It was already doing whatever it could.
The shock and the tuning didn’t help me when Cheeirilaq stuck two manipulators into my wound, found and pinched off the spurting artery, and tamponaded the whole mess shut with an enormous sticky ball of webbing. It managed me with half its appendages, while managing Farweather with the others, and then it swept me up with a raptorial forelimb as well.
The first Jothari vessel outpaced us, falling toward the occluded sun just a little faster than we were. It turned to bring its guns to bear.
I wondered if they would ask for a surrender.
Cheeirilaq carefully shifted its grip on me so I could see, but it wasn’t pressing on the wound.
You held on to your gun, it said. That is well.
CHAPTER 29
THE BAOMIND DID NOT SLOW. But neither did the flock increase its a. Perhaps it was already falling as fast as it was able. Perhaps it didn’t recognize the threat.
More ships overhauled us. We were englobed. I struggled for awareness, pushing against the fuzzy comfort of unconsciousness as if I were fighting the blear of an unwise drunk. “Something—” I murmured to Cheeirilaq. “Something is coming.”
It wasn’t Singer, though I wanted it to be. I would have felt Singer as a point, a heaviness moving through the folded sky. This was… a wave. A wall.
It seemed familiar. I could not say why. I was not entirely myself. I was dying. I knew it with a lucidity like stained glass with a light behind it.
With effort that hurt, I turned to look over at Farweather. Her eyes were open and focused. They tracked me. I felt terrible about that. She was horribly wounded and should be resting.
I was horribly wounded and should be resting too.
We slumped, cradled in the grip of a giant insect. Ever so gently, with the feathery tip of one manipulator arm, Cheeirilaq nudged my hand that still clutched the weapon into my lap, so it wasn’t floating free. I saw that it had webbed the gun to my glove, but left my hand free to move. I could fire the weapon if I had to.
I should not fire the weapon now.
I wasn’t defenseless, then. And I wouldn’t have to be captured. It is well that you held on to the gun.
So that was what it meant.
The gun was in my lap now. I wasn’t going to lose it.
My com crackled. “Commander Farweather. This is Defiance hailing Commander Farweather. Please respond if you are able.”
Farweather’s eyes narrowed. I noticed, because it seemed like entirely too much effort to look away from her.
She turned her head. I could tell it was all the effort she could muster, but she looked up at the underside of Cheeirilaq’s mandibled face. I could have told her its brain wasn’t in that tiny head, but I suppose addressing yourself to the sensory equipment is polite across species.
“You saved me,” she said.
I saved us all.
“They… detonating.”
They were going to sacrifice you. Yes.
“This is Defiance hailing Commander Farweather. Commander Farweather. Please respond if you are able.”
Farweather nodded. Slowly, wincing. She touched a stud on her glove. The green light of the telltale inside her helmet reflected in her corneas.
“This… Commander Farweather,” she creaked. “Hey… Defiance. Fuck your mother.”
Well. That wasn’t going to get us picked up as potential friendlies, I guessed.
My fox. My fox was in halfway functioning order again. I could… I could use it. I was injured. Badly. But I wasn’t dying right this second, thanks to Cheeirilaq’s intervention.
There were emergency protocols.
Overrides. I could use them to juice myself with a nice, big jolt of adrenaline, for example.
Adrenaline is a hell of a drug.
I sat up in Cheeirilaq’s arms.
It hurt. I mean, I guessed it hurt? But it didn’t hurt nearly enough. Nearly as much as it should have.
Friend Haimey. This is unwise.
“Necessary,” I told it.
Friend Haimey! This is unwise!
I hooked my left arm—the one without the gun it its hand—around the Goodlaw’s neck. A gross violation of its personal space. It didn’t seem to mind, and I needed the support.
I hoped they were listening hard on the suit frequency they were using.
I tuned my com to it. I took as deep a breath as I could manage, and I tried to think. All I had was the standard trade creole. Farweather spoke it like a native.
Maybe the Jothari knew how to translate from the human trade language, if it was something the Freeporters used.
I had to hope.
“Jothari ships!” I said. I tried to enunciate and speak slowly. I’m not sure I managed more than a mumble. “Jothari people. You do not have to live as outlaws. Listen to me. I am Haimey Dz, chief engineer of SGV I Rise From Ancestral Night, and I am a duly appointed representative of the Synarche of Worlds.” Stretching a point, but I was in Singer’s chain of command, and frankly there was no one else out here who could negotiate except for Cheeirilaq, who didn’t appear to have thought of it.
Silence fell into my hand.
I nerved myself. “The Synarche acknowledges that it has a debt to the Jothari species. That mistakes were made in contact, and that reparations are owed.”
Their crimes are terrible, Cheeirilaq said, but I thought it spoke only to me.
They have committed crimes. It’s likely that they owe reparations too. That is a matter someone with a higher diplomatic ranking can assess.
That would be…
Yes. Anyone. Hush.
I strained my ears, which was silly, because any answer would come over my suit radio and com.
Eventually, after what I could only assume were intense private negotiations, a metallic translated voice reached me. “Your Synarche destroyed us.”
By the Well. They were talking. They were talking.
Cheeirilaq’s tiny head pivoted on its narrow neck, its multifaceted main eyes regarding me. It did not speak.
“It was long ago and we were young,” I said. “Please. I know you cannot forgive us. Please accept that the Synarche acknowledges that a terrible wrong has been done and wishes for peace between us, and to make reparations.”
That wave, that wall, was still coming. It ached in my sinuses like dropping pressure. The pain was blinding.
Around it, I heard the Jothari—who had not given me a name or a rank—speak.
“Reparations.”
“Yes.”
“You’ll punish us.”
“We wronged you.”
“You will find it wrongful that we harvest the star-dragons.”
That was where it got sticky. “You would have to stop that, yes.” But you should stop it anyway, because it’s wrong!
I kept my mouth shut. Sometimes a thing can be true, and not for immediate sharing. That was, Connla had assured me more than once, how diplomacy worked.
“You will punish us.”
“That is not for me to decide. The Ativahikas will probably want reparations from you, the same as you will, I expect, want reparations from us. I request only that you open diplomatic relations with the Synarche. You do not have to choose to accept our justice.”
Cheeirilaq twitched.