“He doesn’t need one,” he assured us. “He’s got me.”
The worst part was, I didn’t think he was kidding.
[ 14 ]
“This sucks,” Deke said, making a face. He tossed the half-eaten pita sandwich onto the plate in surrender. “I mean, I ate some seriously bleh shit during the war, but this is what? Soy tuna? Who likes this crap?”
“I do, human,” a Tahni at the next table in the ship’s galley snapped, looking over at us with hard, black eyes. He was older than the rest, with a long cue of graying hair wrapped around his throat, the sign of a blooded warrior. He gestured at the other Tahni at his table. “We all do.”
For an integrated crew, they sure did eat separately. Which made sense, I suppose, since the Evolutionists barely ate at all, hooking themselves up to a tube of what looked like baby food once a day that fed them directly into their stomachs. But the former Predecessor Cultists didn’t seem interested in mingling with the Tahni at least for mealtime, even though they were stuck eating the same shit.
“Last I heard,” Deke said, returning the Tahni’s glare with an amused smile, “the Tahni only ate that fucking disgusting root you planted everywhere on the human colonies you invaded.”
“You humans made sure we didn’t have to worry about our religious restrictions anymore,” the Tahni sneered, “when you killed our emperor.”
“You’re welcome,” Deke told him, grabbing a squeeze-bulb of water and saluting the Tahni. “I mean, who wouldn’t be grateful? After all, we kept you people from wasting your lives following a false god. And we freed you to follow your own destiny, which apparently involves eating utter shit.”
I said nothing, just kept chewing the disgusting soy tuna salad sandwich because it was calories and I needed calories. I’d eaten worse, though not by much. And since mealtime was the only opportunity the two of us had to get out of the tiny compartment we were confined to, I wasn’t about to turn my nose up to the food.
Besides, there was always the chance the Tahni would decide to beat the shit out of Deke Conner, which would have been more entertaining than listening to the man tell stories about growing up in Toronto.
“You speak as if you killed the Emperor by your own hand,” the Tahni male said, not reacting with anger as I’d expected, but more curiosity. “Who are you, human?”
“I was there,” Deke admitted. “At the palace. Didn’t kill the Emperor though. That was Randall Munroe, my boss.”
I looked up with a mouthful of sandwich, blinking in disbelief. Deke saw the reaction and laughed.
“Oh, you didn’t hear about that, huh? Yeah, he did that too, besides the whole deal with Demeter. He doesn’t talk about it, didn’t want anyone to know about it at the time.” Deke turned back to the Tahni. “My friend Cam here was at the palace as well, but he couldn’t fit inside, not wearing one of those big battlesuits. I’m Deke, by the way. Deke Conner.” He grinned broadly. “Formerly of the Tahn-Kandranda.”
The term meant nothing to me, but apparently it did to the Tahni because he sat bolt-upright, staring at Deke.
“Indeed. I thought you were legend.” He touched a long-fingered hand to his chest. “I am Pol-Kai, once of the High Guard.” His gaze flickered toward me. “I too once piloted a battlesuit. It was a proud position, you understand. Not one that most would be awarded, reserved only for the bravest and most loyal warriors. Is that how it was for your Marines?”
It was most certainly not, of course. Our best and brightest went to Force Recon and most of the Drop Troopers were the scum of the Earth, but I had the sense it wouldn’t be politic to share that insight with this Pol-Kai, not with a whole table of rough-looking Tahni around him and me without a gun.
“Yes, it was exactly like that,” I assured him. “It was a great honor to wear the armor.” Eventually. “Tell me something, honorable Pol-Kai,” I asked him, choosing my words carefully. “The Tahni I met after the war, they were… angry. Bitter. Sometimes at their emperor, sometimes with us humans. Sometimes with the gods themselves. But none have ever shown any inclination to work together with humans. What made you and your comrades decide to join this Confluence?”
“Marakit did,” he said immediately, without a second’s hesitation. “She accepts us. She has shown by her actions that she is concerned for us as Tahni, that she is willing to sacrifice her life to save ours. None of us doubt her.” He gave an elaborate motion of hands and shoulders that I knew most closely translated to a shrug. “When the troubled times came, when the supplies ceased to come from your people to our home at Kandranda-Skyyiah, only Marakit thought to return to help us. Not your Commonwealth, not our own homeworld, only her.”
“Kandranda-Skyyiah,” I repeated, tasting the words. “That means something like Home of Death, doesn’t it?”
Pol-Kai gave an expression of surprise.
“You have spent time among my people, to know something of our language. Even your pronunciation wasn’t completely obscene.”
I had, of course, though I hoped he wouldn’t ask too much about it, since it had involved killing a lot of them.
“Your people call the world Hudson Bay,” he went on, “since they seized it from us and made it one of their own colonies. At least they allowed us the charity of continuing to live in the home we carved out of the frozen wilderness.” Oh yeah, no bitterness there at all. “But what do you want of Marakit, Cam and Deke?” He enunciated the words as if they were stranger than the rest of the English he’d been speaking. “Do you hope for her aid, or simply her wisdom?”
“The reason the Commonwealth supplies stopped coming,” Deke told him, and I thought he’d jumped in because he was afraid of what I’d say, “was that the government collapsed during the war with the Changed. We’re building it back up again, trying to tie the scattered bits of the Cluster together so that we can all mutually aid and support each other. Our job is to find out if Marakit is interested in being a part of the new Commonwealth.”
It was well-rehearsed and delivered by a man used to lying, I thought, but I wouldn’t have believed it if he’d been trying to convince me. Maybe that was just me though, since I already knew he was shading the truth.
“What do you think, Pol-Kai?” I asked. “Does that sound like something she’d be interested in?”
“Marakit had no love for your Commonwealth before,” Pol-Kai declared, “and I can’t imagine she would change her mind simply because you’ve given it a new name. Like my home, humans love to give old things new names and pretend it changes the nature of the thing.”
“It is new,” I told him. “Whether it’ll wind up being better or worse, I couldn’t tell you. But I can say that if you aren’t part of building it, you’ll have no say at all in how it turns out.”
Pol-Kai had no response for that, or at least he had no time to formulate one before Dreadlocks plodded through the galley hatchway, every footstep a metallic thump against the grating of the deck. Dreadlocks wasn’t his real name, of course. We’d learned at some point during the last few days that he called himself Vagabond. Why I had no idea and hadn’t bothered to ask, though it did lend him a certain depth of imagination I wouldn’t have otherwise attributed to a Skinganger.
“Mealtime is concluded,” he said, looming over our table like the worst waiter in the galaxy.
“Oh, come on,” Deke argued plaintively. “We’re in T-space. What the hell are we gonna see that would give anything away?” He showed teeth in a smile that was an imitation of the lipless, metallic perpetual grin of one of the Evolutionists. “Besides, I haven’t finished this delicious tuna salad sandwich yet.”
If Vagabond was amused, he didn’t show it.
“You were told the rules before you agreed to come.”
Deke sighed and pushed himself up from the table. I quickly stuffed what was left of my sandwich into my mouth, chewing at the periphery of the cardboard-like flatbread, and left my tray on the table. I figured if they’d wanted me to bus my own table, they would have given me more time to eat.
The hike back from the galley to our compartment took us through the engineering section, which was some indication of how small the crewed sections of the cargo ship were. No hatchways, just emergency seals ready to lower in case of an air or radiation leak. If I thought Deke liked to walk fast on purpose in order to lose us, Vagabond was twice as bad… and I was twice as determined not to run. Which gave me a good look at the crew as they worked. If they didn’t eat together, the Tahni, the Cultists, and the Evolutionists certainly worked together.
Lots of Evolutionists in the engineering section, fewer Cultists, fewer still Tahni. No surprise, since the Tahni had lost an entire generation of drive and reactor techs during the war and hadn’t been allowed to rebuild their fleet since. The Tahni were the foot soldiers here, the Evolutionists the techs and pilots, the Cultists… maybe the grunt workers? They certainly weren’t talkative in the mess, not even to each other.
Vagabond turned and made a come-along gesture to the two of us with as much obvious annoyance as a cyborg with a face half made of metal could show.
“If you want us to keep up,” I told him, letting my glare slide aside to Deke in a not-so-subtle hint, “then stop moving faster than you know we can walk.”