Ambassador 4: Coming Home (26 page)

“The larger ones,” Asha said. “We’ve already been destroying as many as we can. Some are quite small, others much larger. We don’t have the time to check what each node does, but it’s safe to assume that the larger ones fulfil more important roles.”

“What is your assessment of the structural integrity of that ship? What do we need to breach the hull?”

“They’re well shielded. Their shield processes capture energy and feed it back into the engine, possibly also into weapons systems.”

“As it would, with a deep space vessel. Can we overheat it?”

“Not with regular weapons. With the sling, maybe.”

Ezhya nodded. “How fast can you bring it over?”

“It needs to go through six jumps.”

“Time loss?”

“Without checking, my guess is about a day.”

“Do it. Now.”

Asha went quiet and his expression blank. I guessed the order went out to his fleet right this very moment and somewhere deep in space, people would be frantically packing and stowing and cleaning up a ship that was normally used for exploration and research purposes, now to be used as a prime weapon.

Ezhya was chillingly serious now. For thousands of years, Asto’s society had deliberately selected the most physically able and mentally capable people in their top tiers of society. Children were born without Circle membership. Testing started at age five and for the top tiers, finished at seventeen. These two men were the smartest and toughest in all of Coldi society. I would argue in the entire galaxy. They calculated every step of their actions with consequences far down the track.

Their decision was to go to war.

Then Ezhya got up. “I guess that’s it.”

“What can I do?” I asked, and my voice sounded insecure. I hadn’t realised how my jaw was trembling and I was sweating from the tension.

Ezhya faced me. For a moment I was wondering if he was going to question what I was doing there, because the preparation for war was sucking his attention to all three of his feeders at once. I felt very small, and insignificant, and utterly clueless on how to behave. These two men were so much more powerful than I was and I didn’t understand why I had ever thought that I could call either of them a “friend”.

There was turmoil in those gold-flecked eyes, and I could no longer meet them. I looked down, felt myself take up a subservient position even though I’d sworn that I would never do this unless I judged it wise, and only under pressure at that. That had been my human side speaking, my stubborn conviction that all people are equal and that I could match this man. I was stupid. I could not.

He didn’t touch my shoulder, but a firm, thick-fingered hand moved into my field of vision and pushed my chin up. “I thought you wouldn’t do that anymore except when protocol dictates.”

I met the gold-flecked eyes. “I’m on very shaky ground. I can’t say I’ve ever participated in a war council before.”

He laughed out loud. “Neither have we.”

“Tell me what I can do to help, with the understanding that I would be very much in favour of avoiding the firing of weapons. There are thousands of innocent civilians aboard that ship who never chose to come here and given the choice, would rather go back home.”

“We do not favour that option either. If the sling can get here in time, it might not be strong enough to work. I’d prefer not to have to try. As for what you can do: I understand that there is a relay buried in an excavation site on the outskirts of town.”

“There is.”

“It appears important in terms of communication with the ship. It’s bigger than the ones we’ve found in space, although we don’t yet know why or how, mainly because that stupid council is keeping people away from the site. That scan you sent was helpful, but we haven’t yet had the time to fully analyse it.”

I nodded.

“At this stage, there is only one sensible thing that we should be doing with it: destroy it.”

“Yes.” Absolutely, I could do that.

“Then go.
Iyamichu ata
.”

“
Iyamichu ata.
” Into a real battle this time.

T
HERE WAS NO TIME
to lose.

Ezhya and Asha left to arrange their respective business. I understood that Ezhya would take full command of Asto’s entire fleet, and would gather as many ships as could possibly make it back to Asto. If the sling could be back in time and if it was fired, he would do it.

After Asha had left the room, Ezhya said to me, “I don’t envy your task. It’s easy to go hunting and shooting things in the depth of space. They’re often things that shouldn’t have been there in the first place, and no one complains, even if it was a ship with troublesome occupants.”

There had been suggestions that Asto’s fleet had been hunting Tamerians, and this was as close as an admission that this had indeed been the case.

“All these things become massively more complicated when there are settlements and authorities involved. I would caution you to stay clear of the Barresh Council and the various powerful interest groups involved in this site. I would advise you to obtain the proper permits and have this relay, wherever it is, dismantled and taken apart to the level where the individual pieces just become parts and no longer fulfil the function they’ve been designed to fulfil. But we have no time for all of that. Therefore, go out there tonight. Take your association, make sure they are absolutely loyal to you, take arms and blast the thing to pieces. I have on my
gamra
account a prepared statement that I will send out the moment you get into trouble. It will be a notification that you’ve been relieved of your position so that you can be tried in the Barresh court and don’t need to face the
gamra
court. It will arrive backdated two days ago. You can send that on as evidence that you were acting of your own accord. If you run into trouble.”

“Delegate Namion still filters all my mail anyway.”

He snorted. “When all this is over, I’ll have a thing or two to say about that.” He lowered his voice. “When this is done, I will call a council of supporters to make sure we get rid of this idiot. If by any chance you get an opportunity to do it earlier than that, by all means, go ahead. You have my full, utter, undivided support. This extends to taking you into protection and offering you unlimited residence in Athyl.”

I met his eyes, my heart hammering. Shit, this was serious. Was he telling me that he would condone any of us assassinating Delegate Namion? I didn’t even dare ask. Didn’t want to go there. He
trusted
me, and that was so much appreciated.

There was a slightly awkward moment. He had to go, I had my work laid out for me. We might never see each other again.

We’d been through all the formalities, war declarations and protocol. A simple “goodbye” would never do. I held out my hand, and he clasped it in a bone-crushing grip—never shake hands with a Coldi person, Nicha used to joke, and by hell, how true that was. He put his other hand on my shoulder and held me briefly in a very human, very earthly hug.

Then he was gone, crossing the hall in fast strides, drawing his red-sashed guards from the hub room and the door. I would have thought the hug had been a dream, but I could still feel the warmth of his touch.

Right, then. To work.

I called, “Thay’, Nich’!”

They had both been in the hub, and came to the door. “Everyone, in the living room.”

They weren’t used to me issuing orders, but they nodded, absolutely loyal. They knew that something very serious was up.

I asked Eirani to bring some refreshments up; and cakes, nibbles and tea arrived at the same time that people started turning up.

Nicha without his son, Thayu, Veyada and Sheydu who had been downstairs and Deyu and Reida who had been in the bath and came in wearing bathrobes and with wet hair.

Also Evi and Telaris.

We settled around the dining table. Eirani poured tea.

I began, “We have a nasty job to do tonight.” And I continued with a summary of what Ezhya had told me and what we had to do.

“Shouldn’t be too difficult,” Reida said. “Usually there are only foreign guards at night. Usually Tamerians. They don’t question or ask for more pay.”

I asked him, “Do any of these Tamerians ever introduce themselves? Do they have names? Do they talk or mingle with others?”
Can they be talked around into cooperating because I hate killing people?

He raised his eyebrows. “Very little. They give one-syllable names. Pok, Mil, Sang, names like that. I don’t think they’re real names. I don’t think they’re capable of holding a conversation or relating normally to people.”

Sheydu nodded. “That concurs with my assessment. They’re not superpeople. They might be strong and good at physical combat, but they have no skills in negotiation.”

“They’re made to blindly obey,” Veyada said. “Like the Aghyrian crew themselves.”

“They’re not that good at fighting either,” Reida said. “I haven’t even done that much training but I bet I could could wrestle them to the ground.”

“Now don’t you go and take unnecessary risks, young man,” Sheydu said. “The plan is we go in quick, do the job and out quick, before anyone sees us or before we run into trouble. No wrestling matches.”

Reida nodded, leaning forward on the table. Absolutely loyal.

So the plan was deceptively simple. Go to the dig site, overwhelm the guards, preferably without killing them, and destroy the relay which Reida had shown was inside the ruins of the former ship.

Deyu then wanted to know why I was so obsessed with not killing the guards. “I mean, they’re Tamerians, not really people at all.”

I was going to reply, but Sheydu cut in. “Young lady, that is how the Aghyrians think about us, and once you start down that road, there really is no end to it.”

Deyu had the grace to look ashamed, and I met Sheydu’s eyes. Had I just been mistaken about them all along and did they understand me better than I thought?

“Killing people is a last resort,” she said. “But when it needs to be done, it needs to be done.”

There were nods around the table. It was just that the parameters for getting killed in Coldi society were so much more sensitive than on Earth or even in
gamra
society. Shooting first, ignoring a writ, or being deemed troublesome by a higher authority were all likely to get you killed, and of course once the
sheya
instinct came into play, laws no longer applied and all bets were off.

I handed the meeting to Sheydu, who spoke in brief sentences about weapons we would take—full armour and two guns for everyone, including me—and explosives she would carry. Her backup was Deyu, who nodded bravely, but looked terrified.

Thayu reported that the military astronomers had already started calculations to find the most likely spots where the ship would jump. They were compiling lists of relays that needed to be destroyed with urgency that would be drip-fed to the ships that needed them. The expectation was that this process would need to run half a day at least for calculating time, for crosschecks, for matching of items in the giant database of space junk.

She added, “But I expect the checking to go out the window when they get pressed for time. It’s more important that they try to stop the ship than that they avoid taking out operational satellites.”

Then Veyada reported on legal implications of conducting an attack on the island.

He reported, “Being on the island proper, and none of us being citizens of Barresh, we’re all far outside our mandate. If the council wants to prosecute us for a hostile act, they can. If
gamra
hears of it, they will drag us to court.”

I told them that Ezhya would send a backdated message to temporarily take us out of
gamra
duty if something went wrong. I presumed that if something went wrong in space as well, he had people on the ground to send it.

Veyada said, “All right, that takes us off the hook with
gamra
, but the Barresh Council will have classified the site as heritage property and there are conservation laws dealing with this listing. Barresh takes their history very seriously. They have arduous application processes if you simply want to see the site. Never mind blow a hole in it. We could apply to have the offending object removed, but that would probably take the best part of a year to clear the Heritage Committee, the Public Safety Committee and the Committee for Protection of Agricultural Habitat.” He counted off on his fingers.

I stared at him. “Fuck all that. Let’s go throw some bombs.”

Nods. Coldi were people of action. They disliked endless talk. For all that the two people were on related branches in the tree of humanity, their personalities were vastly different.

I said, “We’re going to be facing Tamerians.”

Reida rubbed his hands. “I’m looking forward to that. Those guards were useless pricks.”

Again, there were nods all around. If the Coldi absolutely had to acknowledge that someone else had created them, they wanted to push home the fact that they were more adaptable and stronger than other people

“Later, we might need to deal with people who financially support Tamerians.” Like councillors, like Delegate Akhtari. We should get off our backside and move these Tamerians out of town.

“I will shoot them personally,” Sheydu said. “They have no idea what they’re playing with.”

Her bravado was uplifting, but ultimately false. The people who supported the Tamerians were powerful
gamra
identities and would be unlikely to put themselves in a situation where they could be shot.

It was an occasion for full battle gear, with the rare added condition that none of us needed to hide the fact that we were armed.

I went with Thayu into the bedroom to get changed. I shed my wet clothes in the little bathroom that was attached to our bedroom, wondering if I’d ever wear them again.

You’ve wondered that so often in the last few years
. Thayu came in. She was in her underwear, a short body-hugging singlet and a pair of loose shorts, both brown. Her metallic hair hung loose over her shoulders. “Need to get a hair tie.”