Three player game the lu.., p.6
Three Player Game (The Lunar Free State Book 10), page 6
“That’s an… interesting point of view.” Taylor’s jaw dropped. “No disrespect, ma’am, but it’s not something I would expect from a colonial Governor General.”
“Acting Governor General.” Lorna gave him a stern look, then relaxed. “I’m a student of history—as every military officer should be—and a firm believer in the old adage that says those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it.
“For now, that means we need to treat the Xanadu colony with respect while giving them all the support they need. If we do that, we might well avoid any thoughts of rebellion on their part for many decades to come. In other words, let them have their militia, with my blessing. More than that, you can tell them I’ll be willing to supply whatever equipment they need, within reason.”
* * *
Valley of Clouds Village, Oceania, Planet Xanadu
“I’m glad you’re back.” Karl Levin wore a look of relief as he greeted Jin at the gateway to the village. “The tribal chiefs and their shamans have been arriving for the last three days. I’ve been getting a lot of strange looks, but Storm Shadow is planning to formally introduce us at the opening meeting tonight. Here… let me help you with that.”
He lifted Jin’s heavy duffle bag easily and slung it over his shoulder. Levin had been a thin and unimpressive man when he arrived on the scene. Two years of Xanadu’s gravity had caused him to bulk up and develop some serious muscle.
“Oh!” Jin’s eyes widened. “I didn’t think about that. A formal presentation?”
“Right… he wants to present you as a chief of our tribe and me as a shaman.”
“What about Charlie? He’s the Diplomatic Corps representative.”
Lieutenant Charles Dirksen had been sent from DCHQ on Luna specifically to handle diplomatic issues dealing with the Kitties.
“Yeah, but the Kitties don’t count him.” Levin shook his head. “He can’t communicate with them.”
“Most people can’t.” Jin sighed. “Telepathy isn’t a natural human ability. So far, it looks like only about one person in a hundred can do it well, and then only with a lot of coaching by the Kitties. We’re incredibly lucky that both you and I—key people on the first contact team—were able to do it. One of the reasons the Marines put Brenda Willow permanently in charge of our security detail in the early days is that she could do it, but a hundred or so other Marines who’ve had contact with the Kitties on various occasions cannot.”
“Your husband can.”
“Yes, but neither he nor Brenda can do it as well as you and I. In fairness, we’ve been in contact with the Kitties more than either of them, but it’s not only that. My two grad students were here for six months and neither of them picked up a hint of it. I sent them back to Luna, and I think I’m going to have to lay it on the line for Charlie. He can’t communicate directly with them. Without that, he can’t give us good diplomatic advice because he can’t appreciate their point of view.
“He needs to go back to Luna. DC can try again with somebody else, or they can send somebody out to teach us how to be diplomats. At the very least, they need to get us up to speed on what Lunar Command expects to accomplish. No reflection on him, but he’s got to go… and if he doesn’t agree, I’ll speak to Admiral Greenwood about it.”
“Ouch!” Levin winced. “You’re right, though. We spend too much time trying to explain Kitty thinking to him, and most of the time his suggestions agree with what we have already figured out. For all that, he’s a nice guy, and I hate to think somebody back on Luna might draw the wrong conclusions if we send him home.”
“Right, so if he goes voluntarily, I’ll have to talk to the admiral to make sure the word gets back there. He did his best; he simply has no telepathic talent—and the same is probably true of ninety-nine percent of the people back there in DCHQ. Unfortunately, the only way they’ll be able to find someone who can communicate will be trial and error.”
“Hmmph!” Levin snorted. “Another one percenter, like us. Good luck with that.”
“On a brighter note—and speaking of percentages…” Jin broke into a smile. “The results came back on the DNA sequencing. It seems our local Kitties differ from common Earth house cats by about one tenth of one percent.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Levin shook his head. “Just looking at them tells me that.” He waved a hand in the direction of the village common area, a busy place where dozens of the Xanadu cats went about their daily business.
“For a point of reference, that’s about the same degree of difference between cats and tigers back home,” Jin said. “It’s also about the same as the difference between chimpanzees and humans. Meanwhile, the bioresearch people are still trying to identify anything in their DNA that accounts for telepathy. There’s a Nobel Prize waiting for whoever figures that out.”
<
Mental communication was done more with images than with words, and Jin had taken the Korean hangul symbol for her last name—Kim—as her avatar. Later, when asked what her proper title or form of address should be, she had again turned to the phonetic Korean alphabet and given them sonsaeng—the Korean word for ‘teacher’ or ‘professor.’ She didn’t feel entitled to use the Kitty symbol for shaman, since the tribe’s “medicine cat” was a combination healer, historian, alchemist, and spiritual leader. Somehow, however, they had attached that title to Levin.
The rust-red and green mottled cat was accompanied by two others, one of whom Jin recognized. The other was a stranger, so she decided to respond with equal formality.
<
<> Red Leaves nodded toward the stranger, a black-on-green tabby-patterned male cat. <
<> Dream Walker came right to the point. Jin smiled, careful not to show her teeth. The cat had made a simple statement, betraying no hint of doubt as to her origin (which would have been considered impolite). Fortunately, she had been called upon to answer that same inquiry many times before, from hard-headed warriors as well as curious kittens.
<
<
She felt a touch of ironic humor. She was an exobiologist, an expert in life sciences—but here she was, about to give a lecture in astronomy and astrophysics.
<
* * * * *
Chapter Five
23 June 2121
LFS Isis, in Ragnarok Orbit
“Frankly, Admiral, I could do without your Marines.” Commander Martin Steel shifted uncomfortably in his chair, waiting for O’Hara’s reaction. Diplomatic Corps used a rank structure like the Navy, but Steel wasn’t in the Fleet chain of command. Still, rank was rank; O’Hara was a rear admiral as well as the son of Luna’s current chief executive.
“Really?” To Steel’s relief, John O’Hara’s voice carried only a note of surprise. “Lunar Marines provide security for every LFS embassy on every planet—including Earth. I realize that your operation is only a diplomatic mission at this point, not an embassy, but I’m curious as to why you feel that way. Have the Marines been misbehaving in any way?”
“No, they’re doing what they’re supposed to do—providing security for the building and our people—but their very presence makes my job more difficult.” Steel shrugged. “The locals resent them. They don’t like the idea of having armed foreigners in their city, on their planet. They also don’t like seeing those foreigners armed with advanced weaponry that we refuse to sell or give to their own people.
“Add that to the resentment over the gold that we and the Akara are taking out of the ground less than a hundred kilometers from the city, and they aren’t likely to welcome us with open arms. It’s really difficult to establish relations with a government that considers us to be armed thugs trespassing on their territory.”
“I thought that issue had been settled.” O’Hara raised an eyebrow. “We signed a lease agreement with them giving us mining rights in exchange for a percentage of the gold taken out—TerraCorp wasn’t happy about it, but my da… ah… Lunar Command twisted their arms to get it done. Then your DC people did the same to the Lizards, and they signed a similar agreement. I thought that was a win-win for everyone.”
“They don’t see it that way.” Steel waved a hand in dismissal. “They consider it more of a bone we tossed them, a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. We get millions of credits worth of gold; they get a paltry five percent.”
“Commander, I’ve studied the background brief very thoroughly.” O’Hara sat back in his chair with a frown. “The mines are in an area well outside the boundaries of the Wan city-state, in an area they considered to be unsafe to visit because of lingering radiation. They were wrong about that, but they wouldn’t be getting any gold at all if we hadn’t come along.
“As for the Marines and their ‘advanced weaponry’ issues, I don’t recall reading about any complaints from the Wans when we took out that Confed-supported rebel group four years ago and stopped the Confeds from supplying advanced weaponry to the rebels. My orders say we are to remain neutral in their little war unless one side or the other physically attacks or threatens our people.”
“Well, actually, that’s precisely what they’re complaining about,” Steel insisted. “The rebels killed some of our people and kidnapped two others. We went after them, rescued our people, and thoroughly trashed both the mercenary ‘advisor’ group and the force the Confeds were trying to land on the planet. In the process, we killed a few of the rebels but we didn’t break the rebellion—and by the way, they don’t call them ‘rebels;’ they’re ‘criminals’ according to the Wans. It’s a ‘civil disturbance’—‘war’ is a dirty word in their language.”
“Yes, I got that from the mission brief.” O’Hara rolled his eyes. “They had a nuclear war about a century ago, it set them back to the Dark Ages, and they’ve been struggling to get back ever since. They refuse to talk about it.”
“More than ‘refuse to talk about it.’” Steel shook his head. “Even saying the word ‘war’ in their language is forbidden. Saying it in public will get you arrested and flagged as an enemy of the state. They’re willing to cut us a little slack on that by virtue of our perceived ignorance, but I’ve already had to send one of the LRI’s anthropologists back to Luna because he pissed them off by using the word too often.”
O’Hara also shook his head. After a moment of brooding silence, he sat up and looked directly into Steel’s eyes.
“All right, Commander,” he said. “Your concerns have been noted; however, my orders specifically require me to support the diplomatic mission as needed. They state specifically that such support is to include the provision of Marines for security purposes, in such strength as I deem necessary. Their little ‘civil disturbance’ is still going on down there, with terror attacks happening inside the city about once a month. Under the circumstances, I cannot in conscience assign less than a full squad of Marines to that duty.
“I’ll speak to Commodore Brown, since the Marines report to her as the ship’s captain. She’ll address the matter with Major Roberts, advise him of your concerns, and have him brief the squad accordingly. We’ll tell them to keep a low profile and to stay out of sight when possible. Once they’re down, they will be advised to respond to your direction, but don’t try to stand them down and lock them inside the building. I don’t care what the natives call it; you’re in a war zone, and the Marines are there for your protection.”
* * *
“Admiral, we have a… well, I don’t know if I’d call it a situation…” O’Hara noted the hint of a smile on Eurasia Brown’s face. “It’s more like an interesting development, but I thought you ought to know about it.”
Brown’s call had come in from the flagship’s bridge less than an hour after Steel had departed.
“Well, it’s been an interesting day so far.” He returned the smile. “What have we got now?”
“Four ships have arrived in system, sir,” she said. “One is a commercial freighter that’s been here before—ICV Majorca, with a shipment of mining equipment from Earth for the Lizards. I checked the logs Admiral Richards left; apparently, she’s got a contract to haul stuff the Akara buy from Confed nations back home, since we don’t allow Confed-flagged ships in this system. Majorca is registered out of Ibiza back on Earth, not a CNE nation.
“The other three are the ones that raised my eyebrows—two Canadian frigates escorting a Korean deep-space survey ship. IFF queries came back as HMCS Halifax, HMCS Regina, and RKS Tamheom-Ja—the name translates to Explorer in English. I have only the FTL message from Dragon on outer system picket. No other details except the note that these three are traveling in company. Apparently, Majorca hooked up with them in the Sol system for security in transit.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.” O’Hara shrugged. “Word is out that we—and the Lizards—are mining gold. We haven’t seen pirates yet, but I’m betting Fleet will start assigning escorts for our own commercial traffic between here and Luna soon. I assume the picket is sending a detailed follow up by normal comm.”
“Yes, sir. We should have it in about two hours.”
“Fine. Let me know when it gets here.” He chuckled. “Now you’ve got me curious as well.”
* * *
Hall of the People, Two River City, Planet Ragnarok
“How could you possibly think we might trust you?” Wan Tar’s lip curled as he regarded the off-worlder with contempt.
Curiously, the man didn’t look like an off-worlder. By his skin tone, facial features, and the shape of his eyes he could have been a member of Wan’s own family—perhaps a distant cousin. His clothing, however, though styled to look local, was made of a fabric that had never been produced on this planet. In addition, the devices and weapons he carried were beyond the capability of the local technology to make. He’d been required to surrender those devices and weapons before being allowed into the Patriarch’s presence.
“You should trust me because we have a common enemy.” Hideo Yamaguchi shrugged, showing little concern for the shackles that had been locked onto his wrists, none at all for the two burly guards that stood on either side of his chair.
“Common enemy? Who? The Zhenyi?” Wan Tro—Wan Tar’s son and anointed heir—spat out the word, which meant ‘Brotherhood’ in their language. “Are you proposing now to rid us of those your people supported four years ago?”
“My people did you a favor.” Yamaguchi tried to wave a hand in dismissal but frowned as the shackles brought him up short. He spoke the local language very well, but with a somewhat harsh and guttural accent. “We pretended to support the rebels. Our purpose was to set them against your real enemies, the Moonies.
“The Moonies, in turn, dealt a blow to the Brotherhood such as you have been unable to do in a decade of fighting. We had hoped that would cause you to see how dangerous the Moonies are, to hold back in your dealings with them. Yet here you are, preparing to talk with them yet again, no doubt to accede to their demands and let them steal the resources that belong to you.”
Wan Tro started to reply, but a gesture from his father silenced him. Yamaguchi’s description of past events differed somewhat from their own recollections. From their viewpoint, Yamaguchi’s ‘people’—they still weren’t sure what off-world faction he represented—had provided the Brotherhood with advanced weapons and encouraged them to attack both the Moonies and the city. They had killed people at the Moonie mining operation and had kidnapped a couple of Moonies connected with the diplomatic mission with whom the Wans were engaged in preliminary talks; however, they had also conducted an assault on the gates of the city.
The Moonies had immediately withdrawn from the talks, then gone out and wreaked havoc on the Brotherhood and its allies. There had also been some sort of space battle, but the Wans had only hearsay evidence of that. The Moonies had not stopped the Brotherhood attack on the city, however. They had also withdrawn their own assault on the Brotherhood once they had recovered their kidnapped people and removed Yamaguchi’s group from the equation.
Since then, the Brotherhood had fallen back to its old routine, conducting nuisance raids and small acts of terrorism. The Wans had heard nothing more of the Brotherhood’s former allies until Yamaguchi had shown up at the city’s western gate, brazenly requesting an audience with the Patriarch. He had not denied his association with the earlier group but claimed that their earlier association with the Brotherhood had really been aimed at thwarting the Moonies. For that, the Brotherhood had proven inadequate; hence Yamaguchi had been directed to make contact with the Wans in a more subtle approach to the problem.
“We do not expect you to attack the Moonies. Neither you nor the Brotherhood have the ability to damage them. You would only give them an excuse to take over the city and remove you from power.”
