The individual on the monitor was not someone Julia usually dealt with. The tan-skinned man in question was on the large side, dressed for business (at least with the high-collared 27th Century aesthetics of a FedStar Earther), and seated at a desk behind which a window showing the Portland skyline was visible. Small dots that could only be air cars moved in streams around the large buildings. "This is highly irregular, Captain," the man said in a Spanish accent. "Councilman Mutombo usually receives these applications through the Foreign Office or from diplomatic representation in Portland. There is no precedent for a naval captain to submit one."
"This is an irregular situation, Mister Vasquez," Julia answered. "And we're dealing with a possible genocide out here. The Dilgar application for Alliance membership could provide a diplomatic mechanism we can use to prevent it."
"So you have said. I admit I am not sure we should even be involved in this. We're already waging one interstellar war…"
Julia tried to keep the frost out of her voice when she pointed out, "Yes, against enemies who commit genocide. As an Alliance officer I'm bound by regulation, ethics, and basic morality to do whatever I can to prevent genocides. This is one mechanism we can use to do that."
Vasquez looked down at his reader again, as if studying it for an imperfection. Finally he sighed in defeat. "Alright. The Councilman will be returning from the current Council session in an hour or so. I'll bring this to his attention. I can't promise he'll call the Committee right away…"
"Just do what you can, please," Julia pleaded. "It could mean the difference between life and death out here."
"Right." A sympathetic look came to the aide's face before he reached off-screen for the key to terminate the call.
After sighing with relief Julia immediately sent another call to Defense Command. But they couldn't relay her to the Kentan or any other responsible official. An attempt to contact Admiral Maran's flagship directly failed; it was undoubtedly in the middle of a combat operation. And the Presidential Mansion stonewalled her immediately on getting ahold of Morgan, insisting he was in high level meetings and could not be disturbed. She barely got the official in question to promise to relay her message to Morgan. And the Foreign Office insisted Secretary Onaram was off-world in important classified meetings.
Whatever rest she hoped the conclusion of these efforts would bring did not come. Julia barely had time to rub at her forehead before she got the call from the Medbay. "Captain, you should get down here," Leo's voice said. "This is serious."
"On my way," she said.
Getting called to the medbay was rarely good, Julia thought during her trip. It usually meant a complication to their mission or a medical crisis that was going to affect the crew in some way.
Upon arrival in the medbay she was met by Doctor Walker. "Doctor Gillam is still with the patient," she said.
"Who is it?"
"One of the Dilgar aboard. Lieutenant Delgado said her name was Tra'dur?"
"Damn." Julia shook her head. "She's the exchange officer. And the daughter of their leader. What's wrong with her?"
"A number of spores worked their way into her brain. She lost consciousness. The spores are causing lesions to form in her brain tissues."
"Knowing Doctor Gillam, he's doing everything he can."
"He is. But our knowledge of Dilgar physiology is limited. We can't fight this thing effectively unless we know more."
"We'll have to…"
Before Julia could finish that sentence a blue light appeared over the back of Walker's left hand. She pressed the light and opened the communication. "Doctor Walker here."
"I got through to Shai'jhur," Caterina said. "She's having one of her medical personnel connect to us to help."
"I will inform Doctor Gillam," Walker replied. She returned to the emergency care ward with Julia behind her. Julia looked to the occupied biobed, where the young Dilgar officer was still unconscious and being looked over by Leo. "Doctor, we will be getting a contact shortly."
"Good." Leo glanced up briefly. Noticing Julia, he nodded and returned to work. "Captain, thank you for coming. I thought you should see this. It might be relevant to the Dilgar case."
"Oh?" Julia asked. "Doctor Walker said spores got into her brain?"
"Yes. Probably the ones Shai'jhur mentioned." Leo tapped a key and shook his head. "And removing them is almost impossible. They're really small. Our surgical transporters don't have the resolution to get them. Not without taking healthy tissue too."
"I can ask Mister Scott about improving them," Julia said.
"We could use that. Right now I'm trying to get the spores that are in the bloodstream. I'll send samples to Lab 3 for biological analysis."
"I'm sure Doctor Ke'mani'pala will be a great help."
The screen in the medbay flashed with the indication of an incoming connection. Leo answered the incoming call.
A young looking Dilgar female appeared on the screen, a redhead just like Tra'dur. In fact, it looked like there was a distinct family resemblance between the two. This was confirmed a moment later. "This is Surgeon-Commander Nah'dur of the Redoubtable. The Warmaster informed me that Tra'dur was suffering from fungitoxic hydrocephalus, is that correct?"
Leo nodded. "I'm Doctor Leonard Gillam of the Aurora and that would be my best guess, yes, Surgeon-Commander… Are you related to the patient?"
"Yes, she's my older sister, but we don't have regulations about family members treating each other and anyway, it is straightforward. We have all been deviled with these spores since we were very young, the scarves we wear are to hide our bloody spittle from our enemies, but to me, these spores are the enemies I will someday beat. Tell me, what would your normal method be for removing a foreign object from the brain?"
Leo glanced to Dr. Walker. The woman grinned. Nah'dur was, to a word, eccentric. "We have transporter based surgery," he explained the concept, watching the woman take notes on a pad.
When she finished taking notes a moment after he had finished explaining, she looked up with a chipper grin. "Brilliant. This is going to be very easy. The spores may be too small to resolve, but Dilgar antibodies shouldn't be, and the fluid in the lesion will have a high concentration that the surrounding tissue will not. By this point the lesions should be large enough to fit nicely within the resolution limits. I'm sending the calculation for that to you, as well as the chemical trace of the antibodies. Very, very few spores will have gotten to the brain, so if you target each lesion, she should be waking up tomorrow no worse for wear since we're still at an early enough stage that the displacement isn't causing a buildup in pressure or cell damage. Of all the people… This happens to about one in a thousand Rohricans in their lifetime and it's just plain bad luck. I could get you the drugs we normally use to treat it, but there are side effects and about five percent still die and another thirty percent have brain damage. I don't want my sister's three hundred kilo brain messed up, and I'm quite confident this will work. Though she'll owe me some rotgut from the Magaratha's still."
Leo had confirmed the presence of the offered calculations by this point. "Thank you, Doctor," he said. "Here we go." He loaded the relevant data into the system. Within a few seconds the bio-scanners located the antibodies inside of the lesions. With a couple presses to the control board the surgical transporters started to remove the antibodies and spores within.
The procedure was still delicate. A look from Doctor Walker was all Julia needed to leave the doctors to their work.
Upon receiving the order from Julia to report for the insertion mission, Lucy returned to her quarters to suit up. She removed her uniform and put on the Gersallian-made armor she used for field missions. The armor was purple in color and quite mobile despite its look and size. Lucy finished fitting the final pieces and re-clipped her lightsaber to the belt. She reached into her closet and retrieved a blue combat robe of Gersallian make, which she pulled on. She left the hood down as she always did.
Once she was ready Lucy departed for the other side of the ship. The Gonzalez would be departing from its place in the secondary shuttle bay, at the rear of the ship's lower drive section.
In that bay the squat form of the Gonzalez was waiting. It was the replacement for the Basilone, one of the many small craft lost to the near-disaster that struck the ship toward the end of the prior year. Like the Basilone the Gonzalez was a stealth insertion runabout, equipped with its own cloaking device and a turreted gun that could be used to give fire support to friendly troops trying to board the craft. Lucy approached the main door on the side when she was met by a man in light Marine power armor. His complexion and appearance indicated a man with at least some Native American heritage. The rank insignia on his suit showed he had the rank of Major, or equivalent to a Lieutenant Commander. "Lieutenant," he said. "I'm told you'll be coming with us."
"Major Anders." Lucy nodded once to the commander of the Aurora's Marines. Major Gabriel Anders was the relatively new head of said Marines. Indeed, with a few exceptions all of the Marines on the ship were new given all of those lost fighting the Cybermen and Daleks. His predecessor, Commander Kane, had gotten along well enough with Lucy, but had nearly been killed fighting the Daleks that included having limbs blown off. This would be her first working with Anders. "I'm here for the mission."
"So I see." Anders looked over her with uncertainty. "You're not going in armor?"
"This is my armor."
"Not powered, though." He shook his head. "I'd feel better if you had a proper suit. At least a support tech suit. It'll make insertion easier and I won't have to worry about you taking a hit."
Lucy sighed at that. "Major, I'm trained in the life-force arts of the Gersallians. They consider me an honorary knight. Trust me, you've got nothing to worry about."
"I've heard about all of that," Anders said. "But life force magic or no, you'll be safer in an armor suit."
"But less mobile and able to fight," she countered. "This is how I do things, Major. You're going to have to trust me." Lucy hoped she sounded conciliatory. At the same time she didn't want to waste time going to Julia over this.
Anders sighed. "Your funeral," he murmured.
With that out of the way Lucy followed him aboard the Gonzalez.
The Gonzales' departure from the Aurora was done carefully. The other ships in the friendly squadron were used to mask the opening of the bay door from being seen. The stealth runabout cloaked before emerging from the bay. Under the control of Ensign Getamanan the craft slipped around the friendly vessels in orbit and made their way toward the water world below. Beside Getamanan, Lucy monitored the systems and made sure their approach angle would prevent re-entry heat from exceeding the stealth craft's absorption and cloaking capability. Major Anders and Fei'nur were seated behind them to observe.
The Gersallian's piloting was spot-on throughout the re-entry phase. Once they were fully in atmosphere he altered the attitude of the craft to minimize wind resistance - avoiding creating an aerial wake profile that particularly fine sensors might detect - and brought them in toward the Dilgar colony.
A great reversing lake system, sometimes outflowing into an estuary and sometimes accepting water from the sea, mingled in a beautiful, light blue expansion of tropic, brackish water. Secure on one coast of the lake, situated on the largest piece of contiguous land on the water world (an island-continent around the size of Brazil), a simple set of rammed earth barrages with steel floodgates salvaged from wrecked freighters defended the city from tide and wet season flood.
It was designed for a million people, and the rest of the population had spread beyond it, but it remained the nerve-centre and capital of Tira. Modular buildings built out of shipping containers predominated, some up to ten stories high, and wooden low buildings with thatch roofs the rest, but the streets had been smartly laid out. There were signs of fighting, though, for smoke rose at places, especially in the outlying areas near to the jungle.
Lucy shook her head. "There's a lot of wild fear and anger down there," she said. She checked her sensors. "I am showing multiple groups of Dilgar together at various points in the city, all in internal spaces. Individuals only in the streets with large numbers of non-Dilgar, consistent with an enforced curfew. And there's concentrated bodies of Dilgar on the outskirts in the jungle verge."
"Surviving government forces then," Anders said. "We can link up with them if it proves necessary. But orders are to observe, not intervene."
"I know." Lucy tapped another series of keys. "I'm not showing active loss of life going by the bio-scans. They're not trying to kill everyone… wait." A particular reading came up. "Okay, it looks like one set of life signs is decreasing. But they're very faint."
"Can you get us close?" Anders asked. "This sounds like it bears investigating."
"I am doing so now, sir," Getamanan answered.
The Gonzalez changed heading slightly and flew toward one particular structure in the northern section of the city.
"Where are you planning to land to avoid accidental detection on the ground?" Fei'nur asked, looking over the readings but evidencing no distress.
"We'll drop onto the site," Anders said. "With our personal cloaks engaged and with a height of ten meters with stealth landing boosts engaged."
"Shuttle only to orbit, then?" She clarified, nodding to the plan. It was straightforward enough.
"That's the usual plan for these ops," Anders answered.
By this point the Gonzalez was hovering in the air above the structure at the desired height. "We're in position, Major," Getamanan said.
"Alright." He stood up. Lucy and Fei'nur did the same. Technical Officer Wang moved from a backup station at the rear of the cockpit to take Lucy's place. They walked into the back where more of Anders' Marines were waiting, already in their light power armor. "Get ready for a quiet drop, everyone. Activate silent drop protocols."
The various Marines nodded and operated the omnitools that appeared, on command, over their forearms.
Lucy, for her part, merely went over and retrieved the blue Gersallian-style robe from a hook she'd set up for it. She pulled it on over her purple body armor and noticed Fei'nur giving her a curious look. She answered with a little grin before checking that her lightsaber was still fixed to her hip.
One of the Marines hit a key at the back of the runabout. The rear loading hatch opened. Anders nodded to his people and was the first to jump out. He shimmered out of view in the process Not quite halfway to the ground, quiet thrusters fired on the boots and back of the armor. Anders landed softly (or relatively softly anyway) on the roof of the structure.
One by one, the other eleven Marines in the infiltration squad did the same. Fei'nur and Lucy would be the last to go down. Lucy sensed readiness in the Dilgar in the moment before she jumped, shimmering out of view as she did.
Lucy slid the tactical goggles over her eyes before she reached to her belt and triggered her own personal cloak. Once she was cloaked she jumped out. The wind in her face was strong. If not for her goggles her eyes would be closing to protect themselves. This would ordinarily be dangerous if not for her other gifts, which were already guiding her to begin applying counter-force to her landing. Her timing was well enough that she was virtually floating the last hundred centimeters before her feet hit the roof. She looked around and observed the others in formation through her tactical goggles. She glanced toward where Fei'nur was. "Can you adjust the wavelength on your cloak?"
"I apologize, I am still getting used to operating your equipment," Fei'nur answered innocently, then nodded. A moment later a wavery form showed on the tactical goggles. "I am ready. We will proceed to the anomalous lifesigns."
"Sanders, Xalin, take point," Anders said. Two Marines, a Human woman and a Dorei male, moved to the obvious entranceway first. Lucy walked up behind them and ran a scan with her omnitool. "Anything, Lieutenant?" Anders asked.
"Nothing," she said. She brought up a hand and waved it side to side. The door opened in sympathy with her motion. "Let's go."
They descended into a stairwell. For several floors they went down surrounded in a darkness that would have obscured them even without their cloaks. Their progress was not slow, but neither was it with urgency. There was clear method in their pace that Fei'nur found it easy to follow. As always, Humans - even Humans from another universe - proved to be quite good at soldiers' work. Lucy Lucero was the visible non-soldier of the group, but there was a self-discipline to her movement that kept her in step with the others.
Once their readings showed they were at the right floor Lucy stepped up to open another door. This required half a minute of careful work to thwart a security sensor on it. Once it was quieted the door slid open and they stepped into the corridors of the facility.
"This facility has been cleared of regular civilian workers," Fei'nur observed. "The codes have all been set on overrides. And it's a biomedical facility." She cut herself off after that. "Not biohazard, though," she amended after a moment.
"I'm still showing decreasing life signatures on this floor." Lucy shook her head. "And this isn't just some biological waste they're destroying." A sick feeling filled Lucy's gut. She focused and felt it. Life was being ended. "This way," she said urgently, and for the first time she, not the Marines, was at point.
They heard smashing glass and laughter before long. Lucy brought them into a chamber occupied by mercenaries. Most were Brakiri, but there were members of other species too. Humans, Narn, and a couple from the other League races. Lucy recognized a Krogan among their number.
The chamber had originally been laid out with about two thousand humanoid-sized clear tubes with equipment in them. As it stood down, three-quarters of them were smashed, wrecked, deactivated. Laying on the floor in pools of blood in varying degrees of development were Dilgar fetuses. Babies. As they stood there, the Brakiri standing to the side and watching with sneers and smirks, the mercenaries were using fire-axes seized from the facility to smash open more of the cloning tanks, throwing the infants onto the ground and stomping, hacking and bashing them to death. There were already so many dead on the floor of the cloning hall that the entirety of the walkways were slicked with blood and shattered intestines.
A surge of violent emotion threatened to grip Lucy. Her discipline forced it back down. This was destruction, death, just for the sake of the act, and it was horror to see it being carried out.
One of the mercs looked around. The others noticed. Lucy did too and grimaced. They had a telepath with them. "Telepath," she muttered over the secured tactical comm line, in a low enough voice that it didn't leave the stealth field. "We're blown." She looked to Anders, wondering what would happen.
She knew what Carter Kane would've done. He would have likely opened fire. This was a chance to see how Anders, who always seemed more reserved than the Aurora's prior Marine Commander, would react to the matter.
Anders' reaction was a quiet, "Open fire."
Fei'nur lunged to the left in an explosion of movement the moment that Anders' orders left his lips. She had her rifle up, firing integrally suppressed subsonic smart-rounds which tore into the cluster of the Brakiri away from the tanks. She had done it without saying a word, utterly expressionless until the moment she acted. And then she was, just like that, an explosion of motion and energy and disciplined fires.
The telepath, a Hyach, was already calling out a warning. But it was too late for many of the mercs. Anders' Marines opened fire with deadly precision, gunning down a number of the mercs even before they could reach for their rifles. One of the Marines made sure to shoot the Hyach in mid-warning.
Lucy had a feeling that lightsaber marks would make it completely impossible to deny their presence. She reached out with her life force and ripped the weapons from the mercs that, even now, were still working on killing the infants in the tanks. They looked in confusion at their empty hands in the moment before Lucy started yanking them to the ground, one by one.
One of the Marines' targets was the Krogan. But said merc, with crimson carapace over pale flesh and a suit of blue armor, proved more resilient than the mercs with him. He lifted a massive Krogan shotgun from behind his back and pointed it forward. There was a sudden roar and a blast that hit one of the cloaked Marines. Blood spewed out behind the cloaked figure. The shotgun's mass effect-enhanced rounds had ripped into a weak point in the light power armor. The Krogan roared in rage and fired his shotgun again. The second blast nearly hit Anders. He was already side-stepping to avoid it.
The relaxing of fire allowed the other mercs to begin returning fire from cover. Anders' Marines immediately moved for cover themselves. One dragged their wounded comrade out of the door to get him to safety.
Lucy had no choice. She pulled her lightsaber and activated it. The brilliant blue blade was visible outside of her cloaking field. It moved in a blur to bat away the incoming fire.
And then the Krogan went flying. It was the kind of fight which seemed absurd, since one combatant in it was invisible. His eyes rolled around, searching for the enemy who had knocked him wide, but instead the cloaked figure of Fei'nur struck again, and this time with a point-blank round, shrapnel pounding into the ground, firing until the Krogan knocked her away.
He rose, tracking with his gun through the streaks in the blood on the floor. But Fei'nur was moving lightly already, and this time when her gun spoke, he staggered and fell from a burst of rounds carrying into his armoured head. An invisible dash past fire as they cleaned up what remained of the merc squad, and she was standing over him, and fired twice, thrice, four times. His body heaved and moved no more, a mangled mass of gunfire wounds.
It was then that Fei'nur dropped to her knees in the gore, and very, very gently, with a shaking hand, she touched one of the shattered little bodies. "To Death I dedicate this day, and you, little ones, I beg, Gods of the silent wastes, take these kills as theirs and honour them with all the comrades I have known." She rose with a face as taut and pinched as death, and did not speak much again in their mission.
Already the comm units of the mercs were ringing with demands for a report. Anders glanced from the dead bodies of the Dilgar infants and fetuses to Lucy, who was trying not to throw up at the sight of the carnage. "There's no way to fool them, is there?"
"I don't know enough about their comm protocols, and even then I can't guarantee I'd get the proper checkphrase."
"Then we're made."
"Yeah." She looked at the intact tubes. "And if we run, they'll just destroy the rest."
"They're just embryos, right?" one of the Marines said. "Our orders don't include standing our ground against an entire city's worth of mercs."
"You're right about that, Marine," Anders said. "But this isn't a matter of choice. This is genocide. They're killing them to kill them." After exchanging nods with Lucy Anders looked to his Lieutenant. "Lieutenant Sanger, I want all access ways watched, now. We're holding here until further orders." While the Marines worked to implement his command, he hit the comm key on his omnitool. "Anders to Aurora. Captain, things down here are FUBAR, and more FUBAR than you could ever believe…"
Seeing the images from Tira hit home to the Aurora officers what this entire conflict was about. Every face around the conference table was turning pale. "That's…that's inexcusable," was all Leo managed.
"Maybe we should just blow the crap out of them now and get it over with," Locarno said, his voice strained with rage. "Who needs allies like these murdering psychopaths?"
Julia had to admit that Locarno's option was tempting, more than it should be. The sheer specieist destructiveness of the act was direct testimony to the genocidal intent on display here. "Transmit that to Defense Command and to Councilman Mutombo's Office with a full content warning. If anything, it will keep the ISA's diplomatic corps from trying to spin this."
"They'll simply claim it's faked," Jarod pointed out. "Even with the authenticator coding in the recording."
"Let them claim whatever they want. The Alliance, our Alliance, needs to know what's happening here." Julia shook her head. "The important thing is what to do with Anders' team."
"The Brakiri do not have energy shield technology yet," Meridina said. "Transporting them out should be quite simple. Although perhaps not the best option for the Dilgar."
"Once Anders and Lucero are gone, they'll just start killing the rest of the Dilgar," Richmond pointed out.
"But they'll be overrun unless we support them," said Locarno.
"And if we do that, the Brakiri probably open fire," Julia finished for all of them. She leaned forward and rested her forehead on her open hand. The options in front of her all had pitfalls, and the unavoidable truth was that the situation was escalating.
A tone filled the room. "Captain." Lieutenant Takawira's voice came from the bridge. "Captain Tabir is signaling."
"Put him in here," Julia said. She drew in a breath and readied herself, casting away the visible fatigue and uncertainty that was evident in the prior moment. She turned her chair to face the wall monitor behind her. Tabir's face appeared on the screen. "Captain Tabir. What can I do for you?" she asked diplomatically.
"Correct a misunderstanding." Tabir was still trying to show the business charm like before, but there was visible strain to it. Meridina was quick to inform the others of the anger she sensed in him through a mental projection. "It seems you ignored my prior request to keep your forces out of the city. Now we have had a misunderstanding and my forces have taken losses. My ground commanders are quite ready to destroy the building they've occupied in retaliation, but I am restraining them for the moment.."
Julia's mind raced as she put together her reply. She struggled to keep her face impassive as she did so, not an easy thing given what she was feeling toward Tabir. "We were conducting a reconnaissance only," she said, "but my commanders on the scene detected a loss of life signs from the building. They investigated and found your forces slaughtering a chamber full of unborn Dilgar."
"Yes, their super-soldier program," Tabir said. "The Dilgar are known to have been experimenting with genetic augmentation during the war. Given the decades since we expected them to have made some progress. Our forces were ordered to destroy them to remove the threat. We have already reported our success to Brakir. Or rather, partial success I should say."
We need to have Lucy and Anders get a genetic sample was Julia's thought, the charge immediately sending her heart hammering. Am I getting played? "I would like to verify that they are from such a program and not a general re-population effort," she said.
"Be my guest. Although your people have an imperfect understanding of Dilgar genetics and physiology, and I must say your most likely source for that data is going to be understandably suspect. I assure you, Captain, I did not approve this solution until my experts were certain of the nature of the embryos in question. Now, I believe we should settle this unfortunate impasse." Tabir grinned widely. "I am quite willing to accept that this was an honest mistake on the part of the Alliance forces. We Brakiri recognize that the Allied Systems have a strong ethical code that requires you to act against genocide, and we appreciate this code. But I can only be so generous. If your forces do not withdraw I will not be able to restrain my ground commanders, and the structure will be destroyed by bombardment. For the safety of your forces you must withdraw them, and this time, keep them out. You have one hour to withdraw your people. Tabir out." The Brakiri commander disappeared from the screen.
For a moment Julia remained silent.
"He believes his charge," Meridina said. "Mostly. Although he does not care if it is true."
"If it's true, we might be getting played for suckers," Angel pointed out. There was deep uncertainty showing in her face. "I mean, could this be a con? Something to turn us against the ISA?"
"There was sincerity in Shai'jhur," Meridina said.
"Yes, but she could be really good at faking it," Angel said. "Your senses aren't completely perfect, are they?"
"You are correct. They are not infallible," Meridina conceded. "But I am not so inexperienced to be fooled easily. I am confident that my reading was accurate."
"Yeah, but confidence is something you're supposed to have to make your powers work," Angel said. "So that's not entirely convincing."
"I don't believe him," Cat announced.
Everyone looked toward her. She was still pale from the recording, but the assertive way she'd spoken was a bit of a surprise.
"I think he's a lying, genocidal bastard," she declared, "and that we should continue to help Shai'jhur."
"Cat." Angel gave her a sympathetic look. "I know you're bonding with Tra'dur, but it's not always that simple."
"It is. I've talked to her. I've listened to her. All she wants to do is write science papers, visit places, and attend the Vulcan Science Academy."
"Maybe that's true for her," Angel said. "But it doesn't mean her mother's not playing us for saps."
"She's not. I'm sure she's not."
"But you can't be sure," Angel insisted. "And are you really believing this? Or is it just because you think the Doctor would believe the Dilgar?"
Angel immediately regretted the accusation given the look of sheer betrayal on her sister's face. She managed to say, "I'm sorry" a moment before Cat stood from the table and walked to the corner. A quiet sniffle came from the corner a moment after she arrived there.
"Trust but verify," Julia said. "Have Lucero and Anders recover genetic samples."
"Tabir is right, though," Richmond said. She looked at Leo for confirmation. "We don't know enough about Dilgar genetic structure to confirm augmentation."
"I've got genetic samples from at least one Dilgar who is clearly unaugmented," Leo answered. "The tissues I scooped out of Tra'dur are in Science Lab 3 so we can examine the Rohrican spore, but we can just as easily examine the genetic structure too."
"That's not going to be enough," Jarod said.
"No. It's a start though. I can send the data on all samples to Doctor Franklin and ask for his help."
"Do you think the Earth Alliance will give us an honest answer?" Meridina asked.
Leo met her eyes. "I don't know if they would. But I trust that Doctor Franklin would."
"Do it," Julia said. "And we're running out of time. I want options."
"Our impasse remains the same." Meridina shook her head. "If we withdraw, they kill the remaining children."
"And if we don't, they kill them anyway, plus our people, when they bomb the building," Jarod added. "And stopping them from that will require us to openly engage the Brakiri."
The next line came from Angel. "Setting off a possible war with the InterStellar Alliance, for people who might be screwing with us."
Julia listened to them and turned the options over in her head again. At the same time, her heart already knew something about this situation.
In the end, that helped determine her decision.
Julia brought her omnitool into view and tapped a key on the blue light construct around her left forearm. "Andreys to Bridge. Get me Captain Tabir."
"Yes Captain."
A few moments later Tabir appeared on the monitor. "Yes, Captain?"
Julia didn't bother with a diplomatic smile this time. "Captain, I'm going to put this bluntly. There is no law in the Multiverse that allows anyone to kill cloned children, even genetically augmented ones. Even the Federation, which bans most forms of genetic alteration, would not commit what your people have done. So I'm not going to standby and let you continue this culling. My people will move in and protect the facilities where the Dilgar children are being grown. Your people will withdraw from them immediately. If you fail to comply, the Aurora and her squadron will open fire. Is that clear?"
For the first time the business-like facade of Tabir failed. He scowled at her. "You sanctimonious fool. Don't you realize the Dilgar are playing you?! That this has probably been their plan all along, to turn us against each other!"
"We're already vetting their claims, and we'll investigate the charge that the children are bred super-soldiers ourselves. And we don't need the Dilgar to do it. But for the time being, stand your mercs down. The killing stops here."
"I need time…"
"It takes one call, Captain, and you can make it over this open channel," Julia countered. "So make it. Now."
Tabir's scowl turned into a hostile snarl. For one moment it looked like he would defy Julia. To test her resolve and see if she was bluffing. But as the snarl faded slightly it was clear that Tabir was reconsidering any such thoughts. There was too much resolve in the face he was glaring at. He finally stabbed his finger at a key nearby. "This is Tabir. Halt all operations against the Dilgar cloning facilities."
"What?!" a disbelieving voice said on the other end.
"Do it now, or you won't get paid!" Tabir growled. "And suspend all plans to attack the Alliance team. Otherwise I'll turn you over to their captain myself. Yatiri out." He released the button he'd been holding and looked back to the screen. "This is pointless on your part anyway. The Earthforce ship is on our side and the Drazi reinforcements will be here soon. Face the facts, Human. There's nothing you can do to stop this, here or at Rohric. The Dilgar should have stayed dead and soon they will be. Tabir out."
The signal cut. Julia let out a breath and turned to the others. "You heard it too?" she asked.
"They know about Shai'jhur's planet," Jarod said.
"Th' timin' sounds fishy if ye ask me," Scotty said. "Decades o' nothin', they learn everythin' now?"
Julia nodded. "And it begs the question of how the Brakiri and Drazi learned about the supply network from Tira in the first place." She shook her head. "I'll put it in the report. We need to get people down there."
"I'll assemble security teams immediately," Richmond said, standing up.
"And send down the other Marines too. I'm going to call up Captain Ming-Chung and the other commanders we have with us to see who they can spare," Julia said. "In the meantime, you're all dismissed."
Everyone stood up and left. Angel glanced toward her sister, but Cat refused to look at her. She remained standing in the corner until everyone was gone, at which point she went out the door.
Along with her thoughts, Julia looked out the transtanium windows of the conference lounge to consider the deceptively peaceful ocean planet below. It seemed that every step they took, every decision, inched them closer to war.
But what else could she do? Even if Shai'jhur was a master actress and was playing her, even if the Dilgar on Tira really were creating a population of super-soldiers… the acts of the ISA races were just wrong. They were out for blood, to kill an entire species, and she couldn't stand by and let that happen.
A saying Julia had learned in school came to her lips. "'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing'," she whispered to herself, as if the words would fortify her in the decisions she'd made. They did, to a degree. But there was no avoiding the fact that her decisions were putting them on a course she didn't want to take.
She just had to hope that, in the end, her decisions would prove the right ones.
Tra'dur had recovered, awake and alert, within a few hours. The abrupt blackout has been related to the allergic response in the brain, and alleviated as quickly as it was relieved. Leo had still insisted on her remaining under careful observation based on Surgeon-Commander Nah'dur's notes and the lights were kept down to a bare minimum to avoid irritation of a partially inflamed optic nerve. Resting with a bare minimum of stimulation, just an earpiece playing some books on tape Cat had downloaded to the hospital bed for her, she was bundled up and quiet during the ship's night period.
The door to sickbay hissed open quietly, as a grey-clad figure padded silently over to her bed. "Tra'dur…?" echoed out in the hushed hisses and growls of a Dilgar trying to keep her voice down.
"Fei'nur…?" It was just as hushed as the young woman blinked wide eyes and loosed the earpiece from her ear. "I had heard you had been in action on the surface, but not much more."
"You don't want to know more, Fei'nur…" She stepped closer, and glanced about for any observers, before leaning down to enfold the young Dilgar in a firm embrace. "Gods, but you do not wish to know more."
Tra'dur leaned into the hug and the steady, ready affection of her mother's oldest retainer. It was hard just to call Fei'nur a subordinate by this point, she was something more, the woman who had always been there since they were young. And Tra'dur knew and felt the warmth in her of family, of the one half of a family she'd never have. For all the Clan of Jhur was a warm and welcoming extension of her mother's line, it was Fei'nur who stood in for having a house of Dur other than her own sisters. So, for a time, she just snuggled.
The massive woman who'd fought for so hard, so long, to keep her and all her sisters safe silently held her close for several long minutes. "We will need you in the trials to come, rest yourself well, Tra'dur."
"I know. I won't even move. I've been following the Doctor's instructions. He went ahead and used my sister's method to remove the spores from the lesions in the other parts of my body as well, so … Until the next time we're back on Rohric, I'll get to be well. Thank you for coming, Fei'nur. It was nice to see a familiar face."
"Always, Tra'dur. I won't let the animals get you. Any of you."
"Fei'nur…" Tra'dur sighed gently. "Well. You should get back to the Magaratha. You need sleep after a mission like that, and I am truly fine here."
"You had better! We'll see you back aboard soon enough, I hope. I don't like trusting you to the ani-humans."
When the call came, Julia considered that it had been too much to hope that she got even a moderate night's sleep given the events of the day.
This was why she decided to sleep on the couch in her ready office.
She rose from said couch the moment the tone woke her up. In one motion she grabbed her uniform jacket from the nearby hook. She didn't bother to put it on before leaving, so it was loose as she walked out onto the bridge with brisk urgency. She closed the jacket in the moments before she made it to the command chair, where Lieutenant Takawira was standing. "Report."
"Seven ships coming in, Captain," the Zimbabwean officer replied. "They are approaching at Warp 8."
Julia wondered what that meant. Warp drive was still slowly percolating into the E5B1 galaxy. Could this be unexpected reinforcements? But why wouldn't they jump directly to us? "What can you tell us about them?"
Ensign Tagas, the Dorei man at sensors, looked up from his board. "Sensors are giving me data now. It looks like they have deflector shields raised already. I'm showing an intermix ratio close to the others, but not quite. Give me a moment while I check recognition tables." Julia said nothing during that moment. "The intermix ratio is in Federation records. Old Romulan drives, from before they switched to quantum singularity power plants."
"Most likely Dilgar then."
"Yes. I'm getting profiles now, checking against recognition charts…" Tagas looked up. "Sir, these ships… they're from a dead species."
Julia wondered what he meant by that. "As in?"
"According to our recognition charts from the InterStellar Alliance… those are Markab ships, Captain."
"But they're extinct," Julia said. "Someone else must be aboard them." As soon as she said those words, she figured it out.
Tagas confirmed it a moment later.
"Markab ships, Warmaster? Your reinforcements are Markab ships?"
Julia was in her office again, looking at the image of Shai'jhur over on the Magaratha. The Dilgar leader was just finishing a coughing fit.
"Of course they are, Captain Andreys. As we have previously discussed, the Dilgar remain lawfully at war with the races of the League… And the Markab, Mentab, and Earth Alliance."
Julia sucked in her breath. "So, when the Markab…"
"Yes, when the plague exterminated the Markab-Gods, but I wish we'd had the chance to help, we knew so much, we might have undone some damage by then-I had absolutely no choice. I salvaged one hundred and thirty-nine jump-capable warships from Markab space without being detected. In fact, I consider it to have been a very great feat which would keep my people a spacefaring nation for decades longer. To be blunt, Captain, the Markab had no use of them. They're some of my newest and best heavy cruisers, so of course they were in our refit program."
"You realize how this will look?" Julia asked. "It reinforces the ghoulish view of the Dilgar that the other species have."
Calm Shai'jhur actually let a sharp passion fall into her voice as she answered. "Please, Captain. Give me peace. There were innocent Dilgar who needed to survive, and I did what I must. Perhaps I am a tomb-robber, but I am not a mass murderer and I am not a tyrant. My people are free, and they deserved to live. For the sake of the Gods, every species within a thousand lightyears was salvaging Markab ships. They had a fleet of more than a thousand ships, and countless armed transports as well. The Dilgar are hardly the only ones."
Julia sighed. "Somehow I doubt they will care." She shook her head. "Either way, the Drazi second wave will be more manageable now. Although the matter of the Huáscar being on their side is still going to pose problems."
"Is there anything you can do about the Huáscar, Captain Andreys? Captain Varma saved twenty million people from genocide. She deserves to do more than rot in an EA prison for the deed. Kaveri has been… holding up as well as can be expected, that considered, but it is a hardship, and a danger. If Major Foster engages us…"
"Unfortunately, Foster's been keeping an anti-beaming shield up, so I can't just transport over boarding parties. We'd have to engage. And there's no telling what he might do if we start a fight. According to his record, Foster fought on Clark's side in the Earth Civil War, and the Nightwatch rated his loyalty as high. He might very well kill Captain Varma rather than let a rescue attempt prevail."
"He will not speak with you?"
"He's refused all attempts at communication since our last," Julia confirmed. "I'd love to get Captain Varma out, trust me, and I'll make sure the Alliance knows what she did. And Sheridan will know too. But I can't safely get her out, and trying will only blow this situation up. For the time being, I'm afraid we have to trust that Foster won't want to outright kill his commander arbitrarily."
"Kaveri will keep praying, and so will I. Thank you for making any effort, Captain." Shai'jhur reached up and rubbed her head. "We should both go back to sleep, I imagine. However, I will give you the warning in advance that I also salvaged a large number of Cascor ships which were marooned in deep space by Warmaster Jha'dur during the war. We mostly use them for spare parts, though, and I did that even before Omelos was lost."
"Right. Thank you for the head's up." Julia nodded. "I'll keep you informed of any developments from the Alliance, Warmaster. Hopefully we'll hear something back soon."
"There is one thing I can do which might be sincerely constructive. Or, rather, what Kaveri can do. She would like to make an all-frequencies broadcast now that our cover is completely blown, with an appeal containing special information she believes would seriously impact any effort by the Earth Alliance to side with the former League powers politically. I have my fleet at Rohric on full alert, but instead of abandoning hope, I think this is the best aid we can provide to the cause of a pacific settlement."
"What information?" Julia asked, wondering just what Varma was holding back, and if it might fix this situation.
"As it turns out, Captain, the Varmas aren't the only people in the Earth Alliance to think that the death of a species is a moral crime…"