“Not much to say, really,” Hamish said. “Grew up in London, near the East End. Bit of a rough childhood, so I had a nasty time at school; eventually, one of the teachers told me I’d do well in the army, if I worked hard. He’d been a Sergeant, apparently; he worked with kids who were bigger and meaner than me and never batted an eyelid. Taming rough little brats was what he did. And then the waters came rolling over London and ... well, to cut a long story short, I volunteered for service instead of being conscripted.”
“Like Percy,” Penny muttered. “What about your family?”
“Mum died when I was very young, dad never remarried,” Hamish said. “He was turning to drink when the aliens hit us and London was drowned. I never saw him or my sister again.”
“I’m sorry,” Penny said.
“Don’t be,” Hamish said. “It wasn't your fault.”
He shrugged. “The Paras took me out of Catterick and put me through hell before I qualified to join them,” he added. “And then I spent two years on various deployments, including one on Mars. That was pretty cool, if weird. They say Mars will be habitable in another hundred years.”
“So they say,” Penny said. The Mars Project had begun before the tramlines had been discovered. “I’ve never been there.”
“Go one day,” Hamish urged. “It’s spectacular.”
He glanced at his watch. “And I’d better get back to the barracks,” he added. “Knowing my luck, there will be an emergency call in the middle of the night.”
Penny nodded, then leaned over the table and kissed his cheek. “Thank you, again,” she said. “You still owe me that drink.”
“I will, promise,” he said. “If we ever get leave again, here, we can try to go somewhere together.”
“We can try,” Penny agreed. She gave him another kiss, then rose. “Goodnight.”
Hamish smiled at her. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” he called. “Really.”
Penny winced. They’d been warned about insects infesting the barracks as soon as they’d landed. As long as the rooms stayed cool, they weren't a problem ... but they wouldn’t stay cool forever. The air conditioning seemed permanently on the brink of breaking down.
“Goodnight,” she said, again. “Bye!”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Hell of a mess,” John said. “There’s still been no word from City Seven?”
Joelle shook her head from where she was sitting on his sofa, curled up against a cushion and holding a mug of tea in her hand. “Not a peep,” she said. “The satellites tell us they’re still fighting one another, but no new leader seems to have emerged.”
“Pity we don’t understand their politics that well,” John said. He picked up his own mug of tea, then sat down facing her. Bringing her up to orbit was a risk, but he hadn't wanted to leave Warspite when the situation was in flux. “They might be going through a ritual contest of strength before choosing a new leader or they might be fighting a flat-out civil war.”
He cursed under his breath. Joelle had ordered all British personnel to remain at Fort Knight - and strongly advised personnel from the other powers to do the same - and they were getting restless, while the Indians moved from strength to strength. It was hard to be sure, but it was starting to look like the Indians had no less than thirteen cities allied to them, thirteen cities that had already rejected visitors from the other powers before Kun decided to start a riot. He couldn't help thinking that it was merely the beginning. Kun, whatever he’d been thinking, had struck a blow at the underlying fabric of Vesy society. They’d reacted by turning away from the outsiders.
Save for the Indians, he thought. And the Indians have an unfair advantage.
“There’s a second problem,” Joelle added. “Ivan specifically requested a diplomatic visit - and named Lieutenant Schneider as the representative he wanted to see.”
John looked down at the deck, puzzled. “They must understand he can't give them anything, surely?”
“I think so,” Joelle agreed. “They certainly didn't ask for him or anyone else, once I arrived. And underhanded diplomatic manoeuvres aren't really their thing.”
“As far as we can tell,” John said. “I rather doubt any of them have had to deal with visitors from beyond the stars before.”
“Maybe their gods are visitors from the stars,” Joelle said. “Wasn't there an entire group on Earth that believed aliens were the source of our myths?”
John shrugged. If that were true, he would have expected a great deal more damage to Vesy society ... but then, if it had taken place thousands of years ago, there might be nothing left but rumours and tales that had grown in the telling. He vaguely recalled a Hindu epic that might have been talking about a battle fought with modern weapons, if one squinted at it the right way. God knew there were no shortage of books dating back two centuries that had predicted the development of interstellar warfare ... and thousands more that were laughably wrong.
“Maybe so,” he said, finally. “How do you intend to proceed?”
Joelle took a sip of her tea. “We do have the basics of a unified command structure on the surface now, excepting the Indians,” she said. “If nothing happens for a week, we might as well start extending our presence again. Give City Seven a wide berth and do our best to discourage religious lunatics from getting down to the surface. Tie them up in bureaucratic paperwork, perhaps.”
“Might work,” John said. “But it may take longer for any consequences to manifest.”
Joelle gave him a sharp look. “Why do you say that?”
“Back during the War of 1812, there was a battle fought after peace was signed, because neither side could get word to their respective commanders before the attack went ahead,” John said. “There was a working agreement, I believe, that anything along the same lines that took place after the peace wouldn't be regarded as a deliberate breach, as long as both sides returned to the status quo once word finally reached them. It hasn't actually happened in space, but it easily could, given the nature of the tramlines.
“The Vesy don’t have instant communications,” he added. “It could take weeks or months for word to spread over the local community; years, perhaps, for the entire planet to hear of it and by then the news will probably be badly distorted. Just because nothing has materialised immediately doesn't mean that it won’t.”
Joelle frowned. “Do you think it will?”
“I was never a religious man,” John said. “Not really ... but there are plenty of people on Earth who take religion seriously, even though we know enough about how the universe developed to see our existence as random chance. It had to happen somewhere, so why not Earth? And Tadpole Prime? And Vesy? Hell, Ambassador, the discovery of two other worlds that gave birth to intelligent races suggest that there is something truly random about the process. But a religious person will not see it that way.
“Kun struck at the heart of their religions - and, by now, the story will be growing more and more distorted as it spreads from city to city.”
“Chinese whispers,” Joelle said.
“Precisely,” John agreed. He’d had the problem outlined to him while he’d been in the Academy; a message, repeated through dozens of mouths, might become something quite different by the time it reached its final destination. “God alone knows what they’re thinking right now.”
“Percy Schneider might be about to find out,” Joelle said.
John nodded. He couldn’t help thinking that that was a worrying sign. The aliens hadn't really shown any tendency towards double-dealing, as far as he’d been able to tell; they’d told the humans, up front, what they wanted and backed away when it was not forthcoming. There certainly hadn't been any attempt to stall the British while they held talks with other human powers. He had a feeling, indeed, that the Vesy would honour their side of the agreement as long as the humans honoured theirs. It was quite inhuman of them.
But if they had deliberately asked for someone they knew couldn't give them an
ything they might want ...?
He sighed, bitterly. Kun was currently in the brig, complaining loudly about his injury, his imprisonment and the slop that passed for brig rations. He’d be sent home on the next warship to leave orbit, where he would be charged with ... something. The legal team had already admitted that it would be hard to charge Kun with anything, given just how many precedents had already been set. Even endangering lives would be a hard charge to make stick in a suspicious court.
“Then we wait and see what he finds,” John said. Could the aliens want to talk to a military leader? It wasn't clear how much they understood of human rank structures, but they had to know that Percy Schneider was greatly outranked by Colonel Boone or John himself. Or were they hoping to talk to someone they knew? “And then consider our response.”
Joelle sighed. “No word from Earth yet, but I saw the stories going back,” she said. “There will be riots on the street once they get onto the datanet.”
“Look on the bright side,” John said. “Maybe they’ll send us reinforcements.”
“I thought that wasn't likely,” Joelle said.
John gritted his teeth. The vast majority of Britain’s professional force - as opposed to the conscript force - was currently deployed in Britain itself, helping to deal with the problems caused by the bombardment. Getting 3 Para assigned to Vesy had been a stroke of luck; Boone had told him, during one of their first briefings, that 3 Para had been slated to go to Ireland before Warspite had returned to Earth. It was unlikely the Prime Minister would be able to dispatch any other units without risking a revolt among the backbenchers.
“It’s not,” John said. The French or Americans might have something to spare, but it seemed unlikely. It was even less likely that Russian forces would be accepted, if any of them happened to be sent. God alone knew what the Chinese would do. “I don’t think they can even send us a few more warships.”
He looked into his mug of tea, seeking answers. “Ambassador, I think we should seriously consider withdrawing our personnel and closing Fort Knight,” he admitted. “The situation is too dangerous.”
Joelle stared at him, shocked. “I have never heard a military officer advocate retreat before.”
“We prefer to think of it as a tactical adjustment towards the rear,” John said. He smiled humourlessly, then frowned. “If it was just military personnel on the ground, if we were fighting a war, I wouldn't advocate anything of the sort. Here, though, we have countless civilians on the surface, all exposed to alien attack. And said aliens have a very good reason to be pissed at us. If we pull out now, tempers will have a chance to cool.”
“The Indians would not leave,” Joelle reminded him. “Abandoning Fort Knight would surrender the planet to them.”
“They would also take the brunt of alien ... displeasure over Kun’s stupidity,” John pointed out. But he knew she was right. The British Government wouldn't want to create a situation where the aliens were largely aligned with the Indians, giving them a reasonable claim to the entire system. “Maybe you should convince the Prime Minister to push for a complete quarantine of the surface. Concede transit rights through the system in exchange for leaving the Vesy alone.”
“They’ve already been contaminated, quite badly,” Joelle said. “Their culture will never be the same again.”
“I know,” John said. It would be impossible to recover everything that might have been traded to the Vesy, if they’d been inclined to try. “But at least they’d have a chance to get used to the idea of alien life without us being so close to them.”
“One would hope so,” Joelle said. She shook her head. “The PM would need to horse-trade with just about everyone to get an agreement to ban further imports of weapons, let alone ban any further contact. Too many people would protest.”
John sighed. If they’d stumbled across the Vesy before the Tadpoles, perhaps things would have been different. The five Great Powers could have come to a solution and imposed it on the rest of the Human Sphere, perhaps merely declaring the entire system off-limits save for researchers and xenospecialists. There would have been no attempt to make contact, no attempt to uplift them to human levels ... it would have been a better world. But history had had its little joke, ensuring that humanity encountered the Vesy when the Great Powers were in no condition to impose anything.
He frowned as a thought struck him. “Have the Tadpoles said anything?”
“Nothing at all,” Joelle said. “We told them about the Vesy, as we were obliged to do under the terms of the peace treaty, but they never expressed any interest in sending researchers of their own. Maybe they just don’t find the Vesy particularly interesting.”
John shrugged. “It’s possible,” he agreed. “Or maybe they’re just not interested in the past.”
Joelle frowned. “This isn't the past,” she said. “They made a mistake when they ran into us and ended up fighting a war that could have wiped out both races. Surely they’d be interested in more data on non-Tadpoles.”
“You’d think, wouldn't you?” John said. “But who knows what they’re thinking? They’re not human, Ambassador, and they don’t think like humans.”
“They’re not stupid either,” Joelle countered. “If they were stupid, they wouldn't have pushed us to the brink of defeat.”
And that, John knew, was true of the Vesy too.
***
“So,” Penny said, as she sat down facing Doctor Jill Pole. “You spoke about a breakthrough?”
“Indeed,” Jill said. She was a short, rather dumpy woman wearing a long white coat and a pair of spectacles she almost certainly didn't need. “As you know, I’ve been studying a number of alien bodies since our arrival on Vesy.”
Penny nodded, impatiently. The three days since the lockdown had been declared had been boring, apart from a second debriefing that was nearly as intense as the first and a chance to record interviews with the other Paras. No one was allowed outside the walls, not even the military; she’d even heard rumours that the entire fort was going to be shut down. By the time Doctor Pole had called her, Penny had been so bored that she’d been willing to go back to City Seven without an armed escort.
“It’s really quite fascinating to study how their bodies develop,” Jill continued. “In some ways, they’re remarkably like us, even though their biology is completely different. But in others, they are ... well ...”
“Alien?” Penny asked.
“Of course,” Jill said. “Do you realise, for example, that they have a far superior sense of smell to anything we possess? There’s no point in trying to hide in the darkness from them, I think; they’d just be able to sniff you out. This may actually be why they don’t seem to have any problems telling us apart, even though they all look alike to us. Each of us smells differently to them.”
“That isn't exactly new,” Penny said, tartly.
“It’s important,” Jill said, unabashed. “I think one of the reasons they are so brutally direct with one another is because they can't really lie to one another. A deliberate lie sets off changes in their scent that are easily detectable, at least to their fellows. They also can't hide their reactions, under certain situations. If a male should happen to find a female attractive, he won’t be able to hide that fact - and vice versa.”
“Sounds like they have it made,” Penny said, who remembered her own adolescence with a kind of cringing horror. It had been hard to tell which boys were interested in her as a person and which boys had seen her as nothing more than an attractively-shaped piece of meat; hell, Percy had even confessed he had the same problem. How did one tell if a girl was interested or if she was just being polite? “They can have sex out of season, after all.”
“Indeed,” Jill said. She looked down at the table. “I think that one scent reinforces the other, although it’s hard to be sure. A Vesy scenting the arousal of another Vesy will become aroused too. It doesn't seem to matter which party started it. All that matters is that you put a male and a
female together and eventually sparks will fly.”
Penny held up a hand. “None of this is particularly new,” she said. “And I honestly have no interest in the details of alien sexual practices.”
Jill frowned. “I’m getting to the point,” she said. “When a female enters season, her scent changes and becomes overpowering. A male who isn't too close to her, genetically speaking, will chase her and try to mate with her. Put two or more males in close proximity and they will fight each other for the chance to sire her eggs. I think that’s nature’s way of ensuring that the father is strong because it’s rare for a female not to get pregnant on the first attempt.”
She paused. “Unfortunately, this means that females entering their season are confined to prevent them from mating with the wrong males,” she added. “This restricts their lives in a manner that wouldn't be out of place in the Middle East.”
A Savage War Of Peace (Ark Royal Book 5) Page 27