Merkiaari Wars: 01 - Hard Duty (10 page)

Tahar eased his paw to the ground, and with his head low between powerful shoulders, crept toward his quarry. Left forefoot, right hind foot and pause. Right forefoot, left hind foot and pause again. Shima mirrored her father’s movements and was concentrating on him to such an extent that she failed to notice when her sight finally resolved the Shkai’ra.

Tahar stopped and looked back at her in question.

She was so close to the beast that one pounce would have been enough to take it down. The Shkai’ra was a young male, barely old enough to forage for himself. Although his fangs rivalled hers, his other weapons were still undeveloped. Two knife-sharp horns presaged an impressive rack that would eventually grace his proud head.

“He’s beautiful,” she whispered almost inaudibly, and Tahar flicked his ears in agreement.

The Shkai’ra froze in mid-chew and Shima held her breath. It raised its head warily, looking for the source of its unease, but Tahar’s pelt was a mottled shadow, and Shima took after him in her looks if not in her abilities. It failed to see them. The Shkai’ra used his wickedly sharp hooves to dig for more roots and went happily back to his chewing.

Shima took one more step and slowly raised herself onto her hind legs. She could almost reach out and touch him now. One more step and she reached forward. The Shkai’ra turned to look back and froze. The moment stretched out into an eternity. She stared into those innocent eyes in wonder, feeling connected to her ancestors as never before. It was so easy to think of herself as one of those primitive hunters. She would have known nothing of the wider world back then. She would have known nothing of engineering, or genetic farming methods—known nothing of history or philosophy. Her only concern would be the wellbeing of the clan and her people, her only task to hunt for food and protect her clan.

The moment passed.

She felt the barest of touches on her outstretched paw and then the Shkai’ra was gone in a blur of speed. She would never forget that moment or the feel of its hide as long as she lived. She watched it race into the trees until she lost it to poor vision. She could still sense it running blindly away from her—still scent its fear on the breeze. There was nothing wrong with her other senses. It was only her eyes that made her a cripple among her people.

The Shkai’ra was long gone when Tahar stood tall once more and led Shima back to their camp. She looked back once but the wonderful beast was lost to her. She could no longer even sense it. She and her father were its natural enemy. It didn’t know it was safe from them. Sanctuary East was a preserve. The Shkai’ra weren’t the only species to need such a place, but they were the most endangered.

“We must leave before the sun sets,” Tahar said when they reached camp.

“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry I lied. I wanted you to look at me like you do at Chailen… I’m sorry.”

She ducked her head, looking at the ground and not at him. She was tired of seeing the disappointment on his face, but his anger would be worse. She busied herself tidying their supplies. They would be ready when it was time to begin the long walk out of Sanctuary East and back to the world. She retrieved her harness and slipped it on. It’s weight felt odd after so long wearing nothing but her pelt.

“You are my first cub,” Tahar said softly from close behind her. “I love you no less than Chailen.”

She forced herself not to turn. “Chailen is special. You
should
love her more.”

Tahar sighed. “Look at me. Please look at me. I can’t keep talking to your tail.”

Her jaw dropped open in amusement and her ears quivered of their own accord. He used to say that when she was very small.

“Stop trying to make me laugh.”

“Laughter is good.”

Tahar led her to the fallen tree they had been using as a table. Visitors to Sanctuary East were encouraged to take only the minimum of supplies into the preserve. Harming the animals was against the purpose of the preserve, and bringing technology other than an emergency beacon was discouraged. It was a matter of pride among those who came here to bring only what their ancestors had used.

Tahar sat upon the fallen tree beside her. “I am proud of you, Shima, so very proud. So what if you cannot hunt like the great Jasha? I cannot either, nor could anyone if you believe the stories. We are no longer hunters, Shima. We are beyond such things now. Hunting is not important any longer.” He mimed grasping something and throwing it away. “It’s a hobby, nothing more. You and Chailen are the future; I am the past as much as hunting is.”

“Don’t say that! You are great, everyone knows it.”

He snorted. “A great fool for not teaching you better. You have surpassed me in all that matters, Shima. You make me proud to be your father, but you don’t see it, do you?”

“I see disappointment when you look at me.”

Tahar’s eyes widened and his ears flattened. “I have
never
felt that. I have been angry on occasion, amused quite often, but never disappointed.
Never
disappointed, Shima.” In a hushed voice he said, “What you see is my guilt, not disappointment.”

“I don’t understand. You’re not disappointed that I lied—that I cannot hunt?”

“That you felt you needed to lie is my failure not yours. You can hunt well enough. You don’t need eyes for that, but as I said before, it doesn’t matter.”

She
could
hunt after a fashion. The Harmonies were strong in her, and her nose and ears were very keen. Not much of a compensation for her poor sight, but it was better than nothing.

“Your mother wanted cubs very much.”

“I know—”

“Hush. You don’t know this. She could never tell you, and I… well, I’m telling you now. When your mother and I were first mated, we worked together.”

“I know this,” Shima protested again. “You and she were system controllers up at the new station.”

“Hool Station, yes. I know that’s what you were told. We did not work there, Shima.”

“But everyone knows.”

Tahar flicked his ears in agreement. “Everyone knows because that’s what we told them.”

“You lied to everyone?”

“Not everyone. My father knew, and so did Elder Harman. It was Harman who asked my father to bring Nidra and me to him.”

“I don’t understand. What has this to do with Chailen and me?”

“It was a time when our people believed that we would re-build the Great Harmony among the stars. We had succeeded at so much in such a short time. So why not? Our scientists were discovering new things almost at every turn. It was a wonderful time. After the war, Child of Harmony became more than ever a special place to us. It proved we could leave our homeworld and survive.”

Tahar looked around at the trees. “Harmony is old, Shima. All planets are of course, but it feels old. Do you understand?”

Shima flicked her ears affirmatively. “Everything is known, every place has been found—”

“And explored, yes. Child of Harmony feels different. The gravity is wrong, the air a little too thick. The sun looks too big… do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Everything feels new?”

“That’s it exactly. Everything is new. It makes you feel that anything is possible. You will see that for yourself when we land at Zuleika.”

Shima flicked her ears in agreement. She was looking forward to it. She would miss Harmony, but her studies were complete and it was time to use them on Child of Harmony. This was their last cycle before the ship took them to their new home.

“Your mother and I worked on a project that we hoped might give our people the stars. Oh, we didn’t design it, but we helped build and test it.”

“Test what?”

“A new kind of drive,” Tahar said staring into the distance at only he knew what. “We were all very excited. Your mother and I were tasked with designing a process and implementing it for the construction of the prototype. It was a massive coil assembly.”

She leaned forward eagerly. “How did it work?”

“It didn’t work. Oh, we built it to specifications all right, and within deadline too, but the drive fused solid the first time it was tested. The second was the same and the third. Your mother thought it might be the phase lock.”

“Phase lock?” Shima recognised the term, anyone would. “You mean you worked on the FTL project?”

“Yes.”

She stared at her father hardly able to believe what she was hearing. The faster than light project had been the culmination of Shan space development, and a complete failure. FTL had been proven an impossibility and the project was shut down.

“Your mother published her theory and was asked to join the design team. She accepted of course, it was a very great honour. The fifth prototype was built. I was so proud of her, Shima. Nidra’s ideas seemed to work. Computer projections were almost exactly as predicted, but she was concerned by the slight difference in her calculations. She stayed aboard the ship to supervise the initiation of the drive. I found out later she had feared a core failure. The drive was activated and the core failed as Nidra predicted.”

“And mother?”

“She was injured, but she healed.” Tahar sighed unhappily. “We didn’t know, Shima. We couldn’t have known.”

“The project was abandoned wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Prototype Seven blew up on activation and destroyed the ship. The entire crew was killed—all two hundred. Your mother cried for days. They were our friends, Shima. It was her design that failed and she felt responsible. The project was terminated and we returned to Harmony. We wanted to start again. We thought that having cubs would help us forget the past, but we didn’t know.”

“Know what?”

Tahar’s voice was very low. “Nidra gave birth to six cubs the first time, Shima. You had five sibs, but all except you were born… wrong. They died. The kin mothers said it happened sometimes and that we should try again. So we did.”

Shima stared at her father in pained disbelief.

She had asked her mother a long time ago why she had given birth to only one cub. It had happened not once but twice. Two litters with only one cub each was very rare. Five cubs was average. She had feared another genetic fault might have been passed to her like her weak eyes. When her time came to have cubs, would she also be cursed with small litters? She had nagged her mother and her mother’s kin to send her for tests. They had tried to reassure her, but at her insistence and with the blessing of Elder Kerani, they had sent her for genetic testing. The results were both good and bad. Bad for her sight, but good for her future cubs—it was very unlikely that she would pass on her deformity to them. As far as anyone could tell, her litters would be normal in every way.

She shouldn’t grieve for her five lost sibs—she had Chailen, and Chailen had her, but she did. Why hadn’t they told her?

“Nidra wanted to try again straight away, Shima, but I said wait. That’s why you are three orbits older than Chailen. Nidra had four cubs the second time—it was horrible.” Tahar swallowed and went on in a voice choked with grief, “Nidra nearly died and Chailen as well. The other three were…
malformed
. They couldn’t have survived.”

She clutched her father’s paw. “Was it the accident?”

Tahar’s ears struggled erect. “Yes. The FTL drive is unlike others. It… I cannot explain it so that you can understand, but when it is activated it uses space itself to create a gateway to another place. When the core failed, Nidra was exposed to that other place for a tiny moment, but that is all it took. When everyone realised what that meant, it was already too late for your mother. Orbits later she died still believing a way could be found to survive in that place, but the elders disagreed. The project was terminated. The other place is just too dangerous, Shima. No shielding known would be adequate to protect us from it, and without it FTL is impossible.”

“You should have told us, father. Why didn’t you tell us?”

Tahar looked down. “Guilt. Chailen is lucky to be alive. All the tests say she is perfectly healthy—a miracle the healers said.”

“And me?” Shima said softly.

She knew what he was going to say. She had known for a long time that she would be blind long before her middle years. It was a genetic disorder. Little was known about such things, though research was ongoing. What she did know was terrible enough. She had a degenerative disease of the inner eye—the part healers called the retina.

Tahar squeezed her paw. “Your mother died from the effects of the accident, and your sight is poor because of it. I hope you can forgive us…
forgive me
for not telling you the truth,” he finished in a whisper.

Shima hugged him while inside she shrieked in anger. It was not him she blamed. It was fate. Even now she would not say that the FTL project should have been abandoned. She was its victim, yet she believed the elders were wrong to cancel the project. What did the future hold for her people if not the stars? Where would everyone live? Would there be feuding among clans like before the Great Pact? Her hackles raised and a shudder ran through her.

“You’re cold, Shima. Let us go now.”

She did not want to stay here any longer. Child of Harmony awaited her. “Let us go.”

* * *