Alliance of Exiles

by Caitlin Demaris McKenna

  “In any good experiment, you want to define as many elements as you can as either constants or variables, then eliminate any variables that could interfere with the outcome.” With deft movements of her tendrils, Water Dancer sorted the pebbles into the two camps; grayish stones went with the constants, but she added pebbles to the variable pile this time with no apparent regard for color. She indicated that pile. “Can you pick out the original stone?”

  Though he’d been watching the whole time, it took him a moment to point out the right one. Water Dancer plucked it from the pile and pressed it into his palm. Daikar looked at her.

  “If you don’t eliminate the variables, you lose track of what’s important,” she said. “You lose control of the experiment.”

  The pebble clacked against the wooden table as he set it down harder than he’d meant to. “This isn’t an experiment we’re talking about,” he said. “Mose isn’t the variable in some hypothesis we’re testing. He’s an unambiguous threat to Shomoro’s life.”

  “Everything I’ve said still applies,” she said. “The more factors beyond your control you introduce into Attarrish’s containment, the higher the risk he could break free or evade it long enough to do what he came here to do.”

  Even with the calming valchna in his veins, Daikar couldn’t have missed her frustration—not in her translator-generated voice, which always spoke at the same pace, but in the speed her chromatophores flashed their lightspeech patterns. “I’m not the first person you’ve brought your concerns to,” he surmised. A second thought followed. “Does Shomoro know you feel this way?”

  “I went to her first,” Water Dancer said. “She thinks she can learn more from Attarrish by catching him in your alliance’s net than by letting Teluk security handle it.” She shuffled her pods. “Apparently, Whalg-General agrees, although not all his colleagues do.”

  That was news to him. “There are councilors who aren’t on board with the plan? Which ones?”

  A sparkle of pleased vermilion spiraled down her pods.

  “Councilors Grass Weaver, Leads-Regretfully, and Basalt have expressed concerns. Councilors Vyrgettilek and Yurll seem committed, but Councilor Bek was undecided.”

  He sat back, tapping the side of his snout. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that not all the High Council was agreed on the proper way to deal with a threat to one of their assets. Yet Whalg-General and Yurll had a way of making their opinions seem like those of the Council as a whole, enough so that it came not just as a surprise but as a reassurance that there were councilors who disagreed.

  Three of the names he knew only in passing—councilors with their home constituencies in other cities—but Basalt was local, a Veert who oversaw both the littoral and terrestrial districts within Anmerresh. They had a reputation, as both a governor and a councilor, for supporting the conservative course, and for fiercely protecting their constituents. He briefly wondered if Basalt’s disapproval was rooted in the use of Stone and their team as the cornerstone of the capture plan. It had been engineered to minimize the danger to Stone’s team, but the risk of bodily harm or even death couldn’t be eliminated. If there was a chance to neutralize the threat Mose represented without putting their people in harm’s way, Daikar didn’t doubt Basalt would take it. Which begged the question . . .

  “Why come to me?” he said. “Why not persuade the dissenting councilors to veto the plan?”

  “That will take too long,” she said. “Months at least, when in reality we have weeks. When Attarrish comes, we need to hit him hard and fast, before he realizes what’s happening, not sit in our chamber debating what to do.”

  His mouth tightened. “You mean kill him?”

  “Only if it’s unavoidable,” Water Dancer said carefully. “A more favorable outcome would be to secure him in one of the high-security detention areas inside the vault.”

  He said nothing. It had been communicated to him in no uncertain terms that he should not confirm whether such a black site existed, even to those who already had been cleared to know about the vault. Even when, as now, Water Dancer knew of or at least suspected the detention site’s existence.

  So instead he repeated, “Why come to me?”

  “You’ve been closely involved in the Council’s intelligence gathering. You were one of the first to know of Attarrish’s mission, correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I assume you will also be tightly monitoring his descent to Teluk and movements on the planet. You’ll tell Stone’s team when the mission is a go.” She paused, as though waiting for his confirmation. He withheld it, but she went on. “You’ll also tell the team where to go once they have Mose in hand—in tendril, as the case may be.” A spray of turquoise at her own wit.

  “All I’m suggesting,” she said, “is that when that time comes, be open to a call from me. With new directions.”

  Water Dancer rose and made a brief pirouette, the Rul equivalent of a bow. “Thank you for the valchna . It was quite relaxing.”

  Warm, soapy water slicked over his hands as Daikar washed out the decanter in the small kitchen’s sink. He was looking out the window over it, which faced toward the sunset, setting the edges of terraced apartments aflame. But his mind wasn’t on the sunset. He was thinking of what Water Dancer had said.

  Daikar knew infiltration strategy; he knew the ways a seph might avoid capture or detection, and approaches to counter those methods. The team he was directing would apprehend Mose at the time and place of their choosing. He had no doubt of that.

  But what came after was murkier in his mind. Shomoro and Pri’s plan—he couldn’t quite think of it as something he was part of—put a lot of trust in Mose’s response to a recruitment attempt. They wanted to believe he would join their side if given the chance. Suns, Daikar wanted to believe it too, of course he did. But not at the expense of Shomoro’s safety. Water Dancer was right: the fewer layers of security in place around Mose, the greater the chance for something to go wrong. A moment’s inattention, the slightest misreading of the situation, could create a gap for the assassin to slip through. Locking Mose away in vault detention would absolutely be safer.

  He’d be secure, he’d be far away from Shomoro and her alliance . . . far away from where Daikar had to see him.

  A stab of pain shot through his scar. His hand slipped on the slick glass of the decanter and it landed in the sink with a brittle crash.

  “Krenkyr!” Daikar clamped down on the impulse to jerk his hands away; it would only increase his risk of being cut.

  Keeping still, he surveyed the damage: The decanter had fallen hard on its curved bottom, and an ugly crack ran from the underside to the broad lip. A smaller wedge of sharp-edged glass had dislodged itself from the lip and lay on the bottom of the sink. He carefully rinsed the soap from his hands and dried them. Gathered the shards of broken decanter in a cloth and deposited them one by one in the recycler. When he closed the recycler’s door, it slammed so hard it shook in its frame.

  Chapter Eight

  Mose spent the next few days after the encounter with Pri in an agony of anticipation—of what, he didn’t know, though his imagination proved excellent at providing all kinds of dark possibilities. But after a few days passed with no strange symptoms—and nothing anomalous showing up on his routine medical tests—he cautiously decided he hadn’t been injected with poison or a weaponized nanoswarm.

  In fact, the routine tests didn’t even detect the swarm Pri had claimed to have administered. Mose knew enough about nanotech to understand that the tiny machines wouldn’t automatically show up on a scan: the techs had to be actively looking for them. But as far as he understood the simulated versions of his own cellular processes, the presence of the rogue nanoswarm hadn’t altered the behavior or function of his own nanites either. Which suggested either that their machine intelligence didn’t consider the second swarm a threat, or that they didn’t know it was there.

  Mose wanted desperately to find out
more about anyone who could foil the detection faculties of a Terran nanoswarm. It was why he’d stayed silent about his encounter with Pri despite the risks. The risks meant nothing compared to the chance of escape Pri had intimated she and the white-maned Osk had to offer.

  Pri had said the swarm would tell him what he needed to know. Until then, Mose could do nothing but wait. Five endless days passed.

  And then the dreams started.

  Mose emerges from nothingness into a body that is not his own. This one is squat and strong, intimately aware of the forces pulling at it. His legs are eight stone pillars pressing into the rock beneath his feet, pushing against a gravity six times that of any Osk or Terran world. Antennae as lithe as two copper wires quiver in the stream of hot wind pouring down from the mountains behind him to the south, gritty with airborne sand.

  He can feel the gentle sucking of the spiracles on his chest and back, drawing warm methane to all the corners of his body.

  A hand (tentacle) lands on his upper arm. He feels a plucking in his antennae at the contact, the electric flow of other minds around him. Scanning the bare volcanic plain, he meets the gazes of his fellow People of the Sand with relief. There is Bef of the Negotiator Line, from the Stone Hearth to the northeast of his own. On his other side is Dur, Keeper of All the Stone Hearths. A newly created Line: Until recently it hadn’t been necessary for one individual to be the voice for all Drevl Char.

  It is Dur who has placed a reassuring tendril on his own.

  «Will you be all right communicating with them?» Mose realizes what and who he is in this place. He—she—is Pri: the

  “Terran-ist,” first of her Line.

  «I will have to be,» her voiceless voice plays out, a recording Mose cannot change or stop. Underneath it, he can feel threads of nervous anticipation running through the three Drevl Char.

  A new presence prickles through the group’s awareness like a cold wind howling out of the polar regions. It emanates from somewhere above their heads. A shadow flows over their bodies, and a pair of onyx wings unfurls from nothing above the bowl of rock they have chosen as a meeting place. The black body of the ship melts into visibility; it juts down from the streamlined cowl in a sharp wedge, iridescent shimmers passing over it as the craft’s camouflage module powers down.

  The invisible entrance is a show of power. Pri has seen it before. The Stone Hearth to which she and Dur belong became the contact point for these Other People barely a revolution ago. During her visits to their camp in the intervening months, Pri has not failed to notice the Terran proclivity for demonstrating their technological superiority. It’s almost as if they’re trying to establish themselves as gods to the People of the Sand. Yet the minds of these creatures, so transparent in their semiconscious displays of fear and disgust of her kind, tell a different story. For all their power, these Soft Ones are mortal. Perhaps a desire to keep this a secret has inspired them to limit contact so far.

  The concave cowl of the flagship has settled to the rock, forming an amphitheater for the coming meeting. A hole irises open in the smooth side of the passenger capsule, disgorging three figures clad in black articulated environment suits. They make their way unsteadily over to the Drevl Char, supported amazingly as ever on only two legs. A gray sphere two meters in diameter rolls along behind them.

  «Brace yourselves,» Pri broadcasts to the Drevl Char flanking her. «They aren’t pleasant to contact, especially at first.»

  Mose can feel a kind of tightening, like the contraction of in-tangible muscles, as Bef and Dur firm their mental resolve.

  The Terrans form a semicircle a generous distance from the Drevl Char. The gray sphere rolls to a halt in the space between them and melts into a pool of matter. A short stalk grows from the morass, unfolding a flat oval of material from its top before stiffening into solidity. Percolations of grayish matter rise on either side of the table, fashioning themselves into high-backed chairs on the Terrans’ side and rounded blocks on Pri’s side.

  A conference table in the middle of an alien desert? If he still had a mouth under his control, Mose would laugh; as far as he’s aware, Drevl Char don’t even sit.

  Even at this range, the antennae of all three Drevl Char are twitching as they absorb the waves of revulsion coming off two of the Soft Ones. Unshielded emotions constitute one of the highest offenses to any Drevl Char, but in Pri’s experience there’s nothing that can be done about it: not only is such restraint impossible to a Terran, the concept doesn’t even translate well.

  On the surface, the three emissaries are the picture of courtesy. After taking their seats, the middle one gestures to the blocks across from them.

  “Please make yourselves comfortable. We want you to be at ease.” The tinny voice that emerges from the helmet’s speaker is that of Delicia Baker, Science Team Leader aboard the Exodus ship Gnosis. As far as Pri can tell, Del’s role is similar to Pri’s own; since first contact, the two of them have been learning all they can about each other’s species. Pri has found herself warming to this Terran: Del’s eager interest in the Drevl Char is quite preferable to the usual Terran reaction to the People.

  «What does it mean by that?» Bef asks Pri. His tendrils wave in bafflement.

  «It would be hard to explain,» she sends back. To the Terrans: «We will stand. ‘Sitting’ is not a concept my companions recognize.»

  “Fair enough,” the Terran woman replies, with amusement if Pri interprets correctly. The blocks on Pri’s side of the table melt into the gray oval of base material. “I admit we still have a lot to learn about your people. But we called this meeting to ask you a very specific question.”

  Pri waits for Del to continue, but the Terran is uncharacteristically hesitant. A frisson of anticipation runs through the mental space she shares with Bef and Dur; she damps it down to white noise as she gropes toward the minds of the three Terrans. Normally blatant broadcasters, the three Soft Ones have abruptly drawn their thoughts and emotions inward, a change so uncanny it would perk the antennae of the least-adept Drevl Char child.

  Pri touches the smooth hardness of the first closed mind, and the froth of his thoughts bubbles through her— hot today of course it’s always hot on this damn dirtball I wonder what made Delicia decide to make her second jaunt to a furnace like Charel anyways boyfriend troubles back home maybe I wouldn’t mind filling that berth maybe I’ll see if she wants to get something at the canteen once we get topside better grab a shower first though after I shuck this suit—Pri withdraws. This man’s thoughts are reassuringly banal.

  She shifts to the man on Del’s other side: hope this thing wraps up soon I can’t wait to get out of here fucking bugs gives me the creeps just looking at ’em—Pri suppresses the urge to jerk away.

  His repulsive thoughts are like a burst of rancid air puffed into her spiracles. However, after a year of contact, it is nothing she hasn’t heard before. Hardening herself, Pri plunges back into the stream. I don’t care if Del likes them for their telepathy that just makes it worse who wants a bunch of fucking bugs scurrying around in their heads anyway I liked the first bunch of aliens a lot better strange maybe but they didn’t make me want to reach for the spray every time I saw them—again Pri breaks away, her relief at withdrawing tinged with confusion. The man’s last thought makes no sense. Haven’t these Terrans told the People time and again that Charel is the only other sentient world they have discovered?

  “I’ve come to appreciate so many things about the People of the Sand during our time here,” Del says, startling Pri out of her puzzled thoughts. “I’d like to think that we’ve made some real friends among you. In fact, that’s what we called this meeting to ask. You three probably have the most complete picture of the general feeling in the Stone Hearths. Do the People of the Sand perceive us as friends and allies? People that the Drevl Char could partner with, if the opportunity arose?”

  «I don’t understand.» Pri says flatly. She sees now that this is true in a deeper sense. There is
some force at work in the Soft Ones’ psyche that was completely hidden, of which she is still only dimly aware.

  Del Baker leans across the table, her chin resting on folded hands as she regards the Drevl Char ambassadors. “Our people are new to interstellar exploration. We’re what you might call unformed stones in terms of our experience with alien cultures. Our own solar system harbored no other forms of sentient life, and neither have any of the worlds we’ve visited in extrasolar expeditions. You Drevl Char are the first sentient species we’ve ever found.”

  Suspicion. The repeated assertion, so innocent before, sends a quaver of uncertainty through Pri’s antennae. «You said there was another,» she replies in a thought tone of simple curiosity. «I remember.»

  “Rosetta .” Del sweeps her arm dismissively through the air.

  “It’s true. That planet was home to an advanced civilization at one time, but the Rosettans died out long ago. We’ve learned a lot from their machines, but understanding remnants and understanding peoples are worlds apart. You’re the first people we’ve really had a chance to know.”

  Pri probes beneath Del’s innocent words—and encounters a whirlwind which spins her mind around as though in a sandstorm. Forgive me forgive me God forgive me forgive forgive forgive me Reeling, Pri jerks her consciousness free from the anguished wail of the woman’s thoughts. The simple words repeat endlessly through Del’s mind, and under them a grief so raw and palpable that just listening in feels like dipping her antennae in acid. The force of Del’s emotion throws up an obscuring cloud between Pri and any deeper thoughts, blurring them like rock formations seen through a dust rain. For the briefest moment, as she slips from Del’s mind, Pri sees something: a pair of Terran eyes looking back at her, the colored irises bright against black sclera. But Terran eyes aren’t black . . .

  «Why partner with us?» Dur asks, jolting Pri back to the meeting. «The People of the Sand are ignorant of worlds beyond our own. It is only with your gift of flying machines that we’ve even started to dream of journeying to other worlds. If your people are unformed stones, we have not even separated from the rock beneath our feet.»