The Span of Empire: Chapter Eight

    At that moment, something crystallized in Caitlin’s mind; something that she realized had been growing for some time.

    “Fleet Commander Dannet . . .”

    “Yes, Director Kralik?” Dannet had looked away for a moment, but her head swiveled back to face Caitlin. Her eyes were green, but her posture was very neutral. Not even one of her whiskers twitched.

    “The fleet will return to Ares Base as soon as any emergency repairs are completed.”

    “As you instruct, Director.” Caitlin listened, but found no trace of irony or sarcasm in the fleet commander’s voice. Her angles were now expressing dutiful-compliance; her eyes were fading to black. Caitlin suspected that Dannet may not be happy with the command, but she still respected who had oudh in this mission. Even if it was a human.

 

---

 

    The Ban Chao’s captain had brought the great craft to a halt some distance away from where the remnants of the World Harvester tumbled slowly through space. In his harness, Tully was drenched in sweat. He clutched his weapon even though the battle was over, there was no one left to fight, and they were safe–for the moment. Knowing that, though, and actually feeling it down in his marrow were two separate matters. He wasn’t sure his heart rate would ever ease back down to normal.

    They had raided a freaking Ekhat Death Star! Or at least, that’s what it felt like. As of yet, he couldn’t quite wrap his mind around that fact.

    “Shit!” he said as he flipped his face-shield open. “I don’t want to do that again anytime soon!” The faces of the six he’d lost from his command were burned behind his eyes. He was going to be seeing them in his sleep for months, he was sure.

    Tully had been one of the last of the jinau to re-board the ship. Ahead of him he could see the troopers splitting up to head for their quarters, shrugging off their harnesses and starting to peel off parts of their suits. They were good protection, but the suits did get a little hot and gamey after a while.

    “Do you know where we’re going next, Colonel?” a gangly youth with shaggy black hair and a private’s single stripe asked. One of his front teeth was broken. Tully cudgeled his memory for the boy’s name.

    Willis, he realized, Willis Ciappa, recruited out of the one of the last of the rebel enclaves in the Appalachian Mountains.

    “Not yet, Ciappa,” Tully replied. “When I know, you’ll know. We’ll be leaving as soon as some repairs are done, though.”

    “What if the Ekhat follow us?” another soldier said, this one a broad-shouldered sandy-haired female built like a truck.

    “Frame travel doesn’t work like that,” he said, having had the same worries himself and secured an explanation some time ago. “It doesn’t leave any kind of trail to follow. We would have had to tell them where we were going.”

    A nearby sergeant, one of the ones that General Kralik had provided, snorted. “Like that would happen!” Cold Bear, Tully’s mind prompted him with the name. Joe Cold Bear, from North Dakota. He’d been one of Ed Kralik’s original jinau troops, and the general had passed him on to Tully when he gave him his colonel’s eagles.

    The Ban Chao shuddered. Tully staggered, regained his balance, then tried to think about anything but the amount of damage they’d taken. “I’m going to check on the prisoners.”

    Ciappa shuddered. “They’re a right despicable bunch,” he said. “Serving the Ekhat like that. I’d rather be dead.”

    “They never had a choice,” Tully said. “Just like we humans didn’t have a choice once the Jao defeated us. They’re victims, not collaborators.”

    “Hard to tell the difference sometimes,” Ciappa muttered.

    Tully caught the sergeant’s eye and jerked his head. Cold Bear pushed the private toward their company quarters. “Private, go clean your weapon, go clean your suit, and for God’s sake, go take a shower.”

    The sergeant led the protesting trooper away. Tully remembered thinking a lot of things himself about the Jao and the conquest when he was growing up in a rebel camp. Many (though not all) of those things turned out not to be true. Ciappa was just going to have to learn through experience. He’d signed up for this adventure; now he was having to live it.

    Tully’s stomach crawled as he made his way through the narrow hallways toward the Holding Area, which had been specially designed for prisoners. Supposedly it was secure enough to contain even an Ekhat, though Tully knew even if they caught one, it would just kill itself the first chance it got if they didn’t drastically restrain it. The one they’d captured in the Valeron boarding action hadn’t lasted long, despite all its limbs being burned off by lasers during the action. They’d gotten it back to Earth, but only barely. Tully hadn’t gotten a straight story yet on how it had died; only some wildly contradictory and usually gory rumors. The freaking Ekhat were crazy enough that it may have eaten itself, for all he knew.

    The Ban Chao’s massively armored hull was reportedly compromised in a dozen places, but its highly trained damage control squads were already on it. He heard banging and swearing in external compartments as he moved along. From what he’d heard over the com net, though, the damage was relatively minor, especially considering that they’d rammed a freaking dreadnought!

 

---

 

    Six fully armed jinau stood outside the Holding Area. Tully peered into the observation window set into the wall beside the door. The aliens had been stripped of their suits, and now sprawled on the floor, entangled with each other. Their bodies were long and sinuous, and such a glossy deep black that they gleamed with iridescent highlights. They had short stubby arms and sleek narrow skulls. They were four-legged and built low to the ground. At the moment, they weren’t moving. He guessed they were still alive, but it was hard to be sure.

    “Any trouble here?” he asked the closest guard, a Jao wearing Terra taif’s blue harness.

    “We have watched them, but they do nothing but cower,” the Jao said with a contemptuous flick of his ear. “They are not worth the energy it would take to kill them.”

    “They are slaves,” Tully said. “I don’t think they’ve ever had the chance to be anything better.”

    “Slaves cannot help us,” the Jao said. “Only more and better ships; additional intelligent allies like the Lleix; beings that know how to protect themselves.”

    “From their close association with the Ekhat, they might have important information vital to our struggle against their former masters,” Tully said, somewhat alarmed. “See that nothing happens to compromise their potential usefulness.”

    Fortunately, though the Jao were baffled by the concept of compassion, they thoroughly understood making oneself of use. It was one of their highest values. The guard’s stance shifted into reluctant-assent. The others would take his lead, Tully knew.

    Inside the Holding Area, the gleaming bodies shifted, slithering over one another in a fashion that reminded Tully all too strongly of snakes. He shuddered.

    “They’re still alive?” said a human voice from behind his shoulder. “That’s a good sign.”

    He turned and met the gaze of Vikram Bannerji, who had put away his gun and armor and resumed his intelligence work. “At least they didn’t pick up that particular meme from their masters,” he said. “If they were Ekhat, they’d have all killed themselves by now.”

    Bannerji spread his hands on the thick observation glass and peered in. “I can’t wait to interrogate them.” Within, the clustered bodies shifted, as though aware of his interest. They buried their faces against one another’s shimmering hide. “The things this lot might be able to tell us!”

    Or not, Tully thought sourly. It was entirely possible they might be no more intelligent than a St. Bernard or no more able to communicate than a great ape. “When will you get started?” he said.

    “As soon as I can get Ramt over here from the Lexington,” Bannerji said with a trace of frustration. “She should be able to translate if they speak any of the known Ekhat dialects. If they have their own language, or some other Ekhat dialect, she’ll be able to learn it faster than I can.”

    The young lieutenant looked around at Tully. “I think they belonged to one of the sub-factions of the Complete Harmony.” His eyes glittered behind his glasses. “They might even be the same sub-faction that upraised the Jao into sentience.”

    The Ban Chao shuddered.

    “What was that?” Bannerji said, looking back over his shoulder. His face paled.

    “Maybe a bit of debris,” Tully said.

    “Oh.” Bannerji turned back to the window. His hands shook a bit; although how he could have any nerves left after what they’d just been through, Tully didn’t know. “I thought maybe we were under attack again.”

    Tully looked at the unresponsive aliens again, then clapped Bannerji on the shoulder. “Keep me posted, Lieutenant. Anything happens with these things–anything at all–you notify me ASAP.”

    “Yes sir, Colonel.”

 

---

 

    Tully’s pad rang with a com call just as he was almost out of his suit. One of the enlisted jinau helped him get free of it, and he grabbed the pad.

    “Tully here.”

    “Colonel, you might want to come up to the command deck.”

    Tully recognized the voice of Shan Liang, his executive officer.

    “I’ll be up as soon as I scrape the stink off.”

    “Actually, Gabe, I think you want to get here ASAP if you don’t want to miss it.”

    Shan’s use of his first name told Tully that whatever was in the air, it wasn’t anything very official or touching on the jinau. Curiosity intrigued, Tully replied, “On my way, then.”

    Jinau and crewmen made way for Tully. He was, after all, both the senior jinau officer in the fleet and a member of the personal service of Aille krinnu ava Terra. He had to snicker when he remembered just how high he had come, and just how much trouble he had caused Aille in that rise.

    When he entered the command deck, Vanta-Captain Ginta krinnu vau Vanta motioned him over to stand with him and Major Liang in front of the Ban Chao’s main view display.

    “They found an Ekhat base on the fourth planet, Colonel Tully,” Ginta said. “Dannet is about to deal with it.” The captain’s body was angled in a posture Tully didn’t recognize. Not officially. But he thought that hunger-for-revenge probably expressed it. No Jao alive would not be excited to see large numbers of Ekhat removed from the universe.

    Tully understood that attitude very well. Once you got through the frou-frou manners and all the funny body language, most Jao were pretty basic folks, he’d decided. At least in most respects. Like this one. As it happened, he agreed with them; the fewer Ekhat in the universe, the better off the universe would be.

    Tully and Liang watched in silence as the penetrator missiles were sent into the dome one at a time. At the end of the exercise, they and the other humans on the command deck celebrated, just as all the human crew in the fleet celebrated.

    After the noise died down, Ginta looked at Tully and said, “We will remain in the system long enough to make necessary repairs, then Director Kralik has ordered that we return to Ares Base.”

    “How long before we jump?” Tully asked.

    Ginta gave the shrug adopted from the humans. “When flow is right. Perhaps one or two of your days. Let your jinau clear the decks away.”

    And interrogate the prisoners, Tully thought, or at least try to. He just hoped it wasn’t going to be like having a conversation with a malfunctioning lamp.

 

---

 

    Tully supervised the interrogation of their prisoners. Or what passed for an interrogation. It looked like more of a joke to him, something like trying to have a conversation with an earthworm just before you used it to bait the hook.

    Vikram Bannerji had directed the guards to separate one of their slithery guests and isolate it in a separate room. The table had been replaced with an ordinary chair for Vaughan and a bench for the Lleix, Ramt, who was to do the translating. Ramt had been observing the aliens’ interaction for hours each day, trying to absorb the scant verbalizations they uttered on their own.

    She reported that they seemed to use both a basic Ekhat dialect and their own language, which of course made some sense. The Ekhat were not going to pollute their exalted minds with a slave species’ language, but the slaves would still have their own tongue.

    The shimmering black beast rushed about the room, trying to find another of its fellows. Bannerji and Ramt let it run its fear out, hoping evidently that it would eventually calm.

    Finally it knocked Bannerji into the wall, but that seemed to frighten it even more and it cowered into a corner.

    “Slave creature,” Ramt said in an Ekhat dialect, “calm yourself.”

    Tully and Bannerji both had programmed their pocket coms to translate.

    The beast ducked its head and seemed to be trying to fold in upon itself.

    “How is your kind designated by the masters?” Ramt said.

    It did not answer, just burrowed harder.

    “Answer, worthless wretch!” Ramt said. “By what name does the Complete Harmony designate your kind?”

    It collapsed to the floor, quivering.

    Ramt glanced over at the observation window. “Continue,” Tully said. “We can’t give up that easily. They will talk to us–eventually.”

    The interrogation went on for two more hours. The slave never once made any kind of meaningful vocalization. They finally joined Tully in the observation room.

    “I recommend that we put it back with its fellows,” Bannerji said, “and observe it then. Perhaps it will at least try to tell them where it’s been and what happened to it.”

    “They are worthless,” Ramt said, “just semi-mindless trash the Ekhat use and then throw away.”

    “They will not be worthless to us,” Tully said, crossing his arms. “I will not allow it.”

    Bannerji glanced at him. “Yes, sir,” he said and snapped off a salute. “We’ll make these suckers work for us, no matter what it takes.”

    Tully nodded. If they could make the rebels on Earth turn their hands to work with the Jao, they could make a few beaten down Ekhat slaves see it their way too. It was just a matter of time and persistence . . . and the right approach, he thought ruefully, rubbing his neck where Yaut used to grab him to throw him where he was supposed to be.

 

---

 

---

 

    Glimnitz shuddered as the loathsome pink creatures dragged it back to its fellows and shoved it inside the sterile room. His fellow Trike swarmed him, pressing their lengths to his in a futile attempt to find comfort. Alas, there was no comfort outside the sphere of the Great Ones. There was no joy if one could not serve until the moment of the next Note and then the next. No songs existed in this terrible place. They could look forward to nothing but death.

    “What do they want with us?” Solvaya asked, an undersized female. She was faulty, having torn off a leg in the battle and now had trouble walking.

    “They ask questions,” Glimnitz said as the rest crowded in for comfort. “Questions and questions about the great masters!”

    She limped back and forth at the edges of the group, unable to draw nearer. “Did you answer?”

    “As soon as they have what they want from us, we will be spaced, you can be sure of that,” Glimnitz said. “Silence is our best protection. Tell them nothing. Eventually the Great Ones will find this ship and destroy it themselves. Then we will all be at peace, knowing we have done our best.”

 

---

 

    In the event, it took nearly three days for the fleet to achieve readiness to leave. Vercingetorix had by far the worst damage, and was accordingly the last vessel to be ready.

    While the fleet waited on the battleship’s repairs, Tully spent most of his time with Lieutenant Bannerji and the Lleix Ramt in the interrogations of the Ekhat slaves.

    Attempted interrogations, that is.

    Down on the lower deck, the squirmy Trike were still not talking to anyone but each other. Ramt was making progress translating their vocalizations, but not nearly as much as she would have if they would speak with her too. They weren’t like real individuals, she thought, as she tracked comments and responses around the room. What one thought, they evidently all thought. They could embellish upon a statement, modify it, expand it, but they seemed utterly unable to contradict an idea once it had been expressed.

    Was that an artifact of their slave status? Ramt edged closer to the one-way glass. Had the Ekhat bred the ability to even conceive of opposition out of these pathetic creatures? She made notations on her pad, thinking how to turn this to their advantage.

    She keyed the intercom on. “Report on condition!” she barked in Ekhat.

    The Trike hesitated, clumped in the center of the detention chamber. “Master?” one of them chirped, then they were all abasing themselves, falling to the floor, squirming over and under one another.

    “Report!” she said again.

    “This is a dreadful place,” one, larger than the rest, said. “Take us back to the divine Ekhat! Let us serve the true song again!”

    “You shall go nowhere until you report!” Ramt said, trying to evoke the hatefulness of a true Ekhat.

    “It is cold here,” the Trike said, “and oh so very bright! Our eyes burn and there is no work. We are desolate with nothing to do.”

    They could adjust the temperature and lighting, Ramt thought. Work was another matter. “Your work,” she said, suddenly struck by a notion, “your current assignment, is to converse with our new slaves, the Lleix. Teach them how to speak properly and how to work for the Ekhat.”

    The iridescent black bodies stilled. “Then we will hear the next note?”

    “You will hear it as soon as I do,” Ramt said, then shut off the intercom. First, she would have conditions altered more to their liking, then she would present himself inside their detention chamber and see if he had at last found a way around their all too natural cautions.

 

---

 

    Even Caitlin Kralik came over from the Lexington to observe the captives. She watched Lieutenant Bannerji and Ramt work with the Trike, as they’d learned the sinuous black aliens called themselves.

    “They may actually be quite low on the intelligence scale for species,” Bannerji said. “They don’t seem to be able to conceive of an existence where they are not slaves.”

    “Then, for now,” Caitlin said, “they should consider themselves our slaves. We can worry about liberating them later.”

    Bannerji stared at her. “That’s–” He shook his head. “That’s–genius. It just might work.”

    He nodded at the door. “Ramt and I will try that.”

    The Lleix joined him as he slipped through door. Inside the detention chamber, the Trike rushed to the back wall and cowered in a sinuous pile of sleek, iridescent black bodies.

 

---

 

    The wretched creatures were coming after them again! Trike 10988, also known as Solvaya, cowered against the wall. Why did they not decently kill their captives? Trike had no purpose outside the divine Ekhat. Their magnificent ship was gone. The great note being composed by their masters was left unsung, choked off into nothingness before it could be broadcast. There were no Ekhat here to slaughter them for failing to win the battle as was right and needful. So it was not even left to them to die well and please their masters in that way.

    The two aliens who came into the room were different from one another in many respects but alike in their stiffness. They spoke the Divine Language. The masters, Solvaya remembered from the few times he had been granted a glimpse, had been quite stiff too.

    “Slaves,” the smaller one said in a piping voice, “you will speak to us.”

    They piled themselves against the wall, diving under and under one another, trying to conceal themselves from the alien wrongness that had invaded their space.

    “You were the Ekhat’s slaves,” the other stiff creature said. “They are dead. Now, you are our slaves and you will speak to us!”

    Solvaya was forced out by the bodies of her fellows. For a moment, there was nowhere to hide. She was painfully exposed.

    The smaller alien stepped closer. It had coverings of some sort draped over it, a false hide, as though it was molting. Disgusting!

    The larger one prowled near. “What are your duties?”

    Solvaya could not think; she was so afraid.

    “Report!” the stiff ones said. “Report!”

    “We run the ship,” the Trike said. “We service the engines, adjust the controls, but mostly we wait for the next Divine Note.”

    “Good,” the smaller one said. “You are our slaves now.”

    “Where is our work?” Solvaya replied in a low tone. “Will you sing one of the great notes when victory is achieved?”

    “Perhaps,” the smaller one said, “if you work hard.”

    “Where is our work?” Trike 31766 said from behind. “What shall we do to please our new masters?”

    “Where is our work?” the others babbled together. “Where is our work?”

    “Your first work is to talk to us in your native tongue,” the smaller one said. “Then we will see.”

    “Talk?” they echoed.

    “Tell us of the Ekhat ship,” the creature said. “Tell us of your duties.”

    So Trike 10988 sat on the floor, folded her stubby arms, and began to explain.