8: Doomed Quests

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Their attackers weren’t aljik.

Sil wasn’t sure exactly what they were, crowded in what remained of their ship and clad in space suits. They had four limbs – two arms and two legs, it looked like, although it was hard to be certain since they, like he, were floating – with dextrous claws and fairly small heads, hidden behind bubble helmets. Everything about them was fairly small. It would’ve been hard tot ake them seriously, if the destruction of mere minutes ago hadn’t been fresh in his mind; as it was, though, Sil was terrified.

They weren’t aljik, meaning he had no idea why they wanted him or his ship. Meaning he had no idea how safe he was.

“Your name?” one of them asked, in slow but surprisingly comprehensible vocal aljik. It was impossible to tell who was speaking.

“S-sil.”

“Captain Sil. We are looking for… rogue Princess. You will tell us. Where she is.”

What? What strange allies had the rogue managed to rustle up now?! “The rogue Princess is… it’s not my fault, I – ”

“You will tell us now.”

“Sh-she’s not… I think she’s not alive? Sh-she can’t be.”

Sil didn’t know the body language of these aliens, but their reaction to this news didn’t look positive. They all stiffened up and turned to face one another. In a silence punctuated by sharp, emphatic gestures, he had to assume that they were having a private conversation.

Then, another question. “What happened?”

“Th-there was a space battle. The Stardancer tried to flee but was destroyed.”

“Certain?”

“Th-the wreck was brought back to the heart world. I’ve seen it. Definitely destroyed.”

“Survivors?”

“I-I don’t… I mean, they’d be in deep space with no method of long-distance travel. And Queen Tatik would’ve known, because she’d have looked for any possible chance of the rogue surviving. So I, I don’t think. I mean, I would’ve heard of them, probably, When they reintegrated into the hive.”

Another private, agitated discussion. A much longer one. Then the speaker spoke to him again.

“You will take us to the place. We will find.”

“We can’t dash; you destroyed – ”

“We can. Lightdancer’s systems will fix other ship’s systems. Then we will go. You are our crew now.”

Not an ideal situation. Could be a lot worse, though.

“There’s no way that the rogue Princess survived out in deep space somewhere.”

“Don’t care.”

“Then what are we looking for?”

“If we find it, you find out.”

———————————————–

I stared at the shyr. “What do you mean, why would that matter? If you want me to somehow sever aljik ties with the species that’s somehow causing this problem – ”

“Do you think that other species won’t cause problems?”

It took me a moment to digest that. “Are you saying that you want to sever ties with every species? Cut yourselves off entirely?”

“It worked fine before we had Empires. Most nests do fine alone even today.”

And people in the bronze age did fine without the internet, but making the internet disappear in our age would mean widespread death and chaos. “I don’t think that’s… I know your people trade for materials with others pecies. I don’t really… understand how that works, given your mindsets and all, but it’s… look, these are several aljik empires, right? And I’m not even aljik. What do you expect me to do, exactly?”

“These aljik have accepted you as their Queen. Make decrees.”

“Oh, sure, I could tell this little ship of runaway dregs that we’re keeping to ourselves, but Queen Tatik has no reas – hang on, are you expecting me to conquer the Out-Western Aljik Empire?”

“Was that not your plan?”

“No!”

“I don’t see how you expect to save the Empire without doing so.”

“I don’t see how you expect me to do so! You want me to wander in with my little band here and just, what, kill Tatik and and Princesses who might be about and declare myself in charge? There’s no way that would work!”

“You convinced these alj – ”

“These aljik didn’t have a choice! We’re all working with what we have here! And we had a pre-existing relationship! I can’t stride into the heart of the Empire, replace their Queen, and expect a huge nest of the traditionalists who weren’t interested in following the rogue to suddenly listen to me! They’d kill me and invite in a new Queen or disband to other nests! And even if that did work, and I banned all alien communication (ignoring the fact that I’m an alien, by the way), how would that solve anything for the other Empires? Do you expect me to conquer all aljik Empires?”

The shyr stared at me silently.

“Oh my god. You do, don’t you? How? Also, how the fuck does it solve the ahlda problem if I kill and replace all the Queens? Who’s laying the female eggs then?”

“You didn’t kill the rogue, did you?”

“Again, desperation and unique circumstances. I’m not magic.”

“You are human, yes?”

“Yeah, and I don’t think you understand our capabilities any better than I understand yours. Humans aren’t half as strong or clever as you seem to think.”

“Humans stole my ship.”

“Do you mean another Empire ship that you were stowing away on, or…?”

“No. My ship. Faster than I could realise what was happening. They said it was called the Lightdancer and forced me to flee.”

“Dancer, huh? Sounds like they’re the ones with delusions of Queendom. Maybe you should get their help.”

“They, unlike you, are not under contract to save the Empire. Besides, we didn’t part on good terms.”

“Wow, really? But you’re so friendly and reasonable.” There was something really off about this whole plan, something too big to be an aljik blind spot. Firstly, even given the legend of the Singers in Light, it simply made no sense that anybody would think that a random human and a handful of aljik would be able to conquer one aljik empire, let alone multiple. Wreak serious havoc, sure, but crashing the Queen’s flagship into her planet was on a totally different level than conquering multiple empires. The request made no sense. Second, even if I could magically do that, it didn’t make sense that this shyr would want me to. If she wanted to save the empires, a massive war that would forcibly unite them into a single nest and completely overthrow the Queen system, if I didn’t just kill all the Queens outright, would cause problems on a scale so big that this ahlda thing simply wouldn’t matter. The ahlda dropoff had been subtle enough that it had taken generations to be sure it was even happening; interstellar was would be… a lot messier. And a lot more immediately dangerous.

There was no way that this shyr could believe I was capable of this task. And there was no reason she’d want me to do it. And even if I did succeed, there’d be an alien very heavily involved in the empires she was trying to isolate – the scariest, more unstable, most dangerous kind of alien, more entangled than any aliens had ever been. The Out-Western Aljik Empire had been established in large part to keep my people as far away from Queen Anta’s nest as possible; this was the opposite of any kind of solution.

She couldn’t believe that this was a good idea. But if her experience with humans so far was them stealing her ship and giving it a grandiose name, she might believe that I might believe it.

What was she trying to get me to do here? What was the game? A suicide run? No; if she wanted me dead, she’d have killed me, not tried to manipulate me to go after her Queen. But she wanted me to attack the Empire for some reason. And she was using my obligation to save it to try and get me to do it.

Why?

—————

The aliens, surprisingly, didn’t really get in the way.

They requisitioned a storeroom in the Red Four for themselves and painstakingly moved all of their stuff in from their old ship with the help of some atil while the engineers focused on repairing the ship’s systems. They told the crew not to repair their communications, and took the lancer class ship’s receiver systems into their storeroom, telling Sil that they would be listening for any outgoing communications and that if they detected any, he and his high-ranking subordinates would all be executed.

A brave captain, a good captain, a worthy captain, probably would have tried to warn the Empire anyway. Sil rationalised to himself that there was little point. All a warning would do would get people killed and the ship scuttled or stolen off somewhere else, and for what reason? To let the Empire know that one border wasn’t being patrolled properly? If these aliens wanted to waste time combing space for wreckage, let them. Better wasting time than dead.

Besides, what if the rogue Princess, or something else valuable, really was out there? They seemed so determined to find something. If they found her, in some random escape pod or something…

That was what he told himself, anyway. Not cowardice. Practicality.

He still wasn’t sure what the aliens looked like; they stayed in their suits when they were outside their own little storeroom, which they kept pressurised slightly differently to the rest of the ship. He supposed that they must have a really narrow band of survivable atmospheric pressure, or something – good to know, if there was more fighting. (He really, really hoped that there wouldn’t be more fighting.) There were definitely only three of them, and almost all of their equipment was aljik, or cobbled together from aljik equipment; aside from the space suits, whose origins he couldn’t identify, everything they owned seemed to come from the lancer ship. Had they blown up their previous one to get the lancer? Was that just what they did?

Watching them settle in and wait for the ship’s engines to be repaired so they could shoot off to their next destination and leave the wreckage behind, Sil finally thought to wonder: what had happened to the aljik crew of the lancer ship?

———————-

There were ways of getting the information I wanted. I thought for a moment.

“Okay,” I said to the shyr. “I’m bound by contract to save the Empire. So let’s say I try an invasion. What if I fail? Won’t killing off a bunch of aljik put the Empire in a worse position?”

“Tahl are replaceable.”

“You think I can succeed because I’m human, right? Did the humans who crashed the Voiddancer focus on tahl? Did the humans who stole your ship? If we do this, you’re losing commanders. Engineers. Can you afford to lose so many men? Can you afford the drop in influence and prestige costing you even more ahlda visitors?”

“You could very well succeed even in failure. An alien attack might be enough to convince Queen Tatik to close off all trade and communication with aliens. It would be better for you to win and be better placed to save all of the empires, but in either case, the attempt is beneficial.”

Unlikely. I still wasn’t great at understanding or predicting aljik politics, but would they really isolate themselves because of one human attack? They’d been dealing with other aliens plenty while Earth was under interstellar quarantine. More, if I understood the legend of the Singers in Light correctly; they’d expanded their jurisdiction over other species specifically to keep us contained. So maybe I was missing something, but I didn’t see how –

Unless it wasn’t about all of those other aliens at all.

“These humans who stole your ship. They must have been clever and sneaky, to pull one over you like that.”

“They will not help. It is pointless to ask. They refused all offers of trade for their services.”

“Yeah, I bet.” Not what I’d been going for, anyway. “Are they going to be a problem? Get in our way?”

“Maybe. They are looking for you.”

“So you said. Does Queen Tatik know?”

“She says to ignore them.”

Was there resentment, in the shyr’s tone? I didn’t know how to read shyr very well, and the language barrier didn’t help. But I was starting to put a picture together. Me attacking Tatik’s Empire wasn’t about saving it from an ahlda shortage. It was about saving it from a perceived human threat that this shyr noticed and Tatik was ignoring. My failed attack would remind Queen Tatik of the danger posed by my species, and the shyr could sabotage me if it looked like I was going to do too much damage. That was the game I was being deployed as a pawn in.

Well, fuck that. If the descendants of kidnapped humans from generations ago wanted to go around stealing aljik ships, more power to them. I was even less interested in getting involved in that than in the ahlda thing.

No need to tell the shyr that, though.

“Okay,” I said. “Noted. Let’s get to planning an invasion.”

There had to be some reason I could invent for contacting the Jupiterians for help with an invasion, right?

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