and the even dozen stubby black fighters, earned us the respect of potential foes.
“Fields up, Commander,” Menno reported.
“We’ll try the blue one first,” I said. I saw Aguella smile. I had been the commander since Farsight died, some fifty years ago. But I still resisted referring to every planet or moon by its proper sequential designation.
Aguella was docked, eyes closed to focus on the sensor readout. Her wings beat slowly, regularly. Pointlessly, too, since no one in more than six decades had beat wing for lift.
And yet, we were still Ketran. We still wanted to fly.
“The blue one it is, Commander,” Menno confirmed.
Menno was my second-in-command, the sub-commander. It was a compromise. We had come very close to civil war at one point. Menno and the fugitive Polars and some of the dazed, confused refugees we’d saved from a shattered Tropical Mid-range Low had banded together to demand a democratic form of government aboard the Searcher. Of course it was more about resisting Equatorial dominance than anything else.
Democracy was not possible on a ship in hostile space. But compromise was. The compromise was Menno. He held second dock. And he did his job very well, though he and I would never be friends.
It had become very personal. For Menno it was just another game he had to win at all costs. I didn’t deceive myself: He was playing that game still. And if he ever took my place he would have no votes: He would command.
We slipped into high orbit above the blue moon.
“It’s water,” Aguella said. Her tone showed only the slightest trace of disappointment. We had learned that planets with a large amount of water never provided the updrafts, or the atmospheric pressures we needed to sustain our crystal-based civilization.
Just that quickly the blue moon became useless to us. It was not a great surprise. I suppressed a disappointed sigh. The people looked to me. I had to set an example. My youth was long since gone and I carried too many responsibilities to be self-indulgent.
“Navigator, lay an intercept course for the white one,” I ordered.
“Wait!”
It was Aguella. I glanced at her and saw intense focus on her face. I keyed up the sensor displays; Menno did the same. But whatever she had seen, neither of us spotted it.
I memmed her. “What is it?”
She broke out two displays and highlighted them for the benefit of Menno and me. When this still failed to move me, she said impatiently, “There’s something moving … floating. In the water, through the water. Beneath the surface. See the light? There, on the dark side. A light pattern, highly refracted, of course.”
“What’s the other display?” Menno asked.
“Water current. See? The … the thing, whatever it is, is moving against the current. And it’s putting off light.”
“A large fish with chemically produced light?” I suggested. “We’ve seen that before.”
“Probably,” Aguella agreed. “But maybe not. I can’t say anything for sure but I had the impression, nothing more than an impression, that I was seeing a complex structure.”
“Crystalline?” Menno asked, disapproving.
“I don’t know,” Aguella snapped. “Not without using active sensors.”
“Too dangerous. Too much risk for what possible reward?” Menno argued. “Are you suggesting we should light up this ship on the off chance that someone, somewhere down there is living some watery mockery of our own long-dead lives? We don’t breathe water, Aguella. We don’t fly in water. This is all just pointless obsession with the past.”
The last remark was guaranteed to outrage Aguella. And it was intended to provoke me. I quickly memmed Aguella to stay silent.
In my mildest voice I said, “This ship’s mission remains clearly defined, Menno.”
“Yes, to wander the galaxy in search of what we now know to be the rarest of all environments,” he shot back. “We’ve adapted in a dozen ways, but never in this. We have enclosed fighters, and we’ve learned to live with that. We’ve long since dropped even the pretence of flying for lift. But we refuse to accept the obvious: There will never be another Ket. No more home crystals. Dozens of planets and what do we find, again and again? Surface dwellers. Surface dwellers. Nothing but surface dwellers.”
“We are of the skies!” Aguella erupted. “We do not crawl. We do not walk. We are born to a life in the skies!”
“We’re dying for that myth. No one has juvies anymore. We’re dying out as a race, all for some vision of a world that no longer exists.”
That last was a shard meant for Aguella and me. We were a declared couple, but we’d never sired. It had become an unwritten rule of our strange, cutoff, castaway civilization that we would bring no new lives into being till we had a home.
“That’s enough,” I said, calling a halt to the dissension before it spread to the other crew. “This ship has a mission. Menno, we’ll take a look at this subaqueous phenomenon of Aguella’s. No, not with active sensors. We’ll take Jicklet’s new Explorer. It’s time we tested her.”
“I’ll take the search team of course,” Menno said with just the faint hint of a smirk. He knew I didn’t trust him in command of the Searcher. He was letting me know that he knew how I felt.
“Actually, I’ll command the search team. It’s been some time since I made planetfall. Menno, you’ll assume temporary command here. Aguella, you’re with m
e. Memm to Lackofa and Jicklet to join us. And memm Third Officer Deeved to take sensor station here.”
Menno nodded. I had called his bluff. I’d demonstrated that I was sufficiently confident to leave him in charge. At least as long as I brought Deeved to the perch as well. Deeved was third officer, a Tropical. He was no ally of mine, but he despised Menno. Menno wouldn’t get away with anything while Deeved was around.
I hated the atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust, but I’d adapted. It was why command was now centered in this perch where we could all see each other in real space: Any of our functions could have been carried out from dock, through the ship’s uninet. But in a world where betrayal was a real possibility it was reassuring to be able to stay globes to globes. I needed to see Menno. And I enjoyed seeing Aguella.
I flew down-ship with Aguella close beside me. Lackofa met us halfway to the Explorer.
“You’re leaving Menno in charge, Ellimist? Are you crazy? He’ll turn this ship around and head back to his little Utopia.”
Lackofa steadfastly refused to either treat me with the deference due to an official Wise One, or the obedience due a commander, or for that matter the basic respect due to any fellow Ketran. I valued him all the more.
He had grown cranky over the years. Crankier even than when he’d been a lowly third biologist. He was the ship’s chief scientist.
“I have Deeved watching him. And anyway, the crew is loyal.”
Lackofa said, “Don’t count too much on loyalty, Ellimist. It’s a weak force.”
He was not being merely facetious. He was serious. Did he know something?
I wanted to press him for information, but Lackofa was trusted by every faction. He was trusted precisely because it was known that he would never violate a confidence or become an informer.
And yet he was sending me a clear signal. Most likely he was exaggerating. Most likely.
Too late to turn back now without showing unacceptable weakness. No choice but to go forward and count on a divided, faction-riven crew and what Lackofa called the weak force of loyalty.
Ellimist Chronicles Page 6