The Crucible of Empire (27 page)

"Fifth set!" the navigator said. The rocking escalated into a frenzied motion that mimicked the bucking of a frightened horse and Caitlin had to catch hold of an empty chair for support before a vacant station. She glanced at Tully, who looked white-faced himself, but still managed to wink at her. He'd thrown his arms around a support pillar.

"Stand by," Dannet said calmly, as though the bridge crew was merely about to conduct a staid tea party. The ship's insistent motion did not seem to affect her at all. Riding it out like an experienced sailor on a ship's deck in heavy weather, the former Narvo flicked an ear. "You may jump, Navigator Sten."

At his station, Sten pushed a lever and the great ship
jumped
. Caitlin felt her insides
fling
themselves forward, abandoning
where-they-were
for sheer
in-betweenness
, which her senses queasily interpreted as
nowhere-at-all
. She looked down at her hand holding onto the chair. It seemed almost transparent and yet solidly there, two conflicting states in one. Which was impossible, her stunned mind insisted. She dropped into the chair and huddled over her clenched fists, feeling impossibly thin and altogether ill.

The bridge crew, both human and Jao, were working, murmuring readings, making adjustments. The bucking had stopped and the ship hummed as it made its way through—what? Caitlin felt as though she were riding a horse over a brick wall. The horse had leaped and was sailing through the air now. The ground was far below and they all had to land sometime, didn't they?

Her hands grew more transparent and even the Jao began to show signs of stress, muttering, stiffening their whiskers, flattening ears, darting to another's stations, arguing quietly but strenuously over settings. The ship began to shake again, gently at first, then more insistently with each passing second.

Dannet herself prowled the bridge, stopping to correct a human crew member and adjusting settings on that console, then pulling a protesting Jao from his seat and taking his place, handling the controls herself.

Jumping into a nebula was technically harder somehow. Caitlin remembered that one of the Krant ships had been destroyed in the attempt. But Dannet was one of Narvo's finest ship captains, a gift to Terra Taif to atone for the crimes of Oppuk. Her skills should be superb. Narvo would never shame itself by providing anything less.

Ears flattened, Dannet furiously altered settings. The officer she'd displaced protested from the floor and she backhanded him without taking her eyes off the display. That sort of casual violence, which could easily have been cause for legal action in a human military force, was taken for granted by Jao. The junior officer made no further protest. He simply sprawled on the deck, half-dazed.

The shaking worsened as though the ship were trying to exist in a dozen different places simultaneously. Maybe they
were
going to turn inside out before it was all over, she thought queasily. How could the Krants have made up such a story anyway? There must have been a grain of truth in it somewhere. Everyone, including the Jao, admitted that their species had little capacity for
ollnat
.

Tully's face had taken on a faint green sheen as he gripped his pillar with both arms. Caitlin's muscles cramped.
Lexington
shuddered one last time and then the shaking abruptly ceased. The air altered, becoming more breathable. They were—somewhere.

Thank God, Caitlin thought. She glanced down at her hands. The skin and bones were definitely all where they should be, at least for now. The screens had gone white, probably because they'd emerged in the photosphere of a blasted star, she thought shakily, and there was nothing to transmit except a searing blaze of solar combustion. She'd seen that for herself once, when one of the Ekhat factions, the Interdict, had traveled to Earth's system to warn for its own inscrutable reasons of the imminent arrival of the maniac Harmony. That ship had emerged from Sol in a white-hot ball of flaming solar gases, shedding streamers of fiery plasma as it headed outward.

The
Lexington
had to look much the same at the moment. Was it just her imagination, or was the hellish heat encasing them actually heating up the bridge? She blotted her suddenly perspiring forehead with a sleeve.

"Hull temperature receding from critical," a Jao officer said, his voice neutral, but his whiskers limp with
relief
.

The white viewscreens gave way to a swirl of red gas and dust, interspersed with black starry spaces which seemed to somehow have a meaningful shape. The nebula?

A second later, alarms went off. Caitlin lurched to her feet, gazing around the bridge. Had the heat penetrated a weakness in their never-before-tried shields? Were they about to burn up?

"Ekhat ships, five of them, Terra-Captain," one of the bridge crew, a balding human, said. His face had gone pale as watered milk. "Dead ahead."

Third-Note-Ascending was having trouble integrating with her mate again. Manifesting at a mere half-tone above Third's own mental signature, Third-and-a-Half-Note-Ascending was keeping his distance so that their mental fields could not properly synchronize. It was a willful act on his part, she was quite sure, not something over which he had no control. Like many males, he was finding the needs of sexual submission unsettling.

The result had been blatant discordance since entering the conductor's pod this duty cycle. She could not think well under such circumstances and strongly suspected Half could not think at all.

Without warning, the song-claxon transmitted a note three octaves below her own mental tuning, powerful and pure, lasting six long breaths, a mighty contribution to the Ekha. Somewhere in this sector, an infestation of non-Ekhat sapience had been sterilized from a world. The entire ship, even the serviles, stopped to contemplate the beauty of the moment. The next such note might not come for quite some time. Each musical interlude had to be properly analyzed and savored.

Third did not recognize the singers, but her admiration surged. They were magnificent. She must corral Half and make him submit so that when their opportunity came to contribute to the on-going Melody composition, they would match such brilliance.

Half seemed not to have noticed the splendid performance. He was spidering on his six legs around the ship's conductor pod like a newling, poking at this, fiddling with that. A possibility existed that she had chosen her mate unwisely. She might have to terminate him, before another of the ship's mating pairs rose to dominance. She was still reluctant to do so, however. Half had a great deal of promise, to go with his obstreperous nature. It would be tedious to begin anew with another mate. The final result might well be a lesser coupling, which would most likely result in the same outcome of submission to another pair.

Manifesting even a half-tone higher or lower would ruin the composition-in-progress, over time, sending the ship's Ekhat neuters into paroxysms of disgust and giving either one of the two other mating pairs the surge they needed for dominance. Like all females, Third was intensely aggressive. She would far rather rend her own limbs from her body than have it done for her by a rival.

Third sometimes wondered what her existence would be like had she been one of the far more numerous neuters produced by Ekhat mating pairs. Less anxious, certainly. But there would also be much less in the way of exultation.

Crossing the conductor's pod, which was suspended high above the control pit, she surveyed sensory input screens scattered across the far wall. The vile dust and gas in the planetary nebula obscured the readings, reflecting beams back upon themselves, slowing down what should have been an easy search for whatever menace lurked here.

Below, small gray and black patterned Anj slithered about in the control pit. Only one quarter the height of an Ekhat, when they stood on their hind legs, they were nevertheless competent with mechanics when not paralyzed with fear. The latter happened all too often, of course. But it had long been Melody policy to breed serviles for fear, accepting the drawbacks. Terror quickened the servile reflexes, alleviated tiresome delays, and left the Ekhat more time for composition.

Something lurking in this area of space had silenced a Melody ship in the not-too-distant past. The lost notes had left a void in the composition presently being conducted in this sector of the galaxy. The remaining ships would have to parcel out the missing tones among themselves and fill in where necessary. A heavy burden. There was no room for error in the Melody. Every note must express itself to perfection or the music that was their life would veer into cacophony, making them as unfit to exist as the Harmonies.

Are you still examining that ball of rock?
Half said as the two circled one another.
It cannot be the source.

Perhaps the True Harmony once harvested here,
Third said, searching for an opening in the other's mincing gait in order to close. She could feel the electric tingle of his mental field approach and retreat, never quite near enough for the two of them to think effectively in tandem.
It would be like that faction to waste a few random notes here and thus encourage the native sapients to fantasize themselves capable of attaining the Ekha.

Below, three of the little Anj became agitated, keening to one another in their atonal babble. They slithered over and under one another, squabbling, checking controls, fighting one another to adjust settings. Third noted their discomfort, but did not investigate what had occasioned it. Such matters were not the responsibility of Conductors. She had to keep her coupling's mind clear for the music that was the divine Ekha—if she could ever force Third-and-a-Half-Note-Ascending to function properly.

Twelfth-Note-Descending entered the pod so that Half had less room to circulate. Twelfth's mate, Tenth-Sharp-Ascending, followed. Both of them seemed so closely synchronized that even their great red eyes blinked as one. The sight enraged Third when she considered her own shameful state of discord. It frightened her also, of course.

Still, Third and her mate still held the edge of ascendancy, she thought.
What?
she demanded, and was heartened to hear Half's voice at least speak in modulation with her own.

Debris, Conductor-of-the-Moment,
Twelfth and Tenth-Sharp said, their voices twining beautifully.
The chemical signatures indicate both Ekhat and Jao, along with Lleix, whom we had thought to be completed long ago.

Jao
and
Lleix,
Third said. This time, Half's voice lagged behind hers by a good quarter of a beat. The short hairs between her eyes itched. Disgraceful! Had her rivals noticed and been emboldened as a result? They must have!

Those tuneless rebels infest no worlds in this sector,
she said, desperately trying to make her single brain work out the conundrum of their former serviles partnering with a supposedly extinct species. This time, Half did not even attempt to speak at all, remaining silent as though this discussion did not concern him.

No, indeed,
said the synced pair of rivals.
So the question becomes why would they venture into this environment with all its inherent dangers, and when did they become allies?

Half was eyeing Tenth-Sharp, and Third took advantage of his inattention to move in so closely that their bodies brushed. With a sudden surge, their mental fields finally merged and fell into sync. She was no longer just her woefully singular self. She was part of
they
, and
they
, each augmenting the other, were much more capable of bold, forceful decisions.

Half's body took up her confident stance, every movement precisely mirroring Third's. The two of them spoke together in exquisite modulation.
Send probes to the ball of rock we have detected. Let us listen to the leitmotif playing down there before we extinguish it forever.

Is that expenditure of resources necessary?
Twelfth asked. Her tone had a desperate tinge. She too had recognized the full merging of her rival. Her mate Tenth-Sharp stood completely paralyzed.
Why not just destroy the planet and be on our way?

By the end, her voice was quavering hopelessly. The time had come. As a single organism, the newly synchronized coupling leaped forward. Half wrestled Twelfth into immobility while Third gouged out one of her rival's eyes. Then, she dug deeply into the brain and severed her former rival's cerebral tree.

Because,
Third/Half said, claws dripping with hot white gore,
it is too soon in the composition for another major note.

That left Tenth-Sharp, but like most males in the final submission, he was almost completely paralyzed. Half was able to terminate him with no assistance. Quite easily, in fact. His own now-sure knowledge of coming termination lent him strength along with exultation.

Twelfth/Tenth-Sharp, lying quite dead upon the floor, would dispute no longer. Neither would the other mating pair on the ship, now that dominance was established. Most likely, they would terminate themselves before Third/Half did so. She regarded the bleeding corpses with pleasant excitement. It was good to establish dominance so early in a mission. She had never done so before. Such quick violence stirred the Ekha profoundly.