Infinite Stars

by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  “Speaker-To-Nestless Kut was the first to suggest that you should be allowed to choose your respective roles. He was also the most dogged advocate when that proposition ran into strong opposition.”

  “Opposition from whom?”

  “The Hkh’Rkh. They do not believe you should have any choice in this matter. Or any other.”

  Riordan smiled. “I suspect some of them wanted us to be left back at Barney Deucy. Without our space suits.”

  Urzueth made a buzzing sound deep in his thorax: even to human ears, it sounded uneasy, awkward. “Some of them expressed… similar sentiments.”

  “‘Some?’” Trevor glanced at Caine. “Sounds like a majority to me.”

  Urzueth started forward. “It would not have mattered even if they had been unanimous in their insistence. We conferred diplomatic status upon you. We will not fail to honor the implicit protections and commitments.”

  Damn, sometimes the Arat Kur spoke English as if they’d swallowed a dictionary and had to vomit up the bigger words. But Urzueth was earnest in his assertion. Just as he had been about rejecting any Arat Kur intention of destroying Earth in toto, Trevor had to admit. “Well, then—thank you for taking our side in that argument.”

  “You need not thank me. I did not do it for you. I did it because it was the right thing to do. The Arat Kur are beings of law, Mr. Corcoran—despite what you may think, given our recent actions.”

  “Thank you, just the same,” added Riordan. “Now, if we are to take proper advantage of the right to select our upcoming roles, I must ask that you also provide us with complete privacy.”

  “I shall vacate your apartment at once.” The Arat Kur turned to go.

  “I’m sorry, Administrator Urzueth, but I do not simply mean that we wish to be alone. I must insist that we are allowed to discuss the matter in an environment where we may be certain that there is no possibility of surveillance.”

  Urzueth had rotated back toward the humans. For a moment, Trevor feared the exosapient might try to deny that they’d been monitored as closely as circumstances allowed during their entire time aboard the ship. But instead, he sagged slightly on his legs: the Arat Kur equivalent of a shrug and sigh. “And how may we assure you of that?”

  Riordan smiled. “It is very kind of you to ask…”

  * * *

  “Seriously?” Trevor muttered between chattering teeth.

  “If you had a better idea, you were free to suggest it at any time,” Riordan replied, wrapping his arms tightly about himself.

  The cavernous interior of the recently emptied liquid hydrogen fuel tank creaked and groaned as the warmer air forced unusually rapid thermal equalization. Riordan and Corcoran had, as requested, watched the Arat Kur pump the fuel over into an adjoining tank. They entered and were sealed in as soon as the temperature rose to a bearable level, wearing as many layers as they could fit under the space suits in which they had been rescued. Even so, they were still shivering. Trevor rubbed his sides briskly. “Okay, so what’s our best play?”

  “The most important thing is that they take you straight to D.C. and you get a meeting with the POTUS so that—”

  “Hey, hold on: I’m not the one going home. You—”

  “It has to be you, Trevor. You’ve got the credentials, the experience, and the leverage to bring Richard Downing in line if he starts trying to control too much of the information flow himself.”

  “Me? Control my Uncle Richard, and through him, intelligence operatives all over the world? Are you nuts?”

  “Probably, but that’s a discussion for another time. The plain facts are that you’re the war-hero son of the late Admiral Nolan Corcoran, that you’ve been a known quantity to D.C. insiders ever since you graduated from Annapolis, and that Richard owes you for all the cloak-and-dagger crap he pulled after your father died.”

  “Don’t remind me—of any of it.”

  “Sorry, but I have to. Besides, you have another duty to perform.”

  “What’s that?”

  “To see your mother. You haven’t been home since your father died.”

  Trevor didn’t know whether to thank Caine for his compassion or punch him in the face. He dodged, instead: “Elena’s there by now.”

  “I don’t have time to put this delicately, but you know that’s not the same. Elena was closer to your dad, and you to your mother.”

  “Don’t try to play family counselor, Riordan.”

  “Not my intention. But you need to be home to help patch the hole your father left. He wasn’t—couldn’t be—there for your mom, or for you, not after returning from deflecting the Doomsday Rock and learning that we had interstellar neighbors who were trying to bash us back to the Bronze Age. And later? Well, shit: famous fathers and the sons who don’t want to follow in their footsteps. It’s hardly a unique family scenario.”

  Well, that was true. You couldn’t swing a cat in the halls of the Academy and not hit a half-dozen midshipmen who didn’t have a similar story. “Okay. You’ve said your piece and made good points. Here’s my reply: there’s not a chance in hell I’m going to leave you here. And it’s not about saving you. That’s what I’m doing for my family.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you’ve got some personal business with Elena that needs settling, and quick. Six months ago, you reappeared after thirteen years of cold sleep—thirteen years while she grappled with the hinky reports that you’d died on Luna. So I’m not about to leave you behind in an enemy invasion fleet. I’m not going to make my sister a widow before she’s married, and my nephew fatherless before he’s met his father.” Trevor watched Caine’s expression closely, looking for any hint that he was less than completely moved by these appeals: if he was, he had no business being in the Corcoran family. Hell, you really didn’t know about people until they were teetering on the horns of a dilemma like this one. Rather than detecting any vacillation, Trevor was gratified to see grim resolve firm Riordan’s jaw, instead.

  But that resolve took a direction Trevor hadn’t intended. Caine frowned. “It’s possible that staying with the invaders means I might be killed,” he admitted, “but it’s a slim possibility. At most. On the other hand, we can be quite sure of what those invaders will do if their collaborators on Earth discover and reveal that you are still on the active duty roster in the US military databanks. The Hkh’Rkh will rightly claim that you didn’t disclose your active rank and your status as a combatant when you accepted your diplomatic status. They’ll have you executed in a heartbeat, and the Arat Kur will not be able to intervene.”

  “You’re military, now, too,” Trevor rebutted in a tense whisper.

  “Yeah, I was military—for a whopping total of twenty-nine days. All of it spent—from induction to retirement into the Reserves—on the Pearl. And what do you bet that paperwork never left Admiral Perduro’s office, but was vaporized during the attack? If so, you and Downing are the only two humans who even know I’ve worn the blue. Meaning that I’m safe, that I’ve never been in the military as far as the invaders, or their turncoat pals in our megacorporations, know.”

  Trevor said, “Yeah, but”—and stopped because he couldn’t find a sufficient objection.

  “Besides,” Caine continued, “there’s a practical side to this as well. You’re the one who has almost twenty years of military experience. The intel analysts are going to be able to get details from you regarding enemy ship architecture and other strategically and tactically relevant observations that I just didn’t see, because I don’t know what I was looking at.”

  “Bullshit. You’re a defense analyst and writer. You see plenty. Like the Arat Kur’s shipboard X-ray laser, and that they only mount it in their shift cruisers.”

  “Okay, so I catch some esoteric details. But most of the details the tech intel people are looking for are buried in the nitty-gritty stuff that veterans become familiar with by seeing it—or turning it over in their hands—time after time. Like you’ve done. F
or almost two decades.” Riordan shook his head. “I’ve got too much book-learning and not enough experience.

  “Now flip it around: no matter how this invasion shakes out, it’s more likely we’re going to need a diplomat next to the invaders than a warrior. Not that I’m a diplomat, really—”

  Trevor shrugged. “You’re a better diplomat than most of the real diplomats I’ve seen.” And then Trevor knew, in that moment of casual agreement, he’d definitively lost the debate.

  So did Riordan: his smile was slow, and a bit sad. “When you see Elena, tell her… tell her I’ve been thinking about her.”

  “Tell her yourself,” Trevor countered. “You’ll be together soon enough.”

  And then he looked away because he knew he was lying.

  * * *

  DECEMBER 7, 2119

  WASHINGTON D.C., EARTH

  Trevor, waiting at the very end of the Metro platform, stepped forward as the train emerged from the tube with a faltering hum, and watched the dull, reflective gleam of the passing windows as it slowed and sank back down onto its primary track-wheels. As the last car drew abreast of him, he saw that it was almost entirely empty. His strategic waiting spot had paid the dividend he had hoped for: solitude.

  He strolled alongside the now creeping car, slipped through the doors as soon as they parted, moved to the last seat and sank into it gratefully. It was both a relief and a little disorienting not to be the center of attention, not to have a dozen pairs of eyeballs—including those of the POTUS, the Joint Chiefs, Director of the CIA, Secretary of State—all boring into him, hanging on every word he uttered. And knowing that each one of those words was being recorded, sent out to the leaders of all five blocs, and examined from every angle.

  Instead of resting after the two-day, closeted debrief, his first stop had been his father’s office—or now, Uncle Richard’s. One of the first to go up after the D.C. construction height codes had been revised in 2062, the building had beautiful views of the National Mall from its position directly south of the Washington Monument. A view Trevor had never seen until today.

  Because Nolan Corcoran hadn’t been like other kids’ fathers. He never made it to school plays or games, was rarely in the same time-zone when parent-teacher meetings occurred. Hell: he’d rarely set foot in his own office. He’d always been on the road, always wheeling and dealing to achieve god knew what.

  Until Riordan had confirmed First Contact just over a year ago and it turned out that Nolan Corcoran—and his shadowy umbrella intelligence cooperative known as IRIS—had been preparing for that fateful day ever since his team had found evidence of exosapient tampering during their intercept of the Earth-bound Doomsday Rock in 2083. As if an omen of things to come, the mission had kept him from being present for Trevor’s birth and had saddled him with secrets which would dog Nolan to his untimely death half a year ago—possibly at the hands of an assassin.

  The train pulled into L’Enfant Plaza: the platform was less crowded than usual. And, whether by chance or some subtle hint of body language, none of the dozen people who boarded the last car approached any of the seats near Trevor.

  His collarcom—a burner furnished by the CIA—toned. Damn it. Trevor rose and exited just before the doors closed. The platform was now nearly empty: the influx of late afternoon commuters was light, probably because so many businesses and government offices had closed down in anticipation of whatever the Arat Kur might elect to do when the deadline for a response to their armistice proposal ran out. This year, instead of scanning the skies for Santa, kids—and their parents—were trying to pick out the slow, dim specks that marked the closest enemy ships as they moved along their orbital tracks.

  Trevor tapped the collarcom after the seventh page: the first step confirming it was a legitimate contact. “Verify ID.”

  “Downing. Winter thorn. Two. Delta-Foxtrot.”

  Trevor waited for the collarcom to process the vocal biometrics and the digitized retinal scan which was required even to accept a voice-only call. The com clicked rapidly as it checked the data against a secure file in his belt-carried palmtop, then opened the channel. “How can I help you, sir?” Trevor wondered if he’d ever feel comfortable calling him “Uncle Richard” again.

  Richard Downing’s BBC-reader accent was stronger than usual: he tended to play it up when he was trying to sound avuncular. “I’m sorry you’re still angry, Trevor.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t like being manipulated.”

  “See here, lad: this is wartime. I had to have you drop by today, had to pass along the mission—”

  “Cut the crap. You weren’t just ‘passing along a mission’ to me. You were twisting emotional thumbscrews to get me willingly on board for the shittiest op I’ve ever been handed.”

  “Trevor, if there was anyone else who could—”

  “Just stop it; stop it now. In the future, if you’re going to order me to prepare a surgical strike against the same people—well, beings—that allowed me to return to Earth on a diplomatic parole, don’t give me the duty and country bullshit. Just give me the order—and don’t bring Dad, or what he’d want, into it. Now: why are you calling?”

  Downing sighed. “I need to get some additional guidance from you regarding the Arat Kur.”

  “Richard, just I spent two long days getting debriefed by all the experts. Then you had me in your own office for another hour. I assure you: I haven’t held anything back.”

  “No, not intentionally, of course. But I’m not looking for specifics so much as impressions, suspicions: the kind of insights that wouldn’t have been solicited during your official debriefing or which you didn’t touch on when you joined us at my office.”

  Where “us” had included Major Opal Patrone, who was still not giving him the time of day, largely because she was still technically Caine’s dedicated bodyguard, even though he remained a captive of the Arat Kur. Or at least that’s what Trevor chose to believe. “So why didn’t you ask me this when I was there?”

  “Because you might reveal something that the others in my office were not cleared to hear.”

  “Well, then why the hell do you think it’s a good idea to ask me over a comm line, encrypted or not?”

  “Because, my boy, your burner collarcom has at least fifteen secure minutes before it can be hacked. Assuming anyone is even scanning for you: fewer than four hundred people know you were returned to us with the terms of the armistice. Besides, anyone who is trying to find a crack in our intel wall today is not wasting their time on random monitoring, which is the only way they’ll find this link. Unless, that is, you keep asking me more questions and delay the process. Now: are you in a place where you can be overheard?”

  “Do you really think I’m that stupid, Uncle Richard? It’s been about a minute since I flashed my ID and walked out on the maintenance walkway in the eastbound tube. So let’s make this quick: I don’t want to be here when the next train comes rushing past within half a meter of my nose.” And that was when Trevor realized he’d slipped and called him Uncle Richard. Well, old habits die hard.

  “Right then: straight to it. I want your cultural take on the Arat Kur.”

  Trevor frowned. “Cultural? That’s not exactly my speciality.”

  “I don’t mean their preferences in art and music, lad. I mean how they approach war as a species. Not their technology and strategy: I’m after their mindset. You’ve been a professional warfighter for almost two decades. What sort of warfighters are they?”

  Trevor discovered he was shaking his head even though Richard couldn’t see the motion: he stopped it abruptly. “They’re not really warfighters at all. The Arat Kur seem to find everything about war not just horrible, but distasteful—almost embarassing. As if they’re ashamed to be caught up in an activity that is so barbarous. Or primitive.”

  Downing was silent a moment before replying. “That could prove very useful, Trevor. Tell me: do you have any hypothesis—no matter how subjective—as to the o
rigins of that reaction?”

  Trevor kept from shrugging. “Before we were rescued, Darzhee Kut told us that the Arat Kur have not had a major physical dispute, let alone a war or even a battle, in living memory. And some of them seem to live a long time. So part of their aversion arises because they never become accustomed to physical violence, either indivdiually or as a day-to-day social possibility. They find it so repulsive that they rejected a Hkh’Rkh offer to school them in all the dirty tricks that a war-fighting species is accustomed to: feints, misinformation, deception.”

  “Hmm. Were they any more attentive to the lessons they might have learned from our media about our conduct of war?”

  “I don’t think so. From what I could tell—which wasn’t much—the Hkh’Rkh conducted exhaustive analyses of whatever signals they’ve picked up from us over the past century or so. But not the Arat Kur. They avoid thinking about violence the same way you and I would avoid jumping into a sewer if we could at all help it—even if there was something really important down in the muck.”

  “Yes—but we’d still do it if we had to.”

  “Yeah, but only to a point. And not with any natural eagerness. We’d never acquire an ‘aptitude’ for it: we’d tolerate it for just as long as we needed to and then, up out of that sewer. Although I think the Arat Kur may have an additional reservation.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “I think that whatever dirty tricks they have up their sleeves”—Trevor’s subconscious concocted the impossible image of an Arat Kur wearing a dress shirt—“they’re not willing to reciprocate, to share them with the Hkh’Rkh.”

  “Because they’re not sure how durable their current alliance is?”

  “That’s my suspicion. The two species couldn’t be more dissimilar. And I got the impression that if the Arat Kur feel the Hkh’Rkh to be base, the Hkh’Rkh consider the Arat Kur to be cowards and more akin to prey animals.”

  Trevor could imagine Downing nodding as he murmured his reply. “Natural, given their evolutionary differences. And the Arat Kur are prudent to fear an end to the alliance. If the Hkh’Rkh remain stuck at their current shift-range, they may start eyeing the worlds of the neighbors they can already reach: the Arat Kur. So it makes sense that the Arat Kur refrain from sharing their own doctrinal secrets and advantages with them, but instead, keep the Hkh’Rkh at arm’s length. That could be very useful for us. Very useful indeed. Thank you, Trev. You’ve certainly done all that could be expected of you. And more.”