Legacy (10 page)

Sarnac glanced sideways at Tiraena's face, and decided no useful purpose would be served by mentioning that he hadn't seen any sign of Cheel'kathu's remains in the morning light.

"I've brought nothing but death to these people," she said dully. "I should never have made contact with them. . . ."

"Don't say that!" Sarnac surprised himself with his anger. But he came from a culture born of revulsion against the ethical idiocy that had permeated the Western civilization from which Tiraena's ancestors had fled. "The Korvaasha have brought death to them—not you—and eventually they'll pay!"

They watched in silence as the Korvaasha began to dismantle the camp and load the hovercraft aboard the second shuttle. Soon a guard deactivated the fencing wire, then swung a gate open and motioned them out. As they shuffled toward the second shuttle's ramp, the Interrogator's shuttle drifted upward and swept around into a westward course, dwindling rapidly. Soon the tiny sun of its fusion drive awoke over the ocean and began to climb.

"So much for the Interrogator's 'business' among the local Danuans," Frank muttered. "I wonder what's got them in such an uproar?"

"No telling," Sarnac replied in an equally low tone, as the guard stepped onto the ramp, stood near its halfway point, and gestured at them to proceed into the shuttle. Sarnac led the way up the ramp, past him, and toward the maw of the hatch. "It's almost as if . . ."

Something arrived with a shriek of cloven air. A Korvaash weapon emplacement on the strand vanished in flame and smoke, followed by a thunderclap that arrived with the first of the aircraft—grav propelled, obviously, but dead silent and impossibly small and fleet—that swept across the camp, raking the Korvaasha with barely visible lasers.

For a split second, everyone on the ramp stood stunned. Then Tiraena yelled, "They're from the base!"

At the same instant, without pausing for analytical thought, Sarnac flung himself back down the ramp, diving under the guard's weapon and sliding into his columnar legs. The guard was thrown off balance on the ramp's edge, and they both toppled off and crashed into the sand, with the guard breaking Sarnac's fall.

Sarnac rolled off the momentarily stunned Korvaasha and looked frantically around for something to use as a weapon. The guard, recovering, surged to his feet and began to bring up his railgun . . . when Tiraena jumped off the ramp above him and landed on his back, locking her arms around his throat.

The Korvaasha dropped the railgun, freeing his hands to grasp at Tiraena. With a convulsive motion, he hauled her off his back and flung her several yards. The wind whooshed out of her as she landed on her back in the sand.

But the Danuans had used the seconds she had gained to rush the guard, and one of Cheel'kathu's mates reared up and lashed out with its forelegs. A Danuan's four walking limbs ended in hard surfaces resembling hooves; two of them caught the guard in the side as he turned to try to retrieve his weapon. The guard went down, and the Danuan reared again, bringing his forehooves down. One of them punched through the Korvaasha's eye with a sickening, wet, crunching sound. Then the rest of the Danuans were all around, trampling the Korvaasha into bloody ruin.

Frank and Natalya had jumped off the ramp just as it started to retract into the shuttle. All three Scouts sprinted for the railgun as the shuttle lifted in a swirl of sand. Sarnac hefted the weapon—he couldn't have carried it very far, but he could lift it. Intelligence briefings came back to him, and he recognized a firing stud.

"Bob!"

Natalya pointed inland, where a firefight was developing between the Korvaasha and the human troops who were bounding from the open sides of some kind of grav personnel carrier. A trio of the aliens were moving toward them. One of them opened up with a railgun, blasting a Danuan open and sending the rest of the locals scattering. Then the Korvaasha spotted Tiraena, who had recovered and was running toward the Scouts with a flash of long bare limbs. Their railguns swung toward her.

Sarnac clumsily aimed from the hip a railgun designed for Korvaash hands. With a silent prayer that the safety was off, he squeezed the firing stud. He immediately discovered that the weapon was on full automatic setting.

Gauss weapons didn't have much recoil compared with chemical-explosive ones, but nothing could hurl large caliber slugs at such velocities without producing some kick—and this one was designed to be held on target by a Korvaasha. With desperate effort, Sarnac managed to halt the muzzle's climb, frantically applying downward pressure that caused the weapon to slew sideways, and sent the stream of hypervelocity missiles through two of the oncoming Korvaasha, ripping their torsos apart in showers of gore. Then, unable to maintain his balance, he dropped the heavy weapon as the third Korvaasha drew a bead on him.

Then one of the mysterious flyers swooped in along the beach, and they heard the unmistakable snapping sound of air rushing in to fill the tube of vacuum drilled in atmosphere by a weapon-grade laser. A sparkling of ionization marked the beam's path, spearing the Korvaasha and hurling him backward with the knockback effect of energy transfer. With a puff of steam from vaporized body fluids and a stench of overcooked meat, he fell. At that moment, the shuttle, under attack from other flyers, exploded over the water, generating a shock wave that flung them all to the sand.

Raising his head and spitting out grit, Sarnac saw Tiraena spring to her feet and run to a dead Korvaasha's railgun. Hoisting it off the ground—she was, Sarnac knew, a lot stronger than she looked—she set it down on a hummock and lay on her stomach behind it.
Yeah, give the thing some support for accuracy, like I should have
, Sarnac thought, annoyed with himself. Picking up his railgun, he staggered forward to join her.

Natalya tried unsuccessfully to lift another of the weapons unaided, then got it off the ground with Frank's one-handed help, and the two of them fell prone beside Sarnac. All three railguns proceeded to pour fire into the Korvaash positions from the rear.

They ceased fire as they saw the rescuers, clad in some kind of light body armor, advancing toward them past the now silent Korvaash weapon emplacements.

Tiraena sprang to her feet and trotted forward to meet their leader. Joining them, the Scouts arrived in the middle of an animated conversation in rapid-fire Raehaniv. Catching Tiraena's eye, Sarnac gave her what he hoped was a universal gesture of incomprehension.

"Sorry," she said. "This is Dorleann hle'Soru, our security chief."

Dorleann doffed his combat helmet, revealing a face that seemed to accentuate all the features that made Tiraena exotic—a pure-blooded Raehaniv, Sarnac supposed. He gave a small bow and called to one of his men, who produced a device like the one Tiraena had used to communicate with the Danuans. Sarnac and Dorleann affixed earpieces, and the latter spoke.

"I thought we might need a translator," the earpiece said to Sarnac. "Welcome! You'll be glad to know that our fleet has arrived—"

"But hasn't engaged the Korvaasha yet," Tiraena cut in, speaking English for the benefit of Frank and Natalya. "They got as close to this system as the displacement network allowed, then proceeded the rest of the way under continuous-displacement drive, approaching from nowhere near any of this star's displacement points. But now the Korvaasha have detected them and are scrambling out of orbit to fight." She turned to Dorleann. "Unfortunately, the one who questioned us—obviously a high-ranking intelligence officer—has already departed and rejoined their fleet. If you had struck just a little earlier, you might have gotten his shuttle!"

Dorleann's coppery complexion grew a little redder.

"We were cutting it very fine, Tiraena. We couldn't mount this rescue operation until the Korvaasha had spotted our fleet and were too busy to strike at us from orbit. At the same time, if we'd delayed any longer, it would have been too late: you would have been taken aboard one of their ships—and died with it." His expression grew harsh. "Don't worry about this Korvaash officer getting away. They're about to learn a lesson in state-of-the-art space combat! And our fleet's approach vector was planned to foreclose any possibility of them getting away through the displacement point by which they entered this system."

"But they have courier boats stationed at that displacement point—" Tiraena began.

"Had," Dorleann corrected. "A special task group cut their continuous-displacement drives well outside grav-scan range, then proceeded to the displacement point in free fall. The couriers never knew what hit them!" Sarnac marvelled at the Raehaniv translator programs' capacity for idiomatic speech.

Tiraena began to be mollified—and aware of her own grimy seminakedness—as combat reaction wore off. "Well, I suppose we don't have to worry about the Realm of Tarzhgul learning about us, then."

"No," Sarnac offered. "Not until we're ready to let them know!" He turned to Dorleann, remembering that handshaking was not a Raehaniv custom. "For now, we just want to thank you, even though it adds to the debt we owe. You see, Tiraena has already saved our lives . . ."

"Twice," Tiraena interjected primly.

"All right, twice! Anyway, on behalf of the Solar Union . . ."

"Please don't mention it," Dorleann interrupted, smiling. "We needed this action as much as you—well, almost as much. We were about to go insane with frustration, you know. Not being able to strike at the Korvaasha was bad enough, but then our distant cousins from Sol appeared and we couldn't even signal them!" He shook his head in wonderment. "I still can't quite credit the reality of it! We've dreamed of reestablishing contact with you for centuries. As soon as we're finished here"—he gestured at the smoking wreckage of the Korvaash camp, which his men had patrolled in search of survivors, while the deadly little grav flyers settled onto the sand—"we'll take you to the base. Everyone's mad with curiosity to meet you. I think I can promise you everything but rest!"

Thrufarn
Taraen Sergeyevich Murchison was from Terranova and, despite his first name, entirely of American and Russian ancestry. It clearly hadn't hindered his rise in the Raehaniv Federation's space navy—the rank "thrufarn" being more or less comparable to vice admiral. But it had made him especially eager to meet the Scouts when his fleet had arrived at Danu after smashing the Korvaasha. For their parts, Sarnac and his companions had been relieved to share the burden of celebrity with the new arrivals, especially at this reception.

"Yes," the
thrufarn
was telling his circle of listeners, "our losses were minimal. Korvaasha military technology doesn't seem significantly better than what their ancestors had two centuries ago. The Realm of Tarzhgul may have rejected the ideological constraints of the old Unity, but as a race they still don't seem to be very inventive. We, on the other hand, have advanced quite a lot since then." He turned to the Scouts. "Of course, your squadron made it easier for us. Comparing the Korvaash forces that originally entered this system with the ones we faced, it's clear that your people didn't go alone. In fact, they must have given far better than they got."

"Thank you,
Thrufarn
Taraen," Sarnac said gravely. He could have said "Admiral Murchison"; the
thrufarn
would have understood, and the non-English-speakers' translator programs could have handled it. But this man rated his proper mode of address. "Knowing Commodore Shannon, I was pretty sure of that. Naturally, the Interrogator implied otherwise."

"Naturally," Murchison nodded. He was stocky and of average Terran height, in contrast to the generally tall, slender Raehaniv—a heritage of his homeworld's high gravity. His black uniform showed the influence of the old United States Space Force, though with Russian-style shoulder boards and an unfamiliar system of rank insignia. He and his officers made an austere contrast to the multicolored civilian garb and the turquoise and white uniforms of the Raehaniv survey service.

We can hold our own
, Sarnac told himself, though he was still adjusting to the notion of attending a formal reception in his underwear while tiny holo projectors in his belt, linked with the computer to which the Scouts had meticulously described their service's uniforms, wrapped the illusion of the Solar Union Space Fleet's mess dress around his body. Knowing what a glare he would get from Natalya, he had resisted the temptation to award himself a few of the medals that any fair-minded person would surely agree he deserved after this . . . this . . . the centuries-old expression "charlie foxtrot" came to mind.

Of course, I'm not in too much pain right now,
he admitted, twirling his oddly shaped wineglass and glancing around.

Three walls of the base's social hall were flat-screen holo projectors, and the room seemed a roofed terrace jutting out over water beneath Raehan's two moons. Across the water, Brobdignagian towers blocked off half the night sky like a shimmering wall of faceted light, as their reflections seemed to fill half the wide bay. Beyond them, inconceivable cityscape climbed up a low range of hills. Overhead, unending swarms of brightly lit grav craft drifted by to the intricate music that he could barely hear over the jubilant hubbub.

Loruin hle'Saelarn, the base's CO, was addressing Murchison. "Has there been any word on that
Torafv
-class frigate that was listed as missing?"

"No," Murchison admitted. "All our other ship losses have been accounted for, but that one hasn't turned up. We'll find some wreckage eventually—probably in the course of hunting down the Korvaash survivors."

"Survivors?" Loruin looked worried. He was pudgy for a Raehaniv, and stretched his survey uniform—an altogether unlikely figure in a paramilitary service.

"Oh, yes. A couple of ships, including one big one. They may be hiding in the outer system, maybe among the gas-giant moons. But they can't threaten us here. And they can't hope to escape via the displacement point that connects with Korvaash space." Murchison smiled unpleasantly. "That one is
very
heavily guarded. Any ships that enter this system through it are going to be turned into rarefied gas before they can even think about going back to report anything amiss here."