A Learning Experience 2: Hard Lessons

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  “We’re going to Varnar,” Yolanda said, as she started to follow him. “As soon as we’ve reloaded, I mean. There won’t be any chance for shore leave.”

  “I wish I could say I was surprised,” Martin said, remembering the Varnar he’d captured on the Tokomak battleship. The senior officers had gone over the capture again and again, wanting to extract every last detail. They’d even fixated on where the Varnar had been standing at the moment the command core had been breached. “There’s nowhere else to go.”

  He reached the shower chamber and opened the door, then stepped inside. It was empty, thankfully; he had a feeling that most of the crew was trying to sleep, now the battle was over and done. Yolanda followed him inside before he could close the door, something he wouldn't have thought possible of the shy girl he’d met, years ago. They had both grown and matured since leaving Earth behind.

  “Let me have a moment to wash the grime from my body,” he said, hastily. His uniform was badly stained; he dropped it in the basket so he could pick it up and clean it later. Marines didn't get maid service, something the Drill Instructors had pointed out with great glee. “And then we can spend time together.”

  “Of course,” Yolanda said. She started to strip off her uniform, then waited for him to finish washing himself. “But don’t take too long.”

  Afterwards, Martin held her tightly and tried not to think about the men he’d seen die.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Reports of a genetically-engineered disease loose in South Africa surfaced today, following the defection of a famous doctor who was apparently under a gag order issued by the government. According to him, the disease specifically targets mixed-race children, but is likely to mutate and strike more generally within months. The South African Government has issued an official denial, which no one believes.

  If these reports are accurate, it represents the fifth attempt to use racially-targeted disease as a means of ethnic cleansing in the past decade.

  -Solar News Network, Year 53

  “We have returned to Varnar, Your Excellency.”

  Neola nodded, then glared at the young officer who had been sent to give her the message. He sputtered, then scurried away, no doubt to moan to his fellows that the Viceroy had been mean to him, like the child he was ... she stood, trying hard to push away the anger and horror that had dominated her mind for the past two weeks. There was no time to waste. Even if the Varnar didn't know about the defeat – and it was quite possible they knew already – they would know soon enough. And then ...

  She paced through the decorated corridors until she reached the command core, where the battleship’s commander was viewing the main display. He was surprisingly young for his post, which probably explained why he’d managed to keep his ship intact while the remainder of the fleet had been battered to pieces. His crew had actually taken the orders to carry out unscripted exercises to heart.

  “Captain,” she said.

  “Your Excellency,” Captain Drew said. There was no trace of disrespect in his tone, unsurprisingly. If she’d died at Earth, he would have been the senior surviving officer, the only person left to take the blame. “We have arrived at Varnar.”

  “I know,” Neola said. She looked up at the display. The handful of Tokomak ships that had remained behind, mainly cruisers and freighters, were still intact. Behind them, the Varnar ships didn't look as though they were planning to open fire. “Raise one of the cruisers and send them a complete copy of our records, then order her commander to proceed straight through the gravity point and back home.”

  “Yes, Your Excellency,” Captain Drew said. He didn't argue, for which she was grateful. An older officer might well have objected to sending a message back to the Old Ones when the fleet was in disarray, but he was too young to notice the danger. “And the Varnar?”

  “Inform them that we will be holding a planning session in two hours,” Neola ordered. The last thing she wanted to do was show weakness. They would see her at her best, planning the defence of the gravity point, which would also remind them of the thousands of battleships still in commission. “And that we will discuss the full situation then.”

  She took her seat and studied the display, silently calculating vectors in her head. What would the humans do, now they had scored a great victory? Attack Varnar and engage the Varnar themselves, as well as the remains of her fleet? Unite the Coalition against the Tokomak as well as the Varnar? Or remain in their star system, licking their wounds? Their technology was advanced, hellishly so, but not enough to compensate for the losses they’d taken in the battle. She had had plenty of time to consider all the angles, including her own mistakes. The humans might be strong, in one way, but they simply lacked the raw numbers they needed for success.

  Or so she told herself, she admitted in the privacy of her own head, because the alternative was too terrible to contemplate.

  ***

  Life on Varnar, Kevin had discovered, was both exciting and boring at the same time. It felt rather like working in the CIA station in Yemen or Somalia, where there were few laws and yet a certain kind of order. The Varnar had opened up their homeworld to all kinds of aliens, including a number who had brought criminal connections with them. Making new contacts, some immediately useful while others held promise for the future, was something that never really went out of style.

  But it was also tedious, at times. There was no true risk, not when the Varnar were turning a blind eye to his activities. He had thought he needed to stay below their radar, particularly as Earth was still involved in the Proxy War, and yet ... they were making it easy for him. They hadn't even twitched when he’d purchased information on the planet’s defence net, something that bothered him more than he cared to admit. Either the information was fake and it was part of an elaborate con, which was quite possible, or they were desperate. He wasn't sure which answer he feared more. Being conned would be irritating – and it happened in the intelligence world, no matter how many precautions one took – but desperate people made desperate and foolish mistakes. Who knew which way the Varnar would jump, if the shit hit the fan?

  He was sitting in his makeshift office, skimming through the planetary datanet, when a message from Sally popped up in his implants. It was nothing more than a simple, curt, COME AT ONCE. Kevin disengaged from the datanet, made a brief report to the rest of his team, then started the long walk to Sally’s apartment. She had warned him, after the first meeting, not to try to visit Mr. Ando’s office again. There was too much risk of someone noticing in a way that couldn't be concealed.

  Sally was waiting for him when he arrived, a grim expression on her unlined face.

  “There have been developments,” she said. “You may have heard already?”

  Kevin shook his head, then took the seat she indicated.

  “There has been a great battle,” Sally said. “And the Tokomak lost.”

  “Good,” Kevin said. Given the odds, a Tokomak victory would have resulted in the destruction of the Solar System. He would have had no choice, but to seek what revenge he could, even if it was ultimately unsatisfying. “What happened?”

  “There aren't many details, yet,” Sally said, flatly. “All we really know is that two hundred Tokomak battleships set out on a mission of genocide; five returned, all damaged to a greater or lesser extent. More might come limping in over the next few days ...”

  Kevin found himself smiling, openly. “How many ships did they lose?”

  “We don’t know for sure,” Sally reminded him, “but if they’d won they would be crowing about it to everyone who would listen. I think it’s fairly self-evident they lost the battle, and perhaps the war.”

  “There will be a message from Earth soon,” Kevin said. He was sure of it. “Where does this leave ... us?”

  “Right now, there’s a feeler out to some of our friends,” Sally said. “But it might be some time before they can reply. The Viceroy apparently survived and has summoned the High Comm
and to her ship.”

  There was nothing else to do, so Kevin sat on the sofa, drank a mug of tea and reviewed the rumours flying through the datanet. The Varnar were doing what they could to limit speculation, he noted, but even endless censorship and thread deletions couldn't prevent rumours from spreading. No one could avoid seeing the battleships, after all, or calculating that if seven had returned, one hundred and ninety-three had been lost. By now, word would be spreading through the sector. Given a couple of weeks, thanks to the gravity points, half the galaxy would know. There was no putting the genie back in the bottle.

  Sally sat at her desk, reading through endless files. Kevin half-wondered if he should invite her to bed, then dismissed the thought before he could make a complete fool of himself. It was easy to tell that Sally was ambivalent about her involvement with human spies, even though she was human. If he ever wrote a book about his adventures, Kevin privately resolved, that detail would be left out. There was no shortage of idiots who would accuse her of secretly being a traitor to humanity, simply for doubting what she was doing.

  Not everyone puts the good of humanity ahead of themselves, he thought, particularly when their career or life is at stake.

  Two hours later, with boredom howling at the corner of Kevin’s mind, Sally received a message.

  “We have to go down to the Pan-Gal,” she said, as she rose to her feet. “And you have to accompany me.”

  Kevin nodded. If it was a trap, he’d find out soon enough; if it wasn't, he didn't want to waste the opportunity by declining the meeting. He watched Sally as she pulled on a coat, then led the way through the door and down a flight of stairs that had clearly been designed for the Varnar, rather than anyone larger. At the bottom, a small automated cab was already waiting for them, completely unmarked. Kevin took a seat next to Sally and watched, without surprise, as the cab rose into the air and headed for the Pan-Gal. The towering complex was just as he remembered it, only louder. There was an aroma of fear in the air that surprised him ...

  Or maybe it shouldn’t, he told himself, tartly. Everyone who visits the Pan-Gal is well connected. They probably know about the battle and defeat by now.

  Sally jumped out of the cab as soon as it landed on the roof and led him down a sloping shaft into the heart of the building. They passed a line of gambling halls, where racial differences were forgotten in the glow of the urge to make money, and cafes where races were effectively segregated, if only because one race’s food was another race’s stomach ache. Kevin had grown up on a ranch, where he’d seen meat taken from the cow and cooked into something edible, but he still had to look away when an alien that resembled a giant pile of sludge lifted a crab-like creature and dropped it into his (or her?) waiting jaws.

  “It’s rather like being a preteen here,” Sally muttered, as they stopped outside a pair of unmarked doors. “I feel young every time I come.”

  Kevin lifted his eyebrows. “Why?”

  “There’s nothing here, but polite interaction,” Sally said.

  “Evidently, your preteen years were tamer than mine,” Kevin countered. Having Steve and Mongo for older brothers had given him an outlook on the world that was very different from many of his fellow trainees at Langley, nearly eighty years ago. “I don’t think anyone would have said my brothers and I were polite.”

  Sally shook her head. “That’s not what I meant,” she said. “It’s just ...”

  She shook her head. “When you turn into a teenager, sex starts rearing its head,” she explained.

  “In more ways than one,” Kevin said, dryly.

  Sally glowered at him, then went on. “You start evaluating all of your relationships in terms of sex,” she explained. “Even when you’re an adult, you keep doing it; you look at someone and you think they’re sexy, or not sexy. You feel affection, which might not be returned; they feel affection, which you don’t return.”

  “You grew up in the Solar Union,” Kevin said. His father had been quite liberal, for his time, but he still remembered the day he’d bawled Steve out for making love to a girl without intending to marry her. Or the rumours that had floated around the district after two girls were found in a compromising position. “Where anything goes.”

  “Yeah,” Sally said. “And sometimes it was a little too much.

  “But here? There’s no sex, but there’s little real social interaction too.”

  Kevin understood. If humans could be so different as to face insurmountable differences in everything from culture to sexual mores, how much harder would it be to form a real relationship with an alien? There would be very little in common, while features common to one would be horrendously offensive to the other. Sally was truly alone in many ways, even though she did have some relationships with her co-workers. None of them could ever form a close friendship with her.

  The hatch opened, revealing a small conference room. Four Varnar – the same ones he’d met earlier, Kevin assumed – were standing behind the table; two chairs, both designed for human rears, were placed prominently in front. It was a gesture of respect, Kevin realised, as well as an unspoken promise. The Varnar would respect humanity as long as humanity extended them the same courtesy.

  “There have been developments,” the lead Varner said, without preamble. They rarely bothered with anything humans would regard as social graces. “The Tokomak fleet was beaten. Soundly beaten.”

  “So I have heard,” Kevin said, carefully. It was never a wise idea to let one side think they knew more than you, even if they did. “I assume there is a reason for this meeting?”

  “We wish to discuss cooperation,” the Varnar stated. “One of us has attempted to reach your people, but may not have succeeded. If he has been killed, your people will not have heard the message.”

  Kevin frowned. The messenger must have been with the Tokomak fleet, he realised slowly, or he could have just parked his ship on the edge of the Sol System and tried to raise the Solar Union. He wouldn’t have been greeted with a hail of fire if he hadn't posed an immediate and obvious threat. Shooting first and asking questions later was rarely a good idea in interstellar relationships.

  “I have not heard anything from my superiors,” he said, smoothly. Given the time between the return of the fleet and the meeting, they wouldn't expect anything more. Human starships weren't significantly faster in FTL than Galactic ships. “However, I believe they would seek your cooperation, if you were prepared to offer it.”

  Sally prompted him helpfully as he negotiated quickly and efficiently. The Varnar didn't bargain, not as humans did; they rarely demanded much in the expectation of having to settle for little. They seemed happy to accept the end of the war, on terms. It was better, he hoped, then continuing the Proxy War indefinitely. If nothing else, the Coalition didn't need the Tokomak supplying the Varnar with warships and weapons until the sheer mass of supplies burned the Coalition beyond hope of recovery.

  “Very well,” the Varnar said, finally. The voice was largely toneless, but Kevin thought he detected a hint of anticipation in the alien’s words. “When the time comes, we will switch sides.”

  With that, the meeting came to an end.

  Once the Varnar were gone, Kevin allowed Sally to take him back to the apartment, but encoded a message for the team before he did anything else. There would be an opportunity to slip a message back to Earth soon enough, he knew, and then Earth would know what was brewing on Varnar. They could take advantage of it ...

  ... And put an end to the war before it was too late.

  ***

  The Varnar were up to something. Neola was sure of it. Oh, they said all the right things and mouthed all the right platitudes, as if nothing was wrong with the universe, but they were up to something. Perhaps it was just paranoid, but after everything that had happened, she felt as though she had a right to be paranoid. But then, so did they.

  Her terminal chimed. “Your Excellency,” Captain Drew said, “the reinforcements have arrived.”


  Neola sent a silent command to the display, activating the holographic display. The gravity point was invisible to the naked eye, of course, but the stream of battleships materialising from a star system five hundred light years away were not. One hundred battleships, reinforcements she had demanded as soon as she’d realised the situation wasn't anything like she’d been told, ready to deal out death to the enemies of the empire.

  They wouldn't be properly maintained, of course, she knew. But they wouldn't actually have to leave Varnar for weeks, if not months. By then, she would have the crews knocked into shape, with threats, rewards and the certain knowledge that failing to tend to their jobs – their proper jobs – would result in another disaster.

  “Order the fleet to rendezvous with us,” she said. “I will host the commanding officers in the lounge, once they have read the new standing orders. Tell them ... tell them that they can make all the complaints they want and send them all the way to the homeworld if they wish, but they will carry out the standing orders. Anyone who balks will be executed.”