Old Man's War Boxed Set 1 (80 page)

“Fuck if I know,” I said. “Right now what I’d really like to do is put a fist through my wall.”

“I’d advise against that,” Trujillo said. “I know you don’t like taking my advice on general principle. Nevertheless, there it is.”

I smiled at that one. I nodded toward the door. “How are people?”

“They’re scared as hell,” Trujillo said. “One man died yesterday, six more died today, five of
them
disappeared, and people are worried they’ll be next. I suspect most people will be sleeping inside the village for the next couple of nights. I’m afraid the cat is out of the bag about these creatures being intelligent, by the way. Gutierrez told a whole lot of people while he was trying to recruit for his posse.”

“I’m surprised another group hasn’t gone out looking for the werewolves,” I said.

“You’re calling them werewolves?” Trujillo said.

“You saw the one that killed Hiram,” I said. “Tell me that’s not what it looks like.”

“Do me a favor and don’t share that name,” Trujillo said. “People are scared enough.”

“Fine,” I said.

“And yes, there was another group who wanted to go out and try to get revenge. A bunch of idiot kids. Your daughter’s boyfriend Enzo was one of them.”

“Ex-boyfriend,” I said. “Did you talk them out of doing something stupid?”

“I pointed out that five grown men went out hunting for them and not a single one of them came home,” Trujillo said. “That seemed to calm them down a bit.”

“Good,” I said.

“You need to make an appearance tonight, down at the community hall,” Trujillo said. “People will be there. They need to see you.”

“I’m not in any shape to see people,” I said.

“You don’t have a choice,” Trujillo said. “You’re the colony leader. People are in mourning, John. You and your wife are the only ones that came out of this alive, and she’s in the medical bay. If you spend the entire night hiding in here, it says to everyone out there that no one gets away from these things alive. And you kept a secret from them. You need to start making up for that.”

“I didn’t know you were a psychologist, Man,” I said.

“I’m not,” he said. “I’m a politician. And so are you, whether you want to admit to it or not. This is the job of a colony leader.”

“I tell you truly, Man,” I said. “If you asked for the job of colony leader, I would give it to you. Right now, I would. I know you think you
should
have been colony leader. So. The job is yours. Want it?”

Trujillo paused to consider his words. “You’re right,” he said. “I thought I should have been the colony leader. Occasionally I still do. And someday, I think I probably will be. But right now, it’s
not
my job. It’s yours. My job is to be your loyal opposition. And what your loyal opposition thinks is this: Your people are scared, John. You’re their leader. Do some goddamn leading. Sir.”

“That’s the first time you’ve ever called me
sir
,” I said, after a long minute.

Trujillo grinned. “I was saving it for a special moment,” he said.

“Well, then,” I said. “Well done. Well done, indeed.”

Trujillo stood up. “I’ll see you around this evening, then,” he said.

“You will,” I said. “I’ll try to be reassuring. Thanks, Man.” He waved off the thanks and left as someone else came walking up to my porch. It was Jerry Bennett.

I waved him in. “What do you have for me?” I asked.

“On the creatures, nothing,” Bennett said. “I did all sorts of search parameters and came out with squat. There’s not a lot to go on. They didn’t do a whole lot on exploring on this planet.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I said.

“All right,” Bennett said. “You know that video file of the Conclave blasting that colony?”

“Yes,” I said. “What does that have to do with this planet?”

“It doesn’t,” Bennett said. “I told you, I checked all the data files for edits under a batch command. It scooped up that file with all the rest of them.”

“What about the file?” I asked.

“Well, it turns out the video file you have is only part of another video file. The metadata features time codes for the original video file. The time codes say your video is just the tail end of that other video. There’s more video there.”

“How much more?” I asked.

“A
lot
more,” Bennett said.

“Can you get it back?” I asked

Bennett smiled. “Already done,” he said.

Six hours and a few dozen strained conversations with colonists later, I let myself into the Black Box. The PDA Bennett had loaded the video file into was on his desk, as promised. I picked it up; the video was already queued up and paused at the start. Its first image was of two creatures on a hill, overlooking a river. I recognized
the hill and one of the creatures from the video I’d already seen. The other one I hadn’t seen before. I squinted to get a better look, then cursed myself for being stupid and magnified the image. The other creature resolved itself.

It was a Whaid.

“Hello,” I said to the creature. “What are you doing, talking to the guy who wiped out your colony?”

I started the video to find out.

The two stood near the edge of a bluff overlooking a river, watching the sunset over the far prairie.

“You have beautiful sunsets here,” General Tarsem Gau said to Chan orenThen.

“Thank you,” orenThen said. “It’s the volcanoes.”

Gau looked over at orenThen, amused. The rolling plain was interrupted only by the river, its bluffs and the small colony that lay where the bluffs descended toward the water.

“Not
here
,” orenThen said, sensing Gau’s unspoken observation. He pointed west, where the sun had just sunk below the horizon. “Half a planet that way. Lots of tectonic activity. There’s a ring of volcanoes around the entire western ocean. One of them went up just as autumn ended. There’s still dust in the atmosphere.”

“Must have made for a hard winter,” Gau said.

OrenThen made a motion that suggested otherwise. “Big enough eruption for nice sunsets. Not big enough for climate change. We have mild winters. It’s one of the reasons we settled here. Hot summers, but good for growing. Rich soil. Excellent water supply.”

“And no volcanoes,” Gau said.

“No volcanoes,” orenThen agreed. “No quakes, either, because we’re right in the middle of a tectonic plate. Incredible thunderstorms, however. And last summer, tornadoes with hail the size of your head. We
lost crops with that. But no place is entirely perfect. On balance this is a good place to start a colony, and to build a new world for my people.”

“I agree,” Gau said. “And from what I can tell, you’ve done a marvelous job leading this colony.”

OrenThen bowed his head slightly. “Thank you, General. Coming from you, that’s high praise indeed.”

The two returned their attention to the sunset, watching as the early dusk deepened around them.

“Chan,” Gau said. “You know I can’t let you keep this colony.”

“Aah,” orenThen said, and smiled, still looking into the sunset. “So much for this being a social call.”

“You know it’s not,” Gau said.

“I know,” orenThen said. “Your knocking my communications satellite out of the sky was my first clue.” OrenThen pointed down the slope of the bluff, where a platoon of Gau’s soldiers stood, warily eyed by orenThen’s own escort of farmers. “They were my second.”

“They’re for show,” Gau said. “I needed to be able to talk to you without the distraction of being shot at.”

“And blasting my satellite?” orenThen said. “That’s not for show, I suspect.”

“It was necessary, for your sake,” Gau said.

“I doubt that,” orenThen said.

“If I left you your satellite, you or someone in your colony would have sent a skip drone, letting your government know you were under attack,” Gau said. “But that’s not why I’m here.”

“You just told me that I can’t keep this colony,” orenThen said.

“You can’t,” Gau said. “But that’s not the same thing as being under attack.”

“The distinction escapes me, General,” orenThen said. “Particularly with a very expensive satellite blown to bits by your guns, and your soldiers on my soil.”

“How long have we known each other, Chan?” Gau said. “We’ve known each other a long time, as friends and adversaries. You’ve seen
how I do things, up close. Have you ever known me to say one thing and mean another?”

OrenThen was quiet for a moment. “No,” he said, finally. “You can be an arrogant ass, Tarsem. But you’ve always said what you meant to say.”

“Then trust me once more,” Gau said. “More than anything, I want this to end peacefully. It’s why I am here, and not anyone else. Because what you and I do here matters, beyond the planet and this colony. I can’t let your colony remain here. You know that. But that doesn’t mean you or any of your people have to suffer for it.”

There was another moment of silence from orenThen. “I have to admit I was surprised that it was you on that ship,” he eventually said to Gau. “We knew there was the risk that the Conclave would come for us. You didn’t spend all that time wrestling all those races into line and declaring an end to colonization just to let us slip through the cracks. We planned for this possibility. But I assumed it would be some ship with a junior officer at the helm. Instead we get the leader of the Conclave.”

“We are friends,” Gau said. “You deserve the courtesy.”

“You are kind to say so, General,” orenThen said. “But, friend or not, it’s overkill.”

Gau smiled. “Well, possibly. Or, perhaps it’s more accurate to say it
would
be overkill. But your colony is more important than you think, Chan.”

“I don’t see how,” orenThen said. “I like it. There are good people here. But we’re a seed colony. There are hardly two thousand of us. We’re at subsistence level. All we do is grow food for ourselves and prepare for the next wave of settlers. And all they will do is prepare for the wave of settlers after them. There’s nothing important about that.”

“Now it’s you who is being disingenuous,” Gau said. “You know very well that it’s not what your colony grows or makes that makes it important. It’s the simple fact it exists, in violation of the Conclave Agreement. There are to be new colonies that are not administered
through the Conclave. The fact your people ignored the agreement is an explicit challenge to the legitimacy of the Conclave.”

“We didn’t
ignore
it,” orenThen said, irritation creeping into his voice. “It simply doesn’t apply to us. We didn’t sign the Conclave Agreement, General. We didn’t, nor did a couple hundred other races. We’re free to colonize as we will. And that’s what we did. You have no right to question that, General. We are a sovereign people.”

“You’re going formal on me,” Gau said. “I remember that being a sure sign that I’ve pissed you off.”

“Don’t assume too much familiarity, General,” orenThen said. “We have been friends, yes. Perhaps we still are. But you shouldn’t doubt where my loyalties lie. Don’t think that just because you’ve ensnared the majority of races into your Conclave that you have some great moral authority. Before the Conclave, if you were to attack my colony, it would be a land grab, pure and simple. Now that you have your precious Conclave, it’s still a land grab, pure and simple.”

“I remember when you thought the Conclave was a good idea,” Gau said. “I remember you arguing for it to the other Whaid diplomats. I remember you convincing them, and them convincing your ataFuey to have the Whaid join the Conclave.”

“The ataFuey was assassinated,” orenThen said. “You know that. His son was of an entirely different mind.”

“Yes he was,” Gau said. “Oddly convenient for him that his father was assassinated when he was.”

“I can’t speak to that,” orenThen said. “And after the new ataFuey took the throne it was not my place to go against his will.”

“The ataFuey’s son was a fool, and you know that,” Gau said.

“That may be,” orenThen said. “But as I said, you should not doubt where my loyalties lie.”

“I don’t doubt where they lie,” Gau said. “I never have. They lie with the Whaidi people. That’s why you fought for the Conclave. If the Whaid had joined the Conclave, you could have colonized this planet, and more than four hundred other races backing your right to be here.”

“We
do
have a right to be here,” orenThen said. “And we do have the planet.”

“You’re going to lose it,” Gau said.

“And we never would have had this planet under the Conclave,” orenThen said, plowing through Gau’s words. “Because it would be Conclave territory, not Whaidi. We would merely be sharecroppers, sharing the planet with other Conclave races. That’s still part of the Conclave mind-set, isn’t it? Multiple races on single worlds? Build a planetary identity that’s not based on species but on allegiance to the Conclave, to create a lasting peace. Or so you believe.”

“You used to think that was a good idea, too,” Gau said.

“Life surprises,” orenThen said. “Things change.”

“Indeed they do,” Gau said. “You remember what set me on the path to the Conclave.”

“The Battle of Amin, or so you like to say,” orenThen said. “When you took back the planet from the Kies.”

“Entirely unnecessarily,” Gau said. “They’re water dwellers. There was no rational reason we couldn’t have shared the planet. But
we
wouldn’t.
They
wouldn’t. And both of us lost more than we could have won. Before that battle, I was as xenophobic as your damned ataFuey, and as much as you’re pretending to be now. After it, I was ashamed how we poisoned that planet when we took it back.
Ashamed
, Chan. And I knew that it would never end. Unless I made it end. Unless I made things change.”

“And here you are with your great Conclave, your so-called hope for peace in this part of space,” orenThen said, mockingly. “And what you’re doing with it is trying to pry me and my colony off this planet. You
haven’t
made it end, General. You haven’t made things change.”

“No, I haven’t,” Gau admitted. “Not yet. But I’m getting closer.”