"Well, that"s where you and I differ, Private," Ia stated. "I feel very comfortable going among them unarmored."
Out of the corner of her eye, Ia could see Knorssen open her mouth, close it, open it again, and again hesitate.
"Whatever it is, Private, go ahead and say it. Just say it respectfully," Ia told the other woman.
"Then, said with respect, sir...you"re crazy." She shot Ia a sideways look of her own before returning her hazel green eyes back to her screens.
"More like well-versed in alien psychology, particularly that of the Tla.s.sian warrior caste," Ia explained. "That, and almost half the crew comes from Glau. Two hundred years ago, that colonyworld was so hard-hit by the Salik during the war, less than fifteen percent of the adults and less than five percent of the children survived. If the non-Glau crewmembers tried anything vaguely resembling cooperation with the Salik, the Glau colonists among them would tear them to shreds. Instruct Private Higatsu to suit up in halfmech, and Privates Tamaganej and Nguyen to don light armor," Ia ordered.
"Aye, sir." Turning back to her workstation, Knorssen did as ordered.
Ia watched the distance count down on her tertiary screen, numbers for both distance and magnification scrolling rapidly as the scanners constantly readjusted the displayed size of their target. They could have used the hyperrelay comms to contact the Red Iron Tail sooner than this. Or they could have short-hopped to a point much closer to the alien vessels and caught them by surprise. The point of gliding in at sub-light insystem speeds was to take advantage of lightspeed wave fronts, matching what they saw with their own sensors against the hyperrelay pings from the system buoys, in case of sabotage or ambush.
There were times when it would be more prudent to sneak up with a short-hop and surprise the ship in question, but Ia knew this wasn"t one of them. As soon as they were in range, she sent out the signal requesting communications with the Tla.s.sian ship. Within moments, she received a pingback, and an open transmission.
"Thiss is the Red Iron Tail, of the Rurrulda Minnning Compannny to the Audie-Murffphy. We are ssstanding down operationsss to comply with boarding prosssceduresss."
"Acknowledged, Red Iron Tail," Ia returned. "Your prompt diligence honors your employers. Estimated boarding time, seventeen ziknnah Tla.s.sian Standard."
A pause, then the comm tech on the other end hissed, "Who do I have the plea.s.ssurrre of ssspeaking with?"
"Lieutenant Second Grade Ia. Mok"kathh ssuweh neh khunnssswerreah Ssarra L"kuhl Kunhienn," she added in Tla.s.sian. "And yes, I do know my accent is atrocious."
A staccato hiss of laughter echoed back along the link. "Wissse is shhhe who confrontsss her own ffflawsss."
"Alas, it is a form of combat only a seasoned diplomat could win. I am but a soldier. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with?" Ia asked in turn.
"Thhird Chief Watcherr Ffred, captain of the Rrred Ironnn Tail. My kinssship affiliationss are not quite ssso essteemmed."
"I am sure you bring honor to your kin with each sun"s rising. I will see you shortly, Third Chief Watcher," Ia promised.
"It will be a plea.s.ssurre to be insspected by you. May all otherrrs be ssso polite. Rrred Iron Tail ending call."
"Acknowledged."
"Okay, now I know I"m missing something. Sir," Knorssen added politely. She craned her neck, looking at Ia over her shoulder. "Kinship affiliations?"
"When I was still a young teenager, I sent a letter to the brand-new Grandmaster of the Afaso, a Tla.s.sian named Ssarra. I managed to impress him enough that he not only corresponded back, we stayed in contact through the years," Ia explained. "Just before I joined the Marines, he adopted me as a sort of clan-cousin-sister-thing. Terran cultures have no exact equivalent for it, though the closest are a combination of...sister-in-arms and honorary extended family member. Though more of the sister-in-arms thing, as it"s a warrior caste thing, but a closer kinship than just a strict military affinity would be. That"s why I know it"ll be more impressive to the warrior caste if most of us board their ship in light armor, rather than in mech. I"ve had the opportunity to get to know how they think."
"If you say so, sir. I was more into the Gatsugi in my Alien Culture cla.s.ses," Private Knorssen dismissed.
Kipple, watching the scanner boards as they approached the mining ship, snorted audibly. "Well, that certainly explains your choice in civilian clothes..."
"Stuff it, Kipple," Knorssen muttered.
He shook his head. "I"m just saying it"s a good thing you aren"t working the scanners, because with your color sense-"
"Stuff it, Kipple," Ia echoed, keeping her tone mild. "Eyes to the boards, thoughts on your tasks. We"ll be docking with the Red Iron Tail in twenty minutes."
Ia wiped another trickle of sweat from her brow with the back of her hand, then stroked her finger up the writing pad"s screen, scrolling through the last of the supply logs. The dry heat of the ship was a bit more than the standardized temperature Terran military vessels used, but it was tolerable enough, if warm. She nodded and handed it back to the captain of the Red Iron Tail.
"Everything appears to be in order, Captain. Thank you for your cooperation. Sschah nakh."
"Ssthienn nakh," the saurian replied, bowing at the hips. "Sssuch courtessy iss appreciated. As iss your effficiensscy."
"You have money to make, the same as any other businessmeioa," Ia told him, shrugging. "These delays are an unfortunate but necessary evil. You have a solid record of complying with Blockade laws and procedures. To approach you without courtesy or efficiency would dishonor your efforts-oh, you might want to change out your power relays in the forward cargo hold. I could smell the ozone from sparks near the starboard-side junction," she added. "The minerals you"re mining aren"t particularly volatile, but it would be prudent to replace them."
"We will lllook into that," Third Chief Ffred promised. He curled one of his scaled arms upward, gesturing for her to precede him out of the bridge.
Ia tapped her arm unit, activating her headset. "Alpha team to Beta, we"re done here. Everything is in the clear. Pack it up and move it out."
Private Nguyen, clad in the same navy blue and ceristeel grey body armor as Ia but cradling his laser rifle against his chest rather than down his back, nodded politely to the captain of the mining ship. Ffred was staring at him with wide eyes and a c.o.c.ked head, a species-similar show of curiosity. Nguyen acknowledged him politely. "Third Chief, you are, ah, curious about something?"
"I would lllike to offffer you a drrinnk, warrior," the alien murmured, eyeing the private.
"Ah, thank you, sir, but no, thank you. I"m not allowed to drink while on duty, sir," Nguyen replied, glancing briefly at Ia.
Ia bit her lip for a moment, quelling the urge to laugh. An invitation to share a drink among the Tla.s.sians wasn"t quite the same as an invitation to share a drink among the Terrans. Or rather, it was, only more so. Facing the Tla.s.sian captain when she was sure her face wasn"t a Gatsugi-like shade of red, she gestured at Nguyen. "He is male, Captain. Meioa-o, not meioa-e."
Ffred flicked his tail. "Sssorry, it iss not alwayss easy to tell ssubspesscies apart. I...apolllogize if my prropossition offended you."
"No, no offense taken," Nguyen agreed, eyes widening slightly with comprehension. "The armor does conceal a lot, I"ll admit. I"ll, ah, take it as a compliment. But gender aside, I am on duty, Captain. Have a good day-cycle."
Neither of them said anything about the incident until they had reached the airlock. Beta team had already cycled through, having come from a spot in the ship closer to the connection point between the two vessels. Nguyen glanced at her several times as they cycled through the Red Iron Tail"s airlock, the boarding tube, and the Audie-Murphy"s aft airlock.
Only when they were in the actual corridors of their own ship, where their presence wasn"t being monitored, did he finally speak. "Um...sir? You"re not going to tell the others I was, ah, propositioned by a Tla.s.sian, are you?"
"What, and have you end up with the nickname of "Prettyboy" Nguyen?" Ia quipped. She shook her head. "No, I won"t say anything, I promise. Stow your weapons but stay in your armor and strap in to your prep alcove, Private. We"ll be short-jumping to the next ship in fifteen minutes, and I"ll want you ready to go."
"Understood, sir."
The crew of the Six Claws of Dirt were not thrilled to have the Audie-Murphy emerge from hypers.p.a.ce less than two hundred kilometers away. That gave them just one minute to receive the ping and its command for them to stand down and prepare to be boarded while the Terran vessel braked hard. Ia flipped over the conjoined ships even as the message went out, preparing to dock the alien vessel"s aft airlock to their starboard side. It wasn"t unusual for a patrol ship to sneak up on a vessel this way, but that didn"t mean they had to be happy about it.
"Yeoman Bashramahtra, take over the helm," Ia announced as they stopped just within grappling distance. "Extend the airlock gantry and match locks with the Six Claws."
"Aye, sir. I have the helm," Bashramahtra agreed, his hand already strapped into the att.i.tude control glove. "Sir...that was some rather nice flying. What was your final flight score?"
"It was 97.3. Not quite high enough to qualify for the Shikoku Yama Academy." Unstrapping herself from her seat, Ia tapped in a final command and left her post. "You have the bridge, Yeoman."
"Aye, sir, I have the bridge," the yeoman confirmed.
Exiting the bridge, she climbed one of the ladderways rather than wait for the lift and emerged at the weapons locker. As he had earlier, First Petty Michaelson issued her a laser rifle and matching pistol, scanning her wrist unit and the ident chip embedded in each weapon. One went over her back, the other into the holster at her hip. Reaching the aft, she found the other three waiting, Higatsu in halfmech armor taking up slightly more than the s.p.a.ce occupied by Tamaganej and Nguyen in their nonmechanized body armor.
"Unlike the members of the last ship," Ia warned the three men waiting for her, "most of the crew of the Six Claws of Dirt do not have a personal, familial, or social grudge against the Salik. They"re here almost strictly for profit. But, like the last ship, most of them are warrior caste. So they may try to test our boundaries. If any of them do try to test you, be rude to you, push you, or act slow in carrying out your inspection orders, you will inform them that they are not permitted to insult you or refuse you the right to carry out your orders, but must instead come to me as your warchief."
Nguyen flicked up his inner faceplate, addressing her directly rather than through his halfmech suit speakers. "Warchief, sir?"
She tapped the side of her brow. "Xenopsychology, Private. They are our allies, but they are aliens, and they don"t always see things quite the same way as we do. We"re lucky there are enough common threads of wisdom, morals, and ethics from sentient species to sentient species that we can get the Alliance to work, most of the time. The Salik being the current notable exception."
"There"s always an exception, sir," Tamaganej muttered.
"Just about always. Let"s move," Ia ordered. She entered the airlock with Nguyen at her back. The gantry tube was cold, the gravity supplied by the weave under the fold-out decking nothing more than a weak tug. The airlock on the far side opened promptly at their arrival. Cycling through, Ia and Nguyen found themselves facing the captain of the Six Claws, a particularly tall Tla.s.sian female. Ia bowed slightly to her. "Second Chief Watcher Nnlill."
"Lllieutennant," she returned. The alien studied Ia for a long moment before finally moving back, giving room for the two to enter the access corridor. "You may sssearch my sship."
"Sschah nakh," Ia thanked her. A huff of breath was the Tla.s.sian"s only reply. Ia waited until Tamaganej and Higatsu had cycled through, then gave them their orders. "Search the lower deck cargo holds. Match them to the manifest, which the captain will provide to you. Captain, we will need to see the crew quarters. The records list that they have not been searched in a while. This needs to be done, to comply with the law."
Nnlill rumbled and bared her teeth a little, but activated her wrist unit. She snapped a set of orders, then gestured with a curl of her arm. "I willl be presssent for the crew cabin inssspectionns."
"Of course," Ia agreed, fishing a pair of exam gloves from one of her black and grey vest pockets. "Private Higatsu, Private Tamaganej, be respectful as well as watchful."
"Aye, sir."
Like the previous ship, the temperature in this one was on the warm side. By the third crew cabin, Ia and Nguyen were sweating again. This one, unlike the previous two, was occupied. Rather than doing it herself, the Tla.s.sian ship captain hissed something at the crewman, who grunted, climbed down from his sleeping alcove, and started opening cupboards.
Instead of pulling out the garments and belongings, however, the kilt-wrapped saurian just sort of shoved things around before moving to shut the panel again. Ignoring the sweat threatening her eyes, Ia stared at him. "You will need to pull it out, meioa-o. All of it."
Nnlill hissed an order and cuffed her crewmate on the shoulder, claws sc.r.a.ping across his scaled hide. He grumbled and pulled out the collection of boots, sandals, the odd trousers that looked like they had three legs, though technically one was meant for his tail...and a collection of plexi packets containing...stuff. Herbal-looking stuff. The enraged roar that escaped his captain"s throat made both Ia and Nguyen wince and sway back.
She lit into him in their native tongue so hard and fast, even Ia couldn"t make much sense of it. Not that Ia was exceptionally fluent in Tla.s.sian without dipping into the timestreams, though she was good enough for casual conversation. Second Chief Nnlill growled, babbled, hissed, and claw-cuffed him again, this time visibly scratching his hide. Tail lashing, she turned to face Ia, but from the flaring of her neck-flaps, the "hood" that marked her as warrior caste, she looked like she was still too enraged to remember how to speak Terranglo.
Ia held up her hand, palm toward herself in nonthreatening Tla.s.sian fashion. "Calm yourself, meioa. Whatever his personal choice of plant-based suicide may be, I am not here to enforce the Tla.s.sian drug laws. I am here to check for a different source of contraband. Ship schematics, hyperrelay manuals, and other engineering specifications. Weapons, both designs and actual armaments. Schedules indicating patrol ship routes and times, past, present, and future. The truly dangerous stuff, not this shova."
"You willl do nnothing?" Nnlill managed to hiss, neck hood still flared slightly.
She shook her head. "The incident will be filed in my report, of course, but I"m not going to draw special attention to it. Provided you take disciplinary actions and report the matter to your government before mine pa.s.ses along this incident, there shouldn"t be any problem. Drug violations are technically an internal matter for the Tla.s.sian government to handle," Ia pointed out. "They are not a Blockade matter.
"However...the fact that he has them at all is a potential security risk. His suppliers could blackmail him into providing contraband information to the black market community. I suggest you contact your government immediately, and have him removed," Ia told the other female.
"It willl be donnne," she growled. Jabbing at her wrist unit, the Tla.s.sian snapped several orders to what sounded like her bridge crew.
The male widened his eyes. His own neck flared, and he scrambled to his feet with a hrrnk deep in his throat. Ia snapped her sidearm out of its holster, pointing it at his chin even as Second Chief Nnlill caught and dug her claws into his shoulder in warning. He froze in place.
"Swallow it." Ia ordered, glaring at him. She flicked the safety off, letting the faint whine of the weapon warm up to an audible pitch. "You have insulted me, meioa-o. You. Will. Swallow it."
"Vhok na-ashh!" Nnlill repeated in their own tongue.
The crewmember blinked and gulped. Then coughed, gagging a little. Touching her headband with her free hand, the Tla.s.sian mining captain lifted her chin. "Messsage is ssent."
Ia"s headset beeped, a channel opening from the Audie"s crew.
"Lieutenant, we just received a split-bandwidth transmission from the Six Claws. They"re reporting to us the presence of illegal drugs on board, with a copy sent to the Tla.s.sian War Command," she heard Kipple state. "Is everything alright, sir?"
Lowering her gun, she flicked it off and tapped her arm unit. "The Second Chief is complying with Blockade procedures, Private. Ia out."
The crewmember grimaced and rubbed his abdomen. He hissed something, but found himself shaken by the shoulder instead. Nnlill still had her neck-skin flared. "You will nnnnnot get your ssstomach cleannsed jussst yet. Show all sstorage contentsss, ffirst!"
Cowed, the male Tla.s.sian crouched and began digging through the rest of his storage lockers. Ia holstered her weapon and watched. He grunted after a few seconds, hunching over more and more as those seconds turned into minutes.
"Uh...sirs?" Nguyen asked hesitantly after a louder groan from the alien. "If he just swallowed his own venom, shouldn"t he get medical help? Doesn"t that stuff corrode flesh?"
"It willl nnnot killl him," Nnlill hissed. "Jusst make him wishh he werrre dead."
"Their digestive tracts have a lining vaguely like our own stomachs, Private. One which resists and neutralizes the proteinic acids in their venom," Ia explained absently, her attention more on the items being revealed than anything else. "They"re designed to handle it in small amounts. Swallowing enough to spit will simply give him a very bad stomachache, followed by a case of the shilva v"shakk, if it isn"t expurged in the next twenty minutes."
Nguyen mulled that over for a moment, then offered, "So...it"s sort of like eating Private Ryker"s cooking, sir?"
Ia bit her lip again to control the urge to smile. She didn"t want to bare her teeth in front of the Tla.s.sians, since that meant something completely different. "From what I"ve heard, it"s worse. Not by much, but still worse." Nguyen grinned at her quip, forcing her to snap, "Teeth, Private!"
That sobered him. Quickly pulling his lips back into place, he sketched a bow to the Tla.s.sians, armor creaking faintly with the move. "Sorry, meioas. My apologies."
"Acsscepted," Nnlill muttered. Stooping, she s.n.a.t.c.hed a flat, vaguely rectangular device from the floor where her crewmate had pushed it, emptying out his cupboards. "Book rrreaderr. You will wannt to ssscann thiss fffor conntraband."
Nodding, Ia unsnapped one of her thigh pockets. Fishing out her translator interface, she sorted through the connectors tucked into the back and hooked the right one into the reader"s socket, checking both screens as soon as they lit up. "Thank you for your cooperation, Captain. Sschah nakh."
Nnlill bowed and gave Ia the equivalent of "you"re welcome" in her native tongue, as she had not done when Ia and the others had first boarded. "Ssthienn nakh. Let usss hope thiss is the onnly violationn on board. I would nnot carrre to have my sssship dissabled."
"Neither would I, meioa," Ia agreed.
CHAPTER 15.
s.p.a.ce is huge. I mean really, really huge. You may think it"s a long way down to the...Okay, alright, that shtick has been done before, and done by someone a lot more amusing than me. But Mr. Adams was right. s.p.a.ce is almost unimaginably vast. Even in our own little corner of it, here in the Orion Arm and parts of the Sagittarius and Perseus Arms, there are hundreds of thousands of star systems, if not millions. Not all of them are inhabited, but many of them have resources, usually minerals and ice water, which can be mined.
Keeping the Salik confined on their homeworld and eight colony planets is therefore a galactic-sized headache. Any direction, right or left, front or back, up or down, can be a direction in which secretly built Salik ships can flee. Thousands of star systems are technically within their reach...but that"s not counting the interstellar void between systems, and the vast volume of s.p.a.ce itself, which is really, really, really huge.
We therefore took great pains to destroy their fleets at the end of the war two centuries ago, and even greater pains to monitor their colonial and homeworld star systems in great depth. Instead of trying to monitor the vast depths of the interstellar void, we took to monitoring the resources that they would need to rebuild. We knew some ships would slip through the tiny cracks around their worlds, and sail merrily through the vast cracks away from their home systems, but we did our absolute best to monitor for any signs of enemy activity and brutally destroy all such vessels when we found them.
Our standing orders were also to bring back any evidence of secret Salik bases located far outsystem. Evidence was to be found, and the bases destroyed with extreme prejudice by a ma.s.sive coalition of Alliance forces. Which meant it was standard operating procedure to board enemy vessels wherever and whenever possible, once they were disabled. Even for a crew as small as the Audie-Murphy"s.
~Ia JANUARY 7, 2494 T.S.
NUK NUKLIEL 83 SYSTEM.