B00BFVOGUI EBOK (8 page)

This Dominium session began as
they all had, with the ruling body displaying a visual reminder of the dangers
the Xylanx were up against. Kolvax,
standing in the center of the circular assembly room, looked up at the suspended
crystal imager and yawned.

There was the soundless monochrome
image of a human woman, tromping up and down happily in a vat — dancing, the Xylanx presumed, in the blood of her enemies. A sure sign of a vicious people. And there she was again in
another fragment: evidently a prisoner, she was forced, along with another
slave, to stuff her mouth with dark morsels carried along by a conveyor. The
segment ended there, but the Xylanx assumed that
death had surely followed. A fiendish method of execution,
showing that even the mightiest human could be brought low.

Kolvax looked away, annoyed. How many
times could this thing be rerun? The seconds of video had no context now, nor
had they ever: Kolvax even suspected that, viewed
outside the martial lens of the Xylanx, they might be
part of some human entertainment rather than a political message. There was
something comic about the woman, in a curious way. No,
how
the images were transmitted was the key thing.

Xylander observers had found the signals
decades earlier during a years-long focus on a nearby star believed to have no
transit stations. Had the broadcast been meant for the originating planet
itself, the Xylanx would never have found it: a
signal directed around the horizon by a surface-based transmitter or down to
the ground from a satellite would’ve leaked little into space and not been of
sufficient power to span the vast distance. But these signals were directed
outward, at a strength intended for reception off world.

Had the humans colonized their
star system? It seemed the most likely explanation to Kolvax.
And it meant that a human presence in their neighborhood could be just around
the corner — or even underway, by the time the Xylanx had
received the signals.

Had Kolvax
been alive then, he would have mobilized the Stalkers immediately to
investigate. Instead, the Xylanx of that time decided
to withdraw to within their borders, using the militia only to put down local
rebellions. Rather than test themselves against the humans, the leaders chose
the path of cowardice.

More images appeared now, some in
color, depicting escalating violence. He had had enough. “You can stop showing
this now,” he said, his voice booming around the chamber. “I alone have seen
them. Me and my followers!”

“The Great Kolvax,”
a voice echoed from above. “We had forgotten you were here.”

Kolvax couldn’t see the speaker’s
sneer, but he didn’t need to. The Dominium’s assembly
room was structured to make anyone given an audience as ill at ease as
possible. Kolvax stood in a tiny lighted circle
beneath the crystal visualizer above. All around were
the ranking Dominium members, silhouettes behind a hundred one-way partitions.
It was a nod to egalitarianism: the guest, usually
accused of some crime against the state, would have no notion of the identities
of his judges and accusers. Kolvax knew, of course.
“Well, Haarfat,” he said, glaring at the shadow who’d
spoken, “you won’t forget me after this.”

He turned and looked up to the
display, which now showed, in vibrant color, scenes from the last hours of his
exile: The arrival of the humans, recorded by the armor worn by him and his
compatriots. The weakling captive chattering in fear.
And the battle with the warrior female and her comrades, all of whom looked
more formidable than the wide-eyed blood-stomper from the old transmission.

The Dominium members had seen the
video, but he heard them gasp again from behind their protective screens. Kolvax smiled. He’d guessed correctly. The images alone
wouldn’t have been enough to save his skin; any talented Xylander
could have doctored them. But he had something else: the coward’s blood on his
glove. He hadn’t needed the hostage after all. Genetic analysis had already
proven that the people he fought existed. And that, Kolvax
hoped, would be enough to reverse his people’s slide into irrelevance.

The Xylanx
of his grandfather’s time were the scourge of the region. Few species could
match them for industry. The rivals who were more efficient did not long
survive. The Xylanx made sure of that, laying waste
to worlds, enslaving some species and eradicating others. The Stalker brigades,
the Xylanx’s high-tech armored special
forces, were a tool of expansion and terror.

But thanks to the messages from
humanity, Kolvax had been born into a flabby realm
only interested in protecting territory already taken. Despite its public
rumblings, the ruling body really had no interest in venturing forth against
the humans, not when its members could use the threat to stoke fear at home and
preserve their holdings. The status quo enriched the Dominium members, and
opponents to the isolation policy were made to suffer.

Kolvax could have been one of those
liquidated. He’d originally cursed his people’s fear of and fixation on
humanity: they limited their horizons, preventing conquests. But then he hit
upon another way. He decided to outflank the ruling class with the creation of the
Severed. If the Dominium wanted to protect what they had by sowing fear of
another species, his people would
loathe
aliens, demanding that all contamination be purged.

Hewing
to an even more xenophobic position had kept him alive and given him room to build
his own power base — for a time.

And now he intended to pound the
wedge in deeply.

“None of you believed the humans
would ever leave their cradle,” Kolvax said. “You showed
the old images by rote, building up your boogeymen
without the least interest in investigating the humans’ challenge. Well, I have
just reminded you. They are real!”

“You don’t have to make a
speech,” Haarfat said. “Although we know that is what
you most love to do.” The Dominium member cleared his throat. “We’ve sequenced
the genetic material you returned. It matches what we would’ve expected to see.
We’ll need to return to your place of exile in force to investigate.”

Kolvax laughed derisively.
Some strategists these people are
. “All you’ll do is alert them to us.”

“And you didn’t?” a female voice
asked. It was Deeliah, Kolvax
assumed, one of his harshest critics. “The humans saw you!”

“But we left no clue to follow — none
that will be found before we have a chance to act,” Kolvax
said. “The Severed are meticulous and careful, even in exile. That buys us
time. The humans were not on a military expedition—”

“They were armed!” Deeliah sputtered.

Kolvax waved his hand, and above, the
image resolved to show the golden-haired coward, wearing his badge. “The human
was a trader,” Kolvax said. “He certainly wasn’t a
fighter. We saw them bringing goods into the station.
They’re leading a commercial — not military — expedition.”

Silence above and around. The
human accession into the Signatory Systems was by far the biggest shocker Kolvax had come back with. It was a fearsome development,
portending the spread of humanity everywhere. It gave him the confidence to
advance his plan.

“We need more information about
their capabilities,” he said. “I can get it.” Kolvax gestured
again. A twinkling display appeared in the crystal imager above, depicting
stars as glowing red pulses. Eight pathways traced away from a flashing dot at
the center, representing the transit connections from the Severed’s
place of exile. “A frontal assault on the station will mobilize them against
us. But there’s no reason to do that — not when there are alternate routes for us
to reach places they’re likely to go. We can find them where they’re out
trading. And I can take the information you want as easily as I took the
trader’s blood.”

Haarfat said nothing for a moment.
Finally, Kolvax heard a grudging question. “What do
you want?”

“Command of a
habitat. And
control of a Stalker detachment, which I will direct from there.”

“A habitat! You don’t want much.”

“I want to protect the Xylanx,” Kolvax said. He raised a
hairless eyebrow. “If the rest of our people knew who was lurking at the door,
I’m sure they’d want you to advance me all that was needed.” His lip curled. “Give
me my license to speak to the masses again, and they’ll know—”

 “We’re not making that mistake again,” Deeliah said. The Dominium had withheld news of Kolvax’s encounter from the general public. She sighed.
“You will install your so-called followers in positions of power, we assume.”

“Of course. You know the code,” Kolvax said. “I claim this discovery. Rights assigned to
it, and titles.” He looked at the display and pointed. “I suggest Gharion Preserve — where I just came from. It’s connected to
the exile station, with transit links heading almost everywhere the trader can
go.” It also had thirty thousand Xylanders, he did
not need to say, whose production would be under his
command.

“Use discretion,” Haarfat said. “If you know how to do
that. The human traders may be accustomed to commercial rivals. Appear
as one.”

Kolvax would do more than that. The
need to keep the humans from expanding was legitimate. “I will oppose them at
every turn — until I have what I need.” He looked up. “I mean, what
we
need.”

Silence from above signaled the
audience was over. Kolvax smirked and walked out into
the receiving area. There, in the antiseptic atrium, Tellmer
stood beneath the only color in the room: a great tree growing in a vast
planter. Tellmer’s other arm had been reconnected, he
saw, and the aide was moving it around awkwardly.

“We got it,” Kolvax
said. “Everything I wanted.” In less than a week, they’d gone from being exiled
on an alien station to having control of the Xylanx
fortress station next door.

Tellmer bowed his helmeted head. “Wonderful, Great Kolvax.” Raising
his head, Tellmer looked up. “I just remembered
something, standing here.”

“How to make a
fist?” Kolvax laughed. Xylanx surgical
science was remarkable, but Tellmer was still
recovering.

Tellmer made a feeble attempt to point
upward. “Remember back in your office, behind the chapel? You forgot your
tree,” he said.

Kolvax looked up. “Huh. So I did.” But
he was hungry and in the mood to celebrate, so he quickly forgot about it.

When he was eleven, Jamie Sturm
had sold his little stepsister to the Regulans. Earth’s
first trading partner had taken a liking to Shetland ponies, which his mother’s
new in-laws bred: Jamie had opened their eyes to the prospect of shipping their
excess animals off world, taking advantage of a market that was, as yet, in its
infancy. He had simply added one more name to the documentation. Young Jamie
had not gotten to keep the eighty thousand dollars, and to this day the sight
of a live-animal shipping container still made Taffy Keeler cry.

Given how the adult Taffy had
turned out, Jamie knew now he had been absolutely justified. The Keelers would drive anyone to extreme measures. But that
early experience had put him on the road to thinking he could sell anything to
anyone, anywhere. In truth, though, what Jamie had done at the bourse was much
different from selling in the past. He’d conducted all his sales through an isopanel, only occasionally speaking to another human
through a linkup. He’d never so much as had to sell a candy bar in person.

He’d tried selling candy bars and
just about everything else to the Baghu in the hours
since Lorraine left. The portable fabricator from the general store sat in the
sand behind him, where Bridget’s team had parked it earlier. Two and a half
meters tall and twice as long, the tracked vehicle was in effect a vending
machine capable of producing most anything small enough to emerge from its
meter-cubed slot. It had worked as it was supposed to. But nothing it had
produced had caught the Baghu’s eye…or whatever the Baghu had.

His attempts had gone on for so
long that Bridget’s teammates had lost interest in making fun of him. Over by
the beach, he saw the ludicrous sight of Dinner and a couple of his teammates
building a castle out of blue sand. The Breathers paid them no mind. Nor did
they seem to care that O’Herlihy was wading at the
edge of the lagoon, tramping around and picking up rocks. “He’s a collector,”
Bridget explained.

“More for his
head.” Jamie
looked tiredly at the Baghu leader — and then behind
him, at the heap of merchandise he’d manufactured. He’d gone through the
routine a hundred times at least. Jamie would call up images on the menu isopanel. Something would catch the leader’s interest.
Jamie would order up a sample and wait for it to be manufactured. Finally, he
would take the item to the Baghu — who would sniff at
it indifferently and then turn away.

Jamie’s pile of rejected junk was
now almost as tall as he was. A trumpet. A brass ingot. A paper comic book. A surveillance bee. A wedge of Stilton
cheese. A pink bow tie. A
bowling ball. Cyclotron parts. A bottle of brandy. High-tech or low-tech, decorative or
useful, the products failed to impress the Baghu
leader, who had simply lost interest and waddled off. Bridget’s main use had
been to stand between the creature and the lake, and nudge him back into the
sale. The Breather didn’t seem to mind being detained; whatever duties he had
scaring young children in their nightmares weren’t pulling him away.

“This is pointless,” Jamie
finally said. “These things don’t even have anything to trade!”

“Wait.” Bridget walked up to him.
“Hold out your hand. The one the Breather shook.”

Jamie rolled his eyes. “This is a
waste of time,” he said, sticking his right hand out. Bridget turned it over
and activated the sensor above her helmet’s faceplate. A line of light swept
past Jamie’s hand.

“I was right,” she said, checking
a reading. “On your glove — and on the Baghu.
Gold dust.”

Jamie took his hand back. “What?”
He eyed his glove. “I don’t see anything.”

“Microscopic, but it’s there,”
Bridget said. “Maybe they
do
have
something.”

Jamie calculated. Gold was useful
and desirable, even now. They hadn’t been able to analyze the lake to any
depth, but maybe the Breathers had something down there after all.

He tried to quiz the Baghu leader about it, but the thing simply hissed — a
frightening sound that Jamie decided he never wanted to hear again, ever. “No
deal?”

“We want first,” the Baghu boomed. “Then we will trade you the things.”

“The things.”

“The things under the water,” the
alien said, its nozzle dripping ooze.

Jamie sighed. He turned back to
look at the pile again. “What the hell do you guys want?”

Bridget walked back to the edge
of the lagoon and kicked the liquid with her boot. “Why don’t you hit the
randomizer?” she asked. “Surprise them with something.”

“I’ve been using it for an hour!”
Disgusted, Jamie punched in the command again. Behind him, the fabricator
returned to its work. Less than a minute later he heard the electronic chime in
his helmet. Something fell from the slot and landed in the muck. Jamie didn’t
even try to catch it.

It was a teddy bear. Brown and
fuzzy, the bear was a protected design licensed from the holders of the Zazzy the Zoobear intellectual
property. It had been seventy years since any bears walked the Earth outside
captivity, but the Zazzy entertainments had driven a
generation of kids to fall in love with things ursine. The
previous
generation, Jamie knew: Zazzy
was as dated as the animals that inspired him, and Quaestor
had picked up the license for next to nothing.

Deflated, Jamie kneeled down to
pick it up. But before his gloved hand touched it, a greasy tentacle snaked up
and snatched the stuffed animal away.

Jamie turned to see the Baghu leader holding the fuzzy aloft and contemplating.
Other Breathers took notice, somehow, and tromped out onto the beach. Then the
lead creature flipped the toy up into the air and enveloped it with his snout.
The Baghu swallowed the bear whole.

“
Okaaay
…” Jamie said.

Bridget’s eyes widened with
amusement. “Try another one!”

Another minute,
another chime, another bear.
Now the other Baghu pawed at the Zazzy
^®
Brand Children’s Bear Product with their tentacles. A sort of slap-fight broke
out between the Breathers, and by the time it ended the toy had become a meal
for another appreciative alien.

“Teddy bears?”

Standing in the lagoon, O’Herlihy laughed. “Maybe they like the way they go down.”

All along the shoreline, Baghu beckoned, waving tentacles. More had appeared, and
Jamie could barely see the surge team members through the crowd of aliens. “We
will sell you the things under the water,” came the
call. “We want. We want!”

Jamie tried to shut out the
cacophony.
Teddy bears!
As if this
place wasn’t weird enough. Jamie shook his head. “A sale’s a sale, I guess.” He
looked to Bridget, still on the edge of the lagoon. “What now?”

“You’re the trader—”

“A desk-trader, as you love to remind me,” he said. “But you escort the traders all
the time.”

Bridget shook her head. “Once you
settle on a price, someone takes the deal back to the Dragon’s Depot. Falcone will send back Quaestor’s
factors to set up on-site production. The bears are easy enough to make
locally.”

“But what price?” He looked at
the Baghu. “What’s under the water?”

The lead Breather stood silent,
and the end of its nozzle pinched. “Don’t want to say,” it finally said.

“Great.” Jamie looked at Bridget.
“Help?”

Standing at the edge of the lake,
Bridget grew nervous. There were fifty or more flailing Breathers now, some
half in the lagoon, others on the shore. Jamie’s random pick had put the
walking stomachs into a consumer frenzy not seen since the Black Friday Riots
on Earth brought out a military response a hundred years earlier.

“Chief?” O’Herlihy
asked in her ear. She could barely see him over the aliens. The systems in her HardSHEL armor highlighted the locations of her other eight
squad members up and down the shoreline; nobody was where they needed to be.
She’d gotten complacent, been lulled into a false sense of security by the Baghu’s previously placid manner. Now, nobody was in
position to protect Jamie, who was backing up farther from the beach, hemmed in
against the fabricator.

Nearby, she could see Dinner
trying to raise his rifle to protect the trader. The Breathers pushed and
jostled right past, ignoring him.

“They don’t know what our weapons
are,” she said.

“Shot in the air?” O’Herlihy asked, rattled.

“Hang on.” Anywhere else, she’d
consider it — but gunfire usually had a way of ending sales calls. Turning toward
the lagoon, she slid between bouncing Breathers and waded into the brine. Maybe
the answer was simple: they’d help the primitive Baghu
complete the sale.
We will give you the
things under the water!

It wasn’t really water, she saw
as she tried her scanner again. Heavily laden with salts and chlorides at this
level — and the body went much deeper than she’d imagined. Trovatelli
had stayed aboard the depot to get the place running; Bridget could have used
the Q/A’s skills here now. “Inconclusive,” she said. “Too
murky.” She turned and called back toward the beach, and Jamie. “Maybe
we could—”

Bridget felt a chain snap around
her neck. Reaching with her free hand, she felt it was no chain but rather the
sinewy tentacle of a Baghu pulling at her. Every Breather
on the beach and in the brine turned on the armored bodyguards, bullwhip
tendrils snaking around limbs, chests, and rifles.

“Hostile, hostile!” she called.
The fifty had become a hundred now, a mass of Baghu
splashing up from beneath.
What the hell is
happening?

Jamie backed up against the
fabricator. “Yang!”

The Baghu
kept pressing toward him. Jamie stuck his foot in the delivery slot of the
fabricator and scrambled on top of the big device. It rocked on its wheels,
jostled by the pressure of the Breathers.

“We want,” the Baghu
leader said. “
We want!
”

Jamie didn’t have the menu
anymore; he’d dropped it. It was out there somewhere, pounded under the feet of
the drooling stomachs. And out past them he couldn’t see a single member of
Surge Sigma. He’d seen two of his bodyguards go down into the lake with the
Breathers — the creatures had lifted Arbutus Dinner like he was a child’s toy.

“
We want! We want!
”

On his hands and knees atop a
vending machine a hundred trillion kilometers from home, Jamie looked out over
the sea of alien tentacles and tried to see Bridget — or any of the surge team
members.

So
much for my debut!

Another tentacle and then another
wrapped around Bridget’s faceplate; she could see her companions being bound
and hurried toward the lake. She heard a shot fire wildly as she fought to keep
her balance. Her suit’s internal armature held, keeping her in place. But the
mucky soil beneath her boots did not hold, and the four Breathers holding her
pushed out toward the center of the lagoon.

“Extract the trader,” she called
again to anyone who would listen.

Then they plunged, Bridget
struggling all the way as the darkness devoured them.