Posleen War: Sidestories The Tuloriad (10 page)

Binastarion, the one-eyed and -armed and half a dozen cosslain, all of them suited but without helmets, stood in a half circle around an about to be unfrozen Kessentai in a small area walled off and provided with air and heat. Four of the cosslain carried shotguns, or the Posleen equivalent of them, anyway. In human terms they might have been called “half-gauge” or perhaps “two pounders” since a lead sphere sufficient to fill the bore would have weighed roughly two pounds. Two more cosslain held boma blades poised over the prostrate form. They'd been careful to remove any weapons the hibernating kessentai had had.

The first sign of life was a trembling in the clawed legs. This was followed by twitching along the flanks as nerves long dormant came to life again. Breathing was next, and coughing as the kessentai's lungs fought to remove the inevitable build up of crud that came with the last moments of going under. Lastly, the eyes opened and the head moved.

“This is an intelligence test,” Binastarion's AS announced. “Question One: By the ancestors and the Net, do you swear fealty to our lord, Tulo'stenaloor?”

The just awakened kessentai snarled and automatically tried to rise while reaching for the boma blade that should have been at his side. Just as automatically, all four shotgun-bearing cosslain opened fire, blasting the God-king's head and a goodly chunk of his torso to yellow mist and ruin, even while the two boma blades descended to chop the corpse into three sections.

“Tsk,” said Binastarion's AS to the ichor-leaking corpse. “How truly sad. You failed the test.”

About half of the reawakened kessentai passed Binastarion's intelligence test. This worked out to be roughly one thousand of them. Even so, that meant no more than fifty to one hundred who would actually be a good fit in Tulo'stenaloor's hand-picked oolt. Of the rest, yes, they were brighter than the Posleen norm. This didn't necessarily mean they were all that bright.

These thousand stood now in the cavernous central hold of the Bounty, surrounded by Tulo's own kessentai and cosslains, the latter two groups bearing shotguns rather than railguns. Firing a mass of railguns in the confines of a starship was a virtual guarantee of assisted mass suicide.

Tulo—standing on a stage usually reserved for the services of the Rememberers or for the issue of orders by very senior God-kings—had watched the group file in with a look of utter disgust on his crocodilian face. Taken as a mass, they simply looked . . . stupid. Moreover, given the nature of the intelligence test they had recently passed, most of them looked frightened.

Well, they have reason to be frightened.

“We lost the war,” Tulo began, simply and starkly enough. “No, that's not quite accurate. We lost the war stinking. We got beaten and run off with our tails between our legs. We had every advantage imaginable, and we still lost. The humans were undermined and suborned by their own 'allies' and we still lost. Those 'allies' fed us valid intelligence almost continuously and we still lost. We had the numbers, we had the technology and still we lost. We had control of the gravity well and we still lost. We overran the majority of their sole planet's surface, killed five sixths of their slow-to-replace population and we still fucking lost.”

Tulo saw two thousand yellow eyes open wide in shock. Whatever the massed kessentai had been expecting, losing a war was probably the last thing they considered even theoretically possible.

“Anybody know why? Don't be shy; this isn't a test and I won't have you killed for a wrong answer.”

Still, there was no answer. Tulo wasn't surprised. This group had never seen Earth, that hateful ball of green and blue. Latecomers, fleeing various orna'adars, and hoping for something better, they were caught in space and their fleets crushed without ever even knowing about it.

“Fine. Either you're too stupid to have an opinion or you're bright enough to know when you don't know. I can work with this, I suppose.”

Tulo saw better than eight hundred crests automatically erect themselves at the insult. Good. Let the cameras record that. Those who erected are probably the stupid ones. Those who didn't will be an even split between the very bright and the very non-aggressive who probably ought to throw their sticks.

“In any event,” Tulo continued, “we lost for a number of reasons. But the biggest reasons were that, as a race, we're fairly stupid. Oh, yes, we are. Goloswin, step forth.”

Lowering his shotgun a few degrees, but no more than that, the tinkerer took a step forward on the platform on which his stood. The mass of semi-captive kessentai turned their heads as one to view this oft spoken of brilliant one.

"What you see before you, kessentai, is the only one of us, among scores of millions that once were, who was capable of technological innovation. Among our enemies, beings like Goloswin, as capable as he, were nearly as common as nestlings.

“Thank you, Golo,” Tulo said. The tinkerer stepped back and resumed the steady aim of his shotgun. “Binastarion, step forth.”

That kessenalt did, but unlike Golo his shotgun remained steady-aimed, despite being held by only one claw. Since the thing was unloaded, Binastarion made up for that with a more fierce demeanor. About a third of the mass of kessentai standing on the deck shuddered. These were the ones who had been given their initial examination by Binastarion and had seen him or his AS order the ruthless butchery of any number of their fellows for failure of his very high standards.

"Binastarion was a brilliant war leader, by our reckoning. I have studied his campaigns myself, both on the planet of the humans and those he fought earlier, elsewhere, as orna'adar descended upon the world of his birth.

“But among the humans, his kind are commonplace. Indeed, even their nearest equivalent to the normals are capable of occasional brilliance on the path of fury. How many of our kessentai are?”

Tulo let the question hang for a moment, before continuing. “We lost . . . friends . . . because we are neither bright enough, nor generalistic enough, to match the humans. They are almost as clever as the crabs, almost as brave as ourselves, almost as sneaky as the Himmit, almost as ruthless as—or maybe more ruthless than—the Darhel, and almost as industrious as the Indowy. They are generalists and because of that, they are generally better than we are.”

“So let me tell you what I propose and, after I do, if those who object will please line up to my right where you can be killed without too much fuss, I will work with whatever is left . . .”

Apparently Binastarion and the others had chosen well. Only one particularly stupid kessentai took Tulo's invitation to suicide. That one had been seized, bound, dragged to an air lock and spaced, while all the crew witnessed his rapid decompression and explosion on the view screens.

This did not mean that all the remainder were equally happy.

And yet what can I do about it? wondered the recently awakened Finba'anaga, as he fitted a plate to an interior bulkhead and spread a tube of paste around the edges of the plate. Since I awakened and found myself staring into four wide-muzzled hand cannon, my fate has not been my own. The kessentai shivered with suppressed rage and hate. It's wrong, against the ways of the ancestors and the spirits, to have kessentai doing such work. And the plans this failure of a war leader, Tulo'stenaloor has for us? Abomination!

And worse, I can't even go to our fellows to denounce this abomination. Finba'anaga looked down at the Artificial Sentience hang about his neck and against his chest. If I so much as utter a disloyal syllable this spy-in-a-box will denounce me. And the penalty for that, spacing without possibility of harvesting, is too much to be borne. We're not even allowed to take the blasted things off, either.

This had happened once, when a newcomer kessentai, and not necessarily one of the stupidest, had approached another with the prospect of seizing the ship. Within moments, a party of four of Tulo'stenaloor's closest had descended upon that kessentai, slashed off his limbs, then dragged the corpse to an airlock and shoved it out. Finba'anaga had seen the whole, frightening thing.

In despair, the God-king hung his head.

“More attention to your duties, kessentai,” said one of this Tulo'stenaloor's sycophants. Finba'anaga recognized him as the tinkerer, Goloswin.

Bastard eater of other's thresh, thought the junior. Unworthy toymaker. Kessenalt by another name.

Kessenalt were those who, like Binastarion and indeed much of Tulo'stenaloor's key staff, had thrown their sticks and given up their places on the Path of Fury.

Finba'anaga thought these things yet still dared not utter them. The traditional rough equality among the kessentai, at least among those of a certain rank, did not carry over here. The tyrant would have his way; tradition and law be damned.

Golo tapped Finba'anaga across his nose with his stick, hard; hard enough to hurt. “If we're to get out of here, we need the repair work done with precision. Here”—and Goloswin pointed at one edge of the repair plate—“you have spread the nanopaste unevenly, badly, unworthily. Fix it. Do not fail again.”

“No, Lord. I'm sorry, Lord.” Abat shit.

After the Tinkerer had left, another new kessentai came up to Finba and offered his hand. “I'm Borasmena,” the newcomer said. His head inclined toward Goloswin's departing hindquarters. “He's a right bastard isn't he?”

Finba paled. His yellow eyes grew wide and one claw pointed frantically at the AS on his chest.

“Relax, friend,” said Borasmena. “Yes, the things can get you chopped if you talk mutiny. But simply calling a thing by its name; a bastard, a bastard? No problem.”

“How do you know?” Finba'anaga asked, dubiously.

“Because I had personally referred to Tulo, and Golo, and Binastarion, and the rest as 'feces-eating, ovipositor-licking, addled-egg refugees from the nestling grinder-and-encaser,' before that one kessentai talked mutiny, and no one ever said a word to me about it.”

Which caused Finba to have a thoughts. Either this Borasmena is very brave . . . or somewhat stupid.

“Nice jacket you're wearing, Indowy,” Argzal said to Aelool. The Indowy almost suspected the two headed alien was smiling.

The Indowy looked down at his tunic, a sort of multicolored Nehru jacket, all dots and lines and oddly shaped splotches. “This old thing? Nothing.”

“Oh, really,” the Himmit said. “Funny; Indowy wear plain old grey or blue or green or black. I've seen a lot of your people and I've never seen a one of them wear anything remotely like that monstrosity.”

“So you're a fashion critic now, are you, Himmit?”

“I don't need to be a fashion critic to know that that's a very non-Indowy article of clothing.”

Yes, Aelool thought, there is a definite tone of amusement to this one's voice. What does he know that I do not?

Aelool sighed and asked, “Do you remember that human cruiser that intercepted us as we left Earth?”

“Sure.”

“Well . . . do you recall also the diagram I showed its computer?”

“I do.”

“Think of this jacket as being something like that diagram.”

The Himmit asked, still with that half-amused tone, “You're going to have the Posleen recover orders from their computer?”

“Not exactly,” Aelool answered.

Before he could say any more, and before the Himmit could ask, the speaker on the bridge announced, “Posleen shuttlecraft approaching. Arrival is imminent.”

“And on that note,” Aelool said, “I'll be back after I've said our goodbyes to the People of Tulo'stenaloor.”

The Indowy walked off the bridge whistling a human tune. Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home . . .

Unseen, Argzal smiled at the departing Aelool's back.

The ship was essentially silent for a change. Repairs were complete. Most of the People—over a thousand kessentai, three times that in cosslain, and about as many normals with unusual skill sets—were already put under in the hibernation decks.

On the bridge were Aelool, Tulo, and the group Aelool thought of as Tulo'stenaloor's “apostles.” The Indowy walked around the bridge in no pattern discernable to the Posleen, even had they tried to discern one.

Must give the bridge cameras every possible chance to see my jacket, the Indowy mentally smirked.

“I think you are ready, Tulo,” the Indowy said. “Or as ready as you're going to be. Besides, Argzal and I need to get back. Have you decided on a destination?”

“Indowy, you are beholden to the humans and as such could not be trusted with our destination . . . at least until we can trust the humans not to exterminate us on sight. That said, since I don't know what it is yet, I'll just tell you that our destination is not a place. Instead, I intend for us to seek knowledge. I seek to discover what went wrong with my People, and why.”

“In this quest, Tulo, Lord of Clan Sten, I wish you well,” the Indowy replied. “And now, if you can delegate someone to escort me so that none of the maintenance crew decide I look good enough to eat . . . ?”

“It shall be done . . . friend. Brasingala?”

“Lord?”

“Escort this one in safety to the Himmit ship.”

“It shall be done, Lord.”

The ship—renamed now the Arganaza'al, or the Holy Rescuer, in High Posleen, Run For Your Lives, in Low—thrummed again with life, as matter and anti-matter destroyed themselves deep below to bring it power. The view on the bridge changed, too, as the ship began to cruise a safe distance from the local world for a jump.

Essthree, serving as the defensive officer for the nonce, announced, “Better jump fast. They've spotted us below and have dispatched a trio of cruisers to intercept.”

“Make it so,” ordered Tulo'stenaloor. Almost immediately the thrumming from below picked up, even as the stars in the view screen began to distort.

Along with Tulo and the Esstwo also stood on the bridge the still awakened kessentai, in total “Tulo's dozen,” each with its arms and head raised.

The Remember began the chant, or perhaps it was a song. Certainly it was called a song, the Song of Leave-taking.

"Time now, and past time.

The others joined in:

"The People in flight