IronStar (73 page)

Adrianne’s feet scissored around
Elagai’s right foot and applied leverage. Elagai sprang half a meter into the
air out of the trip-hold, coming down on her other foot a meter away, spinning
and lunging as Adrianne bounced to her feet. The women’s hands flashed, slapped
together, slapped and blocked again. Seeing another stalemate, they disengaged.
Neither was breathing heavily.

“You just did it
again
!”
Adrianne complained good-naturedly. “How do you know when I start my attack
from
behind
you? I was
very
quiet about it.”

“I heard your breathing stop, as
you tensed to lunge,” the Wrth woman answered.

“You heard my
breathing
stop?” Adrianne rolled her eyes and looked around the circle. “Ok, who’s next?”
None of the Talamae stirred. One large Regnum Marine private shuffled his feet,
rubbed his shoulder where it had recently cushioned his fourth fall. “What, all
the big strong Marines can’t take this sweet li’l lady to the mats?”

“Addie, it’s not
nice
to
bait the grunts”, Marcus said from beside her. “They’ve suffered enough. Let’s
move on to basic beamer maintenance, then
we
can teach
them
something
for a change.”

A few hundred meters away, another
circle was gathered in the cleaned but still slightly damaged octagonal
conference room in the palace.

“I must say,” mused Mr. Baldwin as
he scanned a data wafer, “this is a very
selective
shopping list. I
understand the construction equipment. But you’re ordering satellites for
surveillance and communications, but not for defense. Ground transport but no
roadbuilding equipment. Aircraft but just a few cargo handlers. Fabricators,
regen tanks, fusion bottles, wristcomps, survival suits, training suites. No
food synthesizers, no 3V servers, hardly any farming equipment… I simply don’t
understand, Ms. Roehl. The advance from your contract with UniDom is good
credit immediately, it would cover far more than you’re asking for from
Planetation.

“And quite aside from your official
needs, you personally have a share in the
Arvida-Yee’s
crew bonus.
Simply for discovering this planet, you nine, well, you and Ms. Finch and the
other seven’s estates, will split over five billion Krona in finders’ fees,
plus ongoing trade royalties. That’s over half a billion for each of you two,
and all you want is a pair of these Mannheim gliders and some, some
housewares
.
Oh, I see, and a house… no, that’s a home security system… don’t you
like
money,
Ms. Roehl?”

“I like money just fine, Mr.
Baldwin. I just don’t have the time to spend it right now. We’ve got a whole
planet to consolidate, hundreds of tribes and nation states that’ve never heard
of the Regnum or a 3V, and we’re not going to conquer them, we’re going to
persuade
them, every one. Starting with Ale’appa, the nation to our west that’s just
been freed from O’dai domination, although neither party may know it yet. Those
who won’t join our Confederacy, we’ll protect, and hope they change their minds
when they see their neighbors prospering.

“We’ll need every Contact-trained
person we can get our hands on for the next ten years, and even then we’ll have
to train them to work the way we want, to bring modern tech to the people and
not the other way around. It’s a subtly new way of doing business for the
Regnum, but the Talamae wouldn’t dream of doing it any other way.

“We’ll defend ourselves, of course,
and I won’t rest while that last Kruss is loose on my planet. Now that we’ve
cleared up the status of Doris and Marcus and Adrianne,” a grateful glance at
Admiral Dunning across the table, a gracious if ironic nod in return, “…they’ve
been working with the
Argosy’s
NavInt and sensor specialists, trying to
spoof a hail from an orbiting Kruss vessel. So far it’s just an encryption
exercise, using a few drone missiles in orbit, but if we can get that murdering
lizard to respond just
once
, we’ll at least know which direction it’s
been heading.

“I’ve also assigned my new
Greenbutts the task of recommending some modern weapons systems. I understand
Planetation has a limited line in that respect, so we’re sending off a
preliminary order for small arms to Heckler Manufacturing on Neues Oberndorf,
and an order to Spitzbergen Ordnance Gesellschaft for a few light defensive
vessels. But realistically, we’ll be relying on the Regnum Navy for space
defense for the foreseeable future.

“We want these orders to go out in
the next mailtube, if you’re willing to approve Planetation’s part of the
business? Fine. That brings us to personnel. Now I understand both Planetation
and United Dominion have extensive consulting groups, here’s what we’d like for
starters…”

That evening, Kirrah had her first
tiny breakthrough with Ulla’ta. Slaetra had provided a small doll, a simple
cloth-woven thing with a worn painted wooden head and lumpy stuffing, and a
tiny new colorful needlepoint vest and leggings. After dinner, Kirrah offered
the toy to Ulla’ta, who was as usual terrified to receive any kind of attention
from her. It was a near thing, but in the end, the doll’s draw proved more
powerful than the girl’s fear, which was by now blunted by five days’
familiarity.

After the child took the doll from
her hands and went to bed clutching it, Kirrah sat and wept for ten minutes.
Akaray came up and put his arms silently around her, and the two of them sat in
the courtyard outside her rooms and watched the sun set, the sky turn to glory,
and the world shift on its axis, slowly, slowly toward healing.

Rather later that night, Kirrah
wearily pushed herself back from her workscreen and made her way to a cold
empty bed.
Seventeen more days alone
, she thought.
How did I ever
sleep on my own, before? And that’s if he’s out of the tank and discharged on
schedule.

Towards morning, the dream came
again. She and others, a whole community, were racing across an endless
blackness. Every few moments someone’s feet would lift off the surface and they
would glide over satin darkness, black flames streaming behind them. In the
strange
knowing
of dreams, she was sure Irshe, Slaetra, Issthe and a
tiny, exultant Ulla’ta were flying with her. So were Doris, and Professor
Stanglee from her Academy classes.

Where was Akaray?
There! Far
ahead on the plain, almost hidden in the darkness, she could see him beckoning.
‘There!’ she called, and they all swung to the left, toward the promise of
sanctuary.

Suddenly they were at the place
Akaray was calling them to. The other figures drew to a halt beside her, around
a pool of inky blackness. She looked across it to see Akaray’s face, laughing,
as his arm gestured sharply down. Something small and bright flew from his
hand, dropped into the black pit yawning between them. No one else moved. It
burst, suddenly spreading into a sea of ten thousand stars scattered across the
velvety blackness.

“Ah, you’re here,” said Professor
Stanglee. Following his gaze, Kirrah saw a tall robed figure with Issthe’s dark
gray eyes.

The priestess gestured with one
graceful arm toward the pool, and said to Kirrah:

“They’ve been waiting for you.”

Skin tingling in awe and
anticipation, Kirrah turned, paused, and dove headfirst into the stars.

See, (said a familiar voice).
She’s found her own way. Through all this, she’s found herself. She’s done
better than you ever did, old friend, or I. She’s going to be fine.

You’re right, dear Risa, (said
that other familiar voice). As you were so often right before. I wish it had
been different. I can see now…

Daddy? Is that…

Kirrah woke suddenly, alone, in the
pre-dawn dark. Waves of terror fled in all directions, leaving her untouched at
their epicenter. Her sleep-fogged mind turned fearfully to the place where her
darkness lived inside. The darkness
winked
back.

Oh, it’s only you…
she
thought, and rolled over for another hour’s sleep.

The next days fled past in a blur
of details. On the day the last smartshot was declared neutralized, the city
held a celebration. Construction resumed in earnest on the thirty-six
vai’atho
-blocks
more or less leveled in the Kruss blast, and the additional thirty-one needing
major structural repairs, including the southeast corner of the palace. Regnum
and Talamae building technologies were fusing slowly and with surprisingly
little friction, once the Regnum engineers accepted the idea that the Talamae
really
did
want things built
their
way, and the Talamae mason’s
guild realized the Regnum machines really
could
work the miracles their
operators claimed.

The first mission to Ale’appa
returned, reporting a numb and disorganized O’dai occupying force that fled at
their approach, and a grateful city and local populace who embraced their offer
of alliance with near-pathetic haste. Kirrah was learning that one of her most
persuasive diplomatic tools was a ride in one of the shuttles. Certainly King
Tannakoi of Pavatta and his Baron Setta, found themselves tearing up their cautiously
drafted trade proposals in favor of a closer political alliance, after a good
look at their planet from a hundred thousand kilometers in space. With Pavatta
came the promise of further friendly contact with a boreal tribe far to the
east across the mountains, and another nation to the west where the continent
met the ocean. The Wrth were already clamoring for trading rights with the high
desert dwellers who lived to the east of their own Whitecap mountains.

The repair of bodies continued as
fast as the Regnum regen tanks could run. As each casualty was restored to more
or less physical wholeness, they were decanted and the line of waiting maimed
and burned patients moved one place forward. Kirrah was sure she saw a dozen
crippled O’dai in the queue, placed there by the cheerfully indiscriminate
blue-robed healers. On the one hundred sixty-first day since Kirrah’s first
landing, two days after Ulla’ta went into a tank for repair of her eye and
hand, and three days ahead of the Navy doctor’s projection, Irshe was decanted
and released into her care.

“
No battle can take place unless by mutual consent” -
General Carl Von Clausewitz,
op. cit.

“You two can stop mooning over each
other like that,” said Doris at dinner the next night. “It’s not polite to us
mere mortals around the table.” Ex-Corporal Gilman exchanged a knowing glance
with ex-Lieutenant Warden, across the table from her.

Kirrah, one place down, broke from
her reverie and replied languidly, “Irshe
’jasa
, you may ignore my rude
shipmate. She was raised by barbarians and would not recognize True Love if it
bit her on the… come to think of it, I remember once it
did
bite her
on…”

“All
right
, I surrender!”
Doris replied hastily. “I’m sure
everyone
has a past. Would someone
please pass those yellow vegetables?”

“
Do’ris’jasa
, as my
Warmaster’s liaison I should know any relevant facts about her friends and
allies,” replied Irshe, with that straight face he could carry off so well.
“Including any past injuries… are you finding the evening air too warm?”

“You’re supposed to be
resting
,”
Doris replied tartly, “…not making your -
what now
?” as Kirrah’s
wristcomp chimed.

“Roehl, go.” As Kirrah touched the
Transmit key, her memory flashed back to a lake burning in the darkness, and
the sense of carrying the world on her shoulders. Her blood ran suddenly cold
at the sound of a Regnum warship’s General Quarters alarm carried over the comm
link.

“Lieutenant Roehl, this is
Argosy
comm, Ensign Angeles. We have Kruss grav-trace in-system, Admiral Dunning
asked me to locate you and keep a link open.” Doris Finch’s spoon clattered to
her plate, the sound loud in the sudden silence.

“How many?” Kirrah clipped the
words out calmly, even though part of her mind was babbling
‘How many, how
many, how many, how many?’
She unplugged that voice and firmly set it
aside.

“Just two we can see right now,
ma’am. It doesn’t look like any serious metal yet, not that we can see so far.
Wait… one’s stopped… they’ve both stopped, thirteen light-minutes out.
Argosy’s
been holding station on Tubedrive for weeks, so they’ve already made us, but
Utterson
and
Attila
are in passive orbit, and Murphy knows where she’s got
the two FTBs lurking.

“Ok, there’s one, just unTubed
fifteen thousand kay away, looks like they made a straight run in from their
last stop. Other one’s gone stealthed. Nothing hostile yet… yes, Ma’am, I’ll
patch it in…” Kirrah recognized the capital-M ‘Ma’am’ that indicated a captain
or admiral in the vicinity. Her small wristcomp screen suddenly seemed
inadequate, and she and the rest of the dinner table’s complement hastened the
few steps to the large comm console in her quarters.

As she sat in front of her display,
the
Argosy’s
logo was replaced by a live splitscreen feed. The left side
showed the tactical imagery from the sensor net that filled the entire
star-system, updating at lightspeed lag. Occasionally a section would update
faster as an automated courier drone arrived FTL, dumped its data, and returned
to its station. On the right side, Admiral Dunning’s strong face was looking
off-screen, then came back.