The ethos effect, p.9
The Ethos Effect, page 9
“He may have been wiser than I,” Van suggested. “We Tarans have the weakness of loving words more than silence.”
“Learning is sharing, and one cannot learn if one offers nothing to share, and words are the manner in which one must share knowledge.” Marti stepped toward the doorway that opened onto a small terrace, more of a miniature garden. “I had thought we might enjoy the morning. In another few weeks, it will be too hot.”
Van followed the colonel. The two settled into the chairs on each side of a white-enameled wrought-iron table in the shade of the wall. Even before they had fully seated themselves, the aide who had greeted Van appeared with a tray, on which were two steaming cups of café.
“Commodore Petrov had mentioned that you were a café drinker, like me, and so I took the liberty...” Marti offered, raising his own cup.
“Thank you.” Van sipped. The café was good, with a slightly nutty taste. “This is good. Is it Argenti? It tastes close to what I have had...”
“Alas... no.” Marti tilted his head slightly. “I should say it is not directly Argenti. It comes from a plantation begun by Baron Byrnedot. He was a most amazing man. He was actually Scandyan, but he became a member of the Argenti diplomatic corps. That was common then. Before his assassination he had established the café plantation near the old governor’s residence. It is still there, and after matters settled down, we purchased the land back. The Scandyans were happy to receive cold credits for what they saw as close to worthless hillside land.”
“It must have been sometime later.”
“A mere hundred years.”
Van laughed at the dry tone.
“The baron had also established an agreement with the Farhkans to trade observational details for certain technologies to be established on Gotland. After his assassination, the rebels repudiated the agreement.” Marti smiled ironically and took a sip of café.
“He had set up an agreement with the Farhkans?” Van took another sip of café.
“I can assure you that it is accurate. The baron was not killed by Argenti agents, either. That would not have been in our interests.”
“The Scandyans claim he suggested the rebellion. That was in your interests?”
“What is claimed and what occurred may not always be the same,” Marti said. “You may be aware of this from your own experience.” The hint of a twinkle appeared in his dark eyes.
“It has come to my attention that this happens,” Van admitted. “So... why did you not attempt an agreement with the Farhkans directly after that?”
“The Farhkans were not interested. That is what the diplomatic archives say. We also know that the Farhkans have rebuffed all attempts since then. So far as we can determine, they have agreements only with the Coalition. Although those have become most limited in recent years, they have been a matter of long-standing concern.” Marti shrugged. “Were those agreements with the Revenants, the concerns would have been far greater, you understand.”
“That I do.” The very thought of the Revenants with any advanced alien technology left Van feeling very cold. “Who were the rebels, then? You’re suggesting that neither the Argenti government nor thoughtful Scandyans wanted a revolt”
“You wonder why I bring up history to an officer who has just become a military liaison?”
“I think I understand,” Van replied, “but it might be better to hear it in your words.”
“And wiser, no doubt Very well... Three hundred years ago, the Taran Republic was struggling to survive. The Keltyr had scarcely colonized four systems. The Coalition and the Revenants were locked in a tight to the death. In part, because we were aware that the raciogenetic background of the Scandyan colonists was somewhat different—”
“Is that a polite way of saying that they had lighter skins?” Van asked with a laugh.
“That, and a different cultural outlook,” Marti admitted. “We made concession after concession here in Gotland. We even wrote off the planoforming costs of Malmot Taxes were lower here than in the central Argenti systems.” Marti looked blandly at the Taran commander.
“It would certainly seem that the Scandyans had no real reason for a revolt, and the Argentis were clearly trying to avoid provoking one,” Van concluded.
“Exactly my thoughts. They have been the thoughts of many over the years. Yet there was a revolt, and it was in someone’s interests, and those perhaps only looked like they were Scandyan.”
Van knew all too well what culture looked like the Scandyans—the Revenants.
“Ah ... but we should not dwell in too much detail upon the past,” Marti said, his point made. “How are you finding Valborg?”
“Cooler than home. Sulyn. It’s one of the warmer Taran planets.”
“You prefer the warm?”
“I prefer reasonable cool, whenever possible.”
“Gotland will be to your liking in the winter, but you will care little for the months ahead.”
“So I have heard. How long have you been stationed here?”
“Three years. I arrived several months after Commander Cruachan. Did you know him?”
“I’d never met him. Had you run across him before?”
“No. We met for the first time here on Gotland. He was a most polite and courteous officer. Reserved, but most correct. We had little in common except our profession and our assignments. He liked to sail, and I have always preferred the heights. He was little interested in women—he said he had never married—and I brought my wife here at my own expense.”
Van was impressed. That alone must have cost the colonel tens of thousands of credits. “That could not have been inexpensive.”
“It was not, but life... it is fragile, and how could one not appreciate it to the fullest when one realizes that? One cannot hoard life. It still slips through the fingers.”
“It does.” Van smiled. “But hoarding is an old Taran habit, and one that dies hard.”
“Even for one... such as you?”
“You mean... black Tarans? Our skins may be a bit darker or more bronzed, but we can be as bad as the others that way.” Van finished the last of his café and set the cup down.
“I think not A man who borrows the words of Cameros cannot hoard all of his life.”
From there, the conversation slipped into generalities, and various promises to keep each other informed, and, precisely fifty minutes after he arrived, Van stepped back out of the colonel’s office and made his way back to the waiting groundcar.
He settled into the rear seat still thinking over what the colonel had implied. The Scandyan revolt actually created by Revenant agents? It made sense, in an obverse way, since it weakened the Argenti presence on the edge of Revenant territory, but if that were so, why was there no mention of the possibility in the histories and political analyses?
“Ser... something up ahead,” Stefan said.
Van looked up. An electrolorry was angled across the road, blocking the right-hand side, not that it probably would tie up too much traffic, since, as usual, there wasn’t much. From what he read and watched, the only traffic was in the center of Valborg and in the southwest As Stefan slowed to a stop a good five meters back, abruptly the side gate of the lorry—the one turned toward the embassy groundcar—gave way, and lengths of pipe rolled down and crashed onto the street. Some continued rolling toward the embassy vehicle, but Stefan could not move back, not with the large gray groundcar that had stopped less than a meter behind them, the only other groundcar in sight Van had a very chill feeling. Even before the last pipe rolled against the rough pile that built up against the front of the groundcar, he was out and moving, his implant and system tuned up to combat-ready.
The first man—blocky and young—had a vibroknife. Van slammed that aside and twisted the heel of his boot through the would-be attacker’s knee. The crunch was sickening. Van twisted the man’s wrist and upper arm, with another snap, and the vibroknife dropped to the stone walk.
Van dropped flat even before the wicked thwip! of a slashdisc flew through the space where he had been standing. His implant located the second man—no more than four meters to his left.
Van grasped one of the shorter lengths of pipe, then launched himself. The shorter pipe thudded into the bearded man’s chest, and the hand holding the disc-gun flew back. Before the second attacker could bring it back forward, Van followed the pipe with a flurry of well-placed elbows and knees. The second man collapsed.
Van turned, and a line of fire slashed at his left shoulder. He moved toward the pain, quickly, and smashed his good arm and elbow into the third man’s throat, following with a knee. The man dropped his disc-gun and sagged to the ground, trying to gasp for air. Van might have crushed his larynx enough for him to suffocate, although he didn’t think so. He really didn’t care.
Van surveyed the area, but could see no one else nearby. The gray groundcar behind the embassy vehicle was empty, presumably having been driven by one of the attackers, and several other groundcars were approaching from the west “Ser?” Stefan said, holding a dressing. “You are bleeding.”
Van had noted the pain, but not the bleeding, and he looked almost stupidly at the slash in his left arm. “Yes... you’d better use that, and then notify the local authorities.”
“I already called the constabulary, ser. They are on the way.” Stefan ripped open the jacket sleeve more and applied the pressure dressing to the slash in Van’s left arm.
“Good.”
“The newsies have been saying that violence is up here in Valborg, but I’ve never seen anything like this.” Stefan tightened the dressing. “That should do for now.”
“I haven’t either,” Van admitted. He looked over the three fallen men. The one whose knee and arm he had broken was trying to crawl away. Van stepped toward the struggling man. “If you move another centimeter, I’ll snap your other leg.”
“Frig you...” The man fumbled toward his jacket with his good arm.
Van slammed a snap kick into the other’s chin. A small stunner clanked onto the pavement, and the attacker collapsed forward. Van swept the stunner away with his foot. “If you wouldn’t mind picking that up, Stefan... with a cloth or something.”
“Ah... yes, sir.”
The second man groaned, trying to stagger to his feet. Thrummm... Stefan had triggered the stunner. Van glanced at the driver. “It seemed wiser, ser.”
Van held in a laugh. It had been wiser. In his present state of mind, Van might have done far worse, and Stefan had sensed that.
The groundcars that had been nearing stopped. One turned around. The other waited. Then, from overhead, came the sound of a flitter roaring down. The downwash from the ducted airflow whipped Van’s uniform around him, but only for a moment, as the shimmering white craft settled into the open space in front of the angled electrolorry.
Two constables rushed out. One watched the three fallen attackers. The other hurried over to Van and Stefan.
“What happened, ser?” asked the fresh-faced constable.
“I don’t know. The lorry stopped, and then pipes flew off it I got out to see what was happening, and one of them lunged at me with a vibroknife. I kicked at him, and I guess I was lucky. He fell down. The second fellow... the last pipe rolled down and smashed into him. The third one... his disc-gun slashed me in the arm, and we struggled.” Van shrugged, and wished he hadn’t as an arrow of fire slashed up his left arm. He winced.
“Lot of blood there, ser.”
“It took a moment for me to find the dressing, Officer,” Stefan volunteered. “I’ve contacted the embassy, and they have a doctor waiting.”
“The embassy?”
Van extended his datacard. “I’m Commander Albert, military attaché to the Taran embassy. I’d had a meeting with my counterpart at the Argenti embassy, and we were headed back when this happened.”
Despite his earlier concern about Van’s injury, the young constable was most thorough in his questions, asking and reasking about the same details.
“... you say a pipe hit him. How hard might that have been?”
“... and you just kicked him?”
“... about that stunner once more. You say that the one with the shattered knee had that?”
Van kept his answers short and the same, and after what seemed a good hour, the two constables finally let Stefan and Van leave the scene—long after the three attackers had been carted away by a groundwagon.
As Stefan drove back toward the Republic embassy, Van thought over the attack.
Why would anyone attack him? Since he’d arrived on Gotland, he’d done almost nothing, except meet a few people and write reports and analyses for the ambassador. He’d probed into nothing except Commander Cruachan’s reports. Could the attack have been mistaken identity?
It clearly hadn’t been for theft. The three had wanted him, and no one else.
He’d have to think more, because at the moment he couldn’t think of a single reason why anyone on Gotland would want him dead—or captured.
Then, too, the meeting with Colonel Marti had bothered him, not because it hadn’t gone well, but because it had. From what Van could tell, Colonel Marti didn’t at all fit the profile conveyed by Cruachan’s reports, except in physical terms. Was that because Cruachan had not been that fluent in Hispyn? Or because Cruachan had seen more than Van had?
Van honestly couldn’t tell. He just hoped that it wouldn’t be too long before he could. And before he had some idea about why he’d been attacked.
Stefan’s report to the embassy must have been circulated, because a number of people were waiting in the hallway on the upper level as Van came up the ramp after the doctor— whom he didn’t know—checked the wound, sprayed it with nanites, and re-dressed it. Van carried the bloody outer jacket over his right arm.
Cordelia Gregory’s mouth opened as she saw Van and the dark bloodstains across his lower sleeve. “Stefan said... what did they do... to you?”
“Three young fellows tried to rob us. They didn’t much care if I survived the attempt.” Van offered a twisted smile. “But they got a little too close.”
“You didn’t hurt them, did you?” asked the second secretary. Her eyes narrowed.
“Not too much. The local authorities have them in custody.” Van wasn’t about to explain.
Sean Bulben said nothing. Nor did either of the aides Van didn’t know.
Van made his way to his office. He could have gone to his quarters, but all he would have done there was pace. He laid the uniform jacket on the corner of the table desk, thinking that he’d need a replacement, and settled into the chair behind the desk. Trying to ignore the muted throbbing in his arm, he considered about how to get the information he needed from the netsystem.
There was a knock on Van’s door. He could sense a feminine presence. “Yes?”
“Commander... I heard...”
“You can come in, Emily.”
Clifton eased into the inner office. Her eyes went to the bloody jacket on the corner of the desk, then to the dressing on Van’s arm. “Are you all right?” She shook her head. “That’s a stupid question. How badly are you hurt?”
“It’s a glancing gash from a disc-gun—deep enough and long enough for a lot of blood. Almost no muscle damage.”
“Stefan said you took on three toughs and disabled them all.” She paused. “He said you almost killed two with your bare hands.”
Van almost shrugged, but didn’t, offering a sheepish expression. “I have a temper. I get angry when people I don’t know try to ambush me.”
“What if that’s the point?” Emily asked wryly.
“To get me angry enough to commit murder?” Van took a deep breath. “I hadn’t thought of that. It’s possible... but I don’t have any idea who would want to.”
“Maybe it’s not you. Did you ever think of that?”
“I’d thought about mistaken identity, but you think that it’s more to discredit the embassy.”
“Tarans have a reputation for being hotheaded. Things are tense in this part of the Arm right now. What if the Revs or the Kelts wanted to discredit us?”
“The Kelts are as hotheaded—”
“Even better,” she suggested.
Van nodded. “It’s possible.” And it was a better explanation than he had. That was certain. He smiled. “What time tomorrow?”
“Do you still want to go ... tomorrow?”
“I don’t see why not. Walking around and looking at an old governor’s palace isn’t going to do much harm. The wound is more bloody and painful than really damaging. A long fairly shallow cut. It’ll bother me more if all I do is sit around and think about it.”
“You’re certain?”
“Absolutely. The place doesn’t open until ten hundred. What if we leave the embassy at nine-thirty? Or is that too early?”
“Hardly. I’m a morning person.”
“Then I’ll see you then.” Van offered a smile. He was actually looking forward to seeing Cliff Spire. “I’ll be ready.”
After Emily had left, Van eased back in his chair. She’d had a good point about his not being a target personally... and perhaps she was right. Yet... if she were, and he’d just happened to be in the wrong position at the wrong time, what was really going on in the Arm that had created tensions that high? They’d been high for a century. What was different now?
Chapter 15
Van did not sleep well, even with the pain-suppressants in the wound dressing. Nightmares about the Regneri combined with the attack by the unknown cruiser and assault by the three men, until his dreams were a pastiche of violence, underscored with puzzlement. At six hundred he finally got up, showered, and dressed in a casual dark green jumpsuit, since he certainly wasn’t going anywhere on embassy business. He fixed himself café in his own quarters, along with a simple omelet—simple because he’d neglected to stock his larder with more than a few basics.
Then he settled into the one comfortable armchair in his compact sitting room, and tried to sort out what he knew. There were blatant hints that Cruachan’s death had been murder, and Commodore Petrov had nearly stated as much. Someone had used the embassy system to alter some of Cruachan’s reports after his death. Van would have bet on the RSF security experts investigating Cruachan’s death. Whether they had altered those reports for security reasons or for more sinister ones was something that Van couldn’t have proved one way or another.
