Debt of Ages (3 page)

Sidonius didn't hear him. He grew aware that he was on his knees, making the sign of the cross with frantic repetition—and, with his other hand, older signs such as the peasants of the Auvergne still made when no priest was looking. "
In nomine Patris,
" he began.

Strong hands grasped his arms and raised him up. "Don't be afraid, Sidonius." Yes, it was the same deep baritone.

"But . . . but . . . but
Augustus?!
"

As always, the boyish smile looked somehow right on that face—the face of a man in his early forties, the same face that the thirty-seven-year-old Sidonius had seen by the mouth of the Loire.

"Sidonius, you never change! If we're going to be fugitives together, I think you can address me by my
name
!"

The battlecruiser had come out of continuous-displacement drive in the cold dark domain of the outer system. But now its sunward hyperbolic orbit had carried it into the regions where liquid water could, under certain circumstances, exist. Rear Admiral Robert Sarnac, Pan-Human League Space Fleet (Survey Branch), standing under the curving armorplast transparency that was a prerogative of his rank, was bathed in the light of the sun Loriima that flooded his quarters.

To an observer, he might have seemed to be talking very clearly and distinctly to himself. In fact, he was dictating a report for Fleet Ops. The computer wasn't really sentient, of course—that still lay in the realm of science fiction, where Sarnac privately hoped it would remain. But it was programmed with his personality and handled most of his routine business on its own, conversing with people mostly too young to care about their inability to tell whether they were talking to him or to his silicon-based familiar. It could be trusted to edit reports like this one, bleeping out all facetiousness, sarcasm and other assorted wise-ass-isms that he himself wouldn't have allowed onto the final hardcopy. He sometimes wished it wouldn't.

". . . And so," he concluded, "as per orders, I proceeded with all possible speed to Starholm where I picked up my augmented staff. There, I learned that it has been confirmed that the hostile forces encountered in the Torlaerann Chain beyond Loriima are, indeed, of Korvaash race. I thereupon continued to Loriima, where, pursuant to orders, I have contacted Battle Group Thirty-Seven and assumed command, effective this date, Terran Standard 24 June, 2275." The computer would, of course, insert the Raehaniv half of the paired standard dating. "Upon arrival at Loriima III, I will receive a full report of the Battle Group's status, including progress made in repairing the recent battle damage. My first-sense impression is that the initial reports of the extent of that damage were not exaggerated.

"I therefore urgently request that the reinforcements I have been promised be dispatched as expeditiously as possible, since any delay in mounting a counterattack will only allow the Korvaasha to consolidate their position in—"

The door chimed for admittance. "Cease recording," Sarnac ordered—regretfully, for he hated to break such an uncharacteristic flow of pompous formality.
The computer must be proud of me
, he thought.
I haven't given it anything to clean up. Or maybe it thinks I'm up to something.
"Enter," he added. The door slid open, revealing his chief of staff.

Senior Captain Rimaeriy zho'Dornaeriel looked as Raehaniv as her name: tall, slender, sharp-featured, with skin of a coppery shade not quite like that of any of Earth's ethnic types. Her features were a caricature of those which, in Tiraena, were smoothed and muted by an infusion of Terran blood. It was a thought Sarnac couldn't let himself dwell on, for it reminded him of how long it had been since he had seen Tiraena. Too long.
And now we've got another goddamned war
.

"Well, Rimaeriy," he greeted her, "is everything set for our arrival? And don't tell me about any last-minute hitches—I don't need it!"

"Not to worry, sir," was what Sarnac heard inside his skull, overriding Rimaeriy's liquid Raehaniv. The ubiquitous implanted translators had swept away language barriers and allowed the wartime alliance between the two branches of humanity to ripen into the League.

"Our people have been in contact with what's left of the Battle Group Thirty-Seven staff," Rimaeriy continued, "and it looks like we'll be able to put together a combined staff without hurting too many feelings—the seniorities of the people involved worked out right. And we haven't gotten any trouble after the initial raised eyebrows over a Survey officer assuming command."

"Come on, Rimaeriy! It was more than 'raised eyebrows,' and I know damned well what these Line types really call 'Survey officers'! But they couldn't argue with the general order amalgamating Survey and Line and everything else for the duration and making seniority apply across the board regardless of branch."

"No, sir, they couldn't. And . . ." She hesitated. "They naturally stopped grumbling when they heard who the Survey admiral was."

Sarnac grimaced. He and Rimaeriy had been together too long for any possibility of brown-nosing, and they both knew it. The chief of staff was just stating facts. But he'd never overcome an inability to wear special status well. Maybe it was a matter of national character, for he was a child, however irreverent, of one of the North American successor-states, and the traditions of aggressive egalitarianism and "aw-shucks" self-deprecation had never quite died. Still, he reflected, fifteen years should have been time enough to adjust to it. He'd had to live with it since the day he and Tiraena had arrived in a stunned Solar System with the news that the beleaguered Solar Union had allies among the stars—human allies who had no business being there, including descendants of the Russian-American Mars Project people whose disappearance had mystified Terran humanity for two centuries. It had been the beginning of the end for the late unlamented Realm of Tarzhgul, and he had seen Fleet action in the final campaigns of the war—experience which should stand him in good stead now.

But, as always, notoriety had been a decidedly mixed blessing for a junior officer. There had been times when he had come close to quitting the service. The lure of new frontiers had kept him in, just as it had kept Tiraena in the affiliated civilian agencies, specializing in alien contact as she had done before they—and, through them, their peoples—had met. It was what she was doing right now, on the far side of the League from the Torlaerann Chain.

"And," Rimaeriy went on, sensing the Admiral's discomfort and changing the subject, "the fact that we've got an ops officer who's Line should make them feel better."

Sarnac nodded. Captain Draco had joined the staff at Starholm, and the death in action of Battle Group Thirty-Seven's operations officer had left a vacancy he would fill in the combined staff. Sarnac didn't know him, but on the basis of his service record he'd been glad to get him. An altogether impressive man . . . and one whom Sarnac couldn't stop thinking he had met somewhere, long ago and far away. For the sight of him had aroused unwelcome, tantalizing echoes of the dreams.
They've been getting worse lately. Why?

"All right, Rimaeriy," he said, dragging his mind back to the hear-and-now. "Let me finish this report for Fleet Ops. Then I'll want to go over the new staff postings with you."

* * *

A couple of Terran weeks passed, and the combined staff was, if not quite a band of brothers (and sisters), at least a smoothly functioning unit. Rimaeriy had worked wonders, Sarnac thought as he entered the briefing room—Rimaeriy, and Captain Draco.

He studied the officers who rose to their feet in the afternoon Loriima-light that streamed through the tall windows. The majority were Raehaniv-looking. However integrated the League's military had become, units still tended to retain their original ethnic character. Battle Group Thirty-Seven, based here at an old Raehaniv colony, had always been a predominantly Raehaniv outfit. Of course, a certain number of them showed the blood of those Terran exiles for whose descendants fighting for Raehan had become a tradition. . . . Sarnac sternly dismissed the image of Tiraena.

In an instant's flash of clarity, he wondered at the way these humans, originating on two planets a light-millennium apart, could function so matter-of-factly in the face of the inexplicable. But that was the point, of course: the existence of
homo sapiens sapiens
on two different planets
was
inexplicable, and the peoples of the League couldn't let themselves dwell on the mind-numbing impossibility of it. They could only agree that the human species—and certain others—had evolved on Earth and somehow appeared on Raehan thirty thousand years ago, apparently through the agency of a palpably-impossible prehistoric human starfaring culture, and let it go at that, assuring each other that future discoveries would undoubtedly clear up all the mystery. Only thus could they concentrate on immediate practicalities.

Like the fact that we've just turned up another Korvaash successor-state
, Sarnac thought.
Yeah, the other end of creation is probably the best place for Tiraena to be right now, just like school on Earth is the best place for Claude and Liranni.

Two centuries earlier the Korvaash empire, the Unity, had sprawled over an unknowable expanse of this spiral arm, and had extended one tentacle to crush the life out of Raehan. Varien hle'Morna, the eccentric genius who had invented the continuous-displacement drive that allowed interstellar travel without recourse to fixed displacement points, had taken his discovery to Earth and offered it as payment for help for his world. In one of history's little ironies, he had arrived to find a world turning its back on space as it sought a return to a totalitarian womb. But the exiled American and Russian terraformers had taken up his offer, departing with him and destroying all evidence of their origin so as to place their homeworld beyond Korvaash reprisal in the event of failure.

Against all odds, they had succeeded in lopping off the Korvaash tentacle that had clutched Raehan. And then had come one of the recurring realignments of the galaxy's displacement structure. It had put an end to the Unity, but it left the Terran exiles in the same state of ignorance as to Earth's location that they had intended for the Korvaasha.

So matters had stood until fifteen years ago, when Earth's recovered humanity, fighting for its life against one of the surviving fragments of the Korvaash Unity, had encountered their cousins of Raehan. This time the reunion of the two humanities was to be permanent, because Lieutenant Robert Sarnac and Tiraena zho'Daeriel DiFalco had evaded Korvaash pursuit to reach Earth.

As Sarnac looked his staff over, they studied him in turn through the lens of that story. They saw a man of barely average Terran height—his female Raehaniv chief of staff overtopped him by an inch—with dark complexion and strikingly contrasting light blue eyes. By grace of the Raehaniv biotechnology now available throughout the League, his curly hair was as black as ever at forty-three, and thicker than it had been fifteen years before. Middle-aged solidity had not yet overlaid a kind of athletic rakishness.

"As you were, people," he said briskly. "After all the shared VR hookups, I thought it was time we had an in-the-flesh meeting of the entire staff. Unfortunately, Commander Tarluin can't be present." A freakish shipyard accident had put the intelligence officer into the regen tank for at least another week. "But his boss will give us the update. Captain Draco, you have the floor."

"Thank you, sir." Captain Geoffrey Draco, though dark of hair and eyes, didn't have the kind of Latin look his surname suggested. But names were only coincidentally related to origins in the ethnic bouillabaisse that was present-day Earth. He looked European, and you couldn't narrow it down much more than that. He wasn't tall, but he was very strongly built. He was about Sarnac's age; his record said he was ex-enlisted, which explained why he was still just a captain despite his obviously exceptional abilities. It also explained why Sarnac had never met him during the war against the Realm of Tarzhgul—they had been serving at different levels.

In fact, nobody in the staff had ever met him . . .

"Everybody knows the general background," he said, derailing Sarnac's train of thought. He used a pocket remote unit and a holo of the Torlaerann Chain appeared between the table and the ceiling. "When a survey squadron probing along the Chain failed to report, heavy elements of Battle Group Thirty-Seven investigated. Fortunately, some of them got back, with a small hostile craft they'd tractored. No prisoners to interrogate, of course—they had automatic suicide implants. But enough was left to identify them as Korvaasha. Commander Tarluin and his people have had a chance to analyze the tapes of the battle. At a minimum, they're more advanced than the Realm of Tarzhgul was. For one thing, they've got deflector technology."

"Hm . . . inventive Korvaasha," Sarnac mused. "Not too good."

"No, sir. But not entirely unanticipated. When the shifting of the displacement network left the various pieces of the old Unity on their own, most of them simply died. They'd been locked into a rigid totalitarian structure so long that they couldn't function in the absence of higher authority. The ones who survived were the ones who, for whatever reasons,
could
adapt. The dangerous ones. There must be a lot of variation among the surviving Korvaash cultures in the galaxy by now." A bleak smile. "Maybe there are even some we can get along with. But not these, it seems."

"Hardly," Sarnac agreed. The deflectors worried him. The device was an application of gravitics, fending off incoming objects with a force proportional to their own kinetic energy. Varien hle'Morna had gotten the idea from relics of the prehistoric spacefaring culture that was one facet of the enigma of Raehaniv origins. That the Korvaasha—whose lack of inventiveness relative to humans was widely thought to be not merely a cultural trait but a racial one—had apparently come up with it on their own was disturbing.

"Could they have the continuous-displacement drive?" Rimaeriy asked.