“How do you know that?” Teixeira asked.

  “Aileen Enjehn was the key,” he turned back to her. “She and I talked. That woman knew the entire logistical needs of Ajax off the top of her head. Knew what Human food the rest of her crew could eat and what to skip when loading supplies. From memory. You don’t know those things if you don’t care deeply. Lazarus was a baby brother to her.”

  She nodded at some internal commentary.

  Rodrigo gambled now.

  “Where did you screw up?” he asked the woman.

  She turned hot for a second, then dialed it right back down to nothing as he watched. Might have even blushed a little.

  “Admiral Santos did the right thing by sending Oliveira to Vilga to rout that Westphalian incursion,” she said. “My allies helped Eha Dunham sneak out of the palace so she could be there, with the understanding that she would come back later.”

  “Except that she sent Commander Wolcott instead,” Rodrigo completed the thought. “She’s not coming back. Neither is Pancho. Am I right?”

  He turned to Pedro and got enough of a nod to confirm that supposition.

  “So where do I come in?” Rodrigo asked. “You didn’t have me bring Recife into dock, so Paulo is handling the tub right now. At least until you put some other flag aboard her.”

  He would have normally enjoyed the pained expressions the other two shared. The commiseration. Except that he knew it was pointed at him.

  He was about to get the short end of the stick.

  Rodrigo shrugged. Not the first time. At least Pedro wasn’t being an ass about it.

  “Wolcott went about as perfectly far down the way of threatening the High Council as you can get without actually doing it,” Teixeira replied.

  Impressive. Wolcott hadn’t struck him as a diplomat. Maybe that had been Dunham’s problem. She might have been too nice to the old shits to get their attention.

  “What did he say?” Rodrigo asked, intrigued that someone had actually gotten the High Council to do something with any speed at all.

  Maybe bad, but at least it was motion. Innruld Space needed to be dealt with now, not in a decade.

  “Just exactly what you’re thinking, Admiral,” Teixeira replied. “We need to move.”

  “Hot damn,” Rodrigo said. Then reality set in. “Oh, shit.”

  Yup. Pedro had that smile on his face.

  “What have you done to me?” Rodrigo asked his superior officer with a sour voice.

  “Addison is willing to haul a ship to Innruld Space, to help Ajax,” Pedro said. “But only one, and under strictest secrecy.”

  “Why?”

  It was educational, watching both of these politicians, one in uniform and one civilian, flinch.

  “We screwed up.” Councilor Teixeira was the one to speak.

  “Oh?”

  “We automatically assumed that Innruld Space was a new threat to Humanity, from a different direction,” she continued.

  “Makes sense,” Rodrigo answered. “Forty new species in a political unit. What changed?”

  “Two things,” she said. “There are supposedly more Humans combined than all of the folks in Innruld Space, if Wolcott is to be believed, and I’m inclined to do so.”

  “How is that possible?” Rodrigo asked.

  “The Innruld keep everyone else weak,” she turned and stared squarely at him now, going so far as to turn sideways in her chair. “That means low numbers, crowding, small families. Just about the opposite of Humans, with so many new worlds to pick from. According to Wolcott, families of two are the single most common.”

  “Wow,” Rodrigo said, contemplating his six siblings. “So stasis. What’s the other problem?”

  “He think we’re at least a century more advanced than they are, technologically, if my experts did the math correctly,” she said. “And again, static, while Humanity is developing rapidly as a result of the war.”

  “So when we would have found them in another century or three?” Rodrigo asked quietly.

  “Europeans invading Amazonia like last time, Admiral,” Pedro said in a hard, nasty voice.

  All of them in the room were descended from the original colonists from the region of Brazil on the homeworld. It was a mix of ethnicities, and other worlds had joined one side or the other on something of an ethnic base. Westphalia was culturally and ethnically centered on northwestern Europeans, back on Earth, where Westphalia was a place.

  Rodrigo hoped that the Rio Alliance would find an invasion as unsavory an outcome as he did. Maybe that was why they were here?

  “That would explain a few things,” Rodrigo offered. “Where do I fit in?”

  “Wolcott doesn’t trust the government, Admiral,” Teixeira explained. “So we are willing to gamble pretty hard on this one. But at the same time, if he’s right, Wolcott is pretty much putting himself at our mercy.”

  “One ship?” Rodrigo asked. “Which one?”

  “A Patrol Cruiser,” Pedro said. “One of the old Presidential boats. Dutra.”

  Rodrigo kept his profanity to himself.

  The Presidential-class boats were named for ancient Presidents of the Brazilian Republic, back on Earth in history. They were something of a failed experiment, designed to have enormous sailing capacity by keeping the crew relatively small. At the same time, they sacrificed firepower as well, until they were barely more dangerous that a destroyer.

  When Dutra worked, she could probably circumnavigate Rio Alliance Space and stop at every frontier world before needing to take on supplies. Rodrigo da Silva just didn’t have any great expectations that they could sail anywhere near that far without something breaking down.

  “I’ll need more engineering crew members than you probably have aboard,” he said, assuming it was a foregone conclusion at this point.

  Pedro Santos could give him those orders, and resigning his commission in protest was about the only tool Rodrigo had to stop him. Of course, if he did that, he’d never see Innruld Space.

  “You’ll have it,” Pedro said without a quibble. But then, he knew the reputation of those old boats as well. “We’re also planning for you to capture Innruld boats and possibly bring them up to Rio tech levels, where possible, so you’ll be crammed full with gear and extra crew as well.”

  “We going all in on this?” Rodrigo asked, a little shocked himself, given the reputation of the High Council for talking instead of acting.

  “We have little choice at this point, Admiral,” Councilor Teixeira replied. “As Wolcott pointed out, they don’t need us, so we have to convince them that we still want to be friends. That they still want us as friends. They’ll have Ajax to study at their leisure, and Captain Oliveira to help them jumpstart their technology.”

  “Pancho could do it,” Rodrigo noted.

  She nodded.

  “That fear is exactly what finally broke through to the rest of them,” she said. “And why we will have our work cut out for us.”

  “Us?” Rodrigo asked, unsure about the tone of her voice or the implications.

  “Us, Admiral da Silva,” she nodded again. “I’m coming with you.”

  Fourteen

  Lazarus

  Lazarus had to keep reminding himself that from here Kuei knew what she was doing way better than he did and he should just shut up. History would remember her as the person who opened this first pathway between the Species Underground and Rio Alliance Space, and she’d be excellent at it.

  Akeley’s Passage.

  They’d left Ajax behind again. Lazarus felt the occasional twinge when he thought about it. To commemorate the occasion, he had dug out the crimson outfit with the beer logo on the chest, and ordered everyone who could to return to civilian clothing.

  Luckily, they’d had stores of cloth on Ajax for whatever reasons, plus more they’d brought originally with them from Shiva Zephyr Glaive. Thadrakho was in heaven, spending all of his waking hours sewing, since Ereshkiki Nisab had enough engineers finally to keep the ship running.

  The best part today was standing on the ship’s tiny bridge and looking out the front window. Kuei was flying, with Cormac plugged in next to her. H’Brige was next to him, almost rigid with shock. Outside, everything was that pearlescent gray shot through with the strangest blues, because they were inside trans-space, a tunnel rather than a hole you could just step through.

  She turned to him and he could see all seven tail feathers spread out like playing cards in someone’s hand.

  Lazarus smiled at her.

  “I never…” she began, faltering into silence.

  “The first time Addison explained it to me, I had a nervous breakdown,” Lazarus replied. “They thought I was having a heart attack. Maybe I was. Hard to say.”

  “Ajax will utterly disrupt everything,” she finally managed.

  “It will,” Lazarus agreed. “Now you see why we couldn’t tell the folks back home how or where to find the Innruld.”

  “Then why did we leave the ship behind in the nebula?” H’Brige asked.

  “Didn’t have enough crew members to work both,” he replied. “Had we not left everyone behind at Vilga’s Stand, that would be a different story. As it is, we have to go connect with the Species Underground and recruit sailors we can train on the new technology. Plus, we’ve been gone for a while, so Eha needs to know what the Innruld have done in our absence.”

  “Would they do anything?” H’Brige asked. “You’ve said that Innruld Space is culturally static. Almost a dead end.”

  “Close,” Lazarus corrected her. “A pedestal, with the Innruld at the top. Beneath that, their various servants who maintain the system for them. Then everyone else just trying to make a living. Change occurs, but nothing can ever be allowed that threatens to topple things.”

  “I’ve never been a revolutionary before,” she offered in a small voice.

  “You’re a sailor,” he reminded her. “The Rio Alliance Navy exists to protect everyone from Westphalia. We’ve just extended our writ some here.”

  He heard a hatch open behind him and turned to see Eha emerge. It was Addison’s office, configured for a Churquen, so he’d just brought over chairs from Ajax to sit on.

  “Could I see you?” she asked.

  Lazarus nodded and turned to H’Brige. Before he could speak, Eha interrupted.

  “Both of you, actually,” she amended.

  Lazarus led, pulling a chair from a stack against the wall that would fit an Atomarsk’s feathers, and then a second for him.

  Eha waited for the door to close and took a deep breath. He could tell how stressed she was from the way her scales didn’t all align flat.

  “I’ve been thinking about Gowook,” she began. “What we do or say when we get there.”

  “Hopefully, your face isn’t on a wanted poster,” Lazarus said. “But even then, you’ve got me, Grace, Lucas, and a dozen sailors who are all armed. Nothing can get to you without getting through us.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “But I’m more worried about getting the movement to rise up. When you and I left, my orders had been to separate you from Addison so that they could interrogate you for intelligence value.”

  “Lucky for you that you failed, then,” he said, trying not to sound too flippant as he did.

  “Agreed,” she countered. “But we’ll have to get them to step past everything they originally thought and prepare them for the arrival of Humanity. Not everyone will want to believe the truth, even after I can swear to it from firsthand experience. Having an Atomarsk along will just push everything into the realm of fantasy for some of them.”

  “You think I’m at risk again?” Lazarus smiled, contemplating the Underground trying to threaten him now, given everything he’d learned. “Us?”

  Not that he was all that worried, with Grace around. He still wasn’t entirely sure about the woman, but they’d started sharing a cabin. And sleep. And other things. Slowly. Haltingly, even, but getting there.

  “The entire mission might be,” Eha said. She sighed. “It might even be a fool’s errand and we should have come with Ajax handy. Nothing could stand against that ship.”

  “I could offer some options, but many of them probably hinge on a willingness to use excessive violence,” Lazarus turned serious now.

  “My fear is that it becomes necessary, Lazarus,” she said. “Especially if Shiva Zephyr Glaive is known to be a rebel ship. The authorities might decide to shoot first, rather than take their chances. At the very least, they might line up all their security troops and trap us in a dock.”

  “They tried that once, I might remind you,” Lazarus said. “Didn’t work out. But I have a suggestion I haven’t shared with you yet. Something sneaky.”

  “Oh?”

  “Let’s steal a ship,” Lazarus offered. “One they don’t know about. Then we can park Shiva Zephyr Glaive for a while and run around in a different vessel until they figure it out.”

  “How?”

  He turned to H’Brige.

  “Reminder, your kind are legendary,” he told the Atomarsk engineer. “Unicorns, if you will. If you show up and ask to talk, most ships will fall all over themselves to do so.”

  “The same way the Atomarsk first encountered Humans?” she smiled.

  An Atomarsk private ship, a miner, alone in a distant system minding his business when a Human exploration vessel appeared. And changed the future for both species.

  Maybe all of them.

  “Exactly,” Lazarus said, turning back to Eha. “What if we change course right now and pop up at some dead-end station? One of the small ones, rather than a hub like Zhoonarrim or Dormell. An outpost, maybe with a small Security Barc?”

  “What good would that do?” Eha asked, her scales crinkling up in yet greater confusion.

  Lazarus laughed.

  “You’re a spy, Eha,” he said around a huge smile.

  “Well, yes.”

  “You’ve never been a pirate,” he continued.

  “And you have?” she challenged.

  “Let us just say that you do not have the security clearance that would allow me to answer that question.”

  “Oh.”

  Lazarus grinned. This was going to be fun. And nothing at all like anybody had been expecting.

  Fifteen

  Lucas

  Lucas wasn’t sure how he felt about the whole plan, but he was just a lieutenant. His job was to take orders from senior officers. Lazarus certainly qualified, even if everyone was pretending to be civilians now.

  No, his concern was the robot. Cormac. A NavCrawler, like the other one—Lenox—was a MedCrawler. Fully sentient creatures based on silicon rather than carbon.

  Manufactured life forms.

  Nothing had prepared him for that.

  Worse, for a robot with a sense of humor who cracked jokes. Pretty dirty ones, too.

  Lucas was in the main office of the tiny ship, off the back of the bridge, with Lazarus and Cormac. It was mid-day ship’s time. He was on first shift, with the crew split in two and hot bunking, just because otherwise they had too many people and not enough space to put them all.

  “Questions?” Lazarus asked as he finished explaining the plan.

  Lucas wanted to ask “Will it work?” but he knew that was a useless thing at this point. It would or it wouldn’t. If it did, fine. If it didn’t, they would have to piece something together as they went.

  Or go back and get Ajax. There were no problems you couldn’t solve with a big enough hammer.

  Lucas just remembered his instructors telling him that every problem wasn’t necessarily a nail.

  “Can we man a Security Barc?” he asked instead. “Fight from it?”

  “Doubtful, Lucas,” Lazarus said as Cormac pivoted a camera probe this way to study him. “Ajax was designed for automation, while the Innruld generally are the opposite in almost everything.”

  “Sir?”

  “They believe in having servants do the work so the masters don’t have to,” Cormac spoke up. “Lesser life forms, all the way down to electronic ones such as myself. We were an experiment in subservience.”

  “Were?” Lucas asked after he got over the flash of anger at building an entire government that way.

  “In order to make us successful, they had to keep increasing our cognitive abilities.” Cormac’s voice seemed filled with humor. “Eventually, they just added another servant species. Otherwise, they would have had to do work, instead of ordering someone around. Many have not forgiven the inventor of the Crawler for that failure.”

  “Failure?” Lucas asked, confused.

  “Now we have to have rights allotted to us,” Cormac laughed. “Rather exactly the opposite of what the Innruld originally intended. That’s why they stopped making Crawlers for the most part.”

  “Oh,” Lucas saw it now. “Won’t the Innruld do something when they see you, then?”

  “I am beneath Innruld contempt, Lucas,” Cormac replied.

  Wow.

  He turned back to Lazarus now and understood that light in the commander’s eyes finally. Just one more species for Westphalia to oppress when they got here.

  If they got the chance.

  Those bastards would have to go through him first to get there.

  “And you think Thadrakho is up to it?” Lucas asked.

  “He’s incredibly intelligent, Lucas,” Lazarus replied. “I would say lazy, but that’s the wrong word. His kind live in nests in an ice world, with everything directed by a queen. What Thadrakho needs is a set of instructions he can follow to give his life shape.”

  “Like making clothes,” Lucas gasped.

  “According to Aileen, he’s never been so happy as having to sew all the time, instead of trying to figure out what part of Shiva Zephyr Glaive had broken most recently and what he should try to fix first. Humans tend to enjoy that sort of a challenge in ways that would make a Necherle’s skin crawl, if their skin was on the outside of the chitin.”

  Lucas took a breath. He’d never been a pirate, but he could be a cop. Protecting the weak from the predatory.

 

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