Double Spiral War Trilogy
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“IS THAT IT?” MARSHA ASKED. “Aren’t they going to say anything else? Or are they gone?”
“That is very difficult to say, Partner Yednoshpfa, Delightful Childe said with a little shake of his proboscis. “The Verfen do not seem to observe courtesies of parting.”
“It’s impossible,” Lucky said. “How can a bunch of aliens no one has seen for two hundred years just space in and announce that the war is over? That’s the craziest thing I ever-“
“You heard them as well as we did,” Delightful Childe said. “They said they could not put an end to this insane human conflict, but they could protect us from it. I believe them.”
A brief thought of her father crossed Marsha’s mind, and she knew she was still worried about him. No matter what had happened between them she would probably always worry about him. “But how? How are they going to protect you? Are they going to kill all us humans? Is that how they’ll protect you?”
Lucky reached for her hand and squeezed it gently. “Don’t jump to conclusions, Mars. If they could make Delightful Childe exit subspace just to talk to him, and just as suddenly start talking to us here on Oina, maybe they actually do have some power to protect all the neutrals.”
“You’re the one who just said that was impossible!”
“I don’t know, Mars. I really don’t. Maybe it’s only impossible for us to imagine, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if they really could protect us?” In spite of his better judgment Lucky was hoping against logic that the Verfen could live up to their claims.
Marsha shook her head. Something deep inside of her was turning over, stirring up sediment from emotion that had lain undisturbed for a long time.
“Regardless of what happens, my partners, for us here on Oina it is no longer our problem,” Delightful Childe said, knowing all too well that duty to Oina would probably deny him escape from the problems that faced the galaxy.
Marsha fought the tears that threatened to flood her eyes. She felt like she was teetering on the edge of an abyss, and that now only her much-neglected faith in God steadied her. “Hold your faith, Marsha Lisa Cay Yednoshpfa,” several melodic voices said from Delightful Childe’s communications speaker. “We have come to stop what violence we can, not to commit new violence. Please accept our truth-saying. “
The three of them looked at each other as though to confirm that they were all hearing the same thing.
The tears stayed in her eyes, and suddenly Marsha asked, “Are you connected with God?”
“Retain your faith,” the Verfen voices answered. “All things are connected to all things.”
“Of course,” Delightful Childe said with a fluttering sigh. Deep in his heart he felt a warm flow of understanding as though he instinctively knew what the Verfen meant.
“That’s no answer,” Marsha protested, but already the turmoil inside her was settling down. “Give me a straight answer. Are you connected with God?”
The speaker remained silent.
Marsha looked at Lucky and knew he was puzzled by the whole exchange. Then, in a brief flash of insight, she recognized the answer the Verfen had given her. Like a great cleansing force, it swept through her mind and opened her way to peace. She saw it in a pictureless way and heard its silent music. There were no words to describe its effect, but Marsha was caught up in a bright wave of self-assurance. Delightful Childe bared his blunt yellow teeth on either side of his proboscis and gave her his Oinaise version of a smile.
Lucky turned from one of them to the other. “Why are you both smiling?” He asked.
“Because I believe Partner Yednoshpfa and I both understand the Verfen’s answer,” Delightful Childe said, seeing in her eyes a look that matched the feeling in his heart. “It seems the Verfen have left us with a bit of truth.”
“Now I’m the one who’s confused.” Apprehension rippled down Lucky’s spine. “Did I miss something here?”
“Take him to your rooms and show him,” Delightful Childe said to Marsha with an expansive wave of his seven-fingered band. “Then he will understand.”
Feeling happier than she had been since before the war, Marsha took Lucky’s arm and pulled him out of his chair. “Remember that old fiche of skona sayings I found on Patros that time?” she asked as she led him out of the communications room and down the hallway toward their suite. “Well, it’s like that saying, the one I could never figure out but couldn’t get rid of. Remember?”
Lucky remembered only too well, because she had recited it over and over until he had thought she would space him crazy. “The one you kept repeating about the old man’s walking stick?”
She smiled. “That’s the one. If you have it, I will give it to you. If you don’t have it, I will take it away. It’s true for faith, or love, or anything else, Lucky,” she said, as sure of her words as she had ever been. She knew that somehow in the openness of sharing themselves with each other she could make him understand. “Now we have love, so let’s give it to each other.”
As he looked into her eyes his apprehension melted away. “I don’t think I understand about the stick,” he said, answering her smile with a mischievous grin, “but I suspect what we’re about to do doesn’t have anything to do with sticks and skona sayings.”
“Everything’s connected to everything else.” She dropped her hand from his waist and squeezed his rear end.
It was enough for Lucky that she loved him and wanted him. If she needed some strange philosophy of faith, that was all right with him, just so long as they stayed together for the rest of their lives. From the look on her face and the feeling in his heart, somehow he suspected they would.
◊ ◊ ◊
Pajandcan felt great empathy for Schopper’s predicament, but the final decision had to be hers, and she wasn’t quite ready to make it. “Are you sure this is the only way?”
“Depends on whether or not the crypto kids are right. If they are, if the Ukes do have our people imprisoned down there, how can we do anything else?”
“I don’t know,” Pajandcan said with a shiver. “I didn’t think there was any way I could hate the Ukes more than I did after Matthews.” She paused for the brief flash of memory that always accompanied that name. “But slaughtering prisoners? How could they?”
“They think they’re better than we are just because they live a little longer and they’re closer to their Terran roots. Killing our people doesn’t mean anything to them.”
Pajandcan leaned back in her chair and rubbed her temples, feeling the pressure of one of her recurring headaches. “My people thought they were better, once – homo electus, a separate race they said. It was nonsense, stupid nonsense.”
“Doesn’t matter what any of them think. We have to save those prisoners, Admiral, and we’re going to need all the help you can give us.”
“The Ukes are already scared and broken up here.”
“But not down there. This will be our first planetary invasion against a Uke home planet. It’s not going to be easy like it was back on Thayne-G. The best we can hope for is to control Syberal City and its starport and to rescue our people in the prisons we know about.”
“That’s what worries me. Your legions are battle weary, and mine are practically untested.” Pajandcan rotated her shoulders, trying to relieve the routine stiffness in her oncebroken back. “There’s still the blockade alternative.”
“Not if they’re murdering our people.”
“No, I suppose not.” She closed her eyes and sighed before looking at him again. “All the troops are ready?”
“As ready as they’re going to get anytime soon.”
This invasion was going to cost thousands of young lives, but Pajandcan knew that her mind had already made the decision. It was her heart that was reluctant to accept it. “Very well. We land them as you have suggested, an hour before the dawn over Syberal City.”
He stood up immediately and saluted her. “Thanks, Admiral.”
She stood and he
ld out her hands. He accepted them, and arms crossed, they shook. “Good luck, Schopper, and good hunting.”
◊ ◊ ◊
For the first time in her life Leri saw a Confidante outside its grotto – her Confidante, a huge mass of wrinkled gray flesh protruding from a pale blue shell. Despite her fears, and despite her vision, Leri was comforted by the Confidante’s presence. Two Isthians clung to her back, one mute, one not – both ones with whom she had previously shared exchange. Even now Leri felt a sense of awe. Above them, descending slowly through the haze was a Verfen ship. It hardly looked large enough to carry the Confidante, much less her, too, but she trusted that it could.
“Farewell, Honored Leri,” cried voices from the cliff behind her. “May the Elett bless you always? Farewell, True Confidante. May peace be your life’s blessing?”
Leri acknowledged their cries with a small fireball sent straight over her head that burned out well below the descending Verfen ship. As she watched its glow fade she wondered if her people were close enough to see the Isthians on her back, then wondered what they thought of the exposed Confidante. None of this was normal, but then nothing seemed normal anymore, and nothing ever would be again. It had all changed from the time the first humans arrived, when she was but a gupling, to now when she was leaving to live with a race of Confidantes.
Fear shivered through her again. The mute Isthian stroked her nipple with soothing little purring sounds. Slowly Leri let herself relax and watch the Verfen ship land quietly in the middle of the canyon.
“Are you ready to leave now, daughter of Cloise?” her Confidante asked.
“I am ready,” she answered in a voice that trembled with emotion. She wasn’t ready. She would never be ready. But her Confidante had convinced her that this was the choice she was meant to accept, that it needed her as much as she needed the Isthians.
Like a gigantic snail, the Confidante began moving toward the waiting ship. Leri slithered along beside it, more afraid with every passing spinelength, yet more determined not to let her fear show. When they reached the ramp of the ship, they paused.
“Will you follow me still?” the Confidante asked.
“Yes, I will follow you as best I can,” Leri answered.
Slowly, the Confidante humped itself up the ramp and into the ship. Reluctantly, Leri followed into its dark interior. When her tail was completely inside, the ramp began lifting with a quiet whine. Leri panicked and spun herself around.
“Can you be still now, Leri Gish Geril, companion of my life?” the Confidante asked in a musical voice.
Instead of answering, Leri sought the Confidante’s reassuring bulk and curled herself up against it.
“May we share the exchange now?” the speaking lsthian asked. “We are both in need.”
It seemed an odd time, but Leri could not deny their needs any more than they could deny hers. “Yes,” she said softly, but since we are to share the remainder of our lives together, please tell me your names.”
“We have no names in the sense that you mean them. I am but the brother of he who does not speak.”
Leri thought about that for a long moment as the Verfen ship vibrated with a steady hum and the nonspeaking Isthian began suckling deeply on her nipple. “Then I shall call you Speaks and your brother Speaks Not. Is that acceptable?”
“That is acceptable.”
The first exchange soothed her body and her mind, and Leri let herself relax to its rhythms. The second exchange put her to sleep only to be awakened soon after by the Confidante’s voice.
“Will you wake, please, daughter of Cloise?”
“I am awake,” she said.
“Will you see the journeycraft that carries us home?”
Leri looked over her head and for the first time saw a clear opening in the roof of the ship. Through that opening she saw stars and in the middle of the stars a huge and wonderful sight. The journeyship was ablaze with strange lights and the outline of – suddenly she laughed, her heart filled with joy and happiness.
“What pleases you so, daughter of Cloise?”
“Your ship,” she said with great pleasure. “See the opening we approach – the opening like great jaws? Oh, Confidante, those are the jaws of my vision! But I’m not afraid! It was their strangeness that frightened my dreams.”
“Can you rest easily now?”
“Forever,” Leri said, letting her coil relax. She did not know what the future held for her, but she was sure in her heart that whatever happened she would be contented. “Forever,” she whispered again as she drifted back toward sleep.
“Yes, forever,” a voice said.
She thought it was Speaks’s voice, but it could have been the Confidante’s. Whichever, she was happy.
◊ ◊ ◊
It was the place Frye hated the most in the whole universe. It was the place of dreams – where he knew he was dreaming but couldn’t break free from the darkness of the dream. He hated it most because he felt so helpless there – and Frye did not like feeling helpless.
In the dream he was surrounded by Sondak’s fleets, thousands of ships that fired repeatedly at him.
No matter what he did, he couldn’t fire back.
Nothing worked. Everything jammed. Vinita cried out for his help. When he reached for her, she disappeared through a black shadow. His ship rocked and rattled with explosions. Dark winds shook him. Soft claws cut into his flesh.
“More bad news,” Melliman said as she shook his arm. “I think you need to hear this, Frye? Frye? Wake up, Frye.”
He rolled on his back and rubbed his eyes as the dreams slipped like quicksilver through the crevices of his brain. Only the image of Vinita remained as he opened his eyes. He stared at her for a long moment before he realized with a twinge of sadness that it wasn’t Vinita at all.
“I’m awake, Clarest. I’m awake. What’s wrong?”
“We’ve exited subspace and entered the Alexvieux Five system, but you’re not going to like what we’ve found.”
Slowly, his mind cleared, but his heart still trembled in the cold, dark shadow of the dream. “Tell me.”
“Marshall Zanazuza sent ships, but not the ones you told him to. We have one first-war launchship, fifteen troop carriers, ninety-one armed lightspeed freighters, and three hundred twenty-two unarmed ships of miscellaneous classifications.”
“My ears must still be asleep,” Frye said as he sat up and threw his legs over the side of the double bunk.
She sat beside him. For a moment she only looked at him then tears ran from her eyes, and she buried her face into his shoulder. “Zanazuza betrayed us. There is no battle fleet here,” she said through quiet sobs.
Now Frye was wide awake. “No fleet? But he confirmed my orders. How dare he disobey?”
“Oh, Frye, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Even as her words tore at his heart, Frye was unangered, as though he were suddenly drenched by a great calm. He gently pushed Melliman away from him and raised her face to look at him. “There’s more, isn’t there?”
She nodded mutely, her damp cheeks shiny in the light.
“Tell me.”
“Yakusan has, been invaded. Chadiver has declared itself neutral. Gensha’s defenses are crumbling, but they got those messages to us. It’s over, Frye. It’s over.” She threw her arms around him and sobbed uncontrollably.
It’s all right, he said, stroking her hair. “It’s going to be all right…because it’s not over. Sondak may think it is, but I know better. Zanazuza must have known what he was doing when he sent those ships here.” Frye’s words sounded ridiculous, but he needed to believe them, and he did. “We’ll talk to their captains, to the ranking officer. We’ll count every weapon and prepare our counterattack. But it’s not over. No, Clarest, it’s not even close to being over.”
“Don’t you understand?” she asked through her sobs as she pulled back to look at him. “There is no fleet here – no real fleet. We’ve lost, Frye. We’ve lost.”
“Attention, Admiral Charltos,” a voice said through the speaker in the bulkhead.
With an odd sense that he knew what to expect, Frye opened the command channel and said, “Charltos here.”
“Sir, I think ... I think you’d better come up here. We’ve just been contacted by some aliens –the Verfen they claim to be – and they’re demanding to speak to you.”
“Very well,” Frye said. “I’ll be right there.” When he realized how pleased he felt just because the Verfen wanted to talk to him, something frightening twisted in his brain.
“Quickly, Clarest,” he said, not wanting to believe what he was thinking, but at the same time feeling driven to communicate with the Verfen.
As soon as they reached the bridge plural musical voices addressed him in concert from the transceiver. “Admiral Frye ed’Laitin Charltos, you have reached your final destination.”
Frye would have laughed if a feeling of total belief hadn’t swept through him. Yet the core of his being resisted that overwhelming feeling. “Who are you?” he demanded. Glancing up at the tracking screens he saw nothing but U.C.S. ships. “And where are you?”
“Do not concern yourself with that, Frye Charltos. Truth be it to say that you should abandon your vessels of war and make your new home on this planet you call Alexvieux Five.”
“Of course,” Frye said, turning to Melliman. “Don’t you see, Clarest? It’s all so logical that I-” Again something inside of him resisted, but he didn’t know what to say.
“-and calculating landing orbits of the Deci-“
“Preparing shuttles and assembling landing-”
“-Previous scientific base as suitable-
“No!” Frye screamed at the voices from his own fleet and the Verfen. “Stop that!” Part of his mind wondered what all the excitement was all about, but the military part of him continued to protest. “Stop that!...Leave us alone…Please?”