Nothing more was said as the transit craft jetted out into space. The Kaiji seemed very good at not looking at me, but I knew they were. They had a spicy, gunpowder sort of smell to them. It wasn’t quite unpleasant. Juvens fidgeted next to me in his seat as if he were unused to remaining idle.
The small spacecraft was monochromatic. The walls were skinned with a concave geometrical pattern and scattered with little gleaming strips of light. What few devices I could see were angular and weirdly gothic. Szev stretched out a bony hand near the wall and a panel of intricate knobs surfaced like smooth stones in ink-coloured water. Nothing like the bright and complicated design of Torven technology.
I glanced out the viewport as we approached the Kaiji dreadnought. It was shaped like an elongated bullet that slowly curved upwards to form a bulky, sharpened point, scintillating like a sword’s edge in the sun. The hull was purple-black with armoured plates slotting over each other, coated with a hexagonal matte-black surface that twitched, as if alive. A vibrant blue pulsed between them, like thousands of heaving gills. It looked like it had been created with the brush strokes of an oil painting. I suddenly had the impression of stumbling across a mythological monster in the depths of an ocean trench, biochemically modified to withstand the crushing pressure of its atmosphere.
But I know a warship when I see one. Between the scattering of docks and hangars was an arsenal of railguns, plasma cannons, nanoguns, heat-seeking launchers, devastating smatter-shells, and anti-ship weaponry that fired high-velocity tungsten rods. They bristled out from the hull like hostile creatures peeking out between beds of coral. The pod slowed to a standstill as stabilising thrusters balanced us in the void of space, leaving us within the dreadnought’s vicinity. I felt its full mass; dozens of cubic tonnes of this massive alien warship pressing down on my shoulders. ‘We’re not entering the ship?’ I asked.
‘No.’ I’m hardly an expert on alien emotions but Szev seemed to adopt an expression of dour amusement. The pod lights dimmed, as if going into power-conversation mode. ‘We would not allow a human onboard our ship without quarantine.’
No. But by being in the proximity of their dreadnought and seeing their full might of ship-shattering military hardware on display, they’d made it clear we were in their territory, their world, playing by their rules. I’d played this game with people above my rank before. I could play it with these aliens now.
‘Then why are we out here?’ I asked, feeling uncomfortable in the rigid mould of the chair and the awkward five-point harness. I noticed the wide straps had locked tight in place, securing me into my seat. Hopefully so I couldn’t tamper with the controls or see anything they didn’t want me to see, rather than because they planned to take me out.
Juvens inclined his head, jutting horns gleaming in the light. ‘We can’t risk anyone overhearing us. Not with what we’re about to discuss,’ he said. His English was light years ahead of the Ambassador’s, his tone casual and confident, as if he were a native speaker. He had to have spent time at alien cultural centres to learn the language.
‘We have been observing you,’ Szev declared, ‘since Harmony asked you to help prevent the spread of the Shenoi DNA on Compass.’
I caught myself nodding and said, ‘Yes. We call it stormtech. I understand you’ve asked Harmony to stop it spreading.’
‘Stormtech.’ I wasn’t sure if the Ambassador was amused by the phrase or not. ‘Using stormtech may have won a war, but it was still unwise. Your people did not listen then. Perhaps they will now.’
‘Why did you object to the use of stormtech from the very start?’ I’d lived too long with this mystery to keep my curiosity bottled up any longer. ‘How could you possibly know what it would do?’
The Kaiji all seemed to weigh up their response, but Juvens was the first to speak. ‘Show us,’ he said.
I wasn’t overwhelmed with enthusiasm at the idea, but I’d known it was coming. I allowed the armour plates on my arm to peel back, revealing the swirl of blue under my flesh. The Ambassadors inhaled sharply, as if the stormtech would leap out and bite them. All except Juvens, who was watching in fascination as it curled between my bones. The stormtech had been itchy ever since the arena fight, and seeing it made me want to scratch furiously.
Juvens unstrapped from his seat and strode to the viewport, hands behind his back. Different species or not, I recognised the ease with which he wore his armour. Like me, he was more comfortable in his suit than his own skin. ‘I don’t mince my words, and I don’t think you do either, Fukasawa. Honesty’s in short supply around here, and that’s no way for our two species to form an alliance. So I’ll say it directly.’ Juvens glanced over his shoulder at me. ‘Stormtech is a piece of the Shenoi themselves, living on inside other organisms.’
I raised my arm. ‘You mean, this isn’t just DNA scraps … it’s active, living pieces of the Shenoi?’
‘Yes.’
It wasn’t a dawning realisation. More like a complete re-imagining of my situation, hitting me with the force of truth. I had a long-dead alien race trickling through my bloodstream and nervous system, swimming around my organs, coursing through the hands and feet that killed and hurt people at their command. And it was grafted inside every Reaper, every skinnie, everyone who’d ever dabbled in stormtech.
All diseased. All tainted.
Was this why it seemed to have a mind of its own? I balled my hand into a fist, watching the stormtech – the Shenoi – accelerate to the crook of my elbow at the sudden flexing of sinew. ‘You knew the
