Without a Front (3 page)

“You have to buy your way into your top caste?” Prime Merchant Parser asked.

“There are only two ways to become a citizen. You can buy it, or you can earn it through military service. I was halfway through my military service requirement. When I finished, I'd have been a citizen. And then I could have protected my parents.”

“Are they also hangers?” Lanaril asked.

Rax nodded. “They couldn't afford to buy their way out. But they couldn't earn it either, because the military won't take you if you have any medical problems they can't easily fix. My dad lost his leg in a farming accident and my mom—well, she didn't have a medical problem. She just couldn't serve. She washed out of basic training because she wouldn't follow orders.”

“If her orders were something like ‘bomb that village and kill every innocent person in it,' then I salute her moral code,” Shantu said. “But you were ready to follow any order you were given.”

“You don't understand. They don't give you those orders in basic. They give you stupid orders that don't make any sense and then they beat the dokshin out of you if you dare to ask why. So you learn not to ask.”

“And unlike your mother, you learned your lesson,” Yaserka said.

Rax looked haunted. “I made it through. The washout rate is over seventy percent, and I made it through, and I was so proud. My dad was, too. I served for almost three of your cycles before they sent me on my first invasion. They told us that the locals were primitives, that our government had made peaceful overtures but the primitives had attacked and killed most of the landing party, including the entire squadron that had been sent to protect the diplomats. We were outraged. And we were trained not to ask questions. So when they told us to destroy the villages, we did. And it was easy and they rewarded us. And I was going to be a citizen.”

The picture was coming together, and Lanaril was aghast at what she saw.

“All we had to do was follow orders,” Rax continued. “They give them and we follow them and every order is a little bigger than the one before. And you keep following. And you never, ever ask why. Sometimes, somebody asks why or refuses to obey, and then you don't see them anymore. They get transferred. We always knew that really meant something else, but nobody said it out loud. We called it ‘transferred to the Eighth Fleet,' because there is no Eighth Fleet.”

“Are you telling us that your superiors will kill you if you don't obey orders?” Bylwytin looked faint at the thought.

“Nobody knows that for sure. Look, Colonel Razine said I had to be completely honest with you, because you'll know if I'm lying. I'm telling you the truth. I think—we all think it's either obey or die, or if it's not death, then it's something even worse, like medical experimentation. There are rumors. But I don't know. All I know is, none of us ever wanted to find out firsthand.”

“And that's why you were willing to kill innocents?” Shantu crossed his arms, a look of disbelief on his patrician features. “Because it was either kill or die? You're not lying, but you're not telling us everything, either.”

“I'm trying to.” Rax wiped the sweat off his forehead.

“Then try harder. Tell us the rest. Tell us how proud you were to be on your way to becoming a citizen, no matter what you had to do to get there. Your superiors dropped four thousand soldiers in your
pacifiers
. Don't tell me they were all controlled by fear.”

Rax shook his head. “That's the part I've only started to understand since we came here. You're all primitives—I mean, that's what they told us,” he added hastily. “You don't worship the Seeders. All primitives are good for is slavery, but sometimes slaves convert. Sometimes they learn the truth, and then they're saved. If we have to kill primitives, it's not like killing real people, people who worship the Seeders. It's like…” He struggled to find the words. “Primitives get reborn when they die. They get another chance to accept the truth. We're doing them a favor.”

Shantu's chair flew back with such velocity that it crashed onto the floor. “You're doing us a
favor?”
he roared. “By killing people who never lifted a finger against you? By killing
children?”

“Great Fahla, that is disgusting,” Arabisar said. Heads nodded all around the table.

Lanaril felt ill. “What a twisted theology you have. And twisted for one purpose only, so far as I can see. To justify murder, slavery, and the worst kind of theft. To justify stealing people's worlds
.
”

Rax wiped his forehead again, his fear climbing a notch. “Please…that's not—”

“Everyone settle, please,” Andira said. “I don't think Rax finished what he meant to say. Do you believe this?”

“I did,” he whispered. “I did until we came here. They said you were violent primitives who had just enough technology to be dangerous, and that you'd attacked a diplomacy unit that had landed to invite you to be part of the Imperium. We offered you technological advancement and the chance to be saved by the Seeders, and you answered by killing off half the diplomats and their soldiers.”

“A strangely familiar story.” Shantu's voice dripped with sarcasm. “Heard that one a few times, did you?”

“Primitives are always attacking Voloth diplomats. We were taught that the diplomats are among the most courageous people in the entire Imperium because their jobs are so dangerous. Primitives have their own gods, and they get violent when you try to teach them the truth. But an attack on a diplomatic unit is an attack on the Imperium itself. It has to be answered with ruthless efficiency. So they sent us here, and we were supposed to take your cities. They said we could be live heroes or dead failures. But…the thing is, we failed but we're not dead. You took prisoners, but you didn't kill us. That cell you have me in—it's bigger than the cabin I shared with three other soldiers. You keep us fed and you don't beat us and you don't use us for labor. We killed your people and you're treating us better than we treat our slaves. And your Fahla…everyone's saying she's a Seeder. None of your temples were hit, and I don't see how that's possible when they were one of our primary hard targets.”

“You were
trying
to destroy our temples?” Lanaril's spine hit the back of her chair with a thump.

“It's one of the fastest ways to pacify primitives. That's what they taught us. Take out their false gods and they'll hear the truth more easily.” He looked around the table. “If your Fahla is a Seeder, then that explains everything. It explains how you could do what you did to us, and why nobody landed a hit on those temples and why you're…you're not primitives at all. And that's got us thinking about the other worlds we invaded. What if they weren't really primitives either? That would mean—” He stopped, unable to say it.

“That your government lied to you,” Andira said. “And systematically trained you to murder without question.”

He nodded miserably.

“I never saw a Voloth diplomat until we began negotiating to return you. Your attack—both of your attacks—were entirely unprovoked. The first Voloth to die on this planet died after they had already killed
two hundred and fifty-four
innocent Alseans who didn't even know you existed!”

Rax cringed back at her sudden rise in volume, and she did not let up. “So let me assure you that yes, your government lied to you. And you lied to yourself, because I don't believe you never asked any questions. Maybe you didn't ask them out loud, but you asked them in your head.”

His guilt said she was right. “I'm a hanger, we don't—we can't—”

“Tell me something. In all your time in the military, did you ever once hear about a planet where the natives
didn't
attack the diplomats?”

He shook his head.

“What a coincidence,” Yaserka said. “I guess they don't teach hangers about the laws of probability. How extraordinary that the Voloth appear to be the only peaceful race in the galaxy, and yet—how many ‘pacification' fleets do you have?”

“Seven,” he mumbled. Then he lifted his head and said in a stronger voice, “Five and a half now. The Protectorate destroyed half of the Fifth and you destroyed the entire Third Fleet. The ships are still there, but it will be a long time before they can restock them.”

Lanaril concentrated on what she was sensing from him. He seemed strangely satisfied at the idea of the Voloth fleets being whittled down.

“Once you start asking questions, it's hard to stop, isn't it?” she asked.

He turned to her, visibly relieved by her calmer tone. “Yes, it is.”

“And then you begin to feel angry at the ones who lied to you.”

Andira glanced at her, one eyebrow hitching up. “Is that why you don't want to go back? The whole truth,” she added when Rax hesitated.

“That's…part of it. Some of us would still go back if we could. But we committed treason. We killed our own.”

“But that wasn't your fault,” Bylwytin said. “You were empathically forced.”

He laughed, a shocking sound given the charged emotions in the room. “You don't know our commanders. Telling them ‘the primitives made us do it' won't get us very far.”

“What will the penalty be? Death?” Shantu had retrieved his chair and seemed much calmer.

Rax shook his head. “No, worse. Lifetime slavery at hard labor. No chance of buying or working your way out. The only out is when they work you to death. And they will.”

The room was silent as everyone digested this information.

“Then I have to wonder why nineteen of you do want to go back,” Andira said.

“Some of them are officers. They're citizens; they won't get put into the grinder like we would. The others are true believers. They follow the orders because they enjoy it. They're the ones who tell the higher-ups when somebody asks a question and make people disappear. They want to go back because they have connections, and now they have inside information. They'll find a way to get rewarded for it, just like the officers will. I know some of the ones you're talking about. You don't want them here.”

“Why would we want the rest of you here?” Andira asked, though her tone was not unkind. “You're asking a lot of us. What do you have to offer in return?”

His hope blossomed on Lanaril's senses. “Anything we can. We've already offered to teach you how to maintain and operate the pacifiers—”

“But for a price,” Yaserka said. “You asked for access to the Alseans who turned you. That price was too high for us to pay.”

“I know. We've talked about it, and it's hard for the ones whose hearts got taken. But they've agreed to offer their service without conditions.”

Andira and Shantu exchanged looks.

“And we'll tell you anything we can about our military structure, invasion strategies, weaponry…whatever any of us know. You've got some good engineers in that group, too. And a few scientists. I'm not much use that way; I'm just a producer's son—but I'd gladly serve you as a soldier. So would many of us. There are some that don't ever want to see the inside of a pacifier again, but they're anxious to offer anything that might be of use.” He looked around, his hope rising as the High Council members remained silent. “Can we work out a deal?”

“We can't give you an answer now,” Andira said. “We'll have to discuss it and then bring it before the full Council. I can only promise to give you an answer as soon as we have one.”

Lanaril actually felt sorry for him as his anticipation crashed. She didn't know why he would have expected an answer right away, but perhaps that was his experience in the Voloth military.

“Well…thank you for hearing me out. I appreciate that you even listened to me.”

Andira nodded. “Thank you for your honesty. But there's one thing you need to take back to your people.”

“What's that?”

“
If
we decide to grant political asylum, it will come with a non-negotiable condition. What I did to you—binding you to Alsea—will have to be done to all the others. They will all have to undergo another forced Sharing.”

His jaw dropped as he stared at her. “I don't…I, um…”

“Non-negotiable,” she repeated. “Talk to your people. But you can tell them that it won't hurt, and it won't cause any additional damage. All it will do is ensure their loyalty. You're already carrying that instruction; you know what it feels like. You're the best person to tell them. Colonel Razine, please escort Rax back to his cell.”

The chain rattled as the Guard lifted it up and stepped toward Rax.

“Wait,” Andira said. “He's to be considered a member of parley. Leave him unchained. And give him a reader card so he can record exactly who can offer what in terms of expertise or willingness to work. Rax, we may have more questions for you later.”

To everyone's surprise, he snapped erect, thumped both fists to his chest, and bowed his head. “Lancer Tal.”

Andira's eyes widened before she could control her expression. “Settle,” she said.

He raised his head and nodded at her. “Thank you.” Turning smartly on his heel, he faced Colonel Razine. “I'm ready.”

When the door closed behind them, everyone at the table let out a breath.

“I'll admit that was not what I was expecting,” Arabisar said.

“Nor I,” said Eroles. “Was he telling the truth?”

Andira, Shantu, Yaserka, and Lanaril nodded. “That man was terrified,” Lanaril said. “Though whether it was because he was facing us or because he doesn't want to face his superiors, I'm not sure.”

“Both, I think.” Yaserka pushed back his chair a handspan and relaxed his posture. “Imagine controlling an entire military organization through fear and lies. At some point you'd think it would have to fall apart.”