The Crucible of Empire (38 page)

Tully bestowed on Mallu a variety of big smile—"grin," he thought it was called—that the Krant-captain did not think boded well for his immediate future.

"I'm putting you in charge of the special bell-the-Ekhat detail."

Mallu wondered what bells had to do with anything involved. Tully turned away. "Follow me. I want to introduce you to the key members of your team."

He led Mallu to a small dining area, what the humans called a "mess hall." Nine human soldiers and two Jao were sitting at the tables.

"Bringmann. Kelly. Greer. Front and center."

Three of the human soldiers stood up. All of them were male, and two of them were very large for humans.

Tully waved his hand at Mallu. "I believe you know Krant-Captain Mallu. I'm putting him in charge of you guys. Your team—you'll love this, boys—is assigned to capture an Ekhat. Alive."

The faces of all the human soldiers became distorted. Mallu didn't recognize any specific body gesture, but the gist of it was clear enough—the human equivalent of the
shocked-disbelief
posture of the two Jao soldiers.

Tully shrugged. "Look, the orders come from on high. Don't take it personally, Bringmann. Mallu's got experience fighting them and you don't."

The smallest of the three standing jinau nodded.

"Krant-Captain, these two corporals"—Tully pointed to the two large ones—"are Thomas Kelly and Dennis Greer. They're the unit's recoilless rifle specialists."

Mallu stared at them. They were easy to tell apart, because Kelly was very dark-skinned. "And a recoilless rifle is . . . ?"

"Hard to describe. Kelly, Greer, show him."

Once Mallu saw the weapons and had their operation explained to him, he felt a surge of sympathy for the Jao soldiers who'd fought in the conquest of Terra. Like most Jao who'd been far from the scene, his impression of Terran military capability had been shaped by the knowledge that they used kinetic weapons almost exclusively. Primitive stuff, as you'd expect for a primitive species.

Watching what the
Lexington
's big guns had done to five Ekhat ships had drastically shifted his views on the matter, of course. But seeing such an obviously deadly version of a kinetic weapon adapted for ground combat brought it even closer to home.

Such a recoilless rifle—the jinau called it "an 84mm goose"—had originally been designed to destroy human tanks, apparently. But they'd adapted the munitions to serve for shipboard operations. In fact, they had a bewildering variety of munitions, whose distinctions—HEAT, HEP-T, Anti-Personnel Tracer, Armor-Piercing, and there were two or three others—soon had Mallu hopelessly confused.

It did at least become clear why both of the soldiers were so large, by human standards. The concept of a "recoilless" rifle in microgravity was . . .

Very flexible.

The one named Dennis Greer grinned widely when the subject came up. "Yeah, well. It's tricky. If you don't know what you're doing, firing a goose in null gravity is likely to leave you spinning in circles."

"With a busted neck," added the other one, Thomas Kelly. "It helps, of course, to have as much body mass as possible."

Mallu had gotten intrigued by now. The weapons might actually have a chance of attaining their goal. And he could see other uses for them. "Why not use Jao soldiers, then?"

Both human soldiers chuckled. "Jao don't really take to the things," said Kelly.

"Bunch of snobs, you ask me," said Greer.

Mallu looked from one to the other. Then, even though he suspected the subtlety would be missed by the two soldiers, adopted the posture which he thought came closest to the meaning of their chuckles.
Amusement-at folly.

"You have simply never met the right Jao," he said. "Wait here."

He came back shortly with two of his Krant soldiers in tow. Both of them were large by Jao standards, which meant they were much larger than even Kelly and Greer.

"These are Urta and Naddo." He pointed out one from the other. "Teach them how to use the gooses."

He interpreted the expressions on Kelly and Greer's faces as the human equivalent of
expectation-of-silliness-from-others.
"You need not be apprehensive," he said. "We are Krant. Not—what was the term?"

"Snobs?"

"Yes, that one. Tully once told me we are hillbillies. He was rather exasperated, I believe, so he added the terms 'stubborn' and 'ignorant' as qualifiers. But I got the sense that 'hillbillies' itself was not derogatory."

Kelly's dark face displayed a large smile. The
grin
variety of the expression. "Not coming from Major Tully, anyway. You hear it coming from one of my homeys, be a different story."

The meaning of the last statement was obscure. But it was clear from the subtle shift in the expressions of the two human soldiers that they were willing to try to teach the two Jao how to use the very un-Jao-like weapons.

When Mallu reported back to Tully, he found the human officer in the assault craft's rather small command deck. The monstrous outline of the Ekhat derelict filled the screen now, backlit by the boiling inferno of the system's sun. The pilot, a human female named Kristal Dalgetty, looked over her shoulder at them. "Strap in, sirs. We are about to fire maneuvering jets."

As he strapped himself into his seat, Tully's mind was on the recent conversation with Mallu, not the approaching Ekhat.

Association with Krant . . .

On the one hand, it was obviously a dirt-poor kochan. Dismissed by most Jao, if not exactly sneered at, and with very little in the way of resources.

Fine. They were a bunch of backwoods hillbillies. Who cared? Not Tully, for damn sure. He'd spent most of his life as a Resistance fighter in the mountains. If not quite a hillbilly himself, at least a first cousin. Now that he'd fought alongside them, the Krant were okay in his book.

Besides, Terra Taif was fighting for status and respectability, far more than it needed wealth and resources. The fact was, although few of the Jao kochan were astute enough to realize it, that with its enormous population—Terra was by far the most densely inhabited planet in the known galaxy—and its technical advancement, Terra Taif was already more resource-rich than all but the great kochan.

What it
really
needed was simply . . . Association itself. Terra Taif needed to develop the vast and rich network of connections and alliances and agreements and quid-pro-quos with other kochan that was the single most important fount of power and influence among the Jao. And if that started with bringing into its orbit an impoverished kochan on the fringes of Jao society, so be it.

Baby steps, and all that. As the assault craft neared the hideous-looking Ekhat wreck, Tully reviewed one hoary axiom after another.

The longest voyage starts with a single step. You do what you can.

There were a lot of them. Enough to keep his nerves steady, thankfully. That damn derelict really was uglier than sin. What was it about the Ekhat, anyway? The maniacs couldn't seem to do or make anything that didn't have a horrible appearance. If they made mashed potatoes, the mashed potatoes would look scary.

Jihan was anxious as she struggled into stiff protective clothing so that they could exit the vessel and attach the tethers. None of her experience as a Starsifter included actually working outside a ship, though, as a safety measure, she had been trained in the correct procedure. Hadata assisted her, but Lliant had turned his back, steadfastly not-seeing her, as though he had the right to
oyas-to
in this situation, which he most assuredly did not.

It did not matter, she told herself, easing the damaged arm into its sleeve. Nothing mattered except that they survive the next few breaths, and then the ones following. And, to do so, they had to clamp this ship to the derelict before they tumbled into the sun's photosphere or all the bad manners in the universe would make no difference.

Hadata settled Jihan's helmet onto her shoulders, then closed the seals. She heard a whoosh as the suit's systems activated, then she was alone with the sound of her own breathing. It seemed quite thunderous, but that was probably a byproduct of her tightly controlled fear.

The three of them walked clumsily then to the air lock, Lliant hanging back. She motioned him in before her, not trusting that he would actually leave the ship if she lost sight of him, even briefly. Once he was in the air lock, she stepped in and closed the door. The system cycled, and then they were face to face with the sun with its overwhelming, blazing presence and the looming Ekhat derelict. Despite the energy signatures she had detected from within, the wreck was holed, pitted, and scorched. It looked thoroughly dead from this vantage point.

They clipped their tethers to the Starwarder ship and then activated the suits' tiny maneuvering jets to launch themselves across. It was terrible and wonderful, all at the same time. Though the situation was indeed dire, Jihan felt strangely free in that moment, and the sun, on the other side of the wreck, was gloriously huge, swirling and flowing, in constant motion, almost alive itself. The nebula's gases prevented those on the planet's surface from ever seeing the solar system's star this clearly.

"It is so beautiful," she murmured, then realized she was going to miss the derelict and corrected her angle with a burst from her jets.

"You are insane," Lliant said, landing awkwardly feet-first on the wreck. "It is no wonder the Starsifters cast you out!"

Jihan made contact too, flexing her knees, then sprawled full-length across the alien hull, wringing a wave of pain from her injured arm. Hadata, wiser and more experienced, had halted just short of the wreck and now hovered, seeking the best spot to anchor her cable.

Each tether terminated in an explosive bolt. Of course, Jihan thought, if anything were still alive in there, sinking bolts into their hull might attract unwelcome attention. But they had no choice. It was either this or die in very short order. No matter how beautiful the sun was, she had no wish to dive into its heart.

Hadata activated her bolt and it burst through the plating. She tested it, then turned to Lliant. "Hurry up," the Starwarder said.

He knelt to position his, then fumbled the release, lost hold of the tether, and floated away from the hull. He was terrified, Jihan thought, feeling almost sorry for him. The Ekhatlore had studied the great devils all his life, but had never expected to come this close to them.

She edged closer to assist him. With an angry oath, he pushed her away. She spun off the surface, but fortunately had enough presence of mind to keep hold of her tether. Even without gravity, spinning, so that her visual field was filled with the ship—the derelict—the ship—in rapid succession made her dizzy. After a moment, though, she regained stability with her maneuvering jets.

"Idiot!" Hadata was saying. "You could have killed her!"

"What does it matter? We are all dead anyway!" With a choked cry, Lliant cast away his tether and Hadata launched herself to retrieve it. Face averted, the Ekhatlore floated above the derelict, arms clenched across his chest.

"You certainly
will
be," Jihan said, as the blood pounded through her veins, "if you try something like that again. I do not care how frightened you are!" Behind her lay the immense blackness of space laced with red and blue gasses from the nebula. Before her hung the sun and the damaged derelict. It was all overwhelming.

"Frightened?" Lliant twisted clumsily to face her, more than a body length above the pitted hull. Through his helmet, she could see how his aureole was flattened against his face. "The dead cannot be frightened."

Hadata fired the second bolt into the derelict, then turned to Jihan. "Let me have yours," she said.

"No, I can do it," Jihan said and maneuvered with her jets to return to the wreck. She selected a third site for the tether, roughly equidistant from the two bolts already seated, and had just positioned hers against the hull when a suited creature thrust its head through one of the jagged holes.

Lliant shrieked and then jetted back toward the Starwarder vessel.

Hands shaking, Jihan fired the third bolt into the hull.

Jihan tested the line with her good arm and found it solid, then the creature—whatever it was—bowled into her and she floated away from the derelict again.

She twisted around. Lliant was headed toward the air lock and Jihan had no doubt that he was fully capable of sealing her and Hadata outside to save his own skin. "Go after him!" she called to the Starwarder.

Her attacker was too small to be an Ekhat, according to the images she had studied. Neither did it resemble a Jao. Its torso was long and sinuous with four stubby limbs a quarter of the length of her own, and it was shrouded in a white casing with a clear bubble on the end, not a proper environment suit with a helmet like the three Lleix wore. It would be about a third of her height, she thought, if they stood face to face, and had unblinking red eyes.