Ship's Log: ASV Aurora; 3 April 2643. Captain Julia Andreys recording. We remain on station over the planet Tira to protect the colony of Dilgar. By doing so, we court a war between the Alliance and a number of species from Universe E5B1 including, it seems, the Earth Alliance. But if we withdraw, the Drazi and Brakiri will exterminate over twenty million civilians. My choice seems to be war or genocide. One is undesirable, the other unacceptable.
The command staff of the Aurora were in their conference lounge. The monitors showed their counterparts on the Shenzhou, Koenig, and Heerman, while a fourth image showed Shai'jhur and Kaveri over on the Magaratha. Outside the window their ad hoc squadron was visible in orbit over Tira. The Dilgar now numbered thirty-six ships with the arrival of what was left of Tira's defense forces.
"Tactically we have a partial advantage," Jarod said to the assembled. "The Huáscar is still repairing its damage and the remaining ISA fleets mostly have un-upgraded vessels with no deflector shields. We could drive them from the solar system."
"But if we try, that would precipitate full scale war with the InterStellar Alliance," Li noted. "President Sheridan wouldn't be able to resist the demand of the races here."
"The Earth Alliance would fall in just to get a chance to seize the Darglan homeworld," Julia added. "Unfortunately, if we don't do anything, once the Drazi reinforcements arrive and the Huáscar finishes repairing, we'll be the ones at a tactical disadvantage."
"We can't remain at Tira indefinitely," Imra said. "The fleet's still engaged in S4W8."
"I need solutions." Julia's eyes moved slightly to face the monitor with Shai'jhur. "Warmaster, our only option may be for you to formally contact Tuzanor and ask for President Sheridan to intervene personally. He's the one figure that the ISA races respect and fear enough that they'll back down."
"I am prepared to do it, I have nothing against Sheridan. But there are some complications, especially in regard to Earthforce but really with the old liberation allies in general. I'd like to discuss them with you, if I could, in person."
"We can have you beamed back aboard whenever you're ready, Warmaster."
"I'll be ready with my staff in ten standard minutes."
Fifteen minutes later Julia brought Shai'jhur into her ready office off of the bridge. She offered a seat at her desk to Shai'jhur. The Dilgar leader coughed for several moments, only stopping after she sat down, supported by Battle Captain Fei'nur. Kaveri Varma sat at her right side. Julia took her seat at her desk. "This is about as private as you get on this ship, Warmaster," Julia said. "What is it you need to discuss?"
"Well, I'll lay out the situation plainly, Captain Andreys," Shai'jhur started after a moment. "The issue is that what the Brakiri commander said to you is false. The lawful Dilgar government never agreed to be confined to their homeworld. To paraphrase Louis XIV, I was the lawful Dilgar government and the only regime continuity. Properly I am not the true Head of State under the old laws, but certainly since the death of Supreme Warmaster Jha'dur I have been the Head of Government. And it was with full constitutional continuity that I passed my reforms. And the rightful Head of State was a one hundredth degree collateral relative of the late Emperor, who abdicated her responsibilities to me when I began reforming the government. That 'treaty' was signed with the Surgeon General, who had no authority to sign it. Not while both myself and, bluntly, Jha'dur, as Warmasters, remained alive."
A pause, and she sighed, looking down into the table, before forcing her head up and continuing. In that moment, she looked old. "The Warmaster Council never told the rank and file what was going to happen to Omelos' sun, you understand? I didn't know. My original objective with what I called the Rohric Independent Fleet was simple: I was going to wait until the League got tired of occupying Omelos, possibly supporting a resistance campaign on the planet, and then when they were distracted by other events and fully demobilized, I would sweep in and liberate my people. It was a good plan, for the circumstances. Then Omelos' primary explosively decoupled its outer layers… And twelve billion Dilgar died. But the fact remains, Captain Andreys, that I am legally at war with the former member nations of the League of Non-Aligned Worlds and the Earth Alliance."
There was no immediate perceptible change to Julia's expression or posture as Shai'jhur explained the situation. It was certainly a legal minefield, of course. She had effectively brought the Allied Systems into the Dilgar War. At the same time, the facts on the ground were still the same. Genocide was wrong and it had to be stopped. And if the races of the ISA signed on for genocide… then the onus of the bloodshed was on them.
"So the obvious necessity of the moment, Warmaster, is to end the war legally. Which I'll admit is easier said than done. And it's going to require President Sheridan's involvement.
"He can negotiate for the ISA in full," Shai'jhur agreed. "However, I wish to make something else clear, first, which I think will make everything easier." She glanced to Kaveri, who handed over an embossed folio which was marked with a sharp claw-pattern crest. "I have consulted my government and by universal vote of the elected Statutory Council, I hereby present the Honourable Union of Tira and Rohric's application for accession as a member state of the United Alliance of Systems."
Julia accepted the folio and glanced over it. The language was translated into English and very formal. The formality might have made it obtuse if not for the straightforward nature of the text.
It was certainly a bombshell as well. Julia imagined that once announced it would certainly hurt Alliance relations with most of the ISA's races save, maybe, the Minbari. The Alliance's position in E5B1 would become quite precarious. The Earth Alliance's push to undermine the Alliance's claims to former Darglan worlds would get plenty of adherents. And all for the sake of not even fifty million people on two planets.
Of course, when she considered just how willing those factions were to commit genocide…
"I'll transmit this to the appropriate authorities on Portland," she said. "Normally starship captains aren't the usual channel for these things but given the circumstances, the application should still get processed and brought before the Council. Although you have to understand that the Alliance has strict requirements on sapient rights."
Shai'jhur looked serious as she nodded. "You can have your people review a complete packet of our constitutional law, recent press documentation and electoral records. Of course we anticipate having an Alliance working group visit to verify these, but they should provide a straightforward demonstration of our ability to meet, within our own species' laws, customs and culture, the rights and norms of the Alliance. No different than the Gersallians or the Dorei. I am sure we have some innovations that will mystify you but in the end it will all be perfectly clear that we are fully committed to meeting the principles required for membership. Indeed, as a demonstration of my commitment to full interspecies equality I have already signed documents granting Kaveri Varma citizenship in the Union and the rank of Battlemaster in our Armed Forces."
"The Cabinet and the Senate will likely determine how the investigation is conducted." Julia considered the folio and what Shai'jhur had just said about Varma. "If I may," she began, "what happened between you and Captain Varma? It's clear that the two of you are a lot closer than anyone else imagines."
Kaveri smiled. "I believe I can start, though there's a few parts I don't know that Shai'jhur will have to fill in."
Lt. Kaveri Varma had been the only one out on the escape pod from the Denali - and now she was diving for cover as her escape pod exploded, and staring in horror at most of her supplies going up in a brilliant fireball as the fuel cells cooked off. Now she had almost nothing, and the Dilgar were here... She plunged into the scrub and waited.
In the distance, there was a booming noise of a shuttle having gone down... And then nothing came for the rest of the day, except for the wind and the waves, which rose, and fell, with a brief storm tossing across the isle, so far out to sea. The next day, there was nothing except silence, and without the escape pod, no radio nor beacon, either.
The lack of troops made her believe that, perhaps, the Dilgar had perished in the crash, but to be safe, she stayed away from the crash-site, working with the small kit she had in her survival pack. At least she thought the fish were edible, starting to hack together a fishing pole for use as the sun set. On Earth, at least, it was an ideal time, bringing back memories of heading to the beach at dusk when she was a girl in Konkan.
Fishing was patient, quiet work, resumed the next morning, and the weather was dark and grey, but otherwise well as the sun brightened slowly in the horizon with the dawning of the next day. And about thirty minutes on, a voice in halting English cut the darkness.
"Stay where you are!"
Nope! shot through her mind like lightning, as Kaveri dove for cover, scrambling as quick as she could for broken ground.
"...Human, are all humans - disobedient!? " The voice echoed again, almost trenchant.
As Kaveri searched, she could see the glint of a scope up in the rocks, and a flash of dark blue over the gray. But she would not let herself be drawn into revealing herself, and she stayed silent. A Dilgar who knows English? Intelligence? Divine, but I do not wish to be captured by her! Her survival rifle had gone up with the escape pod, which meant she felt uncomfortably reminded that Dilgar had evolved from a line of carnivores, and this one was armed.
The Dilgar rose, and began to pad down across the rocks, now, keeping the rifle leveled and walking low, in a swift, nimble gait which was sure-footed in the scree of the slope leading down to the beach, a predator's walk from an already small figure.
Darting away, she was trying to break contact, thrashing through the scrub - trying to get far enough away to slow down and start to hide, rather than end up with a bullet in the back.
"Please stop, human! A truce! A truce! You have my word! A truce!"
Pausing, Kaveri halted, looking back, incredulous. "... What?"
"I just wanted to ask you a question, human, but I could hardly expect you to not attempt to kill me if I came unarmed!" She came to a stop as well.
Kaveri did not dignify that with a response, only thinking back to intelligence's reading of the Dilgar, and how they did little but prepare for war and personal combat.
"Human, this is really quite important." She drew herself up - and the rank tabs showed that she was a Battle Captain. Not exactly a low-ranking Dilgar.
"Human, ...can you fish?"
Kaveri smiled wryly as she finished the story. "So, four and a half months later, Shai'jhur was rescued, and I was left behind. Two weeks after that, I was recovered as part of the general fleet advance. They asked me a lot of uncomfortable questions, but to be honest, I always felt Shai'jhur was the one in far more danger."
Shai'jhur smiled. "Perhaps I was, but I believe I understood Warmaster Jha'dur better than most did."
"...Warmaster?" Julia glanced at her, feeling a bit trenchant at the idea of someone 'understanding' Jha'dur.
"You were always at your safest with Jha'dur if you told the truth," Shai'jhur replied, and started her own story.
It was a frail, tiny looking Dilgar female by any measure who entered the antechamber to the Lab where Jha'dur did her reports and computer time. Steady yellow almondine eyes betrayed no fear, however, as she drew herself up and saluted. "Battle Captain Shai'jhur reporting as ordered, Warmaster."
The figure at the desk did not look up for some time, before finishing whatever file she was finishing, and looking up. "Battle Captain. Your preliminary report has come to my attention - you have spent much time with one of the humans, by what you wrote." Cold eyes transfixed her, the commander of First Strike Fleet, the battered force thrown back and shattered by the humans, who still was searching for some way to turn the tide. "You did not return with them."
"I'm a drylander, Warmaster. I didn't know how to fish. So I made a deal with the human, who did," Shai'jhur replied, standing rigidly at attention.
"What was the nature of this arrangement, Battle Captain?" Gaze falling back to her paperwork, the Warmaster was making short notes with a stylus.
"Whichever of us was rescued first wouldn't tell our rescuers about the other to give a fair chance to get clear. Beyond, of course, the truce of cooperation that lasted for the duration of the time on the island."
"Which of you was rescued first?" Looking up, Deathwalker lurked in the eyes before her. "Why did you think of such an arrangement?"
"I was, Warmaster. I thought of it because I considered that a veteran Battle Captain was a sufficiently greater asset to the Dilgar than a green Lieutenant to the humans, and I could learn most of the useful intelligence from her over the time we were together, anyway."
"You have learned useful intelligence?" There was a fractional shifting, and then Jha'dur was leaning closer. "Sit, Battle Captain. What have you learned?"
Shai'jhur moved to sit. "Of course, Warmaster. I can explain in some detail how the war is being presented to the human population, and what their response to the war and the war effort has been, as well as various sociological observations on humans."
"She did not share any military intelligence, but by being friendly she shared those things which would not naturally occur to her to be important."
"The humans are much better acquainted with us than we are with them, Warmaster, I might add."
"You will tell me, Battle Captain. You will tell me everything, and spare nothing. If I am satisfied... you will leave this ship to take up a new command. If I am not..."
Shai'jhur bowed her head and raised her hand. "I'm not sure about the nobility on Omelos, Warmaster, but on Rohric we are taught not to lie." She swallowed. "I'll get started, and spare nothing."
"See that you do not."
"You see, honesty and competency together could forgive a great deal with Warmaster Jha'dur, Captain Andreys. Failure of your own making and incompetency, honestly admitted, were what got you, if you handled the matter with some dignity in your failure, a pistol with a single round and five minutes, and if you tried to lie or make excuses - your one-way trip to Lab Nine." Even after thirty-two years, Shai'jhur shuddered a little.
For Julia the most surprising thing wasn't the shudder that involuntarily shook Shai'jhur. That seemed the reasonable thing. It was that, through the story, Shai'jhur spoke about Jha'dur with what sounded like respect, even a little admiration. Julia would expect that from a defiant Dilgar refusing to accept the abuses and evils their war on the other races had caused, but it was quite clear Shai'jhur was not such a person. "It sounds like you still respect her, almost," she said carefully.
"Jha'dur was my commander, and we had clean glories, Captain. We also had occasions when I volunteered myself and my crew for dangerous duty in the rearguard and the pickets to avoid being assigned as a bombardment ship. That's how I kept my hands clean. I'm sure there were others who did the same… But very few survived, period, after Third Balos. She was also probably the smartest woman of any race in the past ten thousand years. She was damned by our system, Captain Andreys. What was it the human philosopher Hannah Arendt said? The Banality of Evil? Yes, exactly that: She was an orphan, Captain Andreys, and in Dilgar society orphans were cast out to die. Supreme Warmaster Gar'shan helped her - merely by keeping her from being expelled from school as a favor to an old comrade, her father. That was it. And that was considered exceptional, to the point of placing in peril his position as a high-ranking Intelligence officer."
"She kept her brother and herself alive by slowly pawning off her entire family estate, when she was a girl. And then when she had gotten into the academy, they took her aside and told her that her entire species was going to die in less than fifteen years unless they won the war. The way they indoctrinated children on Omelos in those days… They were raised to see all aliens as animals. She was set up. Is she a war criminal? Yes. Did she deserve to die? Yes. Did she, in the end, make choices which killed innocents? Certainly. But that was the fault of our entire society too, not just Jha'dur. From her point of view, she was just a woman trying to save her people. If we pretend Jha'dur was Deathwalker, was this creature of evil, instead of being a brilliant tactician loved by the lower deck who also happened to kill billions, we're just escaping our collective responsibility for what happened. Jha'dur was not born fully formed to evil, she was made that way by our entire society."
"I can see why you've put so much effort into reforming Dilgar society," Julia remarked. "I can't imagine it was easy."
"It wasn't easy, but I was well-motivated, Captain. I have watched pretty much my entire people die. We take expectant mothers up to the Brown Dwarf Station to try and protect children from the spores, keep the children there until they're two years old. Can you imagine what it is like as a mother to take your children back to the surface of Rohric after that? Some parents kill themselves and their children to avoid it. Depression, hopelessness, alcoholism are the norm. I promoted Dharma study in an effort to provide people an explanation for why, to give them anything to latch on to other than hopelessness. It…" She squeezed her hands.
"But I owe it to all those we left behind. Don't we, Fei'nur?"
"Warmaster." The giant woman took a step forward, her face carefully schooled into a reserved, neutral expression.
"If sins are expatiated in blood, Captain, we have certainly bled. It was… Living through the end times." Her eyes seemed almost apocalyptic as old memories were coming to the forefront of her mind.
There was a quiet tension in the Lookout. Anyone could look through the transtanium windows and see why, with the sight of the Brakiri and Hyach ships, not to mention the large Huáscar. It was odd that the ship that had made their success so far possible was now known to be an enemy, but the word was already spread through the crew.
Despite the nervous tension Cat was sitting and enjoying a meal with her sister. Violeta was on the bridge and not available for dinner, unfortunately, but at least they would get to see each other when Violeta's bridge watch was over. For now there was Hargert's offered meal, a particularly German offering of sausages (including, yes, sausage stew), rice pudding, and noodles with gravy and a cabbage casserole. "I was hoping it would be Latin night again," Cat admitted to Angel.
"You always want Latin night," Angel pointed out. "Besides, you can always replicate it if you really don't want the German stuff."
"Yeah, but then that would be mean to Hargert," Cat protested. "He works so hard."
Angel nodded once in agreement. "So, how was it with that Dilgar girl?"
"Who? Tra'dur? She's nice. And jealous of our technology. And as smart as me."
"That I would have to see, because nobody is as smart as you."
Cat gave her sister a bemused look. "What about Jarod?"
"Jarod cheats." Angel looked around. "So where is she?"
"Still on the bridge," Cat replied.
"No, not your girlfriend. Your new friend," Angel said. "Aren't you supposed to be working with her?"
"Well, yes, but when I said I was coming here to eat she said she wanted to finish a simulation she was running on the Science Lab 2 computers." Cat smiled and giggled. "It's some astrophysics model she drew up in school or something, but the Dilgar don't have sophisticated enough computers to examine it. We do."
"Ah. Well, I can see why you'd be friendly with her." Angel laughed. "You're both hopeless geeks."
The Dilgar woman entered just then, bag slung over her shoulder. With her striking red head of hair over her dun fur, and that cute tiny button-nose, yellow eyes looked about alertly. Swathed in crimson sash and scarf, her blue uniform with gray tone had gaudy rank tabs and, science officer or not, she had a sword buckled at her side. Stepping up to the counter, she spoke briefly with Haegert and then picked up a tray with a bowl of sausage stew, two sausages by themselves on the side, and a tiny helping of noodles covered in a very large quantity of gravy. The amount of meat was almost comical for the tiny woman as she looked around, and then headed straight for Cat and Angel.
"Oh, hey," Cat said upon Tra'dur reaching the table. "Did you finish your simulation?"
"Yes, I did. It confirms something about hyperspace that one of my relatives hypothesized back in the old Imperium but never followed up on," she said rather excitedly. "I think it might provide the theoretical link between the hyperspace used here and that used in S0T5."
"Are you going to write a paper?" Cat asked.
"...I'd like to, yes. It would be a great thing to be doing recognized science again, as a people. We have some very strong biological sciences still as well, and I've thought before we might be able to help the League races we hurt in the past, but, of course, they might not like our help." She was quietly demolishing the massive pile of meat dishes she'd acquired, taking mouthfuls between sentences.
"You should contact the Vulcan Science Academy," Cat said. "The Vulcans only really care about the logic and scientific grounding of papers, and they're becoming the lead science organization for the whole Multiverse."
"I want to go there! I should really like to study at the VSA," Tra'dur said with an unbridled delight. "Everyone would just be focused on science, you're right, and I wouldn't have to be concerned. Though I think Vulcans are vegetarians…"
"They are, but they still have meat programmed into their replicators," Cat said.
"Big on meat, aren't you?" Angel asked.
"We are preferential, but not obligate, carnivores. Also, I hate to claim status as a victim for myself, but we always wanted for food growing up, and the spores stunt our growth. My generation of Dilgar is as short as our iron-age ancestors on Omelos. Battle Captain Fei'nur is an example of a Dilgar who grew up healthy."
"Maybe our medical technology can help with those spores? Chelate them out of the body or something."
"Oh, they'll pass if you stay away from Rohric for long enough. That hasn't exactly been an option for anyone. And mother's family was poor, but stubborn, so they stayed on Rohric to be free and respected before the war. That would be another advantage of the Vulcan Science Academy… Or staying on a ship like this, exploring. I've only been to about twenty systems in my life and about six have been on this trip. I want to see the Multiverse!"
"Well, that sounds familiar." Angel grinned at Cat.
Tra'dur was grinning, now, and reached into her bag, pulling out … A pair of bagpipes. "For hobbies, I confess to having learned this human instrument, I understand it's very old, as well as a few others. Can I play it here?"
Angel blinked. "Just where did you get a set of bagpipes?"
"Well, to be honest, it was war booty passed down in the family." She turned the pipes to display a silver regimental plate. The Black Watch. Royal Highland Regiment of Canada.
"So it's a trophy from the war." Angel shook her head. "Be careful showing that thing around Scotty. He takes the bagpipes almost as seriously as he does the engines."
"I honour them by keeping it according to their regulations and playing it as respectfully as they would," she answered, raising the instrument to her lips. Quite flawlessly, she started to play The Black Bear.
Everyone in the Lookout started looking their way. Some were surprised, others annoyed, a few simply bewildered at the sudden blare of bagpiping. Angel and Caterina shared uncertain looks, each wondering just how this was going to turn out. Especially if…
"Now who's playin' th' Black Bear in th' middle o' dinner?" a voice called out.
Cat and Angel turned and watched Scotty enter the Lookout, still in his engineering vest over a long-sleeved white turtleneck and black trousers. He looked around and quickly followed the eyes of the others in the room to their table. Cat and Angel said nothing while the older man came over. His eyes went to the bagpipes and then to their current owner. There was the slightest hint of… not quite anger, but certainly instinctive disapproval.
"Commander, Sir," she smoothly finished and rose. "My name is Tra'dur, Combat Master on the Magaratha. I should like to think I do them honour, Sir. They were meant to be played."
"Oh, lass, you're right they were. But they're a' regiment's, aye?"
"The Canadian Black Watch", she answered, reverently holding them as she displayed the name plate. "I made the repairs myself."
"An' ye did a good job, lass. They are in tune." He looked at the plate for an unusually long time, quiet. "There's about a thousand men between you an' those pipes I'm guessin'."
"I don't hold it against them, I hope their families won't hold it against us." She looked up, her eyes almost glassy. "They were such incredibly brave men. They held the rear-guard on the retreat at Balos. We had never seen such soldiers before, never would again. Not even our worst dared deny their courage. The story goes that Warmaster Jha'dur was so impressed by them that she ordered the few survivors be left to go free. I play for them as much as for myself."
"Ah, lass." His eyes were more grandfatherly. "I willnae say it's wrong, but they might be upset. 'Ere, I'll help ye get a pair fitted for yerself, real ones, nae replicated, an' ye can play those an' make 'em yers."
A nervous, but relieved smile, touched Tra'dur's lips, and she nodded. "I'd be honoured, Commander…"
"Montgomery Scott, lass." There was a little twinkle in his eye. "Do these things right, and I think ye'll make a fine piper."
From the moment that she had started, Shai'jhur seemed gripped in the spell of a terrible memory. She recounted Fei'nur's arrival, the terrifying realization… The desperate call for help from the surface of the doomed world. Her small lungs heaving, claws skittering on Captain Andreys' desk, each word was uttered with a dull precision. Behind her, Battle Captain Fei'nur shrunk in place like the story was physical pain.
I am the Warmaster at the End of Days. It had been the first thought that had flashed through her mind when she heard ragged Fei'nur's report when she had finally reached Rohric, after her daring escape from Balos. Her second had been to lay her cards out and beg the humans for help.
But the humans were far away, and the preliminary signs of Omelos destabilizing were already occurring. Her own people had been terrified the Earth Alliance would not help, and Shai'jhur was not sure if they would, or if they would pretend they had tried their best and would be unable to. And in the end, the event simply happened too fast to plan their way to another resolution.
Instead, Shai'jhur had activated her invasion alarm and used the emergency mobilization protocols to fling every single military and civilian ship in the Rohric Independent Fleet for Omelos, arriving as the radio broadcasts, steadily more desperate, began. And it had been Fei'nur, child of the Ogkharin ghetto, Fei'nur, the replacement, who earned her commission by killing a squad of Drazi with an entrenching tool, and who Shai'jhur had trusted to commence the evacuation on the End of Days. The League had obligingly retreated to let the Dilgar die, and into the short gap between the retreat and death, Shai'jhur had quietly slipped.
The radiation was peaking, and Ogkharin was sweeping toward the terminator line. The dawn would be bring lethal radiation for everyone on the surface. "Combat Expert…" Shai'jhur's voice cut the open line. "You need to finish up the last transport. You have ten minutes until Ogkharin reaches the terminator." She spoke in a strangely detached tone. Around her bridge, listless, hopeless faces and eyes contrasted with those lit with a desperate energy. They had long since muted all the civilian channels: They didn't need to listen to the death cries of the western hemisphere.
"Understood, Warmaster." The voice that came through was flat, emotionless. There would be time to look at the new scars on her soul later, Fei'nur thought, looking around at the masses of Dilgar around her. Her people, the ones living close enough to the spaceports to reach them when the evacuation orders had come down, not the hand-picked selection of society which had made it aboard the evacuation ships before the Battle of Omelos. Now, the slowly growing light on the horizon portended death for anyone who did not make it aboard these last transports. She bit her cheek hard enough to draw blood as she withdrew a small cylinder from her jumpsuit and pressed the button atop it… setting off the charges that would collapse the passenger gangways to the loading platform, as she turned to those around her; "When the sun rises, anyone not aboard dies! Move, Dilgar, move if you want to live! Push until you can barely breathe!" And some of the weaker will not be able to, but there's no other choice…
In later years, Fei'nur knew she was the last Dilgar to breathe the choking, polluted air of Omelos. Somehow, in her nightmares, it always tasted sweet.
The next day, Warmaster Shai'jhur came to visit her personally where she lay in her hospital bed, almost overcome with radiation burns. "Combat Expert," she began, hesitantly, and then reached for Fei'nur's hand in an unprecedented gesture from a Dilgar superior officer. "Thank you for your effort. Both with the people and with the Warmaster's Council files."
Her eyes were flat, when Fei'nur coughed and shuddered, weakly grasping her Warmaster's hand back. "Anything… for my Warmaster. I will never forgive that I failed her, that I arrived too late… but I will force myself to live with the shame. She found it within herself to do so, how could I do any less…?"
"I must ask for more," Shai'jhur answered softly. "I am going to take every measure necessary for us to survive. Survive as Dilgar, a proud race, and free. Some of those measures you will not understand. They will bother you. Challenge what we were told. What we believed. You must, with the reckless lack of fear of a woman who has seen what you have seen, challenge them. Remonstrate. Question what I do. I will always listen. And then you must accept when I stay the course, and do it anyway. But I will always listen."
"I am not sure if I am capable of such a thing, Warmaster, but if such is your order, I shall attempt it with my utmost, to death itself. Is this something you find satisfactory?"
"Yes. It is all I would ask." Around them, the incoherent moans of those drugged into bliss as they died, those just too late to save, washed into the dreadful numbness of the day after the apocalypse.
Shai'jhur finished, leaning into Fei'nur, who stood as woodenly as a statue. Kaveri had leaned back in her chair, quietly weeping. "And so we pulled ourselves together. I had six daughters to set an example for the rest. We had a new war on our hands, against drunkenness, drugs and suicide. So, Captain, now you know everything. Including how twelve billion Dilgar died. Perhaps we adults who started the war deserved it, but wither the children?"
"No." Julia shook her head. There were no words she could conceive of to deal with the grief and loss. It was a truly terrible thing to contemplate the death of an entire people, a unique species and culture that might have yet had something to contribute to their galaxy, to the Multiverse. Forever denied the chance at redemption.
Not to mention the children. Beings who, by definition, were innocent of the crimes of their parents. "Children don't deserve to suffer for the crimes of their parents." As she said the words Julia wondered if her own people could have that thrown back into their faces. An interstellar war could be terrible on civilian populations. The protection that starships and space installations enjoyed ensured that civilian targets faced utter annihilation if not defended themselves… and it was those same defenses that were targeted first to enable planetary invasions. How many children in the Reich had died while the Alliance fought their parents?
"And so here we stand." Shai'jhur sighed, like so much of a deflated balloon. "Captain, I must figure out what is happening on the surface. We are being denied information, and we must know how bad it is. But I don't want to send my own effort independently."
"I was already considering sending a team down." Julia shook her head. "If we move too directly, the Brakiri will probably blow the barrage," she said. "We have a runabout specifically designed for stealth insertions. But I have to warn you that even that's not guaranteed."
There was no hesitation on Shai'jhur's part. "Battle Captain Fei'nur can go, to support your personnel in conducting the reconnaissance and avoiding blue-on-blue incidents. The rest should be your's, Captain."
"I'll inform Major Anders and Lieutenant Lucero."
"An operations officer? This could involve intense special forces activities, Captain, I wouldn't necessarily think it wise to have someone slowing down the group."
Julia nodded and grinned. "Lucy is not your average operations officer. She's been trained in the arts of the Gersallian Order of Swenya, if you've heard of them. She's become experienced enough that they consider her to be an honorary Knight, in fact."
"Only vague rumours," Shai'jhur answered. "We still have telepaths, though they are no longer restricted to the Mha'dorn. Yes, if that is her ability, I understand perfectly. Fei'nur, you are detached to assist the Alliance forces in conducting a reconnaissance of conditions on Tira."
"Yes, Warmaster!" she came to attention.
Shai'jhur smiled. "Now, we just need to wait for Sheridan's reply."
While I foresaw my career ending in such a fashion, I was expecting it to be at the hand of either Sheridan or Clark's people, not at the hands of my own crew. The thought floated to the surface of Zheng-li Varma's mind, as she sat with her legs folded under her in her own ship's brig. Her eyes slowly opened, as she regarded the reinforced steel door before her, then closed again. I must trust that I have instilled the values of righteousness into my crew, that they will choose to see this as mutiny. We are often tested, but it is so difficult to wait, when one can do nothing. Still, to fail to act to protect the helpless… would be failing in my duty. There was nothing else to be done.
Her reverie was interrupted by a soft knock on the cell door. "Captain?" It was Lieutenant Johnathan Goodman, the Security Officer for the Huáscar, a big, easygoing man from Belize. "We're arranging to have your regular meals brought down."
"Thank you, Lieutenant. This will all end badly, mark my words. Even Admiral Hamato was not willing to engage in indiscriminate bombardment, nor his subordinates. Earthforce does not want to sully itself in this. We will not come off well."
"You know Foster's politics. The entire crew is on pins and needles right now. Nobody wanted to fight our allies, though, but Foster doesn't care about that. What he cares about is that he thinks you imperiled Earth's interests for the sake of aliens."
"I've never done that, Lieutenant. This will turn the UAS against us, and make us multiversal pariahs. It's in Earth's interests to be part of a wider community, to be what we should be. Sheridan threw me off Babylon 5, I thought that was the usual defence against a charge of race treason?" She was bitter-sounding, as the wounds the Minbari War had left on Earthforce seemed to be ensnaring her again. "The Dilgar did evil things, but at least they had a reason for it. We wanted to see them become part of the galaxy again, like we did for the nations defeated in the Second World War."
"It isn't that you're wrong, Captain, it's that to a lot of our officers, you went rogue. We had no orders. You just acted." He hesitated, a chill, cold sweat visible on his face.
"Are you telling me that I do not have a responsibility under the Genocide Convention, Lieutenant? I do not need orders - I would be a criminal if I waited for them and allowed it to happen. I swore an oath, and I am acting within it. You recall the Legal Handbook? 'A state's obligation to prevent, and accordingly to act, arise at the instant the State learns of, or normally should have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed.' The Captain's eyes were cold, hard, and unforgiving. "I will see the Commander spaced if he results in us failing in that sacred charge, Lieutenant. I am ashamed that so much of the crew followed him, and regard it as a personal failing as Captain of the Huáscar."
Goodman looked uncomfortable. "Captain, when the war ended everyone agreed to put it behind us, but you know, Major Foster is one of Clark's people…"
"And did I not stand with General Lefcourt at Mars, in accordance with my oaths? Did not Sheridan expel me from Babylon 5? I am a soldier, and I will not abandon my duty. I see Major Foster as having committed mutiny." The word fell like lead between them. Her uttering it raised the stakes to an entirely new and dangerous level for Huáscar's crew.
And Goodman knew it, pacing in front of her cell nervously. "Look, Captain, you know the crew is basically split into two camps. Those of us who sided with Sheridan think you did the right thing and those who served Clark regard this as a betrayal of Earth's interests. They don't think Geneva applies to aliens and they never have and never will. I…. Sharon Farallon," the Chief Engineer, "is the one who's most torqued off about Foster. I'm worried he might order her arrest next. I'll… I'll talk to some people, Captain, I'll keep Foster's Nightwatch buddies out of here. But you gotta understand that if this goes down, it isn't going to remain non-violent."
"This is far more clear-cut than anything Sheridan ever did, Lieutenant. Regardless, be careful. This is a wound that the Minbari inflicted on us, and it has not yet healed. I will not have good people shot down by a mutineer if I can help it."
"Well, I'll get people talking," Goodman answered. "Since I'm Security, nobody is going to question my coming into the brig. I'll… get people talkin'." He looked levelly at Zhengli. "I'm with you."
"You are… a good man, Goodman." She half-grinned at the pun, managing to find a hint of levity in the situation, as painful as it was. "Huáscar will get through this."
Goodman laughed at the joke despite of, or perhaps because of, his nervousness. "I'm prayin', Captain. You're right about it, though. It's right and wrong that matters here… And it just ain't human of us to stand by and watch civilians get shot down from orbit. I'll talk to you again soon." He closed the viewing screen and his footfalls drifted away.
Shortly afterwards, one of the guards slid Zhengli's food into the cell. As she did, the woman whispered softly: "You did right, Captain, but I don't how we're going to get past those Nightwatch goons."
"We'll find a way. Be careful, feel out some of the others. We need to act before they open fire on those UAS ships. Earth will have a whole lot bigger problems than some alliances with genocidaires being messed up if Foster really does that."
"Aye Aye, Captain.."
After dinner Caterina headed back to Science Lab 2 to check on a couple of things. One of those was Tra'dur's simulation which explained, or at least further explained, the Dilgar woman accompanying her. "You look really content," Cat observed.
"Commander Scott was very kind. I've always loved music so much. I know all of the human spacing songs, and any others I've found along the way, but instruments were hard to get…. To many of our own songs from my mother's era are just terrible, so I prefer the human ones," she grinned wryly. "And by terrible, well. Actually, I don't think it's even appropriate to start singing something that recursively talks about how it was 'sung again with a lot of blood'."
Cat made a face. "Yeah, I wouldn't either." She took a seat at one of the computer controls and activated the ongoing simulations. Her own simulation was one of her newest investigations as a result of their trip into the Fracture. Attached to it were notes from Doctor T'Dala and Professor Satek of Vulcan regarding the new parameters for evaluating T'Vral Distortions. She read them again just to do so, and to feel giddy at having two esteemed astrophysicists writing notes to her like she was a fellow colleague, not a student.
Not that she wasn't still a student. She was in many ways, and she didn't even have a doctorate. But it was still a great boost to her confidence.
"So what are you working on, Cat'Delgado?" Tra'dur asked as she settled down, reorienting herself to the system and checking the paper notes that had still been important to the way she worked, after the way she learned.
"It's a simulation on T'Vral Distortions," Cat replied. "They're a result of intense space-time distortion near a star allowing the bleeding of subspace into real-space. They've been theoretical for two hundred years until I found one in the Fracture last month." There was a real enthusiasm in Cat's voice. "It was amazing to see Doctor T'Vral's theory was true. The Vulcan Science Academy is asking me to do a presentation this summer at a symposium they're hosting on the Citadel in Universe M4P2. I've already put in my leave request for it and it's so exciting…"
"The Citadel? I've heard that each of its arms is as grand as Babylon 5! I should love to see it. If they're doing a symposium there… Perhaps there will be peace, and I can actually go to such a thing."
"It's enormous. It doesn't have the same charm as B5, but there's lots of interesting things, and nearly every sapient species from that version of our galaxy has residences on the station."
"I see-or rather I don't, but I wish I did." A smile crossed her face, showing her fangs. "Do you have a mate, Cat'Delgado, or is it just the mathematics for you?"
A deep blush appeared on Cat's face. "Uh… I'm with someone, yeah," she managed.
"Tell me about him?"
Cat swallowed and giggled nervously. "Uh… well… you see… I'm not sure how your species and culture or whatever view this sort of thing, but…" After drawing her silence out Cat sighed and came out with it. "...well, I'm with another girl, not a guy."
After a quiet pause built up some anticipation in Cat, Tra'dur laughed softly. "Cat'Delgado, my mother is hopelessly only attracted to females. But she was a noblewoman in the old Imperium, so she had a mate for a time. But the relationship ended when their son died-that's a long story. But that's why she had us with a genetic donor instead of mating again. In the old Imperium it wasn't forbidden, it was just that you were expected to do your duty to your species and procreate."
Cat made a face at that. "Eww," was her response.
"Well, we came up with some better technology for that. I'd just been so impressed by everything around me that I'd assumed you had it as well."
"Well, I think we do," Cat said. "It's just the idea of being forced to be with a guy just to have a kid. It's… yech."
"It is rather disgusting to think about, I admit. Copulation with someone you don't even wa-" And suddenly, just like that, Tra'dur fell silent, collapsing across her desk.
There was a moment when Caterina was completely uncertain of what had just happened. Training and experience kicked in after that moment. Her hand went straight for her omnitool and triggered the communication system. "Delgado to Medbay, medical emergency in Science Lab 2!"
An anti-grav stretcher bearing the unconscious Tra'dur came right through the sliding doors into the medbay's emergency care ward. A pair of orderlies moved the Dilgar girl to a bed. Leo entered with Doctor Lani Walker, of the Tohono O'odham people of the American Southwest, behind him. "What's wrong?"
It was Cat who called out "She just collapsed!" from the door.
While Walker commenced scans to determine any issue with Tra'dur's blood chemistry and lower organs, Leo went right to the most likely source. He activated the powerful scanners built into the emergency ward bio-bed and used them to scan Tra'dur's brain. As the results showed he narrowed his eyes and operated the scanning controls with his omnitool, refining the results. Once he got to the right magnification he nodded. "I'm picking up some kind of organism in her brain. It looks like… spores, with associated lesions in brain tissue. Still minor."
"It must be the spores from her homeworld," Cat said. "Can't you get them out?"
"We're going to try. In the meantime." He looked to his nurse. "Let's start off cautiously. Five ccs of oxylin, now."
"Yes Doctor."
Leo glanced back to Cat. "This is a serious medical situation, Cat, I'm afraid you need to leave."
"Oh. Okay," she said. "I'll go let Shai'jhur know."
"Sounds good to me. We may need the help with her physiology." Leo immediately returned his attention to his patient. "What do we have in the library files on them anyway?" he asked Walker. "I want to know what I should be avoiding here…