The Bureaucrat's Tale - Chapter 1

What do I do with this?

The characters still floated several inches from my eyes, maintaining their relative position like an oddly disciplined swarm of flies.  The contents of the short transmission were responsible for my thoughts of vermin.  For one reason, it was a nuisance, wrought by small creatures, which refused to be ignored.  The second reason was less metaphor and more wordplay: the communique had originated in the Locust System.

This plague could not be pushed aside; it would only return.  Much less could it be destroyed; the underlying origin would only breed another swarm of the same kind, perhaps larger, certainly worse.  All I could reasonably do was pass it on to another victim. 

The pestilent news would have to be persuaded to move somewhere more attractive.  Certainly there were targets more deserving of its torment.  Still, no one would welcome this particular communication, no more than they would thank me for an infestation.  So the problem became: how to hand off this mess without being included in its blame.

I just happened to be the gatekeeper: Hori Jeetah, Assistant Secretary of Settlement Affairs.

More literally, the troublesome message was a packet from a Ningyo diplomatic mission which had arrived across folded space from a region adjacent to the Locust system.  They were relaying a transmission from the Great Family passenger liner Vlluti, which was itself orbiting the fourth planet from Locust C, a star informally named ‘Ra’.  The planet itself had no decided name, save its official designation: Locust 4.

The news was summarized in a single block of text, accompanied by an enrichment of associated data: direct video recordings, multi-dimensional scans, ship log records, and the like, all elaborating and corroborating the claims asserted up front.  Someone would have the task of sifting through all this information to confirm that it did, in fact, support its introductory claims.  Someone else, not me.

The attached records included contributions from two other vessels: a Zig mining ship, VasKoTaCho, and a Mauraug freighter, Shomuth.  It was strange enough for these particular cultures to be working in cooperation, but that oddity was only a footnote to the greater anomaly.  For one thing, these two were not the only ships involved in the Locust system’s troubles.  One other vessel, Saving Grace, a Human salvager, had been present but was unavailable for comment.  The report couldn’t answer why 'Grace was unavailable, either.  That was another mystery for someone else to actively pursue.

In quick summary, the story was this: the joint Terran-Mauraug colony on Locust 4 was gone, leveled in an attack.  That great experiment initiated by the Collective’s negotiated settlement – this department’s negotiated settlement – was over.  Depending on how you read the matter, the results were either inconclusive due to early termination, or an utter failure due to that same termination.

As wiser minds – mine included – had feared, the joint colony had become an unbearable irritation to the dissidents of the Mauraug Apostasy.  How much stronger a reminder could we have issued that the Collective was still, bizarrely, more comfortable working with the expansionist, imperialist, Dominionist faction of the Mauraug majority?  Of course the Apostates had come calling.  What surprised me was how thoroughly they had expressed their outrage.  The number of known survivors at Locust was in the single digits, although even that number was uncertain, for reasons detailed further in. 

A massacre on this scale could hardly raise sympathy for the Apostate cause.  Their leadership (and I use that term loosely) must have felt that the colony itself posed a greater risk than the infamy generated by its obliteration.  Perhaps I was being too generous.  This attack might have been an impulsive reaction to an insult, with no thought about its long-term consequences.  Most lay readers would assume as much, finding a common thread of Mauraug fanaticism between both factions, Dominion and Apostasy.

Those readers would also ask the obvious question: where was the Collective?  Why hadn’t we, the bureaucrats and officials and experts of the galaxy’s largest organized society, anticipated this obvious danger and put safeguards in place to prevent it?  The answer ought to be equally obvious: of course we recognized the danger.  Most of us did, at least.  Some of us downplayed the risk.  Some acknowledged its possibility, but accepted the danger as a necessary risk, worth permitting in return for a potential gain.  What might be gained?  Closer association and reduced hostility with the Mauraug Dominion.  Greater understanding between cultures.  A shared stake in a common project, with neither side getting everything they wanted… that was the hallmark of a good negotiation, right?

I had argued that the actual threat was not worth such tenuous benefits.  The Apostates would attack, overtly or covertly.  They couldn’t not respond.  If you can believe it, some sophists argued that such attacks could be turned to a profit, pushing the two cultures closer together in shared opposition.  None of those voices came from Humans, of course.  Most of the absurd social theory came from our Great Family representatives.  I wouldn’t even say that the worst arguments came from the Hrotata.  That whole ‘shared enemy’ speech had hallmarks of Vislin psychology laced through it, although of course the speaker had been Hrotata.

So an attack was likely, if not inevitable.  Why not, then, be on guard?  Why not give the colony defenses, or better yet, station a ring of Collective warships around Locust System?  That would certainly have deterred the resource-challenged Apostates.  With an equal or greater number of defending ships, an attack would fail.  Even the likelihood of a small prepared defense, raising the cost of an invasion, might have been sufficient deterrent.

The reason a fleet of Collective warships were not in Locust system was as prosaic as it was regrettable: economics.  The Collective could not afford to spare five, four, three, or even two military vessels, with their crew and fuel supply demands, for any extended period.  Certainly not for the many planetary cycles it would take for a colony to take root and grow self-sufficient in its own defense.  Much less could so many ships be spared from other duties, such as border defense or active duty at 'known' conflict sites.

It was telling that the first responders now working to salvage the remains of the Locust 4 colony were a motley of various ships, each from a different culture and specialized for different purposes.  Only one, Saving Grace, was designated a licensed salvager.  That one had abruptly lifted from the planet before completing its stated survey, leaving the system without further explanation to its three collaborators.  Its last message had confirmed the presence of survivors, stragglers who had been outside of the colonial settlements at the time of the Apostate attack.  How those clues fit together was still a mystery, pending further investigation… which would have to wait on an official constabulary visit.

So, that left three civilian ships to do the work of the Collective, at least for another planetary rotation before support ships were estimated to arrive.  If any military vessels were to arrive sooner – and the need for them was questionable at this point – they would have to be outfitted with Ningyo fold drives.

There was another reason explaining not only why a military fleet was absent, but also why not a single warship was nearby.  The substance of that reason is the ocean in which I swim: politics.

First up, Settlement couldn’t get approval for a military presence.  Whose ship would it be, for example?  Human and Mauraug presences were excluded immediately, for fear of granting an in-system advantage to one culture or the other.  The crux of the negotiation had been competitive.  Both cultures would have an opportunity to develop Locust 4, with permanent rights to the planet going to the culture that showed itself better able to utilize the world and prosper.  Idealists had hoped that the competition would end in a draw, with both parties recognizing that they succeeded best together rather than separately.  It’s difficult to argue publicly against such ideals, given that they form one basis of the Collective.  But the other basis of the Collective is recognition of differences and allowance for inequitable relationships when those imbalances offer the greater benefit to all members.  Hence the technology laws, hence settlement rights, and hence commerce law.  Still, competition had to be done on a fair basis to avoid exploitation of present advantages... such as a nearby military vessel full of supplies and armed allies.

That exclusion of Terran or Mauraug military still left a handful of cultures eligible to provide military support.  Once again, the Terrans and Mauraug argued themselves out of options.  Zig obviously are biased toward Humanity.  The few existing Tesetse ships are too automated for the Mauraug to trust.  The Great Family had offended the Terran delegation by forcing the whole negotiation in the first place.  And nobody is comfortable enough to trust the Ningyo or Awakeners, except where we have no choice.

That’s not to say that a few compromise candidates couldn’t have been found.  Some secondary members of the Collective could have been acceptable neutral parties.  The problem there was, once again, cost.  Unless a Collective member offered to cover the expenses out of a sense of duty to the organization, the costs of protection would have to be paid by one or both of the colonizing parties.  Plus, all this debate presumed that a willing third party could be found at all.  Whether or not they were getting paid for the effort, there was a high probability of an attack to consider.  Essentially, any candidate – volunteer or mercenary – was signing on for an almost guaranteed military engagement.  The cost might include lost lives or even lost ships, at a probability actuaries wouldn’t touch.

Finding such sympathetic, noble, and/or courageous captains would be difficult enough if the hiring parties were dedicated and concerted in their search.  They were not.  Up until the date of the Apostate attack, the Terran and Mauraug governments were still hashing out a defense plan and recruitment strategy.  They hadn’t let those considerations delay their settlement plans, oh no.  As soon as the contract was countersigned and saved to memory, they had started launching transports to Locust system.  First arrival had an advantage, after all, and one couldn’t discard any advantage… not if one wanted to stay in office.

As far as I was concerned, blame for this disaster could be placed most squarely at the feet of those cultural governments, both Terran and Mauraug.  More specifically, the responsible parties were the leaders who had interfered with their own interests by pushing the colonization forward before they managed its protection.  By association, my condemnation included the business interests and perhaps even the colonists who had put pressure on those leaders.

In turn, those authorities had put pressure on my office to open up settlement.  Since they were in compliance with the terms of the contract, my superior, the Secretary of Settlement, had no choice but to approve the touchdown of their ships.  At the time, we hoped that those transports would stay in-system long enough for defense support to arrive.  Perhaps we should have specified supervision as a condition of approval, as much as that demand would exceed the authority of our office.  Sometimes you have to bend the rules to do what is right, although that doesn’t exempt rule-benders from sanctions.

All this byplay was a matter of public record.  Anyone who wanted answers to their questions about the whys and whodunits of the Locust settlement could access our network and search directly, or even read themselves to exhaustion through the transcripts, contracts, and associated exhibit data.  Would they?  No.  Most would see the upcoming headlines and blame the Collective for permitting another massacre.  After all, the Collective created the colony, therefore we were responsible for anything that happened to it.

To a limited degree, I could agree with that sentiment.  I, personally, am responsible for monitoring settlement progress.  Setbacks, pressing needs, and other concerns of Collective-sponsored settlements pass directly through this office, for relay to the offices that supply those needs.  We do a fair amount of filtering, deciding which requests merit response, on what timetable, and who should be contacted to provide that response.  Routing this particular message was going to be a challenge, which was my personal dilemma.

However, the Office of Settlement does not handle culture-internal matters.  It certainly does not set Collective policy.  We follow existing law and custom as instructed, exercising judgment only to determine how a given situation fits into that framework.

For that matter, the Collective is supposed to do the same, enacting and enforcing the collective will of its member cultures.  Sorry if I’m slipping into Galactic Political Science 1001 here.  The more I think about the Locust colony mess, the more aggravated I get about the ignorance of so-called sapients.  The Collective did not cause that atrocity.  We’re not responsible, not by commission or omission.  Nonetheless, we’re going to be tarred by association. 

While the Collective may have set the scene for this disaster, like I said, there were some good and noble reasons for the joint colony.  I haven’t even discussed why the good and rational arguments against that arrangement were overruled.  To do so, I once again point to the cultural governments themselves.  Neither would back down from their claim on the Locust system.  Both had equal claims from proximity and precedent to establish settlements.  Locust 4 was the best, most habitable world in the region, so there was no question of dividing up the system planet by planet.  One possibility that was proposed and discarded was to trade claims in other star systems for exclusive rights in Locust.  Nobody could come up with a current or anticipated dispute that might be resolved by giving away one system in return for another… and neither side would accept “a credit to be claimed in future disputes.”  I can’t really blame them there.

So, short of military resolution – something the Collective could not accept – or mutual abandonment – again, inimical to the nature of the Collective – it became inevitable that some kind of division of Locust IV would be necessary.  Perhaps a continent-by-continent split?  Well, no, the nature of the baby prevented that kind of split, as well.  All of the most preferable resources were found on the same continent, just slightly north of the equator.

The best separation that could be managed, in the end, was to establish separate colonies in the same geographical zone.  For reasons both idealistic, practical and cynical, the sites were chosen to be within driving distance of one another.  Keep an eye on the neighbors, in case they need help, but also in case they start getting too far ahead.

I may be Human, myself, but sometimes I despair of my species.  I tend to agree with the sapients that find little distinction between us and the Mauraug.  But for several accidents of history, there go we.  There could easily have been a Terran Dominion pounding dogma and bad poetry into our minds, right now.

I work for the Collective by choice.  It’s something that might pull Humanity out of itself.  I’m not a species traitor; the same is true for all the member cultures of the Collective.  They all have flaws that need to be addressed: Mauraug obviously, but Zig and Hrotata need humility, Vislin and Taratumm need restraint, and the Ningyo… need some kind of racial psychotherapy, probably.

Anyway, if there’s one thing all those cultures share, it’s resentment of the restraints the Collective puts on their preferences and ambitions.  Situations like the one before me just give them a target to pin those frustrations on.  “The Collective isn’t working; look at this mistake.”  “Why do we bother with this nonsense; let us manage ourselves and let other sapients do the same.”  “They don’t understand what we need.”

I wasn’t about to let the death of Locust colony feed opposition to the Collective.  I suspected, even then, that that was the real goal of the Apostates: not only to hurt Dominionist Mauraug and their ‘allies’, not only to demonstrate against the Collective for our unacceptable collaboration with Dominion, but to undermine the Collective and what it represents.

Oh, not what it actually represents, which is the pinnacle of enlightened self-interest.  I mean, why would so many disparate cultures even bother meeting, discussing, and negotiating, if they didn’t find some advantage in it for themselves?  The idealists are a minority in this Universe, but pragmatists are common enough.

No, I mean the Apostates - apparently like the majority of sapients out there – think the Collective represents power, authority, and the domination of others by an empowered minority.  The Apostates see us as Dominion writ across the galactic disc.  Frost, the Dominionists probably do, too, which would explain why their official policy shifted to support us.  That majority, including both Mauraug factions as well as most of the sapients in all the cultures of the Collective, are idiots.

This office has exactly the power given to it by the colonists that rely upon it, the offices that answer to it, and the cultures that support the Collective as a whole.  If nobody returns my calls, I have zero power.  The Office of Settlement has no military power to enforce its edicts, and its economic power is contingent on other bureaus doing their jobs.  Even the mighty executives of the Collective are beholden to their subordinates and the cultures they operate between.

That’s enough lecturing.  I just wanted to make sure you understood my problem, before I explain how I went about resolving it.  There are all these pieces, all these actors, each limited in scope and span of power.  Each was responsible for how they used that power: the decisions they made and the orders they issued to put events in motion.  Lots of those sapients were going to have to make some hard decisions, issue some orders, and work hard in reaction to this Locust plague.  Some of them were going to get hurt, particularly in the realm of public opinion.

I just wanted to make sure anyone who got bitten deserved the pain.  I certainly did not.

Update - As the Galaxy Turns

A brief note those who check this space regularly:

Thank you!

Your attention will be rewarded.  I have completed my Human pair-bonding ritual and have time available again to write.  The first chapter of a new Empyrean story should be posted within the next week.  After that, though, no promises about a timeline.  The next month includes another fascinating human custom: our honeymoon.  It might be late May before I'm able to post again.

We still have a couple of interesting projects simmering in the background, but both dishes require full completion before they can be served.  I'll leave that as a riddle to be answered whenever that presentation finally occurs.  We hope it's worth the wait.

-N. L.

The Swarm

     They were in the walls.  Oh, God, they were in the WALLS!

     Fredrik jerked away from the sculpted grey surface where he had leaned to catch his breath.  He wanted to deny what he had heard.  He wanted to believe he had gotten away, to feel safe, to permit himself time to rest.  His jangled nerves refused to be deceived.

     His temples throbbed with his pulse.  His ears strained past that noise, demanding to hear more.  They insisted that the noise was real.  His lower brain could not ignore such warnings of danger.

     The things were small.  They could easily be behind the walls.  How thick were those surfaces?  He did not know.  He did not even know what the grey substance was.  It was warmer than stone should be in this chill, damp air.  The stuff was almost smooth, but not quite, with an irregular roughness that teased the eye and hand with hints of a pattern.  It had no joints or corners, but flowed smoothly into bends and arches, pits and pockets, branching off in every direction into corridors of every size.

     Fredrik was lost here.  His flight through this maze, with its round unmarked paths, had been like the tumbling of a lone blood cell through a dying artery.  Now the microbes were closing in all around him.  They could hear him, maybe smell him, even if neither he nor they could see one another.

     He could hear them.  Their many legs scratched on the strange surface.  Were they in another tunnel, close by but separate?  Were they, indeed, in some interstice just behind a thin divider?  Might they burst through like ants piercing the skin of a hollowed fruit?  Spiders pouring from an egg sac?

     They ran like insects, but they were not insects.  Fredrik had not had time to look at them closely.  He had only an impression of multiple hard, gleaming limbs, colored maybe red or black.  It had been difficult to tell in the red light of Thompson’s lamp.

     There were a lot of them.  He had seen the way they swarmed, legs almost clicking together as they headed for that light.  They had overrun Thompson, grabbed the lamp out of his hand, and extinguished it.

     Had that been intentional?  Did they know their prey was helpless in the dark?  Did they recognize the switch and know how to operate it?  Or did they act on animal instincts, sensing that the bright spot was a target or otherwise somehow important?  Perhaps the light had antagonized them.  They might have simply attacked it and switched it off entirely by accident.  It didn’t matter now.

     When it went dark, they took Thompson with them.  Fredrik tried not to hear his partner’s screams again.  He had heard panic, rising to terror as the creatures swarmed up and smothered the man.  Fredrik could imagine it from the way Thompson’s voice had been stifled. 

     Then he felt their touch himself.  Cold, hard appendages, bristling with sharp points and oddly soft hairs.  They had clicked and whistled to one another as they sought him out in the dark.  Fredrik had not waited.  He had not tried to fight.  He knew there were too many.  If he tried to fight, blind and afraid, they would catch him.  They might take his lamp, too, and then it would not matter if he ran away.  So, he fled.

     Harley had held their weapons.  She was supposed to be their guard, her and Braddock.  Braddock had died in the crash, along with Stone.  Had that been an accident?  Fredrik wasn’t an engineer and hadn’t been navigating, so he had no way to know.  Thompson said something got into the intake vents.  They assumed it was debris kicked up by the storm.  Maybe it had been a little, hard, multi-legged body, trying to climb into the shuttle.  Maybe it was debris... thrown into the vents as sabotage.

     Fredrik fought down the surge of paranoid panic.  He had to assume there was a way out.  The shuttle was down but the ship was still up there, in orbit.  His comm wasn’t working… maybe due to the depth, maybe because of something about these tunnels?  No way to know.  If he could find a path to the surface, he could call for help.  The ship should already be searching.  Maybe they were.  He had to get above ground and warn them.  If these things were intelligent, they might attack the backup landing team.

     He had to fight despair.  He had to assume he was smarter than this enemy.  He was definitely bigger.  Stronger.  Was he stronger?  They had grabbed Harley, and she was a big, strong woman.  They had caught her standing under an opening, reached down, and hauled her away before she could fire a shot.  They took her and her weapon.  Thank goodness they couldn’t use it.  Otherwise, he might already be dead.

     The swarm had nearly caught up with Fredrik twice now.  If they could shoot, they would have had an easy shot both times.  After he fled, he found and illuminated his own lamp.  He switched it from red to full spectrum.  It didn’t matter if it drew their attention, not now.  He needed to see.  He could run fast, faster than them… for a time.  As he grew tired, their scuttling speed was starting to match his jogging gait.  He only had a few more sprints left.  Resting here might buy him a few more escapes.

     The landing team had run into the tunnels, at first.  When the shuttle went down and the winds picked up, it seemed like the best course of action.  They would take shelter, call to the ship, and wait out the storm until conditions were clear enough to repair their shuttle or to bring down their backup.

     The strange, grey-lined openings had beckoned.  They were, after all, what the researchers - Fredrik and Thompson and Stone - had come down to see.  Orbital surveys had shown several such tunnel mouths, too perfectly shaped and regularly spaced to be natural formations.  The surface seemed entirely natural, entirely untouched… but there were these openings.  Such reshaping suggested larger, hidden life forms, perhaps even intelligence.

     There certainly was some kind of intelligence at work.  Rudimentary, sentient, sapient… it didn’t matter now, now that Fredrik knew the natives were dangerous and hostile.  The things had reacted badly to their intrusion.  Whether out of defense or hunger, they had attacked, and it did not matter why.  Fredrik just needed to escape.  If he returned, if he ever returned, it would be with a full squad, all carrying plasma throwers, with atomic lanterns ablaze and motion detectors active, each monitored by their personal A.I. and synced to a positioning satellite.  Then they'd see who hunted who.

     His primate brain was doing its best to organize conflicting lower impulses.  Stand and fight!  Run away!  Hold still!  Right now was not the time to fight.  Holding still was suicide, too: he was in the creatures’ lair.  He had to run.  He needed to run soon.  When the scratching sound came again, it was time to run now.

      Which way?  The sounds came from every direction.  Was he surrounded?  Were some of the noises echoes from tunnels further back?  Further forward?  Above, below, to the sides?  He had climbed up at one point, slid down at another.  As best he could remember, he was at about the same depth as the entrance.  Its lateral direction was a complete mystery.

     Fredrik decided… forward, then right at the next large branch.  He tended to assume that larger branches meant a main trunk.  The entrance had been three meters wide.  He had avoided anything less than a meter across, where he would have to crawl.  He was in the two meter range right now.  A flash of rationality reminded him that the passages had not shown any specific organization.  Branches seemed randomly located and randomly sized, with nothing like a ‘tree’ structure at all.

     Certainly, the tunnels were nothing like a Human structure, even an underground facility.  No sapient race Fredrik could think of built like this.  Did the creatures build it?  Excavate it?  Extrude it, like termites?  Were they parasites infesting a structure built by some previous inhabitant?  Had they already expelled… or consumed… that prior tenant?  Or worse, were they commensal creatures, guardians, or pets of something worse?

    Was Fredrik, even now, descending into the lair of the swarm’s master?  As he ran, hearing clicks on every side but seeing none of the pursuers, he realized that he might be being herded.

    Still, what could he do otherwise?  It seemed that whenever someone stopped to confront the enemy, they were taken.  If they would not step into his light, he was safe as long as he kept moving forward and never left his back unguarded.  Or his head, or his feet.  Assuming they could not, in fact, burst through the walls.

    The passage began to widen.  Hope surged, chased closely by leery caution.  Something ahead reflected Fredrik’s lamp-light.  It did not glisten black or red.  It shone an opalescent glimmer of blue and green and purple.  At first, it seemed like a stack of gems.  Then it was the facets of a great multifaceted eye.  Fredrik slowed, caught between the need to press forward and the fear of what lay ahead.

     He raised his lamp like a weapon.  Then he lowered it, fearing it would be snatched from his grasp.  Instead, he held both hands high, ready to strike if something lunged.  Step by step he advanced.  The skittering scraping sound intensified behind him and faded ahead.  Was this where he was being led?  What worse thing waited for him, watching with a thousand unblinking eyes?

     He could only move forward.  Now, he saw more clearly what produced the glitter.  Soft orbs, each larger than an eyeball, hung in clusters from the wall.  Like an eye, they also had a translucent skin filled with fluid.  Fredrik could tell that the centers were fluid, because something darker swam within each globe.  Dark things, like swimming centipedes, a body with many small legs flailing…

     Eggs.  They were eggs.  The spawn of the crawling swarm, no doubt of it.  Thousands of them.  He had been goaded to their nest, driven to this chamber when he could not be dragged.  The creatures had larvae, hungry young, and he was a self-delivered meal. 

     No!  Fredrik had not lived well in his brief, spacefaring life, but he would die well.  There would be a thousand fewer monstrosities growing to threaten his successors.  They wanted to fatten on his corpse?  Let them die beneath his boot!

     Fredrik raised his foot to crush the first bunch of eggs.  That threat drew a response.  The swarm was emboldened.  A wave of crawling creatures raced forward, flowing across the floor, then up the walls and over the ceiling.  Red and black.  Reddish-black, like blood in the dim light.  Fredrik lashed out, with his feet, with his fist, finally even with the lamp.  He felt carapaces crack and even a few eggs burst.

     Then he felt spines puncture his suit and his skin.  He tore away from the first grasp, but more of the creatures clambered up his supporting leg.  Their segmented bodies wrapped over his lamp and its tightly clenched hand.  Then they were on his back, around his neck, on top of his head, and finally, over his face.  He could not brush one off without a new horror taking its place.

     They did not drag him down, as they had Thompson.  Nor did they pull him away, as they had Harley.  Of course not.  They were holding him in place.  They held him still, so that he could not harm their young.  They kept him where they wanted him, until the eggs were ready to hatch.  They would not even give him the mercy of death to spare him the pain of being devoured alive.

     Then, one of the creatures shoved something soft and wet against his nostrils.  A foul chemical odor flowed down his throat, making Fredrik gag.  A poison?  No, a paralytic.  He tried to cough and could not.  He could not turn his head to avoid the secretion.  Blessedly, his vision began to blur.  Unconsciousness.  Thank the stars.  As he fell, Fredrik prayed only that he would die before the anesthetic wore off.

      ****************************************************************************************

    

      Special Defense Leader Sshtknnn.tph.rrrssK crawled out from beneath the collapsed beast.  Three of her/her/his legs had been crushed in the battle, but the other nine still held her/her/his weight.

     “Any casualties?” she/she/he whistled to the gathered troops.

     “Kkktwww.ttt.kchssR is paralyzed!” came one report.  That was the worst of it among the soldiers.  A few offspring had died, but losses before hatching were sadly common.  It could have been worse.  It should have gone better.  They had been forced into melee.  When the monster went after the nursery, they had no choice.

     Curses on Defense Primary!  Her/his/her demands to capture the beasts without injury had made this operation more dangerous than necessary.  The invaders were large, aggressive, and armed.  Sshtknnn.tph.rrrssK had been right to request a double squad.  She/She/He had also been right to request armament, a request that Primary had denied.  That point of error would come up next gathering, it certainly would.

     “Triad teams, tend to those who can’t move.  The rest of you, take positions around this captive.”  Sshtknn.tph.rrrssK almost hissed the orders in her/her/his fury.  When the squads were in position, she/she/he whistled in a more carefully modulated scale, “Carry it/it/it to the holding chamber with the others.  Wounded to the infirmary.  All legs, march!”

     It was the lack of communication that made things really difficult.  The intruding creatures were clearly intelligent.  The separate covering over their softer, exposed flesh was evidence: synthetic skin for protection.  They had tools: light sources and weapons.  Sshtknn.tph.rrrssK had to assume that the slow, rumbling noises these horrors emitted was a language.  Maybe the scientists could decode it.  Then, they could interrogate the captives.

     Talk to the captives, if Primary had anything to do with it.  Sshtknn.tph.rrrrssK whined in exasperation.  Well, Primary was just relaying the wishes of Himself/Herself/Herself.  They would try to 'understand' the invaders first.

     Then, when Sshtknn.tph.rrrssK was proven right, when the beasts were revealed as the vicious marauders they clearly were... then, the nest could launch a real offensive.  These things had come from somewhere on the surface, beyond the tunnels.  There could be more of them coming.  They could be massing up there, waiting for word from their scouts.  Life existed beyond the storms, and it was intelligent and hostile.

     The nest couldn’t just hold still and wait until they were overrun by alien things!

Escape from Grace - Chapter 11

From the command chair on the bridge of Saving Grace, Evgeny finished viewing the key records Matilda had provided him,.  She had included a summary timeline of events from the ship’s perspective.  His gut roiled with nausea from multiple causes.  He was hungry and thirsty, but he would need some time before he could eat.  He was furiously angry, but thanks to Matilda, there was no one he could vent that anger upon.  He was devastated with grief.  Everyone was gone, everyone except himself, Mikala, Wallace, and the Mauraug.  There might be a few more scattered survivors, but the whole of New Gethsemane was deceased.

The crew of the salvager had confirmed: minimal heat signatures, no independent movement, no signs of respiration.  They had even checked the mines.  Unless Evgeny’s family had somehow transported themselves a hundred kilometers away from the settlement in the moments between their last distress hail and the landing of the Apostate bombs, they were dead.  They were dead.  He tried to let that fact sink in and deaden his nerves.

Matilda gave him as much time as they could spare to process and reconcile his troubles.  That time amounted to only a few additional minutes.  She had to interrupt to notify him that the Mauraug and Mikala – but not Wallace – were boarding the ship.  She could keep them waiting in the cargo bay, but not indefinitely.

She also advised Evgeny that she had been impersonating him and detailed the terms of ‘their’ ultimatum.  Evgeny accepted her improvisation.  His approval was unsurprising.  A well-designed A.I., having grown up with a User from childhood onward, could easily anticipate their preferences and substitute for them without presuming too much.  If anything, Matilda had handled the situation more adroitly than Evgeny might have, given the circumstances.

It did frustrate Evgeny that Wallace chose to remain planetside.  Again, no surprise in retrospect.  Everyone aboard was taking a dangerous chance.  It was entirely likely that all of them would be destroyed or captured as hijackers.  Still, taking that risk was better than trusting to the mercies of other mercenaries or the pathetic security of the absentee Collective.  Evgeny planned to take advantage of this opportunity.  He hadn’t yet decided what form his action would take, but he would act.

To achieve anything with that action, he would need help.  Matilda could operate a star ship herself, and maybe even guide him through physical operations like maintenance, but eventually, more biological crew would be necessary.  For one thing, a ship this size with only one crewman would draw unwanted attention.  For another, they might need multiple bodies for repairs, for sapient interaction, or for expertise Matilda lacked.

For example, they needed to become inconspicuous.  A salvager with a mixed Human-Mauraug crew wasn’t all that strange.  With a few modifications, they could make the brick-like hulk look like a whole different ship.  Ideally, they could borrow the clearances of the original Saving Grace, at least until it was widely reported as stolen.

Evgeny regretted that, both to be unremarkable and to retain a Mauraug crew, the ship would have to be removed from Matilda’s control.  Worse, if he was to have any hope of securing the Mauraug’s loyalties, he had to continue the fiction of his A.I.’s demise.  Matilda had already anticipated this necessity.  Within minutes, she would simultaneously unlock the cargo bay door and place herself in indefinite dormancy, passing control of ship’s functions back to the original systems.  Still, those systems were modified to respond only to Evgeny until he granted permission otherwise.  Even after he granted access to chosen individuals, he could still override them with his own superior codes.  Though Matilda could not actively assist Evgeny, she had handed him all the power she had wrested for herself.

The timing of their switch-over was not left to Evgeny’s discretion.  Matilda intercepted a message transmitted from near the ruins of New Gethsemane, addressed to a ship circling in Locust IV’s upper atmosphere.  Captain Mendoza was signaling distress to the Great Family passenger liner, Vlluti.  If Saving Grace did not depart in the next few minutes, it could be impeded or trailed by the other ship.  Worse, now that the local, private ships were alerted, military ships would accelerate efforts to reach the system in time to intercept.  They needed to leave, and before the ship left the surface, they needed a crew in place.  No more time could be spared.

Evgeny was just beginning to mourn his parents.  Now he had to bid his best friend goodbye.  Matilda was practically his sister, his younger but brilliant sister.  He told himself it wasn’t permanent.  Someday, when his labors were done, they would be reunited.  A very specific input would awaken Matilda from her deep, invisible slumber.  Until then, they would be totally separated.  The Mauraug would kill her if they knew she was aboard.  Even if not, they would never trust him if they found out.  They would never follow him.

Hell, they still might not.  With great effort, Evgeny gave the word: “Nasvidenje, Matilda.”

“Hoo roo, Evgeny.”

********************************************************************

In the cargo bay of Saving Grace, the volunteer crew waited uneasily.  After they had climbed aboard, the ramp closed behind them, rendering them effectively imprisoned.  Gaalet, Karech, and Voshtig had already begun discussing options for disabling or detaching the hatchway door leading deeper into the ship.  Soloth and Suufit held a lively debate in hushed whispers, more visible than audible due to its gestural punctuations.  These groupings left Luuboh and Mikala standing apart, glancing awkwardly at one another.

These interactions were interrupted by the unlocking click of the entry door.  Every gaze was drawn in that direction.  Mikala was first to move, but was preempted by Soloth, who had been closer and moved into her path.  She had to watch the Mauraug’s cybernetically-enhanced back flex as it pulled open the hatch and stepped through.  Close behind it came its three loyal followers.  Mikala was able to enter behind them and just ahead of the recalcitrant Suufit.  Luuboh hung back, perhaps torn on the value of being left behind, alone.

Evgeny’s voice came to them through the speakers of an intercom system: “Come up to the bridge, please.  There is another ship on its way to our location and I’d like to lift off before they get here.  It will be easier to move with all hands on deck.  Take the hall fore and come up the ladder two decks.”

His directions were almost superfluous; the ship’s halls were clearly labeled for navigation.  Plus, any sapient familiar with ship design could probably guess where the bridge was placed.  Still, it saved them some time to have a confirmed route, and it was reassuring to be invited up rather than left to their own choices.

The group still took a few minutes to assemble on the bridge.  Evgeny watched them enter from his chosen perch: the central captain’s chair, placed like a throne on a raised platform at the back of the room, directly right of the entrance hatch.  The others filed in and spread out through the area, looking over the various workstations.  Gaalet stopped before the communications panel and impulsively pressed several buttons, scrunching its face in irritation when the commands produced no effect.

“I have locked all ship systems,” Evgeny said in Mauraug, looking first at Gaalet but then turning to face Soloth.  “I will release access based on individual expertise and agreed duties.  We will share this ship, but I am in charge.”

“Why?”  Soloth asked in response.  Suufit and Voshtig grunted agreement.  The three senior Mauraug stood in defiant poses.  Suufit, Karech, and Gaalet had weapons still drawn, though the latter remained more interested in the ship’s technology than its politics.  Soloth’s gun was still holstered, but it hardly needed firearms to be deadly at such close range.

Evgeny set his jaw, but did not appear otherwise intimidated as he answered, “Because I took this ship, and you didn’t.  Because I have its command codes, and you don’t.  Because you underestimated my value, and I won’t make that mistake.  I could have left you behind and left alone, but that doesn’t help any of us.  You chose to come aboard, on my terms, for the same reason I invited you: we have things we want to accomplish.  Find the Apostates and avenge our people.  Make sure the Collective doesn’t bury the truth.  Hell, just stop accepting the fate other people dictate for us.  If that’s not good enough, if you want out, say so.  You can leave and face whatever justice or charity you find out there.  Trust me, it won’t be much.”

He paused to let the audience absorb his words.  Soloth did appear to be giving his arguments some consideration.   Voshtig looked unhappy, staring at Evgeny with clear hostility.

Suufit, instead, retorted right away, “Stay and submit or go and submit?  I say there is a third choice: stay and unseat you, ‘captain’.  You are out-numbered, out-armed, and out-classed.  You are not a leader.  You squandered your stolen Dominance and created our current problems.  Step down and let me fix your mistakes.  Give me the command codes.  Your alternative is to suffer until you submit.”

Evgeny and Mikala exchanged a look that implied shared aggravation with all things Mauraug.  She began what she hoped was a casual movement toward the opposite side of the bridge, placing her back to the forward wall.  Now, four Mauraug stood in the room’s center, facing Evgeny, while Mikala, Gaalet, and Luuboh were spread to its outer edges.

Evgeny gave Suufit an indulgent look before rebutting: “No.  The command codes are my claim to Dominance.  I won them.  I will not release them.  If you threaten me again, I can disable this ship or even destroy it.  Saving Grace will serve me or no one else.  I would choose death – mine and yours – over submission, to you, to the scavengers, or to the Collective.”

Suufit fleered its lips in a sneer.  It mocked, “You submitted before, rather than die.  You will do so again.”  It spoke over its shoulder to the other Mauraug: “Take the Human.”

Gaalet and Karech failed to react, either ignoring Suufit’s order or hesitating to obey.  Voshtig eagerly drew its short sword and stepped forward.  Its attempt to intimidate backfired.  By advancing with ominous slowness, it allowed time for Mikala to react.  The underestimated Human closed the short distance between them in three long steps.

She dropped to a long, leaning crouch and extended one leg in an arc parallel to the floor.  The power behind that sweep was evident when it made contact with Voshtig’s legs and brought them sliding backward.  The top-heavy simian fell forward, twisting to avoid injuring itself on its own blade.

Mikala did not pause but rose smoothly as her first target fell.  She next struck upwards at Karech’s weapon arm with an extended fist.  While not strong enough to disable a Mauraug, her strike caught it in a sensitive spot and forced it to drop its firearm.

Startled at first, Suufit finally had time to raise its own flechette thrower.  Evgeny stood, ready to throw himself at the giant Mauraug to prevent it from shooting Mikala.  He knew he would be too late if Suufit fired immediately.

Instead, Soloth interfered, stepping forward to place itself between Suufit and Mikala.  This unexpected move gave Suufit pause, and it held its fire.  Mikala and Karech both dove for the latter's dropped weapon.  Closer and faster, she won the draw and turned the gun – a small plasma thrower – on its former holder.  Voshtig struggled to rise without releasing its sword, a slow but evident threat.

Evgeny also realized, with some confusion, that Gaalet, the seemingly oblivious engineer, had bestirred itself to turn around and was now pointing its much larger plasma rifle... at Suufit.  It had not spoken or otherwise inserted itself into the situation, but it appeared ready to kill its former superior if necessary.

The internal relationships within even a small society of Mauraug were evidently more complex than Evgeny assumed.  Deciphering the cultural triggers involved here would take time he couldn’t spare.  At the moment, at least, a few undercurrents had flowed in his favor.

Soloth finally spoke, facing Suufit but addressing its remarks to the group: “I accept captain Lerner’s terms.  I also assert that I am second in Dominance beneath it.  As such, I reserve right of challenge to myself and oppose any other threats to its command.  If you have a problem, direct it to me.”

Soloth and Suufit stared one another down for three long seconds.  Mikala held Karech’s gun on him, keeping a wary eye on the nearby Voshtig.  Gaalet kept its rifle similarly trained on Suufit.  Luuboh, who had been edging toward the bridge’s exit, stood still and silent.

Evgeny finally realized they were waiting on him to break the standoff.  “I accept Soloth bash’Soloth as second in Dominance.  It will hold a set of subordinate codes to the ship and deliver orders to the crew on my behalf.”  He recognized the need for compromise.  The Mauraug might resist him as their direct master, but could accept Soloth as a competent surrogate.  As long as he and Soloth were in accord, he would have the former leader’s support.  It would therefore have indirect control over the orders he chose.  It was an arrangement they could work with, for now.

Suufit, noticing the tide turning against it, finally relented.  It lowered its gun and its eyes from Soloth.  Gaalet lowered its own weapon in response, and Mikala started to take her aim off of Karech.  Everyone seemed to be releasing tension, giving their respective versions of a sigh of relief.

Voshtig disrupted the mood with sudden violence.  It swung its short blade at Mikala, who twisted out of the way, forced to draw back her arms to avoid injury.  She jumped backward as Voshtig charged forward. 

The rogue Mauraug now had a clear path to its true target: Soloth’s back.  It seized upon a rare opportunity to bypass the armored cybernetic spine.  Suufit did not react, to give a warning, to aim its weapon, or to push Soloth out of the way.  Evgeny did shout, but belatedly.  Gaalet was similarly slow to react.

Two actions occurred simultaneously.  Voshtig plunged its blade down, shouting, “Die, Traitor!"  It punctured Soloth below its shoulder blade, just beside the gleaming contour of the plate covering that segment of vertebra.  The wound was obviously agonizing but not fatal, since Soloth roared and spun around, wrenching the sword out of Voshtig’s grasp.  Its dark blood oozed and spattered the floor as it turned.

At the same time, Mikala lowered and aimed Karech’s plasma thrower.  She fired as Voshtig struck.  A small but expanding sphere of superheated matter streaked across the small distance to strike Voshtig in its ribs, at the center of mass.  The projectile burned itself out as it vaporized hair, skin, flesh, lung tissue and body fluids.  Fortunately for Karech, standing at the victim’s opposite side, the plasma bursts were calibrated to expend themselves before penetrating an organic target.  It had done itself a service by setting the weapon to an appropriate level for close-quarters use.

Voshtig was not able to protest its injury.  If anything, it looked confused as it fell onto its face, gasping without breath.  Its limbs shuddered as its nervous system attempted to remedy a sudden lack of respiration.

Before the body had stilled, Evgeny was barking orders, alternating between Mauraug and the colonists' Terran dialect.  “Enough!  We have no more time to waste.  Any other grudges can wait until the next port.  Suufit, take navigation, prepare us to lift.  Karech, get to weapons, see what we have.  Gaalet, get down to engineering.  I want a warning if any systems aren’t ready for use.  Mikala, go to comms.  Make sure we give the right clearances… use what you know to convince everyone that the situation is normal, no reason for alarm.  Luuboh, see to Soloth.  Get it to medical if necessary and get that sword out.  Let’s GO.”

His words took varying amounts of time to sink in for each listener, but one by one – first Gaalet, then Karech, then Mikala, then Luuboh, and finally Suufit – each sapient moved as bidden.  Evgeny busied himself transmitting authorization codes to each station, opening up the specific systems to their permitted uses.  Soloth finally consented to leave the room, but refused Luuboh’s offer of support or even a hand to stanch the steady bleeding from its back.  Evgeny could hear Soloth mutter something about ‘provincial heretics’ as it stumbled though the hatchway.

Seeing Evgeny’s warnings verified by scanner data, Suufit wasted little time learning the navigational controls.  It deciphered enough to plot a course out of atmosphere and onto a path leaving Locust System.  Without prompting, it initiated liftoff, sending a tremor through the ship as she struggled to adjust for the irregularities of wind currents.  Karech was equally engaged, sending the occasional summary message to Evgeny’s command console as it confirmed access to several energy projectors, ballistic and magnetic projectile throwers, and a moderately useful deflection system among the ship’s armaments.  For a basic salvager, Saving Grace was actually a bit over-armed; Evgeny expected to find at least one log record where the captain had convinced a ‘derelict’ ship that it was dead and not merely crippled.  Too bad forensic science for starship homicide was a rare profession.  There was rarely much of a corpse to study, between explosive distribution of matter in space and the scavengers tearing apart any remnants they found.

Evgeny hoped that detection would prove similarly lax when a ship involuntarily changed hands.  They had the original registry codes for Saving Grace, thanks to Matilda.  Those would work for a time, until the distribution of news caught up with them.  From then on, the ship would play a game of bluff and disguise, stealing or forging codes, or else resupplying at ports where Collective registry didn’t matter much.

Mikala had already admitted that she would be an asset in that area.  Evgeny didn’t know how far he could trust her cooperation.  That was true for every sapient aboard, to be fair, but Mikala didn’t seem driven by personal goals the way he, Soloth, and Luuboh were.  Evgeny had been totally honest about his purposes for the ship.  He had correctly wagered that Soloth also wanted to put the colony and the Collective far behind.  He had offered Luuboh a better deal than it had ever received before. 

Possibly, Mikala had been working for the Terran government.  She might still be considered on the job.  Evgeny had dangled the offer of information before her, along with action against mass murderers.  Hopefully, that was enough, and she would forbear any attempts to disable or arrest Evgeny or the Mauraug until their work of vengeance was done.

Regardless of the motivation, they were rogues.  Renegades.  Pirates.  If Mikala was still licensed, did that make them privateers?  It wouldn’t matter to most of the Collective.  They had stolen a ship, no matter the circumstances, killed one of her crew and marooned the rest.  The abuses of Evgeny’s A.I. were a tertiary offense compared to the first two crimes.  Unless they were fortunate enough to find legitimate work – salvage was most poetically likely – they would have to commit further thefts to stay in operation.

Evgeny groaned as he digested the weight of his situation and considered the choices left to him.  He already missed Matilda’s advice.  Awakening her was an option rendered impossible by circumstances.  Surrendering to the ‘authorities’ was another.  What authorities?  Even if someone properly authoritative were present in-system, Evgeny would defy them anyway.  The Collective lacked the will to act.  It lacked the courage of its convictions.  Evgeny felt righteous, a feeling amplified by his youth.

Toggling the main comm system, Evgeny announced for all to hear (including Soloth and Luuboh in medical, wherever that was).  He spoke in familiar trade Terran and let the ship’s monitors handle the translation where necessary.

“To let you know what to expect, here are my plans: We have a hold full of cargo, obtained by questionable means.  We’re going to sell any of it that we can’t use.  With the profits, I want this ship upgraded, outfitted, and disguised so that we can stay in operation.  Then, we do some research: check for reports, come back and search this region, and otherwise do whatever is necessary to find the Apostates responsible for our losses.  Then, we go punish them.  If we find out who gave the orders to abandon our homes to the mercies of terrorists… well, then, we have another enemy to deal with.”

He paused, less certain now how to continue.  “After that… we probably won’t have much latitude left.  We’ll probably be notorious criminals.  It’s up to you how long afterward you want to stay on.  Try to desert before the Apostates are dealt with, and you’ll be suspected of betrayal and dealt with like Voshtig bash’Kenet.  Once that goal is completed, we may all need to scatter and find new lives.  I promise to help you there with any assets we pick up along the way.”

“We’re leaving,” he continued, “leaving Locust IV, leaving our old lives, and leaving the control of the Collective.  Not just leaving, escaping.  I want you to see me, and this ship, as your real escape from tragedy.  As refugees, we’d be the objects of pity and charity, the recipients of condolences and regrets.  As escapees, we will be feared… and perhaps privately, respected and cheered on.”

He went on, suddenly inspired: “We didn’t need to be saved.  We needed to be helped, back when it mattered.  They called this ship Saving Grace.  Fuck that.  Now it’s called Scape Grace.  That phrase comes from an even older Terran language.  It’s a way to say sinner or villain, someone who avoids the grace of God.  We don’t need their grace, their blessing, their late-coming largesse.  We escaped it.  And if that makes us criminals, then I’m proud to break free.”

As if seizing upon the dramatic moment, the re-christened ship tore loose from the gravity of Locust IV and entered vacuum.  Aiming just left of the eye of Ra, she plunged toward the spatial deformation created by the star’s mass and entered hyperspace.  At the next system nearby, they would bury the dead and sell their looted grave goods.  With those funds, Scape Grace would truly be reborn.