Sisterhood of Suns: Pallas Athena

by Martin Schiller

  Their captive did not reply.

  “Maybe she’s impaired somehow,” another Marine suggested.

  The squad’s medic came forwards and scanned their prisoner from head to foot and the girl watched the proceedings with a certain frightened fascination. It was as if she had never seen a medical body scanner before.

  “No,” the medic said at last. “She’s fine. She should be able to speak to us without any difficulty.”

  “Maybe she just doesn’t understand Standard,” Jon volunteered.

  “That’s ridiculous!” the Troop Leader snorted. “This is a human colony! Of course she knows Standard. She’s just playing stupid with us.” The Marine bent over and cupped the girls jaw roughly. “Now you listen, girlie!” she snarled, “I want an answer to my question. Who are you?”

  The terrified girl shook her head and uttered a string of words that were completely foreign to everyone in the squad. Everyone except Jon.

  He blinked in disbelief as she repeated herself. “Miya namey es Reesy!” she blurted. It couldn’t be, he thought.

  The Troop Leader had noticed his reaction. “Does that gibberish make any sense to you?” she asked. “What did she just say?”

  “If she’s speaking the language that I think she is,” he replied, “then she just answered your question. She said her name is Reesy.”

  “Did she now?” the Troop Leader challenged, planting her hands on her hips. “In what language? What dialect? I speak Standard, Nemesian, Kalian, Zommerlaandartal, Hriss’ka, and even a little Xee. I’ve never heard anything like that mess of words.”

  “If you were a Marionite, it wouldn’t sound so foreign to you,” he retorted.

  “That would be unlikely” the woman replied with a sneer. “So, what do you people know that we don’t?”

  “A dialect of Old Gaia for one.It’s called Espangla,” Jon answered, more and more confident of his conclusion. “We of the Faithful,” he made sure to put an emphasis on that word, “keep it alive because it is one of the few remaining tongues of the planet that gave birth to Jesu, our First Savior. I studied it as a child in our primary school, along with another sacred language called Latin. It was part of our religious training.”

  “So, she speaks a Marionite language, then,” the Troop Leader concluded. “That just confirms what Command thought about this place.”

  “No,” Jon countered. “It doesn’t. There is no church here and there would be if this was a colony of the Faithful. And no one actually speaks Espangla, or Latin. We speak Standard just like everyone else does. The Sisters only use Espangla for rituals. It’s too sacred for daily use.”

  “Well, maybe these people just don’t think it’s so holy,” the Troop Leader retorted. “Maybe they’re some kind of offshoot that just uses it for everyday speech.”

  Jon shook his head. “No, I disagree. Let me try something and we’ll see if I’m right.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Jon walked up to the girl and tried to smile at her as reassuringly as possible. He knew that the Marine team was terrifying and he wanted to be seen as a friend, despite the circumstances. He got down on his knees so that he was on a level with her eyes, and carefully composed his words.

  “Miya namey es Jon,” he said, pointing to himself. “Que es esteya sitia llamar?”

  The girl looked at him in bewilderment, but answered immediately. “Se llama a la Escaul.”

  “And all that meant?” the Troop Leader demanded impatiently.

  Jon waved her off and asked the girl another question. “Has oidia hablaar de el Padrey? Que sabey de el Salvadar de todas nosotra?”

  The girl rewarded him with another perplexed look, and Jon reached forwards slowly and withdrew her necklace from her blouse, reassuring her in Espangla that he meant her no harm. The pendant at the end of the tiny chain confirmed all of his suspicions and he held it up for the squad to see.

  “This should be a Star of the Faithful,” he explained. “A Marionite star, but it’s not. It’s a secular piece of jewelry.”

  “So what?” one of the troopers replied in a bored tone.

  “No young Marionite girl would ever be allowed to travel without wearing the sign of Our Lady Mari for protection. It’s unthinkable. I also just asked her if she knew the Son of God as her savior and she didn’t know what I was talking about.”

  “Neither do I,” the Troop Leader responded with a derisive laugh. Her sisters joined her. “Go on.”

  Jon ignored their scorn. “She’s definitely not a Marionite. If she were, she’d know about Our Savior. Everyone here would, and none of them would deny Him. She also told me that this settlement is called the School. Apparently the town is dedicated to some kind of worldly study. It’s not a Marionite colony.”

  “Well what is it, then?” the Troop Leader asked incredulously. “I have to report something up to Command.”

  “It’s a settlement that speaks a language that no one has spoken conversationally for over 1,000 years standard,” Jon answered. “Who these people are, I don’t know, but they’re not from any Sisterhood world.”

  “Of all the klaxxy shess!” the Troop Leader sputtered. “She’s human! The Doc here would have said if she wasn’t. You ask her about the Sisterhood and I’ll lay a wager she knows about it just fine.”

  “I will, Troop Leader,” Jon agreed, “but I already think I know the answer.” He asked the girl the question and was quickly rewarded with another long string of words.

  “So?”

  “So, you were right,” he said, “in part. She knows about the Sisterhood, but she told me that she learned about it from the women who came to live here years ago. She’s never been there, and neither has anyone that she knows except for those women.” There was a tone to his voice that indicated he was holding something back, and the Troop Leader caught it.

  “And? What else?”

  “It scares her. She’s frightened of the Sisterhood.”

  “Fine!” the Troop Leader scowled. “I’ll just report that we have another fekking mystery on our hands. We have a colony of people, humans, that aren’t from the Sisterhood and speak an antique tongue that only our pet neoman knows. They’ll just love that!”

  ***

  After receiving the team’s report, Lilith ordered the Battle Group into standby mode. She needed to contact Rixa immediately. This was something that they would definitely want to hear about. Inviting her senior officers into her office, she made the call.

  When she answered, Admiral ebed Cya had included two other women in their conversation. They were introduced to Lilith as the Director of the OAE, Susa ben Paula, and Senatrix Barbra d’Salla, Assistant Majority Leader of the Supreme Circle.

  “Commander, you seem to have stumbled across something that we’ve been investigating for some time now,” Ben Paula began. “What I’m about to tell you cannot go beyond this group.”

  “Ma’am?” Lilith asked. She was beginning to wonder if this affair could get any stranger, or more complicated. As it turned out, it did.

  “We’ve known for a while about the existence of a human civilization that survived the Plague just like we did,” the Agency Director said. “We learned about them through our partners, the Daughters of the Coast. Nothing solid however—not at first.”

  So, it’s not first contact after all, Lilith thought. And the ‘Lost Colonies’ aren’t’ really ‘lost’.

  Senatrix d’Salla spoke next. “Once we were certain that they existed, we tried to make contact with them. We wanted to negotiate an alliance and secure trade agreements. You see, they have some things that we want, not the least of which are rich sources of titanium and other important metals.”

  “So you sent the Atalanta here to accomplish that mission?” Lilith asked.

  “Yes, we did,” the Senatrix admitted. “Along with several other SVER ships. They all disappeared and we never received an answer to our proposals. Now we know what happened to one those ships at least, and it’s a f
air bet that the same thing occured to the others.”

  Lilith turned to Admiral ebed Cya. “What are your orders, ma’am?”

  “Lilith, this situation touches on our foreign policy, and also on our long term goals for the quadrant,” Ebed Cya replied carefully. “We need the resources that this star nation has, and we also need to make certain that they don’t fall into Hriss hands.’

  “In addition, there is the fact that our efforts to forge a partnership have gone unanswered, and that our sailors have not been allowed to contact us, or to return to the Sisterhood.”

  Lilith nodded. Given their level of technology, they’re probably terrified of us, she thought. She didn’t say this out loud however.

  “Commander, we want you to rescue the crew, but we also wish to make a statement here. This star nation must be made to understand that we will not tolerate the destruction of our ships, or the imprisonment of our citizens.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “We also want to make it clear,” the Senatrix added, “that it would be in their best interests to adopt a friendlier attitude towards us. They need to realize that we must have open communications and that an alliance is in their best interests.”

  “I’m sorry, Madame Senatrix,” Lilith said, “but isn’t that the job of the OAE?”

  D’Salla gave her a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “It is—but in this case, we feel that our diplomatic efforts have failed to produce the results that we have been looking for. So, the task is being given over to the Navy.”

  Lilith was immediately reminded of a quote that she had once heard in the Academy as a young cadet. It was from the great military thinker, Karla von Clausewitz. It went; “War is the continuation of politics by other means.” She kept this to herself as well.

  Ebed Cya addressed her again. “Commander, your orders are to neutralize their planetary defenses, and deploy your forces downside. There, you are to secure the settlement and detain the entire population.”

  Lilith didn’t quite believe what she was hearing, and raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  “You are to utilize your assets to the fullest extent,” Ebed Cya continued. “We want the population to have no doubts about our displeasure, or to be given any opportunity to offer up resistance to our presence. This mission will serve as an example to their government, and hopefully, motivate them to initiate an open and constructive dialogue with us.”

  Or serve as a prelude to open war, Lilith reflected sourly. Suddenly she understood the situation all too clearly. This had very little to do with the rescue of some marooned sailors.

  Instead, it was 1852 BSE all over again. These people, and their nation were Imperial Japan, and she had been involuntarily cast in the role of Commodore Perry. Only this was not Tokyo Bay, and her ships were not equipped with iron cannons but planet-buster missiles.

  But as horrified as she felt, she was also an officer, and she reminded herself that she had a job to do, however distasteful it was.

  “Yes, ma’am,” she answered stiffly.

  “Very well,” Ebed Cya concluded, obviously just as uncomfortable as she was. “You are dismissed, Commander. Carry out your orders.”

  The call ended, and Lilith let out a deep, ragged sigh.

  “What kind of orders were those,” Katrinn demanded. “Are they completely klaxxy? They just told us to terrorize those people!”

  “They are not klaxxy Kat,” Lilith replied grimly. “Far from it. It’s called ‘gunboat diplomacy’. Ask Mearinn to explain what that means.”

  With that, she showed everyone out, and took a few minutes to compose herself and come to terms with what she had just been ordered to do.

  ***

  The early morning air was still and quiet. Only the occasional call of a bird, or something very like it, disturbed the silence that enveloped the sleeping settlement. Without any sign to warn of its arrival, a Valkyrie aerospace fighter roared overhead, just meters above the tallest roof. Its engine noise shook the glass of every building as it flew straight down the middle of the town’s main street. It banked left and headed out and away over the surrounding fields.

  Jon watched as a few lights winked on in some of the houses, and down the street he saw the figure of a man come out and search the sky for the source of the disturbance.

  Another Valkyrie thundered past, and the man ran back inside his home. The raid had begun.

  Jon looked to Troop Leader Annasdaater and she flashed him a hand sign that told him to wait. Then she withdrew a smoke canister from her web gear, popped the fuse and threw it into the center of the street. A block away, another member of their team did the same thing.

  The area began to fill up with grey-white smoke and another sound came to his ears. It was a low rumbling thrum that Jon knew were the fans of hovertanks. A second later they came into view over the roof tops and took up guarding positions, kicking up clouds of dust and sending someone’s laundry flying into the air.

  The ground troops came in next, rushing by Jon and his squad with their weapons charged and ready. Passing the first few houses, small groups broke off, and covering the entrances with their weapons, kicked the doors open and rushed inside. When they reemerged, they had the stunned residents marching out at gunpoint in front of them, hands atop their heads. This scene was repeated at every home and every building until the entire population was out in the street shivering with fear and the chill in the air. And through it all, a pair of troopers were recording the event with a holocorder.

  Jon felt a chill of his own, but it was not from the cold. What he was witnessing here was too similar to the fears that he and other members of the Faithful harbored. Someday, if the right-wing extremists in the Sisterhood ever had their way, this could happen on the Marionite motherworlds, to his people, he thought. He whispered up a tiny prayer against evil.

  “Well,” Troop Leader Annasdaater said, “I suppose we should go help with the prisoners. It’s a damn sight more interesting than standing around here doing nothing.”

  She hefted her Mark 7 and joined a pair of Marines who were herding their captives down the street towards the open common area at the center of town. Having no alternative, Jon followed her, trying to appear as non-threatening as possible to the frightened townspeople.

  In contrast, his fellow Marines all seemed to be enjoying the affair, and once or twice he saw one of them shove a male, or bark out an expletive as they marched their captors along. He looked away from the spectacle.

  “Is this job a little too tough for you, Neo?” Annasdaater challenged. “You look like you have a problem.”

  “No, ma’am,” Jon lied. He tried to adopt the same hard expression as the other troopers, but it was difficult. This was even worse than the lies he had been forced to tell Dr. elle’ Kaari, or stealing the sample from N’Aida. It went against everything that he believed in.

  But he also knew that the Marines around him were watching to see if he would break and he was not about to let that happen. He was a Marine, too, he forcefully reminded himself, and he had a mission to perform. And more than that, he owed the Sisters on his motherworld, and his fellow neomen, his strength. If he succumbed now, if he gave into his revusion and rebelled like he wanted to, then all of their struggles to see his kind succeed would be for naught. Motherthought would be proven right and Shaitan would win.

  “You!” he shouted to one male who was lagging a bit, “Get moving! Pick up the pace.”

  Annasdaater glanced back over her shoulder and gave him a look of grudging approval. He had passed her test. And more importantly, he had resisted temptation. The Evil One would have to wait for another chance to thwart the truth.

  At the central gathering area, the officers in charge of the landing force gave the order for the males and females to be segregated. There was some light resistance to this from a few of the captives, but in the end, the town was neatly divided between the two sexes.

  This too was documented by the holocamera. When
the camera’s crew moved on, Jon and several other Marines were assigned to watch over the males, while the females were led into the Main Gathering Hall. Not knowing what else to do, he signaled the men to sit on the grass.

  A few of them tried to make eye contact with him, but he avoided it. He couldn’t bring himself to meet their eyes. For the first time since becoming a Sisterhood Marine, he felt ashamed of the uniform he wore.

  Unnamed Settlement, Second Planet, HSL-48 2124A System, Unclaimed Territory, 1043.03|02|02:73:30

  Lilith and Katrinn walked together down the shuttle ramp and stepped into the bright sunlight. The shuttle had landed at the end of the settlement’s main street, just behind a Marine hovertank that sat on guard, covering the group of buildings.

  Lilith glanced up at the trooper on duty. She was perched atop the turret manning a heavy blaster on a swivel post, and Lilith read the expression on her face. It was boredom mixed with mild confusion, as if the woman wasn’t entirely sure why she was there, or what they were doing with so much firepower in the absence of any threat. She envied her for her ignorance.

  “This is appalling,” she said under her breath. “Absolutely appalling.”

  Katrinn nodded unhappily. The Zommerlaandars’ mouth was set in a tight, unhappy line. “I know. Just keep it together, Lily. We’ll do our job, and then we’ll get out of here.”

  Col. Lislsdaater was standing with a group of officers a little further down the street, and when she saw Lilith and Katrinn, she broke away and marched up to them with a decided spring in her step.

  “Commander,” she said, saluting crisply, “the town is secure and we have the residents detained. The crew of the Atalanta has been located and they are in the Main Gathering Hall. We also have the town leaders isolated. They are awaiting your pleasure.”

  “I see,” Lilith responded tightly, returning her salute and frowning at the inference that any of this ‘pleased her’ at all. “Did you encounter any resistance, Colonel?”