Ally (19 page)

She glanced down between her boots through the transparent deck of the ship as it passed over the center of Jejeno. The city was both a tribute to isenj engineering skills and an indictment of their stupidity. The forest of asymmetric towers—bronze, brown, copper, tan—and narrow streets created endless canyons. Shapakti said that it was an echo of isenj origins as termite-like animals living in giant mounds,
but Esganikan had seen almost identical soaring buildings in the images of Earth. It was how greedy species built: it showed space was at a premium because they had filled it and out-priced it—yes, she understood Earth's economy now, she understood it
very
well—and they didn't care about the intrusion on the landscape. It was a statement of their contempt for all other life.

It was one thing that reassured her about Australia as host nation for the landings. They built underground now. It was the relentless daytime temperatures and fierce storms that motivated them, and not environmental modesty in most cases, but motive didn't matter. Outcomes did.

The six soldiers who had insisted on being brought to Umeh Station to do their duty, as they put it, were clustered on the port side of the bridge. Apart from Shan Frankland's
jurej,
Ade, they spoke no eqbas'u and waited in silence to be disembarked.

Ade was learning slowly, but Shapakti said that was normal for humans with their poor language skills.

“Teh, niyukal hasve?”
Ade's speech was more wess'u than eqbas'u, but the crew liked him for his unselfconscious honesty. He managed to make himself understood, but sometimes he did something that the other marines called
crashing and burning.
This was such a time. The bridge crew stared at him. “Did that make sense?”

Hayin, the communications officer, felt compelled to try out his English. “You say you want closeness.”

Barencoin, the big dark-haired marine, and the small female one called Qureshi laughed loudly. “Keep your mind on the job, you dirty bugger,” Barencoin said.

“I thought I was asking what range the shield's got.” Ade squatted with his rifle across his knees, staring down at the cityscape passing beneath them. “As in how much ship do they have to leave behind to provide cover for the whole dome area.”

Hayin flicked the magnification in the deck to give Ade a better view of the faceted transparent dome of Umeh Station, and he flinched as the image beneath him snapped into larger scale.

The damage to the dome was visible. A large opaque patch had crazed but not shattered, and twisted debris was still sitting on the panels.

“That was done when, exactly?” she asked.

Ade consulted the
virin
clipped to his pouch belt. “Yesterday. Bit too close for comfort.”

“You know what they say about glass houses,” she said to Mart Barencoin.

“What, that you shouldn't whip out your cucumber if you live in one?”

The other marines laughed. “You're hilarious,” said Qureshi. “For a man who's only got a gherkin.”

Hayin appeared not to understand the joke. Esganikan decided to ask Shan later for an explanation of the comic value of vegetables. Her English was now fully fluent, but some nuances still evaded her.

“You can just set us down by the perimeter, ma'am,” said Ade. “We'll be fine. We're not under fire. If we were—well, we've all done that a few times.”

“If I didn't provide some cover for you, then I expect your
isan
would have serious objections,” said Esganikan. “We have enough resources to leave a ship section to shield the dome.”

“When do we get to meet the Skavu, ma'am?”

“You don't need to.”

“I'd
like
to.” Ade was quietly insistent, and his scent was very wess'har, very much the dominant male in the pecking order. “We may have to fight alongside these blokes or work with them at the very least.”

There were just six Royal Marines. Perhaps their presence reassured the humans in the dome, but Esganikan couldn't see how a handful of troops with basic weapons could make a difference if Umeh Station came under attack. They could make little difference to the evacuation, either. But she did understand their compulsion to do their duty. Hers was taking her more than fifty years out of time, to Earth.

“Very well,” she said. “I'll arrange for you to accompany one of their patrols.”

Ade brightened visibly. “Thank you, ma'am.”

“I want Eddie to remain in the dome.”

“Yes, ma'am.” Ade didn't ask why. Eddie would. “What do I need to know about their command structure?”

“They rank themselves in order of who will die.”

The marines stared at her, their identical expressions—very slight frowns, lips slightly parted—giving them almost a family resemblance.

“Well, it happens that way with us,” said Barencoin. “Only we don't plan it that way.”

“Educated guess, or is this a…well, suicide squad?” Ade asked.

Suicide squad.
It was a fascinating term. “If there's an need to die to achieve a mission, then they have a numbered sequence of personnel. Commanders tend to go first.”

“Works for me,” said Becken. “Bit extreme, though.”

Ade shrugged, but he looked uneasy. “Not unknown back home.”

“Not with a bloody numbered ticket. Gentleman's understanding, maybe.”

Esganikan decided to introduce the marines to the Skavu gently. She wasn't sure how to explain the cultural gulf. “They are extremely rigorous about environmental policy, and intolerant of infringement, and they will kill to enforce balance.”

“Best thing is to meet them,” said Ade, and his comment had a finality about it. “If they're going to be in our backyard for the next few years, then we need to get to know them
properly.
”

Esganikan went to break the news to Eddie. He was in the aft section of the ship as it was configured at that moment, using his remote camera to record images of the fighters forming from the hangar deck material and coalescing with it again. It fascinated him. Joluti had left him in the hands of the air group staff because he wanted to see it demonstrated so many times to
get all the angles.

It was basic technology, unchanged in years. Esganikan wondered what the reaction would be on Earth when she broke out sections of the ship on landing, if Eddie hadn't tired his audience of the spectacle by then.

“So what can I cover?” he asked. “Where can I go?”

“Umeh Station,” said Esganikan. “The combat zone is closed to you.”

“Oh.”

“The Skavu aren't used to
embedded journalists.
That's the right term, yes?”

Eddie looked about to argue, chin lifting slightly, but then he lowered it and nodded. “Okay. Onboard footage?”

“Perhaps.” How much carnage did he need? “Stay with Ade Bennett. There's nothing new for you in this phase.”

“Are you going to deploy bioweapons?”

“I'll assess the situation after the Skavu have begun the assault on the Maritime Fringe.”

“Can you estimate how long you expect this to last?”

“Possibly weeks. The more dust that bombing throws into the atmosphere, the more remediation work we have to do. Bioweapons make less impact, however much the idea repels humans.”

Eddie looked down and put the back of his hand to his mouth, knuckles against his lips. He looked deep in thought for a moment. When he looked up again, his face seemed to have sagged slightly.

“I don't know why this doesn't shock me any longer,” he said. “Because it bloody well should.”

He turned to summon his bee cam with a gesture and closed the small ball in his palm. Esganikan indicated the forward section of the ship and waited for him to notice that he was being sent elsewhere.

“Join the marine detachment,” she said.

Eddie gave her a mock salute of the kind the marines used, hand to brow, and left the hangar. Joluti knelt down on the gantry to rest and surveyed the deck below.

“The Skavu are in position. They aim to cut off the Maritime Fringe forces just before your squad enables Minister Rit to take control.”

“How far inside the border is the Fringe now?”

“Thirty kilometers.”

“Untidy.”

“Yes, there'll be heavy Northern Assembly casualties.
There's nowhere to move civilians in this kind of infrastructure.”

“Then we'll deploy the bioagent as soon as possible. It won't be tidy, but the more Fringe genotypes we can wipe out without bombardment, the better.”

“You know what the Skavu will do.”

“Oh yes. I know that very well.”

There were plenty of Northern Assembly citizens—and even troops—who opposed their government now. Even the bioagent tailored to the Fringe's majority genome wouldn't target all those resisting the restoration. Esganikan said the internal politics of the isenj were irrelevant, but it still made her uneasy.

“With Earth,” she said, “we have time to select those who want to cooperate. No crude lines across a chart. We can select those who can sustain the planet responsibly.”

“Is that what happened with Garav?”

“No. The Skavu seemed to be culturally prone to radical conversions.”

Joluti got to his feet again. “Then let's get this done,” he sighed.

The engineered pathogen would take a few days to work through the target population. Rit didn't have that long. If she couldn't hold the government together, then the erasure option would follow. Esganikan returned to the bridge to begin transforming Umeh, and paused at one of the screens that showed a view of the hangar bay hatch. Sleek bronze fighter craft formed from the body of the ship, configured in this sortie to seed clouds, were slipping out of the hatch at regular intervals that almost created a strobe effect in the field of view. She turned to watch through the transparent bulkhead section as they streaked south towards the Fringe.

I want this to work. I'm tired of slaughter.

She hoped this would be the last world she ever had to restore by global destruction. It was as well that worlds needing such radical measures were very, very rare.

“Aitassi,” said Esganikan. “Call Minister Rit.”

The minister had progressed a great deal in terms of confidence and sheer audacity since Esganikan had first met her
in Umeh Station to discuss a kinder, slower way of reducing the isenj population with contraceptive agents in the water supply.
They could have done this without conflict.
But if they'd had that foresight, she wouldn't have been here in the first place.

“All the cabinet members are in the main government offices,” said Ralassi, turning back and forth to interpret. Sometimes he paused and seemed to be arguing with her, but it was hard to tell by the tone. He might simply have been annoyed, as ussissi frequently were. “Seven of them. They have not yet replaced Minister Rit with another. She asks you to remove them so she can declare herself head of an emergency government and formally sanction your intervention.”

Isenj liked their bureaucracy tidy. “Then let me be certain what she now means by
remove.
”

“Eradicate.”

“I thought so. We have no facilities for prisoners and experience tells me the minister would be unwise to hold any.”

“Are you ready to begin?”

“As soon as the marines have been landed.”

“When will you begin seeding the clouds?”

“We already have.”

From the tracking remote, Esganikan could see the fighters, now configured as armed payload vessels, in formation above the cloud layer cloaking most of the coastal strip that made up the Maritime Fringe. Once dropped, the crystals containing the pathogen would result in heavy rain within hours, coating the city-packed land beneath, scattering contaminated water droplets to be inhaled, disrupting the biochemistry of every isenj in the region whose genome had certain key alleles, and causing massive internal hemorrhage. In hours, they'd sicken. In days they would all be dead.

Esganikan could do this to the whole planet if and when she wished.

“Minister Rit says that was premature.”

“She said she intended to use the weapon.”

“She wanted to deploy it at a time of her choosing.”

“We understand how to do these things. This is the best time for her.” Esganikan turned to Hayin and inclined her head in a mute signal to be passed to the pilots.
Drop the payload.
She'd done this before, on more modest scales. She never took it lightly. “The effects should be seen in four hours, if she'd like images from the remotes to make her point to the rest of her administration. There should be dead and dying visible to the cameras by then.”

Ralassi's silence on the other end of the link was palpable shock. It seemed he'd spent too long among isenj if he didn't recall that wess'har—the ones he knew, or the Eqbas—were literal and not given to shows of
brinksmanship,
as Shan called it. Eventually he exchanged high-pitched chatter with Rit.

“The Minister says she understands and will operate from her chambers in the north of the city until the situation is stable enough for her to appear in public.”

“We may be able to add some emphasis to her words.”

“You have still not agreed who will have control of the universal pathogen.”

“No, but I do have it, and I
will
deploy it if need be,” said Esganikan.

If she did, there would be no isenj to worry about any longer, not on Umeh anyway. She could let the nanites loose to scour the planet and break down every last thing the isenj had created, and their corpses along with their works; then the phased remediation systems would finally move in to cleanse what couldn't be broken down—some of the heavier metals—and then the planet would be left fallow.