in0 (32 page)

“Those politics may have just
cost a lot of lives,” Park told her grimly. “Do you need help picking up the
pieces?”

“We have the rescue op well in
hand,” Benerinda told him. “How about yours?”

“I have two fighters that lost power,
but we should have them docked
 
with this
ship soon,” Park replied. We’ll see you on Felina?”

“You will,” Benerinda assured
him. “I’d offer to buy you a drink, but the Felinans’ Code doesn’t extend that
far. As I understand it, alcohol is technically a poison and it is against the
Code to give poison to a friend.”

“Good thing I’m not a heavy
drinker then,” Park shrugged.

The Pakha Montz met them at the
spaceport personally. He greeted each of the Earthlings with a firm handshake
and a smile that seemed just a little forced to Park until he reached Marisea.
“Ah! So you’re the famous Mer woman my father could not stop talking about!”

“I’m very sorry for your loss,
Pakha Montz,” Marisea told him sympathetically. “I liked your father very
much.”

“You did?” Montz showed surprise.
“Many people have told me how they respected him, but you may be the only one
outside of the family who liked him. My father was a very stern man and
determined to live by the Code at all times. I suppose I am that way too, but
you see, the Code of Behavior makes us stern. The more seriously you take it,
the more careful you must be not to violate it. That caution keeps us behaving
in the stiff and formal manner outsiders find so forbidding, but, my dear, if
you were able to see past that icy façade of Father’s, I am glad. He did not
make friends easily, a situation not only brought on by his strict adherence to
the Code, but from the fact that he was the Pakha.” Montz sighed, “a burden
that is now mine, I fear. But come to my home. A friend of my father’s deserves
only the best I have to offer.”

“You hospitality honors us all,”
Marisea responded.

Montz did not have eyebrows since
his entire face was covered with hair, but he made an expression that if he did
have district brows, the one over his right eye would have just raised
slightly. “Have you been studying the Code too, my dear.”

“Not really,” Marisea admitted,
“but I have enjoyed your father’s hospitality on more than one occasion. I once
used that response and got a delighted lecture about what the Code says about
the rules of hospitality, both from the point of view of the host and the
guest.”

“I hope you were not too bored,”
Montz winked at her. He gestured to them all that they should follow him.

“I might have been, normally,”
Marisea admitted, “but the pleasure Pakha Grintz had in a fresh audience made
it worthwhile, I think. What I would like to know, sometime, is how the Code
came to be at all. So much of it comes down to a simple, ‘Treat others the way
you wish to be treated.’”

“That is a long story,” Montz
told her as they strolled down the long concourse. “Actually it is a large
volume full of long stories that verge on mythology. We have scholars who spend
their entire lives on that one subject alone and there is no clear consensus as
to how our behavior came to be so codified as it happened further back than our
history records. Still if we have a long quiet evening sometime and you are
truly interested, perhaps we could study the matter together.”

“I would like that,” Marisea told
him.

“Be careful!” Montz warned her
jovially, “I might just believe you.”

There were news reporters at the
end of the concourse, but security guards kept them back behind a cordone,
providing Montz and his guests a wide path to the front gate and a waiting
hover-van. The first step outside caused all but Montz himself to gasp at the
chill air. “I apologize,” Montz told them, “but due to security restrictions I
could not arrange for a van inside the port itself.”

“That’s quite okay,” Park told
him. “It’s just that Earth is a tropical planet these days. It’s been a while
since we experienced temperatures this far below freezing.”

“Heh,” Marisea forced a chuckle
as she got gratefully into the heated van, “I doubt I ever have. Something to
tell the kids about, I suppose.”

“I have arranged for a nice warm
fire to sit around at dinner,” Montz told her.

“Sounds delightfully exotic,”
Marisea opined.

Montz looked puzzled for a
moment, “Oh. As an aquatic person, I suppose sitting near a fire would be a
rare thing. Would it make you uncomfortable? I could have a hot bath prepared
instead.”

“A hot bath is always nice,”
Marisea smiled, “but Earth is a very warm world. I am told this has not always
been the case, but it is these days. Consequently, the only time I have used
fire is in cooking and then only when traveling in the bush. It rarely gets
cold enough to need a fire to stay warm.”

“I see,” Montz nodded, “so what
is commonplace to me is quite unusual to you. I had not thought of that.”

Marisea smiled, “It’s your
hospitality I appreciate most. The form it comes in is, I am sure, most
appropriate.”

It turned out that a typical
Felinan dining room was built with a large round fireplace in the center with
small tables for two arranged around it. People were seated in odd, lopsided
chairs in which a diner could recline to his right or left, depending on the
chair. It reminded Park a little of Roman dining couches.

Following the Pakha Montz’s lead,
all the guests began the meal sitting straight up on the chairs, but as the
meal and conversation progressed for the next hour and a half, they gradually
all found themselves reclining. Montz kept the conversation trivial for the
first hour, but eventually he brought the topic to more serious business. “I
hope you will all forgive this breech of the Code,” he began. Iris, who had
been studying the Felinan Code of Behavior on their way there, smiled. The
Pakha was not violating the Code in the least, since it was flexible enough to
allow for times of emergency. Montz’s words were actually the prescribed manner
in which such emergency procedures were invoked. “But as pleasant as this
conversation has been, I propose that we speak of more serious matters for a
brief time. I hope that time will be brief, indeed.”

“We would all love to be able to
chat away about games and other entertainments,” Park told him, “but I must
agree that we are here for more serious concerns. This is your house and you
are our host. Speak of whatever you desire and we shall be happy to accommodate
you.”

“That is one of the strangest
ways I have ever heard of putting that,” Montz laughed. “Even a Felinan would
not have been so formal when saying… what is the Tzantzan expression?”

“Okay?” Sartena suggested.

“That’s it,” Montz smiled. “Thank
you. All right, as you know the Diet is in emergency session. We met even as
you were defending Felina and have continued to meet these last few days while
you all were returning from the battle.

“Parker Holman,” Montz continued,
“The Diet would be honored is you would consent to lead the Fleet in our war
against the Dark Ships.”

“Me?” Park asked, taken by
surprise.

“Both as the most successful
military leader in living memory and as a one-time delegate to the Diet, you
are highly respected within the Alliance,” Montz pointed out.

“Funny,” Park shook his head,
“but it didn’t seem that way a few weeks ago when I finally left the Diet.”

“The reappearance of the Dark
Ships and the attack on Owatino has changed many delegates’ minds about you.
And our military has always respected your accomplishments even if, at the time,
they were at odds with you personally.”

“But I’ve had only the most basic
of military training,” Park objected, “and that was literally a quarter of a
billion years ago. Truth be told, I doubt any mere mortal can even conceive how
long that truly is. I know I cannot. Not really.”

“Apparently your incredibly
ancient basic military training is more effective than anything our poor modern
officers have had,” Montz pointed out, a note of sarcasm in his voice.
“Seriously, I am certain that nearly everyone believes it is your incredible
Earth technology that is responsible for your victories against incredible
odds.”

“That and an incredible amount of
dumb luck,” Park replied

“Perhaps,” Montz shrugged, “but
when the issues of fleet command came up, yours was the only name the entire
Diet could agree on.”

 
“I don’t get it,” Park shook his head.
“Doesn’t the Alliance Fleet have an admiral in charge of the entire service?”

“Of course,” Montz nodded, “and a
whole staff of other admirals, each in charge of their own fleet units, but the
position of Admiral of the Fleet is primarily political in nature. He is the
one who chooses which of the Admirals would lead an action involving the
commands of several admirals, in theory at least. In practice, it is the Diet
that tells him who to choose.”

“That’s a hell of a way to run a
navy,” Park told him without any trace of humor. “I know some of the delegates
served when they were younger and one or two are retired flag-rank officers,
but most of those chuckleheads have trouble telling which side of the hatch the
spaceship is on.”

“The system appears to work for
us,” Montz replied a little defensively. “Usually the Fleet Admiral proposes
who he wants us to choose in any case.”

“Why not this time, then?” Park
asked, trying not to sound like it was a demand.

“You were his choice as well,
once your name came up,” Montz replied.

“Seems to me I’ve built up too
much of a mystique,” Park grumbled. “The idea was to get respect for Earth and
her people, not cow the whole Alliance into thinking I’m their savior.”

“We truly do need you to lead the
fleet against the Dark Ships, Parker Holman,” Montz told him, “or should I say
Black Admiral McArrgh?”

“You know about that, do you?”
Park asked warily.

“It is not really a secret,”
Montz laughed, “although I think everyone politely pretends they do not know.
Well, maybe there are some who truly do not know. It is hard to say for
certain. Regardless, while every delegate, it seemed, had a different second
choice, you were far and away the overwhelming first choice for command. If you
refuse, the Diet will be utterly disunited over whom to put in charge instead.”

“Park,” Iris told him. “Sounds to
me like you might be the only thing the Diet is agreed on.”

“Terrific,” Park muttered. “So
what you are saying is you want a figurehead to act like he’s running the
fleet? I won’t do that. It’s not fair to the real leaders or to the men and
women who serve with them.”

“The Diet neither needs nor wants
a figurehead, Admiral,” Montz replied formally. “We need you to lead.”

Park met with Fleet Admiral Othar
Relaviss in Montz’s home over the breakfast the next morning. It was supposed
to have been a private meeting, but Park was in an ornery mood, not having
slept well. He dismissed the guards who would have kept the meeting private and
when Marisea wandered into the dining room in search of breakfast with Cousin tagging
along behind her, he insisted she join them, mostly to see how Relaviss would
react to having to dine with a Mer.

Before Project Van Winkle woke up
in the middle of Pangaea Proxima, the Mer had been viewed as undesirables by
the rest of the people of the Alliance of Confederated Worlds, by virtue of
being a gene-locked species. The reasoning was religious in nature and
therefore suspect in Park’s mind, but from what he had learned, many members of
the Alliance, while descended from artificially created ancestors, were still
capable of evolution. The Mer were not and were therefore considered an
abomination in the eyes of the god or gods of one’s choice. Since Earth’s
emergence as a power within the Alliance, the Mer and the Atackack had been
accepted at least outwardly, but Park knew that such prejudices did not
evaporate. They tended to hide away for generations before remerging in their
original vehemence or worse.

If Fleet Admiral Relaviss held
any prejudices against Marisea as Montz’s servants arrived unsummoned with a
place setting for her, he failed to exhibit them and, in fact seemed pleased to
meet her and was fascinated by Cousin. When Cousin crawled up on to the
admiral’s lap and allowed him to pet her, Park was forced to admit he might be
one of the “good guys” after all and finally relaxed a little. Marisea did not
understand where Park’s tension was coming from, but as it ebbed, she helped
herself to the food on the table in front of her.

“I understand your hesitation,
Admiral,” Relaviss told him, nodding. “I had many second thoughts when I was
offered the post of Fleet Admiral. In fact I would have severe reservations
about you if you were eager for the job. We’re assembling the largest fleet of
ships the Alliance has ever seen.”

“Assembling?” Park asked. “Isn’t
there a standing fleet?”

“There is,” the admiral nodded,
“but usually no more than three hundred ships. Each world of the Alliance
donates ships to the fleet for a time and the ships rotate in and out of the
fleet. In an emergency, such as we have now, those ships and their crews can be
recalled into service.”

“And what have those ships been
doing in the meantime?” Park asked. “Acting as cargo carriers and miners? How
well armed will they be and how much military experience do their crews have?
Admiral, these Dark Ships were tough the first time around, but they are even
tougher, more powerful, faster than ever before. We are not going to overwhelm
them with numbers if all those numbers have are pea shooters and pop guns.”

“I don’t know what a pea shooter
is,” Relaviss smiled, “nor a pop gun, but I think I know what you mean. Some of
these ships have served as merchantmen, but by treaty they are required to
remain armed in the same manner they were when actively serving in the fleet
and the men and women on board will all be veterans.”