The Crucible of Empire (25 page)

The great gun mount was locked into the hull, ready for action. Miller was squatting, peering down into the magazine. She glanced up, then sprang to attention. "Sir!"

Freckles stood out on her face. Between those and the bright blue eyes and the red hair and the general prettiness of her features, Tully actually had to struggle a little to keep his mind on business.

"At ease, Lieutenant," he said. "How's it going?"

"Okay, I guess." She glanced at the open hatch. Banging could be heard from below. "If her adaptation works, it may be ready to try later, if that's all right."

"We're running another drill at 14:00," he said. "Tomorrow's the day we jump and we have to be sharp. No telling what's waiting for us in that nebula." He leaned over the opening. "Senior-Tech Kaln?"

The dark-napped Jao below paused and looked up, good ear pinned. The floor was littered with parts. "I am busy." Her tone brooked no interruption.

"This mount has to be up and running by—" He broke off, trying to gauge how to explain 14:00 to someone who did not understand measuring time in quantified amounts. "—a little after mid-sun."

"Do not be ridiculous," she said, holding up a silvery rod and squinting at it. "There is no sun on this ship. Even a dry-foot like you should know that."

"We are running firing drills—later," he said. "And not a lot later. You have to reassemble the hoist in time for that."

"It will be done when it is done," Kaln said, turning back to the scatter of disassembled parts.

"No," he said, trying to channel Yaut, "it will be done on time. Even if I cannot feel the flow of this situation, I know you can, and you will either have the improvement finished or the hoist reassembled in its former condition in time for the drill. Do I make myself understood?"

She threw down the part in her hand with a clank and scrambled back up the ladder to stand before him, shoulders braced, whiskers bristling.

Yaut
, he thought, trying to remember the proper stance for someone being defied as she loomed in front of him, a head taller.
Yaut, when Tully had done something particularly clueless by Jao standards. What had that looked like?
He dropped one shoulder, angled his head, curved his arms.

Kaln's eyes blazed green. Caewithe Miller edged away, her own arms locked behind her back, her gaze prudently on the back wall.

The Jao froze. If she'd been a dog, Tully would have said her hackles were raised. Time seemed to stretch out as Kaln attempted to out-stare him, but he'd been trained by a master. He concentrated, noting her
vai camiti
, camouflaged by dark-brown nap. It was actually quite bold, sweeping across her face at a rakish angle.

"This is important," she said finally. Her whiskers wilted. "I know how to make the device better."

"I am impressed that you have an idea to improve the technology," Tully said, not relaxing his stance. "But the gun mount must function in time for the drill. We will jump soon and no one knows what we will find when we emerge from the framepoint. It could be the Ekhat. It could even be something worse. We have to be ready."

Kaln suddenly dropped her gaze to her maroon boots. "On a Krant ship, such—changing—would not be allowed." Her voice was low.

Indeed it would not, Tully thought. "Do you often get such ideas?" he asked, grasping at the edge of something intriguing in this conversation that was still eluding him.

"Occasionally," she said, "but no one is interested in improvements. Things work as they are meant to, as they always have. That is good enough. Anytime I changed something, no matter how well it functioned afterwards, I always had to put it back."

"I see," he said, and he thought that finally he really did. She was a Jao maverick, the proverbial square peg trying to fit into an exceedingly round hole, gifted with a least some measure of creativity while born to a species that had little use for such interests.

"Humans respect the power of
ollnat
," he said, "but the gun mount must be ready for action." He considered the situation. "I will assign a ship-tech to assist you."

Her eyes glittered with that enigmatic green fire that must signify something, though he had no way to understand. "That would be helpful," she said. The lines of her body shifted into a posture he'd never seen on Yaut. Skies above only knew what it was. He certainly couldn't ask.

He nodded to Lieutenant Miller, then left Senior-Tech Kaln to her self-appointed task.

Flow increased. Somewhere, something was about to come together and Wrot had a fairly good idea just what that was. The jump into the nebula would be tomorrow and then they would all know whether the Preceptor's suspicions were justified.

Part of him hoped Ronz had made an error, that this would be some new species, never before encountered. If so, the Jao would have a "clean slate," as humans liked to say, no preconceptions, no more than the usual fears at encountering unknown sapients. First contact would be much easier than dealing with the mayhem the Jao had long ago sowed under the Ekhat's direction.

Caitlin Kralik had sent him a message last night, requesting a meeting at "his earliest convenience." That expression amused him, as much about humans did. A Jao would never care if a desired interaction were "convenient" or not. His kind would accept an invitation from a subordinate, if it were deemed necessary or advantageous, and ignore it otherwise. Humans, though, were a different breed. No one understood that better than Wrot, who'd fought in the Conquest and then spent over twenty years afterward living among them.

He sent word that he would drop by her quarters, then indulged in a quick morning swim so that his wits would be at their sharpest. Caitlin had been sniffing at the edges of the matter ever since they'd left Terra. It was not inconceivable that she'd figured out their mission.

"Wrot, come in," Caitlin said, when he presented himself, his nap still damp, at her door.

"
Vaim
," he said. We-see-each-other, a greeting between those of equal status. By naming her so, which she was not in this situation since he had
oudh
, he rendered her a great compliment.

Dressed in jeans and a navy-blue shirt, she resembled a jinau. Her face was flushed with excitement. She stood aside as he entered, then eased into the graceful lines of
appreciation-of-bestowed-favor
. "
Vaim
, yourself, old man," she murmured, starting in Jao and then ending in Standard English. She had the air of a mischievous child. A hint of simple
pride
crept into her lines though she quickly suppressed it.

"You know," he said, taking her console chair. She sat across from him on her bunk.

"I think so," she said, drawing her legs up and hugging her knees. "You'll have to tell me whether I'm right."

Humans were so much more limber than Jao, he thought ruefully. He cocked an ear at her, waiting.

"It's the Lleix," she said. "The species who first put the notion of freedom into your minds."

It would never do to underestimate this one, Wrot told himself. Her childhood exposure to Jao culture had made her infernally clever. He wondered if humans would ever be recruited by the Bond. If so, she would probably be the first selected. "That is what we suspect," he said, "but there is no way to know until we jump."

"If it is them, they won't welcome us," she said. Her face had gone pink in the cheeks, a reliable indicator of excitement for her kind. "They'll be afraid, or angry, or both."

"That is, as humans say, an understatement," Wrot said. "So, if Ronz is correct, we will have to proceed carefully."

"Why proceed at all?" she said. "Why not just leave them in peace? If they wanted to be found, they wouldn't have left after the battle."

"The Ekhat have already rediscovered them," Wrot said. "At some point, they will be back with as many ships as it takes and then this colony will perish. For the sake of our
vithrik
and all those who died so long ago at our hands, we should make ourselves of use and save these."

"How will we even speak to them?" she said. "The only file I found with an audio track had them communicating with your representative in Jao, for all the good it did them."

Once the Lleix had even gone to the trouble of learning their enemy's language to try to forge an alliance. That indicated much about both their desperation and resourcefulness. Wrot closed his eyes, thinking hard. That meeting had been so long ago, no Lleix would remember how to speak Jao now. They'd certainly had no reason to maintain the skill.

"I do not know," he said finally, "but they are an intelligent species with something of humanity's ability to visualize that-which-is-not, otherwise they would never have glimpsed the possibilities in the Jao that we could not see for ourselves. Perhaps you and your fellow humans can connect with them on at least that level."

"Are there any restricted files dealing with the Lleix?" she asked, her eyes upon a digital photograph of her mate, Ed, on the shelf above Wrot's head. "I have Aille's access codes, but you must have the Bond's."

Now that she had guessed the truth, she should have access to everything so that she could make herself of the fullest use, should the Lleix be waiting for them in that nebula. Still, Wrot hesitated. Caitlin thought she understood the full grimness of the Jao's former existence as tools of the Ekhat, but he was quite certain she did not. If he gave her access, she would see for herself in gruesome detail all the terrible actions they had carried out long ago under Ekhat rule, and once known, the knowledge could never be taken back.

It would be a burden she would have to carry all her days. He understood that in this moment, even if she did not.

But they all had to make themselves of use, Wrot and Caitlin and Tully and Dannet and the Krants, no matter how painful the path was.
Vithrik
allowed nothing less. He turned his chair around and then added his code to her authorization on the computer. "What you learn here," he said over his shoulder, "can be shared with no one without Bond permission, not even Ed." He turned back and met her startled blue-gray eyes. "Can you handle that?"

"But Ed has very high clearance," she said. "Surely—"

"Not without Bond approval," Wrot said, "and that may never be granted. Ronz would require as good a reason to authorize him as I have with you now."

Flow slowed as she took some time to think it over. Wrot appreciated that about this particular human. Plagued as she was with her species' endless curiosity, she still understood what kind of commitment this would be. She did not rush into big decisions like a child newly emerged from its natal pool.

Finally, she sighed. "I don't want to know things I can't tell Ed, but I don't see that I have a choice. I need as much information as possible if I'm going to do any good here."

"I think you are right," he said and validated her access.

Mallu heeded the summons to Spine C for additional training, reporting with Jalta, Kaln, and the rest of his reduced Krant crew. His own position as Gun C-Eleven's captain was much more interesting than he had first thought. The great kinetic weapons packed immense force and he could see how they might even be more effective in some situations than energy weapons for which the Ekhat would have shields.

His ribs still ached, but not as much, though a number of postures were still difficult. However, working with humans as he was, postures weren't required and mostly he didn't even bother trying. The creatures seemed oblivious to them anyway and their own postures were too chaotic to interpret.

Jalta was working at the far end on Gun One with no more fuss than if he'd been one of these stub-eared humans. Mallu had been braced for trouble from Kaln, but oddly enough she seemed to be fitting in with her own crew. At least, she had taken a position in the magazine of her gun mount and stayed down there most of the time. As far as he could tell, there had been no more commotion.

His other Krants were also doing fairly well. He'd only had to discipline three so far, and those for minor infractions. That was fortunate because he could feel the flow of this journey increasing. Something was about to happen and they all had to be ready.

His gun crew knew what to do far better than he did, in actuality, so at first he observed the other captains as their crews struggled to increase their efficiency, then watched for the same problems with his own personnel. Those under his responsibility were all human, infernally quick and more agile than Jao, but also more easily distracted. He soon realized that part of his job was to keep them focused, and that was not so hard.

When the drill was completed, Tully called a meeting of the gun captains and read off the stats. "Excellent," it said. Then Mallu corrected himself mentally—
he
said. This particular individual was male. He was beginning to be able to reliably tell the genders apart, which seemed important to humans. Males apparently disliked very much being taken for female. The opposite mistake elicited an even more indignant reaction.