Posleen War: Sidestories The Tuloriad (22 page)

“Take the green route,” Aelool offered, without being asked. “Trust me.”

“I don't trust you in the slightest, you bat-faced little fuck,” Sally said, “but in this you just restate the obvious. I trust the Darhel even less.”

The Indowy shrugged again, still guiltily. “I cannot blame you for that lack of trust, Ship Salem. It is only my due. Still, you are correct about using the green route.”

“How long by Route Green?” Dwyer asked.

“About fifteen months,” Sally replied. “And that's just to the place the Posleen were sent by this furry little treacher. What I copied will not reveal itself any further until we've reached that world. I don't know where they'll have gone from there, if they survived. I told you it will have been the furthest any humans have ever gone.”

And I will not make a Star Trek joke, Dwyer told himself.

“So we're boldly going where no man has gone before?” asked von Altishofen, smiling.

But I couldn't guarantee no one else would.

“Well, none we know of, in any case, Wachtmeister,” Sally said. She turned to Aelool. “And you, you poisonous toad, do you know of any member of the species homo sapiens who have gone where we're going?”

“Not . . . homo . . . sapiens . . . exactly. But . . .”

“But what?” asked Dwyer.

“I only know of legends,” said the Indowy. “But some of those do suggest sentient, hairless bipeds with broad, flat nails. Extinct, supposedly. An experiment by the Aldenata, or maybe the Darhel, that didn't work out. Supposedly.”

Dwyer nodded. Maybe the furry little would-be saboteur was telling the truth. Maybe. He turned his attention to Guano, who had recovered enough self possession to attend the conference.

“Doctor Guanamarioch, your opinion?”

“Green Route,” he answered in High Posleen, with Sally doing the simultaneous translation. “I do not trust the Darhel either.”

And with his wife and son aboard, Dwyer thought, I imagine that judgment is heartfelt.

“The ship seems to be a very nice ship,” Guano said to his son, later.

“You mean compared to the old Posleen globes you used to ride in Dad?” Frederico asked. “More comfortable?”

“Oh . . . well, yes, son, that, too. But I meant the personality of the ship. It's like my old”—Guano stifled a sniffle—“like my old AS.”

“Ah. Yes, she's great, Dad. She's not very happy though.”

“Why is that, son?”

Frederico hesitated for a moment, not sure if what he was told by Sally at the lakeshore was in confidence. He decided, finally, that even if it was, his father was also his minister and she couldn't have meant to keep if from him.

“She thinks she's . . . ugly.”

Nonplussed, Guano said, “Well . . . from what little I understand of human aesthetics she's actually quite pleasing for them to look upon. Certainly she has enough of those fatty lumps in front the humans set so much store by.”

“She's only half, maybe only a third, human, Dad. Another third is ship and compared to her old self she thinks she's ugly.”

“Indeed? That is sad. I wonder what, as Christians, we might do to make her feel better. It is something to think upon, is it not?”

“Sure,” the boy answered. “But I can't imagine what we could do that would help.”

“Perhaps I can,” the father said, adding, “Perhaps, too, thinking on it would help me lift from my heart from the pain of losing my artificial sentience.”

“Did AS have a soul, Dad?” the boy asked.

“That, I do not know. But I know it could conceive of one. Can a being conceive of one without having one?”

“Does mom conceive of one, Dad?”

The minister smiled a great Posleen smile, all teeth and tongue. “Your mother has one, even if she can't articulate it, son, because hers and mine are intertwined.”

In close ranks, almost shoulder to shoulder, Von Altishofen's men sang in their tenors and baritones. The song that timed their marching was already more than two centuries old. They marched bearing halberds and wearing their armor and helmets, which were newer than that but of an older design, into the assembly hall:

Unser Leben gleicht der Reise

Eines Wandrers in der Nacht;

Jeder hat in seinem Gleise

Etwas, das ihm Kummer macht.

Not that two centuries of age was much to the Swiss Guard, of course. The song, the Beresinalied, still commemorated a valiant fight by Swiss mercenaries in the service of Napoleon in the dark days of the flight from frozen Russia. As such, it had a certain appeal.

Then men marched in time with their own singing. Too, the light slap of halberd butts on legs, and the ringing of the fastenings of the armor, kept time.

Under the circumstances, the first two lines of the song were particularly fitting: Our life resembles a journey of wanderers in the night.

Marching on the left side, von Altishofen turned his head to the right and commanded, “Vexillation . . . HALT!” As one the troops took a last step and stopped at attention. “Links und rechts . . . um!” The two filed turned to face each other.

“Gentlemen, we've been getting rusty,” the Wachtmeister said. “And you know we can't have that.”

The men groaned. They were expected to groan. Halberd drill hurt, even if the points and blades had protective coverings on them, as these did.

Truth to tell, von Altishofen would have been deeply disappointed if they hadn't groaned.

“Piket . . . achtung!” The men adjusted their halberds to stand straight against their bodies, then subtly rotated the pikeheads to face to the right. Each head was capped, blade and point, to prevent injuries. Their rights arms came across their chests to cross in front of their halberds' poles. Their own heads and eyes, likewise, turned right.

“Steht!” The men dropped their crossing arms and turned head and eyes to the front.

“Schultern . . . Gewehr!”

Nurse Duvall had found the Switzers, to a man, highly attractive. They were, one and all, well-muscled, extraordinarily fit, and—even if some of their faces could use with a trip to the plastic surgeon—very, very masculine.

It was their leader, though, to whom she was attracted. She didn't know if the attraction was mutual; she and von Altishofen had barely exchanged half a dozen words since the ship's company had gathered.

I'm not bad looking, I know, she thought. Plenty of the right equipment in the right places. Most men find me attractive. I wonder why von Altishofen is . . . no, not cold. Just distant.

Still, she'd noticed the Switzers' training schedule posted on the bulletin board and, not being terribly busy, had come to watch. As she watched von Altishofen put his men through their paces, she found her heart fluttering like a young girl's at a rock concert.

I'm being silly, she thought. And it's probably not mutual anyway.

Even so, she stayed to watch.

Frederico, walking from the galley by his father's side, heard the grunts of exertion and the clang of halberd on helmet and breastplate. He didn't know what the sound was, of course, nothing in his experience resembled it. But he was instantly fascinated.

“Dad, can we please go look?”

Guano, who had a much broader experience and did recognize the sound, in general, at least, was more than reluctant. Still, under his son's pleading gaze he relented. Together the Posleen walked to the assembly hall in the center of the ship.

After watching for a while, Guano observed, “Their technique is good, very good, for the kind of weapons they're using.”

“Really, dad? How can you tell?”

“Well, son, for any two living beings facing each other, there are only nine possible lines of attack, of which one, the center, is so difficult—difficult because it's the easiest to guard—that one might as well say 'eight.' Most of the time, anyway, unless one can use those eight to uncover the center. They're covering all eight, trying competently to uncover the opposing center, and working in their own attacks. If those things they're using were somehow impervious to a monomolecular edge I wouldn't want to face them with just a boma blade.”

As if to punctuate Guano's statement, Rossini's sheathed halberd came down in a slash on de Courten's right shoulder, knocking the boy to the deck. Frederico winced.

“And taking proper advantage of the peculiarities of their weapons, too,” Guano added.

A whistle blew, causing all the Switzers to freeze in place. What looked to Guano to be the chief of the human soldiers walked over to the stricken man, de Courten.

“You all right, boy?” von Altishofen asked.

“Yes, Herr Wachtmeister,” de Courten answered. He arose, rubbing one shoulder. “I think Leopoldo pulled his strike.”

“Lucky for you he did, Hellebardier.”

“Dad,” Frederico asked, “during the war, why did the Posleen carry swords when they had so many more powerful weapons?”

Guano had noticed the boy's arms moving unconsciously in time with the drill. Not that he made the precise movements. Rather, those arms, the claws, and the shoulders twitched in unconscious mimicry.

And so I suspect that is my son's skill set. He is to be a fighter? But why can he not be a fighter for the Lord? Why must it be with arms?

Reluctantly, fairly certain of what was coming, in time, the father answered, “Four reasons, I think. At least four. Firstly, the swords were tools for gathering thresh, hence doubly useful. Secondly, unlike the more powerful weapons, the boma blades didn't damage the thresh, but left it at worst partially harvested. Then, too, boma blades never jam, nor run out of ammunition, nor decay in the worse climates.”

Guano stopped speaking.

“That was only three, dad.”

"I know. The last reason is hard for me to fathom now. But . . . the boma blades were, as much as anything, for honor. When someone challenges a kessentai with a blade, it is considered dishonorable not to meet them blade to blade, and most honorable to do so. It's almost a law. Maybe, even, it is a law.

“And, no, son, I don't know why that should be.”

It was one of the things Frederico loved about his father; while he was certain, utterly certain, in his faith in the human God, about his own knowledge he was actually a fairly humble being. This had hit him months before, when he'd realized his father's nickname, “Guano,” meant “shit.”

“It was only the AS that insisted upon that 'Reverend Doctor' nonsense, Son.” So his father had said. “For my part, it teaches me humility to have the nickname that I do. Indeed, I prefer it to what the full name means in High Posleen: 'Spirit of Vindictive Bloodlust.'”

Hard not to love an old man like that, even if he wasn't a man and even if he could be an awful hard ass at times.

Frederico spotted Sally, the woman, watching the Switzers at their drill from another entrance into the assembly haul. Without asking permission, he bounded over, swerving only to stay away from the Guardsmen's swinging polearms.

“Hi, Sally,” the boy said as he wrapped his clawed arms around her waist and buried his scaly, brown and yellow face, sideways, against her midsection. He wriggled like a boxer dog, perhaps the only canine that shows with its entire body that it's happy to see you. She, for her part, put her hands down and scrunched both of his ears. The entire time, though, she kept her blue eyes on the boy's sire even as the sire watched her intently.

“Dan,” Sally said, a few days later, over dinner, “you know I like the little Posleen, and even like his mother. But the big one, Guanamarioch, just creeps me out.”

“Why? What's he done?”

“He hasn't done anything. But he's studying me, I mean both me me and the diagrams of the ship part of me, and has been doing the latter since yesterday.”

“So? Maybe he just wants to learn his way around. Maybe he's bored.”

“Then why study me as if I'm a carcass to butcher?”

Dwyer shook his head. “Can't say, but I don't think he means you any harm.”

“Prove it.”

“Well . . . his wife and son are aboard you. Anything bad happens to you, the same happens to them?”

“In the war Posleen sacrificed sons and cosslain all the time.”

“Yes, but Guano's not a warrior anymore. Just relax, would you?”

“No. Instead, I'm going to go make some better halberds for the Switzers. I wanted to do that anyway. And some better armor, too.”

Seven times seven times did the maddened horde

Swirl over the rampart, their fangs dripping yellow.

And seven times seven times did our lord drive them back.

—The Tuloriad, Na'agastenalooren

Anno Domini 2010

Hemaleen Five

Tulo watched impassively as one of his newly recruited kessentai, apparently out of ammunition and reaching for his boma blade, was dragged down and dismembered on the rampart by nearly a dozen of the scrawny locals. When the rail gun had clicked empty, the God-king's first reaction had been to throw it, muzzle first, right through the face of the nearest subnormal.

Note to self, Tulo'stenaloor thought, get Goloswin to figure out some way to add those human things, bayonets, to the rail guns.

The thrown rail gun hit the target just under its left eye, punching through scaly skin, meat, and bone. The pressure of displaced flesh and bone forced the eye out of its socket, causing the normal to shriek and claw at its face, before falling to its knees. Its cousins, unfazed, leapt over the stricken one, warbling gleefully and with little knives held high.

The kessentai's claws had not reached the hilt of the boma blade before one of the enemy managed to thrust its knife into its chest and drag it down half a foot. There the thing lodged in bone. The kessentai clutched at the knife as it raised its muzzle and howled with the pain. Those howls were cut short as still more of the locals swarmed over the God-king, striking or slashing with their knives as the mood and opportunity took them. The victim shrank, both morally as its wounds took hold and physically as the normals hacked off chunks of flesh and gobbled them down.

Tsk, Tulo thought as he leveled his own heavy duty rail gun and let fly a burst of several score projectiles. The normals feasting on the fallen God-kill began to shred and, in some cases, explode as the projectiles dumped their massive energy into the bodies.