The Ghost Brigades (17 page)

::I'm center line,:: Sagan said. ::Dirac, you're left; Pauling, right. Einstein will cover us as we climb, and then you two cover her and the other two from the top as they get out. Clear?::

::Clear,:: Jared and Pauling said.

::Reload my Empee and give it to Einstein,:: Sagan said to Jared. ::She won't have time to reload.:: Jared cleared the magazine from Sagan's Empee, reloaded it with one of his spares, and handed it to Einstein. She took it and nodded.

::We're ready for you,:: Roentgen said from above. ::You better hurry.::

As they went to their lines they heard the sound of heavy Eneshan footfalls. Einstein began firing as they started to climb. At each of the next two levels Jared's platoon mates were calmly waiting, sighted in on their sole entrances. Jared's integration told him they were both scared shitless and waiting for the shoe to drop.

From above Jared new firing began. The Eneshans had come through on the top level.

Sagan was weighed down by the heir but lacking her Empee or her equipment pack; on balace she was traveling light, and flew up her line, ahead of Jared and Pauling. The pair of bullets that stitched across her shoulder hit her as she was within reach of the top, and grasping for the hand of Julian Lowell to pull her up. A third bullet slipped past Sagan's shoulder and struck Lowell directly above his right eye, passing through his brain before ricocheting off the inside of his skull and burying itself in his neck, severing his carotid in the process. Lowell's head snapped back and then forward, his body slumping and falling forward into the hole. He collided with Sagan as he fell, tearing the final scrap of fabric that kept intact the sling holding the heir. Sagan felt the tear and the sling falling away but was too occupied trying to keep herself from falling to do anything about it.

::Catch it,:: she said, and was grabbed by Alex Roentgen and pulled to safety.

Jared grabbed and missed; it was too far away. The sling rippled past Pauling, who snatched it as it fell and then swung as it described an arc around her.

From below, Jared sensed a surprised shock of pain from Julie Einstein. Her Empee went silent. The rustling sound that followed was the sound of Eneshans climbing into the heirarch's chambers.

Pauling looked up at Jared. ::Climb,:: she said.

Jared climbed without looking down. As he passed the upper level of the palace he glimpsed the bodies of a score of dead Eneshans, and more live Eneshans behind them firing at Jared as he climbed, while Jared's platoon mates fired back with bullets and grenades. Then he was beyond them, pulled up by an unseen platoon mate onto the roof of the palace. He turned back to see Sarah Pauling on her line, sling in hand, Eneshans below her aiming upward at her. Holding the sling, she could not climb.

Pauling looked at Jared, and smiled. ::Beloved,:: she said, and flung the sling to him as the first of the bullets struck her body. Jared reached as she danced on her line, moved by the force of the projectiles that overwhelmed the defenses of her unitard and tore into her legs, torso, back and skull. He caught the sling as she fell, and pulled it from the hole as she found its bottom. He felt the last second of her life and then it was gone.

He was screaming as they pulled him into the transport.

 

The Eneshan culture is both matriarchal and tribal, as befits a race whose far distant ancestors were hive-dwelling, insect-like creatures. The hierarch comes to power through the vote of the matriarchs of the major Eneshan tribes; this makes the process sound rather more civilized than it is, since the vote-gathering process can involve years of unspeakably violent civil war, as the tribes battle to make their own matriarch ascendant. To avoid massive unrest at the end of every hierarch's reign, once a hierarch is chosen the position becomes hereditary, and aggressively so: A hierarch must produce
and
consecrate a viable heir within two Eneshan years of assuming the mantle—thus assuring an orderly transfer of power for the future—or have the hierarchical rule of her tribe end with her reign.

Eneshan matriarchs, fed hormonally-dense royal jellies that produce sweeping changes in their bodies (another artifact of their ancestry), are fertile lifelong. The ability to produce an heir was rarely an issue. What would become an issue was from which tribe to choose the father. Matriarchs do not marry for love (strictly speaking, Eneshans don't marry at all), so political considerations would now come into play. The tribes unable to achieve hierarchy now competed (on a much subtler and usually less violent level) to produce a consort, with the reward being social advantages for the tribe directly, and the ability to influence hierarchical policies as part of the “dowry” provided the consortial tribe. Hierarchs from newly-ascendent tribes traditionally took their consort either from their tribe's greatest ally, as a reward for service, or from the tribe of their greatest enemy, if the hierarchical “vote” had been particularly messy and there was a perception that the entire Eneshan nation needed to be cobbled back together. Hierarchs from established lines, on the other hand, had far greater leeway in choosing their consorts.

Fhileb Ser was the sixth hierarch in the current Ser line (the tribe had held the hierarchy three times previous over the last several hundred Eneshan years). Upon ascending she chose her consort from the Hio tribe, a tribe whose expansionist colonial ambitions eventually led to the decision to ally in secret with the Rraey and the Obin, in order to attack human space. For its primary role in the war, Enesha would come away with some of the Colonial Union's prime real estate, including the Colonial Union home planet of Phoenix. The Rraey would come away with somewhat fewer planets but would get Coral, the planet that was the site of their recent humiliation by the Colonial Union.

The Obin, cryptic to the last, offered to contribute forces only slightly less expansive than the Eneshans but asked only for a single planet: the overpopulated and resource-stripped Earth, which was in such apparent poor repair that the Colonial Union had it under quarantine. Both the Eneshans and the Rraey were happy to cede the planet.

Hierarchical policy, prompted by the Hio, inclined the Enesha to plan a war with the humans. But although united by hierarchical rule, each Eneshan tribe kept its own counsel. At least one tribe, the Geln, strongly opposed attacking the Colonial Union, since humans were reasonably strong, distressingly tenacious and not especially principled when they felt threatened. The Geln felt that the Rraey would have been a far better target, given that race's long-standing enmity with the Eneshans and its weak military state after being crushed by the humans at Coral.

Hierarch Fhileb Ser chose to ignore the Gelns' counsel in this matter, but, noting the tribe's apparent fondness for humanity, selected one of the Gelns' tribal counselors, Hu Geln, as Enesha's ambassador to the Colonial Union. Hu Geln, recently recalled to Enesha to witness the Consecration of the Heir and to celebrate Chafalan with the hierarch. Hu Geln, who was with the hierarch when the 2nd Platoon attacked, and who was with her now, in hiding, as she was hailed by the humans who had murdered her consort and stolen her heir.

 

::They've stopped firing at us,:: Alex Roentgen said. ::Looks like they've figured out we have the heir.::

::Good,:: Sagan said. Pauling and Einstein were dead but she had other soldiers stuck in the palace and she wanted to get them out. She signaled them to make their way to the transport. She winced as Daniel Harvey tended to her shoulder; her unitard blocked the first hit completely but the second managed to get through and did some real damage. For now, her right arm was entirely useless. She motioned with her left hand to the small gurney in the middle of the transport, where the wriggling form of Vyut Ser, heir to the hierarch, lay securely strapped in. The heir no longer screamed but mewled, her fear tempered by exhaustion.

::Someone needs to give her the shot,:: Sagan said.

::I'll do it,:: Jared said, stood before anyone else could volunteer, and retrieved the long needle stored in a medical kit below Sagan's transport seat. He turned and stood over Vyut Ser, hating the thing. An overlay popped into his vision, via his BrainPal, showing him where to insert the needle and how far to push into the heir's guts to deliver what was inside the syringe.

Jared jabbed the needle savagely into Vyut Ser, who screamed horribly at the invasion of the cold metal. Jared pressed the button on the syringe that shot half the contents into one of the heir's two immature reproductive sacs. Jared extracted the needle and plunged it into Vyut Ser's second reproductive sac, emptying the syringe. Inside the sacs nanobots coated the interior walls and then burned, searing the tissues dead, rendering their owner irreversibly sterile.

Vyut Ser wailed in confusion and pain.

::I've got the hierarch on the line,:: Roentgen said. ::Audio and video.::

::Pipe her into the general feed,:: Sagan said. ::And Alex, stand by the gurney. You get to be the camera.::

Roentgen nodded and stood in front the gurney, fixing on Sagan and allowing the audio and visual feeds to his BrainPal from his ears and eyes to serve as microphone and camera.

::Piping in now,:: Roentgen said. In Jared's field of vision—and in the field of vision of everyone in the transport—the Hierarch of Enesha appeared. Even without knowing the map of Eneshan expressions, it was clear the hierarch was incandescent with rage.

“You fucking piece of human shit,” the hierarch said (or the translation said, eschewing a literal translation for something that expressed the intent behind the words). “You have thirty seconds to give me my daughter or I will declare war on every last one of your worlds. I swear to you I will reduce them to rubble.”

“Shut up,” Sagan said, the translation coming from her belt speaker.

From the other end of the line came multiple loud clacks, indicating absolute shock from the hierarch's court. It was simply inconceivable someone would speak to her that way.

“I beg your pardon,” the hierarch said, eventually, shocked herself.

“I said, ‘shut up,'” Sagan said. “If you are smart you will listen to what I have to say to you and spare both our peoples needless suffering. Hierarch, you won't declare war on the Colonial Union here because you've already declared war on us. You, the Rraey and the Obin.”

“I don't have the slightest—” the heirarch began.

“Lie to me again and I'll cut off your daughter's head,” Sagan said.

More clacks. The hierarch shut up.

“Now,” Sagan said. “Are you at war with the Colonial Union?”

“Yes,” the hierarch said, after a long moment. “Or will be, presently.”

“I think not,” Sagan said.

“Who
are
you?” the hierarch said. “Where is Ambassador Hartling? Why I am negotiating with someone who is threatening to kill my child?”

“I imagine Ambassador Hartling is in her office right now, trying to figure out what's going on,” Sagan said. “As you did not feel the need to enlighten her concerning your military plans, neither did we. You are negotiating with the person who has threatened to kill your child because you have threatened to kill
our
children, Hierarch. And you are negotiating with me because at the moment I am the negotiator you deserve. And you can be assured on this matter you will not be able to negotiate with the Colonial Union again.”

The hierarch fell silent again. “Show me my daughter,” she said, when she spoke again.

Sagan nodded to Roentgen, who turned and showed Vyut Ser, who had once again downshifted into whimpering. Jared saw the reaction of the hierarch, who was reduced from the leader of a world to merely a mother, feeling the pain and fear of her own child.

“What are your demands?” the hierarch said, simply.

“Call off your war,” Sagan said.

“There are two other parties,” the hierarch said. “If we back out they will want to know why.”

“Then continue preparing for war,” Sagan said. “And then attack one of your allies instead. I would suggest the Rraey. They are weak, and you could take them by surprise.”

“And what of the Obin?” the hierarch said.

“We'll deal with the Obin,” Sagan said.

“Will you, now,” the hierarch said, clearly skeptical.

“Yes,” Sagan said.

“Are you suggesting we can simply hide what happened here tonight?” the hierarch said. “The beams you used to destroy my palace could be seen for a hundred miles.”

“Don't hide it, investigate it,” Sagan said. “The Colonial Union will gladly help our Eneshan friends in their investigation. And when it's discovered the Rraey are behind it, you'll have your rationale for war.”

“Your other demands,” the hierarch said.

“There is a human, named Charles Boutin,” Sagan said. “We know he's helping you. We want him.”

“We don't have him,” the hierarch said. “The Obin do. You can ask them for him, for all I care. Your other demands.”

“We want assurances that you will call off your war,” Sagan said.

“You want a treaty?” the hierarch asked.

“No,” Sagan said. “We want a new consort. One of our choosing.”

This generated the loudest clack of all from the court.

“You
murder
my consort, and then you
demand
to pick the next one?” the hierarch said.

“Yes,” Sagan said.

“To what end?” the hierarch implored. “My Vyut has been consecrated! She is the legal heir. If I meet your demands and you let my daughter go, she is still of the Hio clan and by our traditions they will still have political influence. You would have to kill my daughter to break their influence”—the hierarch paused brokenly, then continued—“and if you do that, why would I fulfill any of your demands?”

“Hierarch,” Sagan said, “your daughter is sterile.”