To Challenge Heaven, page 2
Vlad pondered that, then raised an eyebrow, and General Wilson chuckled.
“Noticed a slight omission there, didn’t you, Vlad?” he asked cheerfully, pointedly ignoring the glare Dvorak gave him or his sister’s suddenly resigned expression. “Care to explain to Vlad and Stephen why you guys are here, Merahl?”
The red-crested alien glanced at Dvorak and prominent nose flaps twitched visibly … and energetically.
“Oh, stop laughing and just tell him,” Dvorak growled, and the alien turned his attention to Vlad.
“My spouses and I are Sarthian,” he said. Or, rather, the slim translator on the chain around his neck said it, and Vlad’s eyebrows rose once more. The translating devices the Shongairi had brought to Earth had sounded like machines, converting the Shongair language into the manifold languages of Earth without any vestige of tone or nuance. Indeed, their ability to handle tonal languages, like Mandarin, had been … limited, to say the least. But while it was obvious that Thornak’s natural vocal apparatus was poorly suited to forming human words, his translated voice was richly expressive. And what it was expressing at this moment, unless Vlad was sadly mistaken, was affectionate amusement.
“Sarth is the first extra-Solar planet to have joined the Terran Alliance,” Merahl continued, “and at least one of us is required to accompany Clan Ruler David at all times as his sherhynas.” The last word was clearly in Merahl’s native language. That was Vlad’s first thought. Then—
“Clan Ruler David?” he repeated.
“Yep!” Wilson sounded delighted. “And that makes my baby sister Clan Ruler Consort Sharon. Actually, their Sarthian names are Clan Ruler David SharDa nar Dvorak and Clan Ruler Consort Sharon SharDa nar Dvorak. Falls trippingly off the tongue, doesn’t it?” he added brightly.
“You do realize that even if Annette won’t, I have the authority to have Merahl shoot your ass, right, Rob?” Dvorak growled.
“Hey, I’m not the guy who took over half a planet!”
“I did not—” Dvorak began, then paused and drew a deep breath.
“I believe I said we had a lot to discuss, Vlad,” he said. “I’m not sure Sarth is the best place to begin, but now that my beloved and soon-to-be-deceased brother-in-law has decided it’s all just as funny as hell, maybe we should go there anyway.”
“Oh, definitely!” Wilson said, while several other people seemed to find it very difficult not to laugh.
* * *
“—SO THEN MALACHI personally took Juzhyr’s surrender, after identifying himself as my son.” Dvorak shrugged, his expression trapped between wry amusement, something very like consternation, and resigned acceptance. “Since Juzhyr had been Clan Qwern’s clan ruler when Clan Qwern attacked the Terran mission, and I was the head of that mission—although, of course, I was still unconscious in the regeneration tank at the time—that meant the entire clan had surrendered to me. Or, rather, to Malachi as my agent. And that,” he sighed, “meant that Clan Qwern and the entire Qwernian Empire no longer existed.”
“So if I have this straight,” Stephen Buchevsky said in a careful tone, “you basically acquired an entire empire by right of conquest?” He tipped back in his chair and looked at Vlad. “Bit of an overachiever, wouldn’t you say?”
“I must acknowledge that it surpasses my own modest accomplishments as Voivode of Wallachia,” Vlad replied, clearly suppressing laughter. “I feel a certain degree of jealousy!”
“It’s not like I set out to do it!” Dvorak protested. “And I gave that … impetuous youngster a good talking-to, too!”
“And just where do you think your son acquired his ‘impetuosity’?” his wife asked sweetly. “Imprinted on his male role model early, didn’t he?”
“I never—” Dvorak began, then stopped himself as Thornak BryMerThor’s translator produced an extraordinarily human-sounding laugh. Dvorak glared, and the Sarthian—who, Vlad had discovered, was the female member of the tri-sexual union of Dvorak’s sherhynas—nodded her head, in what Vlad had also discovered was the Sarthian gesture of negation.
“Yes, Thornak?” Dvorak said just a bit repressively. “You had something to add?”
“I fear I must stand at your wife’s back in this matter, Clan Ruler,” the captain replied. “Your son is very like you. And—” her translator-produced tone became much more serious “—it was a very good thing for the Empire that he is.”
“I must agree,” Batma said. Vlad looked at her, and she shrugged. “With all deference to Thornak and her spouses, I had a rather closer proximity than most members of our mission to Juzhyr and the Qwernians. There was much to admire about their culture, but there were … downsides, as well. And among those downsides was the fact that tradition, personal rule, and personal loyalty played a much greater role than the rule of law among them. They found the very concept of international law … arcane, which had unfortunate implications for things like diplomacy and formal, binding treaties.”
“And we still find it—the concept of international law, I mean—rather bizarre,” Thornak inserted. “We are making progress as a clan, but it will be some generations, I fear, before we match Dianto in that respect.” She gave a very human-looking shrug.
“For that matter,” Batma said, “there truly is much to be said for the Qwernian—well, the Dvorakan, now—traditions. And even if there weren’t, Dave really couldn’t have renounced the clan rulership, as badly as we all knew he wanted to. It would have completely destabilized their empire, because there would have been no clear line of succession. That would almost certainly have resulted in a civil war between competing claimants and, almost as badly, have prevented Sarth’s inclusion in the Terran Alliance. The Planetary Union had already determined that the decision to join must be endorsed by every nation on the planet, not just some of them, and no one could have spoken for what had been the Qwernian Empire if it disintegrated. As Clan Ruler, on the other hand, Dave could simply sign on the dotted line, and it was done. If he were to choose to renounce the treaty, they’d follow his decision to do that without a qualm, as well, but as long as his orders are to abide by it, they’ll cross every t and dot every i.”
“And just who’s running the show back on Sarth while you go gallivanting around the stars?” Buchevsky asked.
“I have a very good urizhar looking after Dvoraka,” Dvorak replied, using his own translator software to produce the Sarthian title. “It means roughly ‘viceroy’ or maybe ‘vizier,’ he said. “Fellow by the name of Abu Bakr. I won’t say he turned any handsprings of delight when I offered him the job, but he was a pretty near perfect fit. And he’s also the head of our permanent delegation on Sarth.”
Vlad cocked his head, then nodded slowly.
“It seems unlikely to me that any human empire could have … acquiesced in such a transformation,” he said. “But I suppose that is rather the point, is it not? Sarthians—” he inclined his head across the table at the nonhumans “—are not humans, are they?”
“I believe we have more in common than one might think,” Brykira BryMerThor replied. “There are differences, however. Especially between humans and Dvorakians. Those disgustingly effete Diantians are much more like you, I fear.” The neutro’s translator voice rippled with laughter.
“They are,” Dvorak agreed, “although it was really the way the Qwernians responded that led to our presence here in Shong, in a lot of ways.”
“Should I assume that you have come to lend your voices to Stephen’s and advise me to hold my hand against these vermin?”
Vlad’s tone had turned colder and those green eyes hardened as they met Dvorak’s across the briefing room table. In that moment, it was much easier to remember why he was known to history as Vlad Tepes.
“Yes, actually.” Dvorak met that agate gaze levelly. “I have. We have.”
Silence hovered for a long, taut second as their eyes held one another.
“There is such a thing as justice,” Vlad said then, softly. “Such a thing as retribution. These … creatures, these Shongairi, came uninvited into our star system. We had never injured them in any way. And they announced their presence with a kinetic strike which killed millions upon millions of humans. Of your own ‘breathers.’ Of your families.” He nodded to Bai Guiying, who looked back serenely. “Your children.” He reached out to lay a hand on Buchevsky’s shoulder and shook his head slowly, his expression carved from granite. “They followed that up with additional strikes that killed not millions, but billions, until not even half the human race survived. Until, dissatisfied even with that, they planned to murder the rest of humanity in its entirety. What claim can such as they present upon our mercy?”
“Mercy isn’t something you claim from another,” Dvorak said quietly. “It’s something you extend to others. And it isn’t solely for the benefit of those to whom you show it, Vlad. It’s also the salvation of your own soul.”
“Then perhaps it is the Shongairi’s misfortune that I have no soul.” Vlad smiled, and his teeth shifted, extending ever so slightly into fangs.
“That’s … not as much of a given as you may have thought,” Dvorak said.
“I like you, Dave Dvorak. And I admire and respect you. But do not presume to lecture me on the loss of one’s soul.” Vlad’s voice was chiseled ice, and his eyes were bleaker than any glacier. “My soul was stained enough even before the curse came upon me. Now?”
He shrugged, and Longbow Torino stirred in his chair. He opened his mouth, but Dvorak raised a hand before the general could speak.
“First,” he said, still quietly, “I suspect your soul was in somewhat better state than you thought it was. The man—and, yes, Vlad, whatever else, you’re still a man—before me wouldn’t be here today if you’d truly been the soulless monster history says you were. And that I think you’ve allowed yourself to be convinced that you were. A hard, often brutal man? Yes. I’ll give you that. And even cruel. But I also know the time in which that man lived, the challenges and threats he faced, and I find it difficult to believe that the man who could become the person sitting across this table from me was any of those things because he wanted to be. And whatever you may once have been, I don’t believe you’re any of those things today. I’ve spent too much time with Pieter and Dan and the other vampires you made before you left Earth to believe they’re damned to hell, will they or won’t they, because of their monstrous nature. And if they aren’t, neither are you.”
Their gazes held across the table, and Dvorak inhaled deeply.
“But, second, your ‘curse’ isn’t remotely what you think it is.”
Vlad stiffened, a terrible core of anger burning suddenly in the ice of his eyes. The anger of one who had lived for seven hundred years unclean, accursed, cast out into the darkness. Of one who had borne every ounce of his curse’s crushing weight for all those years.
“Breather,” he said ever so softly, “be very careful. You do not know—”
“No, Vlad,” Torino said. “He does know.” Vlad’s eyes whipped to the general, still fiery, and Torino shrugged ever so slightly. “At least, he knows something you don’t,” he said. “You can’t, because we only discovered it after you’d left Earth.”
A brief, titanic sliver of silence hovered in the briefing room. Then Vlad sat back in his chair.
“What?” he asked coldly.
“The docs have examined the ‘vampires’ you left behind to protect and help us,” Dvorak said, and Vlad’s eyes tracked back to him. “It wasn’t easy, even with Dan and Pieter’s full cooperation, but they managed it in the end. And what they found, Vlad, is that you aren’t dark, supernatural creatures of the night. We can’t replicate what you are—not yet—but one day we’ll be able to. Because what you are, Vlad Tepes, is a creature of science, not the product of a curse.”
“Science?” Vlad retorted scornfully. “Science that curses its victims with immortality? Renders them invisible? Lets them pass through key holes and flow through the cracks between shutters? Rip out mortals’ throats with fangs and claws?”
“Yes, science.” Dvorak nodded. “Nanotech, to be precise. Because that’s what you ‘vampires’ are made of, Vlad—nanotech. I brought along the documentation if you want to see it. For that matter, Maighread’s one of the task force’s senior physicians, and she can demonstrate it for you and Stephen and all the others right here aboard Relentless.”
Vlad had stiffened, his eyes wide.
“We still don’t know where it came from, although I have a few suspicions. And we still don’t know how you contracted it. But that’s what it was, Vlad. It wasn’t God cursing you for your sins. And it wasn’t Satan claiming his own. It was … well, what it was was a fucking industrial accident of some sort. That’s what it looks like, anyway. I can’t guarantee you that your soul transferred along with the rest of you when whatever the hell happened turned you into a constellation of nanobots, Vlad. I can guarantee you that it wasn’t a curse designed to punish you for your misdeeds, though. I won’t take those misdeeds, those crimes, away from you. You committed them, and they’re yours to own. But you weren’t turned into a vile monster because of them. And neither were the ‘vampires’ you made before you left. And whatever you may have done in Wallachia, whatever atrocities might have been yours in the fifteenth century, you’ve damned well earned forgiveness. You made restitution for all of it the day you and your vampires saved the human race from extinction. You’re the only reason we still exist. The only hope the galaxy has of breaking the Hegemony’s tyranny. So don’t you tell me you’re a ‘monster,’ Vlad Drakulya! And don’t use the belief that you are as an excuse to take vengeance on an entire species.”
Vlad flinched at the word “excuse.” It was a small thing, scarcely visible, but Dave Dvorak saw it.
“I understand,” he said softly, almost gently. “Not all of it. I can’t, because it didn’t happen to me. But I understand the darkness, Vlad. Trust me, I’ve tasted it myself. I’ve wanted it so badly. You’re right. The bastards did kill over half the human race, including a lot of my friends and family, and I wanted to see them die, instead. And I told myself it would be justice. And I told myself it was a pragmatic necessity, to prevent them from attacking us again.
“But it wouldn’t be justice. Not really. The Shongairi here in the Shong System never authorized the genocide of the human race. The more I’ve studied the Hegemony’s records of their culture and its imperatives, the more convinced I’ve become that the Shongair Empire wouldn’t have authorized it, either. Their culture incorporates something called ‘Jukaris’ that translates as ‘the way of honor,’ that I’m pretty sure would have kept it from doing that. But even if it might have signed off on what was done on Earth, it wasn’t there, Vlad. It was never consulted. One Shongair—one of them—decided to kill us all, and that was Fleet Commander Thikair. And much as I don’t want to, I have to say I question, given how hideously wrong his neat little invasion had gone in the end, how rational he was, even by Shongair standards, when he made that decision. I’m not making excuses for him, but God knows more than enough human commanders—” his eyes bored into Vlad across the table “—have done horrific things in the name of ‘military necessity.’ On the scale of their capabilities, some of them have done things every bit as horrific as what Thikair intended, really, and you know it.
“But every single Shongair directly involved in the attack on Earth is already dead, Vlad. All of them, dead. How could killing the Shongairi here, in their home system, when a third of them hadn’t even been born yet, be retribution—or justice—on them? And, trust me, given how we’ve already improved on the military capability they brought to Earth, they aren’t going to be a threat to our future, either.
“So I suppose what it comes down to is whether or not you choose to go back to the monster you may once have been. And I know which way I hope you’ll choose for the sake of the soul you thought you’d lost.”
PUNS EMILIANO GUTIERREZ,
SHONG SYSTEM,
241.5 LY FROM EARTH,
APRIL 7, YEAR 41 TE.
“Well, damn,” Stephen Buchevsky said as he and Vlad followed Rob Wilson and Brigadier Fitzgerald into PUNS Emiliano Gutierrez’s combat information center. “I sure wish we’d had something like this when I was still in the Suck.”
“Is kind of nice, isn’t it?” Wilson acknowledged with what might have been an edge of complacency, and Buchevsky nodded.
The compartment was enormous by the scale of any ship Buchevsky had ever boarded, including Târgoviște. Of course, Emil Gutierrez was built to an enormous scale. She was every bit as large as Relentless, but unlike Admiral Mallard’s superdreadnought flagship, relatively little of her stupendous bulk was devoted to ship-to-ship weaponry. She had enough offensive and—especially—defensive armament to look after herself if she had to, but she’d been designed and built specifically as an expeditionary force transport and command vessel. She and her sisters Michael Wallace and Achilles Adamakos constituted Task Force One’s transport element, and despite their mammoth size, they were stuffed to the bulkheads with personnel, armored vehicles, transatmospheric fighters and strike aircraft, and the food, fuel, ammunition, spare parts, printers, hangar bays, and machine shops to keep all of the above in action.
And to provide command facilities like this magnificently appointed CIC.
Buchevsky gazed admiringly at the holographic displays and status boards. The compartment was built around a hemispherical holo display ten meters across. A ring-shaped console circled the display and provided built-in communications and computer stations for the quietly efficient staff clustered about it. At the moment, the display featured a grid of at least thirty individual com quadrants, but only seven of them were actually in use.
