Not that the Councilman was a xeno-expert, but he knew what most everybody knew, including the fact that the Bith didn’t meddle much in other species’ affairs. If you had the credit to pay, you used their gates and technology. If you didn’t have the credit to pay…you did not exist as a race worth caring about. Not according to the Bith, anyway. Though it was said the Bith did expend a great deal of time and energy moving whole gates into position in virgin systems.
What made a specific system worthy to receive a gate was something Uldarran researchers had been debating since the very first gate had been moved into Uldarran space. Before there even had been a Council or an Overlord. Merely a mish-mash collection of refugees who’d fled from somewhere else in space. The gate—in that era—had been their only hope of finding a new home. Somewhere they could all start over. Alas, the gate had never protected them from aggressive visitors, and the Bith did not seem to care.
Whoever was currently attacking Uldarran turf unimpeded was doing it through the gate, which meant if the Council was ever going to get any real answers, they were going to have to deal with the Bith first.
A holographic basin in the middle of the bridge displayed a huge, three-dimensional Bith’s face. The creature’s mood was impossible to discern, given the fact it looked nothing at all like a person. Two eyes stared out of a snapping turtle’s head. When the creature’s mouth moved, there was a slight delay as the Flamediver’s translation computer converted the alien’s bizarre speech into a flow of intelligible text which swam beneath the Bith’s almost nonexistent chin.
WE DO NOT CHOOSE SIDES, the creature said for the third time in as many sentences.
“We’re not asking you to actually do anything like that,” Heir Griboth said, throwing his arms wide in a human appeal for understanding. Which may not have translated to anything at all on the Bith’s end.
YOU ARE DEMANDING INFORMATION WHICH WE ORDINARILY REGARD AS CONFIDENTIAL, the creature replied.
“A moment,” Councilman Nyfid said, motioning for the Heir to drop his arms and step away from the conversation.
The Bith seemed to focus its attention on Nyfid. The creature’s eyes widened slightly. “We understand that it’s not Bith policy to disclose gate-to-gate travel information between different species in different systems. We even understand that it’s normal for you to protect data regarding human-to-human affairs, provided the parties occupy different points on the galactic map. But what we’re dealing with, now, is literally criminal. Our own people are attacking us, and they’re using the gate network to get away with it.”
YOUR OWN HUMANS FROM ULDARRAN SPACE ATTACK OTHER HUMANS FROM ULDARRAN SPACE? MOST CONFUSING.
“We’re assuming they’re ours,” Councilwoman Jazlin said curtly.
Nyfid waved for her to be quiet, lest she confuse the creature more.
“Now you see the problem,” Nyfid said to the Bith. “The gate is being used purely as a tool in an internal dispute. The Uldarran Council must put a stop to this. Not only to save lives, but to prevent hostilities from reaching the point that the gate itself is jeopardized.”
ALL HUMANS EVERYWHERE KNOW THE RULES. THE RULES ARE NOT UP FOR NEGOTIATION.
“And we’re not asking you to ignore or change the rules,” Nyfid said. “We’re asking you to help us clean up our mess, before it gets out of control and becomes your problem too. Does that make sense?”
The alien seemed to consider.
THAT IS LOGICAL. WHAT INFORMATION DO YOU REQUIRE?
Nyfid looked to his left and his right—at Councilwoman Jazlin and Heir Griboth—and then rubbed his hands together.
Within minutes, they’d worked out an arrangement with the alien. For a tidy lump of credit, naturally. When the contract came across, the three of them quickly signed—as authorized officers of the Uldarran Colonies, empowered to do deals. Nyfid hated seeing so much credit being used purely for the sake of data. But until they knew where the raiders were attacking from, and then fleeing to, they’d be guessing. And with the cost of gate travel being what it was, they couldn’t afford more than two or three shunts before they’d be dipping into the Uldarran interstellar war chest to a critical degree. The Colonies simply hadn’t spent much time going outside. Neighboring enemies had always brought the fight to Uldarran territory, which seemed as rich as any, but not particularly unique in a galaxy which was—as Jazlin noted—so huge.
Not that anyone had ever needed an excuse for fighting. It was known that, of the thousands of gated systems across the Bith network, many belonged to men. And of the many which belonged to men, even being the same species never guaranteed peace, as it could not guarantee peace even among the Uldarran people.
“What do you think we’ll find on the other side?” Councilwoman Jazlin asked, once the floating head of the Bith vanished from the bridge.
“I don’t know,” Heir Griboth admitted, his demeanor becoming stiff.
“There’s got to be some other explanation,” Jazlin reassured the younger man, placing her knobby-knuckled hand on his shoulder.
“An explanation, aye,” Griboth said. “But does that change what’s happened? That I might have to bring my own sister back to the Council, clapped in binders? Or worse? I said I wanted to find out the truth, and I do. But even when I said it, I was afraid that Councilman Nyfid might be right. That Taga has turned on us, though I cannot for the life of me imagine why. There’s no price any creature in this universe could pay, to make her kill her own people. She’s a patriot, plain as day.”
“Or was a patriot,” Nyfid said. “Until something changed her mind.”
A klaxon alerted them to the fact they would be maneuvering for gate passage soon. Several of the bridge staff—their uniforms neat and crisp—motioned for Nyfid and his companions to take their seats. Their acceleration chairs weren’t really necessary—if the machinery under the floor gave out during maneuvers, they’d be pulverized where they sat. Still, ship’s rules were ship’s rules.
“It might help me if I understand just what it was the Council intended for Taga to accomplish at this . . . Salvage System, as it’s called. It’s more than a bit off the beaten path from the Colonies, and of very little interest to us, save for the fact that it’s gotten a lot of recent Galaxy Network attention.”
Nyfid eyed his counterpart, then nodded for Jazlin to speak.
“We don’t make this public knowledge, Heir Griboth, and we’re not even sharing it widely among those who command, but we’re afraid the balance of power in this part of the galaxy is shifting rapidly. The intelligence we get from the Bith information system gives us a much, much wider picture than any Council that sat before us. We thought we had problems on our front porch. We didn’t know the half of it. There are far greater concerns in space. Heir Taga’s mission was to identify and visit any hubs of activity for human interstellar interests, in particular. The Uldarran Colonies need an ally. Or three. Or at least a qualified guide to point us toward someone or something we can leverage against what’s coming.”
“I don’t like how you said that,” Heir Griboth admitted.
“You shouldn’t,” Nyfid said.
“But what does it mean? Something is coming?”
“That’s just it,” Nyfid continued. “The Council doesn’t know. We’re not even sure the Bith know, and they’re about as reliably neutral on interstellar matters as it’s possible to get. To a fault, if you ask me. But the Council can’t afford to just sit back and spectate, so we drew up the plan for the expedition, used what we know from the Bith to identify a likely system which might be ripe for contact, and we commissioned Heir Taga and her people to go get us what we want. Friends. New technologies. Information about what else is going on in the galaxy. We never, ever thought that Taga would disappear, nor did we ever think she would come back to haunt us the way she has.”
“Suspect she has,” Jazlin said.
Nyfid felt his coolly-maintained demeanor begin to crack, if ever so slightly. He h
ad not liked the idea of being ordered back to space after so many years of comfortable living. And he had especially not liked the idea of having to make dangerous interstellar gate trips. But he liked least of all the continued defending of an obvious enemy by someone who was clearly blind to the fact that whatever Taga had encountered in Salvage System, it had made her a killer of her own people.
Before Nyfid could retort, the klaxon sounded once again, this time to alert them for impending gate activity. All three of them shut up and held onto the straps over their shoulders—with balled fists. None of them were space rookies, but you never quite got used to passing through a gate. The shunt left an unsettling aftertaste in the brain, as if tremendous motion had taken place in a singularly small instant, followed by a return to standing still.
Nyfid swallowed several times, with his eyes closed, letting the unsettling sensation pass.
The view through the meteor glass had shifted. And the delicately mammoth architecture of the gate on the other side of their shunt could be seen drifting away. Or rather, Flamediver was doing the drifting—inertia from one part of the galaxy perfectly preserved across the shunt, to another part of the galaxy.
* * *
The culprit system—approximately identified via gate activity, by providing the Bith with the times and galactic dates when the rogue attacks on Uldarran space had occurred—wasn’t one known to the Uldarran Council as hostile. In fact, the Bith said the system had only recently been given a gate, seeing as how it had not just one, but two clement terrestrials which might make comfortable colonies for several different species. No single expedition had laid claim to the system yet, though several had tried. And eventually, been driven off by competitors, who in turn were driven off by their competitors, and so it was going even now.
Uldarran space, itself, had started that way, until the fighting families had forged the pact out of which the Council was born.
Heir Griboth ordered both Jazlin and Nyfid to stay strapped in, while he quickly conferenced with Flamediver’s captain. There was a lot of space to cover between the gate and the nearest world. Plenty of time during which a hostile ship—or ships—might spot Flamediver and take aggressive action. If anyone was lurking and waiting for an unwary visitor, Griboth wanted to be sure they were still close enough to the gate to get back home before missiles intercepted their flight path.
When an hour passed with no threats detected, Heir Griboth relaxed, and the alert status for the whole ship was dialed down.
“It would be beautiful, except we’re here on critical business,” Councilwoman Jazlin said, noting the tactical holographic map which sprang from the bridge’s central basin.
Nyfid agreed. At least fourteen major planets were hung on elliptical pathways of light, all traced around a binary set of suns—one large and yellow-white, the other small and red. The bulk of the terrestrials were bunched up close to the stars. A very common layout, as men had discovered millennia ago. The astrophysics theory being that solar wind from the home star(s) inevitably stripped away most jovian atmospheres if the jovians were in close. Or a jovian was so massive it classed as a proto-star in its own right.
The little red sun in this particular system had probably started life that way, then absorbed a gaseous planetary neighbor or syphoned off enough of the yellow-white sun’s mass that the proto-star went critical.
In the fullness of time—billions of human years into the future—the yellow-white sun would, itself, go critical, swallowing its little neighbor inside it as it swelled to giant status, then sloughed off much of its mass in a nova, leaving two white dwarves in the nova’s wake.
“Where to start looking?” Nyfid asked, his eyes scanning back and forth across the holographic representation of the system’s layout.
“If you were performing hit-and-run operations,” Jazlin asked Heir Griboth, “and you were using this system as a hasty base for your operations, where would you spend most of your time?”
“The Bith indicated there were no major space platforms or orbital stations in this system,” Griboth said, “so I would not use this system. Where could my command hope to refuel itself? Repair battle damage? Refit and rearm? If my sister is using this system as her main depot, either the Bith report is outdated, or my sister is rapidly using up what consumables she has.”
“Could she be taking what she needs during the raids?” Jazlin asked.
“No,” Nyfid said, cutting Griboth off before the young officer could speak. “The forensic analysis suggests nothing was taken during any of the raids. Not fuel. Not munitions. They were purely punitive in effect. We lost equipment, stores, and lives. Each time. And the raiders slipped back through our defense detection apparatus before we could martial an effective response. Heir Taga clearly wants to hurt the colonies. Her attacks are escalating in a somewhat predictable manner. If she takes hundreds of lives in one strike, the next she takes thousands. Soon, it will be tens of thousands. Or worse.”
“But why?” Heir Griboth said, practically spitting the words. He had taken off his officer’s uniform gloves and clenched them in one fist. Now he threw them through the hologram. It distorted and wavered for a few seconds, then snapped back into crystal-clear focus.
Councilwoman Jazlin’s comforting hand came to rest on the Heir’s muscular shoulder.
“I know this is very hard for you, in particular,” she said soothingly. “But the Overlord wants the same thing you want: to determine what’s gone wrong with Heir Taga, before anything irrevocable is done about it. So please, try to focus yourself on the problem at hand. If you were her, and you were her in this place, where would you go?”
Heir Griboth’s jaw clenched and unclenched several times, before he dipped his chin to his chest and exhaled slowly.
“You’re right, Madam Councilwoman. I apologize for my outburst.”
“Well?” Nyfid said, waiting for the younger man’s response.
Heir Griboth spent several long moments pacing around the hologram, his lips moving just slightly—as if he were having a conversation with someone who wasn’t in the room.
“There,” he finally said, jabbing a finger at the second largest gas giant world, which was well away from the inner terrestrials, and much closer to the gate. It had approximately eighteen moons, all of which orbited on tiny ovals of light, much the way the planets, themselves, orbited.
“Why there?” Nyfid asked, genuinely curious.
“She can’t dock anywhere,” Griboth said, “but she will still need a source of fresh fuel. Most jovian worlds have satellites which offer frozen gasses and water. It will be easier for her to soft-land an auxiliary craft on one of those worlds than on a larger terrestrial closer to the home binary. Plus, I know Taga. She has the heart of an explorer—not a killer, I can assure you—and the spectacle of that jovian planet in her viewports would appeal to her.”
“Alright,” Nyfid said, beginning to pace around the holographic representation of the system. “How do we approach without being noticed? Can we stealth ourselves sufficiently to avoid being tracked?”
“I doubt it,” Heir Griboth said, frowning. “If Taga—or whoever is masquerading as Taga’s command—can penetrate Colonial defense networking, they will be able to see through any countermeasures we deploy. No. I had a different idea, but it will take longer.”
“How much longer?” Nyfid said, stopping cold. “Too long a delay, and we risk Taga hitting Uldarran space again before we’ve had a chance to do anything!”
“If you want us to get there with speed, we’ll be seen coming from a long way away,” Griboth responded. “Otherwise, we set course and initial speed, then turn Flamediver dark.”
“Dark?” Jazlin asked, cocking her head to one side. The lines of age in her face had creased around her mouth, which was turned down disapprovingly.
“Yes, Madam Councilwoman,” the younger man said. “Once we’re aligned on a trajectory to reach orbit about the second-to-largest gas planet, we can tu
rn off all of our tell-tale systems and emissions. Let the main drive go cold. Even deactivate the lights and heating systems in all the exterior cabins with viewports facing into space.”
“Of course,” Nyfid said, smiling slightly. “We would approach looking like nothing more than a tiny chip of inert debris coming from this system’s cometary halo.”
“If we had time, I’d look for an actual chip off a comet,” Griboth said. “But such a search might take weeks. Or longer. And even I think that’s too long.”
“It’s decided,” Nyfid said. “Heir Griboth, your experience already serves us well. Carry out your plan. Please let me and the Councilwoman know how we can best assist. Or at least, how we can best stay out of the way.”
“I’m not a stranger to ships, Councilman,” Jazlin said, an edge to her voice. “Unlike you, I make a point of regularly making Colony visits.”
Nyfid felt a tiny bonfire of anger well up in his stomach—then die quickly as his father’s voice echoed in the back of Nyfid’s mind. If Councilwoman Jazlin devoted more of her time to her job, versus self-serving “morale” junkets which consumed both time and state funds, perhaps she and Nyfid could have worked out their differences at an earlier time? Versus consistently finding ways to be on the opposite side of almost every major issue brought to the Council’s attention.
But Nyfid didn’t air his feelings. Instead, he let her have the small victory.
“Quite so,” he said, bowing in her direction—just a touch too low, so as to demonstrate to her, specifically, that he was aware of the fact she was playing a game for the audience on the bridge to see. But not so low as to be clownish or derogatory in his manner. “I do concern myself with Council business a great deal and could afford to put more time into seeing the people. I’ll follow your example, Councilwoman.”
When Nyfid stood erect again, he could tell—from long exposure to the woman and her subtleties—that he had mollified her. Unexpectedly. And what might, at first, have seemed to be a win on her part, had actually been redirected so that Nyfid was now displaying for the audience that he was not so proud a Councilman that he couldn’t take good-sense direction from people with better—or at least more recent—experience.
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