Zoe's Tale Read online

  Their bosses—the advisors and dignitaries—filed into the area between the bar and the platform. Usually, I was told, they would have benches or chairs (or whatever suited their body shape best) offered to them so they could rest as they did their business. Today, they were all standing.

  As for me, I was standing to the left and just in front of the general, who was seated in his big chair. On the opposite side of the chair was a small table, on which lay the stone knife, which I had just (and for the second time) presented to the general. This time it was delivered in packaging more formal than a shirt. The general had taken it out of the box I had found, admired it, and set it on the table.

  Back along with the staff stood Hickory and Dickory, who were not happy with the plan the general had come up with. With them were three of the general’s security detail, who were likewise not very pleased at all.

  Well, now that we were doing it, I’m not sure I was entirely thrilled with it either.

  “I thought we were here to hear a request from this young human,” said one of the advisors, a tall Lalan (that is, tall even for a Lalan) named Hafte Sorvalh. Her voice was translated by the earpiece I had been given by the Obin.

  “It was a pretense,” Gau said. “The human has no petition, but information pertaining to which one of you intends to assassinate me.”

  This naturally got a stir in the chamber. “It is a human!” said Wert Ninung, a Dwaer. “No disrespect, General, but the humans recently destroyed the entire Conclave fleet. Any information they would share with you should be regarded as highly suspect, to say the least.”

  “I agree with this entirely, Ninung,” Gau said. “Which is why when it was provided to me I did what any sensible person would have done and had my security people check the information thoroughly. I regret to say that the information was good. And now I must deal with the fact that one of my advisors—someone who was privy to all my plans for the Conclave—has conspired against me.”

  “I don’t understand,” said a Ghlagh whose name, if I could remember correctly, was Lernin Il. I wasn’t entirely sure, however; Gau’s security people had given me dossiers on Gau’s circle of advisors only a few hours before the meeting, and given everything else I needed to do to prepare, I had barely had time to skim.

  “What don’t you understand, Lernin?” asked General Gau.

  “If you know which of us is the traitor, why hasn’t your security detail already dealt with them?” Il asked. “This could be done without exposing you to an unnecessary risk. Given your position you don’t need to take any more risks than are absolutely necessary.”

  “We are not talking about some random killer, Il,” the general said. “Look around you. How long have we known each other? How hard have each of us worked to create this great Conclave of races? We have seen more of each other over time than we have seen of our spouses and children. Would any of you have accepted it if I were to make one of you disappear over a vague charge of treason? Would that not seem to each of you that I was losing my grip and creating scapegoats? No, Il. We have come too far and done too much for that. Even this would-be assassin deserves better courtesy than that.”

  “What do you intend to do, then?” asked Il.

  “I will ask the traitor in this room to come forward,” he said. “It’s not too late to right this wrong.”

  “Are you offering this assassin amnesty?” asked some creature whose name I just did not remember (or, given how it spoke, I suspect I could not actually pronounce, even if I did remember it).

  “No,” Gau said. “This person is not acting alone. They are part of a conspiracy that threatens what all of us have worked for.” Gau gestured to me. “My human friend here has given me a few names, but that is not enough. For the security of the Conclave we need to know more. And to show all the members of the Conclave that treason cannot be tolerated, my assassin must answer for what they have done to this point. What I do offer is this: That they will be treated fairly and with dignity. That they will serve their term of punishment with some measure of comfort. That their family and loved ones will not be punished or held responsible, unless they themselves are conspirators. And that their crime will not be made known publicly. Every one outside this room will know only that this conspirator has retired from service. There will be punishment. There must be punishment. But there will not be the punishment of history.”

  “I want to know where this human got its information,” said Wert Ninung.

  Gau nodded to me. “This information ultimately comes from the Colonial Union’s Special Forces division,” I said.

  “The same group that spearheaded the destruction of the Conclave fleet,” Wert said. “Not especially trustworthy.”

  “Councilor Wert,” I said, “how do you think the Special Forces were able to locate every one of the ships of your fleet? The only time it assembles is when it removes a colony. Locating four hundred ships among the tens of thousands that each race alone has at its disposal was an unheard of feat of military intelligence. After that, do you doubt that the Special Forces had difficulty coming up with a single name?”

  Wert actually growled at me. I thought that was rude.

  “I have already told you that I have had the information checked out,” General Gau said. “There is no doubt it is accurate. That is not under discussion. What is under discussion is how the assassin will choose to be discovered. I repeat: The assassin is in this room, right now, among us. If they will come forward now, and share information on their other conspirators, their treatment will be generous, light and secret. The offer is in front of you now. I beg you, as an old friend, to take it. Come forward now.”

  No one in the room moved. General Gau stared at each of his advisors, directly and in the eye, for several seconds each. None of them took so much as a step forward.

  “Very well,” General Gau said. “We do this the hard way, then.”

  “What will you do now, General?” asked Sorvalh.

  “Simple,” Gau said. “I will call up each of you in turn. You will bow to me and swear your allegiance to me as the leader of the Conclave. Those of you who I know are truthful, I will offer you my thanks. The one of you who is a traitor, I will reveal you in front of those you have worked alongside for so long, and have you arrested. Your punishment will be severe. And it will be most definitely public. And it will end with your death.”

  “This is not like you, General,” Sorvalh said. “You created the Conclave with the idea that there would be no dictators, no demands of personal allegiance. There is only allegiance to the Conclave. To its ideals.”

  “The Conclave is near collapse, Hafte,” Gau said. “And you know as well as I do that Nerbros Eser and his sort will run the Conclave like a personal fiefdom. One among you has already decided that Eser’s dictatorship is preferable to a Conclave where every race has a voice. It’s clear to me that I must ask for the allegiance I once only held in trust. I am sorry it has come to this. But it has.”

  “What if we will not swear allegiance?” Sorvalh said.

  “Then you will be arrested as a traitor,” Gau said. “Along with the one who I know to be the assassin.”

  “You are wrong to do this,” Sorvalh said. “You are going against your own vision for the Conclave to ask for this allegiance. I want you to know I believe this in my soul.”

  “Noted,” Gau said.

  “Very well,” Sorvalh said, and stepped forward to the platform and knelt. “General Tarsem Gau, I offer you my allegiance as the leader of the Conclave.”

  Gau looked at me. This was my cue. I shook my head at him, clearly enough that everyone in the room could see that he was waiting for my verification.

  “Thank you, Hafte,” Gau said. “You may step back. Wert Ninung, please step forward.”

  Ninung did. As did the next six advisors. There were three left.

  I was beginning to get very nervous. Gau and I had already agreed that we would not carry the act so far as to accuse so
meone who wasn’t actually guilty. But if we got to the end without a traitor, then we both would have a lot to answer for.

  “Lernin Il,” General Gau said. “Please step forward.”

  Il nodded and smoothly moved forward and when he got to me, viciously shoved me to the floor and lunged for the stone knife Gau had left on the table next to him. I hit the floor so hard I bounced my skull on it. I heard screaming and honks of alarm from the other advisors. I rolled and looked up as Il raised the knife and prepared to plunge it into the general.

  The knife was left out and within easy reach for a reason. Gau had already said he intended to reveal the traitor; he said he knew without a doubt who it was; he said the punishment for the traitor would include death. The traitor would already be convinced he would have nothing to lose by attempting the assassination then and there. But Gau’s advisors didn’t usually carry around killing implements on their person; they were bureaucrats and didn’t carry anything more dangerous than a writing stylus. But a nice sharp stone knife carelessly left lying around would be just the thing to convince a desperate would-be assassin to take a chance. This was also one reason why the general’s guards (and Hickory and Dickory) were stationed at the perimeter of the room instead of near the general; we had to give the illusion to the assassin that he could get in a stab or two before the guards got him.

  The general wasn’t stupid, of course; he was wearing body armor that protected most of the parts of his body susceptible to stab wounds. But the general’s head and neck were still vulnerable. The general thought it was worth the risk, but now as I watched the general trying to move to protect himself, I came to the conclusion that the weakest part of our plan was the one where the general presumably avoids being stabbed to death.

  Il was bringing down the knife. None of the general’s guards or Hickory or Dickory was going to get there in time. Hickory and Dickory had trained me how to disarm an opponent; the problem was I was on the ground and not in any position to block the knife blow. And anyway the Ghlagh were a Conclave race; I hadn’t spent any time learning any of their weak points.

  But then something occurred to me, as I lay there on my back, staring up at Il.

  I may not know much about the Ghlagh, but I sure know what a knee looks like.

  I braced myself on the floor, pushed, and drove the heel of my foot hard into the side of Lernin Il’s most available knee. It gave way with a sickly twist and I thought I could feel something in his leg go snap, which made me feel sick. Il squealed in pain and grabbed at his leg, dropping the knife. I scrambled away as quickly as I could. General Gau launched himself out of his chair and took Il all the rest of the way down.

  Hickory and Dickory were suddenly by me, dragging me off the riser. Gau shouted something to his guards, who were racing toward the general.

  “His staff!” Gau said. “Stop his staff!”

  I looked over to the bar and saw three Ghlagh lunging at their equipment. Il’s people were clearly in on the assassination and were now trying to signal their conspirators that they’d been discovered. Gau’s men skidded to a stop and reversed themselves, leaping over the bar to get at Il’s staff. They knocked away their equipment, but not before at least one of them had gotten a message through. We knew that because all through the Conclave headquarters, alarms began stuttering to life.

  The space station was under attack.

  About a minute after Il had made his clumsy attack on General Gau, an Impo battle cruiser named the Farre launched six missiles into the portion of the Conclave space station where Gau’s offices were. The Farre was commanded by an Impo named Ealt Ruml. Ruml, it turns out, had reached an agreement with Nerbros Eser and Lernin Il to take command of a new Conclave fleet after Gau was assassinated. Ruml would then take the entire fleet to Phoenix Station, destroy it and start working down the list of human worlds. In exchange all Ruml had to do was be prepared to do a little flagrant bombing of Gau’s offices and flagship when signaled, as part of a larger, orchestrated coup attempt, which would feature Gau’s assassination as the main event and the destruction of key battle ships from races loyal to Gau.

  When Gau revealed to his advisors that he knew one of them was a traitor, one of Il’s staffers sent a coded message to Ruml, informing him that everything was about to go sideways. Ruml in turn sent coded messages of his own to three other battle cruisers near the Conclave station, each captained by someone Ruml had converted to the cause. All four ships began warming up their weapons systems and selecting targets: Ruml targeted Gau’s offices while the other traitors targeted Gau’s flagship Gentle Star and other craft.

  If everything went as planned, Ruml and his conspirators would have disabled the ships most likely to come to Gau’s aid—not that it would matter, because Ruml would have opened up Gau’s offices to space, sucking anyone in them (including, at the time, me) into cold, airless vacuum. Minutes later, when Il’s staff sent a confirmation note just before getting their equipment kicked out of their paws, Ruml launched his missiles and readied another set to go.

  And was, I imagine, entirely surprised when the Farre was struck broadside almost simultaneously by three missiles fired from the Gentle Star. The Star and six other trusted ships had been put on alert by Gau to watch for any ships that began warming up their weapons systems. The Star had spotted the Farre warming up its missile batteries and had quietly targeted the ship and prepared its own defense.

  Gau had forbidden any action until someone else’s missiles flew, but the instant the Farre launched, the Star did the same, and then began antimissile defenses against the two missiles targeting it, sent by the Arrisian cruiser Vut-Roy.

  The Star destroyed one of the missiles and took light damage from the second. The Farre, which had not been expecting a counterattack, took heavy damage from the Star’s missiles and even more damage when its engine ruptured, destroying half of the ship and killing hundreds on board, including Ealt Ruml and his bridge crew. Five of the six missiles fired by the Farre were disabled by the space station’s defenses; the sixth hit the station, blowing a hole in the station compartment next to Gau’s offices. The station’s system of airtight doors sealed off the damage in minutes; forty-four people were killed.

  All of this happened in the space of less than two minutes, because the battle happened at incredibly close range. Unlike space battles in entertainment shows, real battles between spaceships take place over huge distances. In this battle, however, all the ships were in orbit around the station. Some of the ships involved were just a few klicks away from each other. That’s pretty much the starship equivalent of going after each other with knives.

  Or so I’m told. I’m going by what others tell me of the battle, because at the time what I was doing was being dragged out of General Gau’s advisor chamber by Hickory and Dickory. The last thing I saw was Gau pinning down Lernin Il while at the same time trying to keep his other advisors from beating the living crap out of him. There was too much noise for my translation device to work anymore, but I suspected that Gau was trying to tell the rest of them that he needed Il alive. What can you say. No one likes a traitor.

  I’m also told that the battle outside of the space station would have gone on longer than it did except that shortly after the first salvo of missiles a funny thing happened: An Obin cruiser skipped into existence unsettlingly close to the Conclave space station, setting off a series of proximity alarms to go with the attack alarms already in progress. That was unusual, but what really got everyone’s attention was the other ships that appeared about thirty seconds afterward. It took the station a few minutes to identify these.

  And at that point everyone who had been fighting each other realized they now had something bigger to worry about.

  I didn’t know about any of this right away. Hickory and Dickory had dragged me to the conference room some distance away from the advisor chamber and were keeping it secure when the alarms suddenly stopped.

  “Well, I finally used that trainin
g,” I said, to Hickory. I was amped up on leftover adrenaline from the assassination attempt and paced up and down in the room. Hickory said nothing to this and continued to scan the corridor for threats. I sighed and waited until it signaled that it was safe to move.

  Ten minutes later, Hickory clicked something to Dickory, who went to the door. Hickory went into the corridor and out of sight. Shortly after that I heard what sounded like Hickory arguing with someone. Hickory returned, followed by six very serious-looking guards and General Gau.

  “What happened?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

  “What do you have to do with the Consu?” General Gau asked me, ignoring my question.

  “The Consu?” I said. “Nothing. I had asked the Obin to try to contact them on my behalf, to see if they could help me save Roanoke. That was a few days ago. I haven’t heard from the Obin about it since.”

  “I think you have an answer,” Gau said. “They’re here. And they’re asking to see you.”

  “There’s a Consu ship here now?” I said.

  “Actually, the Consu asking for you is on an Obin ship,” Gau said. “Which doesn’t make any sense to me at all, but never mind that. There were Consu ships following the Obin ship.”

  “Ships,” I said. “How many?”

  “So far?” Gau said. “About six hundred.”

  “Excuse me?” I said. My adrenaline spiked again.

  “There are still more coming in,” Gau said. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, Zoë, but if you’ve done something to anger the Consu, I hope they choose to take it out on you, not us.”

  I turned and looked at Hickory, disbelieving.

  “You said you required help,” Hickory said.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I entered the storage deck of the other Obin ship.

  “So this is the human who has an entire race to do her bidding,” said the Consu waiting there for me. It was the only place on the Obin ship where he would fit, I guessed.

  I smiled in spite of myself.