Chapter Eleven
Kin'kázka
Alara rises but all on the bridge can see she's forcing herself to move. The scream she'd blocked with her hands clamped over her mouth is still in her throat but she forces appalled words through it. "You…. Wouldn't!"
"Alara?"
She forces herself to turn to her Captain, forces her hands down but nothing can force the horror from her face or the whisper to any volume, yet the word is driven to every station on the bridge. "Genocide."
"We do not know how many DieTarpuns remain alive in Malmoria," Skulasta Etanne declares from behind her desk on the center of three images, Admiral Halsey on the left image before them and Lalaíth Kiernán on the right, "but when they are exterminated we need no longer concern ourselves with their politics."
"And your Lanzrad would support this?" Halsey challenges, praying she will see reason.
"The Lanzrad deals with Planetary issues, or between two or more Nations. This is our Internal Security."
Halsey is outraged. "Internal Security? The extermination of…. No. You cannot do this. We won't permit it."
"The Planetary Union has no jurisdiction in Malmorian affairs, nor that of any sovereign Nation."
"True," the Admiral grants, "but the Union is providing for and coordinating a massive Relief effort. We–"
"And once our population has been winnowed further and a distracting influence has been removed from our society we may well make do with what we have. At any–"
"I will go to Malmoria."
x
"Your Highness," but Halsey's effort is shaken off.
"Etanne will do as she has threatened, or someone else will." Her eyes shift to the image of the woman on her own screen in Sick Bay. "I will do what you have 'offered'."
"A ship will be dispatched to rendezvous with your vessel. No one from Orville will set foot upon our planet."
"Believe me, 'Madam'," Mercer declares. "I can't think of anyone who would want to."
Etanne's image disappears, Halsey's and Kiernán's shift to fill the space.
"I assure you," Halsey says, "the Planetary Union will use every diplomatic means at our disposal to resolve this."
"I know you shall try. Thank you, Admiral. Captain." She lowers her head back to the pillow, perhaps in defeat, perhaps seeing her very limited life to come. "May Lieutenant Kitan join me until I must disembark? It would be nice to spend time with a friendly Xelayan before I begin my… exile."
xx
'Is this Sick Bay or the Morgue?' Alara questions in funeral tones, answering her own thought as she passes through the inner door after a three minute acclimation in the airlock. This is but one aspect of this mission she will not miss. A human could not do this in under twenty minutes minimum, but the transitions already wear upon her nerves.
Claire Finn, in a pressure suit, is inspecting Lalaíth Kiernán with a scanner, the examination perhaps more thorough than it needs to be.
"If I could find a microbe out of place," the doctor pronounces without looking back to the closing door, "I would confine you, but not only does that bitch hold all the cards but your daughter is so close to coming out she's ready to pry her way free."
"Is it really that close?" is an unintended duet between Lalaíth and Alara, differed by inflection.
Claire looks briefly over her shoulder, admitting Alara into the conversation. "It's never so exact, especially when talking about an eleven month gestation, but I wouldn't rule out a photo finish at the hospital; and granting that the native conditions are far better for the baby." She steps back and leaves the pressure chamber.
As soon as she is gone, returning to the main body of the Sick Bay, Alara directs "Computer, restore enhanced gravity field."
Lalaíth groans as the gravity works it's way up over fifteen seconds to resume a pull five times what the outer room experiences. "I won't miss that," she declares when everything within her settles.
/Be glad we can do it,/ Finn says over the intercom, /otherwise I could never get close enough to help you at all./
"I am, doctor," she says. She cries out, clutching both her stomach and the large 'baby bump' as Alara's sure Gordon would say. He'd also say she'd given her mother quite a bump.
She should not be thinking about him right now.
x
"Ohhh, she didn't like that any more than these constant changes."
"You okay?"
"As soon as I can get her out of here."
"I – We're three hours, thirty eight minutes from orbit," Alara says. "I'll stay with you until we see you off."
"Thank you, child," she says in tones more like her own.
It has been so short a time since they'd met, since a time when neither of them could stand to be in the same room with one another, and now…. "I'll be sorry to see you go. Oh," she corrects at the woman's look, "not because of all this, though this is so horrible, but… well, you're a Xelayan."
"Everybody we're dealing with is a Xelayan," she observes, eyes on the overhead.
"How can you be so…" she hunts for a word, finally settles on "calm?"
"Is that the impression I give? I have to do better." Now the woman looks at her and all shields are dropped. "No, I want to scream and rant and break things, but I must think of my daughter – and the DieTarpuns. I recognized that in Etanne. I've known people like her. She will kill them for her ideal. Life won't be pleasant, but those people will live."
She boosts herself up on her elbows. "And who knows, even if I will have no power to help our people, maybe I can trust your people even if I can't trust our own."
Alara can read the depths of hope in that and the despair that she must make the comparison. "We shall see," is the Queen-Mother's final admission.
xxx
Three and a half hours later the massive planet dominates the expansive viewscreen, though for the first time Mercer can recall a new world fills him with neither fascination nor pleasure. The beleaguered northern Continent that has occupied so much of their attention is coming over from beyond the terminator. Were he in command of this mission rather than only of the ship, he would order an immediate reversal of course; let Lalaíth Kiernán and her daughter live out their lives upon distant Raquiel and to hell with Malmoria and Saquine and Lanzrad and DieTarpu and United Coalition and all else. Let just one family, one baby, grow up happy and he would be content.
"Captain," Lt. Clinton, the Beta Shift Communications Officer, calls "We are being hailed by a ship on approach from Malmoria."
'And they can friggin go to hell.' "Open the channel, Lieutenant," he directs without tone. 'Let's get this over with.'
/USS Orville, this is the space cruiser Kromstok out of Quintaru./
'What's left of it,' is his unkind thought.
/We stand ready to send a shuttle to receive Misvar Lalaíth Kiernán./
'Another uninformed crew.' The thought firms his intent to start regular status briefings with input from the crew as soon as Kelly can set things up, 'and you 'stand ready' when you get here,' which by his view should be in about four minutes.
"Our Landing Bay is cleared. Once you are secured we will increase gravity to 1/2 Xelayan and atmospheric pressure to match yours. Do not attempt to disembark until then." With the displayed depths of intelligence he has had to deal with on this mission, he does not hold much confidence in what, to other spacefaring races, would be insultingly obvious.
/Complying./
He cuts the circuit, then opens another. "Bridge to Alara." The computer will record and direct his words to the appropriate Comm link on her uniform sleeve.
/Go ahead, sir./
"We've made orbit, and the Xelayan ship Kromstok is on approach."
/Yes, Captain. We'll be ready./
/Captain? I would like to thank you and your crew for all that you have done. I wish… that it could have…./
"We have a saying on Earth: 'Keep the Faith'."
/Thank you again. Keep the Faith./
x
Mercer has already decided that the Command crew will render an appropriate send-off from the control room above the bay deck and so, replacement crew at their stations, the senior officers are about to depart - with two exceptions.
"Bortus, keep an eye and the weapons on that ship, I don't care if it is impolite. If they so much as blink their running lights wrong, explain to them what a bad idea it was."
"Yes, sir." The basso profundo voice is practically a torpedo's detonation.
"Isaac, you keep a lock on that incoming shuttle; same order."
xx
Alara walks slowly beside Lalaíth, her attention primarily on the possibility of needing to render aid to the pregnant woman as Claire Finn follows beyond the enhanced gravity field. If something were to go wrong now, precious seconds could be lost while the computer admitted the doctor.
When they reach Deck 5 Aft Finn turns away with a final parting word to go through the stairs to join the command crew in the elevated control room. The Xelayans go to the door beyond which the chamber will be pressurized to match the ship's interior.
They step through, the door closes and immediately air is pumped in. It takes two hundred seconds, the shortest possible safe time before they can break the seal on Lalaíth's suit..
x
The dulled silver shuttle stands close to the doors to space as though the crew doesn't want to spend any longer in the human ship than it has to, but Alara knows she's projecting her own feelings on to the shuttle and its crew.
The starboard door opens and four men in blue uniforms with red piping disembark, but a sigh pulls Alara's attention from helping Lalaíth remove the pressure suit that is not designed for significantly pregnant women.
"The Tiranian Guard," she says in Xelayan, as they have spoken whenever alone. "Of course."
As they work on the seals the men draw close, three of them in a line, the one at the right a step forward. They wait until Alara has the heavy garment, five times heavier than usual, bundled under her arm.
"Misvar Kiernán," the one on the right says in a very Malmorian dialect with closed fist to forehead, fingers forward, "your Guard is prepared to send you home."
"If only you knew how wrong you are." Her Xelayan words emphasize the Raquielian accent she'd 'inherited' over the past years.
"Your Worship?" he asks, tone and expression equally mystified. Whether he has or has not perceived anything, Lalaíth doesn't care.
"Never mind." She turns to Alara. "I might as well get used to it," she continues in words that may or may not be translated for the officers who watch from above. She doesn't care about that either. "Titles and salutes and salutations by the cartload are my life now."
"The Planetary Union will not give up."
"I know. Thank you, my dear, for everything; the reminders and the patience and all else."
To hug is not the Xelayan way but hands to upper arms are not going to cut it this time. The Queen's Guard give a start at the embrace but she doesn't care and Alara is sure the woman does not either. When they break she places her open hand upon Lalaíth's very large stomach and whispers "Xinxis tupris ha vlas" which in the tongue is 'Xinxis be one with you'.
"Thank you."
x
Her look up to the control room is cut by English, an intrusion into the moment. "Highness, time to go."
Ironically her English reply is what she'd heard one of the orange jacketed officers in the pilot's station mutter during the four way conference that keeps her answer from the four men but Alara is hard pressed to keep her expression still.
When Lalaíth is ready, the men take up formal escort positions. The middle man faces about and takes two paces forward, she steps into a pace behind him and the two end men face about into flanking positions. The senior takes a place two paces right of the leading guard and they don't quite march toward the shuttle while Alara remains at the closed door.
Three yards short the forward Guard whirls and rams a long blade below her abdomen with such force it pierces her lower back, her shriek punctuated by the burst of steel and blood.
The other three draw long blades and ram them over and over through the woman's back and sides, aiming far below heart, lungs and all else.
"NOOOO!" Alara's own scream fills the chamber as she charges the murderous quartet. Blood splatters the deck in red rain as the four stab and stab again, all targeting Lalaíth's womb.
Alara reaches the closest with a devastating kick that drives him to the shuttle but his partner's back swing catches her in her face and knocks her back and to the deck, though she rolls out of the fall and up to her feet.
These are Xelayans.
For an instant her quip to Gordon about being thrown through walls echoes in her mind as the leader and two flanking men surround her. For every attack she launches she counters two as her larger opponents get through, pound her with sledgehammer blows. She fights against their knives with skills they do not have, disarms all three yet holds her own for only the briefest moment.
The air is full of the sounds of the fourth knife skewering flesh and the smell of blood.
x
"Get Down There!" Mercer had yelled at the first sign of attack, fury high.
"Can't," Finn had countered from the controls, as furious at the murder and fight a score of yards away. "You can't move at a thousand pounds or breathe in that. Gravity takes 15 seconds but air takes 200. I put it on Emergency. That'll evacuate the air in 100 seconds."
"That's too long!"
"Faster may kill them all. She'll still suffer decompression sickness."
x
One of the guards catches Alara in a full Nelson, arms pinned high and back as the other two pummel her with pile driver force. Lalaíth is on her back, the blade slamming into her abdomen over and over, cast off blood raining upon the room.
"How LONG?" Mercer's fury could blow out the transparent aluminum barrier.
"Gravity is 2.1, pressure 94 psi." It has to be 14.7.
He looks out the portal, Alara's knees have buckled, the two men continue to slam their fists into her. She doesn't move except for the titanic impacts that rock her captor.
"FASTER." He ignores the sounds of his crew, eyes only for the woman below them.
"I can't or she'll–"
"Now or she's dead!" He reaches for the blaster that's not at his hip.
"Break the barrier, you'll kill everyone! Gravity 1.4, pressure 80 psi."
The assassins have finally noticed the dramatic change, the one who holds Alara throws her onto the deck and Mercer charges out, followed by the other men and women. He virtually jumps down the stairs, out into the corridor, slams against the locked portal.
Finn has locked it. He turns on her but the regret in her eyes halts him as she shakes her head.
'60' the meter displays. So Damned SLOW! '50….'
Inside an engine whines, builds. Thrusters fire. The sound vanishes as the ship exits through the force field into space. '30… 20….' He slams his fist onto the Emergency button, the doors part with a blast of wind that staggers them back which ends when the meter falls to 14.7.
x
Mercer leads the charge through the portal. Inside Alara lays upon the deck, not motionless but writhing in pain. John LaMarr doesn't join the charge but looks to Lalaíth. She's still, her clothes as red as his crew-mate's but it's blood from scores of wounds that has pooled around her.
All those wounds are to her lower torso.
Alara writhes on the deck, bruising and bloody face contorted in agony she can't quiet. Every breath is a sharp cry through gritted teeth.
Claire Finn is among them, but she doesn't need her scanner. The beating, while horrendous, caused less damage to her equally tough body but "Too Damned FAST! Nitrogen bubbles in her blood, her whole neuromuscular system," she declares as the woman convulses with a scream. "We have to get her to the–" 'Pressure chamber' is drowned out by a soul ripping shriek.
Gordon Malloy shoves Mercer and Grayson apart, gets his arms under the convulsing woman, lifts her against him and runs. Finn must chase him as Alara screams onto his shoulder.