Sjean understood the upcoming tests better than anyone, and she was worried that their outcome would be disappointing. How then, she wondered as she stared at this strange woman, can Janette seem so sure of her conclusions? And why, in the name of anything logical, do I believe her?
◊ ◊ ◊
Leri’s recovery was painful and slow, but Ranas insisted that she fulfill her duties as proctor. What bothered her was that he expected her to fulfill those duties cheerfully – yet he offered little or no sympathy for her pain and discomfort. But the worst thing was that when she complained, he belittled how she felt.
Finally she could stand his self-centered slithering around her no longer and sent him away with the guplings. Better to suffer alone where she could hiss and scream at the empty walls. At least then she didn’t have to suffer the pain in silence or feel guilty about expressing it.
After Weecs rescued her from Exeter’s ship, he had turned her over to the Isthians and stayed away from her. When she finally spoke to him, he refused to come to her, claiming that to do so would only threaten her position. “When you are well,” he had said, “we will meet on neutral ground.”
Now that she had banished Ranas, Leri wanted Weecs with her all the more, but understood his reluctance and honored it. She turned instead to the Confidantes.
“The rumors say other planets and systems have been attacked by the humans,” she said quietly. The Confidante as usual made no statement, but as Leri stared at its great, grey bulk and waited for its question, she waited in vain. “The Council has demanded my recommendation. I have chosen isolation and will tell them so.”
“Is that wise?” the Confidante asked.
“It is our only hope. Otherwise Sondak will suck our atmosphere dry and the Central Systems will try to find us and destroy Sondak’s source of methane.”
“How will you isolate us?”
“With the fires, if necessary.”
“Would that not kill many of your kind?”
“And yours too,” Leri said angrily, “but better to die that way than to have Cloise ravaged by the humans.”
“Does Cloise belong to you alone? Are not others to be considered?”
“We will accept all advice from the others,” Leri said, knowing the Isthians, like the Confidantes, had refused any direct participation in making decisions for their planet. “Will you give us counsel?”
“Could you not join with those from the planets which have been attacked by the humans?”
Leri was shocked by the suggestion. “Shall we join with the soulless?”
“Would you choose to die alone?”
“We only have rumors,” she said, hoping the Confidante would choose another direction. She should have known better.
“Cannot rumors be traced? Is there not strength in numbers – even with those you consider soulless?”
“They do not know the Elett. How can they have souls?”
“Can you know another’s soul?” the Confidante asked sarcastically. “Can you slither in their life?”
“But an alliance –“ Leri shuddered and a rasping pain grated through her. Suddenly she thought of the vision that had haunted her, and how she had seen a strange path through the mists of trouble, a path that would lead her people to a safer life. Just as suddenly she knew the Confidante was right.
Perhaps someone should seek the Oinaise and try to verify the rumors. If they proved true, then…then perhaps an alliance with the soulless ones…She shuddered painfully again. The idea still stuck in her gills.
As though sensing Leri’s resistance, the Confidante said, “The false way is the safest way for everyone.”
It was the first time Leri had ever heard a Confidante make a direct statement. The double shock of that and a possible alliance with the soulless Oinaise left her with no alternative but to withdraw. “I thank you, Confidante,” she said in a shaky voice. “By the grace of the Elett I beg your leave.”
“Will you go in peace?”
“If the Elett grant it.”
“Will you take the one you love?”
“If such can be,” she said thinking first of Ranas and then of Weecs. With no further word she slithered out into the darkness, her mind troubled, but her heart filled with a strange, inexplicable contentment.
◊ ◊ ◊
Despite the many weeks he had spent living without the gorlet, Lucky still felt an occasional craving for it. So one day when Delightful Childe sent for him, Lucky asked if he could have just a taste of gorlet.
The Oinaise glowered at him. “One bite will addict you again,” he said sternly. “Do you wish to repeat the suffering you went through before?”
Lucky smiled. “No, I don’t,” he said slowly. “But if your people have anything that tastes like gorlet at all, I wouldn’t mind eating a sample or two.”
“There are substitutes, but I doubt you would find them palatable. However,” he said, holding up a seven fingered hand, “I will see that you have the opportunity to taste them.”
“Thanks.”
“No thanks are needed. What is ours is, within limits, yours. But now we must discuss the more serious parts of your future. What will you choose to do with your life from now on, Captain Teeman?”
Lucky had been expecting that question or one like it, and he had been hiding from it. When the Ukes failed to renew their attack on Oina, he had allowed himself to relax in the comfort of Delightful Childe’s hospitality, content to enjoy the small pleasures of each day. He had thought as little as possible about the future – or the past.
“I don’t know, Delightful Childe,” he said finally. “I can hardly go back to lightspeed freighting while this war is going on without taking –“
“Why? Are you afraid?”
“You’re damn right I’m afraid.” That wasn’t true, and Lucky heard the lack of sincerity in his voice.
Delightful Childe snorted. “I do not believe you. You are not the type of human who fears such annoyances. It is the mate you lost that holds you from action. Such attachment is pure foolishness for one like you.”
“What would you know about it?” This time the emotion in his voice was anger, and the anger was real.
“Ah, so you think I cannot understand your species or know how you tie yourselves so irrationally to one mate?” Delightful Childe bared his yellow teeth and brought the tips of his fingers together under his chin to form a spreading fan. “Do you think that because I am different? Or do you think that because you believe me to be stupid?”
Unfortunately, Lucky could not gauge Delightful Childe’s emotions well enough to tell if the Oinaise was really angry or just teasing him. “I, uh…”
“Well? Which is it?”
“Neither one, dammit,” he blurted. “How I feel about Marsha is none of your business.”
“It is if we are to join into business together.”
Lucky was stunned. “What did you say?” he asked quickly, afraid that he might have misunderstood.
“I said, my friend, that if we are to become partners, then everything about you becomes my business – just as everything about me becomes yours.”
“But…I mean, are you serious?” Suddenly Lucky had a glimpse of a future with promise. “Do you really want us to form a partnership?”
“Was not that your suggestion originally?”
“Yes, but I didn’t really think you would want to. I was just looking for –“
“If I did not want such a partnership, I would never have mentioned it to you.” He lowered his hands from his chin and held them out in front of him. “The questions before us are whether or not you want it, and whether or not you are ready to ply your trade as a freighter again.”
“Of course I am. I just never –“
“You are not afraid?”
“No. I only said that to –“
“Good. Then perhaps we should discuss –“
“Look, Delightful Childe,” Lucky said with a grin that suddenly seem
ed plastered to his face, “if we’re going to be partners, you’re going to have to learn –“
“Is there still some question about it?”
“No. But I’d like to be able to finish a sentence with you once in a while.”
Delightful Childe snorted. “Is that the condition you were about to put on this partnership?”
“Well…yes. I mean, it just seems to me that partners ought to listen to each other.”
“But I do listen to the important things you say. Partner Teeman. What more do you want of me?”
Lucky still couldn’t get the grin off his face and realized that partnership with Delightful Childe might not only be profitable, but also frustrating in an oddly humorous way. “Nothing, partner,” he said finally.
“Excellent. Let us go eat, and I will outline the plan I have in mind for us.”
“Uh, just one more thing,” Lucky said. “Why do you want this partnership?”
“That is a simple question, yet one so complex I am not sure you would understand.”
“Try me.” For the first time since Lucky had known him, Delightful Childe looked uncomfortable.
“I have chosen to remain here and mate,” he said slowly, “and that requires my physical presence for approximately one standard year until the child is born.”
“And you need me to work the business while you’re tied up.”
“Your choice of words is most appropriate, Partner Teeman, for I will be umbilically tied to my offspring. You are also partially correct in assuming I want you to ‘work the business as you said, but I do hope our association would well outlast my familial obligations.”
Lucky brightened. “You’re talking long term, right?”
“For as long as we are both satisfied with the arrangements,” Delightful Childe said. “Come, let us go eat.”
As they walked side by side toward the dining room, Lucky was so filled with the possibilities that might spring from this relationship that he almost missed what Delightful Childe was saying about their first job.
“…relatively simple, actually, if my cousin is to be believed. He has some goods and a passenger to be transported from Patros to an old friend of his in the U.C.S.”
19
USHOGI FLEET AND SHAKAV FLEET were ready to move away from the Hiifi system on schedule, but thanks to Judoff, they would each have fewer ships than Frye had originally intended for this plan. After the first leg of the journey, the task force would split, and Ely would take Shakav Fleet toward the south galactic pole to attack Sondak’s fringe systems in that sector. From then on, in order to maintain absolute security, they would not communicate either with each other, or with Bridgeforce.
The plan was for Sondak to accept Ely’s line of attack as his main one, but Frye knew better than to count on that deception. Besides, he thought, if the timing is right, it won’t matter. All Shakav Fleet has to do is slow Sondak’s reactions long enough for us to take control of Matthews system,
Or destroy it.
Of the twenty manned neutronic missiles he had sent into the Matthews system, fifteen had sent check-blips on the last status update. He did not know, nor was he concerned about what had happened to the others. If only six of them survived until he needed them, that would be sufficient. Three of the missiles exploding low over each of Reckynop’s poles would start the ice caps melting and flood Sondak’s two main spaceports.
If he could send five or six missiles to each pole, the destruction would happen faster, and if he had the twenty missiles that had been originally promised, and then withdrawn, that would have eased his worry. But his planning experts had assured him that three missiles to each pole would render Sondak’s spaceports inoperable. That was all Frye cared about. If the U.C.S. could not control Reckynop, then they would deny it to Sondak as well.
Yet Frye deeply hoped that destruction would not be necessary. He wanted the whole of Matthews system, including Reckynop – wanted it as the forward base from which he could pound Sondak into submission. From there he could harass Roberg and cripple Sondak’s logistical support. From there he could send missions into the heart of Sondak itself, perhaps even to its ruling planet Nordeen.
Deep strikes against Nordeen would be very costly in lives and ships when balanced against the limited physical damage they could do, but the psychological damage to Sondak’s morale would be immense. For that he was willing to pay dearly. In fact, his officers were about to learn how much he was willing to pay to defeat their enemy.
With a sigh he turned on his lapelcom. “AOCO,” he asked firmly, “are my officers gathered?”
“Yes, sir,” Marsha answered from her small cabin next to his. “They’re waiting in the commander’s conference now.”
“Very good. Tell them I will be there in five minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
“oh, and AOCO, I want you to sit in on the meeting with me. It’s time you met the people under my command.”
“Yes, sir,” she said with hopeful hesitance. “Are you going to tell them?”
“Tell them what, AOCO?” There was a long pause before she answered him.
“That I’m your daughter…sir.”
Frye had wondered about that himself and was surprised to realize that he had already made his decision. Yet, he did not want to hurt Marsha’s feelings. There was already too much distance between them. “Do you think I should?”
In the next room Marsha’s face fell slightly but she held her voice in check, refusing to let him hear her disappointment. “Only if you think so, sir.”
“Well, we’ll see then…if it’s appropriate. Five minutes, AOCO.”
As Marsha walked down the short hallway to the commander’s conference she allowed herself a brief moment of regret. Then she shook it off. She had come as she had promised and she had promised to stay. She would serve her father and serve him well, and if after it was over he still could not express his feelings about her, then she could leave knowing the fault was not hers. With her head held high she entered the commander’s conference to make her announcement.
Frye sat at his desk remembering Marsha as a little girl had how she had come to him for advice rather than to Vinita. Even when she could barely talk, she had sought his counsel and had listened with a child’s intensity to what he had to say. He blinked quickly and took a deep breath at the memory of Vinita.
Yet as he exhaled and shook off that vision, he thought of his own childhood – a childhood filled with stories about the golden age of culture in the U.C.S. and how that culture had been destroyed by the invasion of people from what later became known as Sondak.
His paternal grandfather, ed’Laitin Charltos, had been the one Frye had gone to for counsel. Grandfather el’Laitin had been imprisoned for most of his life on Roberg for the crime of patriotism, and released only when he was too old and sick to do much more than come home and die. But the old man had not been too weak to pass his hatred of Sondak on to Frye.
After his grandfather died and Frye grew older, he learned more and more about the real atrocities and sacrilege Sondak had committed in the name of peace and harmony. The hatred planted in the boy became a permanent part of the man.
When young Junior Commander Charltos came home from the last war against Sondak, he was bitter and determined. The U.C.S. would not lose the next war. He had sworn that to himself on his grandfather’s memory. As he rose to meet his officers, he hoped they would understand his determination and make it their own.
“Commander Ely, Gentlemen,” he said as he entered the conference room, “I am pleased to see you all here.” A quick survey of the room revealed Melliman sitting with Ely’s staff. Frye quickly shifted his gaze from her before their eyes could meet. “This room contains the top three hundred officers in our fleet, and what we are about to do will demand the most excellent efforts from each and every one of you.” He paused without a smile and watched the smiles fade from their faces in response.
“Our initial s
trikes wounded the enemy. Now our task will be far more difficult and costly. We must gain the planetholds we need to cripple Sondak once and for all.”
Marsha watched him with pride from her position at the side of the dais as the room erupted in grim-faced applause. There was no doubt in her mind that her father could lead these people and the U.C.S. to victory.
◊ ◊ ◊
General Mari glared at Stonefield. “And I still say we have to reinforce the polar systems. If the Ukes gain planetholds beyond Ca-Ryn and Umboolu, POLFLEET will never be able to hold them away from Sutton. After that we’ll be scrambling to save twenty systems instead of five.”
Stonefield remained impassive.
“I agree,” Avitor Hilldill said quietly, “but I think it is too late to do anything.”
“Are you giving up?” Mari asked in dismay.
“Certainly not, Fortuno.”
Mari flinched at the familiar form of address, but he immediately forgave his old friend. “Then what –“
“We must divert planetary troops to Sutton, Bakke, Yaffee, Satterfield, and Wallbank.”
“Make the Ukes fight on every planet?” Stonefield asked.
“Yes, sir. They’ll need bases on those planets – safe bases they can use to support attacks against the central sectors. If we cannot defend the systems themselves, at least we can make them pay in blood for every planet they try to control on the ground. I move that we double the garrisons and equipment on the planets I mentioned and all others in the Polar sector where we possibly can.”
“And where will we get these planetary troops?” Admiral Eresser asked. Her voice was laden with disapproval.
“From the conscription – led by trained cadre, of course.”
“Green troops? Surely we cannot –“
“They’re the only ones we have for such an operation. Our cadres are already spread too thinly. Or am I wrong, General Mari? Do we have experienced reserves we could commit to an operation of this size?”
“Barely four legions from the inactive reserve that were recalled last month are currently equipped and ready,” Mari said firmly. He had rejected a similar idea because of the lives it would cost, and he shuddered to think what would happen with untested troops and out of shape veterans against a Uke invasion force. But now, now with Hilldill supporting the idea –
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