Raising Caine - eARC (59 page)

“Why?” O’Garran sounded both eager and annoyed. He was well out on the right flank.

“Because we can afford to do so,” Riordan answered, “and because we need to take the high road on this right up until we engage.”

“Prudent,” affirmed Wu, who was working through the jungle around to the rear of the compound, ready to laser-tag any runners with changed-phase pulses so that
Puller’
s sensors had immediate targeting discrimination between potential hostiles and non-combatants.

“Thirty seconds have elapsed….now,” Bannor announced.

As if to confirm that timing, a half-dozen small arms glittered along the shattered line of the refectory’s windows. The rounds rang off the smooth legs of the AMP.

“PA off,” Riordan ordered. “Melissa, is Phil on the rail gun?”

“Standing by,” Phil answered.

“Okay. You keep standing by until I call for you. Peter, are you in position?”

“In position.”

“I want you to paint the motor pool so we’ve got overlapping impact points. Melissa, you send each paint-point to the AMP’s targeting computer.”

Wu was silent for three seconds. “Done.”

“I have the target-points,” Melissa confirmed.

“Excellent. Slave and fire the AMP’s full inventory of HE missiles to those target points.”

“Commodore, please say again: all HE missiles?”

“Yes, Melissa: all HE missiles. Is our Slaasriithi technical advisor perturbed?”

“No, sir. The question was mine.”

Of course it was yours. You’re a human; you’re used to fighting, to holding weapons in reserve, to keeping your options open. Our exosapient technical advisor is a wiz with machinery, but the pace and exigencies of combat overload and disorient him. Which is just what we need if we’re going to make the AMP
truly
useful to us…
“In the event of counter-fire, miniature anti personnel heat-seekers are to be expended one per attacker. Engage.”

For a moment, it looked as if the AMP had exploded: the plumes of a dozen tactical rockets hid it in a roiling cloud of smoke. But as the exhaust cleared and the rockets arced sharply over Site One’s long, low administrative complex, the AMP stood revealed once again, half of its solid body—the part that had held the rockets—now an open framework.

Assault rifles stuttered at it from the refectory; it fired a MAPH at each flashing muzzle. Each fell silent.

The rockets hit the motor pool in a long, ragged roar followed immediately by an upward rush of smoke and debris. An instant later, the left berm launched a rocket, which the AMP’s back-mounted PDF knocked down easily. “Keep the PDF focused on that berm, Melissa,” Riordan ordered.

Her voice was as alarmed as Bannor Rulaine’s sudden sideways glance: “But sir—”

“Just do it. I haven’t forgotten about the rockets in the other berm.”

The CoDevCo mercenaries indicated that their memory was similarly unimpeded: two rockets launched from the berm, hit the AMP, staggering it. One leg seemed to be unresponsive.

“Sir—?” began Melissa.

“Caine—?” began Bannor.

He ignored them. “Tygg, Miles; paint each berm. Phil, do you have target lock for the rail gun?”

“I do.”

“Good,” replied Caine as another rocket rushed at the AMP. “Light ’em up.”

As the last rocket blew two legs off the crippled ROV and sent it cartwheeling away, two flaming bolts shot over their heads, ripping through the sound barrier with an earsplitting crash. Both went into the left hand berm, which literally flew apart. Another rush of thunder and flame; the right hand berm vanished in a second cyclone of dirt, bodies, torn machinery.

“Karam, do you have an eye on your sensors?”

“Precisely one eye on them, Commodore.”

“Tell me what you see.”

“No combat effectives bearing upon the marshalling ground. Panicked civvies streaming out the back, dodging the inferno that used to be the motor pool, scattering into the jungle. Sure hope they don’t meet any Pavanosaurs out there.”

“We’ll make sure they don’t.”

“You’re a kill-joy. Sir.”

“So true. Condition of the main complex?”

“Just some superficial blast damage, Commodore. All their records and dirty little local-killing secrets should still be in pristine condition when you get to them.”

“No. Commodore Cameron is going to get first access and credit for the operation. If he wants it. We were just here to expedite, unless he’s worried about taking heat for the op and wants to keep his hands clean.”
For which I could not blame him one bit.
“Tygg, O’Garran, close on the compound; Major Rulaine and I will provide a base of fire to cover your advance if any hostiles show up again.”
Although I’d say what little loyalty is bought with mercenary coin has long since been expended
. “Karam, when Tygg and Little Guy give you an all-clear, I want you on site in one minute to scoop up that disabled AMP.”

“Aye, aye, Commodore. I’ve clued Tina in; she’s ready in the bay with a robot stevedore.”

“Excellent. I’ll keep this channel open. Riordan out.”

Bannor Rulaine, looking down the scope of his own liquimix battlerifle, alert for any thermal signatures or movement, did not look at Caine when he asked, “Why did you put that AMP out as a Judas Goat?”

“Well, the Slaasriithi Great Ring forbade Yiithrii’ah’aash from giving us any functional weapons to look at, remember? But when I pressed him, he admitted they hadn’t said anything about us collecting any trash they left behind.” Caine nodded at the stricken AMP. “So I figure we’ll just do a good deed and clean up their trash.”

Rulaine smiled. “Which our miltech brain trust will dissect and get messy drooling over. Commodore, I hope you never choose to become a statesman.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you’re just sneaky enough to be good at it.”

“Maybe,” answered Caine, “but today, I was only interested in one thing: getting us access to every weapon available, given the years to come.”

Bannor heard the implication. “So despite the Arat Kur surrender, you don’t think we’re going to have ‘peace in our time’?”

Riordan just watched
Puller
swing in on fans and open its bay, ready to scoop up the battered AMP like a mechanical bird retrieving an injured fledgling into its own body.

* * *

Sixty kilometers north of the mini-Acropolis that had mutely announced the presence of other intelligences in the universe, the team stood watch for the return of Yiithrii’ah’aash and his assistants. Despite repeated warnings about the dangers posed by Pavonosaurs, they had elected to search for the locals on their own. The presence of humans, Yiithrii’ah’aash explained, would only complicate what could yet prove to be a very simple matter.

Caine was part of the external anchor watch when Karam called him with news that Commodore Cameron was on the line. “Patch him through.”

“Commodores, you are both on; the line is encrypted and private.”

Encrypted and private? Hmmm—
“Commodore Cameron, glad to hear from you.”

“Just Steve, please, Commodore Riordan.”

“Then it’s Caine, Steve. What can I do for you?”

“Firstly, I wanted to update you on what we found at Site One.”

“Incriminating evidence?”

“The mother lode. Apparently, the clever fellow they had running the show when you visited, Helger, was brought home when it was anticipated that Shangri La was going into a deep freeze as far as profit-making was concerned. The clown who took over was nowhere near so shrewd about what information he kept and what he didn’t. We have full records of ‘secure’ communications, including the proprietary cypher keys, that come from CoDevCo’s top brass, instructing a resumption of their original campaign of ‘indigenous wildlife elimination,” in which the locals are definitively listed. And this after they were designated a protected species by the Hague, pending a scientific measurement of their sapience. CoDevCo has screwed itself well and good, Caine.”

“Couldn’t happen to a more deserving pack of jackals,” Caine observed. “But you wouldn’t need a cypher on this line to tell me that. What’s coming down the path towards me, Steve?”

There was a short silence. “You must have majored in reading between the lines, Riordan. But you’re right. You’ve got a situation in-bound.”

“Big trouble or little trouble?”

“Might not be trouble at all. Or it might be worse trouble than I can imagine. Only you’d know.”

“Me? Why me?”

“Because the trouble asked about you by name. Seemed to expect he’d find you here.”

Ah.
“So you got a call from Richard Downing.”

“I did. Seems he came in system two days ago, behind the further gas giant, had the codes to override our remote sensors out there. I didn’t even know that was possible.”

“Richard can do a lot of things that don’t seem possible. What else?”

“Asked about you, what your mission was, showed me credentials even more extraordinary than yours. A
lot
more extraordinary. And he’s on his way to see you.”

“When?”

“About twenty minutes from now. He’s putting down at Site One. Good luck, Caine.”

The line went dead.
Twenty minutes before I have to deal with Richard Downing? Well, that just makes my day.

Karam’s voice was back. “Caine, group coming in from the west. Traveling tight, casual pace. Looks like Yiithrii’ah’aash, his party, maybe two others.”

“Okay. Alert the rest of the watch; we don’t want any friendly fire foul-ups. And spin up the fans; we’ve got a date back at Site One.”

* * *

When Downing emerged from the dust kicked up by the vertifans of his shuttle, Caine and Yiithrii’ah’aash were waiting for him. Alone. Downing motioned for his security escort to stay back, resumed his approach.

“Richard,” Caine called to him. “I’d like you to finally meet Prime Ratiocinator Yiithrii’ah’aash of the Slaasriithi Great Ring, with whom I believe you coordinated our legation’s journey to Beta Aquilae.”

Downing started to put out his hand, was about to pull it back, hesitated again when Yiithrii’ah’aash extended his tendrils. “I have become accustomed to your ways, Mr. Downing, and am pleased to make your personal acquaintance. You obviously received our message.”

“In fact, Ambassador Yiithrii’ah’aash, I was already in transit when it arrived, but was able to divert here to Delta Pavonis.” He glanced at the worn ramp leading up into
Puller
. “I take it you have found what you came for?”

“Indeed. It is gratifying to find such swift rapport with our distant kin despite the passage of so much time. We feared that the estrangement would be greater, that perhaps their pheromones had become hopelessly recidivistic. But the markings upon Caine Riordan gave us countervailing hope. After all, if the mark impressed upon him here was still recognizable—and powerfully so—to us, we had reason to conjecture that ours might still be recognizable to them.”

He waved at
Puller
. “Three of the locals you call Pavonians have consented to come with us. It is a brave thing they do; their people have not ventured beyond this valley for many generations. However, their myth tells them that we are all from the stars, and they wish to see the home of the biota that gave rise to them. They shall be honored among us and, if it is not objectionable to you, we shall return to repatriate any others that might wish it, once our respective governments have agreed to the conditions under which that might occur.”

“I am sure that can be arranged swiftly, Ambassador,” Downing affirmed with a nod. “We have no desire to keep you and your distant relatives apart any longer than absolutely necessary.”

The Slaasriithi’s neck dipped very low and remained so for several seconds before he raised it and spoke again. “Ultimately we have humanity’s curiosity to thank for our reunification. Naturally, all intelligence arises from curiosity, from exploring novel solutions to problems. But only humanity avidly, even restlessly, seeks so many of the challenges, the conundrums, and the mysteries you then solve. For you, nothing calls more strongly than the unknown, or so it seems.”

“Thank you,” said Caine, unsure of what else to say. “But it’s a shame that your reunion must take place under the likely shadow of war.”

Yiithrii’ah’aash’s neck wiggled slightly. “I suspect we would not have realized our need of the indagatorae until such a threat arose, so there may be an unavoidable connection between the approach of strife and our desire to re-embrace our lost taxon. Which we shall now undertake to restore.”

“But it will require some time to breed sufficient numbers of indagatorae, won’t it?”

Yiithrii’ah’aash’s sensor cluster focused on Caine. “‘Sufficient numbers?’ I am uncertain what you mean.”

Downing stepped in. “Enough to field an army or expand your naval formations.”

Yiithrii’ah’aash stared at them for a long time. “I am sorry; you misperceive. We do not need the indagatorae to breed an army. As you say, that would take too long, and we lack the requisite skills to train such forces in time, or at all.”

Riordan felt adrift. “Then why do you need the indagator?”

Yiithrii’ah’aash waved tendrils to take in everything around him. “To act as our liaisons to those members of the macrocommunity who are soldiers already. That is, the indagatorae will be our liaisons to humanity.”

Caine had stepped backward before he realized he had done so. “You mean, you consider us part of your community? And that our role is to be your soldiers?”

“All things are part of the community of life. And all have their roles.”

And our role is to die for you? Wait just a god-damned minute—
But Caine remembered that he was a diplomat, and that the Slaasriithi would be unlikely to see the situation in those terms. “Assuming we are even willing to take up that role, there is a further complication: you Slaasriithi shape your community without consulting all its members. Without anything like a referendum.”

Yiithrii’ah’aash did not blink. “That is true,” he said.

“And you presume we would be willing to be enter into that kind of relationship?”

“Caine Riordan, I have clearly alarmed you. Be calmed: we presume nothing. But we have observed, with great clarity, just how deficient we are in warfare. The speed with which your species is willing to destroy assets in order to achieve objectives—such as the way you prevailed upon me to destroy Disparity’s anti-matter depot to hamper the efforts of the Ktor—is utterly alien to us. We acknowledge our limitations. But we also see areas where we may make fair and balanced contributions in exchange. We may assist you in accelerating the speed with which your green and brown worlds become self-sufficient. We have technological capabilities which may be selectively shared. We may construct various defensive and sensor systems and ROVs that shall aid your forces, or allow you to secure vast areas without wasting precious personnel to do so. These contributions are merely the tree tops of a deep forest of possibilities, and we shall explore all of them together.”