“If we don’t do something about this, right now, we are ignoring the thing that will exterminate the human race.”
There was a fair amount of noise, a babble of people talking amongst themselves. A few shouted questions. Lanoe ignored it all. Candless gave him a meaningful look, but he shook his head. No need to have her shout these people down, not this time. He let the murmuring die out on its own.
“Every alien species we might have met, every alien species we could have learned from, traded with, counted as allies—gone. A galaxy wiped clean of life. Sterilized. Nothing remains of all those cultures. Not so much as ruins on some desolate moon, no trace of their written history. The Blue-Blue-White murdered every intelligent species that we know to exist.
“All but two.”
On the image of the galaxy, two stars lit up—one of which was the sun, the star that nurtured humanity. The other was an unassuming dwarf about a thousand light-years from Earth.
“You all know this one, that’s ours. The other one belongs to a species called the Choir, a species we just recently made contact with. The Choir are barely hanging on by a thread—the Blue-Blue-White killed all but a handful of them. It was the Choir who created the wormhole that brought us here. They have that ability. They have the ability to take us home. I have, on my Hoplite, a chorister—that’s the singular noun for their species. I brought her along to witness what we’re going to do here.
“And that’s the question, isn’t it? I’m sure you’ve all wondered. You’ve listened to my story of tragedy on a colossal scale, and now you want to know what I intend to do about it.
“First off, I came here. To the right place. We have it on good authority that this system, here near the center of the galaxy, is the home of the Blue-Blue-White. I have tracked the dragon to its lair.
“The next step is to make demands. I have onboard my ship computer files that detail the language of the Blue-Blue-White. I intend to make contact with them. Perhaps they can be reasoned with. Perhaps we can convince them we are intelligent beings. Perhaps they can recall their fleets, or at least reprogram them so that they stop trying to kill us all. Maybe that’s all it takes. A little talking.
“But maybe not. Maybe they won’t listen. Maybe the Blue-Blue-White won’t even acknowledge us as worth talking to.
“If that’s the case, I intend to make them listen to our demands. I intend to show them that we cannot be ignored.
“We have a carrier, a cruiser, two destroyers. Almost a full carrier group. Dozens of cataphracts and carrier scouts. We have some of the best pilots the Navy ever trained.
“In the past, we—I—have gone to war with less. And I have prevailed.
“I will take the fight to these damned jellyfish. I will not relent. I will be terrible in my wrath.
“Terrible in my vengeance.
“Because make no mistake,” he said, and straightened out his spine. Lifted his chin. “This is about revenge. It is about justice, and retribution. Those trillions of lives lost—the future of humanity at stake—these things demand an answer.
“I am going to get one, no matter what it takes. And you—everyone listening to me now—are going to assist me with that.
“Thank you,” Lanoe said. “Dismissed.”
He kicked away from the console, headed toward the open hatchway. Intending to return to the cruiser. He had many things to do. People shouted at him—some jeering, some asking honest questions. Some, a very few, applauding and cheering. Candless shouted at them to leave him alone as they reached for him, trying to grab his sleeve, trying to get in front of him to block his way.
Most of them backed down when Candless turned her acid tongue on them. Those who didn’t, Lanoe simply pushed aside. He didn’t bother noting who they were.
Candless collected the officers from the cruiser and formed an honor guard to get Lanoe back down to the flight deck. Together they hurried down a long hallway, eyes watching them from every hatch. Bury kicked alongside the old man, biting his lip as he tried not to say anything.
He was still Bury, of course, and so that didn’t last.
“Sir, I just want to say—”
Lanoe turned and looked at him with one cold eye.
Bury wouldn’t be taken aback, though. Not now. Not when so much was at stake. “I have to say that was the most stirring speech I’ve ever heard.”
“Sure,” Lanoe said.
“I want you to know you can count on me. I’ll follow you through the gates of hell, if that’s what it takes.”
“Good.”
Bury felt the blood rushing to his cheeks. “Look, I just want you to know I’m ready to fly, and—”
“You don’t need to,” Lanoe told him.
“I … I’m sorry?”
The commander sighed. “Candless makes up the duty rosters. She has you down as inactive, for medical reasons. Back when it was just us, I needed every pilot I could get my hands on, wounded or not. That isn’t the case anymore. I just drafted a couple dozen new ones.”
“But—sir—I want to fight!”
Lanoe nodded at him. “Commendable spirit, but completely unnecessary. You really want to help out? I’ll give you a bridge position. You can be Valk’s IO. You can serve with honor and not worry about aggravating your injuries.”
Bury was so surprised—and so horrified—he couldn’t even splutter in response.
“It comes with a promotion, Lieutenant Bury,” Lanoe went on. “You’ve got to like that. In fact, I’m going to promote all of you—I don’t want Centrocor’s people ordering you around. So, Ehta, you go up to major. Candless, I’m making you a captain. If we keep doing this, you’ll outrank me soon.”
“I can think of a few orders I’d give you straightaway,” the newly elevated Captain Candless told him. Bury knew her well enough to tell she didn’t think much of her new rank, though he couldn’t say why. “Unless you’re declaring yourself a rear admiral, while you’re at it.”
Lanoe smiled at her. “Maybe I should just stick with commodore, since I’ve got my own little fleet now,” he said. With a start, Bury realized they were joking with each other.
“Paniet,” Lanoe said, turning to the engineer. “I’m embarrassed to admit—I don’t even know how ranks work in the Neddies. You’re just called an engineer currently, right?”
Bury’s chest hurt. He couldn’t breathe. He’d just been stabbed in the back, and they were all just nattering on. How could they—
“Yes, dearie,” Paniet said. “If you bump me up one rank that’ll make me an engineer-captain, second class.” The neddy shrugged. “We’re all boffins in the NED. We just love making things more complicated than necessary.”
“Hold on,” Bury said. “I mean, that’s all very exciting, but—but—damn you, sir!”
They had come up to the hatch that led to the flight deck. Lanoe stopped now and looked at Bury with a towering and chilly regard.
Hellfire, Bury thought. He’d really stepped in it now. You didn’t say things like that to a commander, not if you wanted to have a career in the Navy. “I beg your pardon, sir—if I misspoke there. It’s just because I’m so eager to fly a cataphract in your service. I think that back in the last battle I acquitted myself well, and I believe I can accomplish even more if you just give me a chance.”
“You’re young, Bury,” Lanoe said. “You’ll have plenty of chances to fight. For now, listen to your teacher. She has your best interests at heart.”
“Former teacher,” Candless insisted. “And clearly not a very good one, given that I never beat that insolent manner out of you. You’re disgracing me, right now.”
Bile surged up Bury’s throat. But even he could admit—sometimes—when he was beaten.
“Yes, sir. Yes, ma’am. My most abject apologies.”
“I’m letting this go,” Lanoe said. “You were riled up by my big speech, let’s chalk it up to that. From this point on, try to lay off the insubordination. Now, as for the rest of us—w
e need to get back to the cruiser. There’s a planet to be found if I’m actually going to live up to all the promises I just made. Paniet, Ehta, you take Bury back in the transport. I have my own BR.9 here—I’ll head back on my own.”
“My BR.9 is here as well,” Captain Candless said.
“Sure,” Lanoe said, “and that’s where it’s going to stay. I need you here on the carrier.”
“Sir,” Captain Candless said. “I’m afraid I didn’t understand that last order. Perhaps you’d be kind enough to elaborate on it.”
Bury had been around her long enough to know the look on her face. It was one he’d always tried to avoid—a look of pure distaste, like she’d smelled something awful.
Lanoe just nodded, though, as if he’d taken what she said literally. “I don’t trust anyone on this tub. Bullam and Maggs are probably conspiring to have me killed right now. Shulkin’s a zombie when he’s not a maniac. As for the IO, I’m still not convinced he isn’t a Centrocor spy. I need someone over here that I can trust, and that means you. Watch them for me. Make sure that when they surrendered, they actually meant it. Got it?”
Candless’s lips turned white as she pressed them together. Somehow she managed to get an answer through them. “Sir,” she said.
“Good. Everybody else—I’ll see you back home.” Then he ducked into the airlock for his docking berth and was gone.
Bury stared at the hatch for a while. Unable to believe it.
He’d been grounded. That was exactly what this amounted to. Working as Valk’s IO? Why exactly would an artificial intelligence, a being of pure information, need an information officer?
He’d had his wings clipped. Lanoe had no confidence in him.
No one seemed to care.
“I just got a promotion,” Ehta said. She grabbed Paniet in a tight hug. “Major Ehta, what do you think of that?” the marine asked the engineer.
“I think it’ll look lovely on your cryptab,” the engineer-captain, second class told her. “And ooh, I think I just went up a pay grade! How delicious!”
Bury wanted to run at them and smash their damned faces. Instead he turned and looked at Captain Candless. He thought—maybe—he saw a little something there. Not exactly sympathy. He didn’t know if she was capable of that emotion. Empathy, maybe. If he’d been grounded, she’d just been exiled. Maybe she knew exactly how he felt.
“I wouldn’t order new stationery just yet if I were you,” she said to the others. “He can throw around all the promotions he likes—it doesn’t matter. This is no longer an official Navy mission. The Admiralty didn’t sign off on any of Lanoe’s big plans. I suppose we shouldn’t mention that to the Centrocor contingent. But it does mean absolutely none of these new titles will stick once we get back to civilization.”
She flipped around and kicked back up the hall, in the direction of the carrier’s bridge.
“If it was your birthday,” Major Ehta grumbled, “she’d be the one to tell you how many calories there were in the damned cake.”
Red hair. Again.
Lanoe hovered in the hatchway to the brig, saying nothing. Pretending. Again.
The last time he’d seen her, Zhang had worn her hair up in two small buns on top of her head. He wondered what Ginger would look like if she did that. Female pilots always kept their hair short—in the absence of gravity, long hair had a bad habit of getting in your face. Ginger’s had grown out a little. Maybe she would cut it soon.
He closed his eyes. Squeezed them tightly shut. This was wrong, he knew. He shouldn’t be wallowing in these memories. He should let Zhang go.
The only woman he’d ever loved, really. In three hundred years there had been others. Plenty of them. None like Zhang. When he’d been with her, he’d felt complete. Like the thing that had been missing all his life was finally there. He could talk to Zhang about anything. He spent so much of his life being a hardass, shutting out fear and anxiety and even compassion. Making hard choices, doing bad things. Around Zhang, he had been … not a different person. Still Aleister Lanoe. But with her near—and only when she was near—that had been okay. She had believed in him. Trusted him, as no one else ever could, and he had trusted her.
Now she was gone. She was never coming back.
He opened his eyes.
Red hair. He felt an immense urge to reach out and touch it. Run his fingers through it, see if it felt the same.
That, of course, would be highly inappropriate. He was immediately disgusted with himself just for having the urge. He started to turn, intending to go. To get away from Zhang—from Ginger.
But then she spoke.
“It’s almost gone,” she said.
“I’m sorry?”
She didn’t turn around. If she would just turn around, if he saw her face, it would be easier. “The sedative that Rain-on-Stones brought with her.”
Floating next to Ginger’s elbow was an octagonal case made of thin plates of stone. Its surface was intricately carved with geometric patterns. Its lid was open, and inside Lanoe could see neatly stacked instruments, some of which he recognized—scalpels, retractors, surgical tools—and some that were completely foreign to him, including a ball of what looked like cut bone, its surface so heavily carved it looked like it was perforated. Ginger reached inside and took out a long, curved syringe. Through a window set into its side Lanoe could see a few cubic centimeters of coral-colored liquid.
“How long, do you think?” Lanoe asked.
“Ten days, maybe, if I ration it. Then she’ll start to wake up. Slowly, at first—she’ll be groggy for a long time. She’ll also be alone.”
“No,” Lanoe said. “You’ll be here for her.”
“That’s not enough,” Ginger said.
Lanoe squirmed inside his suit. There was a lot he didn’t understand about the Choir, or about what had happened to Ginger. “Is it safe?” he asked. “Keeping her asleep so long?”
“You’re only asking now?” Ginger shrugged her slim shoulders. Her age—or lack of it—wasn’t lost on him, even if she was acting like someone much older. “It’s safe enough. When one of the Choir is injured, the rest put them to sleep like this for the whole time it takes them to recover. They couldn’t handle it otherwise. They can’t block out each other’s thoughts or feelings, you see. If one of them breaks a leg, every single one of them feels the agony.”
“Hellfire,” Lanoe said.
“Will you help me give her the shot?”
“Sure,” he said.
Ginger opened the hatch and they stepped inside the repurposed detaining cell. Rain-on-Stones was strapped down to a long padded bench. He’d forgotten how big the choristers were, and how gangly. She was half again as tall as he was, but as he put his hands on two of the alien’s shoulders he felt how thin she was under her dress. Mostly just arms and legs, jointed appendages connecting to a central trunk no thicker than a human thigh. Her long, cylindrical head slumped over to one side as he held her down. The ring of eyes that ran around the middle of her head didn’t open.
She twitched in her troubled sleep. Tried to roll over. Lanoe redoubled his grip and pressed down, keeping her still.
“Be careful. Don’t crush any of her males,” Ginger said.
“Don’t worry. I don’t want to touch any of those things.”
“She’s different from us,” Ginger said. “That doesn’t make her repellent, Lanoe. If you could see through their eyes … But you don’t want that, do you? You need to keep your distance.”
Lanoe sighed. He considered telling her to call him “Commander.” Ginger was still a Naval ensign, no matter what else she’d become. Instead, he said, “I understand that you’re angry with me.”
“You lied to her, and to me. You made a deal with them—a promise—and then you broke it.”
“The deal was to give you to them. Like some kind of human sacrifice. Don’t tell me that you wanted to go live with the Choir for the rest of your life. I won’t believe it.”
&nb
sp; “No,” she admitted. “I was afraid. But I understood why it was necessary. I saw the damage we’d already done to their harmony. It’ll be generations before they have peace again, maybe hundreds of years before they—”
“You’re right,” he said, interrupting. “I don’t want to know. I need to keep a certain distance. I think you understand why.”
She didn’t speak to that. Instead she braced herself against a wall of the cell and laid the syringe against Rain-on-Stones’s chest. Then she slid the long, thick needle in between two of the chorister’s scalelike plates. It seemed to take a very long time until Lanoe heard a tiny pop, a sound he was sure indicated that the needle had entered Rain-on-Stones’s protected flesh.
There was no plunger in the syringe. Instead it had a leverlike handle, too long and thin to be comfortable in a human hand. Ginger grunted in exertion as she squeezed it. The fluid shot up the tube.
Under Lanoe’s hands, the alien relaxed almost instantly, her bony arms sagging. He could hear her breathing through spiracles under her dress. Each breath grew longer and shallower as the drug took effect.
“There,” Ginger said. “Thank you.”
“Sure,” Lanoe told her. “So I made my big speech. Told everyone what we’re doing here.”
Ginger sounded uninterested, but she was still mostly human. “Oh?” she asked, perhaps just to be polite. “How’d it go over?”
“Pretty well, I think. Centrocor’s people didn’t come here because they wanted to kill us, not really. They were in it for a paycheck. I can’t offer them money, but when I promised to take them home, they settled down fast.”
Ginger lifted her head, just a little. As if she’d smelled something rotten. “Home,” she said.
“I need you to take good care of her,” Lanoe said, gesturing at the alien. “When she wakes up, we’re all going to be counting on you. From what I’ve seen, you can handle it, but if you need help, just ask Paniet and we’ll—”
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