"Would a million Federation credits do?" he asked, holding up an antique credit stick.
Rachael gaped again. "Why didn't you offer me that from the first?" A million credits would pay for the trip six times over.
"I enjoy bargaining," he said. "You'll never know what you may have earned if you had agreed without all this fuss." He held out the pistol to her, grip first, and she took it from him numbly. "If there is nothing more to discuss, I would like to be on my way. You'll find the port authority amenable to our departure at your convenience."
Chapter Nineteen
As Mandor once again enter the Chamber of the Ancients, he was struck with the impression of being surrounded, even though the large room was achingly empty. Ana was breathing heavily beside him. She wasn't used to gravity as high as Rhyr's; she'd only just gotten used to the gravity on Dawn. He wasn't sure why the Rhyrhans had asked for her to come along, but he suspected it had to do with her husband.
He was wrong.
"Ana Tebrey," a voice said suddenly. "I am Pavla. Welcome to Rhyr."
Ana looked startled by the sudden appearance of the elderly Rhyrhan, but bowed a curtsy. Mandor suppressed a smile. He liked the short woman from Cedeforthy. He really wanted a chance to meet the man who'd won her heart; he had to be a good man.
"Come with me, my dear. We have much to discuss." Pavla took Ana's arm and steered her to a low row of bench-like seats along a far wall.
Mandor started to follow but was stopped by a large hand on his shoulder. He was unsurprised to be looking up at Develos as he turned. The Rhyrhan gave him a reassuring smile that wasn't all that reassuring, considering the three-centimeter fangs.
"What they discuss is for them alone. Come with me."
Mandor sighed and followed Develos across the chamber. At least they had dropped the pretense of telepathic speaking and were using Normarish. Probably figured he'd try to listen in to a telepathic conversation.
"I'd like to point out that Ana Tebrey is not authorized to speak for the Sentient Concord, only for herself," said Mandor.
"And what about you?" Develos asked; his voice was deep. "Are you authorized to speak for your government?"
"Within reason," Mandor replied. He sat where indicated. The stone bench was neither warm nor cold. "I doubt my government would back me if I declared war on you or something, but otherwise I'd say we're good."
"You have a singular sense of humor, Mandor Shadovsky."
"Should I take that as a compliment?"
"I wouldn't."
Mandor didn't know what to say to that. He hadn't meant to be offensive. Not really.
"We do not support what you are doing to the Nurgg."
"Did you support what they were doing to us?" Mandor snapped, diplomacy forgotten. "I didn't think the Combine liked the Nurgg much."
"We do not, but this genocide your species is indulging in is wrong, no matter what the Nurgg have done."
"I bet the Slith don't feel that way." The Slith were a reptilian species that had been badly used by Nurgg before the Rhyrhans had liberated their planet. They were now part of the Combine. The Slith lived only to kill Nurgg.
"They are a young species and prone to foolishness. Yours should know better."
Mandor shrugged.
"I didn't have much say in the matter," he said. "The Earth Federation heads the Alliance. The Sentient Concord and the Loacree Empire of the Homndruu are not equal partners. The Federation suggested destroying the Nurgg homeworld as a way to stop the slaughter of millions of our peoples. I don't remember the Rhyrhans having any better ideas on how end the war."
Develos sighed and looked away. "We did not," he said simply, but there were depths of pain there that Mandor didn't understand. "But we could not be a part of such a thing."
"I understand," Mandor said. "I hope you know that we wouldn't, either, if we could see any other way to protect our people."
"We do not hold you accountable, Mandor. Not you or your people."
"Okay." Mandor wasn't sure where Develos was going with the conversation, but it was good to know that the Rhyrhans didn't hold the Concord to blame for the Nurgg genocide. The combined Alliance fleet was probably already engaged in that battle. Mandor was glad he wasn't a part of that. He had enough to feel guilty about.
"Do you know why the Nurgg were attacking our species?" Develos asked.
Mandor frowned. "I don't think anyone ever figured that out. They never would talk to us."
"They talked to us."
"What?" Mandor stood up. "Did you explain to them that they had to stop attacking us or we would wipe them out? You could have stopped this?"
"Sit down, child," Develos said coldly.
Mandor sat. He was suddenly reminded that the word Nurgg had come from the Rhyrhans.
"We talked to them, but they were incapable of stopping their war. They were harmed by the Achenar."
"So they were uplifted by them."
"They were raised out of the muds of their homeworld and augmented to serve the Achenar as their slaves, yes. This was millions of your years ago. Afterward the Achenar came to this part of the galaxy. They modified the Homndruu, but then they found something that stopped their advance. It is fortunate for us that they did, as they never found the Slith or ourselves. But it may not have been fortunate in the long run."
"What about us?" Mandor asked with a chill of foreboding. "What about humans?"
"We're not sure exactly," Develos said. "But we do know that what stopped them was something they found, and it was their downfall."
"Something they found?" Mandor said, puzzled. "The Homndruu are very close to the Earth, in space. It always seemed strange that the Achenar hadn't visited. Given the descriptions the Homndruu give of winged humanoids, and our own mythologies…" He trailed off as Develos nodded.
"We suspect much the same," the Rhyrhan said. "They would have visited Earth some one hundred thousand to fifty thousand years ago."
"Humans did change, biologically, around that time."
"We know. We also know that the Achenar did not survive the contact."
"You think humans were responsible for the fall of the Achenar?" Mandor laughed. "We barely had fire!"
"Don't be ridiculous," said Develos. "Not humans, but something else. There is something about your world that makes it attractive to… certain kinds of beings. We know that the Mo'Ceri visited your world. There may have been others."
"The who?" Mandor had never heard of the Mo'Ceri.
"Your mythology knew them as sphinxes and ki-rin."
"So the Earth was visited by two alien species in our past?"
"At least," Develos said. "We suspect that a third, older race that had been there as well. It is they that the Achenar awakened."
The Concord merchant vessel Fredericks Grove was fleeing at full burn, falling out of the 70 Orphiuchi system at sixty thousand kilometers per second. Near-space was filled with electronic countermeasures as the ship tried desperately to shrug off missile lock.
Closing in on the doomed ship were a Federation destroyer, the Garibaldi, and two customs frigates. The Garibaldi was closing at the rate of thirty thousand kilometers per second, steadily pulling away from the slower frigates and gaining quickly on the merchant vessel. The captain of the Garibaldi was angry. Her ship wasn't even supposed to be involved in an action like this, but the fleeing vessel had lit up its engines to full power while still in the merchant lanes. The gravitic wake had damaged a dozen ships.
"Explain to them again that they are required to reverse course and return to Frenchberg Station to be impounded," Captain Elizabeth Sturgeon said. Her voice had a cold edge. She didn't like the Concord under normal circumstances. After this ship had refused customs inspection and run, she'd begun to suspect they must be carrying something nasty as cargo, like illegal weapons. Word had gone out weeks before to watch for Concord ships carrying weapons to terrorists within the Federation. The fact that a mere merchant vessel had powerfu
l electronic countermeasures told her she was right.
"Aye, Captain," Gunnery Chief Weber acknowledged.
On the nose of the destroyer, the twin two-meter-bore planetary bombardment laser cannon swiveled into position and fired down the length of the hull of the merchant vessel, leaving dully-glowing trails across it.
Captain Sturgeon could see debris from the grazing hit on her display. "Good shooting, gunny," she said.
"They are still running, Captain."
"We're getting close to the hyperlimit, Captain," said Lt. Commander Victoria Lane.
Captain Sturgeon swore. "Any answers to our hails?" she asked.
"No, Captain."
"We can't let them escape. We have to draw the line somewhere," she said to no one in particular. "Gunny?"
"Yes, Captain?"
"Target their engines."
"Captain?"
"You heard me, Chief."
"Are you ordering me to deliberately destroy the civilian vessel?" Chief Weber said clearly, for the record.
"You have a hearing problem, mister?" the captain asked.
The bridge crew exchanged nervous glances. Warning the ship to return to port was one thing, but deliberately destroying a civilian ship under the control of a foreign power was something else. Even if the ship was carrying contraband, it was illegal to destroy it, and they didn't know. Not for certain.
"Targeting engines, Captain."
There was a sharp intake of breath from someone, but the captain ignored it.
Civilian ships weren't armored in layers of thermal superconductor and beryllium steel the way military vessels were. The invisible twin beams of the laser struck the engines of the vessel and practically cut the Fredericks Grove in half lengthwise. The remains of the ship were consumed in a fiery blast as its fusion engine lost containment.
"Dear god," Lane muttered.
"You have something to say, XO?"
"No, Captain." No one else dared even to breathe.
"Chief? Any chance of survivors?"
"Not a chance in hell, Captain."
Captain Sturgeon nodded her head sharply. She could hear the recrimination in the voice of the gunnery chief. He hadn't wanted to fire on the merchant vessel, and in hindsight maybe it wasn't such a good idea. She hadn't expected the vessel to explode. "Take us back to port. Communications?"
"Yes, Captain?"
"Get me a secure line to the Admiralty. They are going to want to know about this ASAP. Also, tell the customs people they can stand down. I'll be in my office."
Ahead of the Garibaldi, the debris field slowly expanded. In its heart, a small beacon broadcast the fate of the ship and the captain's last message back to the Concord via DEP.
Chapter Twenty
Captain Rachael Vardegan grew tired of her passenger quickly as the days passed.
It wasn't that he was abrasive or underfoot. If fact, he stayed in the small cabin she had assigned him most of the time. It wasn't even the fact that he had smuggled a small travel chest aboard somehow, although she was bothered by that, if only because she just couldn't figure out how he'd gotten it aboard. She'd reviewed the security logs several times with no luck. For all she knew, he'd pulled it out of his ass.
No, it was more his imperious nature. Their conversation that morning had solidified her opinion of him.
That was another thing that bothered her. He'd simply refused to give her his name. When she asked him about it, he'd answered with, "Yes, I have a name. At least, I think I must have once had one. In all probability, more than one." She'd spent an hour in the cargo hold exploring the more colorful aspects of the various languages she knew after that conversation.
He had cornered her again as she worked her way forward.
"I don't see why it is necessary to stop at every star system along the way. I've certainly paid you enough to get me where I want to go," the man said.
"It's not every star system. I told you that before," she said with more patience than she felt. She hadn't forgotten how easily he'd taken her gun. "We need to pick up supplies along the way. We don't have enough food to travel for over sixty days in hyperspace without stopping. You don't want to go without food, do you?"
He had been eating his way through twice as much as all of her crew combined.
"Very well," he said haughtily. "If you feel you must."
Rachael gritted her teeth and retreated to the bridge.
Nancy was there practicing tai chi. It was always difficult to maintain physical fitness on a small ship. Rachael wished that she could afford a larger ship, one with a small gym, but she had too much debt. Like most ship owners, she barely made enough credits to cover operating expenses.
"You look like you just had an encounter with your favorite person," said Nancy.
"Yeah," Rachael replied. "He has graciously given us permission to stop at Gamma Ceti, the shmuck."
Nancy snorted. "That man has enough ego to fill our cargo hold. Still," she said with a grin, "he is kind of hot."
"You can't be serious," Rachael replied.
"Sure I can, I'm just not very often. He's tall, impossibly handsome, rich, and mysterious? Honey, if you don't think that's hot, then I need to start worrying about you sneaking into my cabin at night."
Rachael laughed. "Sorry, strictly men for me," she said. "You can sleep without fear, at least where I'm concerned. The problem I have with him is that I'm not sure he really is a man."
"Now I am worried about you," Nancy said, settling into her acceleration couch with a sigh. "If he's not a man, then what is he? A eunuch? A hermaphrodite?"
"Not like that. I mean, I don't know. He's just too odd," Rachael said. "His mannerisms are all off. He sometimes acts like his body is just a puppet for something else." Rachael shuddered. "His clothes are weird, too, and he seems so out of touch with reality sometimes."
"Maybe he's a space vampire," Nancy said in a sepulchral tone.
Rachael laughed again, shedding some of her tension. "Okay, you win," she said. "He's just weird."
"I'll give you that," replied Nancy. "Now concede on the hot part."
Rachael flipped her off and settled into her couch.
"I thought we’d discussed that," Nancy quipped.
Rachael entered the new destination codes into her console. "Francesca?" she said, addressing the ship's machine intelligence.
"Yes, Captain?"
"Do you have a revised time for our arrival at our new destination?"
"Yes, Captain. I have the Fleet navigational buoy on my long-range sensors. We are thirty-seven minutes from the outer hyperspace threshold of Gamma Ceti. Would you like me to handle the translation?"
"Yes, please," said Rachael.
"Very well, Captain."
Rachel stood and started to leave.
"Rachael?"
"I'm not going to concede anything, Nancy."
"What about our cargo?"
Rachael grimaced. "I'd rather not jettison it. If we can find a buyer, we'll make quite a tidy profit from this trip, even if we did buy the stuff here. Hell, we sell it at a discount and we still make a profit."
"And if we get inspected by customs," Nancy said, "we'll spend the rest of our days on a penal asteroid mining beryllium."
"Right, like they'd bother. They'd probably just space us. It's a lot cheaper."
"Thanks. I needed that little gem of positivism. You see, I had this thought..."
"That would be a first," Rachael said with a laugh. "What was that?"
"We could reassign it in our manifests as confidential cargo belonging to our mysterious passenger. If they inspect us, we can deny having any knowledge of what we were carrying. Let him take the fall for it."
"That's harsh and dirty and underhanded. I'll have nothing to do with it," Rachael said. "You do it. It'll serve the bastard right if he gets nailed by the Feds."
Hrothgar Tebrey decided to take a week of long-overdue leave when the Centaur reached Prism. The weeks spent coop
ed up on the ship had restored his body but drained his soul. He wanted to get away from technology for a while and taste air that hadn’t been recycled a thousand times.
He'd always enjoyed taking leave on Prism. The planet was a primordial paradise. It had slightly lower than Earth-normal gravity and almost no axial tilt, giving it very calm and stable weather. The sky was dominated by the planet's sister world Kaleido. It was only truly dark on those rare nights when Prism's heavily volcanic twin wasn't in the sky.
After checking in at Camp Forester, Tebrey and Hunter spent most of their leave together exploring the thick jungles and mountains surrounding the Fleet base. All of the large predators had been exterminated years ago, but a few of the smaller ones sometimes crept within a few kilometers of the base. Tebrey thought it would make for good hunting. It had been months since Hunter had been able to really get out and run, and Tebrey found himself laughing at his companion's youthful exuberance. It was easy to forget that Hunter was less than two years old.
Well, Hunter thought reasonably, I did have the advantage of being born, so to speak, fully grown. I don't think I'd have been happy having to wait years to attain my full size.
I guess so, Tebrey thought back. I think there is something to what the Sentient Concord says about the issue, and growing up isn't all that bad. What I mean is, you didn't really have a choice but to do what you were told. You didn't even get a chance to develop a personality that wasn't influenced by outside forces.
Maybe, Hunter replied. But I am who I am because of that. I like me. I think.
Tebrey laughed again.
It felt good to laugh. He hadn't really been happy since he left Ana on Dawn. He only had three and a half months of service left, and then he could go home to her. It was his shining beacon against the darkness of his job.
I like you, too, Tebrey replied to Hunter.
You could have answered that a little more quickly, the cat thought sarcastically.
Sorry, I was thinking about Ana.
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