Songs of Love & Death

Something had killed a whole battle group. Whatever it was, I didn’t want it destroying my little trade vessel.

“Contact orbital control, and tell them we’re friendlies,” I ordered Baca.

“I’ve been trying, Tracy, but nobody’s answering. Worse, the whole planet’s gone silent. Nobody’s talking to nobody.”

“Some new Imperial weapon to knock out communications?” Melin asked.

“Are you picking up anything?” I asked.

“Music,” Baca replied.

We all exchanged glances; then I said, “Let’s hear it.”

Baca switched from headphone to speaker, and flipped through the communication channels from the planet. Slow, mournful music filled the bridge. It wasn’t all the same melody, but they all had one thing in common. Each melody was desperately sad.

Something terrible had happened on Kusatsu-Shirane, and judging by the debris, something equally terrible had happened in orbit. Periodically, Melin fired small maneuvering jets as she dodged through the ruins, but despite her best efforts the bridge echoed with pings and scrapes as debris impacted against the hull.

“Not the safest of neighborhoods, Captain,” came my executive officer’s voice in my left ear, and I jumped. Damn, the creature could move quietly! I gave a quick glance over my shoulder, and found myself looking directly into the Isanjo’s sherry-colored eyes. Jahan had settled onto the back of my chair like Alice’s Cheshire cat.

“We’ll grab an identification and get out,” I said.

Jahan wrapped her tail around my throat. I couldn’t tell if the gesture was meant to convey comfort or a threat. An Isanjo’s tail was powerful enough to snap a two-by-four. My neck would offer little challenge.

As if in answer to my statement, the screen on the arm of my jacket flared, adjusted contrast, and the name of the ship came into focus: Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion. My impression had been correct. It had been her ship. I gave the bridge of my nose a hard squeeze, fighting to hold back tears.

“Holy crap, that’s a flagship!” Baca yelped as he accessed the computer files.

“Under the command of Mercedes de Arango, the Infanta who would have held the lives of countless millions of humans and aliens in her hands once her father died,” Jax recited in his piping tones. His encyclopedic memory baffled me. I had no idea how that much brain power could reside in something that looked like an oversized stalk of bamboo.

“Instead, she precedes him into oblivion,” Jahan said.

The attention of my crew was like a pinprick, the unspoken question hung between us. “Yes, I was at the Academy with her,” I said.

“So, did you know her?” Baca asked.

“I’m a tailor’s son. What do you think?”

Baca reacted to my tone. “Just asking,” he said sulkily.

A fur-covered hand swept lightly beneath my eyes. “You weep,” Jahan said, and I was glad she had used her knuckle. An Isanjo’s four-fingered hand is tipped with ferocious claws, capable of disemboweling another Isanjo or even a man. She leaned in closer and whispered, “And I note you did not actually answer the question.”

“Twelve ships were destroyed here. Six thousand starmen died. If things had fallen out differently, I might have been among them,” I said loudly. “Of course I’m upset.”

“They came here to do violence to the people of Kusatsu-Shirane,” Jax tweeted.

“It wasn’t a duty they would have relished.”

“But they would have done it,” Jahan said. “The Infanta would have ordered it done.”

I shrugged. “Orders are orders. I cleared a Hidden World once. When I was a newly minted lieutenant.”

“And now you trade with them and keep them secret,” Jahan said.

“Making me a traitor as well as a cashiered thief.” I changed the subject. “We need to find out what happened down the gravity well.”

“It will take a damn lot of fuel to set the ship down,” Jax tweeted. Flutes were famous for their mathematical ability, and Jax was no exception. He was our purchasing agent, and I was pretty damn sure he was the reason the Selkie ran at a profit. He counted every Reales and squeezed it twice.

“I’ll take the Wasp,” I said, referring to the small League fighter craft we’d picked up at a salvage auction. The cannons had been removed, but it was still screamingly fast and relatively cheap to fly.

Melin had given us enough gravity that I could grip the sides of the access ladder, and slide down to the level that held the docking bay. Even so, Jahan, using her four hands and prehensile tail, reached the lower deck before me.

“I take it that you’re coming along,” I said as I hauled a spacesuit out of a locker.

“I will need to report to the Council.”

“Chalking up another human atrocity,” I said with black humor.

“It’s what we do,” the creature said shortly and she removed her suit from its locker. Isanjo suits always looked strange. They were equipped with a tail because the aliens used their tails for their high-steel construction work.

“And what happens when the ledger gets filled?” I asked as I stepped into the lower half of my suit.

“We will act,” she said, and I knew that she was speaking of all the alien races. “There are a lot more of us than there are of you.”

“Yeah, but none of you are as mean as us.” I shrugged to settle the heavy oxygen pack onto my shoulders.

“But we’re more patient.”

“You’ve got me there.”

I reflected that Isanjos now built our skyscrapers and our spaceships. Under human supervision, of course, but my God, there was so much opportunity for mischief if the aliens decided that it was time for them to act! I had a vision of skyscrapers collapsing and ships exploding.

I thought about the Hajin who worked as servants in our households. How easy it would be to poison a human family.

And the Tiponi Flutes did our accounting. They could crash the economy.

Humans were fucked. Good thing I worked on a ship crewed mostly by aliens. Maybe they liked me enough to keep me around.

We secured each other’s helmets, and headed for the Wasp, which sat in the middle of the bay. Even sitting still, it looked like it was moving a million miles an hour. The needle nose and vertical tail screamed predator.

I took the front seat, and Jahan settled into the gunner’s chair. The canopy dropped, I flipped on the engines, instruments, and radio, and called to the bridge. “We’re ready.”

For a few seconds, we could hear the air being sucked out of the bay and back into the rest of the ship. No sense wasting atmosphere. It cost money to make, as Jax frequently pointed out. Once the wind sounds died, the great outer doors swung slowly and ponderously open. Our view was dominated by the curving rim of the planet. Green seas and a small continent rolled past us. Beyond the bulk of the world, the stars glittered ice-bright. I sent us out into space, and immediately dodged a piece of broken ship.

“Do mind the trash,” Jahan said.

Something was niggling at me. Something missing in the orbital mix—but I was too busy negotiating the floating debris to figure it out. Instead of heading directly to the planet, I took the time to explore the expanding circle of debris that had been the Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion. We soon saw bits of floating detritus that had once been people. I studied each frozen face haloed with crystals of frozen blood.

“She’s dead,” Jahan said.

“I know,” I said. But I couldn’t accept it. She was the heir to the League. There may have been added protection for Mercedes. There had to have been. She could not be gone. Twenty minutes later, I admitted defeat, took us out of the debris field, and headed toward the planet.

We were passing relatively close to a small moon—Kusatsu-Shirane had five but the others weren’t presently in view—when I heard it. A distress beacon, sending its cry into the void. We locked on and followed it. The life capsule had clamped itself limpetlike to the stony surface of the moon. The tiny computer brain that controlled the