“I find that difficult to believe.”
“You don’t need to believe it. You can walk it yourself and go there. Check it out, and return here to get your people moving. The only thing we won’t allow is those already there following you back here. In any case, I doubt they’d want to when they find out how things are here. But I understand a couple of the whites desperately want to escape.”
He nodded. Exactly what to, I didn’t know. Probably to how whites were when not getting their own way. He certainly didn’t look happy about his options.
“What happens to us?”
“In the short term, you’d be treated as refugees. We’d supply you with fast to build housing and whatever we can of your needs. You’d be an enclave within our space, and after an establishment time, you’d be allowed to trade with us. In the medium term, we’d hope to make some diplomatic progress with your people, and either you resettle on another of your planets, or your people retake this system and hold it so you can return.”
“So you’d want me to be a diplomatic embassy for my people?”
“Only if you want to.”
“I’d want to. As reasonable as your offer to relocate us is, we’d be happier with our own people.”
“That could be another option for negotiation. If your people allow it, we could send you to a station where they could collect you, and take you to another of their planets. But it wouldn’t happen without at least a non-aggression treaty, as otherwise your ships would never be allowed near one of our stations. And neither would ours be allowed into your space to deliver you, and even if they were, we couldn’t trust they’d not be destroyed on their way home. There would have to be a formal treaty, for either way to work.”
“I can see that. The problem, if I understand your issues, is the diplomacy might take more time than we have. In which case, your offer of a temporary home becomes necessary as well.”
“So you’d welcome opening a dialogue for us?”
“Of course.”
“Give me a moment,” said Jane’s voice from the combat suit.
Thirty Eight
“General,” said Jane. “Please hold for Governor Tarnigar.”
We both looked sharply at the combat suit. Jane had been speaking in what sounded like perfect Keerah.
A screen popped up in front of the suit, showing an older white general with a lot of decoration on his baldric. He looked surprised to be looking at a human standing near a junior Keerah governor.
“What is this?” he asked, and immediately held up a paw. “Who are you?” he changed the question to.
He was looking at me.
“Commander Ecclestone. Captain of the Claymore taskforce.”
“And you?” he cut me off, and looked at his fellow tiger.
“Acting governor Tarnigar.”
“Never heard of either of you. Identification codes.”
The governor spoke in rapid Keerah, and the translator wasn’t able to translate.
“Ah. We’ve lost contact with your entire spacial area. How come a human is standing in a cave with a Keerah?”
He didn’t ask how we were talking to him, so he must have known.
“General, the Trixone attacked us four rotations ago. We had nothing but militia destroyers in orbit, and local militia reservists on the ground. The destroyers didn’t even put up a decent fight. They landed an army all across the planet, and within two days, the vast majority of the population were dead. My city had no real defenses at all, and instead of trying to fight, I evacuated to caves in the hills nearby.”
My mountains were apparently Keerah hills. Interesting perspective. The general didn’t look impressed.
“We managed to hold them out, but were slowly running out of anyone able to fight.”
Which made me realize there were most likely Keerah bodies under all the dead plant material in front of the walls.
“The humans turned up a few hours ago. They say they’ve taken out the equivalent of seven Trixone fleets in this system alone, but don’t have the ability to block both incoming jump points at this time. Apparently the jump point to the Napenga also leads to their space, and they’ve been following the corridor to find out where the Trixone have been coming from. It led them here.”
He looked at me. I jumped in.
“We currently have a small station in orbit, being used to bring troops here. Our fleet was purely defensive, and we had almost no troops except combat droids with us. The Lufaflufs sent a battalion to bolster what we had a short time ago, and for now, these caves are safe. But we don’t know how long we’ll be able to hold here.”
“Don’t you have additional forces following after you to hold what you’ve taken from the Trixone?”
“General, I wish we did, but we’re spread very thin at the moment. I’m told nothing is coming to help me in the short term, and I don’t have enough here to blockade two jump points. We probably will get additional troops from Napenga in a day or so, but my concern is holding the system more than the planet.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I will cheerfully admit we don’t know what your situation is. The Ralnor took a beating, put in place a non-aggression treaty with us, and are fighting with us in various places. Your people still refuse to even talk to us. I’m not even sure how this channel was even opened, but it’s above my pay grade. And I don’t care. You need to help Governor Tarnigar decide if they risk staying, get moved to a refugee planet in our space, or move permanently to one of your planets.”
“The latter isn’t possible without treaties in place, and those are not going to be possible any time soon.”
No shit.
“Are you able to get a fleet here? We’re quite happy to rid this planet of walking plants, and then withdraw back to the next system towards our space. But you’d need to be able to protect your people here.”
His head was doing no motions.
“We tried to counter attack in that region several days after the first incursion. We sent in one of our most experienced fleets, and nothing came back, not even a distress call. Since then, we’ve been pushed back a long way, and even here where I am, we’re expecting to come under attack within a matter of days.”
“Where are you sir?”
He was a superior, so I gave him the respect. And he’d been straight so far.
“I’m on the other side of the jump point from your Imperium. While my superiors will likely censure me for saying so, your Imperium space will be surrounded by the Trixone within weeks, and you’re not going to know what hit you when they do come for you properly this time.”
It explained the channel connection anyway.
“You let us worry about our space general. And if things are so bleak looking, you should be talking to us about how we can help you defend your side of our space. At the moment we’re wasting resources keeping you out, which could be better used keeping the Trixone out. And while Keerah pride might be keeping you from talking to us, and I get that, I truly do, but if things are as bad as you say, you can kiss your furry arses goodbye if you don’t talk to us.”
Neither of the two whites looked at all happy now.
“We don’t need you. I grant our current position is not good, but the war we had with your people set fleets in motion from a long way away, and once these get here, we’ll push the damned plants back where they came from.”
“Really? Do you know the definition of delusional?”
“Tell me. You’re just dying to, aren’t you?”
“Delusional is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different outcome.”
“And?”
“You’re stuck in a superiority complex while another species are exterminating not only your own people, but the species who depend on you. The Trixone are going to roll across your third of the core, until the Keerah are extinct, and then they’ll turn around and be unstoppable everywhere else.”
I shifted my mask to glasses,
and pulled them off my face. They both flinched when they saw my scars.
“I’m blind. And I can see perfectly clearly, while you’re the ones being blind.”
I put the glasses back on, shifted back to a mask, and glared at the general.
“You don’t get it do you? The Trixone have been testing you and the Ralnor for years now, learning how to beat you. And they are. The Ralnor appealed for our help, and are holding their own in most areas across their five thousand light years of the original frontier. You’re being exterminated. If you as a species fall, the whole galaxy is just food. Only together can we stop the Trixone. Either your superiors realize this, or you condemn the whole galaxy.”
“I don’t think…”
“Exactly. You as a species are not thinking. You used to be the apex predator everyone feared, until you met the Ralnor who considered you to be disorder, and the Trixone who just think of you as food. Think all of us are food. And you’ve never adjusted to being only part of the equation which holds this galaxy together.”
I glared at him again, and he flinched. Maybe I needed to look at myself doing that in a mirror, because it got more of a reaction than I thought it should have. I made an effort to stop my temper from exploding fully.
“We will survive,” I said at a lower volume. “Our people are out on an arm of the galaxy the Trixone can never get to. If we look like losing it here, we’ll withdraw to where we came from. And we can do that. But we’re not the sort of beings who run out on other beings, just because we can. We’ve wanted peace with you from the moment we met you, and we still do. We bring some skills and tech to the table both you and the Ralnor lack. One of them is rapid movement of ships and troops. How far away are those fleets you expect to change things with?”
The question caught him off guard.
“The nearest are still weeks away. What we need most is at least a month away, but scattered over thousands of light years.”
“So even when you get them where you need them, and that won’t be where you need them now, they’ll still be going into battle piecemeal. Won’t they?”
“Most likely, yes.”
“We can not only bring those fleets into battle very rapidly, we can bring them together to form larger fleets which have a better chance of prevailing. How much of your fleet strength is guarding our frontier and the long Ralnor frontier?”
“A lot of it.”
He didn’t like admitting that.
“And we need them along the Trixone frontier, and we need them now. We need troops on planets being attacked now. By refusing to negotiate mutual defense treaties, so we can pool our resources and actually push the Trixone back, you’re damning all of us.”
My voice had risen in both tone and volume again.
“Chris?”
The governor shifted his gaze to the combat suit, and the general looked confused as to where the voice was coming from.
“Yes Jane?”
“You’re needed back on Claymore.”
“Now?”
“Yes now.”
“How?”
A rift opened right next to me, just big enough for me to walk through. I shot a glance at the governor, who was looking poleaxed, and turned back to the general.
“General, you and the governor need to decide right now if they evacuate or stay. If they move, where to. If not, how you’re going to protect them. You need to figure this out right now, because if I’m needed back on my ship, the likelihood is, the Trixone are in this system again already. The voice you hear from the combat suit is a one star admiral named Jane. You can negotiate with her, and she has the ear of the Imperator in real time. We can have diplomats ready to talk non-aggression and mutual protection treaties ready when you are.”
I gave him a speculative look.
“Are you fighters, or are you food? Decide. Now.”
I nodded to the general, turned and nodded to the governor, and stepped through the rift.
It closed behind me, as I took my seat on the bridge.
Claymore and Shenaid were looking at me.
“I need a drink!”
Thirty Nine
Kat put a glass in my hand, and I drained it in one go.
I had an immediate caffeine hit, and handed it back. Kat gave me another one. I did the same thing with it. I shivered for a moment, and passed the second glass back as well. Kat vanished.
“Tell me.”
“We found the Trixone,” said Claymore.
“Of course you did. Where?”
“About an hour inside both jump points.”
“So two fleets?”
“Yes.”
“Size?”
“Both are three standard fleets. But there is good news.”
“Hallelujah. Hit me with it.”
Even I could hear the stress in my voice.
“No fighters. Just ordinary battleships.”
I sighed. Small mercies and all that.
“How long until they get here?”
“Hard to tell.”
“Why?”
“It looks as if they’re going to meet up well before the planet, and come here as a single fleet.”
“Figures.”
My brain had stopped working. The caffeine was turning the crank, but the gears were stripped. The last thing I needed right now was another battle today. And my pilots didn’t need one either.
“Backup?”
“No.”
I’d known there was nothing coming to help us.
“Where is everyone?”
“Still down over the planet. You want me to issue a recall?”
“No. Although I guess everyone should come back to eat.”
“They all have food on their ships. And ground strafing isn’t all that difficult.”
Maybe so, but the day had been long already.
“Best guess on the plants getting here?”
“Six hours?”
“So I have time for dinner.”
“Yes.”
I rose and stalked out.
It was only after Shenaid found me I realized I’d gone to the main mess, and not my own dining room. It was of course completely empty. She pulled out the chair opposite me, and sat, looking oddly pleased with herself.
Kat put food down in front of both of us, and I was half way through before the obvious question I should have already asked popped in.
“Shouldn’t we have another mage here?”
“Why would we?”
“I was rifted back. Didn’t someone say only two people could do that, and one was the Imperator?”
“It’s three, one being the Imperator, and one being Thorn, but no-one seems to know where he is. The other is Syrinx, and she was here when the station was delivered. But she left after opening the rifts for the Lufaflufs.”
“So how did I get back here?”
“I opened it.”
Which explained her self-satisfied look.
“I thought you couldn’t do it?”
“I couldn’t. But Syrinx included me in the magic she did for the first rifts, and we both used the energy of the spare crystal on Monty.”
“Even though Monty was down near the ground?”
“Even then.”
“So you did manage to duplicate the crystals.”
“You were right. I started with the smaller ones, moved up to the Excalibur ones by drawing on the smaller one, and finally duplicated Monty’s drawing on several of the Excalibur ones. Each time I could feel my ability growing, and the fatigue getting less. Before she left, we duplicated a destroyer one for Monty, and then one of Claymores. It’s being hooked up by Claymore now for extra shielding, but until we need it, I can draw on it for magic. Like the rift I opened for you.”
I looked at her for a moment, somewhat lost for words.
“That’s brilliant.” She grinned. “So the inability to do rifts was mainly a lack of external power?”
“Partly. Also an inability to understand
the process. Syrinx told me she taught the Imperator to do it when he connected his power to hers while she did one. So I asked if we could do the same and see if it worked for me as well. It did.”
“So how big can you do them?”
“I can do one big enough for this ship, but I can’t hold it very long. I tried to do one from here back to the jump point, and it collapsed too fast to use.”
“How did you know that?”
“Claymore was timing it. Even putting it right in front of the ship, didn’t give us long enough to go through. She said even if we’d been at combat speed, the ship would have been cut in half.”
“I hope you didn’t stop testing.”
“No. We did more. The shorter the distance, the longer I can hold it open. And it’s not really about power, it’s my ability to hold the magic at a distance. Syrinx was taught this from an early age, and from what I gather, the Imperator has an energy source of his own which is much greater than what she uses. Thorn apparently uses the energy of suns, but that idea terrifies me.”
“Why?”
“Because that sort of power should burn you to a crisp.”
“I can see how that would be terrifying. How far can you safely move the ship?”
“Claymore says about an hour of normal travel.”
“And how soon after can you do another one?”
Forty
“Jane.”
“Chris?”
“Hold the fort.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to try something.”
“What sort of something?”
“You’ll see it when I try it. But if it doesn’t work, you’ll have some time to call for help.”
“Chris?”
I closed the channel, and gave Claymore a look to make sure it wasn’t reopened. She was sitting in the helm chair instead of her normal one, swiveled around to look at me, and she nodded, turning back to face where we were going. I looked across to Shenaid, who was buckling herself into the XO’s chair. She also nodded.
Legend of Dreamwalker (The Hunter Imperium Book 5) Page 18