“Well, I must grant that you are a serious young man.”
“I’m just glad Bria isn’t here,” Tarkos said, as he turned back to the controls. “She would have torn your arm off.”
“You know they don’t think of us as equals. Your Sussurats and Neelee and Brights. They see humans as a lesser race.”
Tarkos touched a blinking red panel. The ship shuddered with the lurch into the improbable. The stars streaked away from the center of their trajectory, as if even the suns fled the terror of the approaching World Hammer.
“Let’s prove them wrong,” he said.
EPILOGUE
Captain Nereenital stood on the observation deck, a dome at the pinnacle of the tallest spire of the Savannah Runner, waiting patiently for the elevator to arrive. With a sigh the transparent car rose into the room, bobbed to a stop, and then opened. Pietro Danielle stepped out on his two thick legs. His small human eyes flicked to the Harmonizer Special Advisor, Preeajitala, where she stood behind the Captain. No one else was on the deck. The two Neelee seemed to stand alone among the stars.
“It shames us to ask this of you, human Dockmaster Pietro Danielle,” the captain said. His pronunciation of the Italian’s name would have been unrecognizable to someone who had never left Earth, with the consonants all collapsing into soft barks. But Danielle had long before grown accustomed to Neelee speech. “You received a personal message from the human Harmonizer Amir Tarkos.”
“Yes,” Danielle said. “I was already on my way to see you when you called for me. This message is clearly meant for you and the Special Advisor. Please permit me to explain it to you.” He waved an arm and the message appeared, the English words floating between them.
To Pietro Danielle, Dockmaster, Savannah Runner.
Pietro—
We’re going to leave here now, so that we can join the search for the wandering planet.
Thank you for the lunchbox. I haven’t needed to open it yet. Instead, remember that escargot we brought with us? We still have some of it, but it proved to be bad. Our Galilean guest is lost because of it. Perhaps we’ll find out why: a straight line from here to the wandering planet will takes us 1 degree North of more snails. That’s where our goal lies, eight years out.
Looking forward to that wine you promised.
—Amir
Danielle first read it aloud in English, then he did his best to translate it to Galactic. “The last sentence—that’s this part—truly is a personal message. But here. Thank you for the lunchbox. I haven’t needed to open it yet. ‘Lunchbox’ is a name the Harmonizer gave to the coherent plasma weapon the Special Advisor gave to the team. By saying he has not opened it, he means they’ve not used it. Presumably they’ve not needed to.
“Then he writes, remember that escargot we brought with us? We still have some of it, but it proved to be bad. ‘Escargot.’ Well,” Danielle hesitated, then smiled slightly as he thought better of a full explanation, “that’s something from Earth that we thought looked like the OnUnAn. So he’s saying the OnUnAn turned against them and some of its members were somehow lost. And this, Our Galilean guest is lost because of it. Galileo Galilea was Earth’s greatest astronomer. So Tarkos is saying—I’m sorry to report—that the Kirt astronomer is dead, and it is the fault of the OnUnAn. Finally, he says they are traveling one degree Galactic North—from their location, I assume—of the OnUnAn homeworld. This is where they expect to find what they seek, eight light years from their current location.”
Preeajitala and Nereenital stared at him in silence a long moment. Danielle waited to see if they had another question, then bowed and, without another word, stepped back into the elevator. The image of the message faded from the air as the elevator door closed and the glass cylinder descended.
“The human Amir Tarkos was clever,” Preeajitala said. “The OnUnAns on the ambassadorial ship will not be able to decode this message. And if the Ulltrians have some spy on The Savannah Runner, or in the fleet, they will not be able to decode this message. The Harmonizer has given us some small advantage of time—at least until the AIs and historians decode the Ulltrian book.”
“But how shall we use this time?” Nereenital said. “If these Harmonizers are correct, the Executive fleet searches worldless vacuum. That is very dangerous, to have our fleet far from our homes, and far from the Ulltrian haven.”
Preeajitala considered the problem. She could go to the Council, and tell them Tarkos had discovered that the World Hammer was on the other side of the Ulltrian homeworld. But the OnUnAn representatives to the Council would have the influence necessary to stall any change in strategies. And, if not just Gowgoroup but all the OnUnAns meant to betray the Alliance, then the Alliance’s actions would surely be communicated to the Ulltrians if they were shared with the OnUnAns on the Council.
No, Preeajitala thought, that way is as constricted as a cave. The open run of possibilities would be found elsewhere, in using my own alliances.
“A portion of the Executive Fleet coordinates with Harmonizer command,” she told the captain. “A coalition formed with some members of the Executive, for the search mission. These ships will listen to us. I will request that they take up defensive positions around the most vulnerable Alliance member worlds.”
“And the Harmonizers?” Nereenital asked.
“I will send two ships to follow Briaathursiasaliantiormethessess and this human Amir Tarkos.”
Nereenital clacked a hoof in agreement. “After the book is decoded, we will go to the Council. We will start the slow and costly process of convincing them to pull back most of the rest of the fleet into more defensive positions. That will take many days.”
Preeajitala said nothing. She walked to the edge of the observation deck, till her dark nose almost touched the clear hull. Nereenital stepped to her side and silently sent the command to dim the lights. It seemed they stood atop the ship then, out in the universe, surrounded only by stars. They stared in silence a while.
“It looks like a trap,” the captain said. “A tight hole, without long views. And we fell into it.”
“Perhaps,” Preeajitala whispered in reply. “Our task now is to prepare as well as we can, without making the trap fully close on us before we are ready.”
Nereenital tapped at the floor. They stared a moment, before the captain added, “One might believe that you sent this particular Harmonizer team because you thought them each expendable, and saw a way to seek information, while putting aside both the OnUnAn ambassador and the Kirt probe that we suspected was contaminated.”
The hairs on Preeajitala’s nose lifted slightly, and her ears lay flat, a sign of anger, though her voice sounded calm as she replied, “But if they succeed, all will say instead that they were the most valuable team, and that all of them were needed.”
“Similarly,” the captain of the great starship continued, undaunted, “some on the Council may wonder if you sent our only human Harmonizer, and one of our few Sussurat Harmonizers, to a certain death, just as the two might discover terrible secrets of the Alliance’s past that affected their own home worlds.”
This time Preeajitala’s voice did betray a hint of anger. “But if the human and Sussurat find those secrets, and return to us, it will be said that these two Harmonizers redeemed the Alliance.”
The captain scraped a hoof along the floor. “An essential ambiguity,” he whispered. No species in the galaxy understood moral ambiguity like the Neelee: they appreciated that sometimes the same act became good, or became bad, with the slightest change in events or perspective. Nonetheless, Nereenital did not like the Special Advisor’s stratagems, and he felt compelled to make this clear. Many respected the Special Advisor, and many more feared her, but he was captain of a flagship, and a member of the Council. He feared no one, not even a Predator. “An essential ambiguity,” the repeated. “But I note that this is an ambiguity you chose, Special Advisor.”
Preeajitala said nothing more. She turned, her hooves clacking sha
rply, and went to the elevator. In moments she had gone below, her implants reeling out commands.
Nereenital stayed by the wall a while longer, watching the stars. The black savannah, his species called space. The Neelee believed they had earned the right to wander the galaxy as if it were their own territory, for they had founded the Alliance, and had lived longer than any race that crossed the black planes between stars. They were Neelee, the self-made herd that thundered across the spiral arm.
But was this self-knowledge, he asked himself, or was it hubris?
He found Neelee-ornor in that sky, his home star bright because it lay only a few light years distant. He turned and located Sussurat, tinted red and standing seemingly alone in a dark patch of space. Finally, he let his eyes settle on the sun of Earth, a tiny pale star, hardly distinguishable from the millions that surrounded it. He wondered, as he blinked at the vast arch of the galaxy, if the children of these stars would survive the coming war.
The End
The Predator Space Chronicles continue in
Evolution Commandos: World Hammer.
Tarkos, Bria, and their team locate and investigate the sunless world where the last Ulltrians dwell. In an ocean under ice, they must discover the war plans that could destroy the Galactic Alliance, and Earth with it, if the Ulltrians are not stopped. Treachery awaits, and not everyone will survive the twin black worlds in deepest space.
THE PREDATOR SPACE CHRONICLES
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A FREE SAMPLE FROM Evolution Commandos: World Hammer (Predator Space Chronicles II)
PROLOGUE
All the stars of heaven fell.
Or so it seemed. Amir Tarkos, human warrior of the Harmonizer corp, dropped toward the axis of a rotating black asteroid. He wore nothing but vacuum armor, and he fell alone. As the horizon grew to swallow half of space, the suns of the galaxy appeared to fall with him.
The asteroid orbited a fading white dwarf that glowed, coldly dim, behind Tarkos. Around the dwarf star orbited a million asteroids, the cold and silent detritus of a dozen planets that had been destroyed when the sun flared, expanded, and then faded to a cinder. The other asteroids orbited so far out that, from their surfaces, the dwarf sun would seem little brighter than the other stars of the galaxy. But this asteroid that rose beneath Tarkos’s feet was special. It orbited alone in the narrow zone of warmth shed by the star’s last sputters of fusion. If the asteroid had been there before the sun exploded, it would have been vaporized. It could only have been pushed down and slowed from distant orbit—placed here with intent.
Tarkos dared a single radar ping and his suit told him he had fifty meters to go.
He held his breath. He wore a simple rocket pack over his armored spacesuit, and when a second ping told him he’d fallen to just twenty meters above the surface, he activated the pack’s adjustment jets, using a pre-programmed routine. A burst pushed him slightly to the side, aligning him closer to, but not quite over, the axis. Then two jets fired in counter-motion from his shoulders, turning him. A third jet slowed his fall. The stars began to rotate around him and the white dwarf sun rushed past, rushed past, rushed past as he spun. He closed his eyes, fighting nausea.
His boots hit the hard rock violently, sending jolts of pain through his ankles and knees. He exhaled with a grunt and ran to catch his balance. His speed had not quite matched the asteroid’s rotation. He skipped, bounced, slammed against the rough side of a crater, and then flipped to land on his feet again. He might bounce right off the surface. He magnetized his boots, pinwheeled his arms, and managed to run with big, lurching steps until it seemed he no longer tumbled forward.
He finally stopped, leaning out over his toes. He had matched the asteroid’s spin. But now he felt lost in the reeling stars and madly rotating sun. He forced himself to look down.
The voice of a human female sounded in his helmet, speaking English, tightbeam relayed off the satellite he’d set in a slow drop above: “Amir. Are you OK? You weren’t breathing, then you sounded like you were in a fight. Over.”
“That’s one small stumble for a man,” Tarkos said, his voice sounding loud in his helmet, “one embarrassing collapse for humankind.”
“Don’t joke like that,” the voice came back, an edge of anger in her tone. “Over.”
“Sorry, Pala. I had a bit of trouble matching the spin.”
“You should have slowed earlier. Over.”
“I didn’t want to trigger any collision defense systems.”
“Well,” Pala Eydis said, “you should talk me through your progress, so I know what’s going on. Over.”
Tarkos did not say what he was thinking: that out here on this black metal rock, trust was irrelevant. He had no one to depend on but himself. “OK, I’m down. Standing near the axis.”
It barely felt “down,” however. The asteroid was big but its mass conveyed only a hint of gravity. Without the magnetic boots, he could have been flung off. He adjusted his helmet visuals to paint out the stars, so that the spin would stop making him nauseous. Now that he had a moment to stand still and think, he recognized that he had begun to shiver. The skin of his armored spacesuit was running a quantum computational cooling algorithm, to nearly match the cold of space. But the chill of it began now to penetrate the suit’s active insulation.
“I’m going to turn off the suit’s camouflage,” he said.
“Roger that,” Eydis said.
Tarkos smiled. It was strange to be speaking English, especially old NASA English. For him, one spoke Galactic in space.
Tarkos sent the command to his armored spacesuit and looked down at his arms. As the black cooling faded, the light of the white dwarf suddenly reflected off his arms and torso, a bright flashing that came and went as the sun seemed to revolve around him. His shadow circled about, a mad sundial.
His suit began to beep. Small radars, hidden among the rocks, had found him now. The radar absorption properties of his suit were ineffective at this short range.
“Here goes.” He told his suit to transmit the message that his prisoner, the OnUnAn hive mind organism Gowgoroup, had recorded for him. He and Eydis had checked the message, as best they could, using his ship’s translation software, so Tarkos knew the literal content. But whether it was appropriate, whether it would be an insult or really, as Gowgoroup insisted, a demand that could not be denied—well, no translation program could tell them that.
“I am a pilgrim,” the message started, in the slurping, gurgling primary language of the swampy world where the OnUnAns originated. “I am Harmonizer Amir Tarkos, an oxygen-order organism, human singleton of the planet Earth, who comes to the venerated Labyrinth of the OnUnAns seeking an answer to an urgent question. I demand entrance of the holy many.”
“You’re doing it again, Amir,” Eydis whispered in his ear. “Holding your breath. Remember you’re a land mammal. Breathe. Over.”
He exhaled.
“Heat signature twenty-three me
ters at thirty degrees from your current orientation,” she said, still whispering, a useless but natural human reaction to their desire for stealth. “It’s a door, I think. Over.”
“So far so good,” Tarkos said. “Maybe this will be straightforward. I go in, find the AI, get the answer we need, and then come straight back out.”
“I suspect that nothing you do turns out that easy.”
“You know what to do with the ship. We’ll be out of communication.”
“Roger,” she said. “And let me add: I’ll kill that heap of slugs Gowgoroup, if you don’t come back soon. Over.”
“If I don’t come back soon, pull Commander Bria from the autodoc,” Tarkos told her. “I think she’s healed enough to stand on her own four feet. She’ll kill Gowgoroup for you, and then start in on this asteroid.”
He could see heat escaping now, a bright square visible in infrared, where a door had opened in the surface. He walked toward it, a difficult task. His seemingly drunken steps reminded him, in a flash, of a favorite bit of playground equipment from his youth. There had been a park near his home in Turkey, where he had live a short while before coming to the United States. At the edge of the playground, near a patch of trash-strewn weeds that narrowly separated the park from a busy road, had been a disk set up on a central axis. You could run alongside the disk, spinning it, and then jump on. Someone eventually took the toy away, no doubt because it was dangerous, but the strange, unexpected trajectory forced on you as you walked to the center of the spinning disk, and then walked back out to the edge, had been for a small child a great lesson in the conservation of angular momentum. In the same way, the ground tried to slip sideways under him as he walked toward the door. And it felt as if he descended an ever-steeper hill, as he walked out from the axis. He leaned farther backwards with each step.
The door was about two meters on a side. Tarkos took off the rocket pack he’d used to control his descent toward the asteroid. He lay the pack on the ground, used his suit to drive a piton, and affixed the pack to it. Then he walked alongside the open rectangular entrance, to its “bottom” edge. He performed the difficult and disorienting task of stepping over the threshold, planting a magnetic boot on the edge, and then taking his next step over onto the interior—a maneuver that required a 90 degree rotation, head forward.
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