Jelaza Kazone
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
The scanner was a constant, comradely presence as Chernak and Stost pursued their studies in the Troop common room. This morning, they had an additional comrade in Diglon Rifle, who was also at study, which they understood to be a part of his assigned duty for the house.
So, three soldiers at duty, the scanner a cheerful babble in the background, naming ships, issuing lane changes, chastising the laggards, assigning berths, and lift-out times…
“Sleet and snow!” the scanner shouted.
Three soldiers spun in their chairs. Stost went so far as to come to his feet, head at an angle as the port issued its instructions.
“We need a screen!” he said. “If someone is throwing rocks at the planet, we need to see!”
“Agreed,” Diglon said, and raised his voice somewhat. “Jeeves, we would profit from a feed in the common room.”
The screen hanging on the wall over the scanner flickered and, indeed, there was an image, a large rock, cutting across the orderly lanes of Surebleak traffic as if it were navigating plain space. An overlay appeared.
“The larger, that is the rock-ship which brought this house and all its goods from the world of Liad to this location,” Diglon said. “There are similarities, but this one incoming is smaller. More rapid, I think.”
In the background, elsewhere in the house, Captain Robertson asked a question, and Jeeves answered, “On course for our driveway.”
“Divert it!” Chernak snapped.
“Descent is already slowing,” Jeeves stated. “House shielding is up. I anticipate a soft landing.”
Stost turned to look at Chernak. Chernak turned to look at Diglon.
“A soft landing,” she repeated. “Rifle, you have some experience of these?”
“Only one other—the larger rock I spoke of. It came in soft and set the house down with precision. Mr. pel’Kana said it was so gently done, not a wine glass was broken.”
“Who pilots such a craft—in such a manner?” demanded Stost.
“The Clutch,” said Diglon, and paused, as if awaiting some moment of recognition.
Chernak showed open, empty hands. “We are not familiar.”
“No? This, more than anything else you have said, convinces me that you hail from another universe,” Diglon said, his eyes on the screen.
“You see? It slows again.”
“It does,” Stost agreed. “But these—Clutch. What manner of pilot? How are they allowed to land with such disregard of the lanes and order of approach?”
“A function of the drive,” Diglon said. “You know that I am not a pilot, but there are papers written, some of which I have read. So far as I understand, the drive demands that the craft work close, using surrounding mass to navigate.”
Stost reclaimed his abandoned chair.
“They are warlike, these Clutch?” asked Chernak. “You are surprised that fellow soldiers do not know them.”
“I think…not warlike,” said Diglon. “They prefer to give fair warning. Many, many years ago, they gave fair warning to the Troop: Cease what you are about in this area of space, or we, the Clutch, will lay waste to your ships and yourselves.”
He paused, frowning somewhat. “The Clutch, they do not appear warlike. They are large, it is true, but impeded by their own bodies. They do not move rapidly. They seem, so my wife assures me, comical…not beings that soldiers, even such as I, might consider to be a threat.”
“Nor did the soldiers who confronted the Clutch so many years ago?” Stost guessed. “They ignored the fair warning?”
“They did,” Diglon said somberly. “And so the Clutch made good their threat. Two Conquest Corps were lost, and outlying ships. And, to this day, should a ship of the Troop find itself in the vicinity of a ship of the Clutch, it is the Troop who run away.”
“And these…warriors are going to land in the driveway. Where will we run to, Friend Diglon?”
“We will stay where we are, unless the Captain calls us,” Diglon said with dignity. “If we are wanted, we will go. We are soldiers of the house, under the Captain’s command. I will shame neither.”
“Well said,” Stost said solemnly. “Have you an idea of how many might be in the rock incoming?”
Diglon frowned at the screen.
“It seems…very small,” he said. “Maybe a Clutch, or two, new from the creche might comfortably fit in such a vessel. The Scout’s Clutch-brother, Edger, whom I have seen and been made known to—he could not fit.”
“Is he so large then?”
“Large, yes, but also, he cannot bend. When this one is down and away from the ship, you will understand why that is.”
In the screen, the rock-ship had slowed again.
The three of them gave up any pretense of study, and watched the ship’s progress, until it landed, very lightly indeed, on the drive at the front of the house.
“Will the Captain want us?” Chernak asked then.
Diglon shook his head.
“She has not called us. And look—she brings Jeeves.”
In fact, the screen showed Captain Robertson approaching the vessel through eddies of steam, Jeeves beside her.
“We will watch,” Stost said.
“Oh, yes,” said Diglon. “We will watch.”
• • • ✴ • • •
It sat, steaming gently, on the driveway. Not much bigger, Miri thought, than the forty-eight-seat touring bus mothballed in the garage, darker than hull plate and vaguely cigar-shaped. There was no visible hatch, no visible instrumentation or lights. No obvious identification.
Just a rock, that was all.
It’d made a good landing, too, Miri noted; hadn’t even dimpled the tarmac. She allowed that to be a point in the pilot’s favor, but not enough to off-set her growing irritation.
She turned her head to address the man-high canister topped by a ball that was, at the moment, glowing palely orange.
“Jeeves, please ask Mr. Joyita to find out when our visitor intends to emerge. The delm of Korval awaits. Impatiently.”
“Transmitting the delm’s request,” Jeeves said agreeably.
There was a brief pause.
“Joyita reports that the pilot thanks the delm of Korval for the gift of her time. She will emerge with all haste.”
A crack appeared in the rock’s pitted surface, and another. Soundlessly a hatch opened, and a figure, stooped, yet still taller than either Miri or Jeeves, emerged, moving awkwardly.
It achieved the surface of the drive and straightened, a young—no, Miri corrected herself—a small Clutch.
Among the Clutch the tell for age was shell size, not height. A youngster, like He Who Watches, would have a very small shell, nestled between the shoulders, like a daypack.
This person’s shell covered them from shoulder to shoulder in the back, like proper armor, tapering down to where their waist might be, if they’d had one. Over the shoulders at the front, there was more armor, lighter in color and maybe, Miri thought, in weight.
Compared to Edger’s bulk, this person was short, slim—almost streamlined. But they were, she was sure, an adult.
Suddenly, the person—“she” according to Joyita, from whatever store of knowledge he was working from—stretched as suddenly and as sinuously as a cat. Somewhere halfway through, the stretch morphed into a bow, full of grace and meaning.
Miri had seen Edger turn graceful like this, and was searching her memory for appropriate response, but their visitor spoke even as she finished her bow.
Hasty, thought Miri, and felt a distant agreement from her lifemate.
“I am called, for the purpose of this mission, Emissary Twelve.”
The voice was light; nowhere near Edger’s occasionally head-rattling boom.
“I am charged by the Elders to deliver a message directly to Delm Korval, on the matter of the short-term security and well-being of planet Surebleak.”
She felt Val Con’s presence rise, until it seemed like he was standing there on the drive next to her. Barely behind and scarcely less physical, the vast green intelligence of Korval’s Tree swelled out of the depths of a self-imposed restorative slumber and into her awareness, curiosity roused, eager to be included in this new diversion.
That’s all we need, she thought, and felt Val Con laugh.