by Jean Johnson
The slightly bigger alien chittered, and the small box strapped to the top of that furred, tan, arthropodic head translated. She curled up a leg toward her abdomen as she spoke. “I am pleased to be remembered, Grand High Ambassador. I have been advising our Ambassador on the successes your Terran spy ships have been giving our forces and urging the V’Dan to give your people more support and leeway in the war.”
Creepycreepycreepy . . . stars and my ancestors, I don’t think I will ever get over this reaction to the poor things. It’s not their fault, Jackie allowed, suppressing a shudder. But creepycreepy . . .
“Let them pass,” the head of A Alpha ordered. “I suggest you hurry, meioas. We have robotic intruders in the North Embassy Wing. Get them back to their zone safely, Elites.”
“Eyah?” the lead female of the four challenged him. She planted her hands on her gold-clad hips. “Are you ordering us around, Terran?”
“Hoo-rah,” the Marine agreed. “I have my charge to protect, and you’re in the way. Go on. Get your own charges out of the kill zone.”
The other female chittered. Her native tongue seemed to hiss off the walls around them. “That is an unpleasant piece of vocabulary, meioa. I will forgive you for it, as you are clearly a Guardian. However, please consider being more cheerful and pleasant. Sweet sap pleases the guest far more than anything bitter.”
“Ma’am,” he stated, as the hissing grew louder, alarming Jackie, “I would be happy to discuss courtesy protocols at any time other th—”
“Look out!” the woman on Gamma shouted, jerking her gun up and shooting. The loud blam blam blam of her gun echoed down the wall as dozens of silvery things poured out of an air vent even as the grille covering it was still tumbling to the floor meters below.
Jackie didn’t have time to throw up a shield; the Marine in charge flung himself on top of her, bearing her to the ground with a sharp, “—Get down!”
Hitting the floor hard enough to have the wind knocked out of her, Jackie lost control of the telekinetic shield she had been in the midst of throwing around herself. Skittering sounds fought with the blood pounding in her ears, the ragged rasp of air as she finally sucked it in—only to scream in agony as ice-hot fire lashed through her legs, her feet, her scalp, attacking her in lightning slashes right around the Marine desperately trying to shield her body with his own.
Panic flared her gifts outward in a burst of force that knocked everyone over, and knocked the swarming army of odd robots back. Even as she tried to get to her feet, the machines recovered with unnerving agility and leaped on top of her again, tearing at her clothes, her skin, her hair—Jackie pulsed again, and a third time, this time holding the sphere even as she levitated herself up off the floor.
The machines, looking like two silvery spider-things stacked one atop the other, unnerved her in their relentlessness. They leaped at her, most able to get themselves two, two and a half meters up before they bounced off the invisible sphere of her telekinetic shield. Her wounds throbbed and bled, forcing her to put on a second layer of shielding, a pressure layer to force her injuries shut.
The guards shot at the machines, but they were hampered by the way they were evenly spaced around the battle zone. The leader—his name came back to her like a tiny island of clarity amidst the chaotic sea of her dazed, aching panic, Corporal Okonjo—barked orders for everyone to get on one side, and for her to rise higher.
Pamf! “Jackie? Jackie! I—”
Li’eth flinched back as the sea of robots turned toward him. He flung up his arms, and a shield slapped up between him and them just in time to stop the nearest handful from tearing into his sweat-damp exercising clothes. Jackie quickly wrapped one of her own around him as well before the others could scuttle around behind. Lifting him up off the ground, she got both of them higher—and the damned things charged up the walls on either side, punching their claw-feet into the plaster-like material so they could try to drop down on the pair from above.
Except that the K’Katta, both of them, were already up there. With incredible fearlessness, both tan-furred females scurried into the mass. All ten limbs worked frantically fast, either clinging to decorative ribs on the arched ceiling, or grappling, twisting, and snapping the semidelicate joints of the metal beasts.
Seeing them handling the ones from above, and wrapped in the protection afforded by his hard-concentrating partner, Li’eth focused his fire on the ones directly beneath the two of them. Literal fire burst from the processors at the heart of each multilimbed bot, multiple pop pop pops that sounded wimpy compared to the harder bangs of the Terran weapons, or the sizzle of laserfire from the Elites’ mechanized armor.
More guards came running up, mostly Elite, some Terran, but there was nothing they could do. Within another minute, nothing was left but dissipating smoke and an occasionally twitching limb . . . and that was when Jackie lost strength and collapsed. She managed to cushion her fall to the floor at the last moment, but Li’eth was on his own, thumping down—thankfully on his feet—a few meters away. What felt like every wound on her body broke open when her telekinesis failed, and she cried out.
“Jackie! No! No no no,” Li’eth breathed, scrambling to her side. He placed his hands on her, hot and bright to her inner eye—visible only because her outer ones had closed. “No, you cannot die!”
“Sir! Sir, I’m a KIman!” one of the Marines asserted. “Sir—you can take my energy!”
Jackie dragged her eyelids open, but it was too much effort. (Like with Sonam,) she managed. His biokinesis was working on her wounds, trying to close them, but not fast enough. (Here . . .)
“Give it to her!” Li’eth snapped. “Both of us!” he corrected.
(S’ a case of taking . . . there. Like that,) she sighed, feeling that soldier’s hot but not psychic hand gingerly touching the cheek that wasn’t bleeding. Latching onto his freely given energies, she pulled, feeding it into herself, feeding it into Li’eth, who shaped and soldered her flesh, superspeeding her body’s natural urge to knit itself back together. Another Marine joined them, and a third.
The meld—a major Gestalt of the two of them, and a minor one of the three volunteers—ended in time for Jackie to feel nothing more than lingering aches, a bit of dizziness, and a strong thirst. “. . . Water,” she managed out loud. “Water . . . and something to eat. Please.”
Li’eth eased her upward, cradling her in a half-sitting position. “Anyone have some water?”
“Here, in my canteen,” the female Marine stated. She unclipped it from her belt and unscrewed the cap, handing it over.
“Thank you,” Li’eth told her. He helped Jackie lift it to her lips, letting her drink it all down to replace the blood she had lost.
A chittering to her left forced Jackie’s eyes open. One of the two K’Katta had moved close, and was holding something small, glossy, and brightly colored in her forehand claws. “Here,” the distinct translator-box voice of the Grand High Ambassador stated. “This is a honey-nut bar. Very popular among my people, and a big export from V’Dan.”
“Thank you,” Jackie managed. She let Li’eth take the half-emptied canteen in exchange for the packet, which the K’Katta quickly ripped open before letting her take the bar inside. It was sticky, sweet, and spiced with something almost like cinnamon, or maybe nutmeg. Nutmeg and a touch of mint. She chewed on the sticky mass, grateful it wasn’t too thick or crunchy in texture.
“I have sent the Commander-of-Hundreds to look for something for you to wear,” Ambassador K’kuttl’cha stated. “I will withdraw now so you will not continue to be frightened.”
That made Jackie reach out. She touched one of those very spider-like limbs, discovering the “fur” was a mixture of stiff yet sleek fibers. “Ambassador . . . thank you,” she stated as clearly as she could. “Thank you for fighting for me. I am in your debt. Yours and Twee-chuk-chrrr’s.”
Delicate
claws lifted and curled around her sticky fingers. “There are no debts among friends, Ambassador.” She let Jackie’s hand go and backed up a little, chittering something that made the translator box emit a soft chuckle. “Besides, we realized quickly that they were only attacking you. The rest of us were in very little danger, save those that had touched you.”
That made her smile weakly. To Jackie, those words meant no one else had been as badly cut up as she had, even if the Marine who had tried to shelter her had surely suffered a couple of wounds. “Still, it was very brave. Thank you.”
“We may not prefer to start any fights,” K’kuttle’cha stated, “but we do know how to finish them.”
Jackie chuckled briefly. “That, meioa, sounds like the philosophy of the Afaso Order.”
“Is it so?”
“They are monks who practice a form of mixed martial arts,” Li’eth explained. More guards were arriving. “The Ambassador has learned some of their art. I have also fielded requests by them, passing them along to various training schools. They wish to integrate V’Dan forms into their Terran styles . . . and have even expressed curiosity toward the alien ones.”
“I think at least a few of our Guardian-teachers would be happy to share their knowledge,” the K’Kattan Ambassador allowed, her translator programmed to say the words in a kindly voice.
She said something more, but Jackie was more interested in the various reports between the Elite Guards and the Terran Marines. Something about a few having been caught, and trying to track their point of origin through the small ventilation shafts scattered throughout the embassy zone.
A new exclamation forced her eyes open. “Dayamn, meioa! What did you do, steal a curtain from the Imperial Wing or something?”
Turning her head toward the voice, she tried to see what was going on. All she could do was hear the chitter-translated reply, as there were too many bodies in the way. “That is precisely what I did. It will provide the Grand High Ambassador with body-decency, as per your social-taboo requirements.”
Shakk, that’s right, she realized. Some of the energy from the bar was finally hitting her depleted bloodstream. I’m practically naked. I don’t think even my underpants survived most of that, and my bra is half-off . . .
(What about your holokinesis?) Li’eth asked her.
(Gone,) she sent back. (I poured all my reserves into healing all those wounds. I’m feeling better. Help me stand up, and we can check my backside to see if we missed healing anything.)
He hugged her gently but pushed to his feet. He grunted a little in doing so but managed to get upright with the help of a few others. Then her feet were on the ground, and while everything ached, letting her know her hide was a mess, nothing burned with the ice-hot pain of a knife wound. Or rather, the wounds caused by hundreds of razor-tipped metal claws.
“Here, the K’Katta brought you a curtain, sir,” one of the Marines said. “I’ve a knife on me; you just tell me where to cut it.”
He offered her the corner of a long, colorfully brocaded swath of . . . yes, Jackie recognized the fabric. It was an actual curtain from within the Imperial Wing, something torn down from one of their meters-high windows. She shook her head—which hurt—and accepted the corner from him. “No, thank you. I’ll take it as it is. It should be long enough.”
“Long enough for what?” Li’eth asked her.
Jackie wrapped the first part of the long edge around her naked, bloodied waist and knotted it. Gathering more of it into pleats, she tucked that into the makeshift waistband from one hip to the other across the front of her belly, then unpleated across her back, before finally throwing the last two meters up over her breasts and down her back. With a little more effort, she adjusted the part over her shoulder into yet more pleats, which wrapped around her upper curves modestly enough.
The fabric was heavy and somewhat stiff, and felt like it would stay pleated for as long as she needed it, so long as she didn’t move too suddenly or let the bundled brocade slip off her shoulder; the weight of the pallu section hanging down her back would hold the top of the makeshift sari in place. With her half-healed injuries, there was no risk of her moving anywhere fast, however. Unless another attack came.
Holding on to Li’eth, she looked around for someone in charge. Between the blood, the mangled machines, the bits of her chopped hair that had fallen free, the guards milling everywhere . . . “Someone get me a report,” she ordered. “Are there any more of those things? Who else is injured? Organize yourselves, people!”
“I’ve got this!” a familiar voice asserted. “Make a hole!”
Wading through the others, the muscular frame of Lieutenant Second Class Simon Paea reached her side. He nodded briskly and made his report. Jackie leaned on Li’eth for strength while he did so.
“Captain al-Fulan is working with the Elite Guard, doing a sector-by-sector sweep of the vents, rooms, and corridors in the embassy zone. Grand Captain Tes’rin has ordered reviews of all security scans from the moment the K’Katta cleared out of there for us, though he’s dead certain everything was clean before we moved into the zone.
“Admiral Nayak was in the city having lunch with a couple of the V’Dan Grand Admirals and is on his way back. The only personnel injured were yourself and Corporal Okonjo. His wounds are mostly superficial, but the robots destroyed the front part of his clothes, wherever he touched you. I cut off a length of the curtain before it got to you and made him a lava-lava for decency’s sake. Medical personnel are on their way, but the Elite are insisting they cannot move either of you until al-Fulan and the Elite teams working with our people have finished that sector-by-sector search, including these halls. They don’t want any stray ’bots following you to the infirmary.”
“Did you get them all?” she asked him.
“As far as we know, they all zeroed in on you somehow and tried to get to you,” Paea told her. “We suspect your DNA may have been used, since it went after your clothes, your bed, anything you used as a seat in your quarters, the carpeting . . . and, of course, you.” He squared his shoulders a little, his deeply tanned cheeks darkening a bit more with a flush. “I apologize for not being able to stop them in time, sir. You’re my Counselor. I should have protected you.”
“It’s alright, Simon,” Jackie reassured him. “When Corporal Okonjo is healed, please gently remind him that I am a telekinetic, and that jumping on top of me like that startled me out of forming a telekinetic shield. Both of us would have been far safer if he’d only told me to get down without trying to physically ensure it.”
“I will let him know that, sir,” Paea agreed.
“Gently,” Jackie repeated. “His actions were completely in the right place for most people in that sort of situation. We don’t want to ruin that reflex for the others’ safety.”
“. . . Yes, sir.”
“Doctors coming!” someone called out. The brief, narrow corridor the others had made for the Marine lieutenant widened, allowing several medical staff to drive their cart-sized hovercraft right up to both Jackie and Okonjo.
The triage was made quickly; Okonjo was rushed off first since he was still bleeding. Li’eth had focused on healing her, not him. Her wounds while far, far greater in number, were half-healed, and that meant scabbed pink and very tender. While her mind was still worrying over the corporal’s condition, one of the medics looking over Jackie muttered something that made her do a double take.
“Excuse me—what did you say? Just now?” she added.
The male, ash-blond and spotted in dark orange bilateral symmetry, shrugged. “I just said it probably didn’t help that you’re dressed like this.”
“I wasn’t dressed like this,” Jackie asserted. She pointed at the mangled snippets of her clothes that were still strewn around the floor, some of them lying in puddles and smears of her own blood. “I was clothed in pants and a blouse and what used
to be my shoes. I am wearing this curtain as a sari because it was the quickest way I could retain my dignity.”
“Oh, I’ve seen you wearing your clothes,” the young medic mocked back. “You dress far too provocatively. I heard these robot things went after your wardrobe, first. They probably thought they were teaching you a lesson.”
Most of the V’Dan around them continued to talk, but all of the Terrans—and Li’eth—fell very still and very quiet. Jackie felt her face and her hands heating with rage.
“What. Did you. Say?” she repeated in V’Dan, clenching her hands into fists until her fingernails dug into her palms, just to keep them from tapping into Li’eth’s pyromantic power.
“You dress too provocatively!”
“How do I dress ‘too provocatively’?” Jackie demanded, so mad she was trembling.
“You know—showing off your body,” the medic scorned. “Like an adult.”
Hands clamped over her eyes, nose, and mouth. Startled by the unexpected attack, Jackie struggled to breathe. Her attacker shouted while she reached for his wrists. “Guards! Elite Guards! Arrest this medic!”
“—What? On what grounds?” the younger man demanded. “Your Highness, I haven’t done anything wrong! I’m an emergency services doctor of the Third Tier, and I—”
“—And you will be silent!” Li’eth ordered. He released Jackie’s nostrils as she struggled, but didn’t uncover her mouth or her eyes. “Guards, detain this man for rest of the day—lock him up for as long as it takes, until I can find out the most remote, awful corner of the Empire to throw him away. You, meioa, are not going to treat any Terran from this point on. Take him away!”
(Dammit, Li’eth!) Jackie growled mentally, tugging at his wrists. She couldn’t pull hard because that just made her body ache, warning her she was stressing her imperfectly healed injuries.
(If I don’t get to cause a diplomatic incident, you don’t get to have a diplomatic incident,) he told her. He released her eyes. “That goes for the rest of you. Any comment about these Terrans being juveniles will be treated as a formal diplomatic incident. You will treat them as adults, and you will take your orders from their medical chief of staff.