The outer ring crumpled, then the inner ring, and then her feet were sucked in. She kept her eyes open out of a stupid sense of pride—a captain should not look away from the fate of her ship—and felt the nausea rise as her legs cracked and twisted. When the yawning emptiness rushed over her head, she no longer knew whether her eyes were open or not. She wasn’t even certain she existed. This moment, in the infinite and infinitesimal space between spaces, was a time and place that defied all understanding. It lasted half a second, it lasted a year, and then her body was stretched and peeled and spat out, and she was swallowing the bile that hovered in her throat.
The first time she went through an exit transition, she stubbornly refused the foramine. She had never done that again. Even with the medication, it was all she could do to keep from throwing up.
But they were through. The upper display, now whole again, showed the wondrous darkness of normal space punctuated by a million discrete points of light.
She relaxed her hands, which had been clenched so tightly around the brace bars that letting go was painful. Flexing her fingers to restore the circulation, she swallowed several more times until the nausea finally receded.
“Everyone still have all their molecules?” she called out.
Groans and a few chuckles filled the air. Lokomorra looked up from his station with a grin that deepened his dimples. “Feels like my big toe got stuck in my ear this time, but other than that, I’m good.”
“Holy Seeders,” Roris croaked from her other side. “It is so much worse on the bridge.”
“It’s a much larger space than a weapons room or your quarters,” Ekatya said. “You have more time to see it coming. And the display makes it more visceral.”
“No kidding. Why do you turn it on?”
“Count your blessings, Roris. I could have had the bottom display on, too.”
She thought she heard a whispered Oh, fuck and clamped her mouth shut. Roris was tough and proud, and it would not help Ekatya in her goal to get the woman into officer training if she laughed at her in front of the entire bridge.
She unclipped her harness, slid the brace bars back into their armrests, and asked navigation for verification of their position. They had exited base space at the relay station closest to their destination, which meant they still had six days of travel in normal space.
“Set course for the Lexihari system,” she said, rising from her chair and making her way down the steps to the bridge deck. “Standard cruising speed. Commander Lokomorra, I’m headed for the medbay. You have the bridge.”
“Yes, Captain,” he said as she crossed the deck. “I’ll try to keep it in one piece.”
Her steps nearly faltered. Commander Baldassar wouldn’t have dreamed of making such a public quip on the bridge, and she was halfway to a reprimand before recalling the conscious decision she had made to accept Lokomorra because of, rather than in spite of, his relaxed attitude.
Don’t be Sholokhov, she reminded herself.
“See that you do, Commander,” she said mildly. “And perhaps you could polish the deck while you’re at it?”
Several of the crew at the wall stations looked at each other and smiled. Their stances loosened, and Ekatya could feel the ease in the collective bridge mood.
She wasn’t used to it. But she liked it.
CHAPTER 27:
Language chip
Ensign Bellows was waiting in the medbay lobby. He still looked a little green around the edges, which did nothing for his complexion and made his round face seem even rounder.
“How was your first exit transition, Ensign?” Ekatya managed to not smile too broadly.
“It was, uh…all right.” He swallowed.
“All right? That must be how they say ‘nauseating’ in Gov Dome these days.”
His expression cleared. “Even you?”
“Me and just about everyone else. There are a few lucky souls who aren’t bothered, but not many. You didn’t refuse the foramine, did you?”
“Seeders, no. Commander Kenji said if I did that, I’d wish I had died during transition, rather than just thinking I did.”
She laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Then you were smart. Someone gave me the same advice my first time, but I thought I was tough enough to be one of the lucky ones. I wasn’t.”
“I’m learning more about you all the time, Captain.” Dr. Wells had arrived with a tall, very slender man at her side. Holding a medpad against her chest with one hand, she extended the other. “Ensign Bellows, yes? I’m Dr. Wells, chief surgeon. This is Dr. Tatyn. He’ll be doing your surgery.”
Bellows gave her an uncertain smile as he shook her hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Dr. Wells. Dr. Tatyn?”
“You’re in good hands here, Ensign.” Dr. Tatyn gestured toward an open treatment room. “I promise it won’t take long.”
Bellows took a step, then stopped and turned to Ekatya. “Captain Serrado, I’m just curious, but…why now?”
“Because we’re going to have headaches for the next two days,” Ekatya said. “Possibly three. And nothing they can give us will help.”
“And we need to be over that before we arrive in the Lexihari system,” he said thoughtfully.
“Exactly. We didn’t schedule it earlier because I didn’t want either of us to be debilitated right after launch. And we both had a pile of reports to read.”
“Okay. That makes sense.” He turned to Dr. Tatyn. “I’m ready.”
Ekatya watched them go.
“You look worried,” Dr. Wells said.
“I am. He’s never been in space before now, his training in first-contact protocols started the day we launched, and this is the first time he’s even had a language chip replacement. That boy does not belong on this landing team.”
“Then why is he on it?”
“Sholokhov assigned him.”
“Why in all…?” Wells trailed off. “There has to be a reason.”
“I think it might be about control. Bellows worked as my assistant in the Presidential Palace for sixteen months. Sholokhov knows him very well. He doesn’t know anyone else in the data systems section.” Though she wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he had a full dossier on her entire crew.
“You mean he’s sending a virtual child on a first-contact mission because he doesn’t trust anyone else?”
“Possibly. Probably.”
Wells’s expression darkened. “What is wrong with that man?”
“Nothing a lobotomy couldn’t fix.” She knew better than to speak so openly, but on this topic, she felt safe with Dr. Wells. It was one of the few things she did feel confident about when it came to her chief surgeon. They had cleared the air, yes, but they were still on edge around each other, and she didn’t know when or if that would change. It infuriated her to think Sholokhov had won this one, too, but there was little she could do about it.
“I would volunteer to perform that surgery.” Wells shook her head, then looked at her medpad. “Your record says you speak Common organically, which puts you in a minority. Your current language chips are High Alsean and Terrahan. Which one do you want to replace?”
It had been a difficult decision. She hated to lose either one. If she gave up High Alsean, and they could not complete this mission before her next quantum com call with Andira, she would have to resort to a translator. Lhyn of course spoke fluent Common, but in their more intimate moments, they conversed in Terrahan, Lhyn’s native language. For the woman whose life was built around learning and speaking the languages of others, to have someone speak her own was a revelation. Lhyn always said that when Ekatya had shown up for one of their rendezvous and whispered I’ve been waiting for this in her own language—that was the moment she had fallen in love.
“High Alsean,” Ekatya said.
“Really? That’s not the one I would
have guessed.”
“Then it seems you still have a few things to learn about me, Dr. Wells.” She hadn’t meant it to sound dismissive, but Wells took it that way.
“I’m sure it’s only a matter of time,” she said shortly. “Shall we?” Without waiting for an answer, she walked toward a treatment room.
“Shek,” Ekatya muttered. Sometimes, the Alsean curse just fit better.
No other words passed between them as Ekatya awkwardly positioned herself on the treatment bed and turned her head to the side. She hated this part. Any work on her lingual implant involved someone else being uncomfortably close to her face.
Her vision was filled by a lab coat as Dr. Wells leaned over, brushing her hair back and clipping it out of the way to expose the area behind her ear. The coat had been recently cleaned, judging by the new laundry scent still clinging to it. When Wells reached over to pick up an injector, Ekatya let out a breath, relieved to be able to see the room again.
“Wait,” she said before she could think better of it. “I just realized that you never accepted my apology.”
Wells lowered the injector. “Are you worried?”
“No, but… I’d feel better if I knew for certain that you weren’t holding a grudge.”
“That’s a little insulting. Don’t concern yourself, Captain. You already know I take my oath seriously.”
It wasn’t the answer Ekatya wanted, but the injector stung her throat and she forgot what she had meant to say. As she sank into the darkness, her tunneling vision caught sight of an impossible but somehow unsurprising figure standing next to Dr. Wells.
“Lhyn,” she murmured. Even that single word seemed too heavy to drag from her throat, but she needed Lhyn to know. “I kept Terrahan. I couldn’t give up any part of you.”
“I know, tyrina,” Lhyn said. “Go to sleep.”
CHAPTER 28:
Lexihari
Ekatya had thoroughly studied the Lexihari system when the task force was considering it for first contact and possible Protectorate membership. The inhabited planets were the second and third in a five-planet system.
Halaama, closer to the sun, was warmer and had a vibrant agricultural base. It also boasted an egalitarian society with an excellent civil rights record, a fact that had been brought up over and over by certain members of the task force bent on bringing it into the Protectorate.
Nylak was a cooler planet with rich mineral resources and a culture locked into a gender-segregated system. Females had few rights and were valued largely for their ability to pleasure the males and produce children. Ekatya could not believe Nylak had even been proposed, but since it was impossible to bring in one planet without the other, the Halaama defenders had claimed that pulling Nylak up to civilized standards would represent a great social experiment that the Protectorate was almost obligated to perform. What better proof of the benefits of membership?
That had spawned endless debates, all of which Ekatya found exhausting. She was more cynical these days, and the list of mineral resources on Nylak looked far too similar to those on the five supposedly inhabited planets for which the Protectorate had sold Alsea. If the push to get membership for Nylak was truly about freeing half of the planetary population from the chains of cultural subjugation, she would eat her captain’s bars.
The history of the two planets was studded with wars. They were evenly matched in terms of technology, both cultures driven by the need to keep up with the other, though of course neither had faster-than-light capabilities. Both kept sizable fleets of warships despite the current lack of overt hostilities. Trade was highly regulated, and interplanetary tourism was nonexistent.
Ekatya had not given two seconds of thought as to which planet she would target. The men of Nylak refused to conduct business or diplomacy with Halaama women and would never accept her as the commander of her ship and representative of her people. Going there would mean putting Commander Lokomorra up as her proxy and leading him from behind. He was even less fond of the idea than she was.
Fortunately, Nylak’s current position in its orbit placed it more than a light-hour away from Halaama, allowing them to fly straight to the inner planet without coming anywhere near its sibling.
On their way in, Commander Kenji had his analysts monitoring the electromagnetic frequencies used for communications by the two civilizations. No mention had been made of the Voloth. By itself, this proved nothing—the visit could have been a stealthy one, kept secret by the governments involved—but Ekatya had her doubts. The Voloth didn’t do anything quietly. If they could prove Sholokhov’s intel wrong, she could avoid a landing altogether and make this a very short mission.
That hope was dashed the moment a Halaaman warship hailed them.
Ekatya took the call on her virtual screen. The rest of the bridge crew could look to the display, which showed the transmission in four locations and translated all conversation to Common. The translator had been loaded with the diplomatic languages of both Halaama and Nylak before they left base space.
The warship captain, a middle-aged man with a series of dark dots tattooed in lines on each side of his bald head, was already scowling. “You have entered Halaama space without permission. State your name, destination, and intent.”
Lokomorra glanced up at Ekatya, his eyebrows raised. This was not the demeanor of a man who had never before seen an alien ship.
“My name is Captain Serrado, and we have come with peaceful intent. We hope to establish orbit around Halaama, where with perfect deference I request the honor of a meeting with the Great Leader.”
The man’s expression grew more open at her use of their formal diplomatic phrasing. “I am Defender Ceylayana, here to serve,” he said. “You are certainly more polite than your predecessors. They were unaware of basic courtesies.”
“I can’t answer for any who came before. This is the first time my people have been in your system.”
He frowned. “Who are your people? The last ones looked like you.”
Not for the first time, Ekatya wished the Voloth had some sort of physical difference that set them apart. But they were all Gaians, separated only by a fundamental moral conflict—and the refusal of the Voloth to call themselves by a name they now disdained.
“My people are the Protectorate, a group of planets dedicated to peaceful coexistence and mutually beneficial trade. Who did the last ones say they represented?”
“They called themselves members of the Guild.”
Baffled whispers rustled through the bridge.
“We’re not familiar with this group,” Ekatya said.
“Nor were they familiar with you. They never mentioned a Protectorate.”
“Then it seems we both have a mystery to solve. I hereby reiterate my deferential request.”
He nodded. “I will deliver your request. The Great Leader may need time to answer. You will not progress until he does.”
It took a stiff spine to tell the captain of a ship ten times larger than his that she wasn’t going anywhere. Ekatya had to admire the attitude.
The Great Leader was on a video link from Halaama within ten minutes. His head was also bald and tattooed, though the markings took the form of two lines curving over the top of his head with a row of dots marching between them.
“Welcome to Halaama, Captain Serrado of the Protectorate,” he said in a rich baritone voice. “You have made a good impression with your courtesy.”
“Thank you. I find that courtesy is rarely wasted.” She had to wait a beat before responding, given the one-second delay. Light-speed communication was so primitive.
“Nevertheless, it is a welcome discovery in those we hope will become friends. In our own system, such courtesy is a rarity.”
Either that was a subtle push to determine whether she had already spoken with the Nylakians, or he was airing his distaste for an entire culture
.
“It can be a rarity where I come from as well. I hope you will not think me discourteous if I say that I came here for a purpose and wish to pursue it. I understand others have approached you before our arrival.”
“Yes, the Guild.”
“Did they offer a treaty?”
He gave her a measuring look. “We have no need of a treaty; we are not at war. The Guild had some goods on offer, and we made a trade that was beneficial to both sides.”
If this was the Voloth, they had changed tactics so drastically as to be unrecognizable.
“My people may also be interested in a trade relationship,” she said carefully. “Would it be possible to meet to discuss it?”
After that, it was simply a negotiation of terms for their meeting. They were given permission to enter low orbit, from which their shuttle would be escorted to the Governing Palace. Ekatya requested permission for six of her fighters to accompany the shuttle, was refused any at all, intimated that she could speak with the Nylakians if the Halaamans did not respect her needs, and ended up with approval for three fighters, which was what she had wanted in the first place. In exchange, she promised that none of her landing team would carry weapons. This was of course a blatant lie, but she was reasonably certain that her team’s weapons would not be detected.
In the seventeen days between her orders from Sholokhov and their arrival at Halaama, Ekatya and her section chiefs had hammered out every detail and possibility they could think of as they prepared for this mission. When the landing team stepped out of their shuttle and into the pageantry of a diplomatic occasion, she felt confident that they were as ready as they could be.
But they had not taken into account the excessive formality of the Halaamans. After an extremely lengthy greeting ceremony, they were led with many apologies through a scanner—which pronounced them free of weaponry—escorted into the multi-towered Governing Palace, and taken on a long and mind-numbing tour. This gave her team the advantage of being able to surreptitiously map much of the palace from the inside, but they paid for it by listening to droning speeches about the importance of this artifact, that historical figure, and the symbolism of the four—or five, Ekatya lost count—different architectural ages represented in the building’s construction.