A Savage War Of Peace (Ark Royal Book 5) (18 page)

“It may be a ritual recreation of a religious story,” Professor Nordstrom commented, as the actors walked back out of sight.  “Something along the same lines as a Christmas Play.”

“They wouldn't have the same myths, though,” Grace said.

“Probably not,” Professor Nordstrom agreed.  He smiled, suddenly.  “But what if they
did
?”

Penny remembered interviewing a priest shortly before her assignment to
Warspite
.  He’d been quite determined to prove that humanity was God’s favourite creation, which he’d done by pointing out that Jesus had been sent to die to save humanity from itself.  The Tadpoles had no such story, he’d said; indeed, the Tadpoles didn't seem to have anything resembling a religion, at least as humans understood the concept.  He’d been convinced that it proved that humanity was special.

But what if they have stories
, she asked herself,
that match the stories of the Norse Gods?  Or the Hindu Gods?  Or the Roman Gods?

She pushed the thought aside as a single alien stepped up to where the dancers had stood, wearing a set of gold robes. 

“Our friends,” he said, in curiously-accented English.  “It is our honour to welcome you to our city after it has been restored.  You have come to us to restore the balance, sent by the gods to redeem us when we had fallen.  The forces of the false god have been shattered, the demons he sent have been destroyed.  To you we offer our thanks.”

Penny’s eyes narrowed.  Was he calling the human race
gods
?

It may not be a very good translation
, she reminded herself.  Percy had told her that talking to the aliens wasn't easy, no matter how simple the subject.  There were just too many ways something innocent could be misunderstood. 
They may be talking about something else entirely
.

“But we also offer our thanks to the gods,” the alien continued.  “To them, we offer our lives and souls.”

He stopped.  Another alien appeared, wearing nothing.  Penny couldn't help herself; she glanced between his legs, only to see a mass of scarring.  Beside her, she heard Grace retch in horror as the alien advanced and stopped in front of the first alien.  There was a long pause, than he fell to his knees.

The professor was right
, Penny thought. 
Sitting down
is
a form of submission for them
.

The first alien pulled back his cloak to reveal a loincloth and a sword, which he drew and held in the air.  It glittered in the sunlight as Penny realised, to her horror, just what was about to happen.  Grace gasped again, then cried out as the alien slashed down with the sword and smote the prisoner’s head off with a single blow.  The body crashed to the ground; moments later, the head landed next to it.  Grace vomited in shock; Penny had to swallow, hard, to keep herself from throwing up too.  She’d seen horrors in the refugee camps, and later as a reporter, but she hadn't seen a man beheaded right in front of her.

“We offer this fallen one to the gods,” the alien said.  He didn't seem to notice that at least half of his human audience was in shock.  “His blood will nourish the Earth and return to us what was stolen.”

“That can't have happened,” Grace said.  “It was a trick.  It has to have been a trick.”

Penny rolled her eyes.  “It happened,” she said.  Didn’t Grace understand that the Vesy weren't human?  And that they couldn't be judged by human standards?  “Professor, what
was
that?”

Professor Nordstrom looked pale.  “Human sacrifice was often seen as giving life to the gods or to the land,” he said.  He sounded oddly perturbed by what he’d seen.  “They may believe that they were actually doing the prisoner a favour ...”

Or not
, Penny thought, as the Vesy hooted so loudly that it drowned out the Professor’s voice. 
If that video gets home ... it will turn the whole world upside down
.

It was a bitter thought.  Humans had their own long history of barbarism, but that was in the past ... except it wasn't, not entirely.  The bombardment had brought out both the best and worst of humanity, creating a world where strangers had helped one another and, at the same time, gangs had roamed the land, searching for food, drink and women.  But anyone who expected the Vesy to be anything other than savages would be badly shocked when they saw the recording.  They would be utterly horrified.

She considered, briefly, deleting it, but she knew there was no point.  There were other recorders in the field.  All she could do was write a covering note and hope the editors at home didn't decide to portray the Vesy as monsters.  Because if they did ...

They might insist we abandon them altogether
, she thought,
or try to fix their society for them
.

Chapter Seventeen

“They’re barbarians,” Grace burst out.

Joelle raised an eyebrow.  Grace had a naive view of the world, but she had never done anything, as far as she knew, to threaten British interests.  For her, someone who had insisted that the Vesy should be helped as much as possible, to change her mind ... something unpleasant must have happened.  Maybe she should have gone to Ivan’s city after all.

“Are they?”  She said, studying her aide.  “What happened?”

“They killed him,” Grace said.  “There was this ... mutilated alien and they
killed
him, right in front of us.  They sacrificed him to the gods!”

“I see,” Joelle said.  She’d seen quite a few foreign traditions that struck her as barbaric, but public executions weren't one of them ... provided, of course, that the criminal deserved to die.  It would have been hypocritical in the extreme to file protests when Britain did the same, although normally with more due process.  “And that surprised you?”

Grace stared at her wildly.  “They’re
monsters
!  We’re allied with monsters!”

“They’re not human,” Joelle said, evenly.  “And most
humans
don't agree on a common standard of morality.  What do you expect?”

She sighed, inwardly.  It hadn't been easy for her to accept that the Tadpoles accepted an infant mortality rate that would have horrified humanity, if the positions had been reversed.  In the past, maybe, child mortality had been terrifyingly high, but modern medicine had ensured that children almost always survived long enough to reach adulthood.  The Tadpoles, on the other hand, could have saved their children, they just didn't care to try.  It had led to some uncomfortable discussions before the whole subject had been declared
verboten
.

Grace sat down on the uncomfortable chair.  “We shouldn't be giving them any more help until they abandon the idea of human sacrifice,” she said.  “Or killing people, or keeping slaves ...”

Joelle met her eyes.  “Do you want to drive them to another interstellar power?”

“We can't encourage them to kill their own people,” Grace protested.

“I was unaware they needed encouragement,” Joelle said.  She allowed her voice to soften, slightly.  “They will change, given time and technology.  Slavery will no longer be economical when their technology reaches the point where it can replace the slaves.”

“They’re holding
billions
in bondage,” Grace flared, “and you’re talking about economics?”

“I rather doubt they’re holding
billions
in bondage,” Joelle said, coolly.  The most optimistic assessment of the planet’s population was just below a billion, although the researchers had hastened to clarify that it was largely guesswork.  Some parts of the planet seemed less developed than others, less capable of supporting large populations.  “And yes, that’s the way they work.”

She sighed, feeling a flicker of sympathy for her aide.  Grace had been born in an era where Britain and the other Great Powers had no need to coddle the smaller nations, not when there was nothing the Great Powers wanted or needed from them.  There was no need to pay lip service to human rights on one hand and turn a blind eye to gross abuses on the other.  To her, having to compromise her principles to get what she wanted was something of purely academic interest.  Joelle, who’d spent time negotiating with the Tadpoles, knew she needed a more pragmatic view of the universe.

“Tell me something,” she said.  “Where were you during the bombardment?”

“The University of Britannia,” Grace said, puzzled.  “Why?”

Joelle nodded.  That made sense.  Britannia had never been attacked during the war, despite housing one of the largest shipbuilding complexes outside Sol itself.  Grace would not have known real danger, or the long-term chaos inflicted by the bombardment.  She would never have had to fight to survive, or crouch in a refugee camp and pray the guards didn't decide to turn nasty.  It had given her a decidedly naive view of the world.

“There’s nothing we can do,” she said, flatly.  “We need to work with the aliens, the ones who have allied with us, to maintain a presence on the surface.  And if that means tolerating their ...
barbarities
, it means tolerating their barbarities.”

Grace shook her head.  “The public wouldn't stand for it.”

“The public has stood for a great deal in the past,” Joelle said, darkly.  “I don’t think there were ever protests when we hammered some little state in the Middle East for daring to raid our shipping.  Nor did anyone complain when refugee boats were sunk in the channel after the bombardment, or when we had to send military units to Ireland to assist what remained of the Irish Government.”

“But this is different,” Grace insisted.  “These aren't
humans
.”

“I doubt it will matter,” Joelle said.  She had a suspicion the media would make a great deal of hay out of it, but no one would really care.  “There’s very little we can do about it without fatally compromising our position here.”

Grace looked stubborn.  “I want to file a Memorandum of Disagreement,” she said.  “This isn't going to reflect well on us.”

Joelle lifted her eyebrows.  “Do you know,” she asked lightly, “what that could do to your career?”

“Yes,” Grace said.

“You would have disagreed, publically, with your superior,” Joelle said, anyway.  “There would be questions, when we got home, and if they disagreed with you your career would be at an end.  And most of the Mandarins in the Foreign Office are ruthlessly pragmatic.  I can guarantee they
would
disagree with you.”

She paused.  “I can forget I ever heard that, if you like,” she added.  “You wouldn't need to mention it again.”

“I have to,” Grace said.  “This is
wrong
.”

Joelle silently gave her points for idealism, then deducted them for naivety.  Grace’s career would not survive a Memorandum of Disagreement, not unless there were strong reasons for their mutual superiors to back Grace over Joelle.  The hell of it was that Joelle could even admire Grace’s willingness to gamble with her career, but she knew, all too well, that there was nothing they could do.  Perhaps, she wondered privately, some of her predecessors from before the Age of Unrest had felt the same, as they were forced to watch helplessly while their hosts made a joke of human rights. 

We need to keep our alien allies
, she thought, grimly. 
And that means we cannot reprimand them like children
.

“If you are insistent on filing a Memorandum of Disagreement, you may do so and it will be carried home on the next ship to leave Vesy,” Joelle said.  She wouldn't check to see if Grace had actually done so, she told herself.  It would give Grace a chance for second thoughts.  “I won’t try to stop you.”

“Thank you, Ambassador,” Grace said.

Joelle held up a hand.  “Don’t thank me yet,” she said.  She allowed her voice to darken as she held Grace’s gaze.  “
However
, I will not tolerate you attempting to disrupt our relationship with our alien friends.  You are not to lecture them, you are not to step away from the official script and you are not to do
anything
that might suggest we will make poor allies.  If you do anything of the sort, you will spend the rest of the deployment in
Warspite’s
brig and face a Board of Inquiry when you get back home.  Do you understand me?”

Grace swallowed.  “Yes, Ambassador.”

“Good,” Joelle said.  “I would prefer not to put you in a position where your duty conflicts with your principles, but I‘m afraid it’s already too late.  There’s no point in offering your resignation now as you’d only remain stuck on Vesy ...”

“With the bill for the trip home awaiting me,” Grace interrupted.

“Quite,” Joelle agreed. 

She gave Grace a considering look.  “Take the rest of the day off and get some sleep,” she added, then paused.  “Get something from the dispensary to help you sleep without nightmares.  You’ll probably need it.  Tomorrow ... there’s a whole backlog of NGO ships to inspect before they’re allowed to land on the planet.  You’ll probably be needed to help smooth ruffled feathers.”

“Thank you, Ambassador,” Grace said.  She frowned.  “Is it always like this?”

Joelle smiled.  “Like how?”

“Like ... having to watch something awful when you’re on a diplomatic assignment,” Grace said.  “Or ...”

Joelle had to smile.  “The French will seek whatever advantage they can for themselves,” she said.  “If you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile.  The Russians will take you to dinner, then stuff you until you feel you’re going to burst, hoping to put you in the right frame of mind to give them whatever they want.  You won’t be in any state to argue.  The Chinese will happily spend weeks talking about nothing before finally getting to the point ...

“In short, yes; you will have to learn to roll with the punches and handle the unpleasant surprises they throw at you,” she concluded.  “An alien being executed in front of you?  If you stay in the service, you’ll probably see a great deal worse before you’re done.”

She watched Grace leave the room, then opened a new file and hastily jotted down her recollections of the meeting.  It was hard to blame Grace for being horrified, but it wasn't an attitude she could tolerate, not now.  There was no room for being squeamish when working for the Foreign Office.  Enemy diplomats might not come at you with guns and bombs, but they would skilfully isolate any hint of weakness and use it to achieve their aims.  If Grace had accidentally caused a diplomatic rift between the British and their allies, Joelle had no doubt that the Indians would happily take advantage of it. 

And that would give them control over more of the surface
, she thought, sourly. 
They might wind up with a decent claim to the entire system
.

Putting the file aside, she went back to work.

***

“Lieutenant,” Lieutenant-Colonel Wilson Boone said, once Percy had entered his office and saluted.  “What happened?”

Percy didn't allow himself to relax.  “The aliens sacrificed one of their prisoners from the war to their gods,” he said.  “It was not a pleasant sight.”

Boone snorted.  “Any more or less pleasant than seeing one’s comrades ripped apart by plasma guns?”

“No, sir,” Percy said.  He’d taken a moment to look up Boone’s service record and discovered that the officer had served on Target One, back during the war.  “The civilians didn't take it very well, however.  Some of them were publicly sick.”

“That must have surprised the Vesy,” Boone said.  “What did you tell them?”

“That the food didn't quite agree with human stomachs,” Percy said.  “It did happen before with some of their meats, sir, so I thought it an acceptable excuse.”

“Good thinking,” Boone said.  He gave Percy a sharp look.  “Did they buy it?”

“I think so, sir,” Percy said.  “They do know we can't eat everything of theirs, sir; some meats are poisonous, others are definitely an acquired taste.”

“Which is worrying, because it gives them a chance to poison us,” Boone said.  “Or would you say that wasn't a problem?”

“I don't think they could poison
all
of us,” Percy said.  “Only a couple of my Bootnecks ate the meat they offered, sir.  Even if they did ... they wouldn't be able to do anything about the rest of Fort Knight, or the ships overhead.”

“Good to know,” Boone grunted.  “Do you think they’re telepathic?”

Percy blinked, thrown by the sudden twist.  “Sir?”

“It’s on the list of possibilities,” Boone said, tapping a sheet of paper.  “The contingency planners went a little mad, Lieutenant.  We have plans here to cope with them being able to read minds, or control minds, or infect us with tailored diseases that would spread back to the Human Sphere before going active and slaughtering us all.”