Kris Longknife: Tenacious (Kris Longknife novellas Book 12) Page 11

  Kris wondered at Jacques. He was babbling, and that was something he never did.

  Then Kris saw where he was leading her and understood his need to hide behind words, empty or not.

  There were more encased coffins lining the wall. The now-lit transparent blocks stretched away as far as she could see. If the pyramid was four klicks on the outside, certainly its inside walls must extend for most of that distance. And for as much of it as Kris could see lit up, there was a body every twenty meters or so.

  One body preserved in a block of glass and before it, a pile of skulls.

  Some were skulls. Some were the tops of carapaces. In a few cases, what was in the glass didn’t seem to have a real head of bone or chitin and what had been piled in front of it had aged away to nothing.

  “Are all of these intelligent races?” Kris asked, then corrected herself. “Were all of these beings intelligent?”

  “We can’t make that determination,” Jacques said, “but I don’t think so. There are creatures here that look like some of the amphibians that first crawled out of Earth’s sea to try life on the land. Over on the other wall, there’s something huge that looks like it might fit right into Earth’s age of dinosaurs. There are smaller ones, too.”

  “So, they don’t care if you’re intelligent. If you’re alive and might grow into something smart enough for spaceflight, they kill you, wipe out your planet, and you become a trophy here,” Kris said. She knew Professor Labao would call this jumping to a conclusion with insufficient evidence, but Kris was looking at the evidence.

  It might take the boffins more time to reach her conclusion, but battles were lost or won by commanders who could reason to the right conclusion before all the facts were in evidence.

  “I think you might be right,” Professor la Duke said.

  “Thank you, Jacques,” Kris said. “You better go find Amanda. She’ll need you when she comes in here.”

  “Amanda’s still outside. I suggested she study the construction of the pyramid before she came in. She’s looking for any evidence that can be found at this late date of how the thing was built.”

  “A safer study,” Kris said.

  “I thought it might be,” Jacques admitted.

  A thought came to Kris. “Have you identified the remains of the aliens from the planet we found in the long search sweep?”

  “Yes we have,” Jacques said. “They’re on the other wall, down near the end.”

  Kris turned away from the wall she’d been walking down and cut across to the other wall. It was easier to pass the royal family that way. There was less to see from their backs.

  “Do you think they were the rulers of the planet that got hammered down to bedrock?” Kris asked Jack as they passed them.

  “I tend to think so,” he said. “They must have really hated them to bury them alive in whatever that stuff is.”

  “Bury the husband and wife only after they’d watched their children killed before their eyes.”

  “You can’t be sure,” Jack said.

  “Look them in the eyes, then look at me and say that.”

  Even in battle armor, Kris saw the tremor go through Jack’s body. “I can’t,” he admitted. “But think, Kris. Where did the hatred come from that would do that?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m thinking. We really need to date the bombardment of this planet. I’m thinking that if it was ten thousand years before the one that beat up the other planet, they might have been the aggressor, and the people they hit took ten thousand years, but they came back and hit hard.”

  “I’m thinking the same thing. Ten thousand years of anger welling up would be a terrible thing to see.”

  “And a hundred thousand years later, that anger, or fear, is still driving them to kill anything alive,” Kris said.

  “It’s sure looking that way,” Jack admitted.

  They passed a lot of creatures as they walked down the line, hunting for those whose planet had been the warning to Kris. They passed encased bodies of beings that looked out with stunned and dumb looks or intelligent gazes. Most they passed had the dull look of animals, unaware of why they had suddenly been transformed from the top of the food chain to trophies in a war they hadn’t started and had no part in.

  There were two scientists working with the pile of chitinous skulls that Kris was interested in.

  “We’re trying to get a better date of death from these,” one told Kris.

  “We estimate it at two hundred years ago. I doubt you can get any closer,” Kris said.

  They ignored her and continued about their work.

  Kris looked at the insectoid. Now, it looked back at her. Like the family at the entrance, this one, too, had grown skin and muscle on its face. Kris wondered if the ability to express yourself in body language and facial expressions was critical to the development of a civilization. No doubt, the boffins would be looking into that.

  Certainly they’d never be able to study so large a set of different evolutionary tracks as had been so brutally arranged for them around these two walls.

  Two more worlds were represented between Kris’s planet and the end of the line. One looked like a vicious animal, something like the shark that swam in Wardhaven’s seas. It was named for something equally as toothy in Earth’s own oceans. Strange, Kris hadn’t noticed any other fish in the collection. The other looked out with no spark of intelligence in its eyes, only dismay at its treatment.

  Kris again found herself wanting to cry. To weep for all the futures and hopes and possibilities that were cut short and brought here.

  As much as she wanted to weep, Kris found only a cold anger growing in her. She stood guard over three intelligent species. Two of them, the human race and the Iteeche, had stumbled into each other, and, though it might have been a struggle, found they could share space without having to kill each other. The third, the Alwans, had offered to share their life-giving planet with desperate human refugees.

  Her Royal Highness, Kris Longknife, Commander of the Alwa Defense Sector, Viceroy and ambassador at large, looked down the line from where she stood.

  “I swear by you who have lost everything that no more will be added to this trophy room. It stops here. We will stop you. I will stop you.”

  “Yes we will,” Jack echoed.

  16

  “But how?” Jack asked, raising the practical question that would, no doubt, dog Kris’s every waking hour from now until her last breath.

  Or the other guy’s.

  “That is something we will figure out,” Kris said. “Nelly, how many glass coffins are here?”

  “I’ve been able to observe four hundred and twelve from what you’ve seen. I’ve just checked in on the boffins’ network, and I believe that number is correct. That includes the first samples.”

  “That many!” Kris said, trying to feel the sorrow and finding that 412 was just too big a number to feel. But it could be analyzed.

  Assuming they’ve had one hundred thousand years to commit all those atrocities, what does that average out to? One every two hundred and fifty years.”

  “One every 242.7184466 years,” Nelly said. Professor la Duke wasn’t the only one given to babbling over what they were looking at. Kris could not recall the last time Nelly had not rounded up or down to the nearest significant number.

  “However, Kris, if I may point out,” Nelly went on, “there are two species here after the one we have dated to two hundred years ago. If we can assume that they are alternately adding kills to both sides, it seems a likely conclusion that they are killing more planets now than in the beginning.”

  “There are more of the bastards,” Jack whispered, amazement in his voice as the realization dawned.

  “It looks that way,” Kris said, but she’d spotted something.

  “Jacques, what are those markings behind each coffin?” Kris pointing to the wall behind the cubes. “It looks like a memorial or something.”

  “We think those are numbers i
n the first line. Possibly a star’s location. The rest are words. We’ll have to study them.”

  “Kris, I have been studying them,” Nelly said. “Could you look closely at the writing behind the fish with all the teeth?”

  Kris moved in that direction.

  “Notice the bottom of the writing. All the writings above are in the same font and the lines are equally spaced. The last two lines are in a different font, larger and etched deeper into the stone. It appears to me very likely that someone added a comment.”

  “Is that the only aquatic life-form?” Kris asked.

  Jacques paused to consult his computer, but Nelly was faster. “Yes it is. I’ve also identified the line as identical to other markings we’ve found in three of the other memorials. I think we may have the name of one of the ships. I don’t know what it means, but we may have ourselves a name.”

  “And I very much want to know how many ships are represented here,” Kris said.

  “I think we all do,” Jacques agreed.

  Kris turned toward the entrance. “I’ve seen enough. Jack, you and I need to get out of these hard suits and back to where we can do some thinking. Jacques, give us more to think about.”

  Three hours later, Kris and Jack sat across from Penny and Masao as Nelly gave them the briefing on the pyramid’s contents. It was easier to take at a distance, but Penny was still reduced to tears.

  Kris put the meeting on hold while Masao held her and shed some tears himself.

  Kris found herself fishing a tissue out of a box for Penny, then took one herself.

  Even Jack asked for one.

  Kris located a second box and let Penny and Masao have the first while she and Jack shared the second. Without the restrictions of an armored helmet, it was impossible not to feel the pain in the pictures at not only the loss of that family at the entrance, but the blight represented by the walls of horror.

  “So that is what we are fighting,” Penny finally said.

  “Yes. We are fighting to keep our skulls from being added to a pile on that floor and one of us locked in plastic as the only proof that we ever lived,” Kris said. “They are not adding a human, an Iteeche, or an Alwan to that house of horrors. Not on my watch.”

  “Yes,” Penny said. “We will not lose. We can’t.”

  “Did any of you notice something about that lineup?” Masao said.

  They waited for him to make his point. “They all represent one species. None of them have two standing together. What do you think they’d make of us and the Alwans on one planet?”

  “They’d either take the Alwans for animals,” Penny said, “or go looking for where we came from. And if they’ve got any ability to read DNA, they’ll know that we don’t fit on Alwa.”

  “Yeah,” Kris said. “Good old Grampa Ray goofed it big this time. No matter how big an industrial base we build on Alwa, we can’t fake our DNA fingerprint. When we killed that first base ship, we started a war, and no amount of us dying on Alwa will shake the raiders from hunting for the first race that managed to kill them in what, over a hundred thousand years?”

  “We don’t know that all of the other races failed to put up a decent fight,” Jack said.

  “The bastards sure don’t fight as if they’ve had a tough, space-based enemy for some time,” Kris pointed out.

  “I will concede that,” Jack said.

  “So, what do we do now?” Penny ask. “Do we know enough to head home and dig in for the next fight?”

  Kris chewed on that thought for a long moment, then shook her head. “I still want to talk to one of them. I want to know if what we’re assuming is the way it is. I want to know what makes their minds tick.”

  “That’s assuming you can find someone running around with a flint-tipped spear on this planet who knows anything about what happened a hundred thousand years ago,” Penny quipped.

  “That’s the problem,” Jack said. “I doubt if any of the natives here have any written records. Handing knowledge down by word of mouth has its limits.”

  “Carefully constructed sagas can last a long time,” Masao pointed out.

  “What about the locals that were recently landed?” Kris said. “The ones that are still wearing rags? They have to know the official story from their ship. Maybe they’ll tell us what’s happening on the ships and why that pyramid of horrors is down there?”

  “But they were tossed off the ships,” Jack said. “Won’t that impact their perspective?”

  “And even if we ignore that minor issue,” Penny said, smiling enigmatically at her understatement, “that’s just one ship’s version.”

  “All good points,” Kris admitted, “but I want to talk to someone. I want to hear something, right or wrong. Those that are stuck down there living from hand to mouth look like a better prospect than those that blow their ships up rather than talk. Somehow, there has to be some way for us to make contact with them before they manage to kill themselves.”

  “Or us,” Jack pointed out.

  “They don’t get to kill us,” Kris said, voice cold as steel.

  “So, how do we get one of them in a mood to talk?” Penny asked.

  “Let’s talk to Jacques,” Kris said. “He’s the anthropologist. If he can’t figure out a way to get a word in edgewise with people struggling to survive on what they can hunt, scavenge, or dig up, no one can.”

  So Jacques and Amanda were recalled from the surface, and Kris found out she’d bitten off a whole lot more than she thought though not more than she was willing to chew.

  After listening to Kris, Jacques shook his head. “I would not suggest that we just sleepy dart one of them and haul them up here. People can kill themselves by running into a wall over and over again. I suspect if these dudes got the shock of finding themselves on a strange ship, that is exactly what they would do.”

  “We look just like them. Can’t we pass for them?” Kris asked.

  “Bare-ass naked, I might,” Jacques said. “But dressed here, on this ship?” He shook his head. “Even the smell of the ship might give us away. No doubt our language would, and definitely our questions would. No, we’ve got to come at this using a totally neutral approach.”

  “Does that mean you have one?” Kris asked.

  The anthropologist settled into a chair and rubbed his chin. It had been a while since he had shaved. “We’ve got surveillance bugs following several of the gens around. I can’t actually call them clans or tribes. They’re much too small. What we’ve found is that they speak similar languages, but different enough that they would have trouble talking to each other.”

  Kris made a puzzled look. Jacques took mercy on her.

  “Most of us speak Standard. It’s a cross between Old Earth’s English and Spanish, which themselves were a cross between several languages that preceded them like German, French, and before them, Latin and Greek. Then you have to throw in borrowed words from all over Earth: Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Swahili. Don’t get me started, or I will bore you to death.

  “Anyway, back on Old Earth, the French, the Italians, and the Spanish spoke languages that branched off from Latin. They shared a lot of similar words, but put two of them in a bar and they couldn’t order a drink.

  “However, we have a lot of scout bots following different gens around, collecting sessions of their speech and the context for it. With any luck, we should have a good idea of what they’re saying in a week, two at the most.”

  “The markings in the pyramid,” Kris said. “Will we be reading them as quickly?”

  “Not likely. We have only the most minimum of context for them. For example, we know that there is a kind of star location given for each of the specimens. It’s the opening line etched into the wall behind every one of them. We think it’s giving us numbers, but we can’t even be sure of that. It’s a lot easier to crack a living language than a dead one, and the written markings on the pyramid are, for all practical matters, dead to us.”

  “Can we do anythi
ng to help you crack the living languages? I’m including in that the languages of the natives in the dominant culture,” Kris said. “I wonder if their language is anywhere close to the star raiders’ language?”

  “Possibly, but quite likely not,” Jacques said. “In a hundred thousand years, languages can change a lot. And remember, these are the ones that stayed behind when the others took up wandering the stars and slaughtering everything they meet. There’s bound to be some basis for that difference.”

  “And these people on the ground have been attacked by the star raiders,” Nelly put in. “We’ve dated three of the more recent depredations. We’re sure the most recent was lased from space in the last ten thousand years.”

  “But why?” Amanda asked.

  Kris took a shot at an answer. “They may be flesh of their flesh, but they chose to stay behind, to separate off from those who are carrying the torch. They can live, but they can’t ever threaten the star rovers. If they look to be developing a science-based, industrial culture, they burn it.”

  “You may be right,” Amanda said. “Dear God, I hate this. And I hate them.”

  “We can’t afford to hate them,” Kris said. “If necessary, I will destroy them, but I will not hate them. Hate like that is what turned them into whatever it is they are.”

  Jack and Jacques nodded agreement.

  “There is one thing that might help us correlate the data we’re collecting,” Jacques said, changing the topic to something they controlled.

  “Name it, and it’s yours,” Kris said.

  “The use of the ships’ main computers to grind the data.”

  “Oops,” Kris said, “On that, you will have to speak to my flag captain. No one messes with the ships’ computers without his say-so.”

  Which brought Captain Drago into the conversation. He looked more than negative to the idea, even when Nelly offered to coordinate the data processing.