Exodus: Empires at War: Book 9: Second Front Read online

  The landing was uneventful, almost perfect, the shuttle slowing to a hover and lowering itself gently to the tarmac, and a cursor appeared on the viewer that pointed where their hosts wanted them to taxi to. The voice returned, and instructed them to head to that area along the ground. Samara looked over at the Commodore with confusion on his face. She knew what he was feeling. Most landing fields in the Empire would allow modern craft to land directly at the debarkation points. Sung nodded, and Samara lowered the wheels on the landing struts until they touched down and lifted the shuttle slightly above the pads.

  “We seem to have a lot of company watching,” said Samara, pointing to the holo which showed a view of the field that was rolling by to the side. There were obvious armored war vehicles and ground troops out there, watching as the shuttle rolled by.

  Do they think I have a ground brigade hiding in this shuttle? she thought.

  “This is the spot,” said Samara as he stopped the shuttle, then engaged the wheels to rise back up the landing struts so that the pads again touched down on the tarmac.

  “You will now leave your craft,” said the com. “You are to bring no weapons with you, and any containers you carry must be placed on the tarmac as soon as you exit.”

  “Well, we might as well face our hosts,” said Sung, getting out of her seat harness and rising, then pulling her small overnight bag from the locker she had stored in it. She walked out of the cockpit and nodded to the other people who were also grabbing the one piece of luggage she had allowed each of them to bring. “I’ll go first,” she told the others, hitting the panel that would open the hatch.

  Outside was a gathering of both humans and Klavarta, many of the latter armed, mostly the frightening looking warrior caste that really didn’t need any additional weaponry. No weapons were pointed her way, but they were at angles from which they could aim her direction in a moment.

  She stepped down the retractable stairs that had extruded from the shuttle. As soon as she stepped onto the tarmac she set down her bag and stepped forward, while the next crew person came down the stairs.

  “We must scan you, ma’am,” said a human, stepping forward with a device in his hands.

  “Go ahead,” she answered, holding her arms up and letting the man run the scanner over her, moving around and making sure he covered her from every angle.

  As the next person down, Major Briggs, stepped onto the tarmac, another human came forward and started to scan him. This continued for the next three of the Imperials, until Sergeant Tia’lash stepped onto the stairs after twisting his large body through the hatch.

  “What the hell is that?” called a voice from the crowd.

  “It’s a monster,” said another voice.

  Weapons that had been held at the ready were now pointed at the Phlistaran, who stopped in his tracks, his eyes showing his near panic. Sung turned and ran past her other crew, up the stairs to stand in front of the Marine.

  “This is one of my crewmen. He is with me, and you will not threaten him. Is that understood?”

  Heads nodded, weapons were lowered, and Sung led the Sergeant down the steps, then walked back up to escort Lt. Commander Lonlilo down. And now I know something about how these people, these xenophobes, feel about nonhumans.

  As Samara left the shuttle the hatch closed behind him, in seconds the seams disappearing as the nanomaterials turned the door into just another section of the armored hull. As soon as the pilot stepped off the steps they also retracted back into the hull, disappearing into a cavity that was soon sealed off in the same manner as the hatch.

  “We need to inspect your craft, ma’am,” said the man who had scanned Sung.

  “You are not allowed on our shuttle, which is the sovereign territory of the New Terran Empire,” she told the man, standing to her full height and looking up into his eyes with an unflinching expression. “We followed all of your orders to come down here, as offensive as they were to us as guests of your nation. But you will not enter my shuttle and attempt to invade its system, is that understood?”

  “And I have my orders,” said the man, waving a pair of Klavarta engineers forward.

  “I would not attempt to force your way in,” said Sung. “The shuttle will respond to such an attempt.”

  “Stand down,” called out a commanding voice, and the woman she had talked to while up in orbit stepped through the crowd, a section of Klavarta warrior caste at her back. “These people are our guests.”

  “But, Madame Underdirector,” said the man who had his orders, his tone showing his panic. “They have nonhumans.”

  “Then they are our guests as well,” she told the man, staring him down. She stepped closer to the man and whispered. An old style human couldn’t have heard him, but Sung could barely make it out. “Their ways are not our ways. And Chairwoman Pallion might want to forge an alliance with these people. So don’t you go fucking it up.”

  Thrann stepped away, the man nodding his head furiously, his eyes wide. The Underdirector turned back to Sung, a smile on her face that looked like it was pasted on. “I am so sorry about this misunderstanding, Commodore. You are, of course, welcome.”

  We have been invaded by nanites, ma’am, said her own implant to her. They are primitive compared to what we utilize. Should we repel them?

  She sent a reply back, ordering her system not to fight back as long as they were just checking her out. After all, she had done the same thing to the Klavarta who had come aboard her ship. She really didn’t blame them, since they would want to make sure that they were actually human. She wondered what they would make of the improved human genome. Or if theirs was just as improved.

  Her biological personnel had their own nanites ready to invade the Pure humans and get a genetic scan on them as well. She had wanted them to wait until they were sure their nanotech was better, since it might be considered intrusive to their hosts. Now it didn’t look like it mattered, but she still decided to wait.

  “We have a transport waiting for you a short distance from here,” said Thrann, motioning for the soldiers and the gawkers to get out of the way. The Klavarta she had brought along with her, who were wearing a different uniform than the warriors who had greeted them, moved people out of the way and blocked the crowd from following.

  The transport looked like a dedicated atmospheric vehicle that was built for luxury, not speed, though she was sure at their tech level that it was probably hypersonic as well. Thrann showed them to the luxurious cabin that could have held three times their number, while the Klavarta warriors moved to a different area of the plane.

  “As you could probably guess, this is a fast plane,” said Thrann, sitting in a comfortable seat in facing Sung. “But we will be taking our time so that you can get a look at our world, and so that, to be perfectly honest, the Council can get ready for you.”

  “And what was the problem with my nonhumans?” she asked, wondering if she would get an honest answer to that one from someone who looked to be a member of a xenophobic society.

  “We are just not used to seeing nonhumans,” said the woman after a slight pause that showed she was thinking about it. “The only nonhumans we see are those who are subject races of the Monsters, the Ca’cadasans.”

  “And why are there no nonhumans in your own nation?” asked Lt. Commander Lonlilo, sitting next to Sung.

  Thrann stared at the Gryphon, an expression not really of distaste, but more of embarrassment. “When we first arrived here, the ruling Council was not in the mood to trust aliens. So we, arranged, to move them from the areas we needed to be.”

  To move them, thought Sung, keeping her expression blank. Still nothing solid, but her suspicions had been aroused. Move them to another planet, or into the grave?

  She looked out the window for a moment. They were flying low and slow, and she could make out the tops of the trees down below. They looked like maples, elms and oaks. They went over a large clearing fronting a large lake, and what looked like elk stared up a
t the plane.

  “Everything is Earth form?” she asked the other woman.

  “We wanted the world to be as much like Earth as possible,” said Thrann, looking out her window. “Or at least the people who got here first did.”

  “And you terraformed this world right after arriving here?” asked Sung, raising an eyebrow. She knew from the history of her own Empire that it was two centuries before they tried to tackle any terraforming projects, which were very energy intensive.

  “This was already a living world when we arrived,” said Thrann, looking away from the Commodore so her eyes were pointed toward the window. “All we had to do was introduce our own life forms to make it another Earth.”

  “And what happened to the native life?” asked Saul Benoit from a row over.

  “We, replaced it,” said Thrann, again looking uncomfortable. “Let me ask you some questions about your Empire, which I have been dying to know.”

  And so you get out of talking about your own nation, and the aspects of it which seem to make you uncomfortable, thought Sung, nodding.

  “How many humans in your Empire?”

  “What?” asked Sung of Benoit, looking back at his seat. “Eight hundred billion in the Empire?”

  “At least that many, plus another couple of hundred billion in the Republic,” answered the biologist.

  “And almost three hundred billion nonhumans,” said Sung, looking back at Thrann, wanting to see how she reacted.

  “That many,” said Thrann, her eyes wide. “How do you all get along?”

  “Not really much of a problem,” said Sung. “Maybe some at first when we bring them into the Empire. But we treat them like people, and they act like people.” She looked over at her Gryphon planetologist. “And some of them have added their distinctive talents to the Empire.”

  “And how many humans have the Monsters killed in your war with them, so far?”

  “Twenty billion?”

  “I think that’s correct, Commodore,” said Lonlilo. “And not only humans, though the Cacas seem to have a tendency to target humans first.”

  “Twenty billion Pure humans killed,” said Thrann in a hushed voice. “That’s many times what we have in total.”

  “How many of the, uh, Pure humans do you have in your nation?” asked Sung, not sure she would even get an answer, but the young woman was so shocked by what they had just told her that she couldn’t hold back.

  “Maybe fifty million,” said Thrann, looking out the window, then back with a tear in her eye. “We thought we were doing so well here, preserving the human species. And we are nothing compared to you.”

  “We’ve noticed your tech is deficient in some respects,” said Sung, thinking of that disparity. They must have a hundred times the number of scientists and engineers in the Empire, and the production of all those minds. “You get most of your tech from the Cacas, don’t you? The Monsters?” she continued when the woman didn’t answer.

  “I’m, not at liberty to discuss that,” said Thrann, looking away. “You will have to ask the Chairwoman that question.”

  The next ten minutes of the flight was in silence, Sung realizing that the woman had shut down and would not answer any more questions. She seemed to liven up a bit when the aircraft had landed, and they were ushered out onto the tarmac where a pair of short range transports waited for them.

  The city they flew over looked much like any frontier city of the Empire, with some tall buildings, but mostly a sprawl of low rises interspersed with parkland. In the distance was another sprawl, curving around the outskirts of the city. Sung focused her eyes to bring the distant image in closer, and was surprised to see that all the buildings were unornamented grey, like some kind of concrete. The word slum came to mind, and she wondered what kind of people lived there in what was obviously a rich high energy society.

  The government building was the highest tower in the city, rising out of a massive low-rise. Their transports came down on the very top of the building, on the landing pad that was set to one side. A number of beings stood nearby the pad, many of them the Klavarta warriors that seemed ubiquitous in this, the center of the nation.

  “You are to meet with the Chairwoman immediately,” said Thrann, motioning to a lift just off the pad.

  Sung nodded and followed, while she looked over the take from the nanites they had released on the aircraft. The genetic structure of the humans on-board had been close to that of Earth born humans, with some basic improvements, but nothing like what had been done to humans in the second century of the Empire. She thought over those results as they boarded the lift and started down.

  “The Chairwoman is in her personal conference chamber,” said Thrann as they walked down a long corridor. “After she has talked with you a bit, the entire Council will be anxious to see you.”

  Chapter Ten

  A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.

  John Stuart Mill.

  NEW EARTH MAY 16TH, 1002.

  Chairwoman Marion Pallion sat at the table looking at her guests. The humans looked normal enough. More or less like her own people, the Pure humans. The two aliens they had brought along, on the other hand. The one who looked like some kind of heavy boned bird was bad enough, but the damned dragon, crocodile, centaur, whatever you wanted to call him, was almost too much.

  How in the hell do they get along with another species? she thought, staring at the crocogator centaur with a glaring eye.

  Her people had never tried to get along with any of the other species they had found, not after running from the murderous race that had tried to exterminate their own. When they had settled here, the other species they had found were seen as a threat to the human race. The beings the humans created were guaranteed not to give the presence of the race away to the Cacas. The aliens, not so much, and the easiest solution to that problem was to just be rid of them.

  “We are so happy to meet with our sisters and brothers from the stars,” said Pallion, forcing a smile on her face. “I cannot tell you how wonderful it feels to know we are not alone in our struggle against the Monsters.”

  “I’m sure we feel the same way, Madame Chairwoman,” said Commodore Sung, a smile on her own face that didn’t fool Pallion in the least. “We too struggle against the Ca’cadasans. And my Emperor will be happy to know that other humans struggle along with us.”

  And you trust aliens in your struggle, thought the Chairwoman, still not sure she could believe that concept. She hated species other than her own. That was a common feeling among the undying members of the government, She was sure most of the other Pure humans felt the same. There were some dissenters, though those members of the society were careful not to call too much attention to themselves. She wasn’t sure, with all of her power, that the Pure population would put up with an alliance with such people. But she was a politician, and now was the time to act like one.

  “We welcome the contact,” she said, smiling at those around the table, the expression failing a moment as she looked at the two aliens. They made her heart beat, faster, and she would have liked nothing more than to have ordered them destroyed. That would not be in the best interest of her people. If these visitors wanted to live with the filthy nonhumans, that was their business. It was hers to make sure that they did not come here in their masses and pollute her worlds.

  “We will have many meetings in the future,” she told the Commodore, the smile again firmly fixed on her face. “I look forward to forging a firm relationship with you and your people. Now, I have a nation to run, and a war to fight. If you will excuse me.”

  The expression on the Commodores face told the story of her disappointment. She is a good ambassador, but not good enough, thought the Chairwoman, not even thinking for a moment that maybe it was because she was not in touch with normal human emotions anymore that she could be so good at what she did.

  * * *<
br />
  IMPERIAL SPACE, MAY 17TH, 1002.

  “Raising warp bubble, now,” called out the Pilot.

  Captain Jinghua Chou nodded as she watched the tactical holo that showed the command flight of her wing, as well as the representative squadron they were deploying with, disappear from the plot. They were of course still there, just cut off from the rest of the Universe. Or they had been, until now, if everything worked out. But now came the most important question.

  “Do you have contact with your siblings, Spacer Naranta?” she asked the newest of her crewmembers. She still had trouble with the fact that the spacer was being deployed without the requisite four months of basic, then the three to four months of com school. She had been fast tracked through because of her special talents, and that was something the Captain had been happy to see.

  “It, is a little blurry, ma’am,” said the Spacer in heavily accented Terranglo, the kind that was learned through implant programing without the needed vocal training. “But it is there.”

  Just like the initial studies said would happen, thought the Wing Commander, looking at the strange alien that was a member of the species said to be the solution to the greatest problems faced by the inertia less fighters.

  Mzzarat Naranta was a prime example of her species, and one the strangest looking aliens the Captain had ever seen. A Klassekian, among one of the first group of siblings evacuated from that world back to the Exploration Command base when it was still thought that the population of the planet was doomed. But the mechanisms of a long lost race had saved the planet from the wave of radiation spreading from a nearby supernova. Still, those who had been evacuated became part of the Empire by default, mostly because the Empire had need of their peculiar talent, their ability to communicate with the minds of those they had shared the womb with by means of quantum entanglement.