By Other Means (9 page)

It was all rather fascinating, really, and Miram very much enjoyed reading about the backgrounds of various alien species.

“You, and your people of course, have full access to all public areas of the station,” The Master of Station told her. “Security has been instructed to be available to help in case anyone has difficulties, most of them are at least semi-proficient in English now.”

Miram raised an eyebrow, but nodded graciously, and replied in Parithalia. “Thank you, Master of Station Parath. I have to compliment you on your accent, it’s really quite good.”

She wasn’t the only person to note that, though she was one of the few who wasn’t surprised. Miram had dealt with the Alliance more closely than most already, and she was well aware that they had mastered some form of learning languages, and perhaps more. She didn’t know how it was done, but it only took a few days for an Alliance official to have a working mastery over English in her experience.

“You’ve learned our language,” Parath seemed pleased, if also surprised. “Few do, we mostly speak Sturm here, or Alliance Standard if you prefer.”

She noted that he hadn’t said anything about her own accent, likely out of politeness. She was well aware that it was far from proficient.

“I’ve also learned Alliance Standard,” She assured him, changing back to English. “I didn’t know it had another name.”

“Older name,” Parath twisted his joints up in what she’d come to recognize as a shrug, “Sturm is more the root language, and it more complex than Alliance Standard. It is used as the language of trade and scientists.”

“Like Latin, then.” She murmured.

“Pardon?”

“Don’t worry about it, human history,” Miram shook off her thoughts, “We’ll have to discuss it sometime, though, I would love to see how our history compares to the Alliance members.”

“That would be… very interesting indeed.” Parath said, “in the meantime, however, I believe that we have allowed the Ambassador to wait long enough.”

“Of course,” Miram smiled, “lead on.”

Parath waved security forward, moving the group through the large open spaces of the station. As they moved through the public areas and into more and more secure zones, the number of aliens watching them dropped off and Sorilla both began to relax a little, but conversely move up her alert levels.

Assassinating the Ambassador would now be harder to get away with, the security levels would make escaping difficult, but at the same time if they wanted to trigger a war this would be the time to do it. It would be much harder to blame the incident on dissidents or a grieving family member of someone who died going up against the SOLCOM fleet.

Which assumes that they’re planning an assassination, something I don’t know for sure,
Sorilla reminded herself.

All she did know was that the Alliance saw fit to put a front line combat specialist on the job, which only told her that they either expected trouble or they had a complete idiot in their command structure. The idiot theory was comforting, but she was paid to assume idiocy over malicious intent, so for the moment it wasn’t something she was giving much credence to.

They were all admitted to a large room where the Alliance diplomatic team were waiting, so Sorilla joined the Diplo protection detail as they spread out. She picked a spot on the wall where she could cover the entire room and silently settled in.

Across the room she spotted the Lucian doing the same, but Sorilla’s attention was focused more on the Sin Fae she’d noticed earlier. The Lucian was a warrior, straight up near as she could tell. His reactions, and his actions, would likely be predictable. It was the unknown player in the game that interested her most just then.

Her eyes glowed a faint green as she turned her implants on her target, analyzing everything they could detect and recording everything they got that she couldn’t make sense of.

Alright, Elf,
Sorilla thought with silent chuckle,
What’s your play?

*****

Sienel could feel the human’s eyes on him and silently cursed his decision to inform the Lucian about her the day before. Clearly she’d noticed him when he broke from his position to speak with the Sentinel, and likely his reaction had made Sienel a person of interest.

She, or whoever is controlling her, is good,
He thought ruefully.

It had been the sort of slip that would have gone unnoticed in the Alliance, but he should have recognized that many of the conventions that he used to camouflage his actions in the Alliance wouldn’t exist with this new species. He’d gotten complacent and tipped his hand, now he’d have to roll with that and see where it took him.

Despite himself, Sienel found himself becoming somewhat fond of the Terrans. They were a new challenge, something to keep him working to best effect as they forced him to adapt and overcome.  Complacency got people killed in his line of work, so anything that shook him out of It was a good thing. Unless, of course, that thing
killed
him shortly after.

It remains to be seen whether that will be the case with the Terrans.

Sienel casually unfolded his personal computer, looking like nothing more than one of a dozen clerks in the room tapping away self-importantly on their systems, recording the minutia of the meeting as the Ambassadors and other speakers droned on. He was analyzing the Terran positions, however, putting their actions into context and drawing conclusions about them as a species based on the results.

It wouldn’t be completely correct, that was certain, but he’d done it before and would likely do it again. New species weren’t as rare as all that, the Galaxy was a big place and the nature of Jump points meant that sometimes you could be sitting right beside a thriving civilization and not even know it until a new point was discovered, or some new technical advancement opened up new stars for development.

It was the second in the case of the Terrans, the Ross had managed to expand their jump radius by about half a percent. Not much, really, but enough to bring at least eighteen new stars into their direct jump range.

His best research indicated that was likely why the Ross had been granted permission to open up the new frontier. A combination of being the first ones there and they bribed the Alliance central government with the modifications to the jump drive control systems to allow Alliance ships the same half percent edge.

Likely a few less legal and more personal bribes were involved as well, of course.

That was all in the past, however, not his concern. He was here to make sure that nothing got in the way of cleaning the mess up. Finding a new empire capable of slugging it out with an Alliance task force was bad enough, annoying said empire to the point that they made that same Alliance task force simple
vanish
into the ether, that was something else entirely.

Untill they got a handle on exactly what happened there, no one wanted to tangle with the Terrans uneccesarily.

Almost no one,
He thought sourly.

There were always idiots with more money and more greed than sense, focused on the short term rather than the long game. Sienel was well aware that those were his most likely opponents at the moment, but the presence of a Terran
Sentinel
was confusing the issues just enough to make his head hurt.

His gaze drifted to her, casually as possible, and he examined her for as long as he dared before looking away again.

She looked like most Terrans, which is to say not particularly impressive.

It was clear to him that the species was one that the Alliance Command quietly grouped under ‘extreme tool users’. Most Alliance species were tool users, of course, that was almost the mark of intelligence that could be recognized. Extreme users, however, were a class to themselves.

They did more than use tools, they relied on them. They integrated them into their lives with an almost religious observance and, in extreme cases, practically became the tools and technology they used.

The Ross were one such species, the most dangerous the Alliance had ever located… until now.

Now it was a tossup,  at least until they could figure out what happened to the battle fleet.

Sienel was so deep in his thoughts that he almost missed it when the Terran Sentinel…
twitched
.

*****

Sorilla had most of her implant software running in low priority mode, preserving cycles for the more active work she was doing. One of the processes she’d shunted to as low priority as possible was the gravity analysis code. The hardware was still active, of course, it ran on her own heat and bio-electricity, but it required massive CPU cycles and she hadn’t expected the enemy to be using gravity valves on their own station so it seemed like a safe system to put on the back burner.

With the signals still coming from the detectors, though, she felt a twinge as her mind identified a change in the local environment even faster that her computer would have if it were turned on.

Sorilla dumped her work application and threw open the gravity analysis software to full priority in a split second, already moving as she did. She would have bolted, but bearing in mind where she was she kept her motions calm and purposeful as her eyes fixated on an upper deck that overlooked the large gathering.

It looked empty, but that didn’t mean as much as she’d like.

“Where are you going, Aida?” Swift’s voice hissed in her ear. “Get back in place.”

“Stuff it, Swift. I’m checking something out.” She responded, using subvocal translators and burst transmission instead of speaking aloud. “Standby to get the Ambassador out of here.”

“What the hell? What did you see?”

“Just stand by.” Sorilla killed the reception, but left her feed open as she hopped channels. “Admiral.”

There was a pause before Ruger came back, and when he did she recognized the slight machine quality of his voice as that of a sub-vocal translator at work.

“Go, Major.”

“Unknown gravity event, located to your three o’clock, high position.” She sent, “am proceeding to investigate.”

“Roger.”

The overlooking balcony was flanked by a pair of curving ramps on either side of the massive room, Sorilla picked the closest and calmly started to climb, waiting until she was out of sight of the others before breaking into a sprint.

She didn’t notice that she wasn’t the only person on the move.

At the top of the spiral ramp, she slowed to a stop and started edging forward as she dropped into a crouch. The gravity pulse had been faint, she was surprised that she felt it without the processor on full actually, but it was easily pinpointed now that she was dedicating all available cycles to the task and it wasn’t very far.

She stopped by the corner, covering there briefly before tipping her head out just enough to get one clean image with the implants before pulling back.

One Tango. Lucian. Assembling an assault weapon?

Sorilla frowned, she couldn’t be sure of the last bit, but it didn’t look like the actions of anyone with pure intentions. Her hand dropped to the holster that held her MTac, but Sorilla hesitated as she considered the full weight of what was at stake.

If she were wrong, she could start a war right here and now, a war that SOLCOM wasn’t ready to fight.

I
hate
this shit,
Sorilla briefly bitched and moaned as her hand fell away from the weapon she carried.
I’m a combat trainer, not some damned meat shield bullet stop.

Once that moment of whining was up, however, Sorilla rose to her feet and stepped out into the open with a calm and professional look as she started walking toward the Lucian.

“Excuse me, Sir.” She said in halting Alliance Standard, “do you have clearance to be here?”

*****

Slipping out of a crowded room without anyone being the wiser was a tougher trick than it might seem to some, but Sienel had done it before and had little doubt that he’d do it again in the future. He didn’t alert any of his own people, mostly because his instincts told him that the Terran wasn’t hostile.

He was still getting a handle on Terran body language, but hers had been defensive and surprised. She was reacting, not acting, which meant that she’d noticed something no one else had. That alone was enough for him to take note and decide to investigate on his own recognizance.

On his way out of the room, Sienel glanced at the Terran contingent and noticed that they’d all shifted to varying alert levels.
So those pulses we detected are communications. I wonder if it’s a simple pulse code or something more sophisticated? No matter, that can wait.

Once he slipped out one of the side doors all pretense at stealth was forgotten as he bolted for the upper level access, he needed to see what was going on.

“Sentinel Kriss.”

“What is it, Fae?” The gruff voice of the Lucian came back after a brief pause.

“The Terran Sentinel has moved to the upper level, I think she noticed something. I’m taking the side access behind you, heading there myself. I would appreciate some friends at my back, as it were.”

“On their way. Watch yourself, Fae. That one is dangerous.”

“That is precisely why I want to see her in action, Sentinel.”

Sienel paused as he arrived near the top, quietly sneaking a look around the corner. He scowled as he spotted a Lucian he didn’t know, who was clearly assembling a pulse weapon.

Where the hell are the Sentinels?
Sienel instantly started to worry since he
knew
that he was no match for a Lucian, even one who wasn’t a Sentinel.

The thought that this was a Sentinel action didn’t even occur to Sienel, the Lucians were far too rigid in their discipline for that and not remotely sneaky enough to play both sides. Still, they had their occasional rogues, same as any other species.

“Kriss,” He hissed softly, “We have a rogue Lucian here, with a precision pulse cannon.”

“What!?” The Lucian’s roar in his ear made Sienel wince. “I’m on my way.”

“You’d best hurry… oh… my.” Sienel stammered as the Terran stepped out into the open and calmly began to approach the Lucian, speaking to him in Alliance standard and asking him for his
clearance
of all things.