The Crucible of Empire (62 page)

Pyr watched her closely.

"Our knowledge of the Jao will be critical, but there is so much more to learn. We must understand Humans and Terra and the history of the Jao from the time we last knew them until now, the events which transformed them into allies who reached out to assist us." She settled on the floor and braced her back against the bulkhead. "We need a wider, more inclusive—"

"Terralore!" Pyr exclaimed.

The designation fit. She tried it out in her mind, seeing if it would stretch to include everything needed. "Yes, youngest," she said, "I think you are right."

Kajin, as always, glowered.

Just after the last craft from Valeron docked with the
Lexington
, the command crew reported a contact deep in the local star's blazing photosphere. Terra-Captain Dannet was prowling the command deck, where she belonged at this critical point in the evacuation. To her irritation, the Preceptor, Ronz, and Terra's governor, Aille krinnu ava Terra, had come up and were now poking about where they were most decidedly not wanted. The governor, a former Pluthrak, was quite the pilot himself, evidently, and felt free to pry into every detail of
Lexington's
operation.

Her whiskers bristled. The new sensor contact was unlikely to be one of their ships. The rest of the Jao fleet had already jumped back to Terra, conducting their portion of the Lleix population to safety. It had to be the Ekhat. Dannet imported the stats to her own screen and studied them.

Lacking their own assignments, Ronz and Aille crossed the bridge to examine the readings over a crewman's shoulder. Dannet remained at her station, ears lowered in thought. She had felt flow quicken a short time ago, but had erroneously thought it only indicated the return of all remaining crew from Valeron and their own immanent departure from the system.

"Multiple contacts now, Terra-Captain!" her sensor tech reported. She was a human female, quite competent at her task. "Ten, no, make that thirteen!"

Arriving vessels were vulnerable at this stage before they could break free of the photosphere, and Dannet was not adverse to another fight. The last, when she had defeated five Ekhat ships in a single engagement, had increased her status in Terra Taif immensely.

And the
Lexington
was designed for exactly this situation. Dannet wouldn't have to improvise as she had before. Her shoulders assumed the sweet lines of
anticipated-success
.

The doors opened and the scarred old veteran Wrot krinnu ava Terra came onto the Command Deck. "All secure—" he began, then saw Ronz and Aille huddled over a screen, ears
intent
. "Preceptor?"

"Enemy contacts," Ronz said without looking up. "The Ekhat are returning."

Dannet rose, unable to sit still, her body angled into
readiness-to-be-of use
. Flow raced and she tightened her perception so that she experienced the moment more sedately. "Permission to engage?" she said. "We will rarely if ever get an opportunity as good as this to use
Lexington
to maximum effect. I am confident our kinetic weapons can destroy several of those ships with little risk to ourselves while the Ekhat are still submerged in the photosphere. And we can make our own escape before they can regroup."

Ronz turned and met her gaze. His eyes flickered only a faint green like lightning from a faraway storm, while she knew her own must be blazing with eagerness. His body was exquisitely neutral, betraying not a single hint of his thoughts.

The normal sounds of the command deck continued around all around them, clicking and whirring and the excited murmurs of the crew, but the Preceptor remained silent.

"No," he said finally. "It is indeed tempting, but we have a responsibility to the Lleix we have taken onboard. We have an ancient matter of conscience to resolve." He turned back to the screen. "Besides, the universe produces a seemingly inexhaustible supply of Ekhat.
Lexington
will see more than enough action before its usefulness is completed."

Dannet was disappointed, but . . . it was a sensible choice on the Preceptor's part, she supposed. She adjusted her body-harness, which had gotten a bit twisted in her excitement, then sank back into her seat and studied the oversized navigation viewscreen. "Navigator Sten," she said. "Are our return framepoint coordinates calculated?"

"Yes, Terra-Captain," the Jao officer said, his angles gone to
swift-readiness
. "Shall I lock them in?"

The Ekhat contacts strengthened, but the enemy ships would not clear the photosphere in time to detect the
Lexington
. For a wild moment, she was tempted to withhold the order to jump away from the dust and haze of this benighted system just long enough to ensure they would be forced to engage, but then her strict Narvo training reasserted itself. Such a circumvention of the Preceptor's order would be dishonorable, reflecting badly upon Terra Taif as well as those who had once schooled her for this position of trust. As always, the honor of one was the honor of all.

This would have been an excellent opportunity for honing the crew's battle skills, but as the Preceptor had pointed out, there would always be more Ekhat. That was the one great truth of the universe as far as she could tell. No matter how many battles she fought, the Jao would not see the end of the Ekhat in her lifetime.

She flicked an ear at Sten. "Jump when ready, Navigator. This ship is returning to Terra."

Caitlin looked around the room on the ship that served Preceptor Ronz as an admiral's stateroom. She was pretty sure it had originally been a storeroom for kitchen supplies. It had the appearance of being a chamber that had been hastily refitted when Ronz decided to accompany the
Lexington
back to NGC 7293.

On the plus side, it was certainly big enough to serve as an admiral's headquarters. There was plenty of room for staff meetings, such as the one that was about to get underway. On the minus side, it was far removed from the command deck. But that was probably an advantage, looked at from the standpoint of the ship's captain. Kept the admiral from being underfoot all the time.

Ronz made the little hawking sound that served Jao as an equivalent for a human clearing his throat.

"I believe we are all here, so let's begin. I think a good place to start would be with Major Tully's proposal."

"I do not mean to offend, Preceptor," said Wrot. "But the issue of association between Terra Taif and Krant is not actually a matter for the Bond's concern."

Caitlin couldn't stop herself from wincing a little. Wrot was right, true. But couldn't he have made
some
effort to say it diplomatically?

Fortunately, the Preceptor was not given to being easily offended. "Normally, that would be true," he said, in a very mild tone. "But this situation is more complicated."

"Why?" Wrot asked, as bluntly as ever.

"Because I think, to borrow a human phrase, that we are in position here to kill two birds with one stone. Possibly even three."

Before Wrot could say anything, Aille spoke up. "Please continue, Preceptor. I am interested in hearing your opinion."

So much for that, Caitlin thought. Technically, since he was not one of the elders of the Jao portion of Terra Taif, Aille's views didn't carry much weight when it came to purely kochan matters like determining association with another kochan. But the Jao were just as subject as humans—and Lleix, for that matter—to the imperatives of practical reality. Aille was not only the governor of Terra, he was the single central figure in the new taif. Wrot might chafe privately at the youngster's presumption, but he wasn't going to make a public issue out of it.

"The first bird to be slain is the question of association between Terra and Krant," Ronz said. He gave Wrot the same little dip of the head. "Into which, as my former agent points out with his usual delicacy and tact, I have no business sticking my snout. To paraphrase another human expression."

Wrot looked slightly abashed. Only slightly, though.

"But there is the second bird. I believe Terra Taif should adopt a new institution. More precisely, adopt an institution which will be very familiar to its human members, if not to its Jao. I speak of what humans would call a 'diplomatic corps.' "

Wrot and Aille stared at him. They both looked so dumbfounded that Caitlin had to suppress a laugh.

"Diplomacy," as such, was no stranger to the Jao. But diplomatic relations were simply part and parcel of kochan business, handled by the clan elders like all other kochan matters. The idea that you would separate out the process and assign the work to a specialized unit was simply bizarre, from a Jao viewpoint.

Aille recovered quickly, of course. "Please explain the need for such, Preceptor."

"Consider the business with the Lleix. And then contemplate the fact that the galaxy contains many sapient species. Some of whom we have already encountered, most of whom we have not."

"Except for humans and Lleix, though," Wrot said, "they are all extremely primitive."

Ronz placed his hands on the big round table that served all of them as a conference table. "True. But why is that? Perhaps it is because we have only encountered species in this region of the galaxy—which is the same region infested by the Ekhat."

Wrot was obviously puzzled. "Naturally. Here is where we have concerns to deal with. Why would we go elsewhere?"

His attitude was pretty typical. Exploration for the sake of exploration was a variety of
ollnat,
you could say. An impractical enterprise which would hold little interest for the Jao.

Ronz didn't answer the question directly. "Consider the corollary. The Ekhat rigorously search out any sapient species in order to enslave them or destroy them. But there is no way to search for sapience as such. What they are actually seeking are the byproducts of technological advancement, not so?"

"Yes," said Aille. "And I understand your point. Because of the Ekhat, there is a selective pressure against technologically advanced intelligent species in this portion of our galactic arm. But that might not be so, in some other region where the Ekhat have not gone yet."

"Exactly. And from observing what has happened with the Lleix, it occurs to me that we are possibly missing an opportunity. Who is to say there are not other species as advanced as humans or Lleix—or even we Jao ourselves? And if so, could they not make powerful allies in our war against the Ekhat?"

Wrot was still looking confused. "But no kochan would devote resources to such an uncertain enterprise. Perhaps the Bond . . . ?"

The Preceptor shook his head, one of the few human gestures which had been adopted by many Jao. "That would be unwise, I think. The function of the Bond is to mediate between the kochan. Were we to begin acting on behalf of all kochan, that would inevitably stir up antagonism."

"True," said Aille. "But if one of the kochan were to begin such an effort—better still, a new taif—"

"Better still," Ronz interrupted, "a new taif in association with a little known and poorly regarded kochan, like Krant."

Aille leaned back in his chair. So did Wrot.

So did Caitlin and Ed, for that matter. And Tully actually whistled. Softly, thank God.

Caitlin's mind was racing ahead. A diplomatic expedition of the sort Ronz was proposing would be dismissed by all the great kochan as the silliness you might expect from a new and bizarre taif like Terra. And as for the Krant . . . Who cared what Krant did?

It was quite possible, of course, that such an expedition would be a failure. The rarity of technologically-advanced species might be one of the stark realities of the universe, and not just a function of Ekhat genocide. But if so, no real harm was done. No harm at all, actually, from a human standpoint. The Jao might consider exploration for its own sake to be a pointless waste of resources, but humans had a much greater interest in abstract knowledge. And, at least in the long run, there was plenty of evidence that the human attitude was more practical than the Jao.

But if the expedition was
not
a failure . . . If it did, in fact, come across potential allies in the war against the Ekhat . . .

Whichever kochan—or taif—led the way in the process would come out of it with its power and influence greatly enhanced. She glanced at Ronz. And so would the Bond, of course. Since, the Preceptor's protestations notwithstanding, Caitlin had no doubt at all that the Bond would be closely allied to the project, in fact if not formally.

Tully was the first to raise the obvious problem. "But why would Krant agree? They are poor as it is, hardly in position to devote resources to such a project."

Aille's body posture, even seated, was practically exuding enthusiasm. "Not if we provide the resources." He leaned forward. "We all know how effective Terra's shipbuilding industry can be, if we throw our full efforts into it. We need to build a big fleet of
Lexington
-class warships in any event, since the Ekhat are sure to launch another attack on Terra. Why not give two of them to the Krant—with the proviso that one of the ships is to be used for such a diplomatic mission? Krant could provide much of the crew."