Theirs Not to Reason Why 5: Damnation (23 page)

“You! Supposedly, you’re in charge,” he snapped without preamble. “And
supposedly
you used to be a Sanctuarian! What in the name of God Most Holy are you doing, threatening our capital?”

Ia raised her brows. “Threatening? Since when is a simple parking orbit a threat? On the contrary, President Moller,” she stated smoothly, double-checking the timestreams, “we are here to protect Sanctuary from an incoming threat.”

“Incoming threat, God’s Own Foot!” he countered, flushing. “It is
your own soldiers
who have threatened the sanctity of our sovereign government!”

“President Moller,
our
intelligence sources have revealed that up until recently, members of your government were involved in clandestine biological-warfare research without an Alliance-granted permit. Of course, I am also told those research notes were destroyed by Sanctuarian citizens. Not Terran citizens. Which is just as well,” she added dryly, “since I would have been forced by our contract with your government to destroy that research and take all co-conspirators into custody, up to and including yourself, if it turns out that you, too, are implicated in violating the laws governing Alliance Sentientarian Conduct Standards.”

He blinked at her, his age-lined face paling, then flushing. “You—you have no jurisdiction on this world!”

She met his gaze levelly. “The Truth Party government of Sanctuary is a duly chartered member of the Alliance. The Alliance is currently at war. I am the General of the Alliance Armies, and that means I have the authority to declare martial law in any and
all
membership states of said Alliance. Be very careful with your next few words, President Moller. This may sound like a threat, but I assure you, the presence of these two Terran warships in this system, hugging your planet’s atmosphere, is not a sign of aggression against Sanctuary.

“Rather, we are following through on our duly chartered duties to protect Sanctuary.”

“From
what
?” Moller snapped. “The Salik? Those amphibious abominations haven’t even come within a hundred light-years of here!”

“From the
Greys
, Meioa President. Not from the Salik. As I predicted long ago, the Second Grey War is about to start in”—she checked the chronometer counting down on her lower first tertiary screen—“three . . . two . . . one.”

“General, ships have just materialized at 7 by 352, sir,” MacInnes asserted from her seat at the navigation console. “Five . . . seven . . . twelve ships, approximately twenty light-seconds away. They do match known Grey ship materials and configurations, sir.”

“You brought the
Greys
down upon us?” Moller demanded at the same time as he registered Ia’s words.

“No, but I did know they were coming,” Ia replied mildly. She strapped her left hand into the attitude glove, then ghosted her right one over the controls, calling up the current trajectory of the scatter-bombs in relation to that lightwave reading of the Grey ships. They were almost in position. A check of her lower-leftmost screen showed a good number of the orbs were gone from her cargo hold, leaving roughly seventy.

The Greys were not going to attack immediately. At the moment, they were scanning the system, noting her ship’s presence. The Greys were also debating not only just how accurate she was as a precognitive—having successfully predicted their presence today—but what sort of trick she was going to pull on them as a psychic.

She had a different problem to handle first, however. President Moller stared at her, eyes widening, then quickly lifted his finger to his forehead, scribing a circle on it. The mark of the Corona, symbol of his religion. “God protect me—you’re that unnatural white-haired demon with the Devil’s skills! The Future-Liar!”

“
God
gave me my psychic abilities, President Moller, not the Devil,” she countered, still calm. Tired, but calm. Having gone over this conversation dozens, even hundreds of times in her mind, she merely gave him a level look. And a piece of her mind, of course, since this was their one and only meeting. “In fact, God gave them to me so that I could save
you
, even if you are little more than a festering pustule hidden within the scrotal folds of the Devil Himself. Unfortunately, I must now abide by the rules of the Space Force’s duly chartered defense contract with your government, and tend to my duties by preventing your righteous, if premature, destruction.”

“Aha!” he exclaimed, raising a finger within view of the screen’s pickups. “But I am calling to tell you that my government has chosen to
cancel
your contract! So you can get the blessed
hell
out of our sovereign skies!”

“Oh, that would be just fine with me, Meioa President,” Ia replied, “except that, by that very same contract, in the event a hostile enemy presence is already active within this system at the time of contract termination, we are obliged to extend that contract until said enemy presence has left. The Greys appeared
before
you informed us of the cancellation of that contract, President Moller. I will therefore protect this world from their aggressions to the best of my abilities, and
then
withdraw all Terran military support from this system.”

Someone off-screen said something on his end, and the sound cut off for a few moments. President Moller looked to the side, scowled, snapped something, paled, swallowed, and returned his gaze to the comm link between them. The sound came back on.

“It seems those
are
Grey ships entering Sanctuarian orbit. But not even the full might of the entire Terran fleet would be enough to stop them from doing whatever they want.”

“Not without resorting to ‘Devil Powers,’ no,” she agreed. “Understand this, President Moller. I have just placed several satellites in orbit around this world. Touch them, or worse, try to remove them, and the Greys
will
harvest your people. Leave them in place, leave them alone, and the Greys will leave
you
alone.”

“So you
are
a Daughter of the Devil, to make a bargain with His alien accomplices?” Moller accused.

“No. I am a Daughter of Sanctuary, here to save her people. Have a good life, President Moller. Or rather,” she corrected herself, “as the old saying goes, ‘May you one day
deserve
the good life.’” A tap of her finger ended the conversation. “Ishiomi, helm to my control in five.”

“Helm to yours . . . in . . . now, sir,” Ishiomi agreed, making the switch. Since the ship was in a static orbit, and the yeoman had anticipated her request, the exchange was made swiftly and smoothly. “I hope those golden balls of yours
can
stop the Greys, General.”

“I’m just hoping those scatter-bombs do the trick,” Ia returned. Checking on the remaining orbs, she closed the docking bay doors and gently turned up the gravity. The heavy, tough machinery-packed spheres drifted down again. At the same time, she tipped the ship down relative to her dead-ahead, pointing the bow away from the planet at the top of her viewscreen and more toward the alien discs in the distance.

Taking her time, she lined up the attitude of the
Damnation
with the Grey vessels.

“Sir, we have a ping from the Greys on their private channel,” Xhuge told her.

“Put it through.”

Gray-skinned, mouse-eyed, vaguely bipedal, and disproportionate in Human eyes, the Shredou captain appeared on Ia’s center screen.

“Ee Ah of the Terrans,” the alien stated, with that odd, dual-larynxed, slightly-out-of-tune way of his, her, or its kind. “Your prediction accuracy is acknowledged. Your words do not stop the Shredou. Your technology does not stop the Shredou.”

“
You
will stay off this world,” Ia returned coldly, speaking with equally short sentences, so that there would be little room for misinterpretation. “You will obey my words. When I tell you to expand, you will expand. Where I tell you to expand, you will expand. When I tell you to stop, you will stop. Where I tell you to stop, you will stop. And when I tell you to fight, you will fight. You will fight
who
I tell you to fight.”

“Irrelevant.”

Ia did not take her eyes off the screen. Instead, she lifted the plexi lid on the main gun control and let the machine inside scan her identity. “Private Ramasa? Detonate.”

He hit a control on his station console. Sixty handcrafted projectiles exploded in brief flashes of light, at a distance roughly eighty percent of the way to the enemy’s position, transmission boosted by the hyperrelay hub the
Popova
had left in place. The Grey on the screen blinked and cocked his/its head even as Ia tapped the unlocked button on her own station console.

“Your targeting ability is flawed. Your missiles are not threatening. Your—”

“
This
is a warning shot, meioa. I suggest you pay attention,” Ia told him, speaking over the alien. Deep red flashed from all the screens showing a forward view from the
Damnation
’s perspective. The bolt was short, a twentieth of a second, but the distance long, twenty full seconds. Their communication was via hyperrelay link, but the result of the attack came back after forty seconds.

Packed with thousands of shards from broken, recycled chunks of laser-focusing crystals, the scatter-bombs had exploded like fireworks. That seeded the area between her direct line of fire and the main cluster of ships with a cone. The moment that pulse from the
Damnation
’s upgraded Godstrike cannon struck, half of the beam’s intensity was fragmented, fanning out in a flare of red. Over half would dissipate in interstitial space.

The rest scored straight through those alien shields. Diffused in strength, but still powerful enough to damage all twelve hulls. Damage, but not destroy. This was a warning shot, after all, even if the Godstrike, Mark II, was not something easily diffused.

Noise whistled through the comm link between the two factions: alien claxons. The expressions on a Shredou’s face were hard to read, but Ia was fairly sure she was seeing alarm in the gray-skinned, black-eyed alien. Reaching out with her mind, she touched Silverstone again. (
Ready for the link?
)

(
Ready to clean the taste of shit out of our mouths,
) he sent back. (
If I’d known back then you were going to make me eat my own
shakk
 . . .
)

(
Yes, yes, you would’ve killed me. And then died four hundred fifty-three years from now, instead of over two thousand.
) Pulling up a thread of awareness, she looped it around the Feyori’s mind and wove it quickly along her other faction strings into the minds of the other fourteen.

The Grey snapped an order. Fifteen silvery soap bubbles swooped into view, aggregating in a cluster and intercepting the white-hot beam that arrowed their way. In the back of her head, where Ia heard voices telepathically . . . she heard the Feyori named Silverstone belch.

(
Mm, tasty. Think we’ll get any more? It doesn’t go far, split fifteen different ways.
)

Lifting her right hand to her temple, Ia massaged her forehead for a moment, then addressed the Grey on the screen. “Your weapons are useless. They are food for the
shhnk-zii
. All of the Feyori are my allies.”

“We will poison the
shhnk-zii
,” the Grey on her screen stated.

“If you try, I will poison
you
,” Ia countered.

He/it/whatever stared at her, then turned to give another order. She flicked her mind into the timestreams, activating the spheres. Ever-present as a tiny thread of melody thanks to the right-side bracer she wore, the faint, crystalline chime of crysium-song abruptly leaped into full-throated chorus. Her entire bridge crew twitched and looked up, craning their necks and darting their eyes around the room, trying to find the source of that sound. Only briefly; they did drag their attention back to their screens within a second or two, but the sudden surge of noise had definitely startled them.

It wasn’t a physical noise but rather a psychic one in nature. The Grey on her viewscreen hissed and clasped his long-fingered hands around his bulbous skull, flat lips pulling back in a pained grimace to show the odd, pale, bluish knobs that served for his teeth. The greenish bolt that flashed toward the Feyori struck them, but did not scatter their formation.

(
This is very disturbing,
) Silverstone observed in the back of her mind. (
Using our own shit as a shield? I’m glad it works, but . . .
)

(
Get used to it,
) Ia told him, glad the others had agreed to filter all questions and comments through just one of their number. Silverstone had won the right to be that contact point because his particular area of Meddling influence was the Terran military; otherwise, it would have been her erstwhile father. (
You have seen enough of their construction to make more, and can use them to protect yourselves in the future from the Shredou.
)

(
True.
)

(
Whatever toxic energies they throw at you, the orbs will resonate strongly enough to counter it. The only problem is that they have a proximity effect similar to gravity,
) Ia warned him, knowing Silverstone was passing the information along to the others. (
The farther away you get, the weaker the field, in squared proportion . . . and it’s best for them to be set in an orbit close enough to feed off jets and sprites from energy storms if you can’t find enough portable hydrogenerators to supplement their power reserves. You’ll also have to trigger them yourselves. I’m only triggering the ones we made today. I don’t have time to set off the rest.
)

She reached through the timestreams and deactivated the resonances. The Grey on the screen still grimaced for a bit longer, though the chorus faded immediately. The inner machinery was based on the anti-psi devices, with a twist that allowed the resonances to be amplified by the unique ability of crysium to harness, store, and use various energies. Similar nodes had been installed all along the
Damnation
’s hull beneath concealment panels, but she did not open those panels.