The screen went blank. The marines, Shan and Eddie all reacted as if they’d been slapped in the face. They seemed to think the abrupt end of the conversation was rude, but Esganikan had no more to add. Nevyan, however, clearly did. She spun around and beckoned to her ussissi aide, Serrimissani. “Get data on Garav. And see what the other ussissi know. Do the isenj realize these troops are here?”
Most wess’har who’d paused to watch the exchange between the two matriarchs dispersed and went about their business, depositing produce they didn’t need so that others could use it, and selecting what they needed from others’ bounty. Drama or not, life went on. Some stopped to talk to Nevyan and the other senior matriarchs, then went on their way.
“I’d say the Skavu are a bit too keen,” Shan said. She made an annoyed click with her teeth and examined her thumbnail in a rather un-Shanlike way. “Converts can be a pain in the arse. Can’t stand a born-again zealot, even if they’re on my side.”
The marines were ominously silent but their bearing and scent said they were, to use Ade’s phrase, up for it. There was a crisis; and they were bored, and trained precisely for times like these. For men and women who had been dismissed from their jobs, it gave them renewed focus. Ade and Eddie turned to Shan almost at the same time. Aras had begun to dread each day now, waiting for the next escalation or brand-new problem that accompanied it, and recognized the irony in a c’naatat worrying about the future.
Ade glanced at him, checking again, and patted his back. He winked. It’s okay. It’ll all be okay. He’d taken over Shan’s role of pretending things would be sorted out, and illusory as it was, Aras still welcomed it.
“How about the isenj?” said Jon Becken. “If I were them, I’d be shitting myself right now.”
Barencoin snorted. “What, more than if the Eqbas had just razed a few of your cities to the ground and were prepping bioweapons? How much more shit can they possibly have left?”
It was none of Aras’s business, but the Skavu—whatever they were—would be on Bezer’ej, and centuries of commitment to protecting the planet was impossible to switch off however betrayed he felt. What would the Skavu make of the bezeri—or him? An uneasiness echoed in him and he listened carefully to it, unsure if it was his own fear or an ancient isenj voice embedded in his genetic memory.
“The isenj react badly to the new arrivals,” he said. “As gethes would. The fact that they can’t be more doomed than they already are has no bearing on their emotions.”
“I can’t say I blame them,” said Shan. “Where does this leave Umeh Station?”
“Yeah, I’m feeling nervous about them too, Boss.” Ade’s pupils were dilated and he swallowed a couple of times. The rest of the marines were looking at him as if waiting for direction. Whatever the court back on Earth had decided, Ade was still the sergeant, the pack leader, and it was a bond that wasn’t easily broken. He had that certain quality, just as Shan did: when things went wrong, he stepped in and provided leadership. “We have to get the civvies out, at least. It’s too unstable over there. The station wasn’t designed to withstand a war going on outside the front door and if Jejeno’s utilities get hit, the dome’s systems can’t keep up cycling power and water for that many people. It’s way over capacity.”
“A direct hit would ruin their entire day too,” Barencoin muttered. “If the Eqbas withdraw their top cover, the dome’s a nice big symbolic target.”
“Come on, we’ve established refugee camps before,” said Webster. “Just get someone to say the word. Let’s get them out. It’d solve a lot more problems than it causes—keep all the Earthbound personnel in one location.”
Aras had expected some of the Umeh Station party to want to stay, given that they’d taken a fifty-year round trip and abandoned everything to come to the Cavanagh system. It was a measure of the precarious situation on Umeh that there had been no argument about withdrawing. Now it was an evacuation.
“Okay, Devil’s advocate,” said Shan. “How are we going to support a few hundred extra bodies here when the colony on Mar’an’cas can barely feed itself? We can’t ship in supplies. They can’t forage or live off the land. It’s not like disaster relief on Earth, Sue.”
“Then they ship out with all the supplies they’ve got,” said Webster, “and if the colonists remember all that Christian guff about helping those in need, we might manage it. If we need to. Nobody’s taken that decision yet.”
Shan chewed it over visibly, then swung around looking for Nevyan. She was in a huddle with the matriarchs. “Okay, let me see if Nev will change her mind about having more humans on her turf. Wait one.”
Aras called after her. “We should ask Deborah Garrod’s permission too.”
“It’s Nevyan’s planet,” Shan called back. “And if she says no, Deborah’s view doesn’t matter.”
Chahal and Webster began sketching out plumbing schematics on a ragged sheet of hemp paper. They were engineers, something Aras regularly overlooked because he saw only commandos. They didn’t just kill enemies. They provided humanitarian relief too. Aras had found that an odd combination until Ade explained something called “hearts and minds.” Aras and his troops hadn’t been much interested in the hearts or minds of the isenj colony on Bezer’ej, just their eradication.
Now he found himself thinking of eradicating the last of the bezeri, and that thought was getting persistent. It was a human one: he tried to measure it against the wess’har need for balance.
This isn’t wess’har. This isn’t wess’har at all.
“So, Sarge, is the missus going to let you out to play when we go to Umeh Station?” Barencoin asked. “Or are you grounded?”
“If you go, I’m going.” Ade glanced at Aras. “You up for it too, mate? I know it’s Umeh—”
“You should ask Shan.”
Barencoin frowned, his permanent dark stubble making him look what Shan called a right thug. “So she’s got your balls in her handbag, then. They’ll be nice and safe there.”
“It’s called manners, Mart. Y’know, consulting your wife.” Ade watched Shan walk back towards them, wistful adoration on his face for a moment. “Well, Boss?”
Shan shrugged. “Nevyan’s not ecstatic, but she says yes, if we have to—it’s Mar’an’cas.”
“Okay, then I want to take the detachment over to Umeh Station,” Ade said. Shan said nothing, or at least her mouth didn’t. She simply stared eloquently. “It’s my job, Boss.”
Aras rallied to his house-brother. “I don’t doubt the detachment’s competence, but I fought the isenj and I want to go too.”
Shan held her swiss in a white knuckled grip. Its status indicators flashed blue and the bioluminescence in her hands mirrored it as if answering. “You’ve got Esganikan’s top cover. You don’t need my permission, either.”
“I ask anyway.” Aras glanced at Barencoin, inviting comment if he dared. For a moment, he felt himself back in a larger family again, establishing the pecking order of the males. “You’re always concerned for my welfare. I don’t want to cause you concern.”
“Aras, do you seriously want to go to Umeh?”
Over the years, a mix of curiosity and wanting to face his demons gripped him from time to time, but now he wanted to be with his brother, with Ade, because he was walking into a war. The time was right—inevitable.
“It might help to walk on Umeh among isenj who regard me as a monster.” He didn’t have to tell her the rest, but the watching marines needed explanation. He knew they discussed his time as a prisoner of war. “It can’t make my memories worse, but it might temper them.”
He was the Beast of Mjat, slaughterer of innocents, war criminal. And a scrap of isenj within him yearned to see home: he’d learned to live with that voice without heeding it. He saw himself as none of those things, and yet he knew they were all him.
“Okay,” Shan said. “Can you spare time to talk to Deborah with me first? I need to sweet-talk her into accommodating the evacuees, and I don’
t do sweet-talk well.”
“We can secure Umeh Station first,” said Barencoin. “Then you join us.”
“When we’re done with the colony, we’ll get a shuttle to Jejeno.”
“Shooting might have started, and wess’har craft don’t have Eqbas shielding,” said Barencoin.
“I’ve been shot at on a routine basis, Mart. I know the drill.” Shan glanced at the marine. “What is this, a testosterone epidemic?”
“Just anxious to do our jobs,” Barencoin said. “Might be dim and distant, but we were sent here to provide protection for a civilian mission.”
“I do vaguely recall Thetis, yes…” For all her sarcasm, Shan never seemed to lose her patience with the marine, even though he was what Ade called in your face. Respect for the detachment gave her a tolerance she rarely showed to others. “Just remember that you can die, and so can Aras and Ade, if the explosion is enough to fragment them.” Her expression was oddly benign. “I came here with six marines, and I want six alive when it’s time to go home. Okay?”
“We need transport,” Ade said. “Makes sense if we go in with the Eqbas. We being the detachment.”
“I’d better talk to Miss Sunshine about your first-class seats, then,” said Shan. She walked a few paces away and then turned to Aras, hands in pockets. “Are you coming, sweetheart?”
They walked a few paces and then Shan turned round, went up to Ade, and kissed him unselfconsciously. That wasn’t typical Shan, and certainly not in front of Ade’s comrades.
“In case I’m not around when you have to ship out,” she said. “Just in case. No swanning off without saying goodbye, never again.”
Ade blushed on cue. The marines looked blank in that studious way that said they didn’t think the usual chorus of ribaldry was going to be funny this time. Shan turned around as if she’d suddenly realized where she was, and walked off briskly, eyes fixed ahead. Aras followed her out of the city, through the alleys at the bottom of the caldera’s bowl and towards the landing area to collect a shuttle.
“Should have taken the freight tube rather than fly,” she said. The network ran underground, stark carriages for moving material and produce between cities without disturbing the surface. “But it’s a few hours we don’t have—”
“Ade will be fine. You needn’t worry.”
“Okay, I didn’t get to say goodbye to you before I ended up doing an EVA sans suit, and I didn’t get to say goodbye to either of you when you went on your half-arsed let’ssee-who-can-sacrifice-himself-first mission to join the bezeri.” Shan rubbed her hand quickly across her nose, but she wasn’t crying. She wasn’t the weeping kind. “And I’m never going to risk that again. Not now. We think we might get separated—we part right. Okay?”
Aras nodded. Shan wasn’t good at intimacy and it burst out of her sporadically, as if she wasn’t sure how to use it. “There will be an end to this cycle of trouble, isan, and then we have no reason to be apart. And we’ll savor boredom.”
Shan paused as if sizing up the idea. “I like the sound of boredom, actually. It’s a novelty in itself.”
Aras flew the small shuttle to Mar’an’cas. He hadn’t piloted a vessel in a long time, and his body recalled being a pilot and that he was good at it. Shan peered out of the cockpit’s wraparound shield and seemed absorbed by the canyons and winding rivers that gave way to forests and eventually to coastal plains, where the island of Mar’an’cas sat staring back at Pajat.
It was just a gray rock. It seemed hard to believe that anyone could live there.
“Y’know, I’ve never flown over anywhere on Earth so unmarked by people,” said Shan.
No roads, no scattered towns, no big cities, no iconic buildings: it was the polar opposite of Umeh in every conceivable way. Aras still felt restoration would be wholly beyond the isenj. As he brought the vessel lower, Pajat emerged suddenly in the curve of cliffs, as dully gray as F’nar was frivolously pearlescent. “This is not a world for architects.”
“Maybe the Skavu will approve. Christ, it worries me that Esganikan didn’t know they were showing up so soon.”
“You seem to think the Eqbas should be omnipotent.”
“Well, it’s disconcerting to think that a million-year-old culture is as prone to bad communication, under-resourcing and getting in over their heads as the chimps back home.”
“There is no such thing as continual improvement. Just change.”
“Maybe I should adjust my expectations. I’m just glad I insisted on splitting the gene bank and keeping one in reserve.”
Aras set the vessel down near the beach. They sat in silence, listening to the ticking of the airframe as parts cooled.
“Five years,” said Shan. “It’ll all be behind us. The colony, the Eqbas, Umeh Station, everyone—on their way back to Earth. Umeh—well, on the mend or a blank slate. We won’t know what to do with our time, will we?”
Shan didn’t mention the bezeri, or the Skavu. Aras also wondered what they might be doing in five years’ time. Shan was still thinking like a creature that died within a hundred years, but it was early days for her.
“What did you have in mind for the gene bank?” he asked.
“The spare?”
“If the Earth adjustment fails, you won’t commit your last resource to a second attempt.”
“No, I’ll hand it to the Eqbas. Perhaps they can create a terrestrial environment minus Homo sapiens and give every other bugger a chance.” She nudged him with her elbow. “It’s too big for me to think about. Right now, I’ll settle for getting the colony to take on the Umeh evacuees. Tick ’em off the list one at a time.”
“This is an escalating problem.”
“Here’s the trick,” said Shan. She swung down from the cockpit. She actually seemed more cheerful today: she hadn’t mentioned the abortion for a while, and she wasn’t fretting openly about Rayat and Lindsay. “You reach a point where there’s so much shit coming down the pipe that you can’t worry or panic any longer because you have no choices to make. You just deal with what’s immediate. Tactical rather than strategic level. If tactical gets too much, I default to operational. Does that make sense?”
It was police jargon. “No.”
“Basically, you do what you can.”
She strode down to the shallow-draft boat on the beach. Nobody else went to Mar’an’cas. It was there for them alone. Aras followed her example, and thought of his list, the tactical things he might do to stem the feeling of being buried in chaos and unbidden memories.
Do what you can.
He settled for accepting that his five-hundred-year vigil to keep Bezer’ej from being despoiled again had failed.
From there, things could only improve.
The Temporary City, Bezer’ej
Esganikan Gai had expected the call sooner, but the isenj were no longer working together globally. The Northern Assembly, millions of miles away on Umeh, had finally detected the Skavu fleet.
“Minister Shomen Eit wants an explanation,” said Aitassi. “I didn’t tell him it was too late to debate about this.”
Esganikan wondered whether to tell him that Minister Rit had already asked for her immediate intervention, but the internal power struggles of the Northern Assembly cabinet didn’t concern her. “If Rit intends to remove Shomen Eit to ensure the restoration goes ahead with some degree of cooperation, that will be a bonus.”
There was nothing the isenj could do about it either way. Their long-range systems still fed back data, but their strike capacity was gone. In the command center cut into the rock of Bezer’ej, the Eqbas crew paused to watch the exchange. Humans, Shan said, didn’t conduct critical meetings in front of an audience. Esganikan couldn’t see why; the more people who saw it, the better informed everyone was, and the more chance they had to make a useful contribution.
But gethes didn’t work that way. Earth was going to be hard work in more ways than one.
“What is this, Commander?” Shomen Eit appeared on th
e screen, agitated. Esganikan wasn’t sure if raised quills meant anger or fear, but this certainly wasn’t a relaxed isenj on her screen. The cabochon beads of green gems that tipped his quills rattled, making his gasping delivery of English harder to understand. “These look like Eqbas ships. Are you sending more support, or are you invading?”
“They are Skavu,” said Esganikan. “From Garav.” Did isenj have any knowledge of the system? It was so close as to be next door—a few light-weeks—but that didn’t mean they had ever had contact with each other. “Garav is—”
Shomen Eit seemed to expand. His quills were now almost 90 degrees from his body. “We know about Garav,” he said. Every word was sucked and exhaled through a hole in his throat, bypassing his own vocal system. “We have seen what you did to Garav, and many other worlds. Minister Ual was keen to show us the evidence to justify why we should cooperate with you.”
“The Skavu can help you restore your planet once we give them the means.”
“You give them ships and weapons, they wipe us out. Yes, I understand.”
“They don’t want conquest. They want balance. I don’t have the troops to fight street by street with your enemies. So choose, Minister—I can deal with your planet very rapidly from orbit, or I can give you land forces who’ll do a more considered job and isenj will survive.”
“But they will not be under our command, will they? All other states are at war with us, and that small problem has to be resolved before I can worry about planting more trees.” Shomen Eit did a very good job of spitting out the word for a creature who wasn’t using lips to form sound. “So tell me what your Skavu allies can do that’s helpful.”
“Minister, your domestic affairs are your concern. What do you plan to do? Surrender?”
Shomen Eit was silent for a moment. “I have a number of options. I may have to capitulate and accept enemy terms.”