Crusade (Exile Book 3) Read online

  “Breathe, Captain,” Amelie ordered. She understood the other woman’s frustration. “Stand by for your warning shots. Either they’ll divert before then, or that should make the point.”

  She hesitated.

  “Does your warning shot use the main gun?” she asked.

  “Grasers only,” Holmwood replied. “Our secondaries and the strike cruisers’ primaries. Should I…?”

  “No,” Amelie said. “That’s exactly what I was hoping you’d say, Captain. You’re well ahead of me.”

  The petite Captain smiled grimly.

  “I was a Confederacy officer, Minister,” she pointed out. “Paranoia and hiding your cards came with the territory.” She shook her head at the hologram.

  “I like the ESF much better,” Holmwood concluded. “Warning shots in sixty seconds. Contacts have not changed course.”

  “It’s your call, Captain Holmwood,” Amelie said. “Fire at your discretion.”

  Holmwood exhaled loudly, then rose and walked over to the display. The distance was continuing to tick down, fast.

  “Commander Riker?” she barked.

  “Ready with the warning shots, Captain!” the tactical officer replied, answering her unspoken question.

  “Fire at will.”

  The firing plan had been programmed over half an hour before and continually updated by three tactical officers. They had a lot more weapons than the four grasers they were using for the first warning shot, but that was part of the point.

  Never show your hand early. It was as important in diplomacy as it was in war or poker. Amelie was no soldier, but she’d planned a war once—and she was damn good at both diplomacy and poker.

  Four gamma-ray lasers bracketed the battleship with the larger escort group. For a few worrisome seconds, Amelie had to worry that they’d hit the local warship. They hadn’t been aiming for it, but they’d been aiming closely enough for it to be a risk with a six-second control loop.

  “Zero hits, all beams within ten thousand kilometers of the target,” Riker reported. He paused. “Contacts are adjusting vector, reducing vector towards and adding a side vector. Estimate they’ll hit zero velocity about fifty thousand kilometers past us. They can’t slow down any faster than that.”

  “Minister?” Holmwood looked over at Amelie.

  “Let’s keep them at half a million klicks but adjust to match their course,” Amelie said. “Keep a careful eye on them. Even once they start talking to us, I’m not convinced I want to trust these folks just yet.”

  It took a few seconds for the navigators to calculate the right course, but then the flotilla came to life. They weren’t running away, just controlling the range.

  “Any communication from them yet?” Amelie asked.

  “Just adjusting their vector,” Heathers told her. “They have the first-contact package but they haven’t sent us anything equivalent.”

  “WK, how long on that translation protocol?” the Minister demanded.

  “At least three more hours unless one of the analysts has a breakthrough,” the AI responded. “If they are capable of running the first-contact package and have a similar protocol, they should already be able to generate a text translation system if they started from the first transmission.”

  “Or they have no idea what they’re doing with binary machine code,” Amelie suggested. “We couldn’t even run Vistan code when we first encountered them.”

  “They should be able to run the package,” Heathers said. “Everything I’m seeing in the transmissions we’re picking up and feeding into our translation efforts looks like binary-encoded audio and video.”

  “Well, they aren’t charging at us with weapons ready anymore,” Holmwood noted. “We’re probably better at building translation software than they are. We’ll get it done, Minister.”

  “Let me know the moment we can set up a communications link,” Amelie replied. “Someone over there has a bunch of twitchy warships and I’d like to be able to say ‘we come in peace’ before we have to fire more warning shots!”

  6

  With four interspecies translation systems behind them and the K-sequence AIs to back their work up, the team of translation and decryption specialists backing Amelie up could do far better than the text translators of their first contact with the Matrices.

  The locals were having more problems than she would have expected. Two hours after the two flotillas matched velocities and began orbiting half a million kilometers apart, they still hadn’t tried to initiate any communication based on the contact package.

  Amelie’s people, on the other hand, had been very busy.

  “We’ve got everything,” Commodore Rhianna Rose told Amelie. The woman had once been the head of the original Vigil’s communication department, but now she was very quietly the head of what military intelligence teams the Republic of Exilium possessed.

  Since she answered to a civilian boss, however, Rose could leave Exilium with the Foreign Minister and lead the translation projects as they made contact. And if polite or not-so-polite espionage became required after making contact, that would fall on Rose too.

  “Define everything,” Amelie asked.

  “I can give you a direct video link to their flagship,” Rose said confidently. “Live two-way translation. There’ll be a delay of about half a second each way, so your three-and-a-bit-second time-lag for being half a million klicks away becomes four seconds. Otherwise, should be perfectly smooth.”

  “How solid’s the translator?”

  “Don’t delve into political theory or quantum physics?” the intelligence officer replied. “Once we get our hands on a proper language database, it will be a hundred percent. Right now, we’re limited by what people have been talking about on the radio since we got here.”

  “All right. Send it to Commander Heathers,” Amelie instructed. “It’s time to actually talk instead of just waving warships at each other.”

  She turned in the uncomfortable observer seat to look at the communications officer. The seat was far enough away that no one should be overhearing her coms.

  On the other hand, like the Terran Confederacy before it, the Republic of Exilium tended to treat the coms officer as an unofficial intelligence officer. Amelie doubted that Heathers wasn’t listening in on her calls from the bridge.

  “You got that, Commander Heathers?” she asked.

  The coms officer had the grace to flush under her stiff regard.

  “Yes, Minister,” she confessed. “I’ll have the call set up in two minutes. Should you find some more, ah, impressive surroundings, ma’am?”

  “And less operational-security-breaching ones,” Holmwood muttered, just loud enough for Amelie to hear.

  “True enough,” Amelie admitted. “Get everything set up but hold off on building the link until I okay it. I’ll take it in… The observation deck should be impressive enough, don’t you think?”

  “We have a flag deck,” Holmwood pointed out. “We don’t have a staff for it and it’s currently shut down, but we should be able to rig up an impressive-looking fleet-command display that doesn’t tell them anything. WK?”

  “We have some protocols left over from the Confederacy that should serve for flashy and useless,” the AI confirmed. “I should have something up in the flag deck by the time you arrive, Minister Lestroud.”

  Amelie had been a movie actress once. She was very familiar with the type of displays that WK was referring to—they’d been the only ones used in movies that had been granted access to film on Confed warships.

  “I know when to concede to the experts,” she told them. “I’ll be on the flag deck in a few minutes. Once I’m there, we’ll double-check everything and then we’ll call our new friends.”

  Without a staff, the flag deck was almost hauntingly empty. None of the consoles outside of the zone the camera would be picking up were on. As Amelie settled in to the Admiral’s seat, the entire assemblage rotated to put the holodisplay behind her.
<
br />   A small screen on the arm of the seat showed her what would be transmitted. The hologram behind her was now live, showing a massive holographic image of Watchtower and the rest of the consular flotilla.

  There was nothing in that image that couldn’t be picked out by a half-decent telescope, but the looming hologram helped make for quite the effect.

  She chuckled to herself as she realized that WK was also inserting officers into the scene behind her, filling in seats with computer-generated images of a fictitious staff.

  “Commander Heathers, are you ready?” she asked.

  “We are ready.” The Commander paused. “It looks like their language is mostly even human-pronounceable, so the translation protocol is going to leave proper nouns intact. Most relevant right now is probably the species name:

  “They call themselves the Sivar, Siva for singular. Trimodal gender, he, she, ban. Rose and I really want to access a database to see just what the biology factors are on that!”

  “Understood. Get me a link, Commander.”

  “We’re initiating handshake now, Minister.”

  New icons appeared on the screen. They’d transmitted using a Sivar protocol and were waiting for… There. Receipt acknowledgement.

  “We have a channel,” Heathers reported. “You’re live in five.”

  A countdown appeared on the screen and Amelie let her best diplomat mask fall over her face as a single light informed her that she was now recording.

  “This is Minister Amelie Lestroud of the Republic of Exilium,” she said levelly. “I have been appointed as the Ambassador Plenipotentiary of the Republic to open contact and negotiations with your government.

  “Am I speaking with the commander of the military force shadowing us?”

  She waited. It was a three-second loop for the light, plus the half-second on each for translation. Four seconds wasn’t much, but it could definitely feel like forever.

  A new hologram appeared in the flag deck, projecting a two-dimensional image of what she presumed to be the flag-deck equivalent aboard the local flagship. The camera was centered on a throne-like seat, presumably also in the middle of the space.

  Sitting rigidly on the very edge of the seat was the most human-like alien Amelie had ever met. The Siva was a gaunt bipedal figure with long limbs and pale blue skin who appeared tall—it was hard to tell without a known reference. They wore a long dark-green tunic with a hood that covered their head, leaving only the red reflection of a human-like pair of eyes emerging from the shadow.

  “I am Sector Commandant Ackahl,” the stranger said slowly. “I presume we are speaking via a translation program?”

  “We are,” Amelie confirmed. “My team have extracted your civilian communication bandwidths and encoding. We may have some lacking words until we have access to a full language database.

  “I must make clear from the beginning that we are not here to invade or conquer your system,” she told the alien. “We fired warning shots to protect ourselves only. We wish to forge ties of trade with your people and warn them of a great danger that looms over your stars.”

  It was hard to tell, but it looked like the Siva had intentionally rigged their camera so they were looking down at whoever they were speaking to. It seemed unlikely that they’d made that change since the humans had shown up, which suggested that was a permanent part of the design.

  Amelie filed that away in the back of her mind. Every new alien race they encountered was a puzzle, and the more pieces of that puzzle she had, the more likely she was to be able to decipher them.

  “The only danger I see is a stranger who brought warships to my system,” Ackahl noted. “This is my space, Minister Amelie Lestroud. You come with weapons and starships and expect me to accept your protestations of peace? First you flee when challenged; now you fire on us.

  “If you wish to meet with the Intendant, you will surrender your ships and submit as our prisoners. If you do not, I must treat you as invaders.”

  The alien’s face was concealed in the hood and it was risky to assume that anything resembling human body language was in play. But some signs were universal, and stress tended to create muscle tension, which was visible.

  The Sector Commandant was not stressed. They had to suspect that Amelie would choose to fight over surrender, but they weren’t acting like they were expecting a fight.

  “I would suggest you consider alternatives,” Amelie finally said. “I answer to higher powers, Sector Commandant, and I have no intention of surrendering my consular escort. If you want a fight, my people will give you one, but that is not why we are here. If you are determined to make us unwelcome, I will leave.

  “And then, I presume that you will have to explain to your leaders why you threw away this opportunity to make new allies,” she finished sweetly. “My preference, of course, would to be have these discussions with your leader. Senior as you are, I do not think you are the final voice of your people.”

  The Siva had already said that was a being called the Intendant, after all. Without more information, Amelie couldn’t say if that was a military commander, civilian head of state or what. Only that this Sector Commandant was not who she needed to be speaking to.

  “I am the final authority in this star system,” Ackahl told her. “My superiors will understand that I do what I must to protect my charges.”

  Seconds ticked away and Amelie let the alien’s words hang in the air unanswered.

  “I have no intention of threatening anyone,” she finally replied. “I will protect my own people if attacked, but I am here to make treaties, not war. A wave of death sweeps towards you, of worlds turned to a specific standard regardless of whether they are inhabited.

  “I doubt your scientists or your soldiers are blind to what I speak of.”

  This time, it was Ackahl who let her words hang in silence.

  “I believe I know of what you speak,” they eventually concluded. “We have seen the marks of the worldbuilders in the stars. You know more of them?”

  “We know them,” she confirmed. “We have fought some of them. Allied with others. But we stand a bare handful of light-years from the edge of where the closest ones operate.

  “They will not care that the world you are charged to protect is inhabited. They will not care that you have warships or industry or space platforms. They will care solely that the world in this system does not match the standard they intend to apply.

  “They will destroy the atmosphere of this system’s habitable planet so they can rebuild it to their design. Your ships could not stop them.”

  “And yours could?” Ackahl asked. If they weren’t sneering at her, the translator was adding tone of its own.

  “This flotilla? Maybe,” Amelie conceded cautiously. “But that is why my Republic is seeking allies. By sharing our technology and knowledge, we are building an alliance to stand against the terraformers and stop them from killing any more species.”

  The Siva was silent for several more seconds, then reached up and pulled the hood back. Their neck and face were the same pale blue of their hands. Their eyes weren’t quite as burning red as they’d looked under the hood, fading toward a dull orange without the hood accentuating them.

  Where a human would have had hair, Ackahl had a solid bone carapace that stretched from roughly where the nose would be over to the back of their skull, with breaks only for their eyes.

  The Siva was probably more intimidating to Amelie without concealing their face.

  “Your ships will remain where they are,” they told her calmly. “We will see if we can transmit a language database to you. In exchange, you will provide recent intelligence on the worldbuilders.

  “If that intelligence matches what we know and I agree with your assessment of the threat, I will communicate with the Intendant and see if His Greatness will speak with you.

  “I can promise no more,” Ackahl concluded. “You have safe passage to this system so long as you approach no closer than yo
ur current position. Is this acceptable, Minister Amelie Lestroud?”

  She inclined her head.

  “These are reasonable precautions, Sector Commandant,” Amelie said. “I will consult with my team and have a briefing prepared to send over. How long do you expect the Intendant’s response to take?”

  “I do not trust you, Minister Amelie Lestroud,” the Sector Commandant replied. “I will reveal no secrets but those I must. I await the intelligence.

  “May the darkness flee your path.”

  The channel cut out and Amelie smiled grimly.

  “WK? Let Rose know I need a sanitized briefing packet on the Rogues to give these guys,” she told the AI. “I then need an all-hands-on-deck meeting. I don’t think this Intendant is going to come to us, which means everyone needs to know everything we’ve established about the Sivar.”

  “Yes, Minister.”

  Amelie turned her chair to study the holograms of the ships behind her. With the automation the Republic built into everything now, the three warships and two freighters only carried a thousand people between them.

  Those people’s lives were in her hands…but almost as important was that if she screwed this negotiation up, both the Republic’s allies and the Sivar would suffer for their lack of coordination.

  The Rogue Matrices, after all, had no concept of “neutral noncombatant.”

  7

  “This is our Sector Commandant,” Rose noted as the meeting looked at a hologram of Ackahl. “Female, if you’re wondering, which took us a bit to work out.”

  Two smaller holograms appeared to either side of Ackahl. The one on the left looked almost identical in body structure except that their carapace erupted into two forward-facing horns. The one on the right had slightly less of their face covered by the bone carapace and also had visible breasts.

  “To the left, we have a Sivar male,” Rose said. “In this case, what we would call a news anchor named Ickone. To the right, you have his partner, a Sivar ban named Trilo. For the curious, the males provide approximately thirty-five percent of the DNA, the females provide sixty percent of the DNA, and the banon provide five percent of the DNA and the womb for gestation.”