by Greg Curtis
“Thank you Admiral, but that won’t be necessary, I assure you. We -”
“You lie. The Calderonians are extinct. Our ancestors destroyed their spineless race aeons ago.” A new face had appeared on the screen interrupting them, a Kaiwhare in full battle gear and obviously on the bridge of a ship. But this was no peaceful creature. This Kaiwhare’s face was screwed up with hatred, and behind him his officers could be seen playing with weapons consoles. They were preparing to attack.
“They tried for certain foolish one. But they failed. And in the process they destroyed most of their own people as well.” Thyri seemed perfectly calm sitting beside him, yet Daryl would have expected something from him. Just a trace of emotion, even if it was ten thousand years overdue.
“We -”
“Have not advanced in ten thousand years. Have learned no wisdom, no new science, not even compassion. All you have is your hatred and lies. As did they.”
“You call those glowing balls of fungus progress?” As calm as Thyri was, the Kaiwhare was even angrier. “I call them dead.”
Warning buzzers started sounding all over the Sparrow’s consoles, and Daryl looked on the display to see a small fleet of cloaked Kaiwhare warships heading directly for them. But even as he, and then the admiral started to ask questions of Thyri, he simply held up his hand for peace. And much as he might feel uncomfortable doing so, Daryl took his hands off the controls, sat back in his chair and watched the displays. It wasn’t his show.
Perhaps two hundred vessels were streaking at them in a spearhead formation, and Daryl knew that they would have the very deadliest technology the Kaiwhare had. Even so, he knew - or at least he hoped - that it was nothing compared to that of the Calderonians. Of course, there was no way to tell until they actually tested it. He spent his time alternating between staring nervously at the display and the calm visage of Thyri, while mentally crossing his fingers.
Then in a heart beat everything changed. The Kaiwhare vessels, having reached their target, opened fire on the closest of the great ships. It was a mistake. Between one heartbeat and the next they disappeared. The ships, the streaks of red that were their weapons, everything, and once more only the Calderonian vessel was on the screen.
They’d obviously been destroyed somehow, though no weapons signatures had come from the Calderonian vessel. The other readouts had no explanation either. There was no sign of debris, no radiation from broken reactors, nothing. It was simply as if they had never been there.
“What the -” Noise came over the receiver from the admiral and his other aids, most of it untranslatable, but Daryl understood the gist of it. He would have said it himself if his tongue had been working.
“Kaiwhare.” The voice came from directly behind him and he turned to see that the rear bulkhead of his bridge was unexpectedly missing, and in its place was a new Calderonian seated in another of the white armchairs. But this new guest unlike Thyri, had some emotion in his translated voice. It was that of strength and determination. Daryl was instantly convinced, and surely so too were the Kaiwhare, that this Calderonian was military.
“You have been warned. Your technology is primitive, your people savage and as unreasoning as they were ten thousand years ago. But even so we will give you this chance. Send your ships home, disarm all your plagues, surrender your weapons and we will refrain from causing you further harm. Fail to do this and your people will be punished. All of your people.”
The response wasn’t want he wanted as Daryl watched on the displays as thousands of bombs suddenly came into view on the main screen, despite the fact that they were nowhere near any of the ship’s sensors or com units. The Calderonians were sending his ship the information. A heartbeat later they were simultaneously detonated all across the Community, and he watched each turn into a shower of sparks and flame. But he didn’t even have time to panic as he saw those same explosions petering out before their destruction had spread more than a few metres. Flames vanished, clouds of black gases were suddenly sucked back in to their centre as though by a vacuum cleaner, and Daryl’s heart started beating again.
“Calm yourself Daryl. The plagues had been deactivated long ago by our scientists. Only harmless smoke remained as we needed to determine whether the Kaiwhare could at least learn wisdom even in the face of overwhelming power. Apparently they still can’t.” Like a father to a child Thyri was leaning over from his chair speaking quietly into his ear, and placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder. But Daryl wasn’t the only frightened child he was calming. His voice was surely heard by the entire Force through his open com.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He even patted his shoulder a couple of times for reassurance, while Daryl sat there trying not to fall over in relief and shock. “Now perhaps we should head for Unity Base. I’m sure your people have plenty of questions, and I’m quite looking forward to seeing it in person.”
Obediently Daryl started plotting the course, until he suddenly remembered that the Kaiwhare still had a fleet out there. But even as he turned to ask his eyes fell once more to the tactical plotter and he saw that they were alone in space. Gone was the entire Kaiwhare fleet, along with all of the Calderonian’s escort ships.
“Umm?” He pointed to the plotter.
“The matter is taken care of. The Kaiwhare are not going to bother anyone ever again.” Daryl stared at him, and at the plotter, completely lost. The most terrible war ever imagined was over before it began? Ended without a bang? Without a whisper? It made no sense. And he didn’t even know how to ask the question. Fortunately they seemed to understand.
“You really wanted a war? You wanted death and destruction?” Naturally he shook his head. He’d never wanted that. No one wanted that.
“Then why trouble yourself with how something happened, and simply enjoy the fact that it has.”
He had a point, though somehow Daryl doubted it would be only him who wanted to ask the question. For the moment though he realised that he had a job left to do. Only one.
“Unity, here we come.”
Chapter Twenty.
“I can understand that he doesn’t want to negotiate with the Community. Most of us don’t either. But does that include the Force? Surely not. If he understood that the Force is unlike the rest of the Community. That it’s its protector and police as well as its guide. Perhaps he might realise that we are far more ready for their knowledge than the Community.”
Meanwhile the subject of the admiral’s questions was simply standing on the docking station floor across the way taking in the view, which was surely something like a scene from ancient history for him. Around him a dozen or more diplomats of every race were pestering him, politely, and failing by the looks of things, to get him to pay them any attention.
“I don’t think so Admiral.” The admiral stared back at him uneasily but he said nothing.
“I think he, they know everything there is to know about the Force and that they have done so from the very beginning. Telling them that the Force is an entity outside and above the Community won’t come as a surprise, and won’t really help.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because of the way they - that is Ambassador Thyri - answered some of my questions on the Sparrow. It was in the way he spoke so easily of Earth’s situation. Yet when I asked him how he knew of it, he said that they had watched me for some time, that they knew of what was in the ship’s database. But the Sparrow is an Earth Fleet vessel. It doesn’t contain much of the knowledge of how that came about. He tricked me by responding to my question by telling me another partly relevant truth and letting me think it was an answer. The conclusion is clearly that they knew another way. Perhaps by telepathy, or perhaps from having watched us.”
“The Ambassador lied to you?”
“No.” And Daryl was surprisingly clear on that. “I don’t think they would ever lie, not at all. I’m not even sure they can. But they can allow you to deceive yourself. He sim
ply didn’t tell me the whole truth and yet allowed me to think he had. It’s an excellent skill for a diplomat.”
“How much knowledge of us do you think they have then?”
“An awful lot more than we will surely ever know. The other thing the ambassador told me later was that they met me a month or so early into my journey, and later still that they had deactivated the Kaiwhare’s plagues long ago. But I was too frantic with worry at the time to pay him much mind. Now I realise that in order for them to do that they had to do several other things first. For a start they had to get to the previous world on my journey, ZZD204, and reprogramme that computer to send me to a closer world. One which somehow both fitted the Calderonian’s own unique requirements for a world, and yet one that wasn’t a colony of theirs. Then they had to get some of their ships into place around that world to await me, and at the same time make sure that I still wasn’t going to be too late.”
“Before I got there I’d checked the ship’s logs and found a minor error. The Sparrow reported it had been travelling at terrig fourteen two for the entire trip, despite the fact that its top speed is terrig thirteen five. At the time I thought it was simply a computer glitch as the monitors failed to read the nav co-ords correctly, being so far from their reference points, especially when the ship was already so altered. It didn’t seem important. Looking back though, I’m sure it wasn’t an error at all. They sped me up somehow, without the ship or myself realising. They knew to the instant the time and place they needed me to arrive and then made sure I did just that.”
“It all smacks of some really advanced planning and more than a little knowledge of not only the Force, but also the Sparrow and its capabilities.”
“I suspect they’ve been watching us for some time. Closely. Maybe for many years. Waiting for the opportunity to act. Waiting to be asked for their help. And that asking was a big thing for them. So big in fact that they met me a month earlier into my journey than I would have met them. They knew there was little time. They knew they wanted to help, and they knew that their very nature, their own laws perhaps, meant they had to be asked. And they knew that I would ask them. They even, I suspect, knew how I would ask them.”
“Given that level of knowledge about just me, a single human being from a race not even part of the Community, on a cloaked ship that I had rebuilt secretly with leftover Force cruiser parts and without the Force’s knowledge - a ship stolen from a pseudo derelict concealed Force base which itself was carrying out highly secret work - it would be foolish to think that they don’t know the innermost workings of the Interstellar Community and the Force.”
The admiral was about to ask him another question when Daryl saw something out of the corner of his eye that took his mind off everything else. He spun, quickly, to see a green eyed beauty come running down a walkway from the control complex. A pregnant green eyed beauty.
“Karen!” There were a thousand people between him and her, aliens of at least a dozen species, and many of them of very high status, but in the twinkling of an eye, there was no one else. He forgot the admiral, forgot everyone else, and just shouted her name again and again, even as he started running for her. As she was running for him.
Then they met, and unbelievably she was there in his arms. Real and solid, and warm. And very pregnant. Her stomach pressed into him, a wonderfully warm reminder of everything he’d missed for five long months on a sardine can. Then his lips found hers and he knew he was home where he belonged. The kiss just carried on, and he felt moisture running down his cheeks and realised that he was crying. It didn’t matter though. Nothing else mattered.
“God you’re so beautiful.” It was all he could think to say as he kissed her again and again.
“And you’re alive.” Tears were flowing down her cheeks as well, and he realised she hadn’t expected to see him again. Despite the message rockets he’d sent, telling her how he was doing and how much he loved her, she’d thought he would die out there, and he couldn’t blame her. He’d thought so too for a long time.
“Yeah and so are you. And you’re safe. You and our baby, and your family, and mine. And the entire Community. I don’t know exactly what they’ve done, but the Kaiwhare will never bother us again. And I’m never leaving you again.”
“Thank God.”
“No he had little to do with it.” Ambassador Thyri had apparently joined them, but neither of them could take their eyes off each other long enough to pay him any real attention. Maybe later, much later.
“Yes He did. He brought Daryl safely to you, and then he brought you to our rescue.” Daryl didn’t really mind Karen disagreeing with the Calderonian. He knew enough by then to know that Ambassador Thyri wouldn’t mind either. But it did take her attention off him where he wanted it to be.
“The Lord works in mysterious ways perhaps?” Which was another indication of just how much the Calderonians knew of the Community and even humanity. They’d read the bible.
“No mystery at all. God works through us all, and provided we are of good heart, we can all hear and do His bidding.” As religious debates went it was completely beyond Daryl, but then quite frankly anything other then Karen was beyond him just then.
“Actually I believe Daryl brought himself and then asked us for our help.”
“Absolutely. Daryl is of good heart and did as he had to do even when he didn’t know why. As did the Community when we grabbed him for our work. As did your people when they chose to help us, for which we are truly grateful. Surely there can be no clearer evidence of His hand than in the way he brought those who needed to meet together exactly when they needed to be.”
“Hmm!” Daryl had the strange feeling the Calderonian was actually agreeing with her. Or at least not fighting her any further on it. The first and probably only victory for the Community.
“In any case it has all worked out for the best for all concerned.” Except for the Kaiwhare, but Daryl couldn’t find it in him to wonder about them just then, or even to care. Besides, deep down inside, he was somehow sure they hadn’t been killed. That wasn’t in the Calderonian’s nature. Reading minds and answering unspoken questions though, was.
“The Kaiwhare have not been harmed either, despite their evil. We simply found a nice, large but metal poor world for them, and transported all of them to it, without any technology. Then we warded it, so no one can land or take off, and set up a warning system. They will never leave it. After all, they were never very good students. They had to steal their technology from us. And there’s nothing there for them to build anything with, and no one for them to steal it from.”
“Their own prison colony. A fitting punishment and one our courts would be happy with. But what about their descendants? Those who might one day aspire to be better than their grandparents? They too will be trapped.”
“We will watch closely, of course. But I doubt such a thing will ever come to pass. Neither will you doubt it when you unravel the genetic codes our ancestors left on the computers Daryl found. They show the true nature of the enemy. The reason he is and always has been an enemy. He can be nothing else.” That caught Daryl’s attention, and he wasn’t alone either as the security officer in Karen turned to face the ambassador.
“Pardon?” They asked as one.
“Long ago the Kaiwhare were for want of a better term, human. Much like any other people. Mixed with good and evil, trying to be the best they could, especially for their children. But they also had wars, terrible conflicts, and as you have already seen, the biological sciences are their truest understanding. They fought with biological weapons from the first.”
“One of their sides, and its name is lost to history as is most of the war, decided they had to use their genetic weapons not only to destroy their enemy, but also to advance themselves. They built new genes into themselves that not only gave them better health, fitness and intelligence, but which were also designed to increase their dedication to their government. Their loyalty if you will.”
“As time went on and the war ended as such things do, that gene continued to be spread among their people. Among all their people, until all Kaiwhare are now of the same mind. They are not telepathic, but each and every one of them is born with the understanding that his or her only duty is to his race. And that anyone who is not of his race, is an enemy. They cannot break that. Nor will their descendants.”
“Great stars!” Another human Force officer had apparently joined them. “You mean they’ve actually condemned themselves to bigotry for eternity?”
“Utterly.” The ambassador nodded, a remarkably human gesture. “Even if they could develop the technology to remove the gene safely from themselves, the gene’s own motivation prevents them from ever wanting to. They see it as their salvation.”
Daryl listened with half an ear as the conversation shifted to the ethics of genetic modification, but that was as much as he could do. Later he might have time to wonder about it. About how they could have done such a thing to themselves. Much, much later. Right then he had only one thing on his mind. So did Karen.