To Challenge Heaven, page 5
“Yeah, it does kinda suck at moments like this, though,” Buchevsky said wryly. “Damn that smells good! And the hell of it is, I’ve had his spaghetti. Lots of times.” He grimaced. “That means I know it tastes as good as it smells. I’ve never been able to decide if it’s the sweet Italian sausage or the brown sugar.”
“Can you at least sample it?”
“Not unless I want a really serious case of ‘indigestion.’” Buchevsky shook his head. “But I can probably at least have a beer while you guys pig out in front of me.”
“‘Pig out’ might be putting it just a bit too strongly,” Jackson protested.
“Alex,” Buchevsky grinned, “I’ve seen Malachi eat. For that matter, Maighread’s no slouch at the table. I admit, the twins were only twelve when we left, but both those girls have always had hollow legs where their dad’s spaghetti sauce was concerned, and I watched her playing basketball in the Emil’s gym with her brother and Raymond yesterday. I sorta doubt anyone in that kind of shape’s worried about calories. And I will guarantee you no Marine—and I don’t care if he’s a ‘Space’ Marine—is about to pass up seconds or thirds!”
“You know, I forget sometimes how long you’ve known Dave and Sharon,” Jackson said.
“Well, in a lot of ways, you’ve actually known them longer than I have,” Buchevsky pointed out.
“I thought you’d known the Dvoraks for years, even before the invasion!” Jackson said.
“Oh, I have.” Buchevsky nodded as the two of them followed Thornak into the dining room. “In fact, I’ve known ‘Uncle Rob’ since I was about twelve. And you know my dad’s a Methodist pastor, right?” Jackson nodded, and Buchevsky shrugged. “I’ll be more than a little surprised if Dave’s managed to keep up his certification, but he was a Methodist lay speaker forever. He covered Dad’s pulpit more than once when I was in senior high. So, yeah, I’ve known him and Sharon a long time. But I left Earth forty years ago, Alex. And you met him—how long ago?”
“I went to work for him in the State Department about five years before we left for Sarth. So that would’ve been, um, about twenty-two years ago.”
“There you are.” Buchevsky shrugged. “I met Dave when I was sixteen. I was thirty-five when we left Earth, so only nineteen years for me.”
“But that was forty years ago,” Jackson pointed out. “So you’re up to fifty-nine years.”
“No, only forty-two. Only twenty-three years subjective voyage time for me.”
“Yeah, but—”
Jackson paused, his expression a little absent, then shook his head.
“All this relativistic crap really screws with your time sense, doesn’t it?” he said. “So, by the calendar, you’ve known Dave and Sharon for fifty-nine years. Subjectively, you’ve only known them for forty-two, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, First Sergeant Buchevsky, allow me to point out that I met them—calendar wise—twenty-two years ago, and that given the Gannon Drive, we made the voyage from Earth in only a year and a half, so that means that by the calendar, you’ve known them for thirty-seven years longer than me, and by subjective time, you’ve known them seventeen years longer than I have.”
“Sure, but you’ve been in constant contact with them that entire time, whereas I only saw them when I was home on leave. So in terms of elapsed time—”
“I hope the two of you will forgive me for observing that Earthians tend to upset themselves over very strange things,” Thornak observed. Both humans looked at her, and her nasal flaps quivered in laughter. “May we all simply agree that both of you have known the Clan Ruler for a very long time?”
“You Sarthians really know how to take the fun out of an argument, don’t you?” Jackson replied with a chuckle.
“It is a gift,” Thornak agreed gravely. “One not given to many, I admit.”
“Oh, yeah? You ever seen Sharon take the fun out of an argument?” Buchevsky demanded.
“Did I just hear my name taken in vain?” a voice asked from behind him, and he turned as the Sharon in question walked in with an enormous basket of garlic bread. The high-tech basket would hold the bread at exactly the right temperature indefinitely, and she walked past them to place it in the center of the large table.
“Oh, no! Heaven forbid!” Buchevsky said. She turned from the table to arch an eyebrow at him. “I just meant that you’ve had a lot of practice shutting Dave down when he gets … overly loquacious.”
“You know,” another voice said, “when you hit the bottom of the hole, it’s usually a good idea to stop digging, Stephen. ‘Overly loquacious,’ is it?”
“Damn you’re quiet,” Buchevsky complained, turning to grin at David Dvorak. “You been taking lessons from Longbow and Pieter?”
“Far be it from me to suggest that your situational awareness could use a little improvement,” Dvorak said, carrying the pot of spaghetti sauce across to the table. Brykira followed him with a huge tossed salad bowl, and Maighread Lewis trailed behind both of them with the spaghetti bowl and smiled a greeting of her own as she passed.
Buchevsky laughed and followed the three of them to the table. Dvorak set down the spaghetti sauce and pointed at one of the chairs. There was no place setting in front of the chair; only a beer stein.
“Sit,” Dvorak said. “Pieter and Longbow have eaten with us enough that I just set out the beer mugs—or the coffee cup, in Longbow’s case.”
“Wise of you.” Buchevsky held Sharon’s chair for her before he settled into the one Dvorak had indicated. “Vlad tells me that in another few decades, I’ll actually be able to eat solid food occasionally. That’ll be nice.”
“Yeah, I’d really miss that myself,” Dvorak said a bit more soberly, taking his own place as Maighread relieved Brykira of the big salad bowl and began filling the smaller bowls at each place. Except Buchevsky’s, of course.
“Dare I ask where your other two guests are?” Jackson inquired as he sat.
“Malachi and Raymond are running a little late,” Sharon said. “Something about someone’s son—” she looked levelly at Dvorak “—who talks too much. Can’t imagine where he got it from.”
“Talks too much?” Jackson repeated.
“He and his company commanders had a simulated exercise yesterday, and the debrief session … ran a little long,” Dvorak said.
“A little?” Sharon snorted. “I suppose you could call an extra three hours running ‘a little’ long. If you’re a male whose last name is Dvorak, anyway.”
“They’re only ten minutes out now, Mom,” Maighread said. “And Raymond says we should go ahead and start without them.”
“I think not,” Sharon replied.
“And give up the opportunity to chew them out for keeping us waiting?” Dvorak shook his head. “You’ve known your mom all your life, Maighread! What were you thinking?”
Sharon made a rude gesture, and Dvorak laughed.
“Well, if we’ve got ten minutes, can I ask a ‘business’ sort of question?” Buchevsky asked, and despite his smile, his tone was serious. “I mean, if we’ve got a window before dinner is actually served.”
“Go ahead,” Sharon said, and he looked back at Dvorak.
“I’ve been wondering,” he said more slowly. “How well is the notion of not just wiping out the Shongairi really going to play at home?”
“Well, that’s a downer,” Dvorak observed dryly, sitting back in his chair.
“It’s just been bugging me,” Buchevsky said a bit apologetically. “Obviously, none of us in Târgoviște had the opportunity to see how moods and attitudes were changing back on Earth. But after what they did to us.…”
“It’s a fair question,” Dvorak conceded. “Especially for someone who lost as much as you did. Sharon and I—and the kids—were a lot luckier than you, Stephen. Maybe that makes it seem a little easier to me. Maybe even a little easier than it will really turn out to be.”
“Can I take a swing at it?” Jackson asked.
“Of course you can, Alex!”
“Okay.” Jackson turned his chair a bit sideways to face Buchevsky fully, and his expression was more serious than Buchevsky had ever seen it. “I know about your wife and daughters, Stephen,” he said. “And, trust me, I really do know how much something like that tears the heart right out of you. I lost my mom, my dad, and my sister to a Shongair K-strike. For that matter, I very much doubt there’s a single person anywhere in the Expeditionary Force who was born before the invasion and didn’t lose somebody he loved. But we’ve had a chance to think about it, come to grips with it the best anyone can, and I think for a lot of people the bottom line is that we’re not the Hegemony. In fact, we’re pretty damned adamant about that. And that means we can’t just go around genociding entire species because they’ve pissed us off. That’s what Galactics do, and then pretend they don’t.”
“There’s more to it than that, of course,” Dvorak said. “I have to tell you, I was never all that happy about the notion that Vlad was going to just wipe the Shongairi out, even before we started putting Earth back together. I wasn’t part of the decision loop at the time, though. In fact,” he grimaced, “if I’m being honest, I was happy I wasn’t. It let me hide from the fact that I was a lot less unhappy about the notion in the immediate aftermath of the invasion. Can’t pretend I wasn’t, if I’m going to be remotely honest. And I’ve never been one of those ‘to understand all is to forgive all’ people. There are some of them back home, though. More of them than there used to be, as we’ve gotten farther away from the invasion. The interesting thing is that some of the folks who are willing to argue that we may be misunderstanding the Hegemony are a lot less happy about us ‘letting the Shongairi off easy.’ I never really understood that bit, since it was the frigging Hegemony that enabled the Shongairi and sent them off to cut our throats.”
He shrugged.
“Fortunately, the sunshine-and-rainbows crowd was still in a distinct minority when we left, and I expect them to stay that way. But even people who are less forgiving than I am are willing to admit, by and large, that we can’t wipe out an entire species because some members of that species tried to wipe us out without becoming just as bad or worse than the people who murdered all the people we cared about.”
Buchevsky nodded slowly. He’d thought the same thing often enough, even as his heart cried out for vengeance.
“I don’t say it’s going to be easy,” Dvorak continued, his expression grave, “but we’ve got it to do, Stephen. Either we’re different from the Hegemony, or we aren’t. And if we are, then we have to prove it. And not just to any allies we might hope to pick up. We have to prove it to ourselves, in a way we’ll remember. In a way that’s definitive enough we can actually believe it. And not wiping out the Shongairi is the best way I can think of to start doing that.”
IMPERIAL PALACE,
CITY OF SHERIKAATH,
PLANET SHONGARU,
SHONG SYSTEM,
241.5 LY FROM EARTH,
APRIL 19, YEAR 41 TE.
“I think it may work better if I have a quiet word with old Shardu first, Your Majesty,” Urkal-ir-Dyam said. “The Kyam have been the protectors of the Hyraidyr Preserve for generations.”
Haymar-zik-Shayma, Shathyra and absolute ruler of the Shongair Empire, leaned inelegantly back in his comfortable chair, grooming the tip of his tail thoughtfully as he considered his first minister’s advice.
As always, Urkal had a point. Shardu-ur-Kyam didn’t represent an especially large district, and he wasn’t getting any younger. But he was the Kyam Pack’s senior Pakyrma delegate, and he’d led the Kyam Quorum for the last twelve years. He’d have enormous influence when the Pakyrma debated the Hyraidyr project—if they could get it to, finally—and while the Pakyrma could only advise the Shathyra, only a fool ignored that advice.
“Do you think he’ll actually support the idea this time?” Haymar asked.
“If he’s approached properly.” Urkal flicked his ears in a shrug. “The capital needs the additional water supply, and Hyraidyr is the logical place to put the reservoir. He knows that as well as we do. It’ll be the local ranchers who scream about it. Again.”
“I think Urkal’s right about Shardu,” Yudar-zik-Shayma said, and Haymar quirked an ear at him. “He’ll understand why we need the water—we started talking about that when I was still in your chair. Cainharn! I think we started talking about it when your grandsire was still Shathyra!”
Haymar laughed, although he suspected his sire was correct about that. The aversion to destroying habitat—and putting a reservoir fifty-one sheertarni long and sixty tarni deep right on top of prime grassland and watershed couldn’t really be called anything else—ran deep in the Shongairi’s genes. So it was entirely possible his sire wasn’t exaggerating in this case. He would have liked to ask his grandsire about it, but old Shathyrakym Yurma had died three years ago, which left Yudar as the Empire’s sole shathyrakym. Haymar missed Yurma’s wise counsel, but at least he and the Empire still had Yudar.
“The question is what choice prey we offer Shardu in return,” he said, still grooming his tail. “You’re right about the ranchers, Urkal. That river valley is choice pastureland, and Hyraidyr-raised dahrmyk venison commands a high price. They’ll scream no matter what we do, and if we want Shardu to pour oil on the waters for us, we need to do something to … show him our appreciation.”
“That sounds so … devious,” Yudar said. “One wonders what your sire was thinking when he raised you!”
“Deep and devious thoughts, I expect.” Haymar let his chair come upright. “I think what we need to point out to Shardu is the recreational aspect of the reservoir. I know he’s already aware of it—as you say, Sire, this proposal’s been beaten to death for far too long. But what if we promise to name the reservoir after him? He’d like that, and if he emphasizes all the opportunities for boating and fishing in his addresses to the Pakyrma, and if he can bring the rest of his quorum along, I think we might get majority approval. And that would go a long way to calm the storm when I issue the decree.”
“Very devious of you,” Yudar said approvingly. “The old chighor will like that! Of course, we won’t want to tell anyone else about it.”
“Not until the decree’s issued.” Haymar flicked his ears in agreement. “I’m sure everyone will understand when I name it after him in appreciation for all his selfless efforts in helping us move its construction forward.”
“I think that’s an excellent idea, Your Majesty,” Urkal agreed.
“Of course it is.” Haymar’s ears laughed. “It was mine, and I’m the Shathyra!”
“Odd.” Yudar cocked his head. “I remember a few ideas I had when I was Shathyra that didn’t work out so well.”
“I’ll make certain your biographers don’t mention those,” his son told him.
“You were always such a good cub.”
“I had good parents.” Haymar said it lightly, but his ears were serious, and Yudar made a brushing away gesture.
“That was your dam’s doing more than mine, cubling.”
“Perhaps. But now that we finally have a plan to deal with the Cainharn-damned reservoir, what’s the next item on the agenda, Urkal?”
“Well, the Kajarhn Pack has asked to place a petition before the throne,” the first minister said. “It’s that dispute of theirs with Hourisha. I think they have a proposal that they believe might finally work. On the other hand—”
ORBIT ONE,
SHONGARU ORBIT,
SHONG SYSTEM,
241.5 LY FROM EARTH,
APRIL 19, YEAR 41 TE.
“What in Cainharn’s twelfth name is going on here?!” Navy Commander Hyrshi-nar-Urkah demanded as he stormed onto Orbit One’s command deck with Ship Commander Frekhar at his heels.
It was hard for even Shongair ears to hear him through the howl of alarms, but Orbit Base Commander Larshal knew exactly what the Navy Commander was saying. It was exactly what he’d said when he arrived on the bridge a few shrekari before Hyrshi. And praise Dainthar he’d been in Auxiliary Plot! Otherwise, the Navy Commander would have beaten him to Command One. Allowing that to happen would have been … unfortunate, although Cainharn only knew what Hyrshi was doing wandering around the huge orbital fortress at this hour of its onboard evening.
Larshal strode across the deck to a range where he could be heard without screaming even through the alarms.
“We’re still trying to figure that out, Navy Commander,” he said loudly. Hyrshi glared at him, ears half-flattened. “Tracking is running the transponder beacon now,” Larshal continued.
“It’s confirmed, Orbital Base Commander!” Squadron Commander Vilkhar-nar-Kyam called. “It’s—” someone hit the button to shut down the alarms “—one of ours!”
Vilkhar’s ears flattened in consternation as he finished his bellowed announcement in the sudden, ringing silence.
“And what in Cainharn’s hell is ‘one of ours’ doing right there?” Hyrshi demanded, jabbing a digit at the blinking light code in the master display.
That light code was barely four light-minutes outside Shongaru’s sixteen-light-minute orbit. That put it just under eight light-minutes inside Derinar’s orbit. At the moment Derinar was most of the way towards superior conjunction, which put it well over thirty light-minutes from the intruder, but any Shongair vessel was required to announce its arrival as soon as it dropped out of phase-space. For a ship to be in that position without anyone’s detecting its emergence footprint, it must have reentered normal-space six days ago. So where was its arrival notification? And why hadn’t System Command’s massive sensor arrays already detected it? Had it coasted all the way in ballistic?
“I have no idea, Navy Commander,” Larshal confessed. Hyrshi had a well-deserved reputation for demolishing anyone he even suspected of incompetence, but it was always better to tell him the truth. Frankly acknowledged ignorance, he would forgive. Sometimes, at least. Posterior-covering evasions? Never. The orbit base commander turned back to Vilkhar. “What do you mean ‘it’s one of ours’?”
