And All The Stars A Grave.

by Greg Curtis

  “How’s the interrogation going?” He knew she wouldn’t tell him much. Most of it was security stuff, which he didn’t need to know about.

  “So so. They’re not very brave, and with two of them, neither knowing what the other’s saying, they keep tripping up over their lies. But still they don’t seem to be able to stop lying. We question the first one and he comes up with a lie. Then we question the next, and he comes up with a different lie. Then we tell each what the other’s said and they come up with two more lies. I’m beginning to wonder if they even know what the truth is.”

  “Sounds about right. Even the little we’ve been able to get out of the records below so far suggests they have no concept of right and wrong. Only self interest.” Could a race be evil? It was one of the questions Daryl had been puzzling over in his little spare time. But everything they’d uncovered about the Kaiwhare said yes. No guilt, no shame, no concept of anything other then the desire to kill everyone who wasn’t of their kind.

  “We have at least found all of the devices they left behind, I hope. Though they weren’t bombs, at least not of the normal sort. They left electronic jammers everywhere, which would have caused our computers to overload, and left the Targ powerless. It wouldn’t even have had life support.”

  “Nasty, but no doubt it would have looked like an accident and they would coincidentally have been on a shuttle at the time I suppose. Who were they going to blame it on?”

  “Hard to say. Probably the scientists again. As if one of the things they’d brought on board could have done it.”

  “That would make sense. Destroy the enemy, and divert the blame. It was almost their standard operating procedure. And if they think they can get away with it, I’m sure they’ll try anything.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice, the other side of the shame he’d been living with for months.

  “They’re not getting away with it, I promise you that Daryl. We will hold them responsible for their crimes.” She wasn’t just talking about these two either. She meant their entire race. He only hoped she was right.

  “So you’ve heard from your people I hope.”

  “Yeah. The status quo holds for the moment, as they keep their agents working hard to infiltrate our society and we watch them closely. Whatever else you’ve done, you’ve certainly got them rattled these last few months. They keep taking massive risks to gain information and rank. More than they’ve ever risked before, and every so often we arrest one or two of them as they get caught in compromising positions, and their ambassadors keep trying to explain it away. It strongly suggests they’re not ready for a war.” He hoped she was right, but it still wasn’t enough.

  “But preparing as fast as they know how.”

  “The torpedo should arrive in a couple more days, and hopefully the tension will ease off around then. Meanwhile, every senior officer in the fleet is being carefully taken aside by Force Security officers and given the score. The instant they move, so will we. It should be fun when more than a hundred thousand Kaiwhare are arrested in a matter of minutes.” Yet there was a sadness in her eyes as she said it, and he knew why. Because finally, though they would be arresting the Community’s greatest enemy, and even putting to rest the pain and grief of her people’s past, she knew it wouldn’t bring the dead back to life.

  “I’m sorry.” He caught and squeezed her hand softly. “I thought finding the truth would help, but it doesn’t really. It doesn’t stop the pain. For any of us.”

  Eight thousand dead, and they were just the beginning. Humanity had gotten off lightly so far. The captain had had a team of historically minded crew go through the records and they’d quickly identified many other planets that the Kaiwhare had destroyed over the previous ten thousand years. It wasn’t pretty. The solar flare that had irradiated two billion Aler on Epsilon Three. The plagues that had destroyed the home world of the Sallo people. More than a billion souls lost just because they had evolved on a world next to a Kaiwhare base. The Eridnai Four colony lost to a tragic accident with their space station, which had inexplicably developed a fusion melt down and then plummeted into the colony itself.

  And so the list went on. A litany of death and destruction. In total the Kaiwhare had killed more than seven billion people over the previous few thousand years. And now they planned on wiping out another six trillion.

  “Don’t be. You’re the reason we’re going to get through this. Why be glum? Be happy for the thousands you’ve already saved here, and the billions you’re going to. We’re not dead yet and I don’t plan on becoming it. Not for a long time to come. Besides, we have more technology on our side than they know about too, and thanks to your warning, an unparalleled chance to prepare. The Kaiwhare were right to fear you. If a little knowledge is a dangerous thing as they say, then you’re an interstellar disaster in the making for them. But one that’s going to save us all.” She was so positive he desperately wanted to agree with her, but he couldn’t.

  “Or send us to our doom early. If I hadn’t been so damn eager to crack the Calderonian riddle, the Kaiwhare wouldn’t be desperately advancing their schedules to destroy us.”

  “No, perhaps not. But they would still be working away methodically, and in a year, perhaps ten, they would have struck and we like the Calderonians themselves, would have had no answer. Maybe you’ve advanced things a bit, but you’ve given us a massive advantage, and one that they don’t know about. Besides, sooner or later, one of our scientists would have made the same discoveries, and I doubt anyone else would have been quick enough to think of hiding that discovery from them. That bomb scare really did get our two friends in a panic. When we caught them they were desperately trying to steal a shuttle. You did us all a great service.”

  “But -”

  “But nothing. I’m alive today because of your quick thinking, as is everyone else on board this ship. And we know it. Our people are in danger, but no more than they were always in. And given the choice between a fighting chance next month or ten years until the guaranteed extinction of everyone I love, I choose to fight.” He kissed her hand by way of a thank you for her resolve. One thing about Karen he realised, she was no shrinking violet. He and the rest might give in to despair, but she would fight until the last drop of blood in her body was gone.

  “I just hope we can.”

  “Daryl. Have some faith in us. We may be a relatively civilised and peaceful people, and the Force may seem to be more a police force than an army to you, but we are strong, and we know how to use our strength.”

  “More importantly, while you quite rightfully, have accused us of keeping humanity in the dark, you should know humans aren’t alone. None of our member races has access to the full range of technology and knowledge that the Force has. The weaponry and drives, the advanced stellar charts and so forth. And even within the Force there are groups who have even more advanced secret technology. The tachyon burst transmitter is just the start of it and I only know about the ones Force Security has. And while the member worlds may have an idea of some of what they lack, none of them truly know the full extent of their ignorance. Or that we won’t allow them to gain that knowledge.”

  “Pardon?” Her words had caught him by surprise. Very much so. In fact they didn’t really make sense. How could the Force be more than the Community it served? He started listening closely, once more wide awake.

  “The Force is a culture unto itself. A civilisation in its own right. And our people are loyal. The crew here aren’t Myrans and Aler, Regularans and Xetans, they’re Force. Surely you’ve noticed that. But it’s something that the Kaiwhare have never truly understood. And that’s why we’ve never let them rise to any great prominence within us. They don’t seem to understand that loyalty. In time they’re going to learn a lesson because of it. And you’re going to learn that same lesson as well.”

  “Pardon?” It was becoming his new favourite word.

  “You didn’t really think we were just going to let you return to
your people and disappear after all this was over did you?” She stared directly at him, and he found himself wanting to turn away, but for some reason, unable. It sounded almost like a threat, but he didn’t feel threatened. In fact he had the strange feeling he was being praised.

  “Think about it Daryl. You’re probably one of the most capable scientists we’ve ever encountered, and in a field we barely study any longer, apparently to our cost. When this is over, you’re going to be in demand by practically every university and research institute in the entire Community, Earth’s included and we won’t stop you going to any of them if that’s your choice. But you’re also going to be wanted by us. No, you are already wanted. And we have some very powerful incentives to offer a scientist of your calibre. Not the least of which is practically unlimited access to worlds and civilisations that no one else in the Community has. The ones that we won’t allow others to study.”

  “Are you bribing me?” Actually he wasn’t sure. But even he knew that what she was offering was everything he could hope for as a xeno-archaeologist. But he also realised slowly, there was a catch. If the Force could give, it could also take away. Turn the Force down and he could swiftly find himself extremely limited in what he could study, what he could report. But then what else was new?

  “We’ll discuss bribery later,” and her sudden smile was dazzling as he suddenly understood Karen wasn’t talking about his future career.

  “But right now I’m making a very serious offer. One you should think about carefully. If you return to Earth you’ll be restricted in many ways. Only some of the technology you’ve uncovered will be allowed to be shared with them. And though that will clearly be far more than they have at present, as they’re slowly admitted into the Community, it will be far less than you now know, and less still than you’d want to learn.”

  “In the universities of the so called great races or, as many of us like to call them, the great wind bags, much of the same will apply. Though you could share more with them, they too are limited, though they don’t realise the full extent of it, and wouldn’t accept it if they did so please don’t mention it to them. But if you went to any of them there would be research you wouldn’t be allowed to do, and information you wouldn’t be allowed to share just as with Earth.”

  “Besides, as you’ve surely already learned, they’re an intolerant bunch. I doubt you’d be very happy among them, even when the truth comes out about humanity’s innocence.” That was true too. He’d seen first hand just how badly the scientists treated each other, and he didn’t really want to be a part of that. They made the most antisocial malcontents look pleasant.

  “But the Force doesn’t have universities.” Which in reality wasn’t a big deal for him. He loved the research and the discovery. Writing up papers and being critically acclaimed was far less important to him. But in truth he didn’t really want to be an officer. He wanted to be just what he was, a scientist, and he couldn’t see the Force offering him that.

  “Actually we do, and damn good ones. We just call them by different names. “Research institutes”, “colleges” and “foundations”. And what’s more they’re stocked with some of the best and brightest in the entire Community. In fact most of the top students attend them. Where do you think Ryal trained, or the other scientists among the crew? Though we might have let you and the civilian scientists think they were just technicians, they aren’t. Why do you think they were so easily able to take your research and turn it into working prototypes? No ordinary technician or engineer could do that.”

  Actually he had thought that that was exactly what a technician could do. It had never occurred to him that what they were doing was more than a Force technician should be able to. He’d just raised his opinion of their engineer’s abilities.

  “Then why’d you bring the scientists at all?”

  “We didn’t. Actually they brought us. We never thought that QA 40 would provide such a treasure trove of information, or that anybody would be able to get through the likely defences. So we weren’t planning on going at all. But the civilian scientists decided, based on some really poor research as it later turned out, that there was a scientific gold mine waiting for them here, and then started making big political waves about how badly they needed to study it. At the request of the Council itself, the Targ was assigned escort duty, and a new crew assembled to deal with a bunch of woolly thinking scientists.”

  “Fortunately the captain here is one very resourceful individual, and he quickly realised the Targ was likely to be in a lot of trouble with so many untamed scientists running loose among Calderonian technology. Especially when he read the reports of the previous expeditions. He quickly put together a team to identify people who could keep the ship safe while exploring QA 40, and that’s when your name popped up. Trust me, he recognised your value to the expedition long before anyone else, and while Helos and Li might have seemed to be the ring leaders who abducted you, the captain is the true master mind.”

  That actually made sense to Daryl even in his exhaustion. He’d wondered any number of times why the captain had kept him on the ship, even when the scientists dismissed his abilities so ardently. And why he hadn’t been sent to the prison colony as promised. As he no doubt deserved. Yet the captain had first abducted him, then kept him on, and had made it seem as though Helos and Li, his two main nightmares, were behind it. A very clever person.

  “Then when you showed up and did everything we’d expected of you we thought we had it all in hand. You’d been assessed closely, given the truth carefully, and given that you were from a society with a lesser level of technology and above all, noted for your caution and meticulous planning in this sort of work, we figured we had plenty of time to corral the scientists. But then when you broke into the city so easily, we realised we’d miscalculated badly. Very badly.”

  “We’d expected that to take months at the least, and maybe years and several return trips. The second voyage of the Targ you might have noticed has a very different crew. Twice as many Force scientists and many, many more security officers as well. Some to keep track on the Kaiwhare and you. But most to stop any dangerous technology making it out into the Community. Something I might add, you’ve made very difficult.” But she didn’t look angry.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause you trouble.”

  “We know that you moron!” She swatted the back of his head lightly but laughed as she did it, so he figured she was merely being friendly.

  “You never mean to cause trouble. It just seems to follow you everywhere, and then once in a while you launch it into orbit.” But she was smiling, and he knew it wasn’t a criticism as much as a wry observation. He nodded agreeing with her.

  “We’ve been watching you very closely from the second we picked you up. Even before. From the start we knew there’d be a danger you’d learn too much and try to take it back to your people. But when you started making all those breakthroughs, well our surveillance had to go up a few notches. A lot of notches actually. That’s when we decided to start bugging poor old Scratch. Then when we discovered that the Kaiwhare had already beaten us to her, that was another clue that you were going to be the centre of security storm.”

  “Security storm?” Actually it was quite a catchy phrase. He just wasn’t quite sure what she meant by it.

  “You really have no idea at all how many people have been watching you lately, do you?” She seemed surprised. “But not because any of them thought you’d do us harm. Well, on our side anyway. You passed our loyalty test with flying colours, if a touch more dramatically than we expected. Shooting yourself is frowned upon in the Force. But at least we knew whatever else you did, you wouldn’t act to harm us.”

  “Loyalty test? That was a test?” He was shocked back into life by the thought.

  “Yes of course. We needed to know what sort of person you were, what you’d do. At what point you’d tell us about the information you’d thought you’d passed on. And I’m please
d to say you did well. First you carefully hid everything for five full weeks in the brig, determined to hide the help you thought you’d given your people. You even became close with your jailers during that time, another good sign.”

  “Then when the captain carefully mentioned the consequences to you and your people if it was learned that you’d passed sensitive material to them, you practically bit your own tongue out to keep it secret. But the moment you could see a greater danger to them from not talking, you blabbed uncontrollably, knowing that even though your own people would hate you for it, and that it would mean your being sent to a penal colony for the rest of your life, it was your duty.”

  “In short you did exactly what we wanted to see you do. Then you shot yourself and we started to worry again. Not about your loyalty, just your sanity. It was pure luck that we don’t use disrupters on board the ship.”

  “But why would you want to know that about me? It would only show that I’m loyal to Earth, not the Force.” In truth he asked the question on automatic. He was still reeling with the thought that it had all been some sort of test.