The Crucible of Empire (56 page)

"Send word," Tully said to Jihan. "Everyone who can should fit into the space-worthy ships. Someone is coming and soon—and we cannot say for certain who it is. The Lleix should save as many of their kind as possible." But it wouldn't be any out of the
dochaya
, he thought angrily. Well, there was no remedy for that at the moment. Dammit, he needed more time!

Caitlin returned, shoes on, bundled into her coat. Tully took her arm and then they plunged outside into the storm. Snow that was more than half ice pelted their faces and they bent their heads, leaning into it. The cold bit deep.

Fligor, Burgeson, and Estrada fell in behind them. The city lay dark and quiet under the onslaught of the storm, the only illumination coming from the light-posts and those were far too few. He kept seeing the colony blasted to ashes in his imagination, which was all too possible in the immediate future.

They turned a corner and a form approached them out of the swirling snow. "Tully!"

He thought it was Lim, though it was hard to be sure in the howling wind. "Go back to the
dochaya
," he said, raising his voice to make himself heard. "We will not have classes today."

More tall shapes appeared out of the darkness. "What is wrong?" Lim said, falling into step alongside him. "We will help."

"You can't help!" Tully said. Caitlin slipped and he steadied her. She clung to his arm. "I wish you could, but there is nothing you can do."

Lim didn't argue further, but neither did she go back to the slum barracks. She and her three companions trailed after them instead all the way to the assault ships.

He hustled Caitlin inside the open hatch of their ship. Fligor, Estrada, and Burgeson followed, all swearing under their breath. Behind them, three lines of jinau were jogging toward the ships from the
elian
-houses, equipment bundled on their backs.

Lieutenant Miller was there to meet them. She pointed toward something over Tully's shoulder. "Major? What do you want to do about those Lleix?"

Beating snow off his hat, Tully glanced outside into the skirling storm. The wind had eased for a moment so that he could make out the four Lleix standing barefoot in the snow, gazing hungrily at the passing jinau.

What did the Lleix want? Tully hadn't the faintest idea, unless it was what everyone in the
dochaya
wanted—work to give meaning to life. But there was no work for them on the assault ship. He wasn't even sure what useful action the jinau could take if the Ekhat were about to burst through the framepoint into this star system. The best they might accomplish was to hide and witness the end of this species.

But the ship had a bit of extra room and in the end it would make no difference if Lim and her fellow unassigned died on Valeron or out in space with them. He ducked back out into the stinging cold again. "All right!" he said, motioning to them. "Come aboard!"

The four Lleix walked inside with that oddly graceful step he'd come to know, then Tully ordered the ramp retracted while the humans and Jao strapped in. As they had found on the way here with Jihan, Lliant, and Hadata, Lleix posterior proportions were not meant for seats that would accommodate Jao or humans. The four had to sit on their haunches, braced against the bulkhead.

Caitlin gave the latecomers a troubled look before she took her own seat. Snow was melting in her hair. "They could wind up being the last of their kind," she whispered to Tully as he slid in beside her.

He nodded grimly, then snapped on his harness and leaned his head back. "They've had a raw deal their whole lives," he said, "kicked out of the Children's Court only to be refused a place at any of the
elian
." He glanced at the four, who had been his most eager and apt students. Their black eyes took in their new surroundings, but, as nearly as he could tell, they were not afraid. Tully turned back around. "Just this once, they should get to dictate their own fate."

The craft's engines revved and the small ship quivered like a racehorse in the starting gate. "Here we go," he muttered, closing his eyes and bracing himself. He'd always hated launches.

"Major!"

Tully's eyes flew open. Dalgetty, the assault craft's pilot, was lurching down the center aisle toward him. Tully stiffened. "Jesus, Kristal. Aren't you supposed to be flying this crate?"

"We've got a reading on the scope!" Dalgetty's young face was flushed. Her fingers dug into the seat back.

Caitlin made a soft exclamation. She turned to Tully.

He unbuckled his harness, his heart racing. "The Ekhat?"

"I—" The pilot stared at him. "Sir, you need to come forward and see for yourself."

Tully jerked out of his seat and followed the pilot back to the cockpit. John Hardy, sitting copilot on this run, was hunched over the radar scope, wearing headphones, his dark eyes staring. "Lordamighty!" he said, shaking his head.

"
What
in the name of hell is it?" Tully said, dropping into Dalgetty's seat.

"Not the Ekhat, sir," Hardy said. "The configuration is way off anything they've ever fielded, but—"

"But—what?" He resisted the urge to shake him.

"There's so many of them," he said. "None of the readings match the
Lexington
either. I haven't a clue who—or what—it is."

"Reading
s
, as in more than one?" A fourth player in this already crowded drama? Tully shook his head. Very freaking improbable. Lack of sleep dragged at his wits as though he had massive jet lag. He studied the dark-green screen as more bright contacts emerged from of the star's photosphere. They were large, but didn't resemble the spindly collection of tinker toys of an Ekhat vessel, and certainly none came close to the size of the
Lexington
. Plasma sheared off the still-vague shapes as the intruders headed outbound from the star.

The ground shook as, over at the colony's landing field, Lleix ships took off, one after the other. "Are we go for launch, Major?" Caewithe Miller asked from the cockpit's doorway.

They should launch, Tully thought, drumming his fingers on the armrest, no matter who it was. Whatever the developing situation, they were just sitting ducks down here. "Is there any chatter on the audio channels?" he said, punching in vector assessments on several of the largest targets.

"No," Hardy said. "So far it's—" He broke off, one hand to his headphones. "Wait!"

Tully's calculations came back with the figures. The ships, all of them, were coming about, accelerating toward Valeron.

Hardy pulled off his headphones and passed them to Tully. "Major, it's—for you," he said. His eyes were crinkled with delight.

Tully held one earpiece up to his head. "—port," a Jao voice was saying. "This is Preceptor Ronz of the Bond of Ebezon. Major Tully, report."

He jammed the headphones on and keyed the mike open. "Major Gabriel Tully here," he said. "Welcome to Valeron."

"Rendezvous with the
Lexington
as soon as we have shed the plasma envelope, Major," Ronz said. "We have a lot to discuss."

"Yes, sir!" Tully said. On the screen, he saw it now, a huge blip, massive enough this time to be the
Lexington
herself. "I'll be damned," he said softly, then pulled off the headphones and passed them back to Hardy.

"They're ours, sir?" Miller said.

"It would seem so," Tully said. They'd brought a whole fleet! The screen was filled with blips, more ships than Earth had seen at one time since the Conquest over twenty years ago, and he'd been just a kid then. He hadn't seen them personally. He rubbed his face, feeling beard stubble. Maybe a hot shower, something unknown to the Lleix, was in his immediate future. He felt way too grungy to report to anyone. "This is going to be interesting, Lieutenant."

"Is that 'interesting,' like in a good movie, sir? Or 'interesting' like in the Chinese curse?"

He grinned at her. "Why not both?"

Ed Kralik paced the busy bridge of the
Lexington
, stopping every so often to check the markers on the screen. The three jinau assault ships were still on course for a rendezvous.

Caitlin had to be all right, he told himself for the hundredth time. No casualties had been reported, But then they might not transmit such terrible news over the radio, he told himself for the hundredth time also, preferring to deliver it in person.

Terra-Captain Dannet gave him a sour look every time he passed her station. Her posture seemed all prickly curves and lines that probably communicated something rude like
get-out-of-my-face!
Ed had a limited bodyspeak vocabulary, at least compared to that of his wife. But if he studied the Terra-Captain for a moment, he could have probably been able to make out the central elements of her posture.

That would have meant, though, that he gave a damn what Dannet thought—which he most decidedly did not, at the moment. By all reports, she was a talented officer and had certainly proved herself useful in the best Jao tradition. But he was in no mood to be friendly to any Narvo-striped face.

The problem was that, to a Jao, showing more than a passing concern to a mate outside the breeding pool was considered poor taste. But he wasn't a goddamn Jao. He was a healthy human male who missed his wife after she'd been whisked off to a dangerous corner of the galaxy on the inscrutable whim of the Bond.

At least all the secrecy made more sense after Preceptor Ronz finally had filled him in. The Lleix represented a shameful chapter in the Jao's past. Ronz hadn't wanted to dredge up old sins unless it were necessary, which now apparently it was. Despite being hunted for centuries by the Ekhat, thousands of Lleix had survived here, hidden in this planetary nebula. That was nothing short of amazing.

"Docking with the lead assault craft in ten minutes," a helm officer announced. Human, obviously. A Jao would never bother with chopping up time into segments, then counting them. Every Jao on this ship knew when the docking would take place without anyone having to say.

Ed headed for the lift. No doubt Ronz and Aille were already down in the hanger bay, having felt the moment of arrival near. The doors closed and he watched the deck indicator flash as the lift dropped with a precipitous speed that left his stomach somewhere back around the bridge.

He exited on the hanger deck, then jogged to the observation/control room with its broad windows looking down upon the deck below. The cavernous bay had already been depressurized. The warning lights were flashing and the doors had retracted so that the deck was open to space. Outside the
Lexington
, Ed could see the characteristic swirls of red and blue, heralding the dust and gas that curled through the region, rendering instruments less than reliable.

Preceptor Ronz waited beside the officer on duty, a Jao clad in Terra Taif's blue, discussing the ships' approach. Aille krinnu ava Terra, current governor of Earth, turned to Ed as he entered. The governor's ears were flat-out
eager
. Even Ed could tell that much.

Aille's fraghta, Yaut, hovered behind his shoulder, still as bull-necked and ugly as ever. He gave Ed a dour look, but then he looked at everyone like that, even Aille. Ed couldn't imagine the Jao veteran in a lighthearted mood.

"There is no sign the Ekhat have yet returned, General Kralik," Aille said. "And it does not feel as though they will be here soon. Still, there is need for haste. Flow can alter as conditions change rapidly." His body assumed the angles of something like
introspection
, though, the governor being born of Pluthrak, Ed was sure it was nothing that simplistic. The Pluthrak were famous for notoriously difficult tripartite stances and it amused them to show off.

The first assault craft drifted through the huge doorway, firing station-keeping jets as the
Lexington's
artificial gravity field asserted itself. The vessel eased into a cradle, then shut down as the next vessel appeared. When all three had settled, the bay doors rolled closed again so that the deck could repressurize.

He wanted to ask how long it would take, but knew the Jao officer would have just stared at him. It took as long as it took. Jao knew how long that was without asking. Time-blind humans just had to wait.

Finally the warning lights went green and the three ships' hatches popped open. Ed dashed through the access hatch and down the steps before Aille, Ronz, and Yaut, as was thankfully proper according to Jao protocol, craning his head for a glimpse of his wife's blond hair.

"Ed!"

He descended the last few steps with a jump, then spotted Caitlin. Her slim figure darted through a crowd of jinau, both human and Jao, then around Tully and four oddly pyramidal silver-skinned creatures to throw herself in his arms. He buried his face in her hair, holding her so tightly that her feet dangled above the deck. She smelled of wood smoke and herbs. Two arms, two legs, one head. Everything seemed to be in place. She felt warm and pliant and wonderful. "Are you all right?" he said a moment later when the tightness in his chest eased and he could breathe again.