by Barry Kirwan
As they ascended and the sky grew darker, Micah switched into assessment mode. Worst case scenario was Sister Esma and Louise having somehow teamed up, lying in wait just outside the Ossyrian ship’s sensor range. Best case scenario was nobody there, except maybe a grinning General Bill Kilaney in a warship come to defend them. But Micah had heard nothing further from Kat, no news via the Hohash, and in this case no news was bad news. The best news of all would be the Kalarash known as Kalaran, accompanied by Jen and the others, returning from wherever the hell they’d been. A Level Nineteen ship could see off the Q’Roth and Alicians, no trouble. But that felt like pure fantasy.
Micah had thought Kilaney long dead; it would be good to see him and find out where he’d been and what he’d been up to all these years. But the likelihood of him being already out there seemed remote; the Ossyrians would have detected his approach. The outcome of his assessment veered back towards pessimism.
He turned around to Gabriel. “Okay, tell me about the weapons we have aboard. All of them.”
Chapter Ten
Secrets and Lies
Kilaney had been busy since his forced departure from the Ngank’s surgery vessel. He and his commandeered Mannekhi ship lurched back into normal space-time, still a couple of hours from Esperia. He’d dragged all twelve unconscious crew members onto the Bridge, carrying the three females – he was ‘old school’. He sat in the command chair, waiting for them to wake up. His sweat smelled less acrid than when he’d been human first time around; the Ngank had done a good cosmetic job, but on the inside he felt a powerful panther-like strength and focus, a legacy from his Q’Roth days.
He ran his hands over his face – he’d always hated mirrors, even before Sister Esma had converted him into a Q’Roth warrior, and wasn’t going to start liking them now. Hair was beginning to grow back on his head; it felt soft, downy. That was going to be downright embarrassing if he managed to meet up with Blake. He had eyebrows, and – it brought a smile to his lips – he felt the prickle of stubble on his chin. He’d never worn a beard. Maybe it was time.
Kilaney observed his captives, who were about to be freed, after a fashion. All of them were fit and young, one or two a little more mature, but no show of grey hair, if indeed they greyed with age. Staring towards their closed eyelids, he knew that underneath was the only overt way to distinguish them from humans. Long ago he’d tried to find out if humans and Mannekhi were in some way related, but the relevant files in Grid Central Archives were classified Level Fifteen. He’d asked Ukrull about it during his short stay aboard the Ice Pick, fully expecting no answer, or at most a grunt. Instead, he’d gotten the longest sentence he’d heard from the reptile. It was partly why they now lay on the floor alive.
Their long, deep breathing rate shifted, became shallower. Good, he was beginning to think he’d have to find a bucket of cold water. Within minutes the first two stirred, and they quickly woke the others. He watched the order they chose, inferring the crew hierarchy. The first one they woke, evidently their captain, stood apart, facing Kilaney, while the others busied themselves, checking instruments, navcom, weapons capability, life support. A nod or two from the captain here and there. Two males went to the weapons locker and withdrew four pistols, arming two other crew members as well as themselves. They didn’t give one to the captain, but he was the one who spoke.
“You’re in my chair.”
“That’s not how it is,” Kilaney replied.
One of the females moved in Kilaney’s direction, but a glance from the captain stopped her.
“Then tell me how you think it is.”
“Ask your crew.”
Without taking his eyes off Kilaney, the captain called out to his key officers.
“Siltern.”
“Sir, Navigation is locked, control encrypted, we’re heading toward a planet in the Quintara sector, the human one we were briefed on. A Level Twelve barrier shields it. Arrival in two hours.”
“Arnter.”
“Sir, half the ship’s spines are prepped for penetration mode, the other half for hellfire beams. We’re going in hot.”
“Gallas.”
“Long range comms has been disabled, encrypted with a Q’Roth Largyl 6 cipher. I can break the code, but it will take longer than two hours.”
“Fentra, something good, please.”
The female withdrew her face from an enclosure screen, and gave Kilaney a long hard look. “He’s a hybrid. Human and Q’Roth.” One of the armed men’s pistol arm went rigid. “I wouldn’t do that, Tolbar,” she added. “He’s injected us all with a Kelleran bloodworm. He has the mother.”
Kilaney shrugged. “I found them in your Medlab. I’d heard about them, though I’d never seen them up close before. Pesky little critters. Is it true what they say about them?” He knew damned well, as the Mannekhi used them on prisoners, but he wanted to hear the captain say it, to acknowledge the status quo.
The captain folded his arms. “You die, we die. You hurt, we hurt. You’re still in my chair.”
Kilaney got up, gesturing to the seat. As the captain took it, Kilaney added, “You have a good crew, captain.”
The captain looked taller now, sitting in the command chair. “What is your name?”
“Does it really matter?” Kilaney didn’t want to give them his Q’Roth name, they might well have heard of Jorann, and decide that bloodworms or no bloodworms, he had to die.
The captain spoke while he called up holos showing the Esperian system. “Names are everything. Our lineage matters deeply to us. I am Xenic, of the clan of Karanashak, wardens of the twelve jewel planets of our Eastern sector for fifty generations. I am the first of my line to be captain, all my ancestors were traders, many of them in the Orrat, the resistance, thirty-three of them put to death at the hands of our patrons. I know all their names. If you ask any of my crew, you will hear similar heritage.” His all-black eyes bore down on Kilaney. “Names are important to us. When you are born into servitude, history becomes your lifeline. Our progeny know our names, and we will live on through them. We are a proud people, and are not afraid to die. So, tell me, what is your name, your heritage.”
Kilaney felt stung. He’d slaughtered so many Mannekhi in battle, yet had never met one before. He drew in a breath. “My name is Bill Kilaney, I was a general back on Earth, our only planet, destroyed by the Q’Roth.” He hesitated. He’d never told anyone the rest, except his wife Sarah, back on Earth decades ago. “My father was a petty thief who deserted me and my mother when I was still a child. I found out later he died in a bar fight. My mother became a prostitute, and at first cared for me, but the drugs she took to cope with what she did stole her from me, bit by bit, until she died in a fire in a cheap motel. I had one lucky break serving as a grunt during the War, when I took a knife missile in the gut intended for a Colonel, and still managed to rip the assassin’s throat out with my bare hands.” He looked down at his fingers. There had been so much anger in him back then. He looked back up. “Life turned around after that, and the Colonel promoted me fast through the ranks, even if he didn’t make it through the war himself. My ancestors… I know little of them, the rest of the family shunned me, more so after I became a General.” He stared at the floor, then looked directly at the captain. “I’m still a soldier. I have nothing else. I have no children. My wife is dead. I have to say I envy you your ancestry. All I have lies on the planet we’re bound towards, and I am here, you are here, to protect them.”
“Protect them from what, exactly?”
Siltern spoke up. “From a Q’Roth Crucible.”
Kilaney continued. “It is indeed your chair. I could not operate this ship on my own, certainly not in a battle. The Q’Roth are your sworn enemy, and –”
Xenic held up his hand. “What was your Q’Roth designation?”
Kilaney chewed his lip, then answered in a quiet voice. “Jorann.”
One of the younger females walked up to him, and with speed and power that surpr
ised him, punched his jaw. Kilaney stood and took the force of the blow, while all of the crew except the captain gasped at the shared pain. The girl herself grunted with some satisfaction, and walked back to her station, nursing her chin.
The captain spoke, as the rest of his crew stroked their jaws gingerly. “Thank you, Tessia.” He stood up. “Siltern, you have the Bridge. Kilaney – that is what we will call you, or else we will all have very short lives – walk with me.”
They left the Bridge, and Kilaney followed Xenic to the observation deck, letting Xenic speak first.
“You took quite a gamble, especially telling us your Q’Roth name, hated by so many Mannekhi. You know the bloodworms are cyborg, and their power sources have a short duration, just twelve hours. They also have a limited range. I could put you in a pod and eject you into space, to rot.”
Kilaney had thought of it. “I would self-terminate if you tried it.”
“So ready to die?”
Kilaney gripped the rail and stared toward the slightly brighter star he knew to be Esperia’s sun. He turned to Xenic. “My people are in mortal danger. Imagine how you would act if all Mannekhi were in jeopardy?”
“But humans are not my people.”
Kilaney drew in a deep breath, then told him what Ukrull had said.
Xenic and Kilaney re-entered the Bridge. “Gallas, set up General Kilaney a tactical console, with external comms.” He paused. “With weapons back-up access.” The entire crew turned to stare at their captain. “We are going to take out that Q’Roth vessel. Kilaney has defected, and has their defence codes.”
The crew nodded, turning back to their stations. The Bridge lights shifted to red, battle mode, and Kilaney felt rather than heard the engines increase their output, spurring the ship onwards, faster.
Kilaney realised two things about Xenic: first, the Mannekhi captain knew how to lead, and second, that he was a damned good liar.
* * *
The Shrell leader Genaspa, at the front of six phalanxes of her most trusted warriors, stared straight ahead with all six eyes and twelve sensor ridges, through the eddies of Transpace to the Quintara sector, where the spider world lay, where she would lead the unhappy mission to poison space within that entire sector. She already knew all the details, but wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to train her protégé, Nasjana.
She thought-directed “Tell. What you see. What you propose.”
Nasjana shifted up a gear, flapping her tech-augmented wings faster, and moved forward from her phalanx of fifty, her Second taking her place. She drew alongside and slightly behind Genaspa, and addressed her First. “I see the two-mooned Katha Class planet the indigenous natives name Ourshiwann, that the humans call Esperia. I see two other planets, one further in to its Giver, and one further out, both without intelligent life’s seed. There is also a thin asteroid belt from a former planet, and the ice-scratch of a past comet with a return cycle of two thousand years. I propose standard spatial necrosis treatment: three opposing Shrell teams at right angles to the Giver, twenty light minutes apart before we commence the run.”
Genaspa sent a sinusoidal frisson down her right wing, a sign of approval.
Nasjana did not return to her team.
“You have a question?”
Nasjana dropped slightly behind. “I have a doubt.”
Genaspa’s wings took on a more rigid motion. She’d been expecting this from one of her team leaders, though not Nasjana, her Second. Or maybe, she reflected, that was why she had chosen Nasjana as Second.
“Tell.”
“Where you lead I follow. What you tell, I do. As do we all. But this… We only poison space when absolutely necessary, to avoid dangerous space-rift expansions, or to corral errant races.”
Nasjana’s thought stream had come out fast, urgent, and Genaspa realised she was worried. But they were short on time. They must be in formation, in every sense of that word.
“Tell true, Second.” She had to wait a full flap-beat for the response.
“Why do we follow the orders of Qorall? He has brought the Xenshra inside the galaxy, those despicable inter-galactic worms. I fear we will never get them out. And Qorall has caused more space damage than in recorded Grid history.”
It was a good question, but not the whole reason Nasjana was daring to doubt her First’s judgement.
“Tell deeper. All.”
Nasjana wings trembled, slowing her until with an effort she caught up. “My husbands. I fear many will perish today.”
Genaspa forced herself to concentrate on the flight. A First must never waver. Tell true, she had instructed, and yet she had not told her team-leaders the whole. None of the husbands would survive the day. Genaspa and three hundred Shrell would enter the system, she and fifty would return, all female. This was a high price. But only Genaspa knew that Qorall held fifty thousand Shrell hostage – a tenth of their entire nomadic population – in a faraway quadrant, lured there to shore up the damage done when he and his worms breached the galactic barrier eighteen years earlier.
This was not what Nasjana and the others needed to hear, nor would it necessarily convince them – it did not persuade her, either, since Qorall might decide never to free his captives, or to feed them to the worms.
Genaspa knew the other team leaders would have one or two eyes and ridges focused on this little exchange, wondering if Nasjana would persuade her to call it off. Not this day.
“Nasjana. This is for you alone. When Qorall asked – demanded – I sought a second opinion.”
Nasjana broke protocol and jumped in. “But who could you possibly –”
“Hellera, the last Kalarash left in our galaxy.”
Nasjana winged forward, taking her eyes off their target, a dangerous move at this speed, and stared at her First, then dropped back just behind Genaspa’s lead.
“What did she say?” Nasjana asked.
“She told me to do it. That it was necessary for the long-term strategy.”
“Did she explain that strategy?”
“No. Nor did I expect a Level Nineteen being to indulge me, a mere Level Nine.” She swivelled three of her eyes towards her Second.
Nasjana drew back. “I… I apologise, my First. I understand if you wish to name a new Second –”
“I do not.”
Nasjana blinked all six eyes at once, for a full flapbeat. “With your leave, I shall return to my position.”
“You will signal to the other leaders and instruct them and all the husbands that what we do today is of the utmost importance for the survival of the galaxy.”
“Such a message should come from the First, not me.”
No, Genaspa thought. I may not survive this run. They must begin to hear from you as a Leader.
Nasjana hesitated, then began to fall back.
Genaspa listened to Nasjana’s pronouncement. She would make a good leader one day, a good First. As the thought streams rippled through the ranks, Genaspa felt their swarm’s wing pulse harmonic grow stronger. But she herself did waver, thinking of her own former husbands, lost during a similar run two thousand years earlier. It was why she was First, because she made the necessary sacrifice, knowing that the husbands’ life force would be bled away from them as they ripped spacetime, curdling its quantum foam; that was the energy exchange needed to inflict such damage. She had cherished each of her six males, and had not taken a husband since.
Abruptly she made the decision. She slowed down, decelerating at a breathtaking pace, as if rearing up against a wall. With no small pride she observed all six phalanxes stay in formation, even the husbands. The entire swarm stopped, panting, awaiting her command. The eddies of Transpace scattered around them like tornadoes of orange steam, blown away into wispy nothingness.
She turned and addressed them all. “We will pay a heavy price today.” Her thought-stream flickered for a moment, then regained its true. “You are the best, that is why you were chosen. Many of us will not return.” She let her eyes
swivel to take in every individual Shrell, including the males, who blinked all eyes in return. “I wish you to say your goodbyes properly, as you see fit. You have one hour.” She turned her back on them, and quietened her form-sensors so they could have their privacy.
A single ship threaded above her, the Mannekhi one her flock had overtaken earlier. She watched its ripples flourish then diminish, twirling in its wake before dissipating. Go ahead, she thought, do whatever it is you have to do, you have little time. She spied another ship on the other side of the Quintara sector, a Q’Roth Marauder, also heading in at terrific speed. She reflected that so many beings – the Rangers an exception – rushed around in their short life-spans, generally making things worse. Shrell were different, they were gardeners, conserving natural space – in normal situations, of course, though not this time.
Genaspa heard the cries of ecstasy behind her. Good, she thought, in a year there will be new Shrell to replace those we lose today. Her eyes and all twelve sensor ridges fixed hard on the distant planet, the object of so much sudden attention while at the war’s front another planet fell every few days. We do this for you Hellera, not Qorall. You had better be right. I hope that whatever is in that system is worth it.
Chapter Eleven
The Plight
The Crucible Class Q’Roth vessel hung dark and silent in stealth mode, two million kilometers across the system from Esperia. Sister Esma stood close enough to the battleship bridge viewscreen to scratch the outline of Esperia with her fingernails. None should ever have escaped. Nearly two decades earlier she’d underestimated a single outlier factor – Micah. Two and a half more days and she would flatline the curve, close the coffin lid on an inferior humanity’s dead-end history.