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4

Trivial Causes

In war, events of importance are the result of trivial causes.
—Caesar

Punt City, New Ardu/Bellerophon

Lentsul watched as a large truck turned the corner and approached. It was articulated into three blocky sections, each with an independently powered set of wheels. The lead section—a command cab—was topped by pulsing red, yellow, and murn lights: an emergency vehicle. Behind it, Arduans—mostly members of the Destoshaz caste—were riding in or atop the other segments of the truck, protective suits on and already half-sealed.

Another, similar vehicle emerged right on its tail, similarly crewed. The boxy vehicle had evidently stood unused since its off-loading on to New Ardu: each wheel hub still had expandable wheel-spikes in place. The remote-deployable spikes had been included to help move bulky loads across the rough surfaces of the uninhabited planet that they—the Star Wanderers—had thought to find.

Instead, the planet they had journeyed many generations to reach, and which they had optimistically labeled New Ardu, was already inhabited. The world—named Bellerophon by its denizens—was teeming with combative, restive bipeds who called themselves humans and styled themselves as sentient, even though they lacked the faintest trace of a selnarmic awareness. And here, abutting and partially arrogating one of their harsh, angular, concrete cities, the Children of Illudor had established their own city of Punt.

A dividing line—six of the human “blocks” in width—had been evacuated to create a depopulated zone between the urban complexes of the two races. And today, alarms—and satellite imagery—indicated that two fires were now raging closer to the human side of that zone. The work of local arsonists, no doubt.

Lentsul watched closely as an Enforcer defense sled—hovering about three meters off the ground—followed the second truck into the street, keeping at least ten meters distance, defensive blisters turning restlessly. Then the two of the blisters on the left side of the almost featureless airborne ovoid snapped around and rotated their weapon-sensor clusters skyward, back in the direction of Punt. Two small, vaguely cruciform specks had appeared overhead, their flight having apparently originated in the human precincts that were to the immediate right of the column.

As if they knew they had been detected, the specks began corkscrewing about, doubling back, swooping, climbing and all the while, buzzing like a pair of overgrown zifrik worker-drones. The defense sled’s left-hand defensive blisters tracked them carefully, watchfully, through their chaotic aerial ballet: in other circumstances, the blisters would simply have brought down what were now obviously remote-controlled toy planes. However, since the artist roundup three weeks back, orders had changed. Far more provocation was now required before discarnating the griarfeksh or discharging weapons in or around their areas of habitation. These little planes pushed the very limit of those new rules of engagement, but the decision was not to fire unless they came within 200 meters. So far, the airborne toys had remained at about 350 meters.

When the planes were spotted, a warning had evidently been passed up the line—by selnarm link, since that was fastest. The lead truck obligingly slowed as the Enforcer sled tracked the two specks through their snarling aeronautical display, the second truck thus compelled to stop fully to prevent bumping its leader. A moment passed while, evidently, the defense-sled sensors confirmed that the little planes were nonthreatening—for now. Then the selnarmic order to resume driving to the scene of the fires was obviously given: the first truck’s immense engines growled, and it heaved forward—

—just as a tiny vehicle, with four wheels that were each almost as big as its body, came whining out of the building to the immediate right of the first truck. Before anyone could react, the little toy car had sped and disappeared under the second segment of the truck, its electric engines screaming. For a moment, there was silence: the truck’s immense wheels rolled slowly forward—

Then: a bright, savage flash; a sharp, percussive roar. The center segment of the first truck seemed to jump like startled prey. It twisted as it ripped clear of the head and tail sections, flying upward and sideways against the second story of the building to its left as if it, too, were nothing more than a child’s toy. The concussion blasted every window on the block into a spray of glassy sleet, did the same to the windows in the cab of the following truck, which slammed to a halt—just before the rear segment of the lead vehicle, back-flipped by the force that had severed its middle section, cartwheeled into and crushed the cab. Selnarmic death spikes—piercing, sudden, wrenching—told the fate of the Arduans there. Similar truncated death jolts came from the other cab a moment later as its fuel lines, ruptured when the middle section tore away, caught fire: a low-pressure wash of flame gushed out the windows of the lead vehicle’s cab with a hoarse roar.

That was when the second remote-controlled toy—almost invisible in the smoke and falling debris—skittered out of the doorway of the next farthest building on the right hand side of the street. Bouncing wildly over and through both the stationary and tumbling detritus, it shot under the already-crippled second vehicle.

This time, the explosive-laden toy car must have detonated near a fuel tank; an orange-yellow fireball roiled out from underneath the truck, sending it almost a meter straight up as it broke into its three constituent pieces. The wave of terrified, agonized death surges shocked Lentsul so profoundly that he reflexively pinched down his selnarm link—a cowardly act, he knew, but this was not just any discarnation: his brothers and sisters were being incinerated. That manner of passing lasted just long enough to experience the full agony of it. It was a memory that was said to transfer into all later lives with a horribly crisp clarity.

The trailing defense sled—the first in a formation of two—had already lifted quickly up and rearward on its thrusters, thinking to give the second vehicle sufficient space to back away from the flaming wreck at the head of the column. As it turned out, that maneuver fortuitously put the sled just beyond the blast pattern of the largest, flaming chunks of what had been the second vehicle’s rear segment.

Then the two cruciform specks doubled back and straight-lined in toward the mortally wounded convoy. As the first Enforcer sled’s weapon blisters began firing, and the second sled boosted up over the rooftops to engage them also, a street-level explosion—almost three blocks behind the convoy—sent masonry and old conduits hurtling skyward in a violent, dirty smudge. Then another blast, a block behind that. At the peripheries of the city’s jagged skyline, a converging ring of delta shapes—the combat air patrol, inbound to stoop protectively over the stricken vehicles—splintered into different directions, some continuing on their inbound course, but almost half sweeping in the direction of the two explosions.

Almost unnoticed amidst all the destruction and the selnarmic waves of horrible pain coming from the wounded, another, smaller toy car appeared out of the smoke. The little truck—covered in an eye-gouging combination of blue, red, and metallic gold—rushed forward with a high-pitched whine, threatening to jump out of the screen at the viewer—

Then the whole scene suddenly seemed to tumble wildly down and away. A brief impression of level flight, a view of the rooftops—

—and then the recording ended.

Heshfet—tall, golden, beautiful, aloof, and, above all, fierce—narrowed her central eye. “That’s all?”

Lentsul twitched his smaller cluster tentacles. (Apologetic.) “That’s all they sent us from the recon hopper’s recording.”

(Contempt, disdain.) “Hoppers. A flixit-brained idea, those. Instead of a truly useful airborne-observation platform, we get a little aluminum garbage can with some semi-sophisticated electronics and the capability to make rotary-winged hops of a few hundred meters, at best.”

Lentsul sent a (reassurance) that was also an appeal to reason. “The hopper was not intended for military reconnaissance, Manip Heshfet. It was originally designed as a drone to survey potential landing sites. They were meant for frontiers, not battlefields.”

(Fury.) “Yes, like every other piece of nerjet-motleyed equipment we’ve been given. Everything designed for settlers; nothing for soldiers. If they had given us real military equipment, this would never have happened.”

The recording had reset; the first image from the hopper’s point of view—of the first truck entering the street—had returned to the playback monitor.

Memreb, Heshfet’s first junior manip and fellow Destoshaz, stared at the image also. “Why did they not show us these recordings until now? Did they think it would disturb us more than our own memories of the ambush?”

Heshfet switched her tentacles like a flail. “Part of the new post-combat recovery sequestration imposed by the Sleeper Ankaht—that almgr’sh.”

Lentsul started at the slur. “She is an Elder and a Councilor, Heshfet.”

“She is the much-filthed mating pouch I say she is. She stands in the way of our destiny as a race. Taking us off duty for three weeks to ‘recuperate’ is just a weakening of our forces, of our efforts.”

Lentsul projected (calm, counterpoint). “It was her attempt to ensure that we were protected from further provocation, and so would not thereby discarnate the griarfeksh by the hundreds, as happened last month at the village they call Bucelas. After we were ambushed”—he gestured at the screen—“we were all furious, desperate to strike back. We would have sought any pretext to discarnate any humans we encountered, however we—”

Heshfet rose to her full height, emitting (suspicion). “You call them ‘humans’? And you speak in support of the almgr’sh Ankaht? You are indeed no Destoshaz, Lentsul”—and she looked down on him from her terrible, and very titillating, height—“but even an Ixturshaz such as yourself should be able to see that Ankaht is lethal to our future on this planet. Indeed, I thought such deductive powers were the forte of your caste.” The group’s collective selnarm rippled with derisive sniggers. “So, tell us, little Lentsul”—for he was indeed small and dark, like most of his caste—“what do your deductive powers tell us we should have done after this ambush? Sat about and moaned the loss of our fellows? No. We should have been soldiers and marched to avenge them.”

“No. We should have exercised more restraint during the action.”

“Restraint? How, and upon what?”

“Restraint when engaging the two aerial toys, and the little one that charged the hopper.”

“What madness is this, Second Junior Manip? Has your mind been disordered by all the numbers you count with your other little caste-mates? We were ambushed, we were vulnerable, and so we destroyed all potential remaining threats. And we were angry.”

“And we were fools.”

“Why? Because we were surprised by the griarfeksh trick?”

“No. Because we needlessly destroyed the few remaining pieces of griarfeksh equipment that survived the attack.”

“And just what would that rubbish have told us?”

Lentsul kept his selnarm (patient, clear). “To begin with, the electronics of the toys would have been the basis of reverse-estimating the operator’s transmitter range, which has obvious tactical implications. Beyond that, a close examination of the toys might have indicated the place and time of their manufacture, perhaps their distribution.”

Heshfet’s acquiescence was (grudging). “Agreed. If we had been able to determine the transmitter range, we could have triangulated a controller zone. But what is the use of the production data?”

“Manip Heshfet, the griarfeksh manufactured these vehicles as common toys and distributed them as such. This means that, at some point, many of these tiny delivery systems were removed from their place in a legitimate toy-store inventory and became the property of a local Resistance cell. Simply knowing where the toys were last sent as inventory items could have been a clue that allowed us to track down these Resistance fighters. And that would have been a great help to us. This is their fourth, and most devastating, attack, and in each they have depended upon these remote-controlled toys.”

Heshfet shook her lesser tentacles in (frustration, stubbornness). “No matter. Now that we are no longer in ‘sequestration,’ we have been given the honor—and the pleasure—of hunting down the griarfeksh who have been mounting these cowardly attacks.”

Lentsul raised a lesser tentacle from each cluster. “So you have told us, Manip Heshfet. But you neglected to tell us: from whom do these orders come?”

“It was no less than Second Blade Daihd who so charged us, and in so doing she passes Torhok’s direct orders—and encouragement—to us.”

Lentsul shifted slightly and projected (tact). “Since the order has to do with the security of Punt, and is therefore primarily a local and domestic matter, should it not come from the Council of Twenty, or one of its officers?”

Heshfet stared down from her height and Lentsul tried to repress—and conceal—the swift mating urge that it excited in him. “It has come from the Council, Lentsul. Daihd speaks for Torhok. And is not the senior admiral’s voice the greatest in, and first among, the Council of Twenty?”

“Yes, it is the greatest”—and Lentsul elected to skip over the first among classification, which was language that leaned toward a military coup—“but my question is this: Should the command not be issued through a Council mandate, passed on to us by—?”

Heshfet actually, physically, smiled. Her selnarm was not friendly, however. “Little Lentsul, have you become a prime who specializes in the laws of governance? We are Destoshaz—most of us—and we have our orders. They have come to us through a duly recognized chain of command. We need know nothing more than that. We will find the griarfeksh who have killed so many of our fellow Wanderers, and we will kill them.”

* * *

Sandro McGee approached the doors of the store and almost bumped into them when they didn’t open on their own. He looked more closely at the entry to the unimaginative, single-level prefab known as Rashid’s Sport and Tool and saw a note taped on the inside of the right-hand door: “Push.” Cocking an eyebrow—and surreptitiously checking the street behind him—McGee entered.

Trained to react swiftly to unexpected noises, McGee almost went prone when he heard a light metallic tinkling as the door swung open—but listening a split-second longer, he discovered that it was but the first in a rapid sequence of tinny musical notes: small copper wind-chimes, bumped when he had opened the door. Evidently, the door’s buzzer had been turned off along with the automatic doors. A sign of the times: outages and costs had both increased since the Baldies had come to town.

“Rashid?” McGee’s voice was the only sound in the store. Then, a shuffling noise from about two-thirds of the way down the central aisle, and Rashid’s head—flecked with more gray than McGee remembered—poked into view around a corner display. “Be there in a minute.”

“ ’Kay.” McGee smiled as he said it, then inspected the nearby shelves. A little shabbier than pre-war, but at least Rashid’s was still open: the large chains had shut their doors almost immediately after the invasion. Not only did people want to stay close to their homes when shopping, but the big stores had depended upon the big shipments that no longer came. McGee meandered over to the sales registers, saw only one powered up, heard nothing besides the movement of his feet and the hum of the overhead lighting.

“See anything you need?” McGee turned at the sound of Rashid’s voice, which had, over the course of the occupation, become as reedy as the rest of him. McGee smiled again and tried not to stare. Always of slight build, Rashid was starting to look withered, and the onset of a slight stoop told the same story as his graying hair: those persons who were chronologically older felt the loss of the antigerone supplements more profoundly, and more swiftly. Three months ago, Rashid Ketarku had looked about forty; now his chronological age of seventy-eight was rapidly asserting itself. McGee kept his voice casual, cheery, as he said, “Hi, Rashid. Business looks slow today.”

The shop’s proprietor smiled ruefully. “Yep, hard times,” he said, waving at the empty aisles but also following McGee’s eyes down toward his own diminished torso. “Now, what can I do for you, Sandro?” His pitch modulated slightly; his smile widened a bit too much. “Your usual supplies?”

“No, Rashid, I need…I need to ask you a favor.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.” The flat tone combined a faint hint of honest irony with Rashid’s carefully innocent diction. No Baldy listening in—if they could do so—would detect anything amiss.

McGee put on his best crooked smile. “Look, you know the merchandise I keep here on account?”

“Um…let me just check the computer.”

He’s a pretty good actor, thought McGee. Hell, I almost believe that he has to check “my account.”

“Yes, I see it. Do you need more, Sandro?”

“Uh, no. Actually, I don’t have any immediate need for that merchandise. I was wondering if you could just hold it for me.”

Rashid’s act broke down for a moment: he looked up sharply. “I can hold on to the toys for as long as you need, Sandro. But the—the construction compounds…I can’t do it. I—I don’t have the right kind of storage space for—special—compounds.”

McGee nodded casually for whatever surveillance might be fixed upon the store but felt a needle of dread in his gut. Where else could he stash the explosives he’d ordered through Rashid? He’d drawn away from his friends when he had started his local bombing campaign against the Baldies, because if the invaders ever bothered to mount true counterinsurgency operations, anyone associated with Alessandro McGee, RFN Marine Reserve, would be on the short list for detention and interrogation. Nothing personal, of course: just standard operating procedure.

Rashid interrupted McGee’s glum thoughts with a polite cough. “I do, however, have a friend. With a cabin. In the mountains.” McGee looked up, filled his lungs with air, thought he might hug the wiry proprietor, who continued with, “But it’s a drive—about forty minutes.”

“Great, that’s great.”

Rashid almost smiled. “Okay. So, here’s how you get there—”

* * *

Jennifer Peitchkov looked down at the small blue bundle in her arms and pushed back a fold of the blanket with a gentle index finger.

Blinking in the light, the even bluer eyes of Alexander McGee looked up. The infant’s gaze wandered at first—until he found an object he knew: Jennifer. Or at least her rather long, straight, nose. Two small hands and smaller fingers came up from the folds of the blanket to explore, to confirm the return of that most protuberant and easily grasped part of the face he knew—and a smile suddenly creased the chubby folds of the broad face and high cheekbones that were unmistakable genetic inheritances from his father.

“Zander, Zander,” Jennifer whispered to him in a sing-song cadence, ignoring the not-mirrors that lined two walls of her accommodations. Hmm, not really “accommodations”: more like “habitat.”

At least it was better than the madhouse they had put her in for the first week of her captivity: its appointments were, to put it lightly, eclectic and often eye gouging. The array of personal articles would have been a source of considerable hilarity in a less dire situation: in their obvious ignorance of damned near everything human, the Baldies had thoughtfully furnished her with items both useful and bizarre. As an expectant mother late in her third trimester, she had appreciated the normal toiletries and the immense supply of moisturizers (although she suspected the bounty of emollients was merely a fortunate fluke). However, she was not quite sure what to do with the false eyelashes, the men’s aftershave, the pubic depilatory lotion, or the contraceptives—both male and female. What this outré selection of objects underscored to Jennifer was not so much that these beings were alien (for they were far less physiologically dissimilar to homo sapiens than other xenosapients), but that they simply were unable to make any sense of human existence. And somehow, that seemed to fit with what humans had seen as the Baldies’ apparent muteness, lack of facial affect, and very limited use of arms and hands—well, snaky limbs and tentacle clusters—as media for self-expression.

The tenor of Jennifer’s captivity had changed after the Baldy named Ankaht came in and actually managed to exchange some words with her. Jennifer had a lingering suspicion that Ankaht had been trying another form of communication as well. At the start of each of their four sessions together, Ankaht had sat in a pose that reminded Jennifer of a sphinx, but with an engine idling deep inside. But as the two of them sat motionless, Jennifer had felt tinglings, itchings, and hot flashes ranging from the back of her neck to the top of her head. At first Jennifer had dismissed it as a dermatological reaction to the dry, forced-air heat they used in her room. Then Jennifer attributed the sensations to anxiety, or maybe a rash induced by the presence of this alien invader with whom she had learned to exchange about a dozen words. Then she had dismissed it as one of the myriad symptoms of Her Delicate Condition. About which, the self-help books had not lied; with pregnancy, almost any complaint, ache, or craving was possible.

But at the beginning of her fourth—and last—meeting with Ankaht—she was alarmed when the Baldy pronounced her name very slowly and very clearly—“Jennifer Peitchkov”—and then she’d felt a pulse of that strange, hot tingling just above the base of her skull. It had faded. While Jennifer felt the tingling, Ankaht had changed color faintly, then reattained her black-brown leather appearance as the sensation subsided, all three of her eyes closed. Then her eyes opened again, fixed intently upon Jennifer, and Ankaht again said, “Jennifer Peitchkov”—who felt the itchy heat again. This happened two more times—at which point Jennifer began to think the unthinkable: Was this how the Baldies communicated? Mind to mind, or some species of telepathy? If it was, it would explain a lot.

Very pregnant Jennifer had stood—well, swayed—up, excited, forgetting her tentative resolve to withhold further verbal communication: she had reasoned that it might aid the enemy in their intelligence gathering. She pointed to Ankaht. “You? Ankaht? You are doing this to me?” She touched the back of her head. “You are trying to send your thoughts to me?”

Which had been just so much futile babble, of course. Ankaht had started back when Jennifer ponderously jumped up. Jennifer’s attempts to simplify and then reiterate her question were equally futile. After fifteen minutes more, Ankaht made a diffident gesture with her tentacle clusters—the Baldy equivalent of a shrug, maybe?—and left the room.

And that was the precise moment when Jennifer felt the first twinge that was not simply Alexander repositioning himself to reacquire his favorite sitting position atop her bladder.

She recalled the next eleven hours as a kind of hallucinatory madness. There was the first desperate hour when the Baldies seemed to have no idea what her trouble was. Her response—largely driven by the hormonal impulse and god-given right of all pregnant women to shout at anyone who Does Not Get It—was to let the aliens know what she thought of them and their whole, hideous, town-murdering, planet-stealing species. Then, as they backed away from her using that same slow caution with which sensible people attempt to distance themselves from rabid animals, Jennifer remembered: Oh, right—they often kill people who start screaming and acting aggressively. Kind of like what I’m doing right now.

So Jennifer controlled herself—for her baby’s sake—and the Baldies eventually reapproached. She finally got the message through to them by digging around in the magazines they had brought her and by pointing—first, to an advertisement for baby formula, depicting an insipidly serene new mother and her gorgeous new infant—and second, to her own distended belly and other relevant regions of her physiology. There was some eye-dancing among the Baldies—some kind of hyperexcited staring match they seemed to engage in right before they changed any established routine—and off they went. Leaving her quite alone.

Her water broke about half an hour before the two hijacked midwives arrived. At whose appearance Jennifer cried like a child—as much for seeing other humans again as for the aid and comfort that their presence ensured. But that presence only lasted seventy-two hours, and Jennifer had neither the clarity of mind, nor training, to think of passing the two women any information useful to the local Resistance—whatever that might be. And the midwives—scared, out of their element, uncertain if the next minute was going to be their last—never brought up, or probably conceived a single thought toward, that topic. When they were removed—almost forcibly—from Jennifer and her infant, their faces fell inward, suddenly seamed and old with the surety of what they presumed would be their imminent execution. Jennifer felt that was a very unlikely outcome. But, unable to reassure them with absolute certainty, and unclear herself exactly why she felt so sure of their safety, she spent a critical moment floundering to craft a farewell that was both comforting and true—and in those two seconds, they were gone.

In the days following, things went along rather well—better than Jennifer had expected. The Baldies seemed to have either studied post-natal–care manuals or discovered that in this regard, human needs were not too dissimilar from their own. They were attentive but did not intrude unless something was clearly wanted. Things that were clearly wanted—Jennifer pointed to the items in the various magazines, and then online catalogs—they brought swiftly. Nothing else changed, and that was just fine with Jennifer, who focused on her new son and tried to believe that Sandro was not dead. The Baldies who had abducted her had roughed him up, but the blows had certainly not looked fatal, or even particularly serious.

Two days after the midwives had been removed, Jennifer was led to her new—and very properly appointed—accommodations. Interestingly, the eye-gouging color combinations of her former room were gone: pastels had evidently guided the aesthetic choices made for this environment, with everything being a variation on either blue or white or cream. It was rather dull, but it was also comforting, and she was able to settle into her new routine.

That routine alternated between caring for Zander and reciting lengthy documents for her captors. Once they were able to demonstrate—by rather pathetic pantomime—what they wanted her to do, Jennifer was never without a script in her hand: they had her recite stage plays; they had her recite public addresses dating back to Cicero; they had her read aloud from Aquinas, Aristotle, Sartre, and Seuss. After several days of this, they then encouraged her to share—vocally—her opinions regarding a short film they screened for her, a brief article they had her read, and then an endless array of essays, stories, and more. They asked her to name an insane number of objects—and now, with a baby to care for and a growing sense that the attempt at communication was genuine, she cooperated fully. But still, Ankaht had not returned, and Jennifer actually felt…well, not saddened, but disappointed. She had thought that Ankaht was somehow at the center of the efforts to establish communication with her. Jennifer’s belief in that conjecture arose not from any message that Ankaht had sent, but from her behavior: specifically, her dogged determination to bridge the gap between them. Likewise, the careful way that Ankaht moved and positioned herself in the room bespoke a studied, meticulous methodology.

Jennifer had also detected an undercurrent of desperation—but how had she detected it? Where had that impression come from? Jennifer could not identify its source, but it was strong—almost as though it were an emotion that had been sent to her by Ankaht. And, given what Jennifer had wondered and tried to ask in their last session—whether Ankaht might be trying to link minds with her—perhaps the notion of having been “sent” the impression of desperation was not entirely wrong, after all. But if this were true, and the two of them had been on the verge of making some genuine progress in communication, then why had Ankaht not resumed coming to see—

The door opened—and Ankaht entered. Jennifer took a half step in her direction…then stepped back, holding Zander closer to her. She fought the primal defense reflex. No, she would approach the alien—just not while holding her child. Jennifer put up a hand as if giving a traffic signal to wait and paced slowly back to Zander’s crib, where she laid him, carefully and gently, among his blankets. After covering him up, she turned and came back toward Ankaht.

The small, dark alien flushed very light—almost olive-drab for a moment—as she lifted her sinuous arms and fanned wide the ten tentacles in each cluster, so that the end of each of her arms suddenly expanded into a pattern very like the spokes of a wagon wheel. However, with each tentacle tapering to a point, it looked more akin to an opening star, or the welcoming gesture of some impossible anemone. And with the gesture came a tingle at the back of Jennifer’s skull that mounted, threatened to become almost painful, but then resolved into—

(Celebration.)

Jennifer started: Had she heard, or felt, that sense of…“celebration”? And then the not-mirrors to her left revealed that they were not just one-way observation windows: they were projectors of a sort. For across them, in light blue, luminous block letters, words slowly bloomed into existence: “Male child joy congratulations Jennifer Peitchkov.”

To which Jennifer Peitchkov responded: “Holy shit.” She stared at the words for what seemed like a very long time. They’d been very busy, these Baldies, and they’d come a long way. But she wanted to be sure.

Jennifer went to the beginning of the Baldy “sentence,” touched the words “male” and “child” in sequence—noticing that her fingers left a lingering orange glow behind—and then pointed at Zander’s crib. She looked back toward Ankaht. “Yes?”

Ankaht’s very physical response alarmed Jennifer, who feared that the Baldy was having some kind of fit…until she recognized the jerky up-and-down motions of the three-eyed head were not some alien version of an epileptic seizure but her visitor’s stiff and awkward attempts to mimic a human nod. Meanwhile, a tingling buzz at the top of Jennifer’s spinal column resolved into—

(Affirmative.)

—even as the wall blanked and spelled out: “Yes. Male child. Joy dam Jennifer Peitchkov.”

Jennifer smiled but wondered: Had they misspelled “dame” as “dam”? But no, they would be sticking to the dictionary, and come to think of it, the term “dam” did specifically refer to a mother—albeit among species of livestock. So why not simply use “mother”? Unless…

Of course. If they’re going through our dictionary, they’ve learned that a “mother” might have adopted a child, or has many other possible meanings—not all of which are pleasant. But “dam” is a word with only one meaning; it is not susceptible to the same confusions of context—

And another pulse intruded—gently—upon her thoughts:

“Affirmative. Clarity requirement.”

Jennifer looked up: Ankaht was almost tan. She swayed; Jennifer leaped forward, snagging a chair by its backrest and swinging it around and under Ankaht’s rather humanlike posterior. The alien sank into the chair, and Jennifer felt—without any tingling in her head whatsoever:

(Gratitude.)

It wasn’t a word…but it was more than a feeling. And predictably, on the mirror smart-boards of her cage-become-classroom, Jennifer saw the words “Ankaht thank Jennifer Peitchkov.”

When Jennifer looked back at Ankaht, she saw the three eyes focused on hers and was suddenly struck by how, studied closely, they were surprisingly like human eyes. She almost imagined they were glad, smiling even….

Jennifer leaned back, set her shoulders, nodded, and realized she had come to a decision. She was going to learn to communicate with this Baldy. This one felt—right. But before the lessons began, before she started down the path of complete communicative cooperation, there was one thing she had to have, and know, first. And getting this across was not going to be easy.…

* * *

Ankaht rushed out of the observation cell with her arms in motion, her tentacles writhing. She knew she should calm herself, but at the moment she could not be bothered to conceal her urgency and distress from the members of her human research cluster.

“Ankaht—Elder—what is it? What distresses you so?”

(Insistence, focus.) “When Jennifer Peitchkov was taken from her house, there was a brief altercation. A human male resisted and was subdued. Rendered unconscious. What further information do we have on this?”

Orthezh, the linguistics prime, exchanged glances with Ipshef, the cognitive science prime. “There is no further information, so far as we know.”

(Fury.) “Then find the information, and swiftly.”

(Shock.) “Yes, at once, Elder—but what is so important about this human male?”

(Composure composure composure.) “This human male is our subject’s mate, the father of the human Firstling. And as far as Jennifer Peitchkov knows, he may have died.”

Ipshef nodded. “I see, Elder. We shall find if more information was recorded by the Enforcement team that went to collect her from her house. But even if the mate has been discarnated, it is not particularly seri—”

(Patience.) “Ipshef, these beings—the humans—apparently do not believe they incarnate again. They believe they live one life, and that is all. So she fears she has lost her mate to oblivion, to xenzhet-narmat’ai. For although my selnarm has touched her mind, which makes them people, they nonetheless believe themselves to be zheteksh.”

Ipshef and Orthezh started at the term zheteksh, which had heretofore been a synonym for a nonsentient species. But for a zheteshk to be able to think, to anticipate a death without incarnation—zhet—was the stuff of Ardu’s most fearsome myths. Only the most cursed or tragic of creatures fell forever into the abyss of eternal unlife, torment, and chaos that was called xenzhet-narmat’ai—“the place of eternal death beyond order or hope.” Ankaht felt Jennifer Peitchkov’s distress become very understandable to her two Primes.

“We shall search the files,” affirmed Ipshef.

Ankaht sent (urgency). “Do more—send an Enforcer unit to her house. I believe she shared it with the male. See if the house is inhabited. If so, determine if the male still lives there, or what his status might be.”

“It shall be done as you ask, Elder.”

“And call an immediate meeting of the rest of our research cluster. We need to concentrate all our efforts on completing the vocoder.”

The two primes looked at each other. “With respect, Ankaht, creating the vocoder is delicate work. To construct a portable, multimedia translation machine is a most difficult and time-consuming project. In order to achieve that goal any faster would require that we take effort away from—”

(Decisiveness, urgency, command.) “Do it. Do whatever you need to do. But complete the vocoder swiftly. Nothing is more important than this. This human, this artist and mother”—she flung all the tentacles of her left cluster so forcefully in Jennifer’s direction that they whipped out with a snapping sound—“she is the key—the touchstone and foundation—for the communication we must build with the humans. With her, and the vocoder, we will be able to bridge the gap between our races. But without them both—”

* * *

Heshfet toggled the communicator off: she radiated (annoyance). “More make-work.” The waves of her selnarm were irregular, testy, fierce: again, Lentsul had to temper and conceal his arousal.

“What is required of us?”

Heshfet rose, stretched out her spine with a sinuous and almost violent whipsawing snap and extended her arms and clusters until they quivered, rigid and golden. “The human-research cluster has ordered us to inspect a house near the Zone.”

“Suspected terrorists?”

“No such luck for us. We are just being sent to knock on the front door and see if the house is still infested—eh, ‘occupied.’ Apparently, one of the griarfeksh artists being studied by the cluster lived there, and her mate resisted the Enforcers. He was knocked in line and now the pathetic female griarfeksh is whining about what might have happened to him. So we have to check and see if he’s still in their ugly little warren of foul-patterned rooms.” She finished her stretching with a luxurious ripple of her spine.

Lentsul was sure Heshfet knew how provocative her motions were—which made themeven more provocative, of course. He watched her remove her machine-pistol from its ready locker, snug the toroid magazine into place beneath it, run a major tentacle through the round aperture made by the juncture between the weapon and the magazine: her selnarm radiated a primal (battlelust) that was already spreading to the other members of her group as they donned their torso armor. She seemed to have no consciousness of her own vulnerability, only of her profound certainty as, and eagerness to be, the annihilator of her race’s foes. She, like Torhok, took a certain fierce pride that their awareness stopped at the peripheries of their own present lives, which Lentsul could not comprehend. As he carefully slipped into his own armor, he sent a quiet pulse to Heshfet: “Does it not disturb you that you do not remember your past lives, Manip?”

(Amazement, amusement.) “Disturb me? Little Ixturshaz, not remembering all that past drivel liberates me. My mind is my own—no one has painted upon the canvas of my existence before me. I anoint the points of my skeerba with my enemy’s blood by my will and my skill alone, not in part-service to memories of times and places long gone, and meaningless to me.”

“Then how is it that you shotan your soul, your life and incarnations beyond this one? Remembering nothing before this life, does it not feel that this life is your only life?”

Heshfet’s answer was tossed to him almost as an aside. But it came a little too quickly, and the selnarm pulsed a little too stridently, to seem as fully nonchalant a response as Heshfet had apparently intended. “I need not feel a thing myself to know it exists and functions within me. What organ produces our selnarm? So far as we can tell, the brain. Have I ever seen my own brain? Has anyone been able to point to one part of it and say, “Here, here is the source of your selnarm?’ No and no. Similarly, have I memories of past lives? No. Do we know how it is that Illudor gathers up our souls and restores us to new bodies? No. Yet I know that both exist and function, and if I have no experience of the latter, I see it in others all around me. Why should I worry? I persist. I am greater than my memories, after all.”

I’m not so sure of that, thought Lentsul.

But he kept that thought to himself.

* * *

Alessandro McGee steered the old fuel-cell four-wheeler around a bear-sized boulder, then swerved to dodge a tree stump that protruded past the margin of the road. I know Rashid said the cabin was pretty remote, but hell!

The forty-minute drive Rashid mentioned had already consumed seventy minutes, and that had only brought McGee to the beginning of the cabin’s ungroomed camp-road, off the main highway. And as far as McGee could tell, the only thing that made the last fifteen kilometers of road a “highway” was that it was paved. Or had been, sometime within the last ten years.

McGee checked the chronometer on the dashboard and winced: he was going to be late getting back. In fact, his guests were now sure to arrive at his house before he did: no doubt about it. And Van Felsen would not be happy.

Of course, Van Felsen would have been even less happy if she knew about his private war against the Baldies. On the other hand, given her comments at the training facility in Upper Thessalaborea, McGee suspected that she knew about those activities anyway. But she had also seemed to be sending him a message that, if he stopped, all was forgiven. And maybe, deep down, she understood why he had had to carry the war to the Baldies.

And she damn well should understand, he thought. It’s easier to wait and watch, now that I’m on a special action team, now that I know we’re really going to do something. But before, it had all been just inane training without any action. And that’s not my thing. I guess it’s just like Harry said when we mustered out: the drill instructors started calling me Tank not because of my size but because of how I deal with obstacles—I plow straight through them. When Jennifer had arrived in his life, McGee had started to learn how to moderate that headfirst proclivity—but then the Baldies had come, and then the baby, and he couldn’t just sit around any longer.

But now I’ve got to clean up my act, he thought, tapping his pocket communicator. He spoke: “Call home.”

The communicator complied. He heard a line open and a faint, rippling hum that meant his call was going through.

* * *

Just after the house’s comm net stopped toning, Corporal Diane Narejko reached the top of the basement stairs and, upon seeing who had summoned her, snapped her best salute.

“Commander Van Felsen, sir!”

Lieutenant Colonel Elizabeth Van Felsen smiled up at her. “Snap it any harder than that, Corporal, and you’ll shake the starch right out of your sleeve. At ease.”

Diane stood down into the official at-ease position: legs spread slightly, hands clasped behind her back.

Van Felsen, who had almost turned away, turned back. “Allow me to rephrase, Corporal. Relax—and pull up a chair.”

“Sir?”

“Leave your post to Corporal…Corporal…”

“Corporal Wismer, sir. I can’t, sir. He’s home with the flu.”

“Very well.” Van Felsen waved over one of the three burly “hunters”—all Marines—who had accompanied the group to Sandro’s house. “Private Dalkilik, please man Corporal Narejko’s watchpost down in the basement. A fairly standard comms and concealed-camera monitoring rig—shouldn’t be any problem.”

“Yes, sir,” mumbled the Marine uncertainly; he descended the stairs.

“You know everybody?” asked Van Felsen as she led Narejko to a seat.

Diane shook her head, but then, seeing the ranks clipped on collars, started snapping another set of salutes.

Captain Falco laughed and waved it off, then removed his bars. “You’ll wear your arm out, Corporal. Besides, since we’re all wearing civvies, we’d better start thinking and acting like civilians, at least insofar as routine gestures and address arre concerned. If we’re here long enough for anyone to see us, it wouldn’t do for them to remember us as saluting each other and standing at attention all the time. Might blow our cover.” He grinned at the two remaining, hulking Marines, who would never be mistaken for civilians, regardless of what they wore or did.

Van Felsen nodded. “Captain Falco—er, ‘Terrence’—is right. Diane, this is Lieutenant Koyazin—‘Vedat,’ for now. And that fellow signing off on the comm net is ‘Joao,’ or just ‘Joe,’ Adams.”

Vedat Koyazin looked up. “Hey, Joe, who was that on the comm?”

Joe slid into a seat at the table next to Diane. “That was McGee. He’s going to be back a little later than he expected.”

“Is there a problem?” Van Felsen’s posture and voice were relaxed, but Diane saw wariness in her eyes.

“No, sir. I mean—‘no.’ ”

Vedat leaned back. “Funny, him being away from his own place when we get here.”

Joe smiled. “Really? You think so? Haven’t you noticed anything—odd—about this place?”

“Other than that funny soapy smell, no.”

“Well, that funny soapy smell is probably connected to why McGee’s late.”

“Huh?”

Joe pointed at the walls, then into the kitchen. “Look around. Most of this place hasn’t been touched in weeks, not since McGee’s…” Joe trailed off, found a new way to approach the topic without mentioning Jennifer Peitchkov’s abduction. “Look, Ved, it’s a bachelor apartment now, don’t you see? And this bachelor was in mourning until we gave him some real hope just a few days ago. So, until then, he was in hermit mode. No amenities. Just enough food for the next day or two. He’s almost out of toilet paper. I’d say half of the rooms haven’t been entered since—uh, ‘the visit’ we’ve come to investigate.”

Ved frowned. “And so you’re telling me that McGee is out—?”

“Getting stuff. Some cans of soda, a few rolls of TP. You know—hospitality, Marine-style.”

“He told you that?”

“He intimated it.”

“Okay.” And Ved turned to look at Diane.

She noticed that everyone else had turned to look at her, too…except the two big Marines, who were watching the front door and street outside. “What?” she said.

Van Felsen rested her arms on the table and leaned forward. “Diane, does that sound about right to you—what Joe said about Sandro?”

“Yes, si—I mean, yes, ma’am. I mean, he really wasn’t around much after the abduction: Jennifer was taken, he got beat up and then was dropped at the hospital by the Baldies. As an afterthought, almost—they only came back to the house after securing her. They picked him up, dumped him curbside at General. After he was released, he was back here a few days, hardly went out, hardly spoke. Then he went off on his trip to Upper Thessalaborea.” She looked meaningfully around the table, and they all smiled at her. “He came back just a few days ago. But he’s still been pretty distracted.”

Van Felsen nodded. “Which is why we’re just as happy he’s not here, Diane. And why we asked you to join us—and help us find out what happened when the Baldies came for Jennifer.”

“Me, si—ma’am? Heck, I’m just an operator. Sandro’s an officer, and he—”

“We know that, Diane. But we don’t want him in the loop on this. He’s not—not the right person to debrief on this situation.”

“But why not? Don’t you trust him? Sir—ma’am—you can’t find a better Marine than Sandro McGee. He’s—”

“We know that, too, Diane. If it’s any consolation to you, I think I trust Sandro more than I trust myself. But trust is not what this is all about.”

“Then what’s it about, ma’am?”

Falco leaned forward. “Diane, think it through. He may have a child, who, along with its mother, would be a Baldy captive right now. If the Baldies wake up and smell the coffee on how the intelligence and counterinsurgency game is really played, that means they have leverage.”

Diane blinked. “You mean—leverage to turn him? No, sir, not Sandro. Not even with his girl and child under their thumb. He’d never do that.”

Van Felsen nodded. “Agreed. I fear he’d do the opposite—that he’d lose control, do anything to get at the monsters who’ve taken the ones he loves. They don’t just call him Tank because he’s big, you know. He tends to go straight at a problem—or through it.”

“And that’s bad?”

Van Felsen sighed. “It is if the Baldies can use his actions to track back to any of us, or our operations, or our organization.”

“Yeah,” Diane admitted, “I can see how that could happen.” She looked up. “So, how can I help you?”

“Diane, I brought most of my command team here because the Baldies’ removal of twenty-three of Melantho’s artists is an act of considerable significance. They’ve shown little enough interest in assessing—or controlling—our intelligence and insurgency capabilities, which are the lifeblood of any resistance movement. But then they decide to grab a bunch of artists? Diane, the Baldies are not proceeding according to any military or occupation playbook we’ve ever heard of, so we decided to come have a look for ourselves. In particular, we wanted to conduct a close professional survey of Jennifer’s art, style, inspirations, surroundings, associates. The Baldies saw something in that demographic matrix that made them believe she was an important piece of some puzzle they’re trying to solve. If we can figure out why that piece is important to them, we might be able to infer the shape of the rest of the puzzle and start understanding what they were up to here.”

“Do you have a hypothesis on why they’re behaving so oddly?” Diane asked.

Van Felsen looked at Joe, and then over to Ved. “We have more than one hypothesis. As usual.” She smiled.

Joe Adams leaned forward. “I’ll take that as a signal to launch.”

Van Felsen’s smile broadened. “By all means. Fire away, Joe.”

He leaned back. “By any military standard we understand, Baldy occupation is outrageously ineffective. Other than our primary data nets and our personal communication services, they left everything else pretty much intact—even the computers at our universities and research centers. They haven’t clamped down on businesses and other markets that deal in large-scale provisioning—meaning we have already accumulated immense reserves of most consumables, except high-tech military ordnance and ammunition for advanced weapon systems. And they’ve left most of this planet unpatrolled. If they’ve put any widespread monitoring in place, then it’s a marvel of unobtrusiveness, because we haven’t been able to detect it after months of trying.”

Falco shifted. “So, what does that all mean, Joe? That they’ve got lousy leaders and low skill in military science and counterinsurgency?”

“It could—but we’re talking such no-brain factors here that I think it goes beyond military incompetence. I think it means they are not really a military force.”

“Uh, Joe, maybe you haven’t noticed the immense fleet overhead right now?”

“Oh, I noticed it, Ved—and I also noticed that actually, given its size, it underperformed against our fleet. Massively underperformed. So much so that I’d say the only reason the Baldies could do so poorly is that they’re not rigged for combat—not primarily.”

Falco frowned. “Meaning what, Joe?”

“Meaning that we’ve looked at their actions and assumed that reveals their identity. They invaded, so they must be invaders. But what if they’re not?”

Ved shook his head. “Joe, judging from their occupation of this planet and their apparent campaign farther into Rim space, I think it’s pretty obvious that they are invaders.”

“Is it? They are willing to fight, yes. But if any of the intelligent races we know of decided to assemble a slower-than-light fleet to conquer another star system, they’d think long and hard about the best military options for that campaign. Wouldn’t we expect their invasion fleet to be tailor-made for such an operation? But we have evidence before us that the Baldy fleet wasn’t designed that way. Their ships’ firepower-to-weight ratio is piss-poor. Their equipment for ground action is pitiful. Their counterinsurgency measures are either amateurish or nonexistent. So I ask you: Does it make sense that a species capable of building those immense pinhole drives—which each keep a micro–black hole on a leash—would be so lacking in both common sense and practical military experience that they couldn’t plan a better invasion than this?”

Van Felsen folded her arms. “Okay—but what does that have to do with abducting the artists?”

“Everything—if their intent in taking the artists was to attempt to find a better way to understand us.”

Ved tilted his head skeptically. “Joe, I have to say that a group of aliens who demonstrate absolutely no respect for life don’t seem like they’d really be interested in sitting down together over coffee for a good heart-to-heart. They slaughter our civilians—kids included—upon detecting the slightest hint of resistance.”

Joe nodded. “There’s no arguing that they clearly put a different value on life than we do. But let’s remember that this is true not only where our lives are concerned, but theirs as well.”

“So what?” Ved spread his hands. “Look, maybe their preferred alternative to cutting-edge military technology is a combination of overwhelming us in both material and biological production. Maybe they reproduce as quickly as rats—or faster. And, judging from their corresponding industrial-production efficiency, overwhelming us with sheer, easily produced numbers might be just the right strategy for them.”

Joe leaned forward into the debate. “Okay, Ved, so if we presume that they are master strategists—albeit working from a very different set of strengths—then how do you explain their ineptitude in counterinsurgency? If their fleet is an invasion fleet, and if its design is the best for their strategy, then it makes their failure as an occupying force all the harder to explain. They excel in all areas except counterinsurgency? And they can’t fix it or do better?”

“Do they really need to do better, Joe? They seem to have the planet well in hand—and with a minimum of bloodshed and effort.”

“Yeah—largely because we haven’t done anything yet. But their lack of skill is already evident in their inability to adjust their responses to our offensive variations. They only have two speeds in their counterinsurgency gearbox: neutral or double-torque overdrive. They either do nothing—or they launch one of their insane overkill reprisals. Resist them too strongly in an area? They cede the area…and then raze it and blast anything that tries to exit.”

Ved frowned and cocked his head. “Maybe that’s not a weakness. Maybe they’ve studied the challenges of occupation—particularly in a cross-species scenario such as this—and have decided their current methodology is the most effective and economical approach. It sure is a lot simpler. They have one simple rule: immediate, absolute, and dispassionate counterstrikes into any contested area. And we’ve learned to respect that quickly enough, regardless of any other communications impasse that might exist between our species. So, did they arrive here unprepared to deal with insurgents? Or have they reasoned through the tactical problems of counterinsurgency more completely—and more ruthlessly—than we have?”

Falco held up both his hands. “Okay. After hearing your two different hypotheses, it’s clear that we still can’t conclusively determine if the Baldy occupation strategies and tactics indicate insufficient, or ruthlessly effective, planning. However, whichever it is, grabbing a bunch of artists makes no sense from a military standpoint.”

Ved put up a finger. “With respect, it makes no sense from an immediate tactical standpoint. But if it’s an attempt to understand us better, it’s a long overdue strategic intelligence move. Whether they mean to use their increased understanding to communicate with us or simply control us more effectively remains unclear.”

Joe leaned back. “Perhaps not—not when we add in some other data that might indirectly shed additional light on why they came here.”

“Which is?” Van Felsen’s eyes were focused on Joe.

“My theory is that their military efforts seem so amateurish because they were not at all fixated on combat when they started out on their interstellar journey. Consider their so-called military organization. It follows the same structural lines as all their other social collectives. Their units are really more like semiautonomous work groups. And their vehicles, weapons, and other equipment lack the appearance or performance of purpose-built military machinery. The same is true of their ships.”

Falco frowned. “So if they weren’t geared up to arrive here as invaders, then what did they have in mind?”

Diane surprised herself by speaking. “Maybe they were thinking of themselves as explorers or settlers.”

Van Felsen nodded encouragingly, but her voice held a note of reserve. “Maybe—but this Baldy fleet represents a lot of investment just for an exploratory jaunt, or even for a settlement initiative. All those immense ships… Damn, seems to me like they left home because they wanted new turf.”

Joe smiled. “Or because they needed new turf. Which would explain the extraordinary investment they made in this fleet.”

Falco frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Look. I had Toshi Springer and her team track back along the Baldies’ approach vector. Nothing interesting for a few hundred light-years, then you hit fairly obstructive nebulae, but right beyond that, you find two novae. Very close to each other. The first, a blue-white giant, looks like it triggered the other one. And probably not more than one or two thousand years ago.”

Van Felsen sat straight. “And so you think…?”

Joe nodded. “The Baldies didn’t set out on a campaign of conquest. This was a desperate exodus. They are not ravagers on a rampage. They are race of refugees in extremis.”

Ved smiled. “Maybe. Or maybe not. You’ve spent so much time thinking about the Baldies that you’ve become their pal, have succumbed to the Stockholm syndrome.”

“Maybe,” responded Joe with a matching smile. “Or maybe not.”

* * *

Jennifer heard Zander throwing his arms around in his crib, lively and happy, but that was just a precursor to his impending discovery that—once again—he was hungry. She tried to refocus on Ankaht, who was evidently trying to ask a question about human relationships or life or experience or…something. It wasn’t clear: the mind-emotion pulses were not precise enough, and the words that sprayed across the smart-screens were like a random selection of terms from the same page in a thesaurus: all related, but it was impossible to discern the intent. She knew it was a question, because the Baldies had learned the word “interrogative,” and they always led with that on its own, and then followed with the vocabulary mishmash. But the cascade of terms—life death birth end more again life mate pair life again more—never made sense, no matter how the Baldies rearranged it. Jennifer watched, almost in pity, as Ankaht became increasingly expressive. Her greater animation was somewhat evident in her face, but more markedly in her clusters’ tentacles, which swayed and writhed and stabbed in some fitful attempt to push the words and her mind-speaking into some meaning that Jennifer could understand. Jennifer reflected that it was like trying to communicate with a person who was wearing a mask, and who could only speak a foreign language: she got emphasis and gestures, but the actual content was, at best, uncertain. Sometimes it was just plain noise.

Jennifer lowered her eyes, put her hands up, and said, “Stop.”

Peripherally, she saw Ankaht’s motions cease. With a sigh she rose—and got to Zander’s crib just in time to hear his coos take on a tinge of insistence: time for the next feeding.

She turned and considered the seat next to Ankaht, then the baby in her arms—and thought: Oh, why the hell shouldn’t I bring Zander closer to Ankaht? They could have already killed or tortured us in any way they want, a dozen times over, if that was their intent.

She reapproached Ankaht, carefully settling Zander at her breast even as she settled herself into the seat. Comfortable and pleased by Zander’s determined and successful nuzzling, Jennifer leaned back, very relaxed, waiting to see what Ankaht would do next.…

* * *

Ankaht had just about decided to give up for the day. After some initial progress on purely primal concepts and emotions, she had tried to push open the selnarmic link. She stuck to the simplest of terms and used every gesture of her race, and those she could recall of Jennifer’s, to forge a further communicative bond, but to no avail.

When Jennifer rose to tend to her newborn male, Ankaht feared that the day’s efforts were now over, but happily that was not the case. Jennifer came back, more slowly, preparing to provide the Youngling nourishment from her own body, much as did Arduan females for their young. And then the new mother sat, settled in, relaxed—

—And a door opened in Jennifer’s rudimentary selnarm. As if looking through a tiny porthole in the side of a vast ship, Ankaht could nonetheless perceive some small part of the interior of Jennifer Peitchkov without significant obstruction. She sent a selnarmic tendril through that aperture. “Jennifer Peitchkov, I celebrate your mother-joy. I, too, am a female.”

Jennifer looked up, her two mid-sized eyes wide—but not afraid. A wave of (surprise) came back at Ankaht—surprise at the sudden clarity of the message she had received. She has already deduced Ankaht’s gender long ago.

Ankaht quickly trumpeted (joy!) at the human. “Yes, Jennifer: hear me!” Ankaht’s selnarmic roar would have been suitable in one of the ancient parodies, where the Fool was invariably associated with very crude and histrionic selnarmic emissions. Embarrassed before her peers, Ankaht doggedly pressed on. “Is it proximity to your progeny that has opened this channel between us?”

From the other side of the porthole, as weak and hollow as a diffident selnarmic shrug from the other side of the planet, came the reply. “Maybe. baby. helps. me. do. this. know. not.”

It was crude, simplistic, faint. But the intent was clear, and unassisted contact had been made.

However, Ankaht now felt the porthole closing, partly because she herself was becoming too exhausted to maintain it, partly because Jennifer seemed to have drifted past the point of both relaxation and focus where their minds were truly aligned with each other.

Ankaht leaned back and discontinued her enormous selnarmic push. She spent a moment recovering, then rose, pointed to the smart-walls that wrote in accordance with her selnarmic commands. “Jennifer Peitchkov. Ankaht depart.”

As she did, Jennifer looked up and showed her teeth in what the humans called a “smile.” Although it could mean many things in many contexts, it seemed to indicate a positive emotion here. And, almost as faint as a feather brushed across her forehead, Ankaht felt a faint selnarmic fragment reach out from the human: (affinity).

Ankaht tried to return that emotion, then turned and made for the exit. She hadn’t achieved as much as she had dared hope.

But it was a start.

* * *

Sandro finally reached the main road back into Melantho and checked the chronometer on the console. He was already two hours late and had another thirty minutes before he’d get to the house. And he hadn’t stopped to get the toilet paper yet. Well, there was one roll left. That ought to be enough. And besides, everyone there was a Marine. Nothing was beyond their courage, after all.

He gunned the already-whining engine and wondered if he should vacuum the car to remove any chemical residues of the plastic explosives he had buried—just in case the Baldies started getting smart enough to run spot checks.

* * *

Heshfet swished her lesser tentacles impatiently. “How long, Lentsul?”

“Soon, Manip. Five minutes, maybe six.”

The rest of the Enforcers sat still and stolid in the back of the wheeled security carrier. Two, like Heshfet, had their tentacles snugged through and around the handles of their machine-pistols. The rest—still following the orders of the Council of Twenty—had their own weapons close to their clusters but not clutched and ready.

Heshfet pushed an exhortative wave of (vigilance) through the team and then reached to open the channel to the combat air patrol.

“Heshfet?” asked Lentsul.

(Sardonic.) “Just in case things get interesting. Although we would never be so lucky.” She also activated the remote-deployment mode of the vehicle’s six defense blisters. So primed, they could be launched to serve as independent aerial weapons platforms at the flick of a selnarmic switch. “How long now?” she asked again.

“A minute less than before, Manip.”

Which Heshfet rewarded with a brief wash of (amusement). “Not bad. You have some spirit after all, Ixturshaz. Now pay attention to the road.”

* * *

Van Felsen leaned back from the table. “Well, if Joe is right that the Baldies did not set out as invaders—and it seems a reasonable conjecture—we are nonetheless stuck with the fact that they have become invaders. If we can get them to reconsider their aggressive posture, that would be wonderful, but we won’t know one way or the other until we can talk to them. And I suspect some of them are thinking the same thing in reverse—which is why they took the artists: to find a way to talk to us.

“But in the meantime, we have a war on our hands. And until now, we’ve concentrated on preparations, not operations. There have been some rogue activities, of course: most notably the bombings in this very city.”

Diane, who had been McGee’s willing accomplice on two of the bombing missions, tried very hard not to flinch or fidget. Which was fortunate, because she had the distinct, if peripheral, impression that Van Felsen was watching out of the corner of her eye. Falco was openly staring in her direction. Great, they must know. But keep your trap shut unless they ask, Diane.

Van Felsen hadn’t paused. “But just as we’re here to find clues on how we might be able to talk to the Baldies, we’d also better make plans for backing up our diplomatic words with some major military muscle. And of course we can’t ignore the possibility that the only reason the Baldies want to talk to us is to tell us how to best get in line for our pending extermination. So let’s start with an assessment of our current status. You’re done correlating all the regional reports, Terrence?”

“Finished just yesterday, Comman—eh, Liz.”

Van Felsen almost smiled. “Elizabeth will suffice, Terrence.”

“Er…yes, Elizabeth. Well, as I was saying right before I put my foot in it and it’s taken a while to get all the regional reports in place and summarized. We’ve confirmed earlier reports that the Baldies have deorbited large pieces of their space arks to use as citadels for the seven small cities they’ve established on the Adriagean Archipelago and the coastlines of Sparta and Sisyphus. We don’t have good intel on these sites because of the sparse populations on those continents. However, subsequent covert observation places the estimated population of each Baldy city at somewhere between three hundred thousand and five hundred thousand.”

Van Felsen’s eyes were narrowed and bright. “But then why put one city—their biggest—right here in Melantho? And why dislocate so many of the residents?”

“Well, of course we only have speculation, but I agree with Ensign Montaño’s analysis that the Baldies felt they needed one point of contact with the resident population. Melantho was their logical strategic alternative. It’s a deep-water port, has a sizable spaceport, and is the roadway and air-corridor hub for our largest cities—Icarius, Asphodel, and Hallack. By investing Melantho, they put themselves right at the center of the Big Triangle, meaning they can observe, patrol, and of course strike all three from their rather sizable military base right here.

“As to why they felt it necessary to unhouse the entirety of the West Shore District, and give us fifty thousand refugees to deal with, your guess is as good as mine. But Montaño thinks that just as we need to keep tabs on them, so they feel the need to do the same with us. And since they had already decided to make this city their planetside military fortress, where better to keep tabs on us than right here, where they have plenty of force to maintain control?”

Van Felsen nodded. “Okay. Let’s stay on the topic of their military. What do we know about its dispersal, command structure, doctrine?”

Falco shook his rather knoblike head. “Too damned little. Their table of organization is—well, it’s a damned mystery. We think we’ve observed NCOs as distinct from line troops, but then the roles seem to change. And sometimes we encounter units made up entirely of the tall, golden ones but other times comprised of a mix of those and the short, dark Baldies. We don’t know how they pass orders, but they are a marvel of coordination—particularly in a firefight. While we’re shouting orders, trying to track our people on HUDs, and keeping the tactical channels free of needless chatter, the Baldies are moving like a well-oiled machine. Never a misstep. They’ve got us hands down on operational fluidity and situational awareness of their own people. We make up for it in better tactics and doctrine. If their plans were a tenth as good as their small-unit cohesion and control, we’d be ground meat.

“On the technical side, we’ve seen short arms, long arms, and what we think are rocket launchers. At the risk of overgeneralizing, I’m happy to report that their personal weapons are just not up to our military standards, either in terms of accuracy or lethality. They seem more like—well, multipurpose weapons…which I guess goes right along with what Joe is postulating regarding their origins as refugee-pioneers. They don’t have purpose-built military tech. Or maybe their attitude is to simply let their automated stand-off platforms do the heavy work. We all know they are very dependent upon user-directed blisters, which are both well-armored and well-equipped with a variety of passive and active sensors. Almost all their troops—if you can call them that—have laser designators with which they call in support from these blisters or from off-site rocket batteries. And they are pretty aggressive about bringing down the thunder really close to their own positions. The one incident when a Resistance cell actually close-assaulted a Baldy position, the damn no-noses actually called in a broken arrow.”

Diane had heard the term before, usually in historical references, but had never quite figured out what it meant. “A broken arrow?”

Ved leaned in her direction. “Sort of like a danger-close fire mission on steroids. ‘All tubes and ordnance: fire for effect, my coordinates.’ ”

Diane swallowed, felt her eyes widen. “Shit…Ved,” she said.

He smiled at her, caught a nod from Falco. “Okay. The report on our own equipment situation. Here’s the bottom line—we can’t field true military units. At least, not many.”

Van Felsen looked up sharply. “I thought we pulled in a sizable percentage of the caches and stashes. Didn’t we get enough?”

Ved shrugged. “Yes and no.”

Falco’s scowl was as sour as his tone. “Well, that statement was a marvel of clarity.”

“Sorry, Cap—Terrence. Here’s what I mean to say. Yes, we have a lot of military-grade equipment, particularly weapons, ammo, personal commo and tracking gear, and—thankfully—air-defense systems, including high-velocity missiles. But we had to leave a lot behind at Acrocotinth Main Base. There simply wasn’t time for removal. And if we wanted to keep the Baldy anxiety regarding a possible resistance movement low, then we had to be very careful regarding how much we took from the other bases and armories. Any depot or cache that was located in a populated area with other loot-worthy targets nearby—well, we took all the contents in those cases. And we made sure the surrounding area was looted as well.”

Joe nodded. “So it didn’t look like the military matériel was taken with special care and malice aforethought.”

“Right. But isolated bases and armories—that was a hard call. How much should we take? In retrospect, I’m not sure the Baldies would have minded if we took it all, lock, stock, and barrel. But we had no way to know they’d be this clueless about resistance movements. So we figured that we should take no more than ten to twenty percent of the total matériel, with all of the missing items withdrawn in an orderly fashion and due to reasonable causes.”

Van Felsen was frowning. “Still, all together, that sounds like a lot of gear.”

“It is—if you were to pile it all up in one place. You could comfortably outfit a few battalions of light infantry. Yeah, some of the equipment is almost Rebellion vintage, but what the hell: it’s still milspec. Compared to the combat gear the Baldies have shown us, any fifty of our troops could dish out a double helping of whup-ass to any fifty of theirs. But we’ll never get that density of military technology in any operation or region. We’ve got scores of Resistance cells all over the place, and each one of them needs a stiffening core of the heavy punch that milspec weapons deliver. When you start dividing the equipment among all those cells, it gets spread pretty thin.”

“So…?”

“So I recommend that we keep a central operational reserve. Maybe about ten percent of the milspec total. We hold that back for the return of the Fleet—that is, when the big balloon goes up—or when we get a target with a high enough strategic value to put in all our chips on one roll of the dice. Otherwise, each Resistance cell keeps a small cache of military gear for any operations of major local significance, but only to be used if given authorization by Elizabeth. So until we’ve got a good reason to bring out the big guns, we keep them quiet and hid—”

“Commander, I’ve got movement at the east end of the street. Baldy security vehicle, sir. Dismounting troops.”

“Shit.” Falco kicked back out of his chair and went for his strangely angular overnight bag. Felsen yelled down the stairs, “Private Dalkilik, get on deck,” then turned to the other “hunter,” who was moving to support their front street spotter. “No, Corporal—you check the back door and see if our path of retreat is clear.”

Joe and Ved had each produced old, short-barrel bullpup assault carbines: low-powered by modern standards, but their compact designs had allowed them to fit in the officers’ luggage. Diane, tugging at the flap of her holster, stopped when Van Felsen put a hand on her arm and asked, “Corporal Narejko, are you up to date on your heavy-weapons training?”

“Affirmative.”

“Good. Then open the big map tube we brought.”

Diane did. Instead of maps was yet another tube—an irregular dark green one that was the launcher for a relatively modern fire-and-forget multimissile pack.

“Take up your position at the far left window, Corporal,” ordered Van Felsen as she produced and checked her own machine-pistol.

* * *

Lentsul almost started when Heshfet leaned over and stabbed a tentacle at the forward camera monitor: the front door of the target house had opened a crack, then shut quickly. The Destoshaz Manip sent a pulse of (thrill, interest, aggression) to everyone in her vehicle. “Well, maybe visiting here isn’t such a pointless task, after all. Hold here, Lentsul, and launch our drones. All of them.”

He complied. The security APC rolled to a stop, its nose just poking into the street that fronted on the house they had been sent to check. In that moment, all six weapons blisters rose up and out of their half-bays, turboprops whining, ducted side fans angling them up and away from the armored personnel carrier.

Heshfet stretched her arm over Lentsul’s shoulder and pointed to the screen. “Look at all the thermal blooms inside the house. It has very much been reoccupied. Dramatically so.”

Lentsul followed her gaze. “Agreed, Manip. Indeed, there might be too many of the griarfeksh. I will send two of the blisters around the back. In addition, I suggest we—”

Heshfet sent the combat air patrol a support request through the selnarm-moderated command circuit. Within a second, her message had been acknowledged. Even now, at least half a dozen Arduan strike craft would be sweeping in to put their ordnance at Heshfet’s disposal. As she triggered the vehicle’s squad-bay door, she instructed (readiness, wariness, ferocity) and also: “The natives that submit, we take captive. All others are to be killed.” She rose up to her full height, brandished her machine-pistol. “Now”—Heshfet’s selnarm surge swept the length of the vehicle—“follow me!”

* * *

Diane slid down and into a fire-ready position just as the private—who had taken her watch in the basement—finished pounding up the stairs. He immediately went for his bulky valise.

Ved had snapped off his safety and gone to the window on the opposite side of the door from the staircase. “Jesu of Old, they must have had this house under observation.”

“Looks like it.” Falco put his eye to the sights of his own weapon, and Diane imagined she could hear an unspoken addition: “Yes, the unauthorized bombers operating out of this location must have been sloppy enough to leave a trail. And that’s going to get all of us killed now.”

Van Felsen was scanning the room, checking everyone’s positions and readiness. He threw a glance at the back door—

—where the hulking Marine corporal she’d sent to check that route of egress had evidently decided to get his rather immense rifle first: he had just stuck his head out the door, leading with the weapon’s muzzle.

“Corporal!” shouted Van Felsen. “No—don’t show weapons. Not unless we have to, damn it!”

The large Marine, flustered, looked out the back door again as if checking whether anyone had seen him or heard her…then froze for one instant and hastily shut the door.

Van Felsen’s voice—and face—was like a slab of bone-dry slate. “Report, Corporal. What did you see out there?”

* * *

Lentsul had just maneuvered one defense blister into position behind the target house when the rear door opened and the barrel of a griarfeksh military rifle protruded. He quickly dropped the altitude of the blister so that its sensor cluster just topped the roofpeak of an adjoining house. He reached out with (urgency) toward—“Heshfet!”

But she had obviously been monitoring the real-time selnarm output that converted the vehicle’s streaming sensor data into the equivalent of a telepathic command channel. “I see it, Lentsul. Send blister 3 to cover the rear exit, also. Now”—and she widened her selnarm projection to include her entire Enforcer-Group—“the griarfeksh are armed but not yet prepared. Quickly, rush the building before they can organize themselves!” And, exemplary Destoshaz that she was, Heshfet broke into a swift charge toward the target house.

Lentsul—both fearful and aroused by her gallantry—pulsed a warning (desist!) and pleaded with her to “Stop—wait for the air cover! Wait for all the blisters to be in position! Heshfet, you must wait just another—”

But Heshfet’s selnarm had walled out his reluctance and suffused with (berserkergang), she closed on the house.

* * *

Joe Adams—usually the most animated of Van Felsen’s command staff—was evidently a very cool customer in a crisis. “They’re coming,” he announced calmly from his position farther up the stairs that were just a step behind Diane. He was using the mid-floor landing as a higher vantage point to see out the same window where Diane waited. “Commander, they are charging with weapons at the ready.”

“Shit,” hissed Van Felsen, who looked not so much angry as bitterly disappointed. “Corporal, clear us a path of retreat out the back. The rest of you hold them off and disengage in descending order of rank, as possible. You do not wait for anyone else—you run like hell. Stay split up. Make all speed for fallback point delta. If it’s compromised, you go into the bush and head for the nearest Resistance cell. Got it?”

Nods and murmurs of assent.

“Good. How close are they?”

Falco sounded tense. “They’ll be coming through the door in a five-count. No sign of stopping or any attempt to communicate.”

Van Felsen shook her head in what looked like both despair and disgust. “Open fire,” she said.

* * *

The change in situation was so abrupt that Lentsul hardly knew what to do first. The back door opened, and a stream of murderous fire poured out—and hit the primary rearwatch blister dead-on. Already impressed by the marksmanship, he was utterly stunned when the unit’s protoselnarm link stuttered and died: that heavy human rifle had been firing some form of hypervelocity armor-penetrating round. He commanded the next blister to rise up and return fire with all munitions, then sent another to the rear as Heshfet had instructed.

But in the same instant, the front windows of the house exploded outward in a glistening wave of shattered glass as multiple muzzle flashes licked angrily out over the sidewalk.

Lentsul felt Heshfet’s soka—her life force—wink out in the very first moment of that fusillade. All her vitality and energy and raw, primal power was erased instantly, and in its place there was an emptiness so profound and yawning that it felt as if the provocative Destoshaz had never existed, had been a figment of Lentsul’s fevered sexual imagination.

The others of Heshfet’s group were not so lucky, for they did not expire so quickly. The half that did not get to cover first were savaged by multiple hits from a variety of human weapons—all of which fired faster and harder than anything that the Children of Illudor had yet encountered. Limbs trailing, clusters and tentacles shattered or even severed, they fell into writhing, blood-spurting heaps, expiring in an agony that buffeted Lentsul with a selnarm wave almost as powerful and piteous as that which had accompanied the burning deaths he had felt during the convoy ambush.

Lentsul experienced a befthel—a “three-eyed blink” that was often a sign of impending shock—before he could respond. And then, with (hate, vengeance, bloodlust) suddenly rising up through him and into the nearby selnarm links, he gave rapid orders to the blisters. One covered the rear door; a second boosted high on its fans for a bird’s-eye look down upon the rear of the house. A third went to the front to provide support for the remaining Destoshaz Enforcers; a fourth hung back behind it, lurking low, waiting to pop up, and the last remained back near the vehicle to provide a base of fire.

Then he reached out his selnarm to the remaining group members, but an instant too late. They were—

* * *

“—charging again, Commander.”

“Hit them—hard,” said Van Felsen, who, turning, obviously intended to check the back door.

Diane could hardly keep track of events after that: they came so swiftly, that there was no reliable sequence.

All the firepower at the front of the house lashed out again. She popped up to look at the Baldy attackers and was stunned by their utter silence, composure, sinuous dodges, and eerie coordination. There were no delays, no waiting, no double-checking. Their fast leapfrog advance was seamless—but hopeless. The interlocking fields of fire tore the rest of them to pieces.

But a blister—airborne and right behind them—was firing with far greater accuracy. And lethality: the private at the door was literally cut in half by a sheet of small-caliber autofire that roared out of the blister in excess of eight hundred rounds per minute. At the same time, the same drone sent a small rocket blasting into the wall to the right of the door. Falco cartwheeled back into the middle of the room, missing both his left arm and the left side of his head.

Bastards, thought Diane, who brought the launcher up to her shoulder and dropped the crosshairs on the advancing blister. The vertical and lateral bars flashed and were then lined in green: she pulled the oversized trigger.

With a dull cough, the clearing charge put the rocket a few meters beyond the muzzle of the launcher. Diane ducked—just as the roar of the rocket kicked in and sent a back-blast through the window she’d been using but a moment before. A split second later, there was a confused smash, blast, howl of violated metal, and an even larger explosion.

Above and behind, Joe Adams’s shout was a celebration. “That’s one down, Corporal! Now hit ’em with—”

Then the rotary weapon sound came again, a little more distant—and she looked up in time to see calm, genial Joe Adams blasted into bloody tatters by yet another blister-mounted rotary machine gun.

Fucking bastards, she amended, selecting another AP round from the five-rocket magazine sleeve at the rear of the weapon. She shouldered the tube, readied herself to rise into a firing position—

—just as she saw the Marine corporal at the rear of the building go down. Van Felsen, arriving there a moment later, picked up his immense rifle, knelt, and dumped the clip skyward out the back door: there was a shuddering roar over the rooftops. Van Felsen dropped the spent weapon, turned, and shouted, “We’re leaving! Everyone on m—”

And then Van Felsen exploded. She literally came apart in a spray of bone and blood and organs that spattered across the room—along with a few pieces of shrapnel that made a zipping sound as they went through Diane’s left lung and shoulder. Ved was less lucky; at least a dozen fragments cut through his torso, and—eyes wide and a broad blood smear on the wall behind him—he slid down to the floor and slumped over.

Well, shit, thought Diane through her tears—and she came up to a crouch, firing at the first weapon blister she saw, not even bothering to wait for a targeting lock. She ducked down—and the same sounds of catastrophic destruction filled the street in front of the house.

Clutching the launcher, she low-crawled toward the back door and glanced around; only she was left. And there was obviously another flying trashcan covering the mostly closed back door—the one that had hit Van Felsen. Diane felt her lips pull back even as she pulled back the loading lever to advance yet another 38 mm AP rocket into the weapon’s launch chamber. Well, trash can, you’re going down. She squirmed over and crouched behind the door, ready to push it open, sweep the skies, and take a fast shot—

—when the door before her disintegrated under a typhoon of small, high-velocity bullets. Through the tattered remains of the door, she had a split-second glimpse of a defense blister floating there, just a meter beyond the doorframe. Evidently, it had been waiting for her thermal signature to draw close enough to fire blind through the door itself.

Diane Narejko discovered that she was still, inexplicably, completely lucid, despite the fact that her back was so wet with her own blood that she was lightly sticking to the wall where the inward blast had impaled and pinned her. And as the blister advanced through the doorway, and its rotary machine gun roared again, she experienced a fleeting feeling—rather like a great sadness—as she realized that the red spray now obscuring her vision was her own blood flying up from the bullets tearing through her chest.

And then, after another split second of the dusky red spray, came a deep, permanent blackness.

* * *

Lentsul, still quivering with rage and grief and horror, watched the pieces of what had been a human drop to the floor.

The selnarm link poked at him. (Urgent. Missiles inbound. Confirm?) came from the combat air patrol which, having been automatically updated on the terrible casualties the Group had suffered, now had precision munitions locked on target. Lentsul considered calling off the strike, sending the weapons to circle back around to fall harmlessly in the bay, but he reasoned—thinly—that there might still be some hostile griarfeksh in the house. And there was no reason to take chances that would cost more lives from the ranks of his brothers and sisters. Best let the weapons strike.

But he knew his real reason: he wanted to obliterate the house and the remains of those that had killed Heshfet. Heshfet who had always had contempt for him; who had stretched like a goddess when she emerged from the misting-chamber; who had been impetuous, temperamental, capricious, emotional, and the object of his every waking and sleeping fantasy. These griarfeksh would pay—and keep paying—for discarnating her: even if they had already gone to a blank, soulless death in the true oblivion of xenzhet-narmat’ai. He would make sure that they were all spinning down that hole of utter nothing, make sure in the most final manner possible: he would wipe the house from the face of the earth.

So it was that when Lentsul sent (confirm) he did not stop to think—nor would he have cared—that he was sterilizing the site of any possible intelligence or forensics value.

And he did not know that, just as surely, he was cremating the remains of what had been the only, and last, nascent hope for peace between Arduans and humans.

* * *

Sandro had seen smoke arise with great suddenness over the roofs of his neighborhood as he pulled on to the closest cross-street that would allow him to park near his house. Then more smoke, and he heard the double-crack of distant sonic booms from all points of the compass: Baldy combat flyers going supersonic, and from every side of him. From every part of the horizon.

As he nosed into the intersection with the street that went past his front door, he saw the source of the smoke from three blocks away: his house was aflame. Burning wreckage—some Baldy machinery, some nearby parked vehicles, even parts of the façade of his house—filled the street. He thought he saw bodies as well, and floating objects that looked like upright, round-ended canisters: Baldy weapon blisters in remote mode. Farther beyond that, through the smoke and occasional movement, he saw what looked like the nose of a Baldy personnel carrier—which rolled backward, even as he watched. The blisters stopped their vaguely cyclic movement and fell back directly on the armored vehicle, accompanying it out of sight around the distant corner.

That was when Sandro caught a flash of movement from the corner of his eye. High above the rooftops, a dot—riding a growing column of smoke—was hurtling downward at a sharp angle. Then he noticed five others, each closing from different, and widely separated, points of the compass.

Sandro took his foot off the brake, accelerated smoothly through the intersection, turned back in the direction he had come from, and took a quick look in his rearview mirror.

As he watched, the first missile came down. He saw the roof of his house—and several nearby—fly upward, riding a geyser of smoke and intermittent flame. Then the other five missiles came in, just as the sound of the explosions started rolling over him in one long wave: the concussions rattled the glass of his vehicle’s rear window, and shook the roadway enough that he could feel it shift under him as he drove.

And, hands digging into the synthetic leather of the steering wheel, he thought: This—this is all me. This is my fault.

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Framed