Christopher Nuttall - A Learning Experience

The Horde are mercenaries , he thought. I’m looking at one of their masters .

“An error,” he repeated. Beside him, Romford was still stunned. “What sort of error?”

“It was our assumption that you were allies or slaves to the Varnar,” the alien said. “Their willingness to use your people as cannon fodder suggested the latter. We were therefore prepared to go to some distance to locate your homeworld and recover samples of your people for analysis. It simply did not occur to us to attempt to contact you openly.”

Kevin felt his eyes narrow. That showed an alarming awareness of events on Earth. Had the aliens hacked the starship database? Or was it simply a coincidence? Or a deduction?

“We maintained a watch for all traces of human life,” the alien continued. “When you arrived, you were noticed. The fact you had a Hordesman with you suggested that you took one or more of their ships.”

“Indeed,” Kevin said, feeling sweat pouring down his back. “And who, might I ask, are you?”

The alien leaned forward. “My name does not fit well into any galactic tongue,” he said. “I am called Master by the Hordesmen, but I hope you will come to think of me as Friend .”

“Right,” Kevin said, doubtfully. “I need to call my ship, Friend , and inform them that we are safe.”

Friend made an elaborate bow. Kevin hesitated, then reached for the communicator and tapped in a code to signify that they were alive and well, but the situation was as yet uncertain. There was a brief response, then silence. Kevin nodded, then turned back to the alien.

“We clearly have a lot to tell each other,” he said. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

“We should move to a more comfortable location first,” Friend said. “This building is not entirely… friendly .”

Kevin nodded, but allowed the aliens to shock Romford awake and then lead them through a set of twisting corridors into a large dining room. Everything seemed designed for children, he realised, as the alien motioned them to a table. One of the stools was barely large enough for an adult human man. Two more of the green-skinned aliens appeared from nowhere, carrying trays of food and drink. Kevin eyed it doubtfully, then picked up something that looked like a potato wedge, just to be sociable. It tasted rather like fish and chilli.

“I will start at the beginning,” Friend informed him, as he took a swig of something that looked rather like green beer. It smelt faintly unpleasant. “The Varnar were appointed” — there was a pause as the translator struggled to provide a translation — “satraps of this region of the galaxy, as the Tokomak didn’t care enough to do it for themselves. Since then, they have waged war on the remaining spacefaring races.”

He paused, significantly. “We believe that the Tokomak deliberately chose to start wars that would prevent us from becoming a major threat to their beloved status quo ,” he admitted, thoughtfully. “The race they chose as their representatives didn’t have the strength to do more than fight, rather than crush us all like bugs. Even if that wasn’t their desired outcome, it was what they got. For the past” — another pause — “three hundred years, this sector has been locked in a bitter war.”

Kevin frowned. There hadn’t been that much mentioned about the Tokomak in the datafiles they’d captured, apart from the fact they’d developed FTL and used it to bind large sections of the galaxy together. There was no hint they were an empire, let alone that they assigned other races to serve as their subordinates in certain parts of the galaxy. But then, given that the files had been intended for the Horde, it was possible that large parts of galactic history had simply been overlooked.

Friend scratched his right ear. It took Kevin a moment to realise that it was intended as a smile.

“Things have changed, recently,” Friend continued. “The Varnar have been deploying a new set of cyborgs, constructed from human brains, flesh and blood. Those cyborgs have proven distressingly effective on the battlefield, allowing them to finally start making gains against their enemies. In short, the war might be lost in as little as two hundred years.”

Kevin sucked in his breath. Humans had fought the Hundred Years War, but it hadn’t been an endless series of military campaigns. Indeed, there had been long periods of peace between bouts of fighting. And besides, the technology for decisive advances and battles simply hadn’t existed at the time.

But, on an interstellar scale, two hundred years was nothing.

“We decided we needed to recover samples of our own,” Friend admitted. “We chose to use deniable assets for various reasons.”

Ensuring that the Varnar didn’t know you knew , Kevin guessed. The story did seem to match with what they’d been told, although he wasn’t sure how much of it they could take for granted. Friend might have his own reasons for telling a version of the story that wasn’t entirely true. But he had to accept it, for the moment.

He leaned forward. “Why us? What makes our brains so special?”

“We believe, from what little intelligence we recovered, that the Varnar did not need to do much modification of your brain tissue to turn you into combat cyborgs,” Friend said. “It is possible that your race is unusually comparable with standard neural interfaces, or that that the Varnar performed genetic modification on the samples they captured and then force-cloned tissue from them. Or it is vaguely possible that they did something else and convinced us that your race was particularly special to hide what they’d done.”

“Humans would prefer to believe that,” Kevin said. The thought of seeing Earth turned into nothing more than a reservoir of genetic livestock was terrifying. Or destroyed. The Varnar, if they realised that humans were breaking out into space, might strike first. “Let us cut to the chase then, as we humans say. What do you want?”

“Your assistance,” Friend said. “We would like humans to fight with us against the mutual foe.”

“Human mercenaries,” Kevin said. There were humans who would volunteer to fight, he knew, purely for the adventure. Hell, if worst came to worst, he had authority to discuss the prospect of selling human military services. But this… this would get them involved in a war they knew next to nothing about, even if Friend was being completely truthful. “And what would you offer in exchange?”

Friend pressed his fingertips together, then spread them out. “What would you like in exchange?”

Kevin took a breath. “Starships and technical support,” he said. “And help in developing a modern industrial base.”

There was a long pause. “You wish to become more than just soldiers?”

“Our race is very — very — inventive,” Kevin countered. “But we can only be inventive in your favour if we have the tools to do it.”

“So it would seem,” Friend said.

Kevin could understand the alien’s fears. They might be exchanging one enemy for another… but, even so, it would take years for humanity to match the Varnar as a threat. The aliens had to know that, didn’t they?

“We wish the services, then, of five thousand human soldiers,” Friend said, finally. “As a down payment, we will provide certain forms of support right now.”

He paused, again. “We will provide you with five large freighters, fifty shuttles and ten unlocked fabricators. And some technical advice you can use to start producing your own technological base. Would that be sufficient?”

Kevin gambled. “Twenty unlocked fabricators,” he said. How desperate were the aliens for human help? The longer they delayed, the harder it would be to stave off defeat. But would human help really prove decisive? “And we want some warships too.”