Human, page 20
part #1 of Humanity Ascendant Series
It was a complicated system and it applied to civil matters as well. “Your word carries more weight in court than anyone in that reception, except for Quailu, of course,” he told her. “And you’ve only been freed for, what, a couple of months?”
The space above her nose wrinkled. “Are you telling me they’re just jealous?”
“Well…” he paused, “… if they are, then they probably don’t consciously realize it. Then again, they might just be assholes!”
She laughed. “I don’t see why it can’t be both.”
Bad Timing
B au sat at the governor’s desk. Three faces were projected in front of her, their backgrounds listed beside each. She turned to General Tilsin. “I see no great differences between them. Do you have a preference?”
Tilsin sat behind a second desk, brought in to make room for the new governor. It was meant as a sign that he was there to work with the soon-to-be-appointed leader.
And also to keep a close eye on him.
“Sumugan seems the least shifty,” Tilsin offered. “We can work with him better than the others.”
The three candidates had been selected by the assembly and put forward for Bau’s decision.
She closed the projection and got up from her seat. “Good. Let’s go find him. The sooner we park his backside behind this desk, the sooner I can get home.”
They left through a side door that led to a long, descending corridor. It took them under the public square and back up into the assembly offices.
They found Sumugan’s office on the two hundred fifteenth floor. He practically jumped out of his seat when they walked in.
“Assemblyman Sumugan,” Bau said, coming straight to the point, “you will be my representative, here on Arbella.”
Tilsin cursed violently, radiating alarm.
“General?” Bau turned to face him.
Tilsen held up his forearm, showing a small holo interface. “A horde of refugee ships are falling out of path in our approach corridor. Their registries list them as being from Gimmerai.”
Gimmerai and Arbella. The two worlds were heavily agricultural and cut into Bau’s profit margins. Marduk had assured her the imperial court would stay out of this and Shullat, the minor lord she’d taken them from, didn’t have the forces to face even her small military.
She had pacified Gimmerai in much the same way she was now winning over the Arbellans. Gimmeraian refugees meant someone had snuck in behind her and taken it over, most likely Shullat, but he didn’t have the forces to do it nor the reputation to win allies to his cause.
Who would be willing to aid someone like him?
“Governor,” Tilsin said, looking up from his holo, “congratulations, and my apologies for this immediate crisis, but…” he turned to Bau. “My Lady, you have to leave. They’re likely headed this way as we speak. No sense taking half the territory back and leaving us here to prepare for a fight. They’ll want to hit us here while we’re still scratching our heads.”
“Absolutely not!” she flared. “You’d insist on sending my escort with me and you’ll need those ships here.”
“But the danger…”
“…Is something I decided to accept when I began planning this venture.”
“Those ships may be needed at home,” Tilsin suggested, feeling her disagreement. “They might head straight for our heart, counting on an attack at Gimmerai to trick us into thinking the next fight will happen here at Arbella.”
“I’ve had new ships grown,” she told him. “The crews are green, but an attacker won’t know that when he sees a mass of cruisers and frigates facing him. And besides,” she leaned in, “you and I both know the attack’s most likely to be coming here next.”
“They’ll throw whatever they have at us,” Tilsin warned.
“All the more reason why you need my ships, General.” She reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. “You should start planning our defense, old friend.”
Tilsin paused for a moment, his discontent clearly felt but it changed suddenly to acceptance. He nodded and left the office.
“So,” Bau said conversationally, turning back to Sumugan, “how’s your first day as governor going so far?”
He offered her a wry smile. “Well, I’ve seen one important improvement over our previous situation, at least.”
“And what is that?”
“Leaders don’t run away when trouble threatens.”
Moved by the clear respect she could feel from Sumugan, Bau’s usual gift for sharp banter failed her. She gestured to the door. “Perhaps you should continue this crisis from your new office. Any announcements will carry more weight if they come from the capitol building.”
T ilsin was tempted to review his deployments but he knew it was just nerves. He’d already set up his forces to the best advantage for this initial engagement. It would do his bridge crew no good to see him obsessing over his plans. “Commander Bilia, you have the bridge”.
He walked into the ready-room, just aft of the bridge, and poured a mug of coffee. He took a seat and sipped at the stale brew, gazing up in surprise at the holo display of his ambush. He smiled, shaking his head.
Despite his firm resolve not to keep going over his plans, he’d opened this screen without even realizing it.
The plan was a good one. Despite the obvious good sense one might see in bringing in an attack force from any other location than the designated arrival corridor, it wasn’t advisable.
Shullat would have to assume there would be mines to deny him a sneaky approach and there were, though they were sparsely deployed. Still, they had incredibly long ranges and their effective areas were just barely overlapped to provide full coverage.
Upon sensing an enemy ship, a mine would engage its small pitch drive and ‘fall’ toward its target.
Imperial conventions prevented the mining of approach corridors, so just about every battle at a planet took place in the corridors.
Shullat could try an unexpected approach, but he’d lose ships, maybe even the one carrying his own precious hide.
Tilsin had all of his frigates with him, leaving the cruisers, minus his own flagship, to stand between the attackers and Arbella. Like all worlds, the approach corridor was between the planet and the sun to simplify the gravitational effect calculations used in the transition out of path.
It meant the attackers would be coming at Arbella with the sun at their backs, making them harder to detect but Tilsin was waiting even further out.
He’d provide the enemy positions to his cruisers, ensuring his own force was off-axis before opening fire. He didn’t want to hit his own ships.
He frowned. That still left the local defense forces who were in orbit. They were ready to fight, knowing now the difference that the Lady Bau would make in their lives, but they were a last line of defense and a thin one, at that.
And all those refugees crowding the orbitals were going to get plastered. He knew from bitter experience that telling refugees they were in danger and actually getting them to move were two completely unrelated things.
And he’d also learned how to work around that. He got up from his seat. “Lieutenant,” he said, stepping back onto the bridge and turning to the communications officer, “Send a message to Captain Mearwhal aboard the cruiser Cremani . Tell him he’s to prepare to inspect the refugee ships and requisition any supplies that may prove useful to us during the fight to come. If we drive them back, we’re still going to be in for a long siege.
“Also tell him he’s not to leave his defensive sector. Any refugee ships moving to the departure-standby queue will have to be ignored for the time being.” He nodded to the officer. “Send that in the open.”
“Aye sir,” the lieutenant replied, grinning. Though he didn’t know exactly what his general was up to, he could sense his confidence.
There was still the defense forces. Tilsin knew he could make better use of them. It would be irresponsible of him to simply leave them in orbit.
That departure corridor was about to get crowded…
“Tactical, get me a list of all the freighters in orbit, quickly!”
Shullat thought he was going to surprise them. He’d learn what it meant to tangle with an experienced warrior.
Cut Loose
E th stared at the small coin laying on his ready-room table aboard the Mouse , the cruiser they’d seized from Uktannu’s forces. He was feeling a coldness, deep inside himself.
That coin could be anywhere. Movement in any direction came with a corresponding probability tied to the surrounding location coordinates. Those coordinates were tied to matter and it explained why Eth stayed in his seat rather than floating up to the ceiling.
He wasn’t sure the explanation was entirely right but it gave him a framework for understanding, so it would do for now. The ship’s grav plating mimicked the same coordinate gradient one found on a planet. The closer you got to the plating, or to a planet, the more locations you could move to.
Sure, you could move in the opposite direction, but not for long. The odds were always in favor of falling down-gradient. Like a casino, gravity always won out in the long game.
Eth brought expectation to bear on the coin. The same absolute confidence that started impulses moving in his own neurons now created potential to the right of the coin. Just enough to overcome the friction between the coin and the smooth table.
And the coin moved.
Somehow, he’d found a way to rig the game.
It had only moved a finger’s width, but he’d done it with his mind. He shuddered, grasping for his coffee mug and draining it of the last of the hot liquid. The effort had cost him some of his heat energy.
“Sir, contact!” Oliv shouted from out on the bridge.
He got up, forgetting about the coin and the chills that came from moving it. He raced out the door onto the bridge. “What do we have?” he asked, eyes taking in the large fleet of warships, showing on the holo, now approaching Heiropolis.
“Eighteen cruisers,” Oliv replied, “three of ‘em heavies, thirty-two frigates and a ‘lick & stick’. Looks like they all ping friendly.”
“Keep us at General Quarters,” Eth ordered.
The ‘lick & stick’ was a hastily grown cargo vessel, based on a long range shuttle core, used to carry supplies or personnel. They were usually the barest minimum vessel to do the job, no weapons and horrible maneuverability. He enlarged the holo of the utility ship. It had two landing bays with signatures for six shuttles inside.
“Incoming hail,” Glen said. “The Lord Sandrak orders you to report aboard his flagship immediately!”
Eth’s body temperature was back to normal by the time he reached the Mouse’s hangar deck. He took one of the scout-ships with Ed as pilot and they approached at high speed, stopping hard at the entrance to the forward landing bay. They slid inside, scattering a team of handlers who’d frozen in terror at their brutally fast arrival.
Eth started opening the side ramp as soon as they passed the navigational shielding and hopped down as his ship’s landing struts touched the deck.
The crew on Sandrak’s ships were entirely Quailu and, not having been stationed at Kish like Mishak’s crews, couldn’t care less that he was Human, but they still showed open revulsion for him anyway. The cause was no mystery: they couldn’t read him.
But he could read them so it almost evened out, though he had to live with the disgust they broadcast his way. He walked up to the officer of the deck, who showed only a little surprise at seeing a native officer – it did happen from time to time – but his unease at talking to a blank slate was plain.
“The Lord Sandrak is waiting for you to report,” the commander told him. “He’s on the bridge.” He gestured toward the obvious exit, such was his eagerness to get rid of Eth.
Eth walked to the bridge, feeling the mental shudders as he passed crewmen on the ramp. It was going to be interesting to see how Sandrak handled this.
He stepped into the bridge and waited quietly as Sandrak finished a conversation with one of his officers. He turned to Eth, frowned and then abruptly affected a perfectly natural attitude.
Eth could feel the faint distaste from Sandrak, who he’d never met before this moment, but he also had the distinct feeling that he’d decided not to let his reaction show.
He may well have assumed that Eth had always been impossible to read. Whatever he’d assumed, he wouldn’t be demanding to know why Eth was different from other Humans.
“Well?” he said curtly. “What’s the status here at Heiropolis?”
Business then. Eth resisted the urge to let out a sigh of relief, especially since he still wasn’t out of the woods. “Stable, Lord – especially now that you’re here.” He felt anger from Sandrak and knew he’d screwed up.
“Get your lips off my rectum! I have courtiers for that, probably locked away somewhere unpleasant.” Sandrak wanted honesty and the more brutal the better.
Eth felt it clearly. Quailu knew how to moderate their emotions during confrontations like this one but Sandrak didn’t know that Eth could read him. “The Heiropolitans don’t really believe they were in any danger,” he told him. “The governor himself refuses to believe that the Lord Uktannu almost seized control of the system.”
“So nothing has changed?” He radiated astonishment.
Eth shook his head. “Aside from our presence, Lord, very little. I’ve tried to convince his defense forces to step up their patrols, to push farther out, recruit enough crews to man all of their warships, but they laugh us off. We’re fighting an uphill battle here.” He nearly reached for his weapon, such was the anger he felt coming from his overlord.
“You let them laugh at you?” Sandrak said quietly, though the depth of his feeling was hitting Eth like a punch to the gut. “I don’t know what my son was thinking, making you an officer, but your commission has the backing of two electors, if my information is correct, and laughing at you is laughing at both me and my son!”
Eth felt Sandrak’s sourness at the mention of two electors and, perhaps, a little concern. Was he feeling threatened by his own son?
“The civil administrators in charge of recruiting are beyond my authority,” Eth insisted, “but the lieutenant commander in charge of local defense-planning isn’t. He’s in my brig.”
Sandrak drew slightly straighter, amusement evident in his mind. “You locked up a superior?”
Eth shook his head. “Lord, I locked up a local security officer, commissioned by a governor who refuses to see his own peril. I’d hardly call him a superior …”
Sandrak let out a sharp bark of laughter. “Send him to my ship. I’ll deal with him. I’ll have to deal with all of them, most likely.
“In the meantime,” he continued, “we have the latest draft from Kish with us – more than five hundred of your kind. They’ve been crewing that l&s bucket,” he said, waving at the ‘lick & stick’ ship in his holo-display, “and they managed to get here in one piece, so I suppose their training sessions were worthwhile.
“I was going to leave them with my son but, since you’re here, I’ll hand them over to you. I’ll be too busy here to go chasing after Mishak just to hand over a pack of… Humans. Take them and go.”
Eth had caught the slip. Whatever word Sandrak had held back was less polite, most likely ‘slaves’.
Eth could understand why Mishak didn’t like his father. The old bastard looked down his nose at everyone. They’d done well to anticipate Uktannu’s scheme. Eth and his Humans had even taken one of the enemy cruisers but now Sandrak was here, taking over without a word of acknowledgement.
And he now had over half a thousand new recruits to worry over. He frowned. “Lord, if I may make a request?”
Sandrak stifled a response, though whether it was annoyance or surprise, Eth couldn’t tell, not with the limited context he had on his lord’s father.
“The request itself will determine the answer to that question,” the Quailu rumbled.
It was, in Eth’s opinion, a weak way to deal with a subordinate. Either allow a question or not. Nonetheless, Sandrak was a prince of the realm and Eth was a lowly mushkenu. “I’d rather not leave orbit with a pack of half-trained recruits. If you have no objections, I’d like to remain in orbit for a few days and put them through a few exercises, maybe even have some of the more promising candidates try stalking some of your ships?”
He didn’t need context to recognize the curiosity in Sandrak’s mind.
“You’d like to try some attack runs on my ships?”
“Only if it won’t disrupt your operations here, Lord.”
“Disrupt?” Sandrak blurted in surprise, clearly expecting little more than amusement from such Human antics. He mastered his reaction and waved a dismissive hand. “Do your worst, Lieutenant. We’ll be ready for you.”
E th returned to the Mouse . He walked onto the bridge and opened a channel to Noa. “Get over to the brig with a couple of your guys and grab that gasbag lieutenant commander. Put him on Your Last Chance. Glen’s waiting for you.”
“You’re cut loose from Heiropolis, Captain?” a deep voice asked behind him.
Eth turned. “We are, Father. Free to head for Dur. We’ll leave in a couple of days.”
“But not exactly ordered to Dur, now, are you?” The oracle’s intonation had no question in it.
Eth looked at him for a moment. “I suppose you’re right, but where else should we be going other than back to our own lord?”
“I saw the attack on Heiropolis coming,” Father Sulak told him, “three months ago. Do you think that fool of a governor would listen to me?” He shook his head in frustration.
“I also saw the next bit of mischief that Uktannu will get himself into,” he continued, pulling out a strip of over-dried fat and gnawing off a corner. “He’ll be stopped by native troops, three days from now.”
“Are you saying we are going to stop him?”
