Theirs Not to Reason Why 5: Damnation (39 page)

Still, they needed to be fed. Ia tapped the Godstrike button. Ten seconds later, a brief bolt shot out and impacted the giant silvery sphere. As the energy was shared out around the globe, the envelope shimmered, shattered, and darted off in hundreds, thousands of directions. Most winked out—many stringing their jumps like beads, using the hyperrift created by the ones in the front to get that much farther without having to expend quite so much food.

One—two—spheres broke off from the rest. Not conjoined like clinging soap bubbles, but separate entities. Something had shifted. Ia frowned, tracking it down. When she realized what it was, she winced, sighed, and waited. Sure enough, the sphere that was Belini Baiyah zipped into her bridge, dipped briefly through an unused station to siphon off a bit of energy, and popped into her pixie form. Short-haired and blonde, petite body, a charming little skirt and a halter-vest top. No shoes, of course.

Ia seized the recordings of the bridge with her electrokinesis as the other Feyori arrived and did the same. He popped into a tall, handsome, clean-shaven fellow with distinct Asian features not too dissimilar from Ia’s own. He smiled at her and held up a golden, faintly glowing orb the size of a softball. Albelar. Her father-progenitor. “A gift, Daughter Dearest. For you.”

He lobbed it at her with a smile. Ia caught it with a scowl, listening as the sphere-within-a-sphere chimed on impact, the smaller ball clanging and rolling inside the larger shell. It sang, too, in the way of all crysium, charged as the biomineral was with its matter-based matrix of psychic energy. But to her, it sang of death, despair, and failure. “I would rather refuse.”

Albelar’s smile tightened. “
Would
is a conditional phrase, Daughter. It means something is preventing you.”

She narrowed her gaze, but only because he was right. A tiny fraction of a possibility that her warnings to the Greys would not be enough. Carefully, delicately, she reshaped the outermost sphere, carefully tweaking the mix of crystalline colors until script emerged, garnet red embedded in pale gold.

DO NOT OPEN UNLESS CONTACTED BY ME DIRECTLY. CONTAINS SALIK DEATH PLAGUE. ~IA

Her progenitor mock-pouted, watching while Ia added her trademark “wax seal stamp” of an arrow within a circle, drawing a line in from the right.

“You’re no fun . . . but I knew you’d do that,” he allowed.

Belini peered at the sphere, then at her fellow Feyori. “
Eww!
You crapped in your daughter’s hand?”

Ia flung the doubled ball back at him. He caught it easily, making it chime again, and arched a brow at her.

“Deliver it to your progeny-son, on Sanctuary,” she instructed. “Inform my brother to stick it in the Vault under the heaviest lock and key. If it is to be used, it will be used eight hundred years from now. And then leave him the hell alone. This is the
last
task I need from you. Anything else you choose to do—so long as you are smart and stay out of my way—will not have any effect either way on the outcome of my moves in the Game. Good-bye, ‘Father.’ I’ll admit it was good to finally meet you, and I’m glad you chose to faction with me, but beyond that and this last task, our interactions are through.”

With an eloquent bow, Albelar popped back into a soap bubble and darted away.

Ia eased back on the bridge recordings, allowing them to record normally now that Albelar and his package were gone. She had already left a note for the Savior to keep an eye on it, and to peer into the timestreams, borrowing Ia’s abilities as she had once borrowed Jack’s. It hadn’t been an overly high probability that her progenitor would offer that little scrap of the plague, but it hadn’t been a small chance, either.

Kirkman, at the comm, cleared his throat. “Are we done being threatened by megalomaniacal beings?”

“Awww, you’re cute,” Belini purred, crossing over to stand behind him and tousle his sandy brown hair. He winced.

“Back off, Belini,” Ia ordered. “He’s not into alien women.”

“Oh, hell no,” Kirkman muttered, flinching again when she tried to touch him a second time. “Definitely not!”

Pouting, the Meddler sighed and moved away. “I really should be going, too; my pawns are getting a bit unruly. And you’ll need me to quell the rising riots being broadcast back home—you do know you’re being blamed not only for the Salik dying, but for their going to war in the first place? There are even some scurrilous rumors that you even had a hand in
creating
the Salik race as rapaciously hungry for sentient flesh.”

Ia frowned in puzzlement; she had no clue what the archaic word
scurrilous
meant, though she could guess a bit from context. Dismissing it with a shake of her head, she made sure the cover on the main gun control was securely latched. “I don’t know, and I don’t care. I have three days to get ready for being slapped with a summons to a military tribunal, fifteen criminal lawsuits, and over two hundred civil suits . . . none of which I can afford to take the time to attend in person.”

“Huh?” Belini asked, raising her brows. She thought a moment, then nodded. “Oh, right . . . the tunnel-visioned idiocy of the shortsighted. Well, I’ll leave you to it. And as your first and foremost lieutenant in the Game—whatever Kierfando or that silvery bastard who swears he’s your father might say—I promise to turn the tide of Terran entertainment and its related media in your favor.”

“I appreciate it. Have a last snack before you go,” Ia added, gesturing at the untended console near the Human-shaped Meddler.

Belini patted her slender belly, sticking it out a little. “Ouf! No, thank you. I’m quite full. I’ll just use the anchor point in our quarters.”

“
My
quarters,” Ia muttered. “Not yours.”

With a flutter of her fingers, the pixie-shaped alien disappeared through the back door. Slumping in her seat—mindful of the hand still tucked in the attitude glove—Ia rubbed at her temple with two of her free fingers.

“Wildheart . . . got that course plotted yet?” she asked.

“Sir, yes, sir,” the private confirmed. “One course, plotted and laid, for SJ 723, where we will rendezvous with the
Warcraft IX
. Ready when you are. Will you be keeping the helm, sir?”

“Actually, I’m scheduled to go have a nervous breakdown in the privacy of my quarters for a few hours, then I’ll get to sleep like the dead for several more,” Ia countered. “Sangwan, it’s your turn . . . Sang . . . ?
Sangwan!
”

“—What? Wait, wha . . . ?” Limbs flailing, body jerking against the restraint harness, the Yeoman First Class swore under his breath, floundering a bit as he came fully awake from his nap at her shout. “
Shakk
me . . . General, yes, sir! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep at my post, sir.
Shakking
hell
 . . . seriously
sorry here, sir,” he added, knuckling grit from the corners of his eyes.

“No harm done, Ching,” Ia told him, sitting up so she could begin turning the
Damnation
onto the course Wildheart had passed to her main screen. “Take a few moments to wake up, get a cup of caf’, and visit the head. I’ll get the ship under way. A few minutes either way won’t put a dent in my schedule today.”

He unstrapped himself, yawning, but shook his head. “I shouldn’t be depriving you of any sleep, sir. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not a loss of any sleep, Yeoman. It’s only grief,” Ia countered mildly, “and I started grieving well over twelve years ago.”

He eyed her as he passed her console, on his way to the heads in the back passage. “Twelve years? No disrespect, sir . . . and I mean it, but . . . aren’t you done, yet?”

“Actually, the odds are high that I’ll just sit on my bed and write prophecies until I fall asleep, which is what I do every night. But I might grieve one last time. I’ll let you know if anything unusual happens in my routine,” she mock-promised.

He nodded and left. Silence reigned for the next minute or so, broken only by the occasional murmur of Private Zedon at the operations console, and the faint
thrum
of the ship’s engines.

“Admiral-General Myang to General Ia,”
she finally heard in her headset.

“Ia here; go,”
she told the sleepy-sounding Myang.

“Is that it? Is that the last threat to the Alliance from the plague?”

“Technically, the plague won’t vanish until this last planet hits its local sun on April 28, 2501, sir,”
Ia corrected,
“but I can see on the timestreams that the Feyori will capture and deal with all attempts to gain control of it by outside forces. Each planet and moon will have an honor guard of at least three hundred Meddlers orbiting it while it’s inbound, and they all have been tied into the timestreams by me to keep track of every scrap of the plague. With that in mind as a caveat . . . yes, the Alliance is safe, sir.”

Except one last scrap, but Ia kept her mouth shut on that. If it wasn’t going to be needed in eight hundred years—and that was the greatest probability—then one of her far-flung descendants would pitch the thing personally into Sanctuary’s sun, to get rid of it once and for all.

“Right, then. As per our joint Alliance leadership’s operational guidelines, you are hereby directed to lift the Quarantine Extreme immediately, blah blah, legalese, I’m damned tired and it’s the middle of my sleep cycle, Sofrens, so stop looking at me like that. Ia knows all the necessary paperwork . . .”
She paused for a conversation Ia couldn’t hear, then added,
“He wants me to remind you to remove the Martial Law.”

“Please remind the colonel that I cannot do that, as we are still very much at war, sir,”
Ia returned politely.

“She says
v’shova sh’tiel
, Lars—my phraseology, not hers—and points out we’re still at war . . . With who? With the Greys! Out! Get out, and let an old soldier get some badly needed sleep.”
More silence, then Myang stated,
“Sorry about that. He’s a good soldier, but he doesn’t always think on several levels.”

“It’s okay, sir,”
Ia promised.
“A lot of people have forgotten we’re still at war with the Greys. I only negotiated a temporary cease-fire. The true end of the war won’t be for a few months yet. Go back to sleep. I’ll call you on second watch.”

“Ia?”
Myang asked, her voice tinged with a hint of concern.
“Get some sleep, yourself? You stay up way too long for a Human, even if you’re a half-breed.”

“I know, sir. That’s why it’ll be second watch. Ia out.”
Speaking above a headset murmur, Ia addressed James Kirkman. “Get me an Alliance-wide broadcast, Private. I need to tell them the Quarantine Extreme is finally over . . . save only for the interdicted Salik systems. And get me the Alliance military leaders—other than the Terrans, I mean; don’t wake up the Admiral-General again. I need to tell the others they’ll need to keep the Blockade going for two more years, but this time directed to keep other people
out
of the Salik systems. Adding them to the Feyori as a matter-based defense line will help ensure the plague stays out of everyone’s reach.”

“Aye, sir. I’m on it,” he promised.

She increased the thruster field, aiming the ship on an FTL course. The tankers of the 1st Cordon Navy had long since parted company, and her ship didn’t have quite enough fuel left after firing the Godstrike several times to expend it on the water-hogging version of hyperwarp travel, but neither did they have the time to seek out the ice fragments of the local Kuiper belt. The Salik had tried seeding those protocomets with bits of the plague, in this and other areas, but Ia and her allies had stopped and destroyed every last one long before they had reached any system’s edge.

It was a good day’s fight. A sad day’s fight. The last day of the last member of the Salik race, whose ship now drifted aimlessly somewhere out past the second gas giant of this system, punctured straight through the bridge by a God-sized spear of light.

This will be our last interview in person—at least for the duration of the war, of course. I’ll try to sneak in a couple more sessions after you’ve left the ship, but I wanted to thank you, Meioa de Marco, for being such a pleasant guest, and an excellent reporter. I know many others, Human and otherwise, wanted to be on board as well, but between your insights and your integrity, you have represented the journalism community well. Thank you . . . You’re welcome, too.

Now that we’ve caught up with current events . . . we need to start talking about what’ll happen next. Everyone else may have forgotten that the Greys came out of hiding to attempt a second war of xenobiological experimentation upon Humans as their next-nearest version of potential kin . . . but I have not. This is why, with the permission of each government’s leader, I have kept the rule of Martial Law in place. The Greys—the Shredou, as they call themselves—are as far beyond our capacity in technology as we are from a primitive tribe that knows how to rub dry sticks together to make a fire. Yet somehow, we must draw the line and stop them.

My intent, as it has been all along, is to make it too psychically painful and costly for the Shredou to continue to pick upon Humans for their attempts to revive their biology with cellular infusions and breeding experiments. There is another way that will stop them—and it will end the war—but it is extremely risky. I would rather they brought everything to an end before I’m forced to use that to put a stop to their predations. I’ve always been interested in the path that is plotted both ethically and expediently, with the least loss of resources and lives.

. . . No, I cannot speak for the Shredou, as to whether or not they understand such concepts. I’m afraid I’ve always understood the Feyori and even the Salik viewpoints a lot more. The Greys . . . are truly alien.

~Ia

AUGUST 3, 2499 T.S.
BATTLE PLATFORM
WARCRAFT IX
ALBEDO ICE STATION SJ 723 SYSTEM

“You may be seated,” Admiral Ioseph Leonidovich directed all the members attending the tribunal. He had a slight accent from his home in the Western Russia Prefecture back on Earth, but not nearly as thick as some Terrans possessed. Nothing like the accent of one of her old Naval Academy instructors, for sure.

As the highest-ranked officer of the Special Forces Judge Advocate General’s Office, Leonidovich had to preside over any tribunal involving a member of the Command Staff, save only instances of clear personal involvement in a particular case. Thankfully, Ia had never run across him in the entire span of her career. Lesser officers working in conjunction with the JAG division, but never him personally. Leonidovich was renowned to be impartial, thoughtful, blunt, and fairly even-handed in digging for the truth and dispensing appropriate justice.

He was also a skeptical soul. Tapping the workscreen buried in his bench, he read its contents, then glanced at the admiral on his right and the general on his left. “. . . There has been a motion requested by the defense for General Ia to make a preliminary statement before this tribunal hearing begins. She insists it is temporally sensitive.”

“That would be highly irregular, sirs,” General Somatel, prosecutor for the case, asserted. “The prosecution always presents its case first. I must lodge a protest.”

Leonidovich frowned down at his screen, looked up sharply at Somatel, then eyed Ia. “That, General, is precisely the wording she used when quoting you in her request. I am inclined to give her leave to speak. Please be seated. General Ia, you may make your opening statement.”

Clad in her heavy, ribbon-decked overcoat, Ia rose. She tried not to make too much noise as she did so, but a couple of the medals clinked against the edge of the table assigned to the defense team. Most of her attention was on going over the warnings of both her defense attorney, Rear Admiral Hemet Johns, and her own examinations of the timestreams.
I am not to address the prosecutor directly, no matter what he says. I am not to levy any accusations, however rightful. I am not to display any sarcasm, impatience, or arrogance . . . no matter how much I hate the fact the idiots at the other table delayed these proceedings for
lunch
, of all things.

“Thank you, sirs,” she stated. “While the Second Salik War has ended—and is the subject of this tribunal—we are still very much at war with the Greys, who are a vastly superior foe in terms of technology, armor, and armament. We are low on hydrobombs, and the only other weapon that can penetrate their ship hulls is the Godstrike cannon, which is DNA-code-locked to my hand. Those codes cannot be changed without destroying the ship, a safety feature installed by order of the Command Staff, leaving myself as the only person who can safely wield it.

“My defense counsel has advised me that, if these proceedings are arranged so that all witnesses and evidence are presented first, the sheer amount of testimony the prosecution wishes to bring to light in these proceedings will ensure that I myself will not be needed to take the stand for several weeks.”

If not months, since if the defense stalls for time by presenting everything else on my side first, then I won’t be needed on the stand until next year,
she thought, but kept those words silent.

“Admiral, in the light of the ongoing and very immediate threat which the Greys are against the Terran United Planets and its allies,” Ia stated, keeping her gaze on the eldest of the three men seated on the bench across from her, rather than the white-haired man off to her right, “I must request that those testimonies and evidence be presented first, and for myself to be granted leave to resume combat against our remaining enemy. I understand that this will severely limit my direct responses to all allegations against me, and that it will require me to review these hearings by hyperrelay proxy until such time as I am physically required to take the stand.

“However, the Greys
are
a major threat to the safety of the Terran Empire. They have acquired the Salik anti-psi machinery and are able to block out most counterattacks by members of the PsiLeague and other associated psychic organizations. My ship, under my command and my precognitively directed control, is therefore our best current weapon. At least until such time as more hydrobombs can be created and amassed for combat, which I have been informed will take at least another two months. Do I have your permission, sirs, to continue to defend the Terran United Planets in our ongoing and very real hour of need?”

“Objection, Your Honor. The defendant’s
use
of the Godstrike cannon is what is under investigation, here,” the chief prosecutor, General Somatel, argued dryly. “Along with her many orders which led to the xenocidal extinction of an entire race. Admiral Leonidovich, I don’t think it’s appropriate for General Ia, as the defendant, to ask permission to go forth and kill even more.”

“Objection, Your Honor,” Admiral Johns stated, raising his hand. “This is a military tribunal, not a civilian case. Being a soldier is, unfortunately, all about defending one’s home territory. Up to and including the possibility of enacting the deaths of any enemy aggressors. Which the Greys clearly still are. Furthermore, my client has given me a detailed list of every single colonist whose life will be affected by her ability, or inability, to resume combat against the enemy in a timely manner.”

“And what, exactly, constitutes a ‘timely manner’?” General Somatel challenged him.

“Why don’t you ask the
duly recognized
precognitive in our midst?” Admiral Johns countered.

“Gentlemeioas,” Admiral Leonidovich stated flatly. It quelled their budding argument. “We will have the rule of law in this courtroom.” They subsided. He turned his attention back to Ia. “The prosecution raises a good point. General Ia, what constitutes a ‘timely manner’ in this instance?”

“Admiral, sir, I would need to have your judgment on my request rendered within the next eight minutes forty-six seconds Terran Standard, in order to get myself and my ship to Parker’s World in order to defend it and its colonists from the predations of the Greys,” Ia told him. “Arriving on time will prevent the translocated kidnapping of 652 colonists. Failure to arrive on time will end with the Judge Advocate General’s office being sued for deliberate and malicious negligence to properly defend a Joint Colonyworld in the face of forewarned enemy aggressions, which my statement in this court qualifies as. This ability to bring suit falls under the established precedent of Johns and Mishka versus the United Nations.”

“General Ia, are you threatening to
sue
the JAG office if you’re not allowed to go haring off to battle?” Somatel challenged her.

This, she had to answer directly. Turning, she looked at the white-haired military lawyer. “Sir, no, sir.
That
charge would be filed by the government of Parker’s World as a violation of the Terran Space Force’s responsibility to respond to a fully identified and known-in-advance threat to their colonial safety. Article III, Section K, clauses 3–5, and in particular clause 8, paragraph 2, subparagraph d, which clearly states the Terran United Planets Space Force is required to respond to all precognitively known-in-advance threats as issued by duly recognized precognitives. Such as myself. The main charge levied by the government of Parker’s World would be Fatality Four: Dereliction of Duty.”

“Something which you would have told them to do in advance,” Somatel argued.

Ia returned her attention to Leonidovich. “Admiral, Generals, the Colonial Charter for Parker’s Paradise was filed with the Alliance in early April of 2417 and ratified after it was formally settled on June 14 of that same year. I was not born until 2472. My only involvement in the matter, sirs, would be whether or not I and my ship show up.
That
decision rests entirely in your hands, sirs.

“Before you make up your mind, however, I would respectfully remind the court that any decision in this particular matter comes with consequences: Refuse to let me go, and hundreds, even thousands of civilians will be kidnapped for alien experimentation, which will include their torture and eventual deaths. Grant me leave to go, and many sentients will die, both allies and enemies, in the coming conflicts—no matter how hard I may strive to reduce the number of casualties involved, there
will
be injuries and deaths,” she stressed. “Either way the court chooses, like every other soldier, I will have to abide with, or suffer, whatever consequences come from that decision.”

Leonidovich studied her, his brow furrowed in a thoughtful frown. Leaning over, he consulted with the general on his right, both men hiding their mouths behind their hands, their voices pitched too low to easily overhear. The admiral then leaned over and consulted with the other four-star general. The first general checked his arm unit, gesturing at it, which stirred a bit more conversation. The admiral even scooted his chair back so that all three could lean in close for a direct discussion. Faint ripples of static in the air above the front edge of the judicial bench suggested they had raised a force field to help muffle their debate.

Finally, Leonidovich leaned his arms on his bench, dropped the field, and studied Ia.

“The question has been raised, General Ia, as to whether or not you already know the outcome of this tribunal. Do you?” he asked her. “Is that why you’re trying to avoid being here? To avoid being bored?”

“Sirs, I deal in percentages. There are eight possible outcomes to this tribunal which are greater than one percent in their probability, and fifty-two possible outcomes that are less than one percent, most being less than one-
tenth
of one percent. However small those minor possibilities are, I cannot rule them out as an outcome. I was shot in the shoulder with a handheld laser cannon on a less than three percent probability, which most people would consider to be a highly unlikely outcome. I was also elevated to the rank of a four-star General, never mind that I am now a five-star, on a less than one-hundred-
thousandth
of a percent, when the largest percentile, forty-seven percent, was that I should have been elevated only to the rank of Rear Admiral.

“As for being bored . . . I actually would prefer to be here because that means nobody would be attacking our colonies. But they are, and that means my preferences must take second place to my sense of duty. I will admit I have sat through this tribunal around eight or nine times in the timestreams, examining those eight largest percentiles,” Ia added candidly. “This has left me very familiar with the majority of all evidence the prosecution will be presenting against me . . . but again, the outcome is never one hundred percent certain, until it has actually come to pass. I do take this tribunal seriously, but I also take the ongoing threat to Terran civilians equally seriously, sirs.”

The general on the admiral’s right tapped his arm unit. Leonidovich glanced at his fellow judge, and sighed. “Very well. With the understanding that you
will
review all hyperrelay-transmitted recordings of these tribunal proceedings in a timely manner, that you will keep this court apprised of every bit of free time you may have available to return to testify and answer any and all questions in person, and with the understanding that any and all actions you undertake in the coming days will
also
be considered as eligible for submission by both the prosecution and the defense in this ongoing case . . . you are dismissed to return to combat at this time.”

“Objection, Your Honor!” Somatel called out even as Ia raised her hand to her brow in salute.

“Overruled,” the general with the arm unit stated. “There are ample precedents already set in prior cases for the defendant’s not being present for the majority of their tribunals. The meioa-e is not being tried
in absentia
in the sense that she isn’t going to attend or even hear about these proceedings at all. There is nothing illegal in her request.”

“General Ia, you are indeed dismissed,” Admiral Leonidovich repeated. He lifted his hand to his brow, returning Ia’s salute.