The Orphan Alliance (The Black Ships Book 3) (13 page)

“Tauhentan?”

“No.” Harry’s tone revealed mild curiosity. “She’s Bolshari,
the ruling class of the old Empire.”

The wide eyelids fluttered open.

The
Midway
, Weirfall
Orbit

“I
s
it my imagination, Doctor, or are they more aggressive than their Human
counterpart?” Towers’ sudden question shook Dwight out of his trance. He had
been standing in front of an isolation cell in the temporary infection lab. The
‘patient’ inside was throwing himself repeatedly at the Plexiglas panel,
leaving smears of degenerated tissue with each lunge.

“No, it’s not imagined.” He kept looking at the infected
Dactari prisoner. “They have faster metabolisms than us. If you turned this guy
loose, he’d go tearing around the ship, attacking the crew until his limbs
failed.” The prisoner had been given the vaccination. Tissue tests had shown a
slightly higher incidence of mutation than in Humans, but none of the samples
had actually taken up the organelle.

The Dactari were susceptible to the plague, but the
inoculation failed to immunize them. It also failed to extend their lives.
Dwight suspected that Dactari genes lacked coding for one of the proteins that
the organelle needed to thrive in their tissues, a protein that Humans produced
naturally.

The plague didn’t discriminate, but the cure did.

Tissue samples from the Weiran population had the same
results, but it was decided to test the full infection on
live
subjects
in the case of the Dactari. That was where Dwight had drawn the line. Even
after injecting thousands of Humans with a fatal dose of barbiturates, he
couldn’t bring himself to give the vaccine to these prisoners, knowing it held
none of the benefits conferred on Humans.

One of the medical staff on the carrier had shown a
willingness. Now the fleet had a new stain on its record.

He felt a growing unease, knowing that testing had been done
on prisoners in the Second World War. The vaccine represented a major military
advantage over the enemy, and fleet command wanted to know whether the Dactari
might be able to adapt it for their own use.

Is this just the beginning?
Dwight wondered.
How
much will we try to justify on the grounds of desperation?

 “How far has it spread?” Towers looked down the row of
transparent cells.

  “All of the subjects you’ve exposed have begun to
show signs of infection.” Dwight sighed. “It’s at least as virulent as it is in
our own population. We should put ‘em down and open the hatch.” The back wall
of the temporary cells was nothing more than the huge portside hangar door. In
the event of an emergency, the entire lab could be ejected by opening the door
and simply shoving the whole mess out into space.

“Perhaps,” Towers muttered, gazing absently at the suffering
Dactari in cell number two. The poor creature was still in his right mind at
the moment, but he had lesions all over his skin and dark rings around his eyes. He’d
seen the fate of his comrades and the fear was plain on his face.

Dwight shivered, despite the jacket he was wearing. “You
can’t be thinking of weaponizing this.” He saw the look that flashed across the
admiral’s face and turned to face him, speaking before the officer could invoke
operational security.

“We have two and a half million Humans in this fleet,” he
said forcefully. “How many Weirans are there – fourteen billion? Same as Oaxes
and Tauhento. Ufanges is even bigger. Can we justify killing them all?”

Towers appeared to be on the verge of a retort but then,
suddenly, he seemed to deflate. “There’s no way to contain it.”

Dwight nodded. “It’s one thing to curtail all inter-ship
traffic in a disciplined military fleet during our own vaccination, but to
cordon off a planet filled with billions of civilians who have nothing to
lose?” He shook his head. “Every ship on Dactar would launch as soon as word of
the infection got out. You’d never stop them all. It’s no different than what
happened back home.”

Towers nodded. “Every planet in the Republic would be wiped
out.” He seemed relieved, if anything, to have definitive reasons to abandon
the concept of weaponizing this infection. Saving a couple million Humans
didn’t justify the death of billions of innocents.

Dwight suddenly realized what had just happened.
This was
an actual turning point in the history of our species. He suppressed a fleeting
moment of pride at his own role. I stopped this from getting worse, but it’s
still something that I helped cause in the first place.
There was no
escaping the burden of responsibility that rested on his shoulders.

He turned back to the cells. “It’s time to end this.” He
waved a hand at the victims.

Towers nodded soberly. “We’ll give them terminal shots and say
a few words before we send them off.” A short silence. “We’ll do fine without
using this.” It sounded almost as if he were trying to convince
himself
.

“Those ships that left a few days ago,” Dwight began, then
hesitated. It had caught everyone by surprise when two carrier groups suddenly
jumped out of Weiran orbit. After Earth had fallen into chaos, the fleet had
gone defensive, but now a twentieth of the Alliance’s strength had mysteriously
departed with no warning. Towers’ speech at the last funeral had sparked
hundreds of theories, but nobody really knew what mission those vessels had
been dispatched on.

They might be enough to take a lightly-defended planet,
assuming they had help from local insurgents, but they could never hold against
a determined Dactari counter-offensive.

“Those ships,” Towers replied quietly, “will have either
succeeded or failed by now. All we can do is wait for them to report.” He
looked at Dwight. “Our manpower problem will solve itself, given enough time,
but we still need to keep our allies happy or that manpower will starve. An
extended lifespan won’t do us much good if Weirfall kicks us out.”

That was an answer, of sorts, to the question that Dwight
had started to ask. Whatever those ships were doing, it had some connection to
the economic stagnation on Weirfall. He knew the worlds of the Republic were
specialized when it came to products. Weirfall’s main product was carbon ship
hulls. That would mean they couldn’t produce anything else for ships. Somewhere
out there were planets that could help Weirfall complete their ships.

Those worlds, assuming they joined the Alliance, would also
be exclusive markets for Weiran ships. The resulting relationships would go a
long way toward reassuring Weirfall that they had made the right choice three
years ago.

The only thing that didn’t compute was the size of the force
that had departed. The Dactari would be able to retake any planet with ease,
faced by only two carrier groups. They would almost certainly gather every
available ship together and make an example of such a small force.

By the time word reached the fleet that the Dactari had
massed for an attack, it would already be too late to send a relief force. He
almost asked about it, but decided there must be something else at work that
altered the equation.

With a mental shrug, he walked over to the cooler to start
preparing doses.

“When you’re done here, head down to Lychensee for a few
days,” Towers offered. “There’s rooms at our consulate in the old quarter. You
should really take some time to clear your head.” He started to leave but
stopped and turned back to Dwight. “I’m making that an order. I’ll tell them to
have a suite ready for you tonight. Make sure you’re in it.”

Dwight watched him leave.
Clear my head?
He grimaced.

The only thing that might do that is a bullet.

The
Dark Defiance

T
he
short walk from the shuttle terminal to his apartment building was both
exciting and deeply unsettling for Tommy. Usually he walked through an eerie
silence. The immaculate ship gave the impression of a city that had been
abandoned only minutes ago, rather than millennia. The quiet was, at the same
time, oppressive and familiar.

But not today.

He was hearing snatches of conversation, even arguments as
he left the terminal and chose one of the winding paths that led through a ten
acre park. Massive hardwoods towered overhead and automated units were
dismantling the large weeping oak that had been threatening to fall down for
the last month. Reclamation units stood at the ready with fresh soil and grass
seed. By morning, there would be no evidence that the massive tree had stood
there.

He rounded a corner and found a man laying on the path.
Another man was walking away from him.
Probably doesn’t want to go inside for
a nap,
Tommy thought. Someone who’d never seen anything bigger than a
temple or amphitheatre might balk at entering a two hundred storey structure,
let alone approach the windows from an upper floor.

He came closer and his pace slowed. A red pool was spreading
out from the man’s head.  A large piece of wood lay next to his body, a
smear of congealing blood and hair adorning the larger end.

Tommy knelt next to the body. His skull was crushed.
No
chance for this poor bugger.
He looked up to see the other man turn and
look back. Before Tommy could call to him for help, the man broke into a run
and disappeared around the next corner.
So now we know what happened to him.

He stood up and walked on.
Keeva, are you seeing this?

Yes,
she replied.
There have been just over
eighteen thousand deaths since they were brought aboard.

Tommy stopped walking again.
Eighteen thousand? Keeva, we
have to do something.

I’ve assigned court officers and security staff while
they were in transport, but it will take some time before they start settling
into their new lives.

People are dying right now,
Tommy thought.
We need
to crack down in the meantime – show them there’s still a price to be paid for
murder.

I could use drones,
she replied doubtfully,
but
they are blunt instruments, to say the least.

You don’t need to remind me,
Tommy replied with a wry
grimace.
Maybe they don’t have the computing power to tell self defense from
homicide, but if we don’t declare martial law during the transition, we’re
going to have more than a few innocent deaths on our hands.

I’ll put it into effect,
Keeva answered.
I’ll
announce it now, and put it into effect an hour later.

Tommy continued, passing out of the park to find an angry
crowd in the street. The yelling suddenly stopped as Keeva’s announcement was
projected into their minds. He took advantage of the sudden calm to thread
through them. He slipped quietly through the ground floor entrance of the
residential building where he shared a penthouse suite with Gelna and Kale.

He turned right in the grand foyer and entered a
surprisingly cozy bar that must have been popular with the building’s original
residents. Usually, the three companions would spend an hour or two here before
heading upstairs, but now the place was crowded.

By ordinary standards, crowded might be an overstatement,
but there were an extra eight people sitting in the main room, not counting a
man behind the counter. Kale and Gelna were at their regular table with two of
the new arrivals.

Tommy drifted over to the bar. Usually, they would simply
walk behind the bar and help themselves, but it suddenly seemed improper, with
someone else standing there. It was strange, having to revert to old standards
of behavior.

“What can I get you?” The man sounded friendly enough.

“Not sure, really,” Tommy had no idea what the ancients
drank. It had been a surprise even learning that they had taverns at all. “What
do you recommend?”

“Well, before I ended up here, the only things I served in
my mansio were ale and wine.” The man gave him a cautious smile. “Now my head
is crammed full of some pretty crazy stuff.” He leaned forward a bit. “I’m
thinking of making ‘Storm Front’ my signature drink. I’ve managed to get it
right the last five times in a row and it’s pretty exotic.”

“Sure, I’ll give it a go.” Tommy was intrigued. He leaned on
the counter to see what the bartender was doing. “So what’s it like, suddenly
ending up here with all that new information?”

The bartender paused with a bottle in his hand. “It’s really
strange,” he began slowly. “It’s not like you suddenly think ‘hey, I know new
stuff’. The knowledge is just there, as if it was always there. You don’t even
realize it until you walk up to something and you suddenly remember what it
does.”

He resumed his work, adding layers of various liquids to a
tall glass. “I was outside my mansio, looking at a huge pillar of smoke and
then, all of a sudden, I found myself upstairs, and I knew it was my housing
unit.”

He crouched under the work surface and pulled out a bottle
of clear liquid. “I came downstairs because I had a vague feeling that there
was something important down here.” He held a small grating over the surface of
the drink and poured some of the liquid down it. “I saw this place and I just
knew it was where I work. Frankly, being busy down here is helping me to stay
sane.”

He smiled and nodded at the glass. Tommy looked down and his
eyebrows shot up in surprise. There was a tiny lightning storm going on in the
middle layers of his beverage. “Is this safe to drink?”

“Oh, certainly,” the man replied with a proud grin. “You
feel a little tingle when you get down to the storm, but it dissipates as you
consume the upper layers. They have most of the electrical potential.” He
chuckled as he looked up at Tommy. “And I just know all that, somehow.”

Tommy held out his hand. “Tommy Kennedy.”

The bartender shook his hand. “Marient Taverner.”

Tommy picked up the glass and, with a grin at its creator,
took a tentative sip. “That’s bloody marvelous!”

Marient beamed. “It better be. I put out three fires
learning how to get it right.”

Tommy took another sip. “So, you found yourself in a
completely new environment and you came straight down here and started work?”

Marient shrugged. “You don’t just adapt to something like
this all at once, you need to tackle it in little increments. I’ve been a
taverner
my whole life. This place is the only connection I
have to reality. I might have gone mad if I’d stayed upstairs alone.” He waved
his hand at the others in the room. “I need to hear voices; I need to run my
shop. Most of the folks who’ve come in here have either found their work
assignments already or they plan to go looking for them in the morning.” He
gave a tiny shake of his head. “There’ve been a few fights as well, out in the
street. Riots too. Not everyone is adjusting as quickly.”

“Well, I’m very sorry you had to leave your world like
this.” Tommy couldn’t help but feel like an idiot.
What do you say to
someone who’s just lost their planet?
“Our own world is being ravaged by
some kind of plague right now.”

Marient nodded. “Kale told me. Is that why you’re here on
the ship?”

“No,” he said with a sigh. “We came aboard at a world called
Khola. Keeva saw the chaos going on there and almost did the same thing the
Firm
Resolve
did to your world. We talked her out of it and then decided that
other ships like her might be inclined to the same reaction…” He trailed off.
Obviously, the assumption had been correct, but it had failed to save
Marient’s
planet.

“I’m starting to wonder if we’re doing the right thing.” He
gazed down into the tiny storm from above. “It didn’t do your world any good.”

“I’m given to understand these ‘guardian’ ships emerge every
now and then to check up on us,” Marient mused. “Ours tried to wipe us out because
there were a few wars going on. What if he was going to check on us in a
hundred years? What if he was planning to come out next month?” He spread his
hands.

“Maybe your people have enjoyed a long history of peaceful
cooperation,” the bartender continued, “but my world hasn’t seen more than a
few months at a time without some kind of conflict. We would have been doomed,
sooner or later.”

Tommy had to laugh at that. “Our history is just as violent
as yours. Our guardian seemed to approve. He said it drove technological
advances.”

“Then you were very fortunate. At least we all survived.”
Marient was looking at Tommy without really seeing him. “It’s strange, to be
pulled out of your time. I’ve suddenly found myself dropped into a situation
that’s thousands of years beyond what my people were capable of, yet I
understand everything around me. It’s as though the first thirty years of my
life were no more than a dream.”

“I feel like a
sawachia
, after its
cocoon floats to the surface of the swamp and it emerges as an avian.” He
smiled absently. “The trick is to take flight quickly, before you sink back
into the swamp.”