To Challenge Heaven, page 6
“We haven’t verified ID yet, Sir. All we have is the preliminary decrypt handshake. But—”
“Excuse me, Orbital Base Commander. Navy Commander.” Hyrshi and Larshal turned as one toward the tactical officer who’d spoken. The young section commander looked perplexed, and Hyrshi cocked an inpatient ear at him. “According to our data files, Navy Commander, that’s Star of Empire.”
“Star of Empire?” Ship Commander Frekhar repeated blankly, and the section commander’s ears twitched in confirmation.
“According to our records, Star of Empire is a Death Descending assigned to Fleet Commander Thikair.”
Hyrshi’s ears curled in confusion.
“I have the breakdown on Fleet Commander Thikair’s command, Sir,” Vilkhar said, looking up from his handheld. “Seven dreadnoughts, a twelve of Hasthar-class cruisers, and a half-twelve of Shorach-class destroyers, plus transports and industrial support.”
“Why does that name strike a chime in my memory?” Ship Commander Frekhar wondered out loud.
“Because Thikair was assigned to command the KU-197–20 expedition.” Hyrshi’s voice was flat, and Frekhar’s ears went equally flat in surprise.
The ship commander was young for his rank. He hadn’t even been born when the KU-197–20 expedition departed the Shong System, but he’d heard about it, because so much was hoped for from it. The weed-eaters who dominated the Hegemony might be horrified by the “bloodthirstiness” of KU-197–20’s dominant species, but not the Shongairi. A subject species with that sort of potential could prove invaluable. But KU-197–20 was the next best thing to eighteen Standard Years’ travel from Shongaru, and Thikair had departed barely thirty-seven Standard Years ago. For Star of Empire to be here now, the dreadnought must have started its return voyage barely a year-quarter after its arrival in that system, and Thikair had been assigned at least two additional colony systems. None of his ships should have returned in less than forty or even forty-five Standard Years! And when one of them did, it should have been one of his destroyers, or possibly a cruiser, carrying dispatches, not a dreadnought. And certainly not his own flagship!
“What in—?” he began.
“Status change!” someone shouted, and all of them wheeled back towards the master display.
“Unknown ships. Multiple unknown ships!” Tracking announced, and every ear on Orbit One’s command deck went flat as four more data codes burned suddenly bright in its depths.
They stared at the preposterous plot, and then a full twelve of additional data codes flashed into existence!
“Is that the rest of Thikair’s fleet?” Squadron Commander Vilkhar muttered into the command deck’s shocked silence.
“No, Sir.” The section commander who’d identified Star of Empire was tapping on his own handheld, and the tips of his canines showed as data flashed across it. “The energy signatures are all wrong. Very wrong!”
“But how did they get that close without anyone’s seeing them?” Vilkhar demanded. “Even powered down, radar, thermal—visual observation—should have picked up something off that many ships!”
“They must have been cloaked, Sir.”
“Cloaked?” Hyrshi snarled. “Nobody could cloak that many ships this deep into our sensor envelope!”
“I would’ve said the same thing, Navy Commander,” Vilkhar agreed, still bringing up data on his handheld. “But—”
He broke off and swallowed hard, then looked back up at Hyrshi.
“Sir,” he said in a very careful tone, “Tracking reports that the biggest of those ships is … It’s over a kholtarn long, Navy Commander.”
“That’s preposterous. Nobody could build a ship that big!” Ship Commander Frekhar said. “That’s almost five times the size of a Death Descending!”
“Sir,” Vilkhar looked almost desperate, “the smallest of those other ships is nearly a twelfth bigger than Star of Empire.”
“Incoming transmission,” one of the com techs announced in a very … odd tone.
The senior officers wheeled towards the master com panel, and their ears went flatter than ever as the broad, flat face of an alien species none of them had ever seen looked out of it at them.
IMPERIAL PALACE,
CITY OF SHERIKAATH,
PLANET SHONGARU,
SHONG SYSTEM,
241.5 LY FROM EARTH,
APRIL 19, YEAR 41 TE.
“Do you really think the Kajarhns will just roll over and acquiesce?” Shathyra Haymar asked thoughtfully. “The Hourishas’ case could be stronger, you know. I admit precedent is on their side, but sometimes precedent is a weak prop when tempers are fully engaged.”
“That’s very true, Your Majesty,” Urkal-ir-Dyam agreed with feeling. “And the Kajarhns are even stubborner than most Shongairi. But they’re the ones who brought the case before the throne instead of settling it in a lower court. They may not like your ruling, but since they’re the ones who petitioned for it.…”
His ears shrugged, and Haymar snorted.
The truth was that, legally, the Kajarhn Pack had no option but to accept his decree. That was sort of the point of being Shathyra. And he had no doubt that—legally—they would obey him. The problem was that the Kajarhn pack leaders were as stubborn as Shongairi came, and as generations of shathyrai had discovered, even the most officially obedient beta could find all manner of ways to passively resist unless the alpha in question was willing to break a few necks to remind the beta in question who was alpha. In many ways, Haymar wouldn’t have minded doing just that—figuratively, of course; not literally—but Yudar had taught him that there were times the hammer wasn’t called for.
“Well, I suppose we’ll find out in a six-day or so,” he sighed finally. “And with that out of the way, I think we can break for—”
“Forgive me, Shathyra!”
Haymar looked up as the office door flew open and his senior secretary burst through it.
“Gyrmal?” He let his chair come upright, ears pricked in consternation.
“Forgive me, Shathyra!” she said once more and dashed across the office, her habitual grace nowhere to be seen. She slapped a palm against the smart wall and the communications system’s wallpaper came up on it. Then she wheeled back to Haymar.
“Navy Commander Hyrshi just forwarded this to Palace Communications, Your Majesty. You … you need to see it.”
“See what?” Haymar demanded, and she touched the smart wall again.
The wallpaper disappeared, and Haymar came halfway out of his chair as the face of a species he’d never heard of appeared on it. Whatever the creature was, it had the appallingly flat face of an herbivore, but the forward-set eyes of a carnivore. It appeared to be essentially hairless, from the little he could see, aside from a short pelt atop its head and some sort of facial fur that barely covered its rounded chin. And its ears! Round, flat, set far down on the side of its head. Obviously, they were useless for expressing any sort of emotion.
“Cainharn,” his sire whispered, and Haymar’s eyes whipped to him.
“You know what that creature is?” he asked.
“It’s been a long time,” Yudar told him. “But unless I’m mistaken, that ‘creature’ is a native of KU-197–20.”
Haymar’s ears frowned. The designation was vaguely familiar, but—
“The Office of Expansion authorized us to colonize the system,” Yudar said, never looking away from the alien frozen on the smart wall, and his curled lip showed the tip of a canine. “That was over thirty years ago; you were only about a year old, at the time. The weed-eaters were horrified by what their survey ship told them about the planet’s inhabitants. ‘Humans,’ they called themselves. They were totally primitive, but their ‘bloodthirstiness’ revolted the weed-eaters even more than we do! Obviously, any species the Council despised that much was worth conquering, so old Minister for Colonization Vairtha and I authorized the expedition.”
Haymar’s ears straightened as he realized why the planet designation had sounded familiar. And also why his father was showing canine. The Hegemony Council and its bureaucracy in the Erquoid System sat at the very center of the web of weed-eaters who regarded the “bloodthirsty” Shongair with bottomless contempt. A contempt which Haymar’s own people repaid with interest.
“I remember now, Sire,” he said. “You and Grandsire told me about it when I first took the throne and you briefed me on our contingency plans. But what in the names of all the devils is a ‘human’ doing here?”
“Sir,” Gyrmal replied, “it’s … it’s delivering a message.”
“Message?” Haymar repeated, and the secretary touched the screen yet again.
The image unfroze, and the creature’s mouth moved. The perfectly enunciated Shongair flowing from the smart wall’s speakers had to be the product of a translating program, since it wasn’t even remotely synchronized with that moving mouth.
That was Haymar’s first thought.
And then he realized what the creature was saying.
“My name,” it said, “is David Dvorak. I am a citizen of the planet we call Earth, and which you call KU-197–20-III. Forty-two of our years ago, Fleet Commander Thikair arrived in our star system. He announced his presence by murdering our rulers, our political and religious leaders, and our cities. By murdering us and our mates and our children. Not just our warriors, not anyone he’d so much as bothered to challenge. Like an urmakhis, he simply opened fire from space, before we even knew he was there. His initial kinetic bombardments killed millions, but they were only the beginning. He continued to bombard our cities and towns and killed millions—in the end, billions—more of my people. Less than half a percent of them were warriors. Half were females. A quarter of them were children. It didn’t matter to him. We were in his way. But despite his willingness to slaughter us, despite the fact that he’d killed over half our total population, we proved a bit too much for him to subdue. And what was his response? Why, he decided to create a bioweapon that would allow him to murder all the rest of us without meeting us in combat at all.”
He paused, and alien or no, the brown eyes looking out of that smart wall were remarkably bleak.
“That was a serious mistake,” he said softly, his translated voice colder than ice. “It cost Fleet Commander Thikair his life. In fact, it cost the life of every single Shongair you sent to conquer or destroy us. They’re all dead. Every … single … one of them. We killed them all, and then we captured your technology, and we’ve improved upon it. I think the size of our ships—and the fact that Fleet Commander Thikair’s flagship is our prize—should probably suggest that to you. And, since you were so eager to conquer—or destroy—us, we thought we would return the favor.
“Understand me, all of you. You, and your entire Empire, will submit to us. We will not simply destroy you, the way Thikair intended to destroy us. Unless, of course, you force us to. But understand this, as well. In many ways, nothing would please us more than the discovery that you will force us to. I am appending Fleet Commander Thikair’s own records to this message. I believe, after you’ve reviewed them, that you’ll understand precisely why that’s true.”
Listening to that perfectly translated voice, Haymar didn’t doubt that at all.
“You have two of your days to submit,” the alien said flatly. “If you choose not to, then we will move first against your fleet and orbital fortifications, then against your habitats, and—finally—against your planets, until we have compelled you to submit. If you wish to initiate combat sooner than that, feel free. But at the end of that time period, we will have your submission, or you will have our response to Fleet Commander Thikair’s billions of murders.
“I advise you to make your choice carefully.”
ORBIT ONE,
SHONGARU ORBIT,
SHONG SYSTEM,
241.5 LY FROM EARTH,
APRIL 19, YEAR 41 TE
Navy Commander Hyrshi-ir-Urkah’s ears were somber as he gazed out at the holographic images of his master display. He stood in Orbit One’s com center beside Fleet Commander Gysharu-ur-Shyrak, who’d joined him aboard the command station for this briefing. Gysharu’s battle squadron and cruiser commanders attended from their flagships’ bridge decks. And none of them looked any more cheerful than Hyrshi did.
“All right,” he said. “We have a lot to cover, and don’t expect any of it to be good.”
He met their massed gazes levelly.
“By now, you’ve all viewed the initial reports about these humans. Thirty-four years ago, we knew nothing about them, beyond what we had from Erquoid in the Office of Expansion survey crews’ original reports. Which—” he allowed his ears to prick sardonically “—were obviously less than complete, even for Barthoni. All we’ve been able to add to that since their arrival is what they’ve told us and what Sensor Commander Yirak’s platforms have been able to glean since they announced their arrival. And, of course, their demands.”
His ears flattened once more.
“I realize that so far we’ve detected only sixteen of their ships, but the largest of those ‘ships’ are over half the size of Orbit One itself, and they have four of them. Understand me clearly. We have three dreadnought squadrons and five cruiser squadrons in Home Fleet. Some of our people have thought that was overkill, given all we had to fear from the weed-eaters. But those sixteen human ships out-mass all seventy-two of ours by a factor of four.”
One or two of his subordinates stirred in their chairs, but Hyrshi continued in those same measured tones.
“Worse than that, we didn’t see them at all until they chose to let us see them. That clearly indicates a cloaking technology superior to anything we have, so we must assume they have additional ships in reserve which they haven’t yet shown us. The mere fact that they can build starships more than a kholtarn in length indicates that however they’ve accomplished it, their technology must be more advanced than ours—than the entire Hegemony’s—by a substantial margin. And if a species which possessed no advanced technology at the time we contacted them has been able to accomplish what those ships represent in only thirty-four of our years, they represent something entirely new—and utterly terrifying—in the galaxy.”
It said much for the strength of the Navy Commander’s character that he could admit that in front of his subordinates, and he gazed around the faces of his commanders, letting them digest that for several endless tiskari.
“I’ve viewed their message,” he said then, softly, and bared his canines. “Whatever else they may be, these ‘humans’ are manifestly not weed-eaters. I don’t yet pretend to know what they truly are, but I do know this much. If Fleet Commander Thikair truly killed over half their species, then I fear we’ve awakened the very Hounds of Cainharn and filled them with a terrible resolve.”
It was very quiet in the briefing room. Gysharu allowed that silence to linger, then nodded to Sensor Commander Yirak-ir-Limak.
“Tell us what we do know about them, Sensor Commander.”
“Yes, Sir.”
The sensor commander, the senior officer of the entire star system’s sensor net, stood to address the assembled officers, and his ears were folded close to his skull.
“As the Navy Commander just said, we’ve so far detected a total of sixteen of their vessels, plus Star of Empire. We’ve subjected our sensor data to the most rigorous analysis possible, but I’m afraid that most of what I can tell you is what we can’t tell you from that data.
“From optical examination of their hulls, they have no spin sections, unless they’re completely internal. We’ve been unable to determine if, or in what way, their normal space drives differ from our own, since they’ve yet to accelerate while we could observe them, but assuming that there is, in fact, no spin section, we must assume these creatures have discovered a way to create artificial shipboard gravity. If that’s true, then we must also assume that it’s possible—indeed, my analysts rate it as highly probable—that their inertial compensator technology is better than our own, which suggests they can sustain higher acceleration rates. And while we obviously haven’t observed their phase-drive in action, either, logic suggests it must be far better than anything the Hegemony possesses, as well.”
Jumhyl-ir-Bohzar, Battle Squadron One’s CO, stirred in his chair, ears half-cocked, and Yirak looked at him.
“Yes, Battle Squadron Commander?”
“With respect, Sensor Commander, surely we must resist the temptation to assign these ‘humans’ demonic capabilities. From the survey data, they were using muscle-powered weapons and animal-mounted cavalry barely two hundred and fifty years ago!”
“The Sensor Commander isn’t suggesting they have ‘demonic capabilities,’ Jumhyl,” Fleet Commander Gysharu said. “But they’re here, in our system, with the ships we’ve already observed, and they’ve arrived in little more than a year-half more than one of Fleet Commander Thikair’s ships could have reached us if he’d dispatched it immediately upon his arrival in KU-197–20’s star system. So either they’d somehow attained this technological level between the Barthoni survey team’s visit and Thikair’s arrival, or their leader is telling the truth, and they were still substantially less advanced at that time than we are now. Frankly, I would much prefer the former—prefer that in those two and a half of our centuries they’d risen from swords and axes to a level capable of defeating the best Hegemony-level weaponry could do. As the Navy Commander’s suggested, the notion that they’ve accomplished all of this in only twenty years on the basis of technology captured from us is terrifying.”
Like the Navy Commander, he met his subordinates’ eyes levelly.
“Consider this,” he continued. “Star of Empire’s returned to us, presumably under her own power with a ‘human’ crew. That means these creatures must have defeated Thikair, killed him, and captured his flagship in no more than nine of our months. That’s the maximum time it could have taken them for that ship to be here now. Yet frightening as that is, they’ve somehow—presumably thanks to the capture of Thikair’s industrial ships—developed the manufacturing capacity and the technological capability to build these monster starships and somehow gotten them here in the same interval. At the very least, their version of the phase-drive must be enormously more efficient than anything our current technology suggests is possible. Star of Empire must have started home within nine months, so for the ships they built themselves to reach here with her means they must have overtaken Star in transit.”
