War Against the White Knights (32 page)

“Skat is a game that only works properly with three players,” said the alien. “I shall organize an AI player with an appropriate skill level, or perhaps you would prefer your personal AI to do so.”

“No,” said Arun. “Thank you, but I’m not in the mood for card games.”

“I understand completely. Perhaps a round of backgammon instead? You would be surprised at my experience with this game. I believe it to be the pinnacle of your species’ cultural expression.”

Arun shook his head, but laughed, suddenly reminded of the perplexing cross-species familiarity sessions that had been part of his training as a Marine Novice. Back as a kid on Tranquility, he had periodically sat beside a Jotun officer making a stumbling attempt at small talk, his youthful guts knotted with terror that if he said too little in reply, or the wrong words, then the powerful alien would snap out its claws and rip open his throat.

But now, as the two of them sat in a DS-26D shuttle rigged with enough explosives to atomize them, there was one crucial difference. He wasn’t afraid of this Jotun. She was a general, for frakk’s sake. And she was being
nice
.

“Lieutenant-General,” he said, “may I ask you a personal question?”

“Yes.”

“Are you trying to be my friend?”

“Yes.”

Arun couldn’t help but smile. To the Jotun, the single-syllable response through her translator was an efficient answer that required no elaboration. But Aelingir had been around humans for a long time and apprehended that Arun wished for a more expansive reply.

“In your adherence to duty, you have suffered physical injuries,” said the Jotun, “and yet the greater hurt has been done to your heart.”

“Aha! I understand you now, Aelingir. I thought you suggested game playing to distract us from the bomb, and the Imperial officer in the outer system with her thumb on the trigger. All this time you were really wanting to take my mind off Xin.”

Aelingir flicked her ears forward in irritation. “Is that so unexpected? You have taken a wound to your soul, and they are often the most difficult to heal. Our Jotun experience of love is not so different from you humans. Even Trogs – as you call them – have a great tradition of romantic poetry.”

“Are you kidding me? Those overgrown ants wax lyrically about love? They don’t even have gender.”

“Perhaps that is for the best, my human colleague. Their society is multifaceted enough without the additional complexities of gender. And ‘lyrical’ is not the correct word choice, because their poetry is constructed in scent pictures. I have read textual translations and they are so tragic they are sometimes too painful for me to read. They are a fascinating species.”

“My Trog friend says he regrets never experiencing love himself, and yet he is relieved because he fears love would have destroyed him. I think that explains why he’s interfered in my personal life so often.”

“I cannot comment on that, General McEwan, but your friend might have meant its words more literally than you realize. The lovemaking of its people is a highly aggressive act, and the lovers are driven to ever more violent romantic encounters until their final act of consummation segues into a fight to the death. The winner consumes the corpse of the loser, and uses the additional biomass to produce the litter of pups.”

“Mader Zagh!” It was all Arun could think to say, but as he cast a net over his memories, he brought up bewildering comments that Pedro had made that suddenly made perfect sense.

“Indeed,” replied the Jotun. “Imagine all those trillions of lovers who told each other the lie that they were different, that their love was stronger than the compulsions of their biology. They may even have believed it at the start. I recommend reading the
Ballad of Sentwali,
sometimes known as
My Extended Death
.”

“I shall look up this Troggie poetry you speak of.” He gave a half-smile. “I mean it, but I do function successfully in my role. Long enough to finish this campaign, anyway.”

“You are wrong!” The Jotun rose to her feet, and Arun felt an echo of the cold pit of terror when he had sat with Jotuns as a Novice. The powerful alien’s lip lifted a fraction, revealing a slither of fang. “My apologies, General McEwan, but you anger me with your foolish and dangerous self-delusion. There is a saying from your homeworld. The green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm. You are hardening, becoming rigid, ossified.”

“If I don’t learn to bend in the wind then one day my heart of oak will snap, and that will be the end of me. Is that it?”

Aelingir returned to her seat. “Consider the number of sentient lives now and in the future who depend on you and your judgment, General McEwan. That number is far beyond my comprehension.”

“No pressure, then.”

“There is a lot of pressure. And that is why you must learn to bend.”

“You’re right, but let’s deal with one thing at a time. Speaking of which…”

Arun woke Barney – the combat AI who lived beneath a flap of false skin behind his right ear – and told him to bring up a schematic of the star system. Euphrates dominated the inner system, with its moon that was nominally under the control of the Emperor hiding in the protective bubble of his citadel, while Legion troops patrolled his world unopposed. The shuttle holding Arun and Aelingir as willing hostages was orbiting Nile, a lifeless, rocky planet inside Euphrates’ orbit. The two officers shone most of their attention on the New Empire fleet heading out of the system.

“At present course and speed, they will be out of range in… fifty-eight minutes,” said Aelingir. “I think your gamble will pay off.”

My gamble
. That was a gentle phrasing for an approach that had taken every ounce of Arun’s political capital to force through. And that was to say nothing of the Emperor who had expressly forbidden Arun to continue, with an anger that had paradoxically swung the Littoranes around to supporting Arun.

Having demonstrated their ability to capture a continental-sized chunk of Athena’s world tree, and with the secrets of the defensive coils almost decoded, the Legion could have ground out the campaign, working to isolate trunks of the world tree and eradicate them one by one. And having shown they could attack from orbit and win, they would have little difficulty in doing the same from territory on the surface.

Arun had pitched this as the basis of his peace overtures made, not to the White Knights of the New Empire, but directly to their Jotun field commanders. Aelingir had conducted parallel negotiations that involved some kind of secret clan oath that Arun wasn’t supposed to know about.

In traditional warfare in the Trans-Species Union, the most generous offer to a defeated army was to execute the leaders and enslave the remainder. Arun and Aelingir offered safe passage out of the system on disarmed ships. To ensure good will on both sides, techs from both sides placed bombs on the New Empire ships and on the shuttle where Arun and Aelingir waited out their enemy’s withdrawal as hostages. The joint tech team developed a pair of triggers for the bombs. Either side could activate their trigger that would instantaneously set off the bombs on both sides. If the triggers moved more than ten light hours apart then they would disarm permanently.

The risk lay largely on the side of the New Empire, but Arun was not prepared to give them more, and the surviving New Empire forces took the best offer they were ever going to get. Well, nearly all of them. Arun had told the New Empire White Knights that it was above his pay grade to either spare or execute them, and that he had no choice but to imprison them to await the pleasure of the lawful ruler. Only the Emperor had the authority to decide their fate. Finally, a political fabrication he was more than happy to stick with.

Which was why he was sitting opposite a six-limbed alien who was trying to play card games and backgammon.

“Sitting with you is one of the most surreal experiences of my life,” said Arun.

“Good. It is our ability to appreciate the absurd that separates us from artificial sentience. The universe can still surprise us, and I believe it is our purpose to observe creation in all its perplexing splendor. If we ever lose that, then we should do other species a favor by building robotic replacements for ourselves and leaping into oblivion, because we will have failed as living species. We will no longer deserve our souls.”

Aelingir’s mention of souls sparked Arun’s interest. He had heard rumors that the Jotun concept of the soul was a way to understanding their loyalty, and their oaths. “Tell me again of your bond to the Jotuns of the New Empire.”

“I will not speak of this matter.”

Arun shrugged. “I get it. Our Reserve Captain used a super-secret Jotun oath to bind enemy officers to us after the battles around Khallini. I only ask for…”

Arun felt the words dry on his tongue, unspoken. A prickle of guilt trekked up his neck. He’d forgotten that Aelingir had been one of those enemy officers recruited at the Second Battle of Khallini. He swallowed and pressed on: “I only want your assessment on whether once those New Empire ships are years away from here; whether they will rearm at the earliest opportunity and come gunning for us.”

“The bond will remain unbroken,” said Aelingir. “But I have said this before, so why raise this now?”

Arun wasn’t entirely sure himself. “Your words got me thinking, I suppose. Maybe I need to see life as more than the next insurmountable problem.”

The Jotun made a chuffing sound deep in her throat. Arun wasn’t sure of its precise translation, but he’d heard it before and recognized it as an encouraging sound. “You follow my advice,” she said. “That is good, General. We dare hope for your soul.”

“Thank you, Aelingir, but I wouldn’t put it so strongly. Fifty-four minutes. I’ve faced worse waits than this. Let us watch our doom together in companionable silence.”

Aelingir raised her ears. Was she laughing? “You know, General, if not for your persistently hairless appearance, which is not so noticeable now that you are inside your chair, I could swear you become more like a Jotun every day.”

Arun wasn’t sure how to take that, but it was a positive enough note to end on if this proved to be his final hour.

In Arun’s analysis of the enemy mindset, he thought that if they were going to set off the mutual destruction, then the most likely time to do so would be straightaway – to ensure the deaths of two leading Legion commanders before they had a chance to disarm the bombs – or at the limit of the trigger’s range – to maximize psychological impact and give the New Empire techs more of a chance to disarm their own bombs.

The enemy accelerated away on a constant bearing, just as they were instructed to: a bearing that would take Arun to vindication or death in about fifty-three minutes.

Arun closed his eyes and dozed. He wasn’t sure he would still be able to, but Marines were trained from an early age to catch sleep wherever they could, and Arun could still switch off and sleep against a background of artillery salvoes and missile attacks. Even the prospect of instant death if the enemy triggered the bombs wasn’t enough to keep him awake the way that thinking about Xin often did. The bombs would either kill him or they wouldn’t, and there was nothing he could do to affect that outcome. It might be his problem, but it sure as hell wasn’t his responsibility. He told Barney to wake him up when the enemy passed out of range, and drifted off into slumber.

——

“It seems we live to fight on,” said Arun, after Barney woke him and confirmed the remote trigger was now disabled. He’d woken in a panic, as he often did, having to remember all over again that he was in a life-support pod unable to feel most of his body because it was either numbed by painkillers, or was no longer there to report for duty. “I find I’m glad to be alive,” he said, savoring the sentiment because he realized he meant what he said. “I don’t always feel that way.”

The Jotun gave him a strange look that he couldn’t interpret. Perhaps the alien had been more afraid than she’d let on.

He opened a comm link to the Navy. “Hood. We’re not dead. Send a boat to pick us up, and push this shuttle into the sun, just to be on the safe side.”

“No need, sir.”

No need?
What did that mean? Flag Lieutenant Hood was Indiya’s man. Was she launching a coup?

Suddenly the shuttle clanged, and Arun was briefly pushed back in his seat. Something was docking with the shuttle! Arun reached around his back for his carbine, forgetting he was unarmed and sitting in a life pod chair because most of his body was missing or undergoing intensive repairs.

‘
Relax
,’ said Barney. ‘
Hood’s been alongside in a stealthed boat all the while.
’

“You knew all along. Both of you. Why?”

‘
Don’t be angry with Aelingir,
’ said Barney. ‘
She asked my permission first to play it this way.
’

“The moment we lose the ability to be surprised at the universe is the moment we lose our soul,” said the Jotun.

‘
You needed to believe the prospect of mutual destruction was genuine to convince the other side. Human lies are easily detectable even through a video link. Aelingir thinks it was good for your soul too. Nonetheless, it was a sham. The bombs were disabled before you got on board
.’

“Everything all right, sir?” asked Hood as he led a squad of Marines into the shuttle’s hold where the two hostages had camped out.

“No, Hood, it is not. There’s a Jotun officer and a combat AI who have gone rogue, and tried to drive me insane. I’m not sure whether they succeeded.”

The flag lieutenant smiled, as if this were a big joke. Arun couldn’t make up his mind whether he was amused or furious, but eventually decided he had time for neither.

“Hood, do you have a comm link to the Imperial Citadel?”

“No, sir. But I can set up a relay from my boat to the link on
Lance of Freedom
. I can have it ready within three minutes.”

“Do it! I need to speak with the Emperor. I’ve waited long enough. It’s time he danced to my tune.”