Date point: 12y3m1d AV
Uncharted Class 12 Deathworld, Near 3Kpc Arm
Xiù Chang
Julian and Allison had left the helmets behind today, and had taken their excursion suits down to just a handful of the parts of its modular system. They looked more like they were wearing thick parkas now, which was definitely friendlier-looking than the full suit.
The natives seemed to find Allison’s hair fascinating. They’d had the chance to get used to Xiù’s black hair, and Julian’s was pretty much the same color with less gloss and more mess. Allison’s, though, was a cold blonde ripped straight from some well-hidden Scandinavian pocket of her genes.
It made for a more relaxed meeting, which was good because the natives had brought one of their women down the hill this time, and from what Xiù could tell she was important. She had vivid red tattoos around her eyes and cheekbones, and if the similarity between human and native body language held true then Vemik was absolutely besotted with her.
Julian cleared his throat when it became apparent that the alien, like her male counterparts, was wearing no more than a leather loincloth. Her body plan was very human in some important regards.
“Huh. Guess we shoulda maybe expected this…”
Allison chuckled. “Don’t stare, baby.”
“She’s an alien monkey, I’m not—”
“Uh, racist?” Allison snorted, and winked at him.
“Oh come *on*—!”
“Relax, Etsicitty. I’m only teasing.”
“I’m just thinking they’re probably all surprised at how much we’re wearing,” Julian shot back with a grin. “Maybe you two should get topless.”
“Lead by example!”
Xiù tried to effect an air of disapproval but mostly she was shaking with suppressed laughter. “Guys! First contact? Serious business? Hello?”
“Hey, nobody ever said first contact couldn’t be fun…” Allison pointed out.
Julian had a pensive expression. “Seriously though? Might not be the worst idea I’ve ever had…It’d prove that we’re flesh and blood, y’know? We don’t want them thinking we’re gods or whatever…”
“Maybe later,” Xiù muttered.
“Translation: Not on your life,” Allison smiled, then straightened up as the last of the natives settled in opposite them in the clearing. “Time to go to work, bǎobèi.”
Xiù nodded, and summoned that whole ethereal elf thing she’d done yesterday. She didn’t go through the whole routine of kneeling and bowing this time, but instead plumped for settling herself comfortably on a small rock and smiling at the natives.
Vemik and the female glanced at the adults, and especially at Yan, who shrugged and made a gesture that said ‘well? Get on with it.’ in any language.
They really were young, Xiù realized. The female was probably about Vemik’s age or maybe just a little older, which raised all kinds of questions. What kind of a society let their teenagers do the talking? Or was there something special about these two?
The translator was nowhere near ready to start answering those questions yet. It wasn’t ready to start asking those questions, not after just one conversation and a few hours to process and crunch the data.
Happily, it had reported near-perfect confidence on the syntax, which was broadly similar to the Indo-European language family. That was good news for Allison and Julian, neither of whom spoke a second language—Xiù’s experience in mastering three very different tongues was the very reason it fell to her to handle this stuff and gave her the confidence to assault any alien syntax, but the fact was that even she was going to struggle with this one.
The native language was…she hesitated to think of it as primitive, but it really was. It was absolutely packed with the oddities that littered old languages, like gendered nouns and consonant mutations, but at least the morphology of the root words was broadly consistent. It was the tangled thicket of prefixes, suffixes, stresses, mutations and tonal shifts that gave her a headache.
Names were among the biggest oddities. Vemik, she had discovered, actually had two names, one of which was Vemik, a proper noun, and the other of which was a common noun followed by the noun form of a verb, and he seemed equally happy to use either name.
More confusingly still, he introduced his female companion as “the [singular noun form of a verb”] without further explanation, but using the tonal tic which clearly designated it as being her name rather than her role or job. With a bit of goading, the translator was able to tentatively suggest how Xiù might inquire if the woman had any other names, but the reply was a straightforward no.
They settled in for a long and rambling discussion, driven by the translator’s hunger to codify all the rules of their language and expand its vocabulary. It was gripping and fascinating stuff…for the three people involved.
For everyone else, it was a long and excruciatingly dull morning.
They stopped for a break around noon, which was when Julian announced his Plan.
“I’m gonna go hunt something,” he declared.
“Hunt? I thought we were gonna stick to the food on the ship until we know it’s safe?” Allison asked.
“Not for us, for them. Kind of a peace offering, and…never mind. Point is it should make a good impression.”
Xiù and Allison frowned at each other. “Never mind?” Xiù asked.
“It’s…nothing important. Kinda dumb really. Never mind.”
“Julian…” Allison had an impatient-patient tone of voice that could crowbar him open in a second when she used it.
He cleared his throat. “I…kinda want to one-up Yan.”
Allison folded her arms at him. “Since when were you into senseless macho posturing?”
“It’s not posturing. It’s…” Julian trailed off, then reconsidered. “Well, okay, it is, but this kind of posturing is important. We’re on his turf, in his territory, and he saw that we were scared of him. I wanna fix that.”
“I…Julian, we don’t know what kind of taboos they have or…” Xiù began.
“Trust me.” He kissed her on the cheek. “I’ve got a pretty good idea already.”
“Okay, but what if Yan thinks you’re challenging him or something?” Allison asked. “That could turn this whole thing ugly pretty quick.”
“Nah. Not with Vemik and…what’s her name?”
“The Singer,” Xiù told him. That one had been pretty easy to get to the bottom of in the end. “She’s their…Shaman, or priestess, or medicine woman? I asked her what she sings about and I think she said ‘the gods’ but the translator has a really hard time with words like that.”
Allison put on a wry roll of her eyes. “Figures, if the Corti programmed it.”
“Well, you’re talking to Vemik and this Singer of theirs,” Julian continued. “And I figure things were already pretty damn ugly when we first met and they chilled out thanks to Vemik, so…”
“They’re at home to reason, at least,” Allison said.
“Right. I wanna see how Yan reacts. Getting the measure of him is gonna be important.”
Xiù hesitated, then nodded. “You’re right. Be careful, bǎobèi?”
“There’s nothing on this planet that’s scarier than me,” Julian grinned. He gave them both parting kisses, turned, and vanished between the trees more quickly than mere distance and line of sight would seem to suggest.
Yan’s reaction was instant and interesting. He straightened, watched Julian go and started to head after him before he seemed to remember something and instead turned to the lean one who looked like an older version of Vemik and said something. The other man nodded, turned, swarmed easily up a tree as comfortably as Xiù would have opened a door, and swished through the low canopy like a breeze as he headed off to follow where Julian had gone.
Allison made a thoughtful noise, and broke out their lunch. They’d debated briefly about the wisdom of using their MREs—Xiù had been worried about how the locals might react to the “magic” of a flameless ration heater—but between the ship itself, Allison’s tactical flashlight, the tablet and its translation software and everything else, it had been a short argument.
“…hmm…Beef chili? Maple pork sausage? Or vegetarian fettuccine?”
“Uh, Canadian?” Xiù grinned at her, and was promptly handed the pork sausage.
Sure enough, Vemik couldn’t help himself. He came close and stared rapt at the thin lines of steam as they poured from the little plastic packages leaning against a rock. His tongue flickered out at one point just like a reptile’s; he winced at the distinctly chemical smell that the heater gave off, and backed away from the pouch a little to consider it some more.
“There’s a joke here,” Allison said. “You know that old one about the dog with no nose?”
“Come on, they don’t smell that bad,” Xiù objected. “Just…musky.”
“Well, okay, sure, he doesn’t exactly smell like fifty used jockstraps on a hot day but I don’t think these guys do bathing a whole lot.”
“I bet humans didn’t smell so great either, ten thousand years ago.”
“I’m just saying, I was promised hot springs…”
Xiù glanced up at the mountain. “Julian thinks there should be some around here…”
“So why don’t these guys use them?”
Xiù was about to shrug and promise to ask about it later when a sharp crack! sounded far out among the woods, echoing oddly between the trees. All the natives surged to their feet—Allison waved a reassuring hand.
“It’s alright!” she called. “Julian! Julian.” she mimed aiming a rifle and made a “pkh!” sound with her mouth.
Yan snorted, but the tribe relaxed again. Vemik gave her a curious look. “Jooyun?” he imitated the rifle mime and the sound she’d made.
“Like, uh…” Allison pointed at the bow on his back, then mimed drawing and firing it with another vocal sound effect. She repeated the rifle mime again and then wobbled her hands to try and suggest a connection.
Vemik trilled, which they’d gathered was his species’ version of laughter, and nodded. He grinned a nd pretended to shoot several things with a rifle and trilled some more. Both Allison and Xiù giggled along with him.
Xiù adjusted her MRE as they sat and thought. “We have a long way to go,” she said suddenly.
“Hmm?” Allison obviously didn’t have any insight into her train of thought, and only heard a non-sequitur. “On what?”
“On these guys. Their language, it just doesn’t have some of the things they need for us to explain what’s happening here. Like…imagine if English only had about a thousand words or so.”
“So? We came here from above the sky in a flying house because some very bad people want to kill them all and we want to stop the bad people.” Allison shrugged. “Simple.”
“And the cybernetic implants? Nukes? Or just aliens in general? I mean…”
“No, I get you. They look like apes and that’s helping, but when there’s things like Gaoians, Rickyticks and Guvnurag out there…”
“Right.” Xiù nodded. “And…I mean, I was never really into sci-fi, that was more my brother’s thing, but I at least knew what an alien was when I was abducted, and what a human was. These guys don’t even have a proper name for themselves.”
“They don’t have a word for their own species?”
“They don’t have a word for species. I mean, they could tell you the difference between a…” Xiù checked her tablet, “…a Werne and a Yshek, but they’ve never put a word to the concept before.”
“Never had to, I guess.”
“Right. Vemik’s bow? He calls it a bird-spear-thrower. They say their village is up on the high-forest-place…except they don’t really have a word for forest, it’s just the word for tree modified into an indefinite plural pronoun…”
“Babe, I don’t make your head hurt by talking about the Nadeau-Alcubierre field, you don’t make my head hurt with language jargon. That’s the deal, remember?” Allison smiled at her. “But I get what you’re saying. They don’t have the concepts.”
“They don’t have a word for concept!” Xiù was getting animated. “Which means they probably don’t have the concept of concepts!”
“Shyow?”
They both turned to Vemik, who was giving them a concerned look. [“Are you angry?”]
[“No. Vemik, we…”] Xiù rubbed her face and desperately consulted the tablet. “…dammit. I don’t know if they have a word for ‘concerned’ or not and even then I couldn’t tell them what we’re concerned about and…”
Allison scooted over and hugged her. “Breathe, babe. You’re gonna give yourself a panic attack.”
She was right, and Xiù closed her eyes and took a few cleansing breaths while Allison used the translator to compose the halting sentence [“We can’t tell you what is bad today.”]
She frowned when Xiù giggled at the mangled sentence. “What?”
“You said you can’t tell him what ‘bad’ is.”
“Good thing he’s a smart one.” Vemik had needed a second or so to parse the disjointed grammar, but he gave a reluctant nod—a weary one, like he was used to getting that answer a lot—and backed away to go sit with the Singer again.
They ate their meals in a thoughtful silence, interrupted only by Allison’s failed attempt to steal some maple sausage. Vemik approached, apparently curious, and Xiù finally agreed to trade him some in exchange for a sample of what turned out to be a flavorful pemmican with dried fruit.
The peacemaking ended when Julian returned to the clearing with a sturdy creature that looked like the offspring of a goat and a small cow flung over his shoulder and the native man who had followed him rolling along beside him in the swaggering, thick-thighed way the natives did. Both men had blood on their faces in finger-painted lines around their eyes and cheekbones, and Julian was looking decidedly pleased with himself.
“Werne,” he announced with a grin as he handed the rifle back to Allison. “A good one too, if Vemet here is any kind of judge.”
[“Good Werne,”] Vemet agreed, nodding enthusiastically. [“Young, but strong. Your man can hunt well.”]
Xiù gave him a smile. [“Thank you!] He says you’re a good hunter, babe.”
“Well, if a caveman monkey fella says that then it’s gotta be true.” Julian looked across the clearing at Yan, who had straightened up again. He cleared his throat, crossed the clearing cautiously, and put it down in front of the big ‘Given Man’.
Yan gave the carcass a long and thoughtful stare, then aimed an even longer and more thoughtful one at Julian. Eventually, slowly, he drew the knives sheathed on his chest and presented them to Julian hilt-first. Julian looked at them carefully, thinking, then imitated him. He reached for the knife sheathed against his own thigh and presented it to Yan, and the two traded implements in the same diplomatic moment.
Allison just couldn’t resist a joke. “Oh God, are the boys comparing their tools?”
Xiù frantically gestured for her to shut up. “Yes, and this is deadly serious. Don’t laugh.”
Julian had strong and work-hardened hands with blunt fingers but Yan’s bulky, heavy knifes would make any human hand look dainty. They were well-balanced and clearly made with a great deal of care—the handle was polished and charred bone and wood, and the blade was flint-knapped down to a smooth, polished finish. There was nothing unsophisticated about them that Xiù could see, and when Julian returned them hilt-first he did so with obvious approval.
Meanwhile, it was the steel blade that seemed to fascinate Yan. He turned it this way and that to watch the light sheen off the metal grain, then ran his thumb experimentally across the edge. He cut himself shallowly and issued a surprised grunt, then handed the blade back with an air of respect.
The men of the village had watched the entire exchange in intent silence, and as Julian withdrew Yan gave him another calculating look then re-sheathed his knives. He stooped next to the Werne, grabbed it with two hands and one of his feet and effortlessly dismembered it with a trio of sickeningly loud cracks that reverberated around the clearing.
He didn’t even watch what he was doing, but instead seemed to be trying to stare Julian down. After a second though he seemed to decide that he’d made his point and turned his attention to the Werne, which he worked a little bit more before offering a meat-stripped thigh bone. Julian paused for a second and Yan snapped the thick bone in half with a snarl that by now almost looked friendly.
Seconds later, both men were slurping down raw marrow with every sign of enjoying it.
“Urgh…Think I’ll stick to beef chili…” Allison muttered, for Xiù’s ears only.
“You never tried Nava,” Xiù retorted, though she was feeling a little queasy herself. Julian hadn’t even hesitated.
Yan relaxed considerably, and made some quick calls that sounded vaguely food-related. Right away the men of the tribe were busying themselves around a new pit, and shortly thereafter they had a start on a fire, with the unfortunate Werne being taken apart to roast. Vemik watched for a moment, then devoured the rest of his pemmican and returned to his spot, and sat on his coiled tail.
Julian and Yan parted ways with an air of newfound respect, and Julian rejoined the girls looking pleased with himself. “Who needs translator software, huh?”
“Ugh, boys.” Allison snorted, though her face said something very different and more positive.
“Raw marrow, though?” Xiù objected. “Ew.”
“Warm from a fresh kill,” Julian beamed. “Kinda buttery and nutty, really rich…saved my life on Nightmare. Sure, it’s a better idea to cook it but…” he glanced back over at Yan. “When in Rome…”
“Can we maybe stop taking stupid contamination and allergy risks now?” Allison pleaded. “This planet’s a solid Class Twelve, that means the bugs and parasites here have gotta be about as bad as Earth’s. I really don’t wanna have to cart you guys home to an isolation ward locked in a stasis field.”
Julian considered. “Maybe we can get Vemik and Yan to step into the decon scanner, then. We need the scans and I bet Vemik would geek out over the anatomy display.”
Allison nodded. “Babe, if you can talk angry silverback daddy there into the magic sky people field, do it,” she said. “But until then, it’s ship food only from now on. Doctor’s orders.”
“How do we do that?”
“Well, we’re all monkeys, right? Monkey see, monkey do. And maybe candy.”
“Um…” Xiù cleared her throat. “We should probably talk about the language problem.”
Julian sat down, and grabbed the last MRE. “Oh man, you left me the fettuccine? I thought you loved me?”
“Julian!”
He quit joking around. “…Okay. Language problem,” he nodded, tearing the pouch open without bothering to heat it. “Fire away.”
“Have a look at this.” Xiù handed him the translator tablet. “Projected vocabulary size.”
He frowned at it. “That’s…not a big number.”
“That’s a really small number,” Xiù said emphatically. “And they’re missing some really important words, too.”
“Like?”
“Well…they don’t have a name for themselves. Not a name like Human, or Gaoian, or Corti or whatever.”
“Not surprising, I guess,” Julian mused. “There’s gotta be so few of them in a tribe they’ve never needed to define themselves versus everything else.”
“Yeah, but that’s just one of lots and lots of kinds of word they don’t have. I don’t think they have even half of what they need for us to be able to tell them about…everything.”
“…This is a Prime Directive problem, isn’t it?”
Xiù nodded. “Yup. And we can’t even tell them that. That’s how bad this is.”
Allison was spreading cream cheese on one of her crackers. “Not like Big Hotel left many options. These poor fuckers were extinct anyway, guys. Not our fault if their world’s about to get turned upside-down, at least they’ll still have one. Right?”
“That’s a sobering thought,” Julian said between mouthfuls of noodles. “But, I mean, okay. We can’t leave ‘em to die. That’d be just as bad as, I dunno, ‘interfering with their cultural development’ or whatever, wouldn’t it?”
“Bet you my share of the mission cash I could find some fuckwit on Earth who’d argue we should just leave ‘em go extinct,” Allison said. “But yeah. If it’s adapt or die, I say we help them adapt.”
“How?” Xiù asked. “There’s just too many…the things they need to know, their language just can’t—”
“So we teach them English. Carefully,” Julian raised his hand to forestall a tidal wave of objections, “We start out just, really really Barney-style, right? Simple, practical things. Start with storytime like you do with kindergarteners, and—”
Allison shook her head. “You’re overthinking it, dummy. I’m starting to think our Vemik here might maybe be smarter than all three of us. So how about we just teach him English?”
“And then what?” Xiù asked.
“And then we let him do what he does best: Ask questions.”
Date Point 12y3m2w AV
Whitecrest Clan Office, Alien Quarter Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Champion Genshi
Whitecrest’s stock in trade was political analysis. Oh yes, they dealt also in the application of low-visibility violence, in surveillance, monitoring, intelligence, espionage and sometimes assassination but as far as Genshi was concerned those were all just the claws. The claw was the sharp bit, the bit that cut the wound, left the scar, spilled the blood…but without a strong and skilled arm behind it, a claw was just an unpleasant little shard of keratin.
Politics. The claws were there both to facilitate gathering information about the political situation, and to facilitate influencing it. Everything the Clan did was about politics, sooner or later. It followed therefore that Whitecrest had become very good indeed at not only reading the politics of the here and now and retrospecting upon the politics of yesteryear, but more importantly had mastered the art of projecting how events would unfold in the future.
And, most importantly, the art of saying the right thing to the right person at the right time to bring preferred events to pass. Hopefully. Nothing was fixed, after all.
The right person in this case, on the surface, might have seemed like a deeply unlikely candidate. She was young, inexperienced and frankly not the most cunning Gaoian alive. She was perfect.
She was also, to borrow a human turn of phrase, drop-dead gorgeous. Although Gaori had some words that meant things similar to ‘Amazonian,’ it was the English word that fit Myun best: It implied a warrior mentality and poise that was absent from its closest Gaori equivalents.
She wasn’t stupid either, or else they’d have found somebody else. She was guileless and straightforward, but she had trained for years to be a commune guard: She had a nose for deception, risk and ‘bullshit,’ and seemed to be disconcertingly resilient to Genshi’s charms.
“I don’t think you actually have that authority,” she was observing as she slouched in the seat opposite him and watched him thoughtfully with her ears twitching and fine-tuning themselves as she thought.
“Not since Regaari was released from Giymuy’s service,” Genshi said. In fact they hadn’t actually had the authority to select the Mother-Supreme’s personal guard even before then, but Whitecrest had…influence.
“…Why me? I’m a junior commune guard. The Mother-Supreme deserves the best.”
Genshi flicked an ear in a calculated show of amusement. “You are the best, Sister Myun.”
“We know that,” Myun agreed with no trace whatsoever of arrogance, “but don’t you have to…” she peppered the sentence with another word in English, “like, prove it or something?”
“I am a Champion, Sister Myun.”
“And why is the Champion of Whitecrest sponsoring me to be one of Yulna’s personal guard?” Myun pressed.
Genshi saw an opportunity to test her, and took it. “Why do you think?”
“Well, obviously you think you’ll need me. Why else? You’re not doing anyone any favors. But why do you need me?”
Genshi had struggled with that same bluntness during the week or two he had spent training with her. Myun had informed her that the style she had developed after studying under Sister Shoo was quite different to what the human Sister had taught her. What she had learned from Shoo had been specific regional styles that were heavily tied in with religious and spiritual practices. ‘Baguazhang’ and ‘Taijiquan,’ apparently.
To these, Myun had added…basically everything. She had obsessively studied human martial arts of every kind as well as she could considering the extreme distance involved and the relative isolation and paucity of human data, and had compared them to existing Gaoian forms.
The result was something that a human could never have learned: their bodies were the wrong shape. Shoo’s Baguazhang was apparently all about steady feet, planted firmly and moving independently of the upper body. But a human could do that – their center of gravity was low, their legs were proportionately long and accounted for a surprisingly large percentage of their mass.
Gaoians on two-paw teetered around a high center of gravity and Myun used that to drive movement through the whole body. She would flow easily from two paws to four and back while her long Gaoian dorsal muscles twisted and coiled her torso this way and that, swaying her body out of harm’s way while her paws diverted incoming blows aside. It was innovative, and effective, and so novel that it took Genshi nearly five days before he could score a hit of any kind. It was only on their final day that he had scored a pin at all.
To his regret, while she’d admitted to being impressed with his speedy progress it hadn’t resulted in a Contract. Myun was still young, still recovering from her first cub and apparently felt that there was no point in having a Clan that empowered the Females and afforded them their autonomy if all they did with that autonomy was spend their lives producing cubs.
She was in short a deeply unconventional creature, which probably came with being every inch her sire’s child right down to the smell. Nobody who knew Daar could fail to notice that she had his unique musk in feminine form.
And like Daar, she knew how to play the great game of politics just fine and didn’t give a stinking wet fart for it.
Oh well. There was nothing to be gained from playing it coy.
“…the Clan has learned things. Things that must remain secret for now and, if we do our job right, will remain a secret for a very long time.”
“Can you tell me what these things are?”
“Yes,” Genshi admitted. “But it involves a lot of paperwork and binding legal agreements and it’s one of those things you’d probably be unhappier for knowing. The fact that we think the Mother-Supreme needs a bodyguard like you should be enough to tell you how serious this is, though.”
He watched Myun watch him, and added “…Incidentally, the humans are very good at personal protection. We would almost certainly want the Mother-Supreme’s bodyguard to…shall we call it ‘comparing notes’ with them?” he asked, carefully deploying the English words like a garnish. That particular phrase had an exact equal in Gaori, but Myun had pleasantly big and clearly-labelled buttons to push.
She knew it, too, and chittered sharply. “…That’s shameless manipulation, Champion Genshi…I’m in.”
Sometimes, Genshi had to admit, the straightforward approach was refreshing.
Date Point: 12y6m AV
Diplomatic Ship Rich Plains, En Route to Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Ambassador Furfeg
“I remember the last time this ship had a human aboard…”
The Rich Plains was a very different ship than had flown fatefully to Gao all those years ago. It had spent nearly two of those years, by the Guvnurag calendar, confined to drydock undergoing both repairs from the violation of its structure by a Hunter broodship and long-overdue upgrades and refit. A footnote in its long history to be sure…but a significant footnote.
Furfeg could well recall the look of awe that the young miss Xiù Chang had unrestrainedly shown while gawping her way around decks that, to his seasoned eyes, had seemed shabby and badly in need of improvement at the time. He wondered what she would make of the ship now, with its new polished dark grey stone floors, its clean burnished fixtures and clear aquamarine lighting.
That mission had not been half so important as this one…nor half so grim.
In the months since the homeworld fell, there had been no follow-up attacks on the remaining planets of the Confederacy. The homeworld was lost, but her calves had been reinforced and permanently enclosed behind the newest and most impenetrable barriers that Guvnurag science could produce. The turnaround on designing and deploying the upgraded devices had been lightning-fast by the standards of any species, but especially by the standards of Guvnuragnaguvendrugun.
Something about the slaughter or enslavement of the largest third of the species served to focus the mind. For a lucky few, the focus had been on what it was they personally could achieve to avert a greater tragedy.
For the great majority, that focus had twisted loose and unattached like a rag in the storm, until it had found something to coil itself around in the form of anger.
The Guvnuragnaguvendrugun were an emotional people. They wore their feelings openly on their body. But they were also a docile people who roused to anger and to violence only with great difficulty. Some were practically incapable of it. To see anger at all was unusual in their society, but now it was a contagion that was sweeping their cities and stations and their citizens by the hundreds of millions.
Furfeg would have preferred that it be directed at the Hunters. They were the monsters here, after all. Their ships had devoured the homeworld and uncountable civilians. But being angry at the Hunters was like being angry at a lightning strike, or a howling gale. They were a destructive force of nature that was not at home to the emotions of an aggrieved species, even if they were capable of understanding those emotions.
…No. The analogy was not apt. Storms and winds had neither desire nor sadism. The Hunters were no force of nature, they were worse; they wished to be hated and feared and so the collected terror, grief and rage of billions was worse than impotent, it was a victory for them.
Thus, yet again, all of that anger and fear had earthed itself where it did not belong: In a species that Furfeg knew in his belly was utterly blameless. A species who were militarily superior to the Guvnuragnaguvendrugun in every conceivable way and yet upon whom a few strident voices, outraged and grieving to the point of insanity, wished to declare war.
A species whose representatives would shortly address the assembled Grand Matriarchs and Patriarchs of the All-Herd. For all their sakes he could only hope that they would prove to be Xiù Chang’s equal or even her better in matters of eloquent passion.
He turned an eye toward Shipmaster A’tkrnnmtktk’ki, whose quiet comment had belatedly roused him from his thoughts without really registering.
“…I am sorry?”
“I said, I remember the last time this ship had a human aboard,” A’tkrnnmtktk’ki repeated. “Gao. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it.”
“I was just thinking about that myself,” Furfeg admitted.
“I hope this time goes better…”
“It went extremely well last time. We survived.”
Furfeg had noticed that about himself in the last few months: his humor was darker and drier. Whether that was a refuge for him, helping him overlook what had happened to his home and his herd…
He decided not to dwell on it, or at least tried not to: There was productivity at hand, which was usually a useful balm for any aching ego…but the itch was there in the back of his mind and constantly sending motes of depression, anxiety and shock glinting down his body atop a slow, steady pulse of gnawing background tension.
He practically radiated relief when the human escort fell in alongside them with an easy muscularity that made the Rich Plains’ respectably fifty kilolights seem like little more than a pleasant stroll. Insofar as starships had body language, however, theirs seemed…subdued. Rather than leveling their noses with that of the much larger diplomatic ship and sweeping in tight to show themselves off, they instead held back almost a kilometer away, and towards the relative rear of the formation.
Possibly that was a difference in protocol and decision-making or possibly it was some subtle expression of thought on their captains’ parts. Impossible to tell.
Furfeg should have spent the remaining distance to Cimbrean reviewing the diplomatic notes, but for some reason it just didn’t happen. Instead he stood there in the dark of the ship’s opulent observation deck and used the stargazing fields to zoom in on the human ship to port.
It was almost impossible to see. Indeed it probably was impossible to see, and only the virtual outline in bright orange let him know it was there at all, and that was no help whatsoever in helping him determine its shape. The silhouette was blunt, efficient and shovel-nosed with the stub of what was possibly a command or sensor tower of some kind mounted off-center and three-quarters of the way back. Beyond that, the ship was featureless beyond five bright lights at its nose which prominently lit the name painted there: Vigilant.
He read the translation of that simple word several times, mulling it over until he was roused from his meditation by the quiet ship wide announcement to the effect that they were shortly to be arriving at Cimbrean Five, and that the ship had entered final deceleration.
That last part was a feature found only on civilian or diplomatic vessels designed for comfort. Military and commercial ships simply kept their warp field at running power until they reached their target coordinates before immediately and seamlessly rejoining their destination’s inertial frame of reference. Efficient, but it had the disconcerting effect of making planets and other celestial bodies simply slam into existence right next to the ship as if they had simply appeared from nothing.
The Rich Plains however made its final approach on a slow and steady deceleration curve that actually brought it below the speed of light during the last minute or so. Thus, the destination planet swelled into view and seemed to slow to a halt beside them, so as to avoid startling any passengers who were unfamiliar with the incomprehensible apparent speeds involved with FTL travel.
The strange perspective of the vacuum of space combined with the inconceivable scale of any planet so that although Furfeg knew that he was watching something immense from a great distance, he felt as though Cimbrean-Five, with its static-charged crystalline silicon sandstorms that would have reduced even a human to bloody shreds within seconds, looked more like something he could reach out and pluck from the sky to study in the palm of his hand.
Armstrong Station meanwhile was just small enough to look very, very big indeed. It had begun life as a perfectly standard Dominion trading outpost, but the Humans had clearly felt that the design needed improving. Indeed, they were still improving it. With the stargazing fields, Furfeg could detect stuttering points of light on its structure that, when he zoomed in on them, turned out to be figures in bright yellow armored suits moving ponderously and carefully as they worked, usually involving the flare of welding or possibly of cutting.
How had they happened so fast? The Gaoians had exploded onto the galactic scene with such unmatched drive and ferocity that they had become members of the Dominion Security Council at a speed that had alarmed and dismayed other factions that had lobbied for decades or centuries for the opportunity.
The humans in many ways were much less…ambitious. From what Furfeg knew in fact the overwhelming majority of their focus remained on local tribal matters back on their war-torn homeworld. The number of their species who had travelled into space was a trivial minority of only a handful of their most historically powerful and wealthy factions.
And yet, that minority of a minority had achieved almost unbelievable things under immense pressure while petitioning for little.
The thought of what might happen if the galactic community pushed this particular species too hard was what had placed Furfeg firmly among the peacemakers. He had seen first-hand what a single human could do when properly motivated: He had no desire whatsoever to see a practical demonstration of their nonsensical idiom about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.
He spun away from the window and prepared to receive the ambassador.