Tech World (Undying Mercenaries Series) (35 page)

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When I reached tactical control, Turov was waiting for me. The screen on the aft wall showed the situation clearly—she didn’t have to say a word.

A looming figure filled the screen. It was alien and bulky. There was an indescribable aura of menace about the being. Something about the way its thick dark tentacles drifted and rasped the deck around it was menacing.

The being was a cephalopod—better known to the troops of legion Varus as a “space squid”. I’d believed them all to be wiped out. A year back, I’d witnessed hell-burners falling on their ocean-covered world. The life there had been removed leaving it ready for what the Galactics called a “reseeding.”

Every commanding officer we’d managed to revive thus far was present in fire control. Turov, Graves and even Leeson were there. No wonder they’d called for me. Except possibly for Turov herself, I couldn’t think of three less capable diplomats. They were fighters—killers—but they hardly knew how to schmooze.

I looked at Turov, and her dark eyes returned my gaze steadily. I could tell she was scared but hiding it well. She looked too young to wear such a calculated expression.

“Specialist McGill,” she said officiously. She waved toward the creature on her wall. “Meet Ambassador Glide—at least, that’s how our translation systems have interpreted the meaning of his name.”

“Your Excellency,” I said, nodding to the image on the wall.

Turov flashed me a tiny smile. I knew that she was happy I’d responded diplomatically.

“Let me explain the situation,” she said. “The Cephalopod warship in this system has come to visit us unannounced. Due to past associations and possible misunderstandings, they feel that they’re technically at war with the Galactic Empire.”

My eyes were as big around as boiled eggs by this time. The squid vessel was a warship? That meant the planet the Nairbs had burned away had to be a colony, not a homeworld. Further, the presence of a warship indicated they had to have another basis of operations in the area.

My mind jumped to conclusions. What if when we’d met up with the squids we’d made a terrible miscalculation? We’d assumed they were a single-planet species. In Frontier 921, multi-world civilizations were very rare. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, Earth with her lone small colony outpost on Zeta Herculis was the only level 2 civilization in the region.

Could all of that have been a mistake? Looking at the squid which so far had remained silent, I could see he was indeed in a ship built for his kind. There was a sloshing tank of water under his body, buoying him up. Cephalopods were amphibious but more at home in water than on land.

“It was only one of their colonies…” I said aloud.

Graves and Turov looked alarmed while Leeson squinted his eyes at me suspiciously.

“Specialist,” Turov said loudly. “Let me explain why you’re here. The Ambassador demanded to meet everyone who’d witnessed the events that occurred at Zeta Herculis, and refuses to believe only Graves here was aware of the details—”

The squid lifted a single thick tentacle and spoke. “Wait.”

We all looked at him.

“Let the large being speak,” the squid said. “I wish to follow its thought processes by sifting through its output directly.”

Turov cast me a worried look. I was pretty sure she was already regretting giving me an invitation to her party.

“Very well,” she said. “Explain yourself, McGill.”

“I was just theorizing aloud,” I said. “My apologies. I shouldn’t have interrupted.”

“You
have
interrupted,” said the squid, “but that’s immaterial as the proceedings thus far have been fruitless. Complete your statement, being.”

“Uh…
well, I was going to say that it all makes sense to me now. If you squids had one large spaceship back in the Zeta Herculis system, we should have known you might have more of them. Since you were capable of travel between local planets at speed, you might well have been capable of traveling between the stars as well.”

“I see,” the squid said. “Therefore, you have surmised that my race populates at least two worlds—and perhaps several.”

“That now seems logical, sir.”

The squid turned an accusatory pair of bulging eyes toward my officers. “Was this the nature of your miscalculation?” he demanded. “Has your underling put his appendage on the crux of the issue? Did simple incompetence drive you to believe you could strike with impunity against our kingdom?”

Turov stepped forward. “We ordered no strike against your people,” she said firmly. “That was the Nairbs and Chief Inspector Xlur. They are direct representatives of the Empire.”

“How then might your role in this matter be classified?” the squid demanded.

I had to speak up. Sometimes the urge just bubbles inside me. Ask anyone who’s told me to shut up more than once—the list of such individuals is long and distinguished.

“We’re mercenaries, Ambassador,” I said.

The squid turned back toward me and lifted a tentacle higher. “That term—Ambassador—I’ve been unable to translate it until now. I’m not an Ambassador.”

I had a few more choice names for him, but I managed to hold my tongue like the others who were staring nervously.

“If you’re not an Ambassador, what are you?” Turov asked bluntly.

“I’m a
Conqueror. It’s my function to coordinate the enslavement of all beings that I meet.”

Slavers,
I thought. That figured. The first time I’d met up with the squids they’d had a ship full of altered humans. They’d treated them like slaves, too.

“Your fear is visible,” the alien said, studying us. “This fact cools my flesh. There is no pleasure in
subjugating beings that do not understand their peril.”

“There is no need for violence,” Turov said. “However, you should know that this ship is capable of defending herself.”

The Cephalopod made a slashing gesture with his uplifted tentacle. “Nonsense. If you had effective weapons, you would have used them to destroy us upon detecting our entrance into this system. Instead, you’ve shown weakness at every turn. The orbital habitat nearby teems with life, but you do not control it. Instead, it has attacked your ship. This is clear evidence of pathetic weakness.”

“We haven’t struck the station because we value it. We wish to regain control of it—not destroy it.”

“Ah!” boomed Glide. “You admit that you do not control the habitat? Excellent. Weakness, yet again. You’ve demonstrated it at every turn. I can scarcely believe such abject beings held back the full fury of the Cephalopods during our previous encounter.”

“Listen, squid,” I said.  “We’re quite capable of defending ourselves, but we should get one thing straight—we didn’t bomb your world at Zeta Herculis. The Nairbs ran that ship, and they did it without asking our opinion of the action. Inspector Xlur must have ordered the attack.”

“How do you know this?” the squid asked.

“I was there. I looked out the window as our ship rolled over. I watched the hell-burners drop—nine of them.”

“Interesting. Your account matches perfectly with recordings transmitted from the colonists during their final moments. Let us assume for a moment that I believe you witnessed the genocide personally. What I find inexplicable is your repeated implicit claim that you’re beings apart from the Galactics and their fading Empire. You’ve called yourself mercenaries. You’ve said you didn’t order the strike. Neutrality? Rebellion? Do these terms describe your political status in regard to the Galactics?”

We all looked at Turov. I’d said enough—even I knew that.

She cleared her throat. “Yes,” she said. “We’re independent. We have dealings with the Empire, but our worlds aren’t to be blamed for their actions.”

I stared at her thinking over her words. She’d lied, of course. We were an active part of the Empire. Hell, we’d recently taken on the role of local Enforcers. By all rights we were obligated to repel this squid ship and protect the local population, but Turov wasn’t interested in sticking her neck out.
She rarely was.

“You place me in a difficult position,” the squid said. “I’d hoped my decisions would be clarified by this communication, but instead you have muddied the waters further.”

“We should take this opportunity to talk,” Turov said. “We have no love for the Empire. We stand apart from it. You can gain much from our cooperation—from our gathered data.”

Turov’s words surprised me. She was selling out. Maybe she knew more about the situation than I did—but I doubt
ed that.

As far as I could tell
she was playing it safe. I had to agree with her move. After all, Earth was quite possibly at risk in this situation. Battle Fleet 921 was gone, called back to the Core Systems. On the other hand, the squids were here with a warship. Maybe it was their only one—or maybe they had a thousand more.

“I will consider your words, being,” Conqueror Glide said. “Do not provoke us. Do not approach this ship. We will not allow it.”

“I’m glad you haven’t yet forced us to destroy your vessel,” Turov said. “That would be unfortunate. Please answer a question, Glide. How many star systems are populated by your species?”

The squid’s tentacles churned briefly. “We swim on many worlds. More than do your legged beasts—but not so many as are controlled by the Galactics.”

Turov accepted this answer even though it was pretty vague. The squid had placed his Kingdom at somewhere between three and a million star systems in size.

“We invite you to talk to us again at a later date,” Turov said.

“If it is convenient for us, we shall do so,” said the squid, and the screen went dark.

Immediately the three officers let out a collective sigh and separated, shaking their heads.

“I told you we shouldn’t have brought McGill to the party,” Leeson said. “We were almost squid-meat.”

“Adj
unct Leeson,” Turov said. “You’re dismissed.”

Leeson looked at her in surprise then at me. He left, shaking his head and muttering.

Graves studied the ship on a projected display of the system. “They’re lingering in far orbit. Too bad
Minotaur
isn’t a real battlecruiser. We could take them out quickly if we were geared for space-superiority. But
Minotaur
is more about troop-support than anything else. God only knows what kind of armament they have.”

Turov turned to me. “McGill, you were undiplomatic as usual, but you did give the squid what it wanted to hear. Your description of the bombing convinced it you were a witness.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I hope that bought us some time. What’s the plan, Imperator?”

She took the question very seriously. I could tell she’d been doing some hard thinking. Turov had always been a rank-climber, but this was different. This time it wasn’t about glory
—it was about survival for all of us.

“The truth is,” she said thoughtfully, “Earth has been playing it by ear out here on the frontier, day by day, for better than a century. We’ve always lived at the sufferance of aliens even before the Galactics made contact—whether we knew it or not.”

She walked to the console and worked the controls. The image of the squid ship Graves had been studying vanished. He threw her an annoyed glance, but she didn’t notice. Probably she didn’t care.

A vast swirl of stars appeared. There were many pinpoints of light and they all seemed to blend into a pinwheel shape.

“This is our galaxy,” she said. “The Empire possesses most of the star systems partly because the center is so thick with stars. But there still exists a lot of unexplored territory past Earth, which is half-way out from the center to the edge. About a quarter of all the star systems in the Galaxy are outside the Empire’s reach. Due to the realities of the central, older stars, many of these outlying systems are believed to be inhabited. We’ve clearly encountered a new hostile entity—what did the squid call his political body?”

“A kingdom, sir,” I said.

“Right. A kingdom. Earth therefore is caught between an Empire of vast size, and a kingdom of unknown proportions. Let us assume for argument’s sake they have colonized a hundred stars.”

She used a stylus to light up an oval of stars past Earth’s position farther out toward the rim of the galaxy. They lit up in red.

“Here we are with two lonely stars.” She moved her fingers, and Sol lit up along with Zeta Herculis in green. Then she touched a contact and a massive number of stars glowed blue. The whole center of the Galaxy was blue—millions of stars.

“See?” she asked. “The Cephalopods are absurdly small
in comparison to the Empire, but it doesn’t matter as we are absurdly small in comparison to them. Encountering a new political entity full of hostile aliens has to be about the worst thing I can conceive of happening—especially when our own protectors are conspicuously absent. For all we know, our position is hopeless.”

Graves was studying her map with interest. “Do you think it’s that bad?”

“We have to assume that it is,” she said.

I stepped closer. I didn’t like what I saw. Our worlds consisted of a tiny pair of dots—like two discolored sand grains on a vast beach.