Hellfire (THEIRS NOT TO REASON WHY) (37 page)

John Genibes snorted. “Don’t pull that officer’s duty
shakk
with me. What’s your
real
reason for wanting to help the Gatsugi?”

Ia dropped her soldierly poise and gave him a flat look. “That
is
my real reason, sir. It is the single most efficient use of all our resources. I did tell you and the others when I bargained for this ship that it would have to be sent places the rest of you might not think are all that vital but actually are.
This
is one of those instances.”

He studied her for longer than the two-second delay. Finally, he asked,
“Carte blanche?”

“Admiral, yes, sir. You’ll see how effective I am in wielding it when the Terran Council receives the gratitude of the Gatsugi Collective, sir,” she promised.

Sighing, Admiral Genibes sat back in his seat and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Right…Well, at least you’re using it for the good of the war effort. I’ll promote it that way to the Admiral-General. What’s next on your itinerary, between then and now?”

“What I would’ve had the crew do before I knew about the anti-psi menace. Attack hidden shipyards and crèches.” She waited for his reaction.

He lifted his head at that. “…Crèches?”

“They’ve been breeding and training generations of workers and warriors on the sly, all dedicated to building up their war machine,” Ia told him. “They’ve been on short rations, working in harsh conditions, but it’s how they’ve managed to come up with enough bodies to craft the robotics and other manufactories to build everything they’re planning on throwing at us. My plan is to make those secret resources too costly to repair, forcing them to make their opening attack before we can destroy too many of them.”

“More rocks flung at near-Cee?” Genibes asked dryly.

“No, sir. Mostly, it’ll be the Godstrike, since the things are located a light-year or more from anything else, which means overshoot won’t be as much of a problem. These are mostly my original targets, the ones without anti-psi shielding—though we will be hunting down more of those as the war gets going,” she promised. “Not just the
Hellfire
, but other ships, too. I’ll need you to pass along rerouting and attack orders for a number of ships within the year, to see that these interstitial-space
enemy bases get destroyed when the odds are highest on our side.”

“About attacking those crèches,” her superior stated after another extralong pause. “It won’t play well if word gets out you’re hitting targets with children. Whether or not they’re Salik tadpoles, they’re still children. Mind you, I won’t object on my end because I
know
what those things are. I’m talking about someone in your crew talking about it to the Nets. If it gets on the news…”

“I know, sir,” Ia admitted quietly. “I accepted the cost long ago. The goal is to cripple their facilities beyond use, not just to kill. We want to concentrate their numbers in other, more heavily defended locations deeper within Salik territory. The Salik intend to stab at Alliance members in between cleansing the Blockade presence from their various territories, dividing our attentions. We can’t afford to let them continue to train replacement soldiers, and we can’t afford to let them spread out any more than they already are.”

“How are you going to put it to your crew?” Genibes asked. “Or are you going to even tell them what the targets actually are?”

She shook her head. “A lie by omission is still a kind of lie, sir. I’d prefer to limit the number of omissions I make because eventually the truth does get out. The first few targets will be manufacturing stations and shipyards, that sort of thing. I’ll find the best moment to tell them about the crèches when we come to that point. Anything else you wanted to discuss, Admiral?”

“Not at this time. Don’t abuse your
carte blanche
, Captain,” he warned her.

She gave him another dry look. “Considering what I
could
be doing with it, I’d hardly call the careful, rational selection of vital targets an abuse of my position—but yes, I am aware that others’ viewpoints may not match my own, sir.”

Some of those viewpoints weren’t even Human. She wanted to warn him about the Feyori who were going to move against her, but refrained. Instead, they said their good-byes and ended the call. Ia rested only a moment before reaching for the comm again, this time making an audio connection with the bridge.

“Captain Ia to Lieutenant Spyder.”

“Spyder ’ere, Cap’n,”
he replied.
“What can we do f’ you?”

“Tell the members of the 1st and 3rd Platoons they may have half an hour to contact their loved ones, up to bandwidth capacity. They are not permitted to say where we are or what we are doing, save that we’re on a deep-space patrol, as per the Company Bible. The 2nd will have to wait until it’s their off-duty turn next time we’re in sublight. After forty minutes, resume course at FTL speed to our next target,”
she directed.

“Understood, Cap’n,”
Spyder said.

FEBRUARY 25, 2496 T.S.

SIC TRANSIT

This time, Ia didn’t bother to square her shoulders before stepping into the boardroom. Her fellow soldiers had already used it a few times since leaving the shipyards, if mostly for group briefings rather than Company-wide ones. This one involved her image being broadcast to tertiary screens at duty stations around the ship for those members of the 1st Platoon who weren’t in attendance since the ship was in motion, which meant priority stations had to be manned.

This time, she wasn’t in her formal Dress Blacks, just in a grey shirt and trouser set with her service and rank pins in place. Lieutenant Rico was up on the bridge, serving as the officer on watch, but the other members of the cadre were gathered at the officers’ table. Some of the soldiers lounging in the tiers of seats looked half-asleep, having been dragged out of bed for this meeting.

They did sit up when she came into view, but didn’t rise or salute since she wasn’t in formals and wasn’t wearing a cap. That was in the Company Bible, which meant they were doing what they were supposed to do. Coming to a stop before her seat at the table, Ia began without preamble.

“At Ease. Up until now, our targets have been considered legitimate under the Alliance joint military code of conduct for all of its sentient members. Mainly because we have been operating under the Alliance-agreed provisions against Salik-crafted and -manned communications hubs, war-matériel-manufacturing facilities, and minor shipyards located outside the Salik Interdicted Zone, and thus outside the law.

“Our next target also falls outside what the law permits the Salik to legally occupy and operate.” She paused, taking the time to meet the gazes of several of the hundred-plus men and women seated around her. “This means they
are
legitimate targets in the eyes of the law. In the eyes of common, sentientkind morality…some of you may have objections.”

She did not display anything on the screen. She did not sit down, either. Bracing her hands on the table, she leaned forward, again meeting the gazes of the soldiers around her.

“Right this minute,” Ia stated, “in the ponds of the city of Shnn-wuish on the Salik Motherworld of Sallha, the senior-most members of what we Humans would call a high school are undergoing their version of a graduation ceremony. The top twenty students are being permitted the chance to hunt and kill the five worst-performing members of their graduating class. They will do so in the ancient way in a deep lake in the heart of that city, without any weapons other than their tentacle-hands and teeth…and yes, they will eat what they kill, while they are still killing it.

“The hunters are cheered on by everyone, and the hunted are scorned,” she continued. “Unless the hunted successfully kill all twenty of their hunters, they will not be permitted to leave the pond. Those among the hunters who are killed by the poor-performing students they hunt will not be avenged by their family or friends. They, too, will become reviled as weak and useless. These are
not
Human children,” Ia stressed, hardening her voice. “They do
not
operate under the same rules as the rest of us. So when I say our next target is a crèche, a deep-space facility designed to spawn and rear Salik children, I am
not
talking about defenseless younglings. They are trained from birth to hunt and kill.”

Roughly one-third of the men and women nodded somberly in understanding. One-third looked a little confused, and the remaining third looked disturbed. That included their ship’s doctor, Jesselle Mishka, who frowned in distaste at Ia.

“I can corroborate this,” Lieutenant Rico stated, surprising her a little. She hadn’t figured he would speak up. At her nod of permission, he filled in a few more details for the skeptical members of the crew. “I have studied their culture as well as their language, to better understand how and why they communicate. For the first five years of a Salik’s life, they do
not
learn how to read, write, or interact socially beyond their immediate family-pack, which consists of their mother and their siblings.

“Instead, within two months of emerging from their egg-sacs, they learn how to hunt live prey, starting first with small, fish-like creatures whose only defenses are that they spawn in great numbers and can swim fast
en masse
, on up through to large, non-sentient livestock that are bred to fight back,” the lieutenant said. “By the time their brains have developed enough for higher cognitive learning, they are natural killers. Attempts by Alliance social services to ‘reeducate’ Salik spawnlings have failed, because this five-year hunting requirement is hardwired into their biology and their neurology. They are
not
Human.”

Ever since his trip into the timestreams with her, Oslo Rico had given up his resistance to her leadership. Ia dipped her head in acknowledgment of his help. “The lieutenant is correct. In the eyes of softhearted civilians who are not trained in xenobiology or xenopsychology…we will be seen as going up against their
own
children. We will be seen as slaughtering
their
younglings, whether it’s Human, Gatsugi, Tlassian, K’kattan, Choyan or Solarican, Dlmvlan or Chinsoiy. But these are
not
our children.

“As for the legality of our coming strike against a crèche station designed to raise and train Salik children…they are located well outside the Salik Interdicted Zone, the only place where the Salik are permitted to establish colonies. By law, they are explicitly forbidden to establish and occupy any locations other than the openly listed ones, which means these hidden crèche stations are completely valid targets, the exact same as those comm hubs were…which
did
have small crèche-ponds of children on board.”

Her confession stirred the crew in waves of discomfort. Ia let that sink in, then continued.

“The only difference between this next target and the previous ones is the scale. A few hundred at most, versus the tens of thousands of tadpoles we’ll be going after. This crèche station, the first of many, is specifically designed to rear and train Salik younglings to be competent engineers, mechanics, scientists, and warriors. They are staffed by Salik broodmothers culled from the top-serving members of the underground Salik
war effort…and while their graduating ceremonies do remove the bottom five students per class, they practice those skills beforehand on captured sentients.”

“
I
can corroborate that,” Helstead spoke up.

That, Ia had expected. She nodded at the former Corps officer to continue.

“Intelligence reports from pirate operations have included numerous cases of extremely unscrupulous sentients among the members of the criminal undergalaxy selling their prisoners for large sums of tangible assets,” the lieutenant commander shared, glancing at her fellow officers. She looked out at the men and women seated in the riser seats. “Rare gems, precious metals, and other nontraceable commodities have ensured that, while extremely risky if caught, the food-slave trade has remained quite profitable over the years.

“While it’s true that in the Interdicted Zone, it’s the death penalty for any pirate caught trading in living sentients to the enemy,” she admitted, “the profits have made that risk worthwhile to many. Every few years, the Knifemen Corps keeps taking out the worst of the slave traders, but more just keep popping back up like weeds.”

“I myself was sold by a group of pirates to the Salik for my weight, kilo for kilo, in platinum originally mined on the legitimate Salik colonyworld of Ss’nuc III,” Ia admitted in an aside. “But we’re digressing. There is a purpose to this meeting beyond informing you of the distasteful yet necessary chore we are about to pursue. I made myself a promise back when I first planned for this crew. If I had the time to spare, and could spare it before a particular engagement, I would give you an opportunity to step into the timestreams with me and
see
for yourselves just how necessary this particular fight will be.

“I offer you this opportunity now. I have half an hour I can spare from my other obligations and duties,” Ia stated, moving around the table to the front of it. “If you wish to see for yourself just what we’re up against, you may choose to do so. This offer is open to my fellow officers as well as to the noncoms and enlisted. If you have any doubts or discomforts at the idea of undergoing this, you may consult with Lieutenant Rico, who has already accompanied me on a previous visit to the timestreams.”

A hand rose, hesitant at first, then higher. The owner was
Private First Class Harley Floathawg, distinct not only for his self-picked name, but for the burgundy blotches of
jungen
mottling his skin. Half-V’Dan and half-Terran, he was one of less than a million or so Humans of the billions occupying the known galaxy to still get the colorful skin pigmentation. Ia had not selected him based on his appearance or unusual name, however; she had selected him because he was one of the best hovertech mechanics available for her crew, without being needed far more elsewhere.