Bolo Brigade (24 page)

"Oh, come down off your white charger, Lieutenant," Len said. "George just said that Miss Turner might have her own agenda, that's all. She did come here to get help, right?"

Donal reached out and fingered the blue, faintly metallic material of the man's sash. "You two seemed to be in uniform. What is this?"

"We're members of the Party for Galactic Peace and Harmony," Len told him.

"A political action committee, actually," George added, "backed by a number of the independent trade corporations and shipping companies in the Confederation."

"Ah. But of
course
you gentlemen have no agenda!"

George and Len both opened their mouths, then gaped hopelessly for a moment.

"Come on, Alexie," Donal said. "Let's see if we can find some fresh air."

He led her up a curving stone stairway leading to a broad corridor. A moment later, they turned left through a high, arched doorway that opened for them at their approach.

"Thanks, Donal," she said, as they stepped through, emerging into the fragrant and chilly Muir night.

"Hey! For what?" They stood on a small, open stone balcony halfway up the side of the castle's north wall. The fjord was almost directly beneath them, the boat ramp and piers below and to the left. A sharp wind was blowing down the loch, carrying with it the mingled smells of forested mountain and ice.

She laughed. "For a diplomat, I guess I'm not doing so well," she said. "Every time I start to talk to people here, I end up getting into fights."

"I think," he said, "that no one here wants to believe us."

"You too?"

"When I delivered my report the other day, I was ordered not to talk about what I'd seen." He wrinkled his face and adopted the nasal tones of one of Phalbin's senior aides. " 'It is vitally important that the Muir civilian population not be panicked until these observations can be checked.' Hell, I'm not even allowed to upload this stuff to Freddy and Ferdy, and that really gripes me."

"They haven't tried to shut me up," Alexie said, "except that they do try to control who I talk to, and they make sure I'm stuck on the circuit of official appearances and meetings. Since I arrived two days ago, I must have talked to every minister, every secretary, every department head, and every bureaucrat on the planet. My feet hurt, my voice is raw, and I'm getting fed up with the whole idea."

"How are the kids getting on?"

She smiled. "Oh, as well as can be expected. A lot of the younger ones miss home, though most are thinking of this as a glorious camping expedition. They were glad to get unpacked out of those ships."

"I can imagine. I was getting pretty claustrophobic there on the
Uriel
, especially the last couple of days."

For a time, they leaned against the stone wall rimming the balcony, not saying anything. The Strathan Cluster glowed low in the east, partly obscured by the mountains. Northward, the planet's aurorae danced and shimmered in ghost-emerald splendor.

"You know, I thought for a while there that you were mad at me," Donal continued. "I thought you were avoiding me." She was quiet for a long moment, and he was afraid he'd offended her. "Look, I didn't mean—"

"It's okay, Donal." She lay one slim hand on his arm. "I'm sorry. I guess maybe . . . I guess I was avoiding you for a while. I was angry, a little hurt. But not really at you."

"I know you didn't want to leave Wide Sky."

She shook her head. "And from what I've encountered here . . ." She rolled her eyes and cocked her head toward the door at their backs, indicating the PGPH people Donal had rescued her from. "I'm less sure than ever that I'm doing the right thing."

"I think you are. They've got to be told, even when they don't want to hear it. Why were you mad?"

"It was Fitz, really. I told you that he was, well, sort of an uncle to me? That he promised Dad to look out for me? Trouble is, I grew up. I can take care of myself, now. Damn it, I was Deputy Director of a planet of a hundred million people, and he still . . ." Her voice trailed off.

"He still what?"

"I don't know. He was a good advisor. A good
friend
. But I resented his high-handedness sometimes, especially when he got all protective. Smothering, you know? And when he ordered me to go with you, well, I guess being mad at Dad's old friend would have felt like a kind of betrayal. So I transferred what I was feeling to you, because you were in on it too. I'm sorry. That wasn't fair."

"Maybe not. But it's human. And I'm glad you're not mad at me anymore."

"Hell, you're my knight in shining armor. You saved me from those PGPH dragons in there!"

Donal shook his head. "Have you ever heard such nonsense?"

"Frequently. The Harmonies aren't strong on Wide Sky, probably because we've never faced a major war out there, but they were there. Their major platform called for abolishing the military entirely."

"I guess they feel pretty silly now."

"Actually, Donal, I doubt that. Last I heard, they were planning to form up a delegation to go
talk
to the Malach. And there's been a lot of discussion about talking to all of the Confederation worlds, about avoiding bloodshed by simply giving the Malach whatever they need."

"What . . . surrender? Just like that?"

"To save civilization. To avoid extinction. To keep the cities and museums and universities from being smashed into broken stone."

"From what I've seen of the Malach, that's what they're here to do. How does surrendering stop them?"

She shook her head. "I really don't know. I've even heard talk that there are factions who want to join the Malach."

"Lovely."

"It's serious, Donal. I had a report, the day before you reached Wide Sky, that said there was a PGPH faction growing within the military that advocated allying with the Malach."

"Good God! Why?"

"Elementary psychology, Donal. There are going to be people everywhere who want to align themselves with the strongest, toughest kid on the block. Wide Sky's government, the Cluster government, for that matter, looks pretty weak and ineffectual right now. A lot of people think they'd be better off on the winning side."

Donal felt as though a punch had been driven into his gut. "I wouldn't have thought it possible. Humans siding with those . . . monsters?" He was remembering the sight of one Malach, frustrated by the struggles of a human prisoner, reacting in what could only have been blind, possibly instinctive rage.

"It's going to get worse," Alexie told him. "With Wide Sky and Endatheline both conquered, lots of worlds might decide that allegiance to the Malach is no worse than allegiance to Muir."

"I wonder what the Malach think of that."

"I don't know. They may not want anything more than the refined and concentrated metals they're stealing from our cities, and if that's the case, humans are just going to be in their way, no matter whether they're fighting back or trying to join them."

"I think that does explain one thing, though," Donal said.

"What's that?"

"Phalbin and his command staff are scared. The governor is scared. I thought that they were afraid of the Malach, that they would want to prepare themselves, the army, and the civilian population, to meet the threat. I'm beginning to think that they might be less afraid of the Malach than they are of their own people."

"You could be right. After all, there's not a lot we can do about the Malach, and they may not be here to stay anyway. But we've
always
got to face our neighbors."

A meteor flared suddenly in the northwest, streaking across the dark sky trailing green fire.

"Oh, God, no," Alexie said.

"What's wrong? Just a shooting star."

The meteor brightened as it passed almost directly overhead, then silently winked out as it flashed toward the southeastern horizon.

"That's how it began. On Wide Sky." She told him about standing under a night sky much like this one, and watching a storm of brilliant meteors descending out of the night. "And that's when the attacks began," she concluded. "I assumed that we were watching spacecraft entering the atmosphere. Later I realized we must have been seeing their landing craft."

Donal studied the sky. "Looks like only the one," he said. "Maybe it was a
real
meteor."

"I hope so."

With a sharp sense of the irony of the thought, he realized that he was playing the same game as the Confederation government officials, ignoring the evidence and hoping things would get better.

"Come on," he told her. "I think we should tell someone."

"Okay." She shivered. "It's getting awfully cold, all of a sudden."

They turned and re-entered the castle, following the explosive sounds of laughter and conversation.

Behind them, the stars gleamed in uncaring splendor from the black waters of Loch Haven.

The Sh'whiss probe had already completed its primary mission. It had been lurking in this system's Oort cloud when it had recorded the passage of the fleet of twenty-three ships inward to the fourth planet of this star. It had used a tight-beamed FTL transmission to alert the Malach Packfleet, then carefully worked its way toward the target world, its rather single-minded robotic brain programmed to learn as much about the target planet's environment and defenses as possible.

During its atmospheric entry, it had arranged to pass almost directly over the large lake where the human fleet had landed, duly recording the vast sprawl of tents and make-shift buildings. Now, it rested at the end of a deeply plowed, still-smoking furrow in the woods southeast of the camp, a jet-black, triangular airfoil with a large dome on its upper surface. At a whispered electronic command, the dome slid open.

The device within was the heart of the ship, a Malach robot shaped like a tapered, black metallic egg or spindle. Struts telescoped from the top of the device, unfolded, unfolded again, and yet again, until the ends touched the ground, then levered the spindle up and out of its resting place. Four glowing red electronic eyes winked open around the perimeter of the thing's body; six spidery legs lifted it, an ebony pendant, well clear of the ground.

The human ships lay
that
way, about fifty
t'charucht
distant. Weapons and sensors unfolded from its sides, seeking targets.

With a mechanical whine, it began walking toward the northwest.

Alexie descended the stairway into the Great Hall with Donal. More guests had arrived while they'd been outside talking, and the place was so crowded now that movement was difficult.

She caught sight of Governor Chard across the stone-floored room, standing with a small group of people. General Phalbin was at his side, listening to a trio of civilians, two men in formal cloaks and kilts, and a woman wearing what looked like the lower half of a gown spun from pure, emerald light. One of the men wore the blue and silver sash of the PGPH. The other, much older, wore a simple clan sash. "Over there," she told Donal.

"I see them. Let's go."

She started to hang back, unwilling to get into another pointless debate with the Harmonies, but as Donal forged his way through the crowd, she changed her mind and fell into his wake. As she came closer, she could hear the man with the Harmony sash expostulating on the Malach . . . and the prospects for a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

"
Communication
, that's the key," the man was saying. He was a small, red-haired man with an intense expression. "These Malach, after all, are intelligent, rational beings, am I right?"

Phalbin frowned into his drink. "They are undeniably intelligent, Lord Delacroix. Rational, yes, at least by their standards. The question is whether they are reasonable by human standards."

"Nonsense! All intelligent beings want the same thing," Delacroix said with a flourish of his hand that came perilously close to sloshing his drink on the floor.

"
These
intelligent beings seem to want some of our real estate," Governor Chard said.

"You know," the woman added, smiling. "So far the Cluster has lost nothing but a few relatively poor and unproductive worlds, of importance only to a handful of nature-loving rugged-individualist types. I doubt that many of them even voted for you, Governor, during the last election."

"Elena's right," Delacroix said. "It's not as if we need Endatheline or Wide Sky. In fact, we might find these Malach to be decent trading partners. They seem to put a high premium on refined metal, copper, zinc, steel, and so on."

"Why should they trade," Donal said, approaching the group, "when it's so much easier for them to simply take what they want?"

"And there speaks the brazen voice of the military," the second man said. He was a lean, hawk-faced, older man with silver hair and knobby knees showing beneath the hem of his kilt. "You know, I'd really thought we'd outgrown that kind of mentality."

"Ah, Lieutenant Ragnor," Governor Chard said, turning and smiling. "So glad you could make it this evening. We were just wondering where you'd gotten to." His face brightened. "And Deputy Director Turner! A pleasure to see you, my dear."

"Hello, Governor, General," Donal said.

"Permit me," Chard said, "to introduce Lord John Delacroix, the current resident of Glenntor, and our host tonight."

Donal rendered a Concordiat salute. "An honor, sir."

"Lieutenant." Delacroix inclined his head slightly.

Chard gestured to the others. "Elena St. Martin. Lord Willis Beaumont, CEO and president of the Strathan Far Star Import-Export, one of our larger local corporations. Gentlemen, Miss St. Martin, this is Deputy Director Alexie Turner of Muir, and Lieutenant Donal Ragnor, our evening's guest of honor, the brave soldier who ventured alone to Wide Sky to face the enemy directly and bring vital information back to us here on Muir."

"Not quite alone, Governor," Donal said. "My pilot was one of your Space Service officers. She died so that we could get the refugee fleet off of Wide Sky and back to Muir."

As if to steer the conversation in a more comfortable direction, Elena St. Martin turned to Alexie with a bright smile. "Welcome to civilization, Deputy Director! I imagine you must find it strange back here in all the lights and excitement."