Ally (28 page)

“They don't work well with other troops, and I decided to keep them separate from you and the wess'har,” Esganikan said slowly, as if Ade didn't quite get it. “They're all male for most practical intents and purposes, but the species is in fact hermaphroditic. They are rigidly disciplined and intolerant of deviation. Are you absolutely sure you want to go on a patrol with them?”

“I like to know who's in my neighborhood, ma'am.” Well, he'd done joint ops with worse. They needed to know a bit about him, too, for their own safety. “Have you told them exactly what
c'naatat
is?”

Esganikan cocked her head, plume bobbing, and wandered slowly forward, hands clasped in what looked like prayer but was just a casually comfortable position for wess'har of either world.

“I have,” she said. “Don't worry. They don't covet it, I can assure you. They're troubled by
c'naatat.
” She indicated one soldier standing in the middle of the five-man group. “
Skavi,
come here.”

He approached as if she was going to give him a good thrashing, head slightly lowered, but Esganikan had that effect on people.

“Kiir, Fourth To Die,” he said. His voice seemed out of sync with his mouth movement, and it took a moment for Ade to realize that the voice was a transcast; he looked for the receiver and eventually spotted a thin white metal band around the collar of Kiir's blouson that vibrated almost imperceptibly when he spoke. “Esganikan Gai, this is our privilege.” He seemed more interested in her than in acknowledging Ade. “We will do for this terrible world what you did for us.”

Ah.
Esganikan was God. They owed her. Ade pieced together odds and ends of recent conversations and realized she hadn't just fought them, she'd won and they held her in high esteem. It certainly beat being spat on as an occupying army.

Then Kiir turned his head almost mechanically towards Ade. Jesus, was he commissioned? Did Ade salute him or not? Sod it, Kiir was an alien and nobody minded a display of courtesy. Ade snapped off a crisp salute and felt the breath of moving air as Chahal and Qureshi did the same. He was on autopilot. “Sergeant Adrian Bennett, Three-Seven Commando Royal Marines, sir.” No, he wasn't; not any longer.
Sod it.
“And Marine Bulwant Singh Chahal and Marine Ismat Qureshi, sir.”

Kiir half turned to the four troops behind him and indicated them with a vague and unmilitary flick of his gloved hand.
Three fingers. Close enough.

“All, Ten To Die, pursuit squad.”

Ade could hear the change in Qureshi's and Chahal's breathing, and for the first time he was aware that he could smell the variations in their skin chemistry. Everyone was nervous. All things considered, nervous was as good as they could hope for. Nobody in FEU armed forces have ever been trained for first contact; 510 Troop had clocked up six sentient alien species in this one deployment.

Kiir gestured to the ship. “This patrol may require you to kill. You do kill, yes or no?”

“Part of the job description,” said Ade, baffled. “Yes, sir.”

“You get in. We have a neighborhood to clear.”

Esganikan strode off, leaving the three marines to busk it with five Skavu and no idea of the acquaint session they were going on, except that Skavu seemed to think they might use non-lethal rounds. Qureshi still had leg pain from the last firefight with an isenj landing party. Esganikan might have thought the isenj were military wimps, but Ade judged them by close-quarters battle. He checked Chahal's and Qureshi's body armor diagnostics himself. It was set to turn rigid if so much as a pebble hit it.

“You're such a worry-guts, Ade,” said Chahal.

“Chaz, I'm not losing anyone on this deployment.” Ade checked his own armor. He didn't need it to survive but a round still hurt. “You're too close to going home in one piece.”

At least the interior of the former Eqbas ship was familiar enough, and the three of them sat on the bench along one bulkhead. The Skavu stared back at them, grim and silent.

“You can call me Ade,” he said. “Or Royal. We all answer to Royal.”

However the transcast rendered
Royal
, it got a baffled frown that seemed to move the Skavu's whole scalp. Qureshi checked the calibration of her rifle.

“Qureshi,
Last
To Bloody Well Die…” she whispered under her breath.

Cabinet office, Jejeno: the new administration

It was a messy argument, and Shan hadn't come twenty-five light-years to sit in a meeting. Esganikan and Rit were doing most of the talking, and the six members of the cabinet who remained, including Bedoi, were very subdued indeed.

Jesus Christ, Esganikan shot Shomen Eit. She actually did it.

And…

And…a few miles across the border they can't even clear the corpses.

Humans did that kind of thing too, and with equal dispassion. It was just that Esganikan wasn't an assassin, but an officer much like herself. And the Eqbas were wess'har, and she had genes in common with them.

It was way too late to have an attack of conscience. She found she wasn't listening to the discussion but trying to match up sins again, to try to put the events of the last few days in a context on her own Richter scale of amorality.

Come on, you've done worse. Just not with heads of state. You can justify every act to yourself.

She couldn't stop glancing out the window, several floors
above the street, and checking what was still out there. The telltale heat haze of the defense shield warped the carved and vividly painted designs on the building opposite. It was a high-rise block like those that seemed to cover most of the planet: isenj liked orange, green and blue, if that was how they actually saw the colors, and the building was as richly vibrant as a tapestry. Shan took no visual spectrum for granted now. Her sudden ability to see blue objects that had previously appeared white had been the first clue that she'd been infected by
c'naatat.
For a copper, the confirmation that you couldn't actually trust your own eyes was unsettling.

And the harder she looked, the more she could see the damage. Shell impact was visible on one sinuous assymmetric tower.
Jesus, Ade, go careful.
It was all getting very close.

“Umeh is not my priority mission,” Esganikan repeated carefully. She wouldn't sit down: she strolled around the room, her scent getting more and more acid. “I can't garrison troops here indefinitely to protect your administration. The Skavu are willing to stay on. This will be a
very
long-term process—many generations.”

Rit's speech still sounded like nails scraped down a smooth wall. Whatever isenj component lay within Shan, it hadn't extended to language. Ralassi was doing a fine job of covering the vocal range from English—delivered in a little child's voice that sat oddly with the mouthful of nasty little teeth—to the off-the-register clicks, shrills and burrs of an isenj. Shan suddenly thought of Vijissi's suicide, unable to face a lonely future as the only ussissi carrying
c'naatat,
and felt the beginnings of an unexpected sob threatening to choke her. She pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth and waited for it to pass.

“Minister Rit says she has alarming reports of atrocities,” said Ralassi. “Skavu have used blades on citizens who weren't resisting them. And you expect these alien troops to live among us for the foreseeable future?”

Shan glanced at Nevyan, who was kneeling like a geisha at a tea ceremony. It was an incongruously subservient pose
for an individual who could wipe a FEU warship from orbit with one literally ancient fighter craft and a handful of missiles. Nevyan tilted her head, pupils snapping open and shut.

So these are the Skavu, the new neighbors. Fifty million miles and Eqbas ships, even if they're they're a de-enriched spec. Right next door.

Nevyan's expression and scent spelled out concern, and Shan wondered if she felt sorry at last for Rit.

“Atrocities,” said Esganikan. She stood over Rit, eliciting a shiver across all those amber quill-beads. “I gave orders to use genome-targeted biological weapons. On Earth, that's banned. If I were to fragment people with explosives, humans accept that as legal. Minister, you authorized me to do this.”

“Okay, we're all inconsistent hypocrites,” said Shan. “But the Skavu will be an occupying army for a long time. And Minister Rit has to choose between total extermination and the eco-jihadim out there.”

Nevyan smelled agitated and there was the faintest hint of mangoes. Shan leaned across and gripped her forearm discreetly but very, very hard. Their eyes met. It was enough to stop a
jask
confrontation.

Diverted, Nevyan took a deep breath. “Can you guarantee that the Skavu won't turn to other worlds in this system, if they're that zealous?”

“They have their orders,” said Esganikan, “and they would have no motive to intrude on a wess'har planet.”

Nevyan rustled. Shan kept a discreet eye on her. Her silence wasn't discretion; she had nothing to add, but she was too dominant to seek consensus with an Eqbas matriarch for much longer. Her
dhren,
the opalescent white robe that all the matriarchs of F'nar wore, shifted color and was yet another incongruity, a magically beautiful garment set against the backdrop of a splendid polished stone-clad chamber while politicians and generals discussed the end of millions upon millions of lives.

Maybe the Skavu just had a tough rep.
Ade will assess them. Ade knows what he's doing.
Shan patted Nevyan's arm
to get her attention and simply mouthed
Ade
. Nevyan made an irritated sideways movement of her head, but the tension seemed to be relieved for the time being.

Then Ralassi changed tack, or maybe Rit did. The ussissi relayed the minister's next argument with neutral patience. “The Maritime Fringe is largely destroyed, but there are three continents also opposed to our cooperation with you, and they've sworn to attack both this nation and the wess'har.”

Esganikan kept pacing. “But none of them have effective air assets, so unless they can land troops by sea they're not a threat. They now
know
you have access to bioweapons which can destroy whole populations—targeted and replicating. They've
seen
this. Do they understand it? Do they appreciate that this is an extremely asymmetric situation? That we don't need large troop numbers or even a presence here to wipe them out?”

“Then may we have the remainder of the targeted bioweapons that you developed?”

“That doesn't address your own internal security problems. The members of your own genetic group that want you ousted.”

Rit considered that, shivering amber beads rattling on the tips of her quills. “Which is why I need ongoing support, so that we may get on with restoration. But not the Skavu, unless their conduct is regulated.”

There
was
a war still in progress, even if it had stopped in its tracks yet again. Shan tried to see isenj as their termite-like ancestors in the same way she saw humans as apes to understand their reactions better. Did they reach population or food crises and then swarm, attacking rival colonies? She didn't understand the stop-start nature of their conflicts. It was as if they hadn't really got the hang of fighting, and paused each time to stare in horror and wonder what the hell they had unleashed.

Esganikan, for all her propensity to take out a weapon and execute someone on the spot, was clearly trying to be patient by wess'har standards.
So I couldn't get it up to kill Rayat, and you can't quite bring yourself to commit genocide.
Shan
wondered how that would play out in the adjustment of Earth. She decided not to ask about that here, but she now knew how ten thousand troops could take half a continent. It all hinged on bioweapons, and firepower was just to make emphatic points.

She wondered how that could possibly work on Earth.

“How are you going to clean up after wiping out whole populations that can't even bury their dead?” Shan asked. “I'm a copper. I used to do stuff like that. Disasters. Emergencies. Shifting casualties.”

“When an area is cleansed,” said Esganikan, “then nanites can be released to remediate the environment. You saw that happen on Constantine island. They erase, and resolve everything to its components.”

“A whole country. A
continent.
You can
vacuum
up that mess too, can you?”

Esganikan seemed to be working out the English word
vacuum.
“Yes.”

Shan might easily have been the medieval peasant asking the modern man how he expected to light his home without lots of tallow. She couldn't grasp even now how advanced a civilization might be that had built towns and cities for a million years. The fact that wess'har—whether Eqbas or their local cousins—still looked like flesh and blood, still had families, still fretted over their kids, still enjoyed food and sex and the feel of wind and sunshine, made her forget how incomprehensibly different other elements of their culture might be.

Nevyan got up. Wess'har could rise from a kneeling position to upright in one fluid movement like a dancer. She walked across the cabinet chamber and stood next to Minister Rit, then knelt to bring her eyes as level with Rit's face as she could, ignoring the rest of the cabinet. They didn't seem to have much to contribute anyway, but then seeing what happened to dissenters like Eit probably made for much faster meetings and shorter agendas. Nevyan, with that intense wess'har focus, needed to be up close to the subject of her curiosity. There were no scent signals she could fully read, and no facial expressions to interpret.

Shan waited for a reaction from Rit. Humans found wess'har aggressive simply because they had no concept of personal space and got in way too close: isenj, creatures living in close confinement, probably had their own discomfort zones.