Spirit of Empire 4: Sky Knights (63 page)

“They’ll never leave their homes.”

“Maybe they will. Or maybe we wait a generation or so, but instead of importing a bunch of teachers, I’d like to create them right here and send them out all over the planet. And these ideas I’m giving to people like Thaeron and the blacksmith here? I can’t be everywhere at once. Eventually, when travel becomes safer and more efficient, I’ll give those ideas out with a caveat: they have to show their counterpart in the next town or the next country how to do it, and that person will have to agree to share it with someone else in the same way. They’ll be me, sharing what they’ve learned and leveling out advancements around the planet.”

“You’re way ahead of me.”

“Well, there’s more. I haven’t even been to a farm yet. I don’t know what I’ll find there, but consider the creatures here that meld. They have tremendous export potential. People all over the Empire would pay dearly for pets they can meld with. I have yet to see a sauron, I think most of them perished at the hands of gleasons, but we should do everything we can to preserve the species. And Tranxte will need printing presses and paper money and antibiotics. Those things will require mathematics, chemistry, biology, physics and the whole gamut of things you and I took for granted in our educations. How we’re going to integrate their creativity with the things we’ve already given them, I don’t have a clue. We’re already using antibiotics on them, they’re flying around in our ships and using our radios, and they’re using our weapons. Are we going to take those things away from them?”

He shook his head. “I don’t see how we can. You’re right. We all need to get on the same page. I can’t tell you how proud I am of what you’re doing. I promised you a place at the Governor’s table if you came, and I meant it. Havlock asked me to ask you—will you join us?”

“Not if you’re leaving.”

“Tranxte is my home, Graylee. I was never going to leave. I just needed to find out if you wanted to make Tranxte your home as well. Like I said, you have to stay because you want to stay, not because I’ve asked you to stay.”

She closed her eyes and hugged herself. When she opened her eyes, she stood up and faced him with her arms crossed and a look telling him to get on with it. Suddenly, he understood—she needed commitment, his commitment.

He struggled to his feet and took her shoulders. “Will you stay here, Graylee? With me?”

Those eyes he had so been wanting to fall into finally let him in. “I will. I love you Hawke. I’ll stay forever if you’ll have me.”

The cane fell to the ground as arms folded around each other. They stayed that way for a long time as two individual lives adjusted to facing the world together.

He kissed the top of her head and said softly, “Forever will be longer than you thought. There’s another requirement that goes with the job.” He took her hand and ran her fingers along a faint scar running the length of his jaw. “This scar rivaled your own a month ago. It’ll be completely gone in another month.”

She left her fingers in place when he released her hand, running them along his scar as she rested her head on his chest. “Tanks can fix a lot of things. I didn’t have that option. On Aldebaran I my deformities set me apart. Here, they fit right in.”

He took her by the shoulders again and backed half a step away. “Tanks can’t fix everything. Havlock essentially died on Harac, and I essentially died at the hands of a gleason here. Among other things, that gleason broke my neck, Graylee, yet here I stand, alive and healthy.”

She leaned away with a furrowed brow. “What are you saying?”

“My scar will be gone in a month because my second best friend in the world told me it would.”

“And that friend would be whom?” she asked guardedly.

“My Rider.”

Her eyes narrowed in confusion, then widened in awe. “How . . .? Why . . .?”

“It’s a long story, a story that it’s time you know. What matters, though, is that we all have them. Riders go only to those of their own choosing. My Rider is asking you if you will accept a Rider of your own.”

“But they’re for the rich and powerful, not us. I’m not even sure what it means to have a Rider.”

“Riders want comfortable homes. To that end, they keep your body healthy, they heal you when necessary, and under some circumstances they can save your life. My Rider saved my life. As important, they become a friend for life.”

She reached a hand out to his cheek. “How do I thank him?”

“He hears you. He’s asking me to tell you, ‘you’re welcome.’ He’s also telling me your Rider will repair your scar and the damage to your hip.”

Her eyes narrowed and her forehead furrowed as she considered. “Do you want them repaired?” she asked.

“You’re perfect in every way just as you are. That choice will be between you and your Rider.”

“I believe I’m accepted here partly because of them.”

He nodded. “You might be right. The timing, if it ever happens, will be entirely up to the two of you.”

“When do I have to decide?”

He smiled as he looked tenderly into her eyes and brushed some stray hairs from her forehead. “Can you possibly decide otherwise? Besides what it will mean to you personally, Tranxte needs continuity among the few of us leading their emergence. You’re part of that team now, Graylee. The job might come with lousy living conditions, but it comes with me, and if you so choose, it comes with hundreds of extra years to share with me and the people of Tranxte.”

Gleasons had agreed to leave Tranxte, but would they honor their agreement? No one knew. Provided they did, certain things had to happen: ships had to be prepared, gleasons had to be rounded up on Tranxte and loaded onto those ships, they had to survive the trip to Harac, and they had to be released on Harac without letting the ships become infected with super peicks.

Every ship required modification. Gleasons did not eat in captivity, but they could not go for seven weeks without eating despite what their spokesman had told Otis. Even if they could, they would certainly need water, and some kind of provisions had to be made for waste removal during the voyage to Harac. Most important, gleason holding pens had to be completely sealed off from the rest of the ship—if even one gleason got free, others would follow. Not only would the ship be lost, it would be lost under horrible circumstances. Crew members aboard the ships had to know gleasons had no chance of reaching them.

And gleasons were not quiescent creatures—ships would sustain as much damage as the gleasons could inflict. That damage could be reduced by proper planning during the modification process.

Lebac was an expert on gleasons and super peicks. He sat down at a table of engineers on Aldebaran I who had given a lot of thought to the issues and were ready to start converting ships. Something Lebac had not considered but that these engineers had was to install gleason sensors throughout the holds. Captains always wanted to know what was going on within their ships, and that included keeping an eye on the creatures.

Lebac planned to provide live animals as food for the gleasons, but he shelved that idea after seeing the horrified looks sent his way from everyone around the table.

“My medical people suggested we drug the water supply,” he then said. “Not enough to put them down, but enough to slow them down and maybe make them less aggressive.”

“You’ve experimented on them?” the chief engineer asked with lifted eyebrows.

“No. They die in captivity so they’re just about impossible to study, but we have fully equipped laboratories in orbit around Tranxte, and they have studied gleason remains. They gave me a formula that they’re fairly confident will work.”

Those plans were incorporated into the water system designs in a way that captains would have the option to turn them on or off.

When he returned to Tranxte, he sat down with his scientists and selected four hundred gathering points around the planet, all of them in open fields or barren, rocky places which provided reasonable travel distances for the gleasons. Beacons were, over the ensuing months, placed at each of the gathering points. These beacons would, when activated, send out messages in the gleason language ordering them to gather nearby. What one gleason knew, the rest of them in the area would know, so in theory the message should reach every gleason on the planet.

* * * * *

The last of 500 ships arrived in orbit, a mix of cargo ships and cruisers. The beacons were activated on the ground, and gleasons actually began gathering. Havlock briefed the ships’ captains, assigned landing sites to 400 of them, and the ships started down from orbit. He held 100 ships in reserve until gatherings were complete—each ship had been modified to hold 1,000 gleasons, and some beacons would doubtlessly attract more than 1,000 and need a second ship.

Ships landed and cargo doors opened. Two shuttles hovered above each of the transporters with gleason sensors monitoring gleason activity. Havlock gave the gleasons a full day and night to load each ship, then the ships lifted and raced for Harac while the shuttles spread out around the planet looking for any gleasons who had failed to board. Those they found were taken out without fanfare.

* * * * *

When the announcement came, it went out to every major population center and to everyone with access to the command network. Hawke stood up from the crude wooden table, abandoning the plans he and Graylee were working on. They had both been waiting. He reached out, and she came into his arms with her head pressed to his chest and her eyes shining.

“I am Sir Galborae. On behalf of the Sky Lord who leads the great exodus of gleasons, I announce today that our terrible ordeal is ended. The gleasons are gone. The few that chose to remain have been hunted down and killed.”

He paused briefly, then said, “I ask for a minute of silence to remember our fallen.”

When the minute ended, he continued. “Yes, it’s over. You are free to return to your farms and your homes, to take up the lives you were forced to abandon and piece them back together as best you can.

“Our lives and our world have changed forever. The sky knights have agreed to remain, to assist us where they can while we rebuild. However, it is up to us to do the work. It is up to us to choose the futures we wish to create for our children. Plant your fields, rekindle your forges, and restore your mills and looms. In the process, welcome the sky knights as they travel our roads and skies. They have fought bravely and unselfishly for us. Some of them have asked to remain here, to make their future homes with us. I hope you will welcome them with open arms.”

* * * * *

Aboard the ships transporting gleasons, an eerie hush prevailed among the crew members as they went about their duties, everyone’s thoughts on what lived beneath them in the holds. Sensors within those holds saw little of what actually transpired since the gleasons were invisible, but the gleasons were not silent. Conversations broke out from time to time, and fights became a routine occurrence after the first week, dead and dying gleasons suddenly becoming visible. The gleasons disdained the food supplied to them by the ship, preferring to feast on each other instead. By the time the ships reached Harac, an estimated 15% of the cargoes had succumbed.

Landing locations had been plotted in advance. With the aid of life force sensors, ships’ guns cleared those landing places of all living creatures, then one-way ramps opened and gleasons streamed from the ships.

Havlock had planned on keeping one gleason temporarily behind in his ship as a spokesman, but Atiana, with Claire by her side, disagreed.

“What will you do if they’re not happy here? Bring them back to Tranxte?” she asked incredulously.

“Well . . . no,” he answered after just a moment’s hesitation. “I guess not. I’d like to stick around for a while, though, just to see how things go.”

“You know it will take months for them to figure each other out.”

“We won’t wait that long. Let’s see what develops in a few weeks.”

The two-month long trip to Harac had not been wasted by Atiana. She spent hours every day with Claire learning to read and write Galactic High Standard. By the time they returned to Tranxte, Claire hoped to have moved her on to simple mathematics.

“What will we do when we get back?” Claire asked over dinner with Atiana and Havlock.

“Ask me in a year and I’ll know more,” Havlock answered. “Tranxte is going through an enormous adjustment period right now. I wish we were there to help. All I know for certain is that we’ll be pulled in lots of different directions for a while.” He chewed on a bite of food, then added, “Graylee is designing some training materials. We’re going to set up a test school for training local young people. It will be a training ground for all of us, not just the students. I’m hoping you might like to be their first teacher.”

A bright smile lit Claire’s face. “I’d like that. Can we bring Mother to help?”

“If she wants to come. It takes special skills to teach, and if she doesn’t have them, I’m sure we can find something else for her. But don’t get too settled in. We’re going to travel as soon as things settle down.”

“To where?”

“To Josh’s home world. Mike is sending a few observers to Tranxte to watch how we go through this transition, and he wants us to reciprocate by sending observers to Earth when we can. I think you and Galborae are good candidates. So are Atiana and me . . . well, I guess all of us are good candidates, and we might pick up some ideas. We can’t all be gone at the same time, so we’ll just have to see what develops. And . . . don’t forget the promise I made to the Queen. She wants to send you to school. She’s checking with the Rress to see if they’ll take you.”

Ariana, Claire’s Rider, had come from a Rress’s Rider. Claire’s eyes widened when she heard what it meant to learn from the Rress.

Sensors on his ship stayed active, but they showed little indication of what the gleasons were up to. Behavior of the peicks and mulogs seemed little changed from the previous visit. Peicks knew the gleasons had come—they had seen the ships—but they had no idea what sort of creature had been released. Havlock was certain they were keeping a close watch on their herds of mulogs. Then, spurious activity started showing up among isolated mulogs. It was hard to say if the mulogs sensed the gleasons prior to the attack, but once attacked, they put up a formidable defense, in most cases killing the gleason before wandering off to die of blood loss. Clearly, physical pain meant little to either of the creatures. The gleasons appeared to have an edge on speed, but the mulogs had the edge when it came to strength, and their ability to heal quickly probably reduced the number of deaths from bleeds.

Before long, mulogs began traveling in pairs or multiples of pairs, possibly on the orders of peicks. When a gleason attacked, the unfortunate mulog put up an instant, hard defense, usually wounding the gleason. As soon as the gleason became visible, the wounded mulog broke off its defense and moved off, either dying from blood loss or surviving due to its quick healing. Its partner, fully functional, moved in on the gleason and in most cases defeated it.

Gleasons began traveling in pairs and groups as well, and the fighting escalated. However, mulogs continued their method of pairing up on one gleason and leaving the kill to a fully functional mulog. Body counts soared among the gleasons.

Peicks usually managed to stay out of the actual fighting, but not always. Gleasons figured out quickly that their best and most formidable targets were the ones with shiny heads. A few peicks fell, and the rest were forced to surround themselves with packs of mulogs. Primitive weapons became more prevalent among the mulogs as well.

Some gleasons adjusted by attacking from downwind. Mulogs usually overwhelmed them in the end, but peicks began providing more and more ecstasy to the gleasons.

Days later Havlock was studying a pack of mulogs moving through a forest. The pack stopped, and under maximum magnification he found the peicks taking positions up in trees with their mulogs around them on the ground. He had lost interest and was just about to leave when the forest erupted in a major attack. Gleasons must have swarmed, because mulogs suddenly raced from the forest, their bodies getting flayed. Before long, branches on the trees holding peicks began collapsing under heavy weights, then the peicks leaped out of the trees and tore after their pack, firing blasters wildly. Gleasons were clearly chasing them because peicks began showing horrible wounds. Two collapsed and were torn to shreds, their weapons falling into the hands of gleasons. Another fell. It was back up in an instant, but part of its face had been torn away and one augmented eye dangled on its cheek. It somehow managed to elude further damage as it raced from the area, then hid in the tall grass. Over the next few hours it managed to work its way back into the forest where it joined two other peicks.

A peick called Havlock on the radio, possibly the wounded peick. “You have brought us a challenge,” it said.

Havlock had no love for the peick and disdained a clear answer. “I brought what was promised. I’m done here.”

“Come back any time.”

* * * * *

A month after Havlock left, a one-eyed peick stood on a high rock outcropping looking out over a killing field. Hundreds of mulogs and gleasons lay dead or dying across the field below him. Here and there, chunks of flesh disappeared as surviving gleasons enjoyed their meals. Strangely, in some cases they appeared to be eating dead gleasons, not mulogs.

Two other commanders joined him. They discussed taking out the gleasons but they decided it was too risky. For some reason, whatever happened to one gleason seemed to be known by all the gleasons in the area. Carefully and silently, they worked their way down from the rock and melted into the grass to plan the next attack.