Brink of Destruction, page 9
Bannon turned to study Flint and Talon. Neither man looked like they’d just been caught out, though Flint raised a sardonic eyebrow as he turned to meet Bannon’s gaze.
“Yes, we were somewhat less than forthcoming on that detail, Lieutenant.” He sighed. “We didn’t link up with Ransjunan on Eredin IV. He came with us. He hadn’t intended our relationship to be public knowledge.” He turned to face Commander Fox again. “I am not at liberty to lay out all of the mission details for you, Commander. I certainly owe your lieutenant and his men for getting us off that planet, but there are secrets that I cannot reveal, and part of the mission was Ransjunan’s. I can’t even begin to talk about any more of it than I’ve already revealed to Lieutenant Bannon without Ransjunan’s approval.” He spread his hands. “That’s the nature of joint operations with the Shihyan, I’m afraid.”
Fox looked over at Bannon, who answered the unspoken query. “Once the rest of the phalanx is out of cryo, Sergeant Hern has instructions to wait for word on the passengers, sir.”
The commander nodded. “Tell him to prioritize the Shihyanese chyotsu and get him up here.” He turned to the Columbians. “In the meantime, gentlemen, I suggest you get some rest. We’ll reconvene when everyone is more disposed to discuss a mutual threat.”
CHAPTER 11
The chyotsu was taller than the largest human in the compartment by easily a head, and outweighed Commander Fox by nearly double. That wasn’t uncommon with chyotsu bulls. Most were close to five hundred pounds.
His skin was a deep, dark green, shading almost toward brown. His hair was silver, indicating he’d been around a while. Most chyotsu crests started pure white, tarnishing as they grew older. A small, neatly trimmed strip of beard cleft his chin, beneath the lipless gash of a mouth. His golden, pupilless eyes were expressionless, or at least they appeared that way to human eyes.
Bannon had heard that chyotsu had very fine-celled compound eyes that could see far better than a human’s, but he’d never had it confirmed.
All four of the chyotsu’s hands were currently folded on the table where he sat, one pair resting on the tabletop just behind the other.
The ship was still at one gee, though they’d conducted skew-flip half a day ago and were nearly to the wormhole transition point. Bannon hadn’t heard anything more about the massive ghost ship pacing them. He didn’t know if that was good news or bad.
Ransjunan hadn’t spoken since he’d been brought to Commander Fox’s ready room to join his Columbian counterparts and the Corvanite officers. He didn’t seem afraid—a chyotsu bull among humans rarely would be—but he was quiet and observant, probably trying to determine where, exactly, everyone stood.
The Shihyan, as Bannon had pointed out before, was a very long way from Corvanite space, and that growing chyotsu empire had had next to nothing to do with this part of the human constellation so far. Most of his information had probably come from the Columbians, and they were likely to be wary. It was characteristic of them, even among humans.
Commander Fox hadn’t pressed, but someone had to break the silence. “I apologize,” Bannon said. “I don’t know Shihyanese ranks.”
It was almost impossible to tell if the chyotsu had shifted his focus. He hadn’t moved since he’d sat down, and if those eyes really were compound, he wouldn’t have to move them to look at Bannon. “I am an ikajji in the 1st Special Directorate for Long Range Operations. My name is Ransjunan Ma Fai Shutash.”
Bannon was surprised that the chyotsu’s Anglisch was so good. Depending on how long this partnership with the Columbians might have gone on, he probably shouldn’t have been, but it was a rare alien who could speak any human language with that degree of fluency. The chyotsu were—despite their obvious differences and four upper limbs—still very humanoid, and while no one would mistake that blunt, flat skull for a human’s, the mouth and throat were apparently constructed quite similarly.
“Ikajji Ransjunan.” Fox didn’t extend a hand. Bannon didn’t know if that was a chyotsu gesture anyway, and Ransjunan hadn’t moved a muscle since he’d sat down. “I am Commander Fox of the 33rd Expeditionary Division of the Council of Corvan. We have been told that you are in this region of space because of certain black ships with which we have recently clashed, ourselves. What can you tell us about your mission and what you know about these ships?”
The massive chyotsu remained motionless. The silence stretched out, and Bannon glanced over at Captain Haarot, next to the two Columbian leaders. The captain was watching their guest with hard eyes, his hand never far from his weapon. All three Corvanites in the room were armed, in contrast to their guests.
Ransjunan didn’t need a weapon to be a threat in these close quarters.
“Ordinarily, Shihyanese operations are not for the ears or eyes of those outside such operations. Our Columbian associates, being joint operatives with me, would be an exception.” Somehow, Bannon got the idea that the chyotsu used the Anglisch word “associates” instead of “friends” quite deliberately. The alien’s voice was a deep rumble that vibrated in his hearers’ chests. “This threat, however, is one that has shaped our people’s history, and one severe enough that I have been authorized to speak of it, even to detail some of our actions to try to counter it, should I encounter those who have similarly fallen under its shadow.”
Commander Fox was impassive, showing no emotion, no reaction, though Bannon imagined that the commander was every bit as focused as he was. Captain Haarot tilted his head ever so slightly as he continued to study Ransjunan, unblinking.
Where a human might gesture, take a dramatic breath, or otherwise become more expressive as he spoke, Ransjunan simply began, still unmoving, apparently expressionless, though his voice rolled with his words. “The Shihyan is not the first, or even the second interstellar chyotsu civilization. The first collapsed in civil war, having extended only twelve hundred light years from Kjanshjan, our homeworld.”
Bannon’s eyes shifted to Commander Fox as he frowned. He’d never heard of Kjanshjan, even after looking up what the ship’s library had on the Shihyan while Ransjunan had recuperated from cryo. The Shihyan was centered on Utsash, a temperate world orbiting Vashajunsakha, a K-type star nearly a thousand light years from Earth. A thousand light years on the other side of Earth from Corvan Major.
Ransjunan noticed. It was faintly unsettling, the way his eyes never moved. “Yes, I suspect you have never heard of that world. Few aliens have. What I have to say will explain why.”
He continued, as still as a sphinx. “Many twelves of years after the fall of the first civilization—we call them the Hunajku, though what they called themselves has been lost to history—the Gircarsai Dominion arose. They spread across the stars, led by the Immortal Emperor.” He didn’t comment on the title, but Bannon was reasonably sure the chyotsu were every bit as mortal as human beings. “Rebellions rose, but the Immortal Emperor would not see the same fate befall his dominion as met the Hunajku. Those risings were crushed, ruthlessly and finally.
“The Dominion spread until it reached past this region of space. Your people were only just beginning to spread out from your homeworld at the height of the Dominion’s power and expansion. Only the strange patterns of wormhole connections kept your people from coming under the Gircarsai.”
It was hard to say, given the alien inflections and utter lack of identifiable expression, but it seemed to Bannon that there might have been a note of superiority in those words. He could understand that, but he bristled anyway.
“At first, they believed that the Garkhut came from outside and had simply penetrated deep into Gircarsai space before they struck first. They were intensely destructive, slaughtering everyone on any target world they took. They would not coexist. Only conquer, enslave, and destroy.
“The war went on for many twelves of years. That was when our people first became aware of the phantom ships. Every time the Dominion came close to stopping or even pushing the Garkhut back, the phantom ships struck, stalling the war effort.
“Much was lost when the Dominion finally collapsed. The Garkhut bombarded Kjanshjan with asteroids. Nothing lives there anymore. The dust is still settling out of the atmosphere on a barren, cratered wasteland, two twelves of twelves of years later.
“It took most of that time to drive the Garkhut back. Cut off and alone, chyotsu worlds fought, and often died. Eventually, though, as the Shihyan and other factions banded together, they fought the Garkhut with a new ferocity. There would be no mercy.
“The phantom ships still haunted us, but now they seemed to target both sides, where once they had only supported the Garkhut. Then, as the last of the Garkhut were driven back to their worlds, and you humans came onto the galactic scene, the phantom ships disappeared. For a while.”
“And now they’re back,” Commander Fox said. “In fact, they have been for some few years. There have been reports going back to the first of the Newlander Wars, though no one has lent them too much credence until recently.” He studied their chyotsu… ally? … carefully. “What is it they want?”
“That is uncertain.” A human might have shrugged or spread his hands. Ransjunan didn’t move anything but his mouth. “Some believe they have been softening up the powers of this region, this arm of the galaxy, in truth, for an invasion.”
“Seems like they’ve been stirring up wars for a long time with no invasion.” Captain Haarot still didn’t seem to have blinked all through the tale.
“Perhaps.” Ransjunan finally moved, turning his head to face the captain. Maybe his field of vision wasn’t quite as wide as it appeared. “Space is vast, however, and if they truly did wish to invade this entire arm, the resources they would have to amass would be staggering.”
Bannon couldn’t fault the chyotsu’s analysis. Just the burgeoning war with the Zolarians was proving to be prohibitively expensive. While that was a concern for the Council, not the field warriors, it was a concern that he’d nevertheless heard murmurs about.
Given the extreme discipline of Corvanite society, the very existence of those murmurs was concerning.
The sheer amount of resources to attempt a conquest on the scale that Ransjunan was describing—presuming it wasn’t mere wild speculation—really was staggering.
“So, you came out here to investigate the sightings in our region of space, then?” Commander Fox began to bring the conversation back to the original subject.
“Yes.”
For a moment it seemed as if the chyotsu wasn’t going to elaborate further. The Columbians might have agreed to a temporary alliance, but Ransjunan had, aside from the information he’d just shared, made no such agreement. Before anyone could say anything more, though, he continued.
“During the long years of war, most of the Gircarsai’s focus was on the Garkhut, and the various other worlds that rebelled along the way. And much was lost after the bombardment of Kjanshjan. Of those records that survived, the Shihyan has only been able to piece together some of them. The technology has changed, and some of the knowledge we went looking for once reports of the reappearance of the phantom ships reached us was encoded.” Were he human, Ransjunan might have smiled. “That their codes did not survive for our successor empire should not be surprising. It has taken some time to put together what little they passed down.
“There is a pattern to the phantom ships’ movements, a pattern that the Gircarsai were beginning to unravel. Not so far—that we can tell—to determine where, exactly, they come from, or what exactly their operational plans are. But enough to move against them.
“The ships do not operate entirely on their own, at least from the records we have deciphered. Wherever they appear, they have set up a base of operations, somewhere within fifty to two hundred light years.”
“That’s a lot of space,” Commander Fox mused. While it was a tiny fraction of the vast stretch of open space that formed just the Zolarian sphere of influence, never mind the Corvanite, or the human constellation, thousands upon thousands of light years and hundreds of thousands of stars included, a sphere two hundred light years in diameter was still a mind-bogglingly vast expanse.
“It is,” Flint said. “But like Ransjunan said, there are patterns. And we’ve been out here a long time.” At Fox’s raised eyebrow, the big Columbian officer shrugged. “The cold war between you and the Zolarians has been a concern for a long time. These sorts of confrontations have a tendency to spread, you know. As should be evident from the current fight the Mytunese are spearheading.”
Commander Fox’s expression didn’t change, but Captain Haarot’s hardened even further, if that was possible.
“At any rate, while we were dispatched out here to keep an eye on this little confrontation, the ghost ships caught our attention—as well as the Shihyan’s.” Flint nodded toward Ransjunan. “The incident over Zhogalgan—no, that wasn’t nearly as secret as your Council might have hoped—was the real clincher that turned the majority of our work toward hunting them, but they were active for several years beforehand. Anyway, we’ve been mapping their movements and the classes of ships—as best we can tell—for a while, and we think we have it narrowed down to a small cluster of five systems, about a hundred seventy-five light years from here.”
Bannon looked from Haarot to Fox, feeling his pulse quicken. He’d lost men to the ghost ships, and it was clear enough to him by then that the ghost ships were doing a much more large-scale version of what the Mytunese had attempted, what had the Council angry with their allies: force the Council of Corvan into open war not of its choosing.
Captain Haarot had resumed impassivity, though his ordinary expression, twisted as it was by his scars, still looked like he was scowling. Commander Fox had leaned his elbows on the table, his fingers steepled in front of his face, thinking.
“And what was the planned course of action once this base was located?” he asked quietly. There was danger in that quiet; Bannon had seen it before.
Flint recognized his position and leaned back in his seat, spreading his hands. “That would be up to our respective governments, Commander. I would hope that the Senate would reach out to the Council to coordinate, given that the target cluster is about twenty-five light years coreward of some of your major allied stars. But this was, ultimately, reconnaissance. Our job has been to gather information and get it back to Columbia, or in Ransjunan’s case, the Shihyan. That takes some doing, by the way, this far out.”
He squinted a little as he studied Commander Fox. “While I can’t speak for the Senate, I would expect that an attempt at a joint operation would make the most sense. Trying to send a strike fleet out here would probably go badly at the best of times. Since you and the Zolarians lit the fuse around this region of space a couple of years ago, it would be a disaster.” He looked over at the impassive, motionless Ransjunan. “I also can’t speak for the Shihyan, but that’s a long way for a fleet to travel unsupported.”
The chyotsu said nothing.
Fox looked at Haarot, then at Bannon, thinking. Whatever he was about to say, however, was interrupted by an alarm chime.
Bannon and Haarot checked their personal comms, but Fox pivoted toward the holo display behind him and opened it up. That display could give him a direct line to Captain Tomas, but at the moment it brought up what looked like a tactical status display. He scanned it briefly, his own bulk between it and their guests, then closed it before turning back around and standing. The others all followed suit, even Ransjunan, who dominated the compartment by his sheer mass.
“Well, gentlemen, we will have to put this to the Council. I’m afraid that you will be our guests until that happens.” Bannon saw Talon’s expression flicker, a faint flash of anger in his eyes. He could understand that. Being rescued only to become effectively prisoners could not sit well with professional warriors. “Unfortunately, even that is dependent on our getting out of the Eredin system alive.
“There is a ghost ship in pursuit, closing faster than we can get back up to velocity now that we’re nearly to the wormhole emergence point. And it’s easily twice the size of any we’ve encountered so far.” He pointed to the hatch. “I suggest you get to an acceleration couch quickly, gentlemen. This could get bumpy.”
CHAPTER 12
“I need to see you in my compartment, First Sergeant.”
Draven looked up as Captain Breck’s voice came from his small terminal in his equally small compartment. Being a senior non-com at least got him private quarters aboard the Inspiration, but they were hardly luxurious.
“Right away, sir.” He levered his feet into his mag boots and clamped himself to the deck before moving to his hatch.
The Inspiration had been in orbit over the gas giant for the last hundred hours or so, following orbital insertion after the clash with the Mytunese around the fourth moon. Draven still wasn’t sure what the moon’s name was; he’d been busy preparing for conflicting mission orders since before they had secured to quarters for the engagement, and still more after.
He hoped that this time might be the final decision, but he doubted it.
The corridors of the Inspiration were relatively empty. The starship’s crew of spacers were still at alert stations, even though the Mytunese hadn’t ventured to try to intercept the orbiting Zolarian ships since the first engagement. The infantry watchstanders had heard whispers about strange contacts nearby, but Draven had yet to hear anything solid, anything beyond spacers’ tales.
He had to wonder, though. He’d seen spacers’ tales come to life recently.
It took a couple of minutes to get to officer quarters and find Captain Breck’s stateroom. He had to pass the guards stationed at the bulkhead separating officer quarters from the enlisted section. Such security measures weren’t normal under most circumstances, but there had been incidents.
