David Brin - The Uplift War

Fear had widened the older chimmie’s eyes so that the whites shone around her irises. She blinked a couple of times, then held out her arms for the children. By the time they were gathered under her protection, Sylvie had already cautiously entered the tunnel of broken trees.

Why am I doing this? Sylvie wondered as she stepped over broken branches still oozing pungent sap. Tiny skittering motions told of native creatures seeking cover after the ruination of their homes. The smell of ozone put Sylvie’s hair on end. And then, as she drew nearer, there came another familiar odor, one of overripe bird.

Everything looked eerie in the dimness. There were absolutely no colors, only shades of Stygian gray. When the off-white bulk of the crashed aircraft loomed in front of her, Sylvie saw that it lay canted at a forty degree slope, its front end quite crumpled from the impact.

She heard a faint crackling as some piece of electronics shorted again and again. Other than that, there came no sound from within. The main hatch had been torn half off its hinges.

Touching the still warm hull for guidance, she approached cautiously. Her fingers traced the outlines of one of the gravitic impellers, and flakes of corrosion came off. Lousy maintenance, she thought, partly in order to keep her mind busy. I wonder if that’s why it crashed. Her mouth was dry and her heart felt in her throat as she reached the opening and bent to peer around the corner.

Two Gubru still lay strapped at their stations, their sharp-beaked heads lolling from slender, broken necks.

Sylvie tried to swallow. She made herself lift one foot and step gingerly onto the sloping deck. Her pulse threatened to stop when the plates groaned and one of the Talon Soldiers moved.

But it was only the broken vessel, creaking and settling slightly. “Goodall,” Sylvie moaned as she brought her hand down from her breast. It was hard to concentrate with all of her instincts screaming just to get the hell out of here.

As she had for many days, Sylvie tried to imagine what Gailet Jones would do under circumstances like this. She knew she would never be the chimmie Gailet was. That just wasn’t in the cards. But if she tried hard…

“Weapons,” she whispered to herself, and forced her trembling hands to pull the soldiers’ sidearms from their holsters. Seconds seemed like hours, but soon two racked saber rifles joined the pistols in a pile outside the hatch. Sylvie was about to lower herself to the ground when she hissed and slapped her forehead. “Idiot! Athaclena needs intelligence more than popguns!”

She returned to the cockpit and peered about, wondering if she would recognize something significant even if it lay right in front of her.

Come on. You’re a Terragens citizen with most of a college education. And you spent months working for the Gubru.

Concentrating, she recognized the flight controls, and — from symbols obviously pertaining to missiles — the weapons console. Another display, still lit by the craft’s draining batteries, showed a relief territory map, with multiple sigils and designations written in Galactic Three.

Could this be what they’re using to find us? she wondered.

A dial, just below the display, used words she knew in the enemy’s language. “Band Selector,” the label said. Experimentally, she touched it.

A window opened in the lower left corner of the display. More arcane writing spilled forth, much too complex for her. But above the text there now whirled a complex design that an adult of any civilized society would recognize as a chemical diagram.

Sylvie was no chemist, but she had had a basic education, and something about the molecule depicted there looked oddly familiar to her. She concentrated and tried to sound out the indentifier, the word just below the diagram. The GalThree syllabary came back to her.

“Hee… Heem… Hee Moog…”

Sylvie felt her skin suddenly course with goose bumps. She traced the line of her lips with her tongue and then whispered a single word.

“Hemoglobin.”

“Biological warfare!” The Suzerain of Beam and Talon hopped about the bridge of the cruising battleship on which it held court and pointed at the Kwackoo technician who had brought the news. “This corrosion, this decay, this blight on armor and machinery, it was created by design?”

The technician bowed. “Yes. There are several agents — bacteria, prions, molds. When we saw the pattern counter-measures were instituted at once. It will take time to treat all affected surfaces with organisms engineered against theirs, but success will eventually reduce this to a mere nuisance.”

Eventually, the admiral thought bitterly. “How were these agents delivered?”

The Kwackoo pulled from its pouch a filmy clump of clothlike material, bound by slender strands. “When these things began blowing in from the mountains, we consulted Library records and questioned the locals. Irritating infestations occur regularly on this continental coast with the onset of winter, so we ignored them.

“However, it now appears the mountain insurgents have found a way to infect these airborne spore carriers with biological entities destructive to our equipment. By the time we were aware, the dispersal was nearly universal. The plot was most) ingenious.”

The military commander paced. “How bad, how severe, how catastrophic is the damage?”

Again, a deep bow. “One third of our planet-side transport is affected. Two of the spaceport defense batteries will be out of commission for ten planetary days.”

“Ten days!”

“As you know, we are no longer receiving spares from the homeworld.”

The admiral did not need to be reminded. Already most routes to Gimelhai had been interdicted by the approaching alien armadas, now patiently clearing mines away from the fringes of Garth system.

And if that weren’t enough, the two other Suzerains were now united in opposing the military. There was nothing they could do to prevent the coming battles if the admiral’s party chose to fight, but they could withhold both religious and bureaucratic support. The effects of that were already showing.

The pressures had built until a steady, throbbing pain seemed to pulse within the admiral’s head. “They will pay!” the Suzerain shrieked. Curse the limitations of priests and egg counters!

The Suzerain of Beam and Talon recalled with fond longing the grand fleets it had led into this system. But long ago most of those ships had been pulled away by the Roost Masters to meet other desperate needs, and probably quite a few of them were already smoking ruins or vapor, out on the contentious Galactic marches.

In order to avoid such thoughts the admiral contemplated instead the noose now tightening around the shrinking mountain strongholds of the insurgents. Soon that worry, at least, would be over forever.

And then, well, let the Uplift Institute enforce the neutrality of its sacred Ceremonial Mound in the midst of a -itched planet-space battle! Under such circumstances, mis-. ijt-s were known to fall astray: — such as into civilian towns, or even neutral ground.

Too bad! There would be commiseration, of course. Such a pity. But those were the fortunes of war!

No longer did he have to hold secret the yearnings in his heart, or keep contained his deep-stored reservoir of feelings. It did not matter if alien detectors pinpointed his psychic emanations, for they surely would know where to find him, when the time came.

At dawn, while the east grew gray with the cloud-shrouded sun, Uthacalthing walked along the dew-covered slopes and reached out with everything he had.

The miracle of some days back had burst the chrysalis of his soul. Where he thought only winter would forever reign, now bright shoots burst forth. To both humans and Tymbrimi, love was considered the greatest power. But there was, indeed, something to be said for irony, as well.