Triumphant Read online

  “Sometimes shuttles crash,” Lochan said, gazing around the rows of empty seats. “That can take a while.”

  She eyed him curiously. “Are you speaking from experience?”

  “Yes.”

  “Damn. And you still in one piece and all. You’ll have to tell me about that.”

  Lochan forced a smile. “I will, if you’ll tell me something. Why’d your father disown you?”

  Freya frowned. “That’s a personal question.”

  “I know,” Lochan said. “But it bears on my mission, doesn’t it? If I’m to get help from Eire for Kosatka.”

  “True. And I owe you for saving me from that freighter in league with the pirates.” Freya leaned back, her brow furrowed in thought. “Long story short, Dad likes people to do as he says. He likes being in charge and pulling all the strings. I’m not good at following orders without question. Maybe we’re too much alike that way. When given the choice of following the path he’d laid out for me or finding my own, I walked. In my father’s eyes, that was unforgivable.”

  “That does match what I’ve heard of Donal Morgan,” Lochan said. “Do you have any advice for how to deal with him?”

  “You’re asking the girl he disowned?” Freya laughed. “Don’t crawl. He needs to respect you. But acknowledge his power as well. Can you do both?”

  “Maybe,” Lochan said. “Maybe not. I haven’t had a successful marriage yet.”

  She laughed again. “There’s a good metaphor. Hey, Alice Mary,” Freya said to Leigh, using the false name that she’d been traveling under. “How long are you staying on Eire?”

  “Just long enough to say my piece and then on to Earth, where my mission is,” Camagan said.

  “Who represents Glenlyon while we try to get more allies for you?”

  “I was hoping that Lochan would,” Camagan admitted. “By now, Kosatka and Glenlyon should be formally allied at last.”

  “Assuming Kosatka is still free,” Lochan said, his mind calling up a snapshot of the invasion fleet to temporarily shove aside memories of the shuttle crash. Between his experiences and the pictures created by his fears, his mind these days seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of horrific images to draw on.

  “Assuming so,” Leigh conceded. “Would you trust me to represent Kosatka if that was true?”

  The question should have been a hard one to answer. But he’d had time to get to know Leigh Camagan, and more importantly his friend Mele Darcy had told him Leigh was trustworthy. So, instead, the answer came to him the moment the question was asked. “Yes.” Lochan looked over at her. “I’ll do my best. The fates of Kosatka and Glenlyon are linked by circumstance, but also by friendship.”

  Freya made a scoffing noise. “You’re better off trusting in self-interest than friendship. Such as, Catalan is aware that Kosatka and Glenlyon are the only two star systems near us that won’t stab us in the back.”

  “And here I thought we were friends,” Lochan said, doing his best to sound disappointed.

  “Oh, Lochan, if I stabbed you in the back, Brigit would never forgive me!”

  The conversation had wandered into the ridiculous, but Lochan welcomed the distraction that offered from worrying about their flight to the surface. “Does Brigit know how much you think she likes me?”

  The shuttle lurched away from the facility and began its controlled fall toward the planet below. Lochan stared at the display on the bulkhead facing his seat, momentarily distracted by the beauty of the view downward.

  From orbit the planet named Eire seemed tranquil and impossibly green. As with any other place where humanity had found a home, the serenity was an illusion born of distance. But the color held truth in its emerald shades.

  More of Eire’s surface was land than on far-distant Earth, with vast continents sprawling among smaller oceans that on other worlds might be called seas, a weave of rivers and streams feeding them. Lochan knew the world had small axial tilt and thus little seasonal variation through the year, and it orbited its star at the right distance to receive the right amount of warmth. As a result, much of Eire basked in an endless summer, the grass ever green and the trees forever cloaked in their own verdant foliage.

  Had the people who came here from an island nation on Earth chosen the planet before they’d known how it looked? A place that evoked the “cool, green hills of Earth,” as an old story had put it? Remembering the brilliant green streaks that adorned the hair of Brigit Kelly, Lochan felt certain that they’d deliberately sought out a world like this.

  He knew they’d also sought peace far from the ancient feuds that haunted Old Earth. But war had already found others, and would soon come here as well if Lochan couldn’t convince Eire’s people to join the apparently hopeless cause of the worlds of Kosatka and Glenlyon. “I hope Brigit is all right,” he murmured.

  “I know what you mean,” Freya said. “There’s someone on Catalan I’m worried about. How about you, Leigh?”

  Leigh Camagan shook her head. “No one that close. I lost that person quite a few years ago. What I do have is a number of people whose fate I care about.”

  Their shuttle had made it only halfway to the surface when an alert tone sounded and the pilot called back. “Weren’t you guys originally intended to come down on Eleven Oh Six?”

  “Yes,” Lochan said. “Your security chief changed that, though, so that shuttle could be thoroughly screened for problems.”

  “They launched it after us, loaded only with cargo and using uncrewed auto-descent even though the security search didn’t turn up anything.” A pause. “Turns out they did miss something. That shuttle blew up barely fifty kilometers from the facility.”

  A moment of silence was finally broken by a murmur from Leigh Camagan. “I need to buy that security chief a drink.”

  “A drink, hell,” Freya said. “I’ll buy the man a house if he asks for it.”

  * * *

  • • •

  On the surface of the planet, their shuttle was met by a strong force that included a couple of platoons of soldiers and several armored vehicles. As a curious crowd watched from a distance, Lochan, Freya, and Leigh were hustled from the shuttle’s ramp to an armored limousine. Inside, four guards watched over them silently as the limo raced from the spaceport to the planetary government complex.

  Another hasty movement from the limo to a side door of an impressive structure, and then Lochan and the others found themselves being led through the building until they reached a large reception room whose walls were lined with pictures and cases holding artifacts that appeared to be extremely old. Lochan stole glances at some of them, seeing ancient weapons including a long sword and a spear, a small harp whose wood bore the marks of exceptional age, and an old, squared-off stone that might have come from a home, a mansion, or a castle, one edge of the stone cracked and scorched by intense heat that must have been born of whatever destroyed the structure it had once been part of.

  “Hi, Kyna,” Freya greeted the older woman ensconced behind a large desk. “How’s the old one?”

  “It really is you,” the woman replied with a disapproving shake of her head. “He’ll be spitting fire when he hears.”

  “I’m here representing Catalan. Make sure he knows that.”

  “I can do my job without prompting from you,” Kyna replied.

  “Do you make friends like that everywhere you go?” Lochan asked.

  “Only here,” Freya replied. “There’s no place like home. He’ll keep us waiting awhile, by the way. Just to emphasize who holds the power here.”

  They stood in a group off to one side of the room. Lochan looked about again, realizing that there were no couches or chairs in the waiting room to make the waiting any easier. He recognized that tactic, a way of tiring out and making irritable those wanting to see the prime minister so that the visitors would start out at a disadv
antage. It also emphasized in a very unsubtle manner that visitors forced to wait were not particularly welcome here.

  But Lochan barely had time to become impatient before the same door they’d entered through opened again, this time to let in a group of five people who approached Kyna’s desk and engaged in a low-volume conversation from which he could only hear occasional words such as “urgent,” “regrets,” and “unable.”

  The five newcomers stepped back from the desk, their carefully controlled expressions revealing little, but their movements carrying the jerkiness of frustration. As they turned to leave, one of the women in the group took a long look at Lochan and his friends. She spoke hurriedly to one of her male companions, who also studied Lochan before walking over and making a small bow from the waist to him, Freya, and Leigh. “You have recently arrived on Eire?”

  “Yes,” Lochan said.

  “The emissaries from Kosatka, Glenlyon, and Catalan?”

  “Word travels quickly,” Leigh observed. “Where are you from?”

  “Benten Star System,” one of the women in the new group replied. “My name is Yukino Nakamura. This is Lawrence Sato. We’re the leaders of our delegation.”

  “Nakamura?” Freya asked, amused. “Is she a cousin of yours, Lochan?”

  “It’s possible,” Lochan said. “My ancestors immigrated to Brahma a long time ago, though.”

  “Most of us on Benten came from Old Earth and Amaterasu,” Lawrence Sato said. “But perhaps your ancestors are the same and brought us together here. You have come seeking help for your worlds? Perhaps we can make common cause.”

  “Why does Benten need help?” Leigh Camagan asked.

  “Benten,” Yukino said, “can see farther than the orbits of our most distant planets. We see the dangers in the distance, and seek to prepare. But other star systems do not share our sense of urgency.”

  “They worry about giving up their freedom,” Lawrence said.

  “It’s a lot easier to negotiate without giving up things when your back isn’t against the wall,” Lochan said.

  “That is our reasoning. We seek agreements before crises force our hands.”

  A moment of silence was broken by Leigh Camagan. “What are the chances that Benten would consider lending aid to Glenlyon and Kosatka?”

  “That would depend on many factors,” Yukino Nakamura said.

  “It’s not out of the question?”

  A long pause ended as Yukino spoke again. “If fighting is wise, then it is wiser to fight far from home than it is to fight at our front door. But whether fighting is wise remains to be determined.”

  “What could you bring?” Lochan asked, trying not to let his hopes get too high. “If you decide, I mean. Does Benten have any warships?”

  “We came on a warship,” Yukino said, gesturing upward. “The Asahi.”

  “We didn’t see any foreign warships present in this star system when we came in,” Lochan said, surprised.

  She smiled. “When you see the stars through another’s eyes, you see only what they wish you to see.”

  “Eire’s systems screened out the Asahi?” Freya shook her head, transforming the gesture into a glare aimed at the door to her father’s office. “He thinks if he doesn’t want to see some things he can make those things go away.”

  “How many other warships does Benten have?” Lochan asked, trying to divert the discussion to a safer topic.

  “Asahi is our only warship,” Lawrence said. “We traveled on her to ensure that the seriousness of our work would be made clear. That does not appear to have impressed Eire, though,” he added, a trace of bitterness entering his voice.

  One of the other members of Benten’s delegation murmured something that caused both Yukino and Lawrence to pause before shaking their heads. “We can’t leave yet,” Lawrence said. “We must make a few more attempts to present our proposals.”

  Lochan paused to think, realizing that if he could convince Benten to help, a star system still far enough from the conflict to not be in immediate danger, it would be a powerful example for others. They weren’t here to speak with him, though, but with Eire. How could . . . ?

  He glanced over at Kyna’s desk as the secretary nodded in response to some message only she could hear.

  “You can go in,” Kyna said to Freya. She tapped something on her desk, causing the heavy wooden door adorned with carvings that led into the inner office to swing open.

  Lochan felt something else opening, not a physical thing, but a possibility that hadn’t existed a few moments earlier. A risky idea, something that could blow back on him and his mission to get help for Kosatka. Something that could kill his chances of getting aid from Eire. But, if it worked . . .

  Make the big decisions. Mele Darcy had told him that just before they parted.

  “Hold it,” Lochan said, holding out a hand to keep Freya from moving, and drawing a startled and disapproving glare from the prime minister’s secretary.

  CHAPTER 3

  “What did he say?” Lochan asked the secretary. “For just Freya to go in?”

  Kyna eyed Lochan in a way that made it clear he’d been added to the category of troublemaker. “He said to send them in. Which includes you, sir.”

  “Them? That’s what he said?”

  “Are you questioning my competency, sir?”

  “I’d never do that.” It was now or never. Lochan looked around, including the delegation for Benten in his gesture, and seeing that both Leigh Camagan and Freya Morgan were waiting to see what he was up to. Apparently they really did trust him. “Let’s all go in,” he said.

  Kyna stared in disbelief as Lochan led the entire group toward the door. She made a belated reach for her desk control, only to halt in midmotion as Freya leaned across it with an earnest look. “We’re just doing as you said.”

  Lochan had learned that offices long occupied by a single individual tended to reflect many things about that person. He cast quick looks about as they were ushered into the office of Eire’s prime minister, seeing a few landscape pictures on the walls, a couple of paintings showing dogs who were obviously valued pets, numerous framed documents, and several plaques representing awards. The desk was nearly empty but for a couple of displays whose screens couldn’t be seen from this side. Conspicuously absent from the office were any pictures of people.

  Donal Morgan sat behind his expansive desk, his expression revealing little about his feelings, though Lochan thought surprise and unhappiness flickered through his eyes as they saw the delegation from Benten coming in along with Lochan and his group. Prime Minister Morgan didn’t get up in greeting when the others entered. “What brings you here?” he demanded of Freya.

  Leigh Camagan answered before Freya could. “I am here as a representative of the free star system of Glenlyon. Is this the courtesy with which you treat diplomatic representatives?”

  The prime minister eyed her, then slowly stood after apparently deciding that tangling with Leigh Camagan would be a mistake. “Forgive me. I let personal concerns override my responsibilities. Welcome to Eire.”

  “We’re here seeking—” Lochan began.

  “I know what it is you want, Lochan Nakamura. Our representative in Kosatka has sent many appeals on your behalf.” Donal Morgan sat down again, pointedly ignoring the presence of those from Benten. “But if the latest reports are to be believed, the time for help has passed. Why should Eire join a fight already lost?”

  Lochan thought of Carmen, doubtless fighting at this moment on Kosatka, anger rising in him at such callous words from an arrogant man facing no immediate threat to his own world. Rather than rein in that anger, Lochan let his words come out without trying to censor them. “It’s my dearest wish at the moment that someday you send for help to others as invaders close in on your home, and that they give you the same answer you just gave me.” He locked ey
es with Morgan, who glared back for a long moment before a trace of a smile appeared.

  “I admit that’s a good answer.” The prime minister shifted his gaze to Leigh Camagan. “I imagine yours is the same.”

  “Not entirely,” Leigh said. “Because Glenlyon has twice risked everything, leaving itself unprotected, to aid Kosatka. We know that if we don’t aid our friends, we’ll have no friends when we need aid. And we have put ourselves in danger more than once as proof that we live by such commitments.”

  “Have you?” Morgan’s eyes went to Freya. “You’d have a stronger argument if you were traveling in better company.”

  “Catalan needs help, too,” Lochan said.

  “And is willing to contribute to mutual defense in proportion to its ability,” Freya added.

  “They’d have been wiser to send someone more reliable to offer such a deal,” the prime minister said.

  “Sir,” Lawrence Sato said, his body as stiff as his tone of voice, “we have come to discuss the same matter with your government.”

  Donal Morgan frowned at his desk. “Benten is a valued trading partner. Of course we recognize that. However, we’re not ready to listen to demands made of us.”

  “Demands?”

  “I’m aware of discussions among Benten’s government to levy a special tax on shipments transiting through your star system en route to Eire! I’ll not have my arm twisted by those claiming friendship!”

  The silence in the room felt heavy enough for Lochan to imagine it pressing down upon him. So that explained Donal Morgan’s treatment of the delegation from Benten. Oddly enough, though, the delegation from Benten appeared to be trying to hide not guilt, but surprise at the accusation.

  Lochan cleared his throat softly. “This is a situation that our star systems have already faced,” he said, keeping his voice calm and low. “What happens when traffic for your star system has to go through another star system? There aren’t any laws enforced by Earth out here. There aren’t any rules. I hear your unhappiness at the thought that Benten might tax shipments heading to Eire, sir, but what recourse would you have if they did? Would you go to war?”