“It is the translation,” Garul said. “That word he just spoke. Your device, it translated the word into my tongue as a word which describes a small, annoying insect which buzzes about on my homeworld.”
“Sounds like a bug to me,” Martel said. “Probably something like it on every world.”
“Perhaps that is so. But you call these things, the terrors of my people, this word?” Garul asked.
“They aren’t so tough. My Marines handled them well enough,” Martelle said.
“How many?” Garul asked.
“Four,” Dan said.
“It is good that you show courage in the face of danger. But you must understand… Four is a small number,” Garul said. “When they pour into your ships by the hundreds and invade your cities by the thousands, it is another thing entirely.”
Dan reached down and carefully picked the claw up from the deck. The Naga wasn’t wrong. They’d beat back these small attacks, partly through luck. The Kkiktchikut were prepared to deal with Naga plasma weapons, but the human guns and missiles were a bit lower tech, and the aliens’ shields seemed useless against railgun fire.
A platoon of Marines had stopped four of the monsters, but it had been a near thing. What if there had been eight? He might have lost the ship if they’d been able to hit even a little harder.
“They come for my world now, human. But they have seen your people too,” Garul said. “I do not think they will rest until they have found your planet. Wrested it from our databases, if nothing else. Then they will come for you, too.”
He wasn’t wrong. The Kkiktchikut had opened fire first, but they’d refused every attempt Dan had made to communicate with them. They weren’t interested in peaceful coexistence. He wondered if the aliens wanted to wipe out every race they encountered, and what had driven them to that end. Maybe Garul could give him more background on that.
“You want our help? Is that it?” Dan asked. “If that’s the case, I need more information about these beings.”
For a moment, it looked like Garul was going to clam up again, but then he opened his snout to speak.
“Most of this happened so long ago that it has fallen into legend,” the Naga said.
Twenty-Three
The story dated back only about a thousand years, or at least that was the number the translator kicked out as it tried to guess Earth years from the Naga calendar. Dan figured it was good enough for an estimate. It sounded like precise dating wasn’t possible. When the Naga ended their last war against the Kkiktchikut, there wasn’t much left of either civilization.
The Kkiktchikut - or bugs, as Martelle continued to insist on calling them, and the name was growing on Dan as well since somehow the diminutive made their enemy seem just a little less fearsome - first approached the Naga several hundred years before the war. At the time the Naga were a feudal society, comparable to Europe or Japan during their own feudal periods. Lords ruled sections of the planet, rallying Naga warriors to their respective banners and warring for control of the land.
When the Kkiktchikut landed, it caused a panic. At first the Naga fought against the monstrous looking things arriving on their world. They didn’t understand star travel, could barely imagine beings coming to their planet from another solar system many light years away. They attacked.
With casual ease, the Kkiktchikut smashed aside their assault, slaughtering hundreds of Naga. Then, using the beam weapons from their ships, they leveled several cities, killing everyone living there. It was a hopeless moment. But then the Kkiktchikut paused in their attack. They returned to the skies and left the Naga alone for three days.
After the brief period of waiting, so legend had it, the Kkiktchikut returned, and this time they spoke the Naga tongue. They offered to take on the reptilian race as friends, rather than destroy it. The Naga conferred - and agreed. They had seen the power these beings had. What other choice could there be?
But it became clear almost right away that this was not a friendship, nor even an equal partnership. Massive vessels arrived, and thousands of Naga were ordered aboard. They were armed with new weapons, trained to fight with them, and then taken into the skies.
When they landed again, it was on a world embattled. They saw cities with towers as high as mountains. The race which inhabited that world had much the same weapons as the Kkiktchikut, but this time the Naga had those arms as well. Their Kkiktchikut masters sent them into battle. It was only the first of many.
Over the hundreds of years which passed while the Naga were in servitude, they grew accustomed to their role. But they never accepted it, nor did they ever indeed forget that they were in effect slaves, their world forfeit if they rebelled.
“Which of course made revolution inevitable,” Martelle said.
Garul blinked, breaking from his story for a moment. “For us, yes. There was no other way. What we are, the Naga heart inside each of us, does not do well with slavery.”
“Nor us,” Martelle said. “We humans have had such things happen before, as well.”
“Races like the Kkiktchikut?” Garul asked.
“No. Sadly, these were crimes we committed against each other,” Dan said.
Garul blinked in surprise. “You cast your own race as slaves? How is that even possible? It is the worst crime imaginable to take one’s freedom, worse than killing.”
“Most of us would agree with you, now. We learned. We grew better,” Dan said.
Garul went on with his tale, agreeing that Martelle was correct. The rebellion was inevitable. The Kkiktchikut, content with their slave warriors, never seemed to see the threat coming until it was too late. The Naga studied their technology, learning from the weapons and tools their masters used. It took hundreds of years for the Naga to rise to a level where they could hope to win. That, and they waited for a spark to light the flame of their revolution.
That spark was a Naga named Kikilkhan. He was a leader like the ones in their legends, like the Naga of the old days. But at the same time he was well versed in the arts of modern war. With his leadership connecting the Naga, and technology they had stolen and learned to build the Naga organized at last.
When they struck, it was all at once. Every troop transport, every military base with Naga guards, every ship where Naga were stationed as guards - they all fought back as one. At the appointed time every Naga in all space rose up together to throw down their masters.
The Kkiktchikut were taken completely by surprise. Naga forces seized ship after ship, recovered their own world, and even obliterated several Kkiktchikut cities. But then the enemy brought in their massive dreadnought vessels. One after another the captured ships were destroyed, burned in space as an example.
The Naga fought as best they could, striving to win through, but the battle grew hopeless. Their weapons were powerful, but the Kkiktchikut were stronger still. Finally the great Kkiktchikut fleet appeared in the space of the Naga home system. All Naga ships had rallied there for one last battle, but every one of them knew it was hopeless.
All but Kikilkhan. He had a desperate plan. If the Naga were to fall, they would take their enemy down with them, or as many as they could. Using stolen technology, his scientists had developed a bio-weapon capable of wreaking havoc on an entire world. He sent three ships out, one to each globe the Kkiktchikut inhabited. All their cities, all their people, everything they were - was on those three worlds.
“The ratzards. We thought those were yours,” Dan said. They’d run into the things on Dust and assumed they were a Naga creation. About the size of a medium dog, they resembled a strange cross between a rat and a lizard - thus the name. The things had clearly been engineered. Their blood contained a living bio-weapon, a bacteria which when exposed to water and sunlight grew exponentially, creating massive black mats on the surface of any water.
The world of Dust was so named because it was a desert. The mats covering its oceans had cut off all evaporation, killing the biosphere, turning the place into a dead plan
et.
“They were the Naga’s last hope to strike back. When the enemy came at us that final time, it killed our ships first. None of them survived the first battle,” Garul said. “Then they raked our cities with fire from their ships. After they were done burning our homes, they landed and came after us in their battle armor.”
“They planned to wipe us from the stars,” Garul said. “But we had done it to them first.”
The bio-weapon had been a success. While the last Naga fought bitterly for every foot of ground on their home planet, slowly dying to the massive invading force, the three ships had slipped in and deposited their arsenals. The ratzards had done their work, going to the water and exposing the planet to the weapon. It grew rapidly. Within days, all three worlds were dying. Within a week, the oceans were dead. The land was sure to follow.
“They must have tried to fix it?” Dan asked.
“I wasn’t there, but I assume so,” Garul said with a humanlike shrug. “Whatever they tried, it didn’t work. Or didn’t work in time. Word of the disaster on their worlds must have reached the invading force, because the legends say they broke contact with the last remnants of our race. They returned to their ships and took off. We never saw them again.”
“Where did they go?” Dan asked.
“We have no way of knowing. Everything was gone, Wynn. We had no ships. We had no cities. Our technology was mostly destroyed. We rebuilt what we could, but it was precious little. We stored all the information we could, preserving it for future generations that might be able to rebuild what we once had. It took almost a thousand years for us to be able to reach outside our own solar system again.”
“Which brings us to about now,” Martelle said.
“Indeed. The first Naga-built hyperspace ship took flight only a hundred years ago. We have built many more since. We have explored scores of worlds. We even visited each of the dead planets once held by the Kkiktchikut - to see with our own eyes that they were truly gone,” Garul said. “They had fled. We did not know where. But in our hearts we have always known that they would return. We set watches over their planets to keep alert for that day.”
“And then you found us,” Dan said.
“And then we found you, flying in a ship armed with Kkiktchikut technology,” Garul said. “You can see why the Naga were not happy to discover you.”
“I understand that,” Dan said. “But it seems to me like both our races might have bigger fish to fry.”
“Fish…cook?” Garul asked. The idiom had not translated well.
“More important problems than fighting each other,” Dan said.
“Ah. On that I can agree,” Garul said. “But I fear that even working together, we might not be enough to stop the Kkiktchikut now that they are back.”
Twenty-Four
Beth stared across at the Naga vessel drifting in the distance. Now that she knew the size of the ship, she was able to get a read on how far away it was. Only a few miles. That was too close for her liking.
It had to be the same ship that she’d seen fighting the Kkiktchikut in the Cyan system. It had jumped to hyperspace. Their sensors had picked up an energy surge from its wake. The Naga ship must have soared past them at about the same time they were making their wormhole jump. Majel had said something about not being able to predict what impact the hyperspace wake would have on their wormhole.
Apparently, it had quite a substantial effect.
The wormhole and hyperspace drives had combined somehow, merging to create a massive leap for both ships across the distance. The symbiosis had been so powerful that it had slung them both clear out of the galaxy. Not just a little way, either, but a hundred thousand light years. That number still made her shiver to think about it.
As Beth watched the Naga ship, she saw what looked like small points of light flashing nearby. Were they doing repairs on the exterior? They might have taken some damage from the Kkiktchikut beam weapons. But she didn’t think she would see whatever the Naga equivalent of a welding torch was at this distance. Besides, they were trapped out here.
The Satori might be able to jump home if they got the drive back online. It would take a lot of jumps. They’d be at it for a very long time. But eventually they’d get home, and they still had plenty of supplies that hadn’t been unloaded for the colony. They’d get back to Earth if they could repair the drives - and they didn’t seem damaged, just drained of charge in some way that was making the recharge much slower. She was confident they could fix the issue with enough time.
But the Naga drive wasn’t as fast. If it took them days to travel as far as the Satori could go after an hour of recharge, then it might take them years to return home. It was an unimaginable journey.
They would be stranded. Desperate. Could they reach her ship?
Beth remembered that the Naga battlecruisers all carried a complement of fighters and a small number of shuttles. Like her space suit, those might still be working. She dialed up the resolution on her visor as much as it could. It was perfect timing. One of the fighters shot away from the Naga ship and crossed in front of the sun, giving her a good silhouette for just a moment.
Yeah, their fighters were still flying, which meant their shuttles would be as well. Those smaller ships were armed, and the Naga had more warriors on board than the Satori did, as well.
“Ayala, we’ve got a serious problem,” Beth said.
“A Naga ship sitting a little ways away? You told me,” he replied.
“Their fighters are active.”
“Mierda,” he replied. “Have they spotted us?”
“I don’t think they can miss us. If the fighters have power, then the fighters’ scanning systems will as well. Their ship should have a couple of shuttles, too,” Beth said.
“So the big question is whether they will swoop over here to blow us to bits, or try to board and take the ship.”
“I’m betting on the latter,” Beth said. “They have a long trip home without us. How soon can we be moving again?”
“It’s complicated. You’d better get in here down in the engine room and take a look,” Ayala replied.
Beth rushed through returning to the ship as best she could. She dumped the space suit as soon as she was inside, two scared looking techs hurriedly helping her out of it. That meant the word had already spread. Nothing moved faster than the speed of rumor, especially on a ship or military base. She raced to the aft of the Satori. As she sped past the armory, she noted that weapons were being passed out. Beth nodded sharply. It was a good move. She was still betting on the Naga trying to take them, rather than destroy them.
Her people would fight for every inch.
The engine room was abuzz with activity. The engines were housed in the center of the small, heavily shielded space. The housing was a big shell containing a variety of black box items. She had no idea how the things there worked. It wasn’t even possible to disassemble them. They were smooth, seamless, and there was no clear indication which parts did what.
Beth supposed they could have cut into the thing to see what made it tick, but the fear was that doing so might accidentally upset the system in a way that was irreparable. Or worse, it could damage the power production unit and make a messy explosion. Somehow that small engine produced enough power to create wormholes. By her rough estimate, one long wormhole jump burned as much energy as the entire United States used in a day.
The engineers had attached meters and instruments to the box to measure what it was doing. The hope was that it was still doing something. If it was fried, they were in deep trouble. It had never gone offline like this before.
“What’s the story?” Beth asked.
“We’re seeing power readings now, ma’am,” Lieutenant Green replied. He was in charge of the engines. Her old job. Beth felt a pang of intense emotion - figuring this sort of thing out was her job! This was what she was good at. But she pushed the feeling aside. She had to trust other people to do their job so that she could
do hers.
“That sounds like good news,” Beth said, her tone wary. It should have been good news. But the rest of the ship’s systems used far less power than the wormhole drive. If the engines were building power again, then there should have been some indication. Some of the alien systems should have been coming back online.
That they weren’t said something else was going on as eloquently as the tone Green used. He was hesitant. Beth could see the confusion in the man’s eyes, and the frustration. She knew that look well enough. She’d seen it in the mirror often enough when she was trying to figure these devices out. It was hell for an engineer to have a closed box sitting there in front of her, doing something, and have no idea how it was doing what it did, nor any way to open it up and find out what made it tick.
“It ought to be. But nothing is working. No power is getting out to the rest of the systems,” Green said, running a hand through his short, sandy hair. “It’s like the power unit was cut off from the rest of the systems somehow.”
“And Majel isn’t back with us either,” Beth said. “We know that the alien computer is what controls and coordinates all of the systems. Majel has told us as much, and she ought to know - she lives inside that computer. What if the complete power drain shut off the computer and it hasn’t come back online?”
“You think that the systems can’t connect to the power unit without the computer,” Green said.
“Can’t connect…or maybe can’t draw power. It would be a sensible safety feature. At the power levels this thing generates, a fraction of a percent overload would be a catastrophe. Having a hard safeguard that blocked power unless the computer was up to regulate it makes sense,” Beth said.
“So we just wait until it reboots?” Ayala broke in. He’d been listening quietly from the side. “It seems like it’s taking a while.”
Embers of War (Adventures of the Starship Satori Book 8) Page 11