Battlestations Page 15

  Lyseo sounded almost desperate. “I’m scared, too. Please, please stay here with me, Jill. You have a shipwide frequency here. You can communicate with anyone you like without leaving. Stay with me.”

  “Ari, I can’t. I’ve got a job to do.”

  The panicked look she knew had replaced the expression of arrogance on Lyseo’s thin face. She remembered, with a pang, the sensitive, insecure side of him. Jill felt herself melting, and steeled her resolve. She was concerned for him, but couldn’t afford to waste time in beginning damage control. The Hawking couldn’t afford morale problems, not now.

  Lyseo reached out for her hand. “I need you. Please stay.”

  Jill forced herself to draw back. “There are ten thousand people aboard this cruiser who also need me. What about them?”

  “The needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few?” Lyseo threw at her bitterly. “And old Hambone is one of the few?”

  He was going to have another temper tantrum, and Jill refused to coddle him through it. “If you like. If you didn’t insist on being one of the few, I might be able to help you, too. I love you, but you are the most spoiled sentient being I have ever met in my life!” Jill looked around and saw that everyone was staring at them. She gasped. She had told off the great Lyseo, and right in front of a roomful of people! Jill felt color mount in her face, and turned to flee the room.

  Lyseo grabbed her wrists before she could pull away. “Say that again.”

  “No,” Jill cried, refusing to meet his eyes. “I can’t believe I said it the first time. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t call you names.”

  “Please?” he coaxed her. “Before the line about the spoiled brat. I know I deserve that, but won’t you?”

  “I love you,” Jill said, after a long moment staring at his feet. “I don’t think I’ve ever said that to anyone but my parents.”

  “Then I am doubly honored.” He turned her hands over one at a time and kissed her palms, a gesture that sent a tingle coursing through her. “My dear, with that to hold to my heart, you can go and help the multitudes, and I’ll know that I’ll have a part of you here that they can never touch. That small phrase alone gives me security I find nowhere else and with no one else. As soon as the lights come back up, I’ll do my little part here to help out.”

  “I’ll be back later,” Jill promised.

  “And I’ll be waiting,” Lyseo said. “Now then, people,” he shouted, clapping his hands as Jill drew away, “let us try a technical rehearsal, shall we? I want to be absolutely perfect for our lads and lasses. From the top, if you please.”

  After the Ichtons were driven back, Commander Brand called back his forces to repair their vessels and heal their wounds. During the late shifts, Jill’s paladins began to receive calls from viewers who had watched the most recent performance by Lyseo.

  “It was terrific,” a woman told Driscoll Strind. “I put it on disk so I can watch it over and over again. To think that when we put lights down during an attack, it actually helps the military to do their job.”

  “That’s a simplistic explanation of it, citizen,” Strind said, punching the cutoff button and switching to another call. “I think it has as much to do with moral support as electricity. Keep it up, folks. With your help, we’re going to win this one.”

  Jill and Lyseo lay curled together on the couch in his dressing room listening to the audio channel.

  “You made my job much easier today,” Jill said, smiling lazily up at him. “I’ve never known morale so high. If pure optimism could stop the Ichtons, they’d be history.”

  “Ah, but without you, it would have been impossible for me to continue with my work,” Lyseo said. “Audiences are fickle, but no matter what lies ahead, I will conquer the galaxy all by myself if I may count on one who will always care for me.”

  “I always will,” Jill said, and shyly admitted, “I always have.”

  Theirs was a love that might have shaken the stars in their courses, but it wasn’t. It was merely a comfortable, quiet center for both of them in an increasingly chaotic environment.

  THE ICHTONS

  A Preliminary Briefing for Hawking Personnel

  Unrestricted Release

  The Ichtons appear to have evolved in a different spiral arm than the races of the Alliance. It is difficult to determine how long they have been ravaging their way across space, but the number of gutted planets discovered to date implies a very substantial period, perhaps even several millennia. We can assume they are experienced and adept at this practice.

  Physically the Ichtons resemble both a terrestrial insect and mammal. The trunk of an Ichton’s body is contained in an exoskeleton of considerable strength. Their multiple appendages are furred, contain an internal bone structure, and resemble the arms and legs of an earth gorilla or Altarian sermet. Their three-fingered hands are quite strong and capable of delicate work. They are believed to be egg laying, but nothing is known about their young.

  As has been the case with all sentient races discovered to date, the Ichtons are individually aware. While it is convenient to attribute insect traits to the Ichtons, this is a fallacy based upon the similarity of their appearance to Terran insects. There appears to be no group awareness or similar connection between Ichton individuals, though they do tend to organize into groups and may be assumed to be highly social. Instinct may play a large role in the decision-making process of the Ichtons. Those few captured seemed almost unable to cope at first with the radically different environment. This may be the main source of Ichton motivation on all levels. Intelligence of a level equal to the average human is merely another tool to fulfill their instinctive needs. A high level of instinctive motivation might explain why those Ichtons we have been able to communicate with are unable to understand the resentment of other races at being overrun and their planets pillaged. When asked why their race acts in this manner, all the prisoners taken to date simply could not comprehend what was being asked. Again, all those likely to directly engage any Ichton force should remember that this type of motivation does not make them any less dangerous as an opponent.

  COMRADES

  by S.M. Stirling

  “Out of my way, furcoat!”

  Captain Alao ber Togren checked half a step as she came out of the adjutant’s tiny office.

  Shit, she thought, quickening her stride. Somebody—someone non-Fleet and human and civilian—was throwing species epithets around.

  A high chittering sound echoed from the narrow corridors.

  Someone was throwing insults at a Khalian who was also a Fleet Marine. The consequences were not likely to be pleasant, unless she got there soon.

  The Marine officer walked with her right shoulder brushing the wall; the Stephen Hawking was the largest self-propelled object humans had ever built, with more than enough room to carry ten thousand crew from Alliance space to the Core of the galaxy—but it had been built by the Fleet, and Fleet Marine quarters shaved space as if this were an assault boat, not a battlestation.

  Stensini, she thought disgustedly as she turned the corner and saw who the human was. I might have known.

  “Stensini, back off,” she barked. “You, too, Senior Sergeant Yertiik. Carry on.”

  Like half her troops, Yertiik was Khalian—she made a long-accustomed mental effort and refused to even think “Weasel”—and quick-tempered even for that race. He let his fur drop flat under his coverall and moved his hands away from the hilts of the nonregulation knives at his belt, but the air stayed full of the wet-dog smell of his anger and a low chirring sound. His eyes stayed fixed on Stensini as he stalked away, as stiff as the short legs and undulant spine allowed: staring was aggressive bad manners to his race.

  “Ah, glad to see you, Captain,” the human civilian said, then froze.

  Anhelo Stensini was a big man, muscular and blond; the Marine officer was a stocky 160 centimeters, with bristle-cut black hair, a beak nose, and a complexion the color of teak.

  “Wish i
t was mutual,” Ber Togren said neutrally, after a moment.

  She could smell her own sweat, under the neutral ozone and pine smell of recirculated air. I could brig him, she thought wistfully. The Stephen Hawking was technically on battle alert. The Gersons had been among the Core races who came looking for allies and found the Alliance, and the battlestation had found their system under Ichton—enemy—control when it broke out of FTL drive. There had been a skirmish, nothing but an occasional shudder through the massive fabric of the battlestation to her Marines or anyone else not in the Fleet’s defensive units. But technically, they were under martial law and she could . . .

  “Unfortunately, we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other,” she said with a slight sigh.

  The blond eyebrows rose. “I was just coming by for the artifact boxes,” he said.

  “Tums out they want to take a look at Abanjul,” Ber Togren said. According to their Core informants, that was one of the first planets the Ichtons had taken when they appeared in this neighborhood. Deserted by now, although many of the forces attacking Gerson had come from there. “Sending us on a corvette. Think there may be some bugs left. Deserters, stay behinds, whatever.”

  “Ichtons are not insects, Captain,” Stensini corrected absently. Then the meaning of what she had said sank through, and he paled. His specialty would be needed.

  “Whatever.”

  Krishna. The civilian was a sentiologist, a student of intelligent life; and, oddly enough, a xenophobe. Although only toward Khalia. Fifty years before, there had been a war; at first the Alliance Fleet had thought their enemies were the Khalia, muskeloid aliens, cannibalistic pirates. Then they had found the real backers behind the Khalia, the families, and the Weasel war had gotten serious. Toward the end the Khalia themselves had changed sides, with an eagerness that was only partly due to the Alliance dreadnoughts orbiting their home world. They just loved to kill, was all.

  Stensini’s father had been one of those human oligarchs of the Family Cluster; he hated the Khalia for what they represented, a lost heritage, betrayal.

  Ber Togren hated them for a much simpler reason; Khalian raiders had hit the Fleet research outpost where her parents worked. What was left of her mother had been found in the raider’s food locker after the pursuit caught it. Her father had spent the rest of the war in the 121st Marine Reaction Company, the Headhunters, collecting weasel tails; then he’d retired, paid for an orthowomb to hatch the frozen ova he and his wife had deposited, and raised her on war stories.

  Naturally, she hated the Khalia. Almost as much as she loathed the Family rich kids who thought they’d lost the war, because they came out just obscenely wealthy instead of omnipotent. If Ber Togren had been in charge, they’d have really lost.

  Have died. All of them.

  “Get your kit together,” she went on. “And don’t even bother complaining to anyone, because this is Brand’s idea.” Anton Brand was Fleet commander on the Hawking. Not exactly God, or even the close approximation a Fleet ship captain was, but near enough. “You’re the sentiologist they assigned me.”

  Shit.

  Abanjul was dead. It smelled dead, a stink of acid and chemicals and raw earth and a little rotting organic matter. The area around the stealthed landing boat was chaotic, a wilderness of tumbled hills of some fine powdery material colored in sand red and scarlet and livid yellow. Cold wind blew it into the faceplates of the Marines and scientists, and several tonnes of it had made convenient cover for the prefab shelter, the new hill already looked as ancient as the others. The talc-like substance was Sahara-dry, too fine-textured to hold water, but there were pools of blue-tinted liquid running on the hard clay substrate beneath it. The sun was setting; Abanjul’s star was a G4 like Sol, but from here it was a swollen red ball covering a quarter of the horizon, haloed by banners of color like nothing she had ever seen. The landing boat was gone, and the corvette would land only on receipt of the correct codes. That had been sensible, at least.

  Ber Togren flicked up her mask. Dust settled on her lips, tasting of metal and rust.

  She spat. “What is this stuff?” one of the troopers muttered.

  “Mining by-products,” a technician answered automatically. “Pure silica, traces of alumina and heavy-metal salts. Oxides of a number of things. Oxygen content in the atmosphere’s dropping noticeably already. Couple of millennia and it’ll be negligible, unless what’s left of the oceans recover, which—”

  A high, thin keening cut through the quiet whistle of the wind. Half a dozen Marines went into crouches, until they saw it was a friendly. One of the Gersons. The ursinoidlike aliens were wearing light environment suits and she could see the short-muzzled face quite clearly. The black button nose was dry and grainy-looking, a sign of ill health, and wet something ran from the eyes and nose and mouth. One of the technicians made a move toward the Gerson, stopped when the alien’s own superior went over to it.

  Thud. The senior Gerson had kicked the other one in the ribs—the teddy-bearlike aliens had skeletons quite close to the mammalian norm—and shouted something at it. Normally the Gersons’ language sounded rather pleasant, like a combination of bees humming and choral song. Thud. More harsh shouting, and the prone Gerson picked itself up, still mewling, and staggered back to the ship.

  “Uncharacteristic,” Stensini murmured on their private channel. He was in charge of the civilian team. “Very uncharacteristic of Gersons. They’re under considerable stress, of course.”

  Ber Togren ignored him. “All right, you people,” she said on the unit push. “Let’s get dug in and camouflaged. And remember, maximum priority is prisoners. Second priority is reasonably intact corpses.” Command priorities, she left unspoken; grunts tended to put a higher value on their own ass than the brass did. They were Marines, though; mission first.

  Stress, she thought, looking around. Ber Togren had been born—decanted—stationside, and had spent most of her life in space or hostile-environment habitats; what she saw around her was not too bad, in itself. The Core holos of this part of Abangul had been taken before the Ichtons arrived, an anthropology mission to study the primitive natives, and showed rolling hills covered with silvery-green trees.

  “Yeah, fairly considerable stress,” she muttered.

  Gerson was occupied by the Ichtons now, and in a generation or two it would look just like this.

  “It is good to see you back,” Chief Worker hummed.

  He had an individual name, compounded of his smell and markings on his exoskeleton and some of the tones the tympani along his thorax made when they vibrated, but there was no need to use them here.

  Fighter sounded a recognition and pushed past into the warren, his patrol with him. The worker waved his unit out to unload the trucks; those were big vehicles slung low between five-meter balloon wheels, but shabby, patched. Like everything else in the improvised warren.

  “Fuel,” Fighter hummed. “Seventy-seven kilos liquid hydrocarbon; three tonnes of protocarbon foodstuffs, supplemented; assorted machine parts, some electronics.”

  “Excellent!” Chief Worker replied. “Our reserve was running low and the hydroponics facility is behind schedule.”

  He turned and limped away; the right limb of his forward pair of legs was missing halfway down. Ichtons had little curative medicine and no artificial limbs. There had never been any need for such; replacements for injured individuals were in plentiful supply and much more efficient than feeding the wounded.

  Fighter turned to one of the technicians. “Any more activity?” he hummed.

  “None since the last indication, Fighter,” the technician hummed. “Definitely a fusion-impulse engine of some sort. Apart from that—” The operator’s forelimbs moved in a fluid gesture of resignation, the three-fingered hands clenching. The equipment was cobbled together, here in an off corridor of the abandoned mine. Everything had been second-rate to begin with, and nothing useful had been left in the evacuation.

  Including us, Fighter
thought bitterly. Including us. “Do you wish to make contact?”

  “Negative!” The ultrasonic whine of the Ichton’s tympani keened upward until the technician winced and turned his faceted eyes away.

  “Then how shall we arrange for evacuation?” The technician must be desperate to question a military order.

  “We are not even certain it is an Ichton vessel,” Fighter hummed. “Carry on. Passive sensors only.”

  “We are to avoid contact?” said one of his patrol, newly promoted to warrior status and fingering his converted mining laser uneasily.

  “On the contrary,” Fighter replied. “We will mobilize all trained”—half-trained, his mind filled in mordantly—“personnel and investigate at the end of this diurnal period.”

  The others of the patrol split off, each speeding up a little as they headed toward their dens and their mates; none of them had been allowed breeding privileges before the evacuation. They would have been evacuated, if they had.

  Fighter stepped wearily through into the main brood chamber. Half a dozen incubators lay grouped around the infrared lanterns, each holding two eggs. None of the clutch of females had laid more than two, not on the minimal rations available, but they would all be hatching in a month. The creche mother was aestivating in the far corner; her exoskeleton was mottled with age, and her mind wandered—this world had been polluted enough to reduce the life span well under thirty years, Fighter himself was twenty-eight—but she was the best they had. At the vibrations of his entry she stirred and unfolded her limbs.

  “You!” she hummed in the female tongue. It had less vocabulary than the male, but its intonations carried power. Deep within himself Fighter felt needs stirring, to protect and guard, a flash of guilt. “You! Facilities inadequate. Conditions bad. Hatchlings endangered!”

  “They will improve,” he soothed. They stood and groomed each other’s carapaces, until the old female sulked back to her corner.

  Fighter’s mandibles ground together as he wearily sought his niche and ate, longing for the digestive torpor that would let him forget his worries.