Hellfire (THEIRS NOT TO REASON WHY) (20 page)

Hong complied with a shake of his head. “…Aye, sir. Powering down all guns, sir. Putting my faith in you, sir—and requesting permission to haunt you in the afterlife if you’re wrong, sir.”

“Permission granted. Corporal Xhuge, if you’ll look in the Alliance folder, subfolder Grey Interactions, you will find a comm file marked ‘Neutral Parley.’ Use that to send a ping to the station,” Ia said.

“Neutral parley?” Rico asked her. One of his brows rose on his tanned face. “Is that even
in
their vocabulary? If it weren’t for the psis, they’d have squished us like bugs long ago. We
aren’t even worth the time it takes to spit to them, or whatever their equivalent is.”

“Considering most of their past interactions with us have either fallen into the categories of ‘ignore the inconsequential jumped-up slime molds’ or ‘plunder their primitive biology for nefarious experimentation purposes,’” Fielle quipped, “I for one wouldn’t fight over the concept of an actual chance to talk like civilized sentients.”

“
I’m
just grateful we’re on a ship with a powerful psi,” Dinyadah muttered. “That’s the only thing that’s backed them down in the past.”

“The file has been sent, Captain,” the corporal at the communications station informed her. He didn’t look happy to have done it, but at least he hadn’t hesitated. “We’ve received pingback, so I know they got it. I can’t make heads or tails out of the language in the recording I sent, though.”

“We actually have a couple dozen psis on board, Private Dinyadah, some of them quite strong for the average psychic,” Ia corrected her, addressing the scanner tech first. “But we won’t need them, just me. They’re on board for another reason. As for the language, Corporal, it’s called Shredou, which is the name for their species as well as for the language of the Greys. I pieced together a greeting specifically addressed to the being who serves as their station master and, coincidentally, the chief military officer for this system. One specific enough, it will catch his attention.

“And they do have terms for neutral parley in their culture; they just don’t share those terms with non-Greys,” Ia said, eyes on the slightly enlarged dot that was the space station in the distance. They were still traveling at a quarter the speed of light, but she didn’t alter their course. “The fact that I know those terms, and the exact location and circumstances he’ll be in when the message reaches him, will stay his hand. They may be the single most alien race in the entire known galaxy—above and beyond the Feyori—and the single most technologically advanced, but they do share the trait of curiosity with us.”

“So what is this parley of yours going to discuss?” Rico asked her.

“Sir! Energy buildup in the—” Hulio started to report. He was cut off by a flare of light, and a slight pressure change in
the bridge, one that puffed air outward. Air that had occupied the clear space just to the right of Ia’s command station, between her and the seats claimed by her two fellow officers. A space now occupied by something, or rather someone, else.

Cocking his head slightly—and calling the alien a “he” was only a guess on Ia’s part, since their gender was hard to discern—the Grey surveyed the stunned occupants of the bridge. He blinked his large black eyes and unfurled one of his slender, grey-skinned hands, focusing on the white-haired, grey-clad woman next to him.

“Speak.”

His voice sounded strange, as if two sets of vocal cords worked at once, and not quite in harmony.

“I know you plan to invade,” Ia said, keeping her sentences short. Longer ones would be open to misinterpretation. “I know when. I know where. I will tell you the battles we will fight.”

Rico hissed at that statement. Even Harper gave her a dubious look. The others looked up from their boards, then hastily turned back to their monitors as the Grey, short and slender, glanced their way.

“You betray your kind.” The Grey didn’t speak with the intonation of a Human. His voice spoke flatly, his thin lips moved and shaped the words, but whether it was a statement or a question could not be discerned.

Ia took it as a question. “No. I do not betray my kind. Your technology will destroy this universe. I will stop you. I will tell you when. I will tell you where. You will see my words are true. When you do, you will surrender. You will obey the second treaty. My treaty.”

He blinked and curled his fingers. “Irrelevant.”

“…Another energy surge, sir,” Hulio whispered, gaze fixed firmly on his screens.

“Obey me,” Ia stated calmly, “and I will save you from the Zida”ya.”

The double click was difficult to manage, considering she had only a soft tongue and the inner side of her teeth to work with. Nor was it in the language of the Greys. It did, however, have the desired effect.

The Grey’s large black eyes widened to their fullest extent. He did not move, however, other than to say, “Speak.”

“They are coming. I know where. I know when. You doubt
me right now,” she added, dipping her head slightly. “I will show you my accuracy. You will accept my deal. If you refuse, I will not save you. I will aim them at you. I will know when. I will know where. You will die. All the Shredou will die.

“Take the indicated hyperrelay unit, and leave,” she added, uncurling her right hand in a similar gesture to the Grey’s. “I will contact you. Then you will know when, and you will know where. You will see my words are true.”

“Arrogant.” The Grey did not move and did not leave the ship as ordered.

Ia breathed deep. As she exhaled slowly, she poured her mental energies into her psychic shields, adding a twist of electrokinesis. The air around her station crackled, and her monitor screens flickered. Capacitors absorbed the energy, stabilizing their views of the stars outside and the navigation data overlaid on her secondary screens. She didn’t move, other than to breathe and tense her body.

The bubble of energy expanded outward like a spherical force field, visible only where the field encountered motes of dust in the air, causing them to snap and spark. It wasn’t exactly electricity, however, but rather, kinetic inergy.

The Grey winced, then stepped back. She expanded the bubble, until he clutched at his head. A high-pitched hiss escaped him, not much different from a teakettle’s whistle. Ia eased back her energies.

“Powerful, not arrogant,” she corrected him, relaxing. “You will obey. Now get off my ship.”

Opening his large eyes, larger than a Gatsugi’s mouse black orbs, he stared at her a long moment. Then vanished. Air flowed inward slightly in a faint
pop
as the molecules slapped back together. Grey technology permitted translocation, a mechanical, technological method of psychic teleportation, but the energies used were not at all the same. Psychic energy, the kind wielded by those Humans descended at least partially from the Feyori, was the equivalent of acid to their species’ senses.

The fact that they could make the translocation instantaneously onto a ship moving at half the speed of light spoke volumes about the rest of their technology. As did the arrogance of sending a single speaker to visit the insects daring to invade their space.

“Right. Time for us to get the hell out of here. Sparking the
rift in thirty seconds,” Ia warned her crew, right hand moving over the controls. “We’ll be taking a short jump with a course correction to follow. Once we’re en route—after this little jaunt,” she added, sparking the rift, “we’ll be able to relax and stand down. Not even the Greys can catch us in hyperspace. This is why we will stay in it on the second jump until we reach Sanctuarian space, putting us well ahead of schedule.”

“And the treason you just committed?” Rico asked her, his voice still calm, his expression still neutral. Behind him, his screen showed the mouth of the wormhole swallowing them in streaks of grey light. It made his deeply tanned skin look sickly, underscoring his accusation. “Is that on the schedule?”

“It’s not treason if I am authorized to commit it, Lieutenant. Nor is it treason when these precognitive actions will be directly responsible for saving the Terrans from being destroyed by the Shredou in several years,” Ia countered, knowing he couldn’t let such a huge security breach pass unchallenged. “I also expect you personally to assist me in properly wording my communiqués with the Greys in our future exchanges of information. But that won’t happen for almost a year, so you can relax.”

“I will not relax until I have examined your
next
message, sir,” he added. “And preferably this last one, too. I’d feel a lot better knowing what you said to them.”

The tunnel of streaks ended. They emerged in realspace on the far side of the system, far from the light of the local star. Ia began the careful process of not only slipping them sideways and down a little, more in the direction of her home system, but gently altering their trajectory so that they would be able to hit the next hyperrift dead on, rather than at an angle. Touching the edges of a rift was never a good idea, which was why speed was essential in getting their ship both in and out at just the right moment.

“So will I, Lieutenant. Some of the words have no easy translation into Terranglo, since my description of what he was doing at the moment of contact have no correlation in our own culture…but the important words are perfectly clear. Including the fact that I will not be using that hyperrelay unit to contact them until 12,379
kesant
have passed. You’ll need to figure out how to translate Grey Standard into Terran Standard time systems, but it’s just under a Terran Standard year.” She looked up at him, then over at Hulio. “Private Hulio, get me a
dead-reckon heading for the Sanctuary System. Line it up with our current speed and heading, and plot an appropriate course correction arc.”

“Aye, sir,” he agreed, turning his attention back to the boards.

“Sir?” Dinyadah asked. “Captain?”

“Yes, Private?” Ia asked, watching the unfocused crosshairs that appeared on her main screen, thanks to Hulio’s efforts.

“Thank you for getting us out of there alive,” the other woman said. “I mean, not for getting us into that situation, sir, but…er, I mean…
shakk
. Sorry, sir.”

“I suggest pulling your foot away from your mouth before you swallow it, Private,” Harper ordered her, his tone gentle but pointed. “Put your faith in our CO as I have, and she’ll get all of us out of this alive.”

Not everyone, Meyun,
Ia thought grimly. To herself, behind tight mental walls.
But I’ll save those that I can.

JANUARY 18, 2496 T.S.

OUR BLESSED MOTHER
INDEPENDENT COLONYWORLD SANCTUARY

The moment Yeoman First Class Arial Yamasuka, 2nd Platoon A Alpha, touched the shuttle onto the landing pad, Ia unstrapped from the copilot’s seat. Slapping open the cockpit door, she hurried into the crowded cargo bay. Gravity pulled at her, hard and heavy; once again, she felt rather out of shape, having lived too long in lightworlder conditions. Exercising a few hours every day in heightened artificial gravity—captain’s privilege—wasn’t enough to compensate for the pull of the real thing.

“Meioas!” she barked, catching the attention of the crew in the cargo hold. “Make sure your gravity weaves are set to adaptive gravimetrics on the low setting, and no higher than medium once you get off the ship. Stand no closer to each other than three meters once they have been turned up, to avoid the nausea that comes with field interference,” she called out, pitching her voice to carry.

The A teams from each Squad in the 2nd and 3rd Platoons fumbled with the buckles of their own four-point harnesses,
hampered somewhat by the bulk of the purple web-works wrapped over their mix of grey camouflage clothes and black-and-pewter light armor.

“Sergeant Santori, Sergeant Maxwell, you are authorized to open up the ammunitions crates. Lead team members will be issued stunner c-clips. Corporals and most of the privates first class and grade, check to make sure your clips have a blue-dotted rectangle, indicating their payloads are indeed relatively harmless beanbags,” she reminded the men and women getting ready to disembark. “Privates second class and grade, you will be issued tranker clips; check to make sure they have blue feathers.

“Do not—I repeat do
not
—fire trankers unless two verbal warnings and two stunner shots have first been fired, and fire no more than one trank per target. People can and
will
die if they hit the ground wrong in this gravity, which includes being tranquilized too fast. Make sure all stunner beanbag rounds are aimed at torsos, not heads, to ensure your targets are not knocked over as well as knocked back. Keep in mind that while the density of the local atmosphere isn’t much different from Terran Standard, the gravity on Sanctuary will drop your shots fast. You can shoot from the hip if you must, but your JL-41 projectile riflescopes come with sensors that will adjust for the local gravity.

“I suggest you turn them on and use them,” she advised the men and women listening to her. Multiple clickings and faint charging whines immediately followed. Ia nodded and continued. “Your job on this drop is to scout the warehouse, establish checkpoints, and secure the initial cargo so that you can instruct your other Squad members on where to go and what to do during our next trip,” she stated as she skirted between the seated soldiers and the cargo crates strapped to the floor. “Line up at the bottom of the ramp when each team pairing has been properly armed, and remember,
no
running on this planet.

“Tripping and falling can kill you in this gravity if you are not prepared to fall just right, and you are
not
prepared. Consider yourselves under orders not to run at all for the duration of all planetside visits to this world. Check your ammo and lock and load. Gentlemeios, welcome to Sanctuary, your local gravitational hell.”

Reaching the back-ramp hatch, she triggered the door and
rode the panels as the metal descended to the tarmac. Clad as she was in camouflage Greys with a black vest covered in polished grey ceristeel plates, Ia hoped she looked no-nonsense enough to be intimidating. Customs officials were a tough breed; they would not appreciate her bulldozing these supplies through their checkpoints without the right to random inspections.