“Tash-eh Hruun”
Tannen said it loud and clear, and the last whispered conversations died. The sounds were difficult to say and Tannen had done a passable job. A native may have just understood the location but the tense and orientation cluster were absent and could only have been guessed at. Tannen let the odd sounds hang in the air and looked around.
“It will be Tash-eh Hruun. We will strike soon and strike directly at the enemy’s heart. Our objective is to show him how powerless he has become. We will destroy the vats and everything that is there to support them. This is the most protected place in his alliance. It is the heart of his military power and the symbol of his will. In a few days it will be no more, and we will demand our freedom or offer him an unending and unstoppable future of violence and defeat. He cannot stand against us. He cannot win. Our task is simply to persuade him that this is true. One day prep, one day drill, then we go. Any questions?”
Silence hung in the room, broken only by one embarrassed, muffled cough. Ansti knew this was coming. He had been briefed hours before with the senior staff. He suspected the reactions of the crew would mimic those of his comrades; everything from bravado to incredulity. He watched and saw a woman get to her feet. She looked older and in good condition, fit and healthy, hair greying and skin vital. She could have been any age over fifty years.
“Tannen, sir, we all want to kick the Tash-eh off our worlds, but, shouldn’t we take a smaller target first, something less ambitious, less well defended? We need practice before we take on such a hard target, don’t we? I’m worried about the vehicle-pilot-ship empathy gradient. It isn't tested under combat stress.”
Ansti noticed a shuffling amongst the crew; some betraying their agreement, others adopting postures and expressions that implied a different view. Tannen said nothing, and let the question filter into the minds of the crew. There were a few whispered remarks and then another woman stood.
“No. We are ready. This ship and the vehicle are ready. We have the power now. We don't need practice, we need to be winning again. I haven't seen my children since they were young. If they are alive they are adults now. I have missed them every moment of every day. I have cried myself to sleep because I forget their childhood faces and don't know their adult ones. I cannot… will not, wait any longer. We can do it. He can do it.”
With those last words she pointed at Ansti, and faces turned to him. Ansti felt the expectation, and it chilled him.
A deep, soft voice penetrated from the back of the crowd; Ashur. Typical of him to be observing and waiting for the right moment to strike.
“Can you Ansti” he questioned? Each word perfectly framed the hopes and fears of all those in the room. Faces turned on Ansti, and his stomach churned. He liked to think of himself as part of the mass, part of a crew that worked together, important but not a leader. He felt comfortable that way. It seemed his fellow humans saw him differently. He looked around at his companions, and not a face turned away. They held him in an appalling grasp of expectation, and Ansti was reminded of the piercing searches of the par-born.
Ansti stood, getting up less elegantly than he would have liked. He lowered his head and ran a hand over his hair, then raised his eyes. He glanced around and found Ashur, fixing him in his gaze.
“Tash-eh Hruun. I know it, just as any pilot knows every world he may not go to. There is no direct jump vector there. It is protected. We have to navigate two other systems, one neutral and the other firmly in enemy hands. That place is the enemy’s pride. It is the heart of all they have become and wish others to be. There are more there than human defenders. They have vat-born and other races.
It was once a Praveen world before it was bargained away to the Helvyani and then taken by humans. There are still Helvyani there, allied to our enemies, if they still practice such concepts as allegiance. Pilots of our race did not go there. We were very unwelcome, and only humans native to the enemy shipped in. It is a world clouded in secrecy. It is said that humans allow inhuman acts by non-human races so that they might increase their power. No one of our race in their right mind would go there, and any who did would not return.”
Ansti, let those words penetrate for a moment, sensed the shuffling and foreboding, saw the victory in the eyes of the first woman speaker, before adding “At least that is the way it used to be. Now there is us, and we’ll go and hit them so hard that their Helvyani will shake the decorations from their armour. Can I go? Can I fight? Can I wield this weapon and free our families and our worlds? The question is Ashur, can anything stop me?”
The applause and cries filled Ansti’s ears and his body was assailed with hugs and slaps, and even — suns-preserve-him — a kiss. He let the others show their affection, but all the while he held Ashur’s gaze. The reply he had given was not the one he had been briefed to give earlier. He had been tasked to offer a simple affirmation in reply to Ashur’s inevitable question. This answer was his own, and it offered the crew that which they had yearned for. He had offered himself as a hero. Ashur held Ansti’s gaze knowing that Ansti had made a play. There was acknowledgement and even admiration in Ashur’s expression, but underneath and behind the eyes and in the muscles of his jaw there was challenge and determination. So, Ansti had become a player. He had calculated and gained power amongst his fellows, at least for now. Ashur was old and wise and used to games like this. He smiled with the others and clapped and asked himself, ‘What do you intend to do with this little power Ansti? Do you know how easy it is to become a fallen hero? Don’t fly too high friend, it is a long way down and I don’t need you broken.’
Ansti worked hard all the next day, synched with the vehicle and the ship, simulating drop points, fire control methodologies and tactical manoeuvres all at ground hugging height and massive speed. They rehearsed routes across the dimpled spherical skin of two worlds, and finally the target. That latter was barely more than a dark grey ball to start with until the vehicle sliced across light years and felt the texture and constructions of it as well as it could. Even so, what it found puzzled Ansti and the military intelligence officers in the crew, there was something not right with the psycho-geography of the place. Texture and detail appeared but it could not be interpreted. The vehicle and ship would reveal all on contact with the world but this lack of clarity worried Ansti and the others. So far they could not identify the target; a detail they did not trouble the crew with. They would land deep in the enemy’s influence and only then know for sure what they had found.
The two other worlds to be traversed held both challenge and opportunity. The first was a Praveen world. In that sense the politics were neutral and the military threat probably non-existent. But it was heavily populated and although the ship was small by standard of ships, it would still be an object as large as a long twenty storey building barrelling across a densely populated world. It would smash atmosphere from its path and broadcast the sounds, radio waves and atmospheric tremors inherent in moving something so large so fast from the entry jump point to the exit. The absence of a military consideration at least meant that the ship could move fast and direct and test its systems further without the threat of deadly intervention. The Praveen might even find it all funny.
The next place was altogether different. It was a barrier system; a dedicated military outpost of the enemy with the specific purpose of detecting and preventing attack on Tash-eh Hruun. One of Ansti’s colleagues on the small planning team had asked why they did not simply avoid this place and jump directly to the target. Ansti was taken aback by such naivety, before he reminded himself that these people had not spoken to a pilot in decades, perhaps the younger ones never had. He tried his best to explain a concept he could recite but barely understand himself.
“Suns create possibilities. We can jump where there are possibilities and we cannot jump where there are none. This is true even when negotiating a new jump with a sun. There are some connections they will not make, and even with this vehicle-ship’s unique independen
ce, we cannot find a path where there is none. We cannot persuade the universe to make real what a sun has decided can’t be real. It is how Tash-eh Hruun stays protected, and other places too. It is what gives some worlds power over others — to get to A you must transit B, so B has power over A.”
The questioner was intrigued. He wanted to understand why, and Ansti groped for explanation before he resorted to the last and final defence of the harried pilot “Sometimes, with suns, there is no why”.
The questioner found the answer as unsatisfying as Ansti found the question, and the conversation moved on. The logistical and tactical options for traversing the barrier world were discussed. The single most important objective was to enter and leave before the occupiers had a chance to dispatch a ship to Tash-eh Hruun and warn of the intrusion. They did not hope to go undetected in this place. They expected initial surprise, then savage response and a fight across sixty degrees of the world’s surface before positioning to launch at the target. From entry to exit would take a day and a half, without diversions for combat and using a route that offered the best tactical advantages when attack came. They planned to run fast and fight on the move without deviation. Ansti wished he had the planners unswerving confidence in the vehicle and ship, and indeed himself.
Finally, there would be Tash-eh Hruun. It was noticeable how the excited chatter amongst the planners quickly turned to slow grave conversation when they discussed options for their ultimate target. They knew almost nothing about it; there were stories, hearsay, and vague notions, but the conversations served only to reveal the depths of their ignorance. And the limited intelligence provided by the vehicle raised more questions than it answered. Enlarged three dimensional images of the world showed fuzzy opaque areas of dark grey against deep black background and a large ring structure. Sometimes the details seemed to have shifted or rendered themselves differently and technicians spoke of viral counter-measures and geometric confusion rites of the Helvyani, forgetting that the vehicle did not sense in ways they understood. The vehicle itself only communicated certainty that it had not made mistakes. What people saw was what it had sensed.
The only possible plan was to arrive in good shape and reconnoitre fast and fully using the vehicle-ship’s powers of observation, then set about destroying until odds or energy restrictions indicated it was time to go. Departure would then mean retracing their steps, this time back through a fully alerted barrier world. If they survived and made another transit of the Praveen world, they may well be laughing more than the Praveen. When summarised this way, it all sounded utterly suicidal. That is until soft re-assuring tones filled the room as Ashur reminded them of the power they now possessed. They could not be trapped or pinned down and overwhelming odds could not be concentrated against them because, as he so lightly put it
“…if it gets too hot we’ll just make that little part of reality go away and choose a new one.”
Ansti hoped that particular manoeuvre would be easier for the vehicle with the ship’s power at its disposal than it had been in his last combat.
These planning sessions were intense, and Ansti found the briefings especially taxing because there had been no time to regrow his guide patch. Other crew members linked to the ship library and in turn its camouflaged links to the world outside. They came pre-equipped with the knowledge they needed or scanned for it while they conversed. Ansti had to read, watch and listen to absorb what he needed; a process much slower and less certain than the guide patch’s synaptic efficiency. His comrades were embarrassed when he asked for some fact they knew or explanation they now found self-evident. The crew all knew why he acted as he did, but an adult human who did not understand things necessary to complete a task was uncomfortably child-like. It served to alienate him somewhat, and diminish his heroic status a little. His crew mates began to find him eccentric.
Between briefing sessions Ansti retreated to his cabin. Once there, alone and in darkness, he let music wash over him. His collection was gone, incinerated and removed before he set off with the vehicle. Now, he had the eclectic sounds acquired by this crew and previous researchers, accessible via the ship. To his surprise and pleasure he found new sounds that touched him. A favourite was a foreboding, warbling melody punctuated with distortions and trembling beats that meandered and swayed from start to end. A melancholy human female voice weaved amongst the rhythms singing in a language he did not know. She sounded heartbroken and it reminded Ansti that he had not loved in all his time in exile. There had been lovers, but he had kept too much of himself in reserve to love, conscious that one day he would be recalled and vanish. He did not need his own heartbreak or the guilt induced by another’s to make that task more difficult. The song was beautiful, disturbing and sad, and it was long enough to fill a break.
With the planning eventually done, system checks complete, and local reconnaissance finished, a pre-mission party was organised. Ansti was astounded at how, amongst the massive and serious workload, anyone had had a chance to think of food, drink and entertainment. That is until Tannen tactfully told him of another fact that they all knew and he did not; not everyone was going on the mission. With proof of concept established, some in the room had served their purpose, some were not needed for the attack. They would stay behind and wait for the ship’s return. Ansti did not ask how or under what conditions they would survive, or what would happen if the ship did not come back. Tannen simply said they would not risk their lives on board, and also not release them into potential capture. Ansti was once again reminded of the sacrifice that bordered the road to freedom.
The party was raucous. There was laughter and camaraderie, teasing and tears, bravado and flirting, all mixed with music and song and speeches. Ansti could tell who was leaving. They were the ones getting drunk. No need for them to worry about competence sapping hang-overs. There was skill at entertaining amongst the crew, and as Ansti watched, he realised how little he knew about his fellows. Most were little more than names, and some he barely recognised. His world had shrunk to the dimension of the ship and yet he still did not know many of his compatriots. He tried to carouse the room and introduce himself but the cramped boisterous space made it difficult, and conversations seemed to stop or become focussed on the mission when he appeared.
In the end Ansti gave up on conversation and turned his attention to the entertainment. At one point he watched a couple strip to their underwear and reveal a mass of markings on both bodies. The colour and shapes were exquisite and they seemed to glow from the life force of each body. The couple assumed a pose and music started. Each remained frozen for a few moments and then as the melody developed they started a twisting, intertwining dance. With their bodies moving, so did the markings; shapes came alive, writhed across skin, and seemed to slide beneath it to emerge elsewhere. The dancers touched and images glided from one to the next. Their bodies were a moving landscape of colours and shapes that harmonised, criss-crossed, and implied stories as they moved. The display was entrancing, and when it ended there were smiles and tears and applause. Ansti marvelled at the skill of these two and wondered if the people they would set out to kill also possessed such breathtaking ability to enchant?
Ansti left the party early and returned once more to his cabin. He wanted to ground himself before the jump sequencing started, and he did not want to say farewell to the leavers. He felt responsible for their enforced bravery. He did not want to hide that feeling, neither did he want to communicate it to his comrades, so it was better to avoid the goodbyes altogether. He was resting on his bed, listening to a story patch when the door chime sounded and an image of Ashur appeared in the view. Ansti had not exactly avoided Ashur at the party, but neither had he sought him out. Now it was obvious that Ashur had decided to initiate a conversation. Ansti gave permission and the door made way.
Ashur had been drinking, clearly he was not required to make the ship function, although Ansti had assumed he would be directing operations. Ansti could see the faint glow of M
iridian behind his eyes and the tell-tale sparkling sweat on his nose and forehead. Ansti made to get up but Ashur motioned him to stay put while reaching for a chair, and missing. The older man got it on his second attempt and dragged it close, sitting open legged with elbows resting on his knees, and hands clasped into a supporting frame for his chin. He swayed slightly and Ansti could not help but smile. He’d never seen Ashur so vaguely comical or lacking in self-control. It was hard to think of him as a great manipulator, diplomat and spy, he had the air of a drunken older uncle about to do something disgraceful. Ansti felt affection returning, this was after all the man that had saved his life, and in this moment he seemed harmless and even vulnerable.
Ashur wiped a dribble of glittering mucus from his nose and opened the conversation. “Not enjoying the games Ansti?”
Ansti smiled and replied “Just preparing myself for the mission. It will take a good deal of energy from me before we are done.”
Ashur retorted immediately, springing a little trap “But you played a little game of your own earlier. Made yourself into a hero. That was just what everyone wanted eh? Super-Ansti! The saviour of free people everywhere.”
Ansti sat up and let his expression flatten. He was not used to blunt instruments like sarcasm from Ashur “That’s what you wanted Ashur. You wanted me to give them confidence, and I did. They need to believe we can succeed.”
Ashur’s face darkened, and suddenly the buffoon was gone, replaced with a sober mask of threat.
“Don’t play with me Ansti. I know I manipulated you, and I know you are angry with me for doing so, but don't take me for a fool. I do things you don't like, but I do them for our people. This universe can be unpleasant in ways you can't imagine. Sitting in a sun-shit pilots seat and feeling superior while you waft about the cosmos is not what keeps us Ansti. People like me keep us. People who intervene, people who dabble, people who take power without permission. You are only alive because of me and those like me. You’d have died with the millions if I hadn't rescued your naive carcass and sent you packing. I like you Ansti, you have serenity and integrity about you, but don't fight me. Sun-shit we are on the same side.”
The Man Who Talked to Suns Page 16