Without a Front Read online

  Arabisar glared at him. “You did that on purpose.”

  “Did what? You asked—”

  “Enough,” Andira said in a clipped tone. “Yes, we have full communication with these Voloth. The healers said it was critical for their mental health to be able to speak with us and to understand our broadcasts. And since mental health is on all of our minds these days, I authorized both the…study of the technology and the production of new language chips.”

  “And look where that got you.” Prime Warrior Shantu crossed his arms over his expensive tunic, his fashionably cut hair brushing his shoulders. “Watching those broadcasts is how they knew to target you.”

  “Excuse me,” Lanaril said. Every head turned to her, and she sat a little straighter. “I understand that you’re thinking like a warrior and looking for the strategic angle. But I think we should remember they’re not our enemies anymore. Right now they’re supplicants.”

  “With all due respect, Lead Templar, I killed as many Voloth as I could. I don’t see them as anything but an enemy.”

  “And of course that’s what you had to do. I stood outside my temple and rejoiced at every explosion of light I saw, because that was one less ground pounder that could attack us. But that was then. You beat them. We won. They have no power anymore. These are people who are asking us not to send them home. So I have to ask in my turn: Why? Why don’t they want to go?”

  “Perhaps they will be prosecuted at home for what we forced them to do here,” Prime Crafter Bylwytin said in her quiet voice. “Or persecuted.”

  “Oh, now, you’re not feeling sorry for them, are you?” Shantu snorted and shook his head. “They’re invaders. They should feel exceedingly fortunate that we haven’t executed the lot. Instead they’ve made demands and we’re actually going to listen to them.”

  “Exactly,” Andira said. “We’re going to listen. We haven’t agreed to anything, and we won’t without a majority approval of the Council. But it costs us nothing to listen.”

  “Well, it’s costing me a valuable hantick of my time, not to mention the strain of being in the same room with one and refraining from killing it.”

  “If they were ‘its,’ I hardly think a high empath would have killed herself from the guilt of empathically forcing one.” Lanaril hadn’t meant to let her own feelings show, but Shantu’s attitude could only come from one who had no inkling of the suffering she had seen in her temple. “I’ve been counseling Blacksun high empaths for two moons, and I can assure you, their guilt comes from forcing people, not animals.”

  His front was as good as Andira’s, but the hate burned in his eyes. “The first ground pounder bombed Duin Bridge to charred bricks and killed every adult and child in it. They would have done the same to every one of our cities if we hadn’t stopped them. And those they didn’t kill, they would have enslaved. Those are not the actions of people.”

  A tap on the door interrupted and Colonel Razine entered, her stern face set even harder than usual. Behind her came a Guard holding one end of a chain, then a tall Voloth with his hands shackled in front of him and attached to the chain. A second Guard brought up the rear, and the small conference room suddenly felt very crowded.

  Lanaril stared at the Voloth. With his smooth, ridgeless face, he resembled the Gaians she had met and liked. How could an enemy look so similar to a friend?

  The three warriors thumped their fists to their chests, a salute that was marred by the jangling of the chain still held by one.

  Colonel Razine stepped forward. “Lancer Tal, members of the High Council, Lead Templar Satran, this is Rax Sestak, weapons specialist in the Voloth Third Pacification Fleet.”

  “Pacification?” Shantu said. “Really?”

  The Voloth looked at him, then around the table. When his gaze settled on Andira, all motion in the room stopped. His unfronted emotions poured off him, buffeting Lanaril with a shock of recognition and panic, followed by the determination that wrestled his fear under control. It had never occurred to her that he might be afraid, but in hindsight it made sense. He was facing down his own personal nightmare.

  Was she?

  They stared at each other for what felt like five ticks before Andira finally said, “Rax Sestak. I never knew your name.”

  “I never knew yours, either.” His voice was gravelly, as if he hadn’t used it in a while. “Well met, Lancer Tal.”

  Great Fahla, Lanaril thought. He knew the standard greeting. Somehow she hadn’t expected courtesy from an invader.

  “Well met,” Andira answered. The tension in the air eased, only to rise again at her next words. “Colonel Razine, this room has a long history, and I don’t believe that history includes the presence of bound prisoners. Take off that chain and unbind his hands.”

  “Are you insane?” Shantu shoved his chair back and stood. “I know you like to prove your points, but this is going too far.”

  “Are you afraid of him, Prime Warrior?”

  Shantu stopped with his mouth open, then snapped it shut. “I killed too many of them to be afraid of one.”

  “Well, I for one am not comfortable sharing the room with a bound Voloth, much less an unbound one,” Eroles said. “Lancer Tal, is there a point to this?”

  “We’re here to listen to a request for political asylum. If we can’t do that without keeping the petitioner in chains, then I don’t see any reason for this meeting to continue. We’ll have already decided on our answer.”

  “I agree.” Prime Merchant Parser cast a sidelong glance at the still-bristling Shantu. “If the five warriors in the room can’t handle one unarmed Voloth, then we have indeed come to our decision.”

  “Unbind him for all I care. I’d welcome the chance to kill one more. But there are others in this room whose concerns should be taken into account.”

  Andira turned to the Prime Builder. “I promise you, on my honor as a warrior, that this Voloth will not harm you.”

  “How can you make a promise like that?” Eroles asked.

  Andira rose and walked over to stand in front of the Voloth. She looked slim and small in front of him, but he watched her with a resurgent fear. Without taking her eyes off his, she said, “Colonel Razine.”

  The colonel took out a key, unlocked the wristcuffs, and handed them to the Guard holding the chain.

  “Thank you,” said the Voloth as he rubbed his wrists.

  “Tell me, Rax Sestak, do you intend harm to anyone in this room?”

  “No, Lancer.”

  “And we’re supposed to—”

  Andira held up a hand, stopping Shantu in mid-sentence. “Would you like a chance to prove that?”

  Rax looked at her in confusion. “I don’t see how.”

  His eyes widened and his fear spiked into panic when she reached into her boot and pulled out a dagger. The entire room collectively held its breath.

  Andira held the dagger for a moment, then flipped it over, caught it by the blade, and offered it to him hilt first.

  He took it from her hesitantly, his panic morphing into shock and bafflement.

  “I’m the one who made you do it,” she said in a low voice. “I stripped you of your will and forced you to kill your fellow soldiers. I know you hate me for that.”

  “A little,” he whispered.

  “Then this is your chance. Take your revenge if you can. No one will stop you; it’s a matter of honor.”

  He looked from her to the dagger and back again. “If I do, none of the others will get to stay.”

  “This is between you and me. It won’t have any effect on the others.”

  Lanaril felt as if she were watching an entertainment vid. This couldn’t be real.

  Rax tightened his grip on the hilt. “Did you know that some of them were my friends?”

  “No, I didn’t. Did you know that I lost friends, too?”
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  “But you didn’t kill them yourself.” His voice was almost a groan. “I killed my own friends.”

  “Then kill me and you’ll feel better about it.”

  “No, I shekking won’t!” He threw the dagger to the ground. “It won’t help! And that’s not what I came here for.”

  One of the Guards scooped up the dagger and handed it back to Andira, who took it with a nod of thanks and slipped it into her boot. Turning to the others, she said, “Is that proof enough?”

  “Great Mother!” Yaserka blurted into the shocked silence. “That was the most reckless thing I have ever seen.”

  “No, it wasn’t. He can’t harm me nor any other Alsean. He cannot. Do you understand?”

  Lanaril finally remembered to exhale, just as Shantu let out a startled laugh.

  “Oh, well done, Lancer Tal. You didn’t bind him to yourself. You bound him to Alsea.” Shantu sat down, still chuckling. “I must say I’m impressed.”

  “And I’m confused,” said Arabisar. “What in Fahla’s name just happened?”

  “A demonstration.” Andira took her seat. “Rax Sestak has free will, with one exception. He cannot harm Alsea nor any Alsean. I left that instruction when I forced him. Unless I cancel it, he’ll be bound by it for the rest of his life. If we send him back to the Voloth, he’ll never again be able to engage in any hostilities against Alsea. And if he stays here, he’ll never be able to raise a hand against any Alsean. So as you can see, he’s not a threat to you.”

  “Some demonstration,” Eroles said. Her dark skin was a shade lighter than usual, and Lanaril suspected her own face was still showing the shock.

  “Rax Sestak, how shall we call you?” Andira asked.

  “Just Rax.” His desperate need to know burst its confines. “Please, tell me. Is that the only thing you did? Is that all you left inside me?”

  “That’s all,” she assured him. “I swear.”

  He dropped his face into his hands, his shoulders shaking with the release, then looked up with reddened eyes. “Thank you. I know I was one of the lucky ones. If you could see the others… Seeders, they’ve forgotten everyone they ever loved. My friend Danek—he has a baby daughter and he doesn’t even care anymore. He carried her picture everywhere and we used to tease him about how gone he was over her, and now—he doesn’t care. At least you left my heart in one piece.”

  Lanaril didn’t think anyone in the room could be unaffected by that. She glanced over. Well, anyone but Shantu.

  “None of us ever wanted to do that,” Andira said. “But you left us no choice.”

  “We had no choice!” he cried. “We were shekked if we did and shekked if we didn’t.”

  “What do you mean?” Lanaril asked. “Why didn’t you have a choice?”

  “Because we’re hangers. And the officers are all citizens.”

  The six caste Primes and Andira seemed to understand this, but Lanaril had no idea what he was talking about. “Hangers and citizens?”

  “The Voloth Imperium has its own caste system with three castes,” Andira explained. “Though they don’t call them that, and there’s no equality. Their people are either citizens, hangers, or slaves.”

  Rax rubbed his wrists again. “And being a hanger isn’t much better than being a slave. You can’t own property, you don’t have the same legal rights as citizens, and Seeders help you if you ever get into trouble with a citizen. The police will never believe you. A citizen can do everything but murder a hanger, and nobody would turn a hair. I don’t think murder is out of the question either, so long as you bribe the right person. And in the military—” He shook his head. “You don’t disobey orders.”

  “You know what your military does,” Yaserka said. “You made a choice when you joined it. Seems to me it’s a little late now to say you wish you hadn’t.”

  “But I don’t—” He stopped and calmed himself with an effort. “Yes, I made a choice to join. We all did. But that’s only because none of us were rich enough to buy our citizenship.”

  “You have to buy your way into your top caste?” Prime Merchant Parser asked.

  “There are only two ways to become a citizen. You can buy it, or you can earn it through military service. I was halfway through my military service requirement. When I finished, I’d have been a citizen. And then I could have protected my parents.”

  “Are they also hangers?” Lanaril asked.

  Rax nodded. “They couldn’t afford to buy their way out. But they couldn’t earn it either, because the military won’t take you if you have any medical problems they can’t easily fix. My dad lost his leg in a farming accident and my mom—well, she didn’t have a medical problem. She just couldn’t serve. She washed out of basic training because she wouldn’t follow orders.”

  “If her orders were something like ‘bomb that village and kill every innocent person in it,’ then I salute her moral code,” Shantu said. “But you were ready to follow any order you were given.”

  “You don’t understand. They don’t give you those orders in basic. They give you stupid orders that don’t make any sense and then they beat the dokshin out of you if you dare to ask why. So you learn not to ask.”

  “And unlike your mother, you learned your lesson,” Yaserka said.

  Rax looked haunted. “I made it through. The washout rate is over seventy percent, and I made it through, and I was so proud. My dad was, too. I served for almost three of your cycles before they sent me on my first invasion. They told us that the locals were primitives, that our government had made peaceful overtures but the primitives had attacked and killed most of the landing party, including the entire squadron that had been sent to protect the diplomats. We were outraged. And we were trained not to ask questions. So when they told us to destroy the villages, we did. And it was easy and they rewarded us. And I was going to be a citizen.”

  The picture was coming together, and Lanaril was aghast at what she saw.

  “All we had to do was follow orders,” Rax continued. “They give them and we follow them and every order is a little bigger than the one before. And you keep following. And you never, ever ask why. Sometimes, somebody asks why or refuses to obey, and then you don’t see them anymore. They get transferred. We always knew that really meant something else, but nobody said it out loud. We called it ‘transferred to the Eighth Fleet,’ because there is no Eighth Fleet.”

  “Are you telling us that your superiors will kill you if you don’t obey orders?” Bylwytin looked faint at the thought.

  “Nobody knows that for sure. Look, Colonel Razine said I had to be completely honest with you, because you’ll know if I’m lying. I’m telling you the truth. I think—we all think it’s either obey or die, or if it’s not death, then it’s something even worse, like medical experimentation. There are rumors. But I don’t know. All I know is, none of us ever wanted to find out firsthand.”

  “And that’s why you were willing to kill innocents?” Shantu crossed his arms, a look of disbelief on his patrician features. “Because it was either kill or die? You’re not lying, but you’re not telling us everything, either.”

  “I’m trying to.” Rax wiped the sweat off his forehead.

  “Then try harder. Tell us the rest. Tell us how proud you were to be on your way to becoming a citizen, no matter what you had to do to get there. Your superiors dropped four thousand soldiers in your pacifiers. Don’t tell me they were all controlled by fear.”

  Rax shook his head. “That’s the part I’ve only started to understand since we came here. You’re all primitives—I mean, that’s what they told us,” he added hastily. “You don’t worship the Seeders. All primitives are good for is slavery, but sometimes slaves convert. Sometimes they learn the truth, and then they’re saved. If we have to kill primitives, it’s not like killing real people, people who worship the Seeders. It’s like…” He struggled
to find the words. “Primitives get reborn when they die. They get another chance to accept the truth. We’re doing them a favor.”

  Shantu’s chair flew back with such velocity that it crashed onto the floor. “You’re doing us a favor?” he roared. “By killing people who never lifted a finger against you? By killing children?”

  “Great Fahla, that is disgusting,” Arabisar said. Heads nodded all around the table.

  Lanaril felt ill. “What a twisted theology you have. And twisted for one purpose only, so far as I can see. To justify murder, slavery, and the worst kind of theft. To justify stealing people’s worlds.”

  Rax wiped his forehead again, his fear climbing a notch. “Please…that’s not—”

  “Everyone settle, please,” Andira said. “I don’t think Rax finished what he meant to say. Do you believe this?”

  “I did,” he whispered. “I did until we came here. They said you were violent primitives who had just enough technology to be dangerous, and that you’d attacked a diplomacy unit that had landed to invite you to be part of the Imperium. We offered you technological advancement and the chance to be saved by the Seeders, and you answered by killing off half the diplomats and their soldiers.”

  “A strangely familiar story.” Shantu’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “Heard that one a few times, did you?”

  “Primitives are always attacking Voloth diplomats. We were taught that the diplomats are among the most courageous people in the entire Imperium because their jobs are so dangerous. Primitives have their own gods, and they get violent when you try to teach them the truth. But an attack on a diplomatic unit is an attack on the Imperium itself. It has to be answered with ruthless efficiency. So they sent us here, and we were supposed to take your cities. They said we could be live heroes or dead failures. But…the thing is, we failed but we’re not dead. You took prisoners, but you didn’t kill us. That cell you have me in—it’s bigger than the cabin I shared with three other soldiers. You keep us fed and you don’t beat us and you don’t use us for labor. We killed your people and you’re treating us better than we treat our slaves. And your Fahla…everyone’s saying she’s a Seeder. None of your temples were hit, and I don’t see how that’s possible when they were one of our primary hard targets.”