The Crucible of Empire (55 page)

She rummaged through the scanty trove of Lleix implements for a smaller tool and came up with something that was at least vaguely wrench-like. "I did not like them at first," she said, "but now I find them interesting, or at least some of them." She held the tool up to the greenish-tinged overhead light, trying to decide if it would work. "They do not look down upon Krant like the great kochan."

"They are stub-eared aliens," Braltan said, holding what seemed to be a sort of manifold cover steady for her. "And we have conquered them. Who are they to look down upon anyone?"

"But now they have their own taif," Kaln said, "so they must be making themselves useful to other kochan, and they are clever, always creating new things as well as finding different ways to make tech work."

"
Ollnat
," Braltan said, as the cover finally came loose and they could peer into the engine workings beneath. The stench of burnt metal was strong. The youth tapped an exposed joint with the end of a wrench and it fell into two pieces. "What use is that?"

"More than you know, obviously," she said, annoyed, thinking of her improvement to the artillery hoist. It had worked so splendidly, it made her happy just to remember. She picked up the pieces and tried to fit them back together. The end of one crumbled into blackened metal shavings. "Humans are clever about other things too," she said, laying the useless pieces aside. "Caewithe Miller told me that they have whole libraries about the problem of social inequality. Some of their political units have even fought wars with one another to prevent it." She stared around the ruined engine room. "Jao almost never write about such matters, or even think about them very often."

"Humans
fight
among themselves?" Braltan stiffened, his lines gone to
outrage
. "That is shameful! Kochan never fight over status."

"Not directly," Kaln said, "but think how Krant is never sought out for trade agreements, so that our worlds remain poor and our fleet minimal. Nor are we included in councils when important decisions must be made. Narvo and Dano and Pluthrak have never turned weapons upon us, but no Krant would ever be appointed governor of a conquered world. We are considered good enough to fight the Ekhat and die, when the need arises, but not to have a place at the forefront of kochan politics."

Braltan fell quiet then, the set of his ears and jaw gone to
uncertainty
. She had given him much to think about and he was still but newly emerged.

"It is the way things are," he said finally, the tool in his hand forgotten. "The way things have always been."

"The Lleix only honor what has been done before," she said, "and see where that has brought them—to the brink of extinction."

Braltan sat back on his haunches and rubbed fretfully at his whiskers. "This will not function without replacement parts," he said, apparently changing the subject to one he could handle.

And there were no replacement parts. They both knew that. Perhaps the
Lexington
could fabricate such from the stock in its machine shops, but that would take time, even after it returned, and, with a sudden surge Kaln felt that both the Ekhat and the
Lexington
would be back
soon
.

"Something has changed," she said softly, resisting the urge to rush outside to the landing field and stare up into the night sky. A storm had blown in from the mountains while they were working and they would see nothing but clouds and swirling pale-blue snow. "Do you feel it?"

His black eyes gazed at her, flickering with green. "I do not have a strong timesense," the youth said, "but I think there is—something."

"They are coming back," she said.

Braltan replaced the manifold cover, a useless gesture, but she noted with approval that he was a tidy worker. "Who?" he asked, his ears flicking nervously from
doubt
to
dread
and then back again.

"I do not know," she said. "We must find Major Tully and see if there has been word from the
Lexington
." Because, if it was the Ekhat, entering the star system with ten or twenty ships instead of five, they were all exposed down here, Jao, human, and Lleix, waiting for the first attack run. The three assault ships would no doubt make excellent targets.

Mallu, sprawled on one of the uncomfortable bare wood sleeping platforms, came awake suddenly as though someone had poked him. He sat up, wincing at a stab of pain from his still-healing ribs, and peered through the darkness. Outside, the wind howled, making the flags along the roof snap, and it was even colder than it had been earlier. He would have given a great deal for a decent
dehabia
blanket upon which to sleep. Had the storm woken him?

At the front of the
elian
-house, he heard a door open. Of course, the Lleix had no locks so anyone could come in at any time, but he'd posted a guard at every entrance. The Lleix were aliens with good reason to hate Jao. Though they seemed to be tolerating their presence for now, he had no intention of depending on their goodwill.

A human male poked his head into the sleeping quarters. "Krant-Captain?" he said softly.

Mallu scrubbed at his ears, then stood. What was the creature's name? Yunk? "Yes?"

The human edged into the room, holding his rifle. "Senior-Tech Kaln is here and asking to speak with you."

Yung. That was it. Private Gairy Yung. Mallu flicked his ears in
assent
, a bit of bodyspeak which humans seemed to universally understand, then maneuvered through the maze of rooms in the dark house to the vast front hall, called the Application Chamber, according to Jihan.

Kaln was pacing up and down, tracking in snow across the gleaming wooden floor, detouring the scavenged benches and stools. Her ear was pinned in
alarm
. She whirled when he came into the room. "Krant-Captain!"

He settled carefully on a bench, trying not to jar his ribs. "Senior-Tech." His mouth tasted like sand and his whole body itched. It seemed forever since he'd had a proper swim.

"Can you feel it?" Her eyes were alive with green. "They are coming!"

"Who is coming?" said a sleepy human voice from the doorway to the back of the house. It was Caitlin Kralik. Obviously the noise had woken her too.

"I do not know!" Kaln said. Her lines went to pure
agitation
. "Either the
Lexington
or the Ekhat, but something has changed and they are coming!"

"The Jao timesense," Caitlin said. She ran fingers through tousled hair that she usually kept quite orderly. Her clothing was haphazardly thrown on, her feet bare. Mallu saw how her toes curled against the cold wood.

Kaln's timesense was especially keen. Mallu's irritation seeped away. The tech might well be the first to know about the approach of an important event and that could give them an edge. He closed his eyes and felt inside his head. At first there was nothing, just the tug of weariness and a longing to return to dormancy, but then . . .

He stiffened. There was something, a faint turning . . . a change. "Wake Major Tully," he said. "And check with the assault ships. See if they can detect any contacts entering the system."

"Which is it?" Caitlin asked. "The Ekhat or the
Lexington
?" Her face had gone pale, which Mallu now understood was a sign of distress among her kind.

"I cannot say yet," he said. "But it is surely one or the other."

Roused out of a dead sleep by a guard, Tully jammed his feet into his cold, stiff boots and headed out into the howling night to join Caitlin, Mallu, and the rest of his jinau over at Jaolore. Something, evidently, was up, or at least the Jao seemed to think so.

Snow had come in from the mountains and a wild wind was driving flakes into the elegant
elian
-houses as he trudged, head down, through the precisely laid-out city. He had experienced the worst winter weather the Rocky Mountains had to offer back on Earth during his time in the Resistance camps. This storm didn't fall far short.

Nancy Burgeson, who had been on duty and taken the call, slogged along beside him. They waded through ankle-deep, curiously dry snow that didn't adhere into drifts, but blew about like sand. Tully had checked with the assault ships as soon as Burgeson had woken him, but all was quiet there. No sign of any vessels entering the system. Of course, Valeron was smack in the middle of a planetary nebula. All that scattered dust and gas threw off the readings so that you couldn't always trust the instruments.

His nose had gone numb two seconds after he'd plunged outside into the freezing wind. His fingers and hands weren't far behind. "This had better be good," he muttered, following the bend that led to Jaolore. Their footsteps crunched through the snow.

Burgeson gave him a startled glance. "Sir?"

"Never mind," he said, turning into the walkway up to the house. Lights shone through the floor to ceiling windows that distinguished this house from all the others he'd seen so far.

A human guard was posted at the door and reached to open it for them. "Helluva night, sir," a muffled female voice said. The figure was too bundled up for identification, swathed in several layers of scarves and coats. She saluted.

Tully returned the salute, stamped the snow off his boots, and plunged inside. "You got that right," he said over his shoulder.

Inside, benches had been placed around the airy room. It was marginally warmer. Someone'd had the sense to stoke a small Lleix brazier and it was radiating a bit of heat. Mallu looked up from his seat. "
Vaish
, Major Tully," he said with the shift in his shoulders that signified
recognition-of-authority
.

Kaln and several other unfamiliar Jao clad in Krant-maroon, were standing behind Mallu, all of them evidently too restless to sit.

Jihan and Pyr were gazing into the room from a doorway, their coronas a-flutter. Caitlin had taken a seat across from Mallu and was sipping a cup of coffee that smelled inviting. Tully wondered if there was any more to be had. She had dark circles under her eyes that would no doubt be worse by morning. No one, it seemed, was getting much sleep tonight.

"You had a concern, Krant-Captain?" he said, assuming a Yautlike-stance, one that he hoped would communicate something like
barely-restrained-impatience
.

The corner of Caitlin's mouth quirked and she turned away to smother a grin. She got what he was trying to do even if no one else in the room did.

"It was Kaln who felt it first," Mallu said, "but once I reached out, I felt it too, though not as strongly. She has always been one of the most sensitive of all Krant to temporal shifts and she is right. Conditions out there have changed or altered. Something—someone—is coming."

The famous Jao timesense. Infamous, as far as Tully was concerned. Somehow the buggers always knew when something would happen. Before being inducted into Aille's personal service, Tully had thought the veterans of the Conquest were making this stuff up, but he'd seen Jao anticipations of an event come true too many times now to be skeptical. The sickening zing of adrenaline spilled through his blood. "Who is it?"

Kaln regarded him with bristling whiskers and eyes gone almost pure green, a measure of her agitation. "I do not know," she said, "but their arrival is imminent."

"I checked with the assault ships before I came over here," Tully said. "They have not detected anything yet on their instruments."

"Whoever it is, they will come through the framepoint," Mallu said. "The assault ships should have their instruments trained there."

"Wake everyone up," Tully said. "Have them report to our ships on the double. If it is the Ekhat, we'll need to lift as soon as possible." Though what kind of stand they could make against an entire Ekhat fleet was beyond him. The maniacs had sent five ships on the last run and got their rears handed to them. This time, it would be more, a lot more. But he wasn't going to just sit here and wait, like the Lleix, for the inevitable.

Caitlin was staring at him, blue-gray eyes wide, hands buried in the pockets of her rose-colored sweater. He remembered his promise to Ed Kralik that he would look out for her. Well, if he failed to keep that promise, at least he wasn't going to have to explain it to her husband. If she died, he would no doubt be just as dead himself. "Get your coat!" he said, crossing the room to her. "We can't stay here!"

"But—" She glanced at Jihan and Pyr. The two Lleix were still standing in the doorway, watching with narrowed black eyes, their coronas on end. "What about the Lleix?"

"No point," he said. "If it's the Ekhat, it won't do any good to save one or two, and that's all we could manage."

"We can't fight a whole Ekhat fleet," she said, rising.

"No," he said, "we can't, but we can hide until the
Lexington
comes back."

She left the Application Chamber. He then he turned to Kaln. "What about the Lleix ships? How many can lift off right now?"

"More than twenty," the senior-tech said. "But they are all very small."