The Sea is Full of Stars

Lord Kassarim cocked one eyeball in Nakitt’s direction. “So, Nakitti, you see the bullets?”

“Yes, my lord, but more I see the refugees. Where is this ship coming from, if I may ask, that it would be so attacked? I see no weapons aboard her. Whoever shot had to be bent on nothing less than murder.”

“Indeed so,” the Lady Akua put in. “This is the first such to put in here, but not the first in our small nation, and I fear it is simply the latest in an increasing tide. One wonders if so many are reaching us, just how many others lie at the bottom of the sea.”

Nakitt nodded. “Looks like a tech level similar to ours. I seem to remember that those around us are either unlimited or no technology, so they must have steamed and sailed quite a distance like that.”

“Possibly fourteen hundred kilometers, from the look of some of those aboard, Nakitti,” Lord Kassarim replied. “You mean to say you don’t know what’s going on out in the West?”

“No, my lord. If my lord recalls, I just got here.”

“Humph! Quite so, quite so.” His Lordship reached into a pouch and took out a gigantic cigar using the “fingers” on his right leg as a hand, biting off the end and sticking it in his mouth. He then reached in and took out an enormously long sulfur-based match, struck it on the side of his head, then reaching up, lit the cigar and began puffing away. Tann Nakitt had been startled the first day here, seeing one leg lock as solid as an iron bar while the other twisted with a limberness that seemed almost impossible and could be easily used as a hand, but now she was so used to doing it herself it hardly registered.

“Well, Nakitti,” His Lordship continued at last, “one of yours from back in wherever it is you come from is behind it. Damnedest thing we’ve seen in thousands of years. Chalidang was always rather ugly a place; it’s run by a kind of pirate nobility that keeps its whole population in thrall, as if everybody, even the children, are in the army, and treated that way. They’ve been a scourge to their neighbors for some time, and nobody’s liked them much, but they’re a high-tech hex with a fair amount of resources and a collective mindset that can figure out an infinite number of ways to rob and kill you using the most common tools and implements. Still, they breathe water and they’re far away from here, so nobody’s much worried about them. Then in pops this creature reprocessed as one of the Chalidang, and with a totally new form and no briefing nor much else, the damned thing manages to disarm its captors, kill several of these folk who are lifelong professionals at it and know everything about their race, and before it even knew the name of the place, it had taken over and totally commanded a village halfway to the capital. It’s a meritocracy of sorts, up to the born nobles. You kill the sergeant, you’re the sergeant, and everybody else is conditioned to obey authority without question. So if you can’t kill ’em, you swear allegiance. Then you kill the lieutenant, you get all the sergeants, and so on. If you keep offing the chain of command, you’ll be running things in no time. If any superior officer nails you, game over, you see.”

“Pleasant sounding place,” Tann Nakitt commented. Sounds like where I just left, only cruder.

“Oh—yes, quite. Well, this sort of thing impressed the nobility, so they brought down an army of their best and laid siege. When it was clear no victory was possible, this new person surrendered and swore allegiance to the Baron, becoming in effect a body slave to the victor. Within three months the Baron had a new favorite concubine and pulled a deucedly clear ploy at a royal event, wiping out most of the highest members of the royal family. Some say it was poisons, some say electricity, some new methods not seen before. Who can say, since only the winners are left and they don’t write manuals. All that can be said is that the Baron is now Emperor, he’s defied all law and tradition by proclaiming this new chief concubine Empress, and they are picking and choosing and reorganizing their forces in all new ways, starting with the execution of any noble who doesn’t accept the new Empress. Seems, too, that some of the new Empress’s relations wound up in hexes not far away and there is now coordination. There’s never been the like of it in sheer speed to the top, let alone audacity in action. Gossip says that Baron, now Emperor, Chojitz has never been known as particularly bright or ambitious. A good soldier but not a creative one. Seems he was bright enough to recognize a true genius in love, war, and politics.”

“With that lot, he’ll settle for war and politics,” the Lady Akua noted bitterly.

“And this ship?” Nakitt prompted.

“Chalidang is adjacent to Quacksa, a land hex on a fair-sized island. It’s a nontech hex full of some very nasty tribal savages with some remarkable and dangerous powers. It’s said that they don’t hunt game, they just walk up to it, stare into its eyes, and the game follows them home and then does its own slaughtering. They’ve been friendly with the underwater Chalidang for some time. The Chalidang can handle some high-tech manufacturing and such, and the Quacksans have little tricks that can ferret out traitors and instill true loyalty. The present Empress is said to be immune to them, which is why she had an easier time, and she’s been using them now, probably as much on the Emperor and courtiers as on any possible enemies. The Quacksans go down in advanced breathing suits; a reverse kind of suit allows Chalidang folk to act on the surface, although, of course, they can’t use the suits in a low-tech hex. Still, in just a bit over a year this—person—has gone from literally nothing to ambitious co-ruler of a dangerous hex, and is even now planning expansion.”

“Now I do feel downright inferior and inadequate,” Tann Nakitt commented softly.

“Eh? What?”

“Sorry, Your Lordship. Just thinking out loud. Please continue.”

“Well then, you see, the first step was to help the relatives get positions in their lands, and this is now under way. The port city of Howek in Jerminia to their south is a transit point. This ship flies a Jerminian flag. I suspect that the port was besieged and overrun and these were the ones, both natives and foreign representatives there, who managed to get out. It was either that or look the Quacksans in the eyes, you see.”

“Hard to believe any one person, even a local one, could do this in so short a time, I agree,” Tann Nakitt responded. “On the other hand, if a lot of this was already in the works, maybe as contingency plans by the former Chalidang Emperor, then pushing it into action while you have momentum and to distract everybody from your wiping out the nobility, well, that makes sense. It would still take an extremely uncommon person to do this. What’s the name of the new Empress, my lord? Do you know it?”

“Oh, yes. It is a name they are already cursing as doomed to make world history in a world that doesn’t like history on that scale. The tongue is such that it wouldn’t translate to us—sounds like a series of painful screeches, don’t you know? But in Zone they say that the name coming in was Josich, a creature so mean and vile they had to shoot it and just send it through. They said it woke up in an incredible fury and got worse.”

That’s Josich all right, Tann Nakitt thought, but said nothing about it to the lord and lady, both of whom were now moving forward to oversee the stretchers taking off wounded and injured people to the limited medical facilities, hopefully to stabilize them for shipment to a high-tech land and ward, and to speak with some of the refugees and the ship’s captain, who looked kind of like a giant scorpion with hair.

She knew Josich only by the incredible reputation and the stories and legends back home, but they paled in comparison to what had apparently taken place here. In little more than one year—one year! —Josich had killed a ton of her new kind, married the perfect puppet, wiped out the entire royal family, and co-mounted the throne. It hardly mattered that Josich was now an Empress and not an Emperor; hell, it probably was the only variety the son of a bitch had in centuries of war and revolution.

Had anyone ever succeeded in a war of conquest here on the Well World? Without access to history records, it was impossible to know, but it didn’t seem as if it could be sustained. Even if the Well allowed it, you’d need to be like that ship out there—able to operate in all three mediums of technology and both underwater and on the ground, and preferably the air as well, and in climates probably ranging from desert to glacial, against races—hell, civilizations—born to those conditions and shaped by their original designers and by subsequent evolution to do it even better.

Tann Nakitt wondered how you’d conquer enough of the Well World to say you’d had it, and, when you did, how you’d hold it together over any measure of time. What kind of intervention might this great Well computer do if populations started going down dramatically in a Josich-style war?

Josich was an insane genius, and his relatives were probably much the same, but sooner or later there would be some kind of method in the rage, some kind of long-range objectives. She was already in top form; maybe it had already begun. What would be the prize here? And what would she do with it once she had it?

Still, it might well be all too easy for Josich the Emperor Hadun. These people could conceive of local conflicts but never a war of conquest. They had no officers, armies, joint commands, or training systems to hold back a tide once it reached a certain point, and few from the stars who could even explain to them what they lacked. Josich