: Give it time : Thalia told Josei.
: I’m trying : he answered : but I miss my Rtathlians :
So did Thalia although she was trying very hard not to think about it.
After practice was over (a preoccupied Thalia had been partnered with a very tiny female cadet who, with determination written all over her pretty little face had managed to get through Thalia’s guard not once but twice) the tired cadets and their respective Lind returned to their barracks and the eighteen vadeln-pairs of the Fifteenth Ryzck returned to their forest dagas.
On route they discussed the new cadets with vim and gusto.
“I liked the look of that little blonde one you were partnered with Thalia,” announced Zeb.
“She certainly gave Thalia a run for her coin,” Rodick chortled with a sly wink in Zeb’s direction.
“My concentration was all to pieces,” Thalia admitted with an embarrassed laugh. “Alkin noticed. I’ve got to report to him tomorrow for a one to one workout - in the salle.”
Rodick and Zeb grimaced.
“Better you than me,” said the latter with feeling and a sympathetic look.
Rodick continued to chuckle. He was not at all upset that Thalia had been promoted to the Vadryzka position in his stead. He was a carefree sort of man who took life very much as it came. Being a Vadryzka meant responsibility and he would have been the first to agree that he was not ready. Despite her poor performance today, Thalia had been Susa Malkum and Ryzcka Vandiel’s first and best choice.
* * * * *
Weaponsmaster Alkin was far stricter with Thalia than he had been with the cadets during their first lesson.
Thalia experienced the most demanding sword practice since the days when she too had been a cadet. She entered the training bout most definitely not teeming with confidence - Alkin could draw rings round most vadelns (although he had been slowing down a little these last seasons as age began to take its toll). He was still, Thalia reflected as she jumped out of the way of one of his determined lunges, amazingly light on his feet.
There wasn’t time to dwell on the reasons why Alkin remained so hale and fit. After a few testing parries the fight got going in earnest.
The two of them weaved in and out looking for an opening in each other’s guard. Alkin lunged and Thalia stumbled backwards, momentarily nonplussed at the speed of the thrust and very thankful she was wearing padded training armour. The hit still hurt though.
She caught her footing and skipped nimbly away from his next blow.
“That’s better,” said Alkin. “After yesterday’s exhibition I thought you were losing your touch girl.”
Thalia grinned and bounded forward.
Alkin was ready for her and deftly stepped aside. Like a dancing master, he swung round and Thalia had to bend almost double to avoid the down sweep of his sword.
Verassi! He was quicker than she remembered or perhaps her reflexes were slower these days. Eight years aboard the Limokko with the lighter gravity had left most if not all vadelns less fit than they had been on their home planet. Unfortunately for Thalia, it didn’t appear to have affected Alkin at all.
Thalia managed to block Alkin’s next sally. The two wooden practice swords began thudding against each other in a rapid succession of blows.
“Cease.”
They disengaged to catch their respective breaths. Thalia had barely recovered when Alkin indicated that the rest was over. Alkin looked as fresh as when they had started. Not a bead of sweat decorated his lined brow.
“Begin.”
Master and pupil began circling each other warily. Alkin swung into the attack again and Thalia parried. He swung again and again. Thalia managed to block him fairly easily on his third. She was beginning to feel that she might manage to gain a coveted word or two of approval when Alkin skipped back a few steps. Thalia, believing Alkin was tiring, advanced.
Big mistake.
Before Thalia could register the fact, Alkin stopped moving backwards and was moving forward. He charged. She managed to dodge his first swing and bring her sword up to meet the second. It didn’t come where she had been expecting. With a backswing and a delighted grin on his face, Alkin brought his sword down and through, knocking her off her feet.
She hit the ground with a groan of pure pain. Practice armour didn’t include leg padding.
“Not bad,” said Alkin grudgingly. “Tomorrow I will expect you to do much better.”
Thalia groaned again but she wasn’t groaning because she was hurting. She was groaning at the thought of having to do it all again. Tomorrow Alkin wouldn’t give her a breathing space.
“Three days should do it,” commented Alkin in an optimistic voice. “As I said, you weren’t a complete disaster.”
* * * * *
Robain Hallam, Councillor in Charge of Species Integration couldn’t believe what he was being told.
“You sure about this?” he asked his assistant David Ross, for the last two months his brother-in-law.
“Jill told me,” Daniel answered. “The technicians and artificers have been working on them for months. They began the planning and development process during the last year or so aboard the Limokko.”
“But we’ve been here for over two years! Why are we only now being told?”
“Not exactly being told,” Daniel disagreed. “Jill said they had been sworn to secrecy. She didn’t mean to say anything. It sort of slipped out. We drank a couple of bottles of wine last night, some of the last we brought with us.”
“But why?” asked Robain.
“Honestly, I don’t know. I’d have told you if I did. She clammed up, told me she’d said more than she should. She asked me not to tell anyone but I felt it was far too important not to come and see you. I didn’t press her to tell me any more. She was upset, and don’t say to her that I told you anything, at least … not yet.”
“The joys of early married life,” grinned Robain. “I promise I won’t say a thing. So, what sort of weapon are they fabricating?”
“I told you. I don’t know. I do know that Tavin, that artificer who left for the Stronghold the other day was a part of it. I think that’s why Jill broke silence and spoke about it. She was worrying about the fact he wouldn’t be there in the workshops any more. She said he was one of the best.”
“But we can guess. It must be some kind of advanced weapon.”
The two worried men looked at each other. Their concern was obvious.
On their home planet, the warfare technology they had made use of had been basic when compared with the weapons the Diaglon had at their disposal on their space ships. Rybak had been a predominantly agrarian society. Any quarrels, feuds, and wars had been settled with edged blades.
Weaponry had consisted of swords, knives, bows with arrows and crossbows. The navies had possessed rudimentary cannons but they hadn’t transferred to land operations well, being slow, unwieldy and virtually unmovable through inclement weather and difficult terrain. Robain and Daniel knew that when their ancestors had arrived on Rybak over eight centuries before they had possessed highly developed and complex weaponry but these had been destroyed during the first year.
Before the attempted invasion of their planet back in the year six hundred and eight, all but a few men and women, historians mostly, had forgotten that other types of armament had ever existed. The invasion had been beaten off at much cost in lives and it had not been the swordfighters who had won the war. The invaders had been defeated using a piece of six hundred year old technology.
Over the years, the museum at Stewarton, the only city in the country known as Argyll, had gathered together the parts of the laser rifles they had been able to locate and displayed them in cabinets. The pieces had been too small and fragmentary for the artificers to put them back together even if they had wanted to. Until the seventh century there had been no need and afterwards the need had been forgotten again.
Everyone who had left Rybak for Tak had known they would be exp
osed to more technology than they had ever envisioned but no one had expected it to be so soon. It had been decided that their education in the new concepts and technologies would be spread out over a number of years. Ten to twenty had been the estimate.
One of the first wonders had been electricity. They had learnt about it on the classrooms on the Limokko. Township had installed electric powered lighting and heating last year and the outskirts were scheduled to receive their supply as soon as it could be managed.
The second advance had been in the area of medicine. The Holad had started attending intensive classes on the space ship and these classes were still going on.
Weaponry however, at least as far as Robain and Daniel were aware, had never been on the agenda. Human, Lind and Larg had assumed that this would continue much as it had always done. After all, who was there to fight? The Diaglon defensive shield, the space ships patrolling their planet would protect them from any alien incursion and they had been assured that there was nothing to fear.
“There are the Vlon and the Jus,” said Daniel doubtfully. “They can both travel through space.”
Robain shook his head.
“No. Maru says that they are not a danger to us.”
“So why do we need an advanced weapon?”
“I’ll try to find out. Daniel, hold the fort while I’m away making enquiries.”
Robain went to find Maru the Lai.
* * * * *
Maru, the golden skinned Lai was spending some free time in his quarters at the northern end of Township.
He had been out hunting that morning in the Nadlians and was feeling happy, sleepy and replete. He roused at Robain Hallam’s authoritative knock. Maru made a point of always being available when friends called round.
“Come in, come in,” he gestured invitingly with an extended wing when he recognised his visitor.
The buildings in Township were all of the same design. They were large circular structures, nicknamed pods by the humans (the Diaglon word was impossible to pronounce). Those built for the Diaglon were larger and more ovoid in shape while the smaller human-occupied ones were round. Large families lived in a series of pods joined by tunnels made of the same opaque material. At intervals clear panels had been inserted to let in the daylight. If viewed from the sky the town looked like a mass of irregular, milky bubbles.
They had been designed like this because of the weather conditions on Tak. Buildings with straight walls and roofs did not stay up for long. In the winter violent storms of wind and rain were apt to ravage the continents. During their first years on the planet, the black-skinned Brai had worked out that the round designs were the only viable ones after no less than a hundred of their traditional dagas had been destroyed.
The inhabitants of Township were almost all human. Maru liked humans. He enjoyed their sense of adventure and humour, especially when faced with adversity. He was especially friendly with a young woman called Jill Ross - they had been close for over a decade now. He was the only Lai presently residing on Tak. Most of the other golden-skinned Lai lived on another planet.
When the space ships carrying the Lind, the Larg, some eight and a half thousand people and the group of Lai of which Maru had been a part arrived on Tak, Maru had not been able to bear the thought of leaving his friends and had elected to remain on the planet with them. For thousands of years the Lai of Rybak had tried to keep the peace between the Lind and the Larg and when the humans had arrived they had extended this self-imposed remit to include them. Although the Lai had not been able to banish conflict completely they had at least been able to keep it within survivable limits.
Maru had appointed himself liaison between the Human-kind, the Lind-kind, the Larg-kind and the black-skinned Brai who had opened their planet to the alien newcomers. He served on the Council of Species Integration under Robain Hallam.
He had been expecting Robain Hallam’s visit for some time. By their nature, secrets could never be kept indefinitely and both Lind and humans enjoyed chattering and gossip; it was one of the many things they had in common.
Ever the courteous host, he motioned for Robain to sit and settled his huge bulk in order to await the explanation for his guest’s visit.
Robain Hallam was not a man to beat about the bush. He announced the reason at once.
“What do you know about the fabrication of an advanced weapon?”
A direct question deserved a blunt answer.
“I have known that it was being designed for a number of years. Your artificers and a group of Brai have been working on it but I do not know the details.”
“Do you know why?” asked his anxious visitor.
“Swords are not enough,” answered Maru enigmatically.
“I don’t understand.”
“Swords are not enough to defend against whatever and whoever needs defending against.”
Robain laughed.
“You are answering my question with riddles and prevarication Maru. Why aren’t swords enough?”
I have not been given leave to tell you any more.”
“Leave from whom?”
“Gtrathlin Larku. He commanded that it be done.”
Gtrathlin Larku? The leader of the Brai here on Tak? Robain was assimilating the sparse answers Maru had given him. Why did he not tell us? He must have known.
“You must go and see Gtrathlin Larku, Robain. He will answer all your questions.”
“Without prevarication?”
“When you know enough to ask the question, you are ready to listen to the answer.”
* * * * *
“This galaxy of ours is very big. It is so large that we Diaglon, although we have been exploring it for a very long time have not begun to learn enough about even a hundredth of it.”
Larku, Gtrathlin of Tak, was in full lecturing mode.
“I did attend the classes on board the Limokko and here on Tak,” Robain Hallam commented. “Also the ones during the acclimatisation period. Nothing was said about there being so much danger here that we would need to fight … and need special weapons to fight with. It troubles me.”
“And so it should,” said Larku, moving restlessly on the large divan, so restlessly that the wooden struts holding it together began to creak alarmingly. “You know of the Vlon?”
Robain nodded.
“Is it the Vlon who are the danger?”
Larku replied in the negative by shaking his large dragon-like head. “We came to an accommodation with them some time ago. No, it is the Vlon who have warned us. They are worried too.”
“Warning about what, or should I say who?”
“Neither we nor the Vlon know. A communication arrived a number of years ago, telling us about some unidentified objects they had located using their long-range image scanners. There were three of them, travelling very fast, much faster than either the Vlon space ships or our space ships can fly. They were definitely not natural. All three had ibon trails marking their passage.”
“Who was flying them?”
“I told you that question has still to be answered.”
“Are they dangerous?”
“That is another question for which no answer had been yet found.”
“But your space ships, they will protect us, right?”
“As you know, we have verustas, defence space ships equipped with weaponry with which they can defend themselves and the planets under our protection. However, by all calculations our space ships are at least five times speed-slower than the three which the Vlon tracked.”
“So whoever is flying them might well be dangerous, might well be able to get through the planetary defences and attack us here, on the surface. That’s why you have started making weapons.”
“Yes. We Diaglon possess no personal weapons. We can breathe fire. We have never had the need to develop them. In space, we have never had to actually fight another space ship, although they are armed to enable us to do so if necessary.”
> Robain stayed silent, too shocked to make a comment.
“A number of space weapons which have been adapted for use on a planet’s surface have being fabricated on our home planet Dagana. The first shipment is imminent, but they are too large for use by individuals your size and try as we have, we have not been able to make them smaller - the power packs are too bulky.”
“So you have been designing personal weapons, ones that we humans can use.”
“Correct. Our designers are attempting to reduce the size of the power packs and have had some success but we believe that it will be another two years before the prototypes are ready for trial.”
“Until then?”
“Until then we shall have to manage with what we have. The first weapons we have manufactured, with help from some of your people,” he consulted his information pad, “over seventy at last count, are ready to be issued to the Vada. They are small, able to be carried much like you carry that knife on your belt.”
Robain’s hand clasped his dagger hilt.
“It’s purely ceremonial.”
“The weapon I am talking about is not ceremonial. I have been present when one has been fired - little balls of metal over a considerable distance.”
“That’s why you insisted the Vada should not be disbanded when we got here. I’ve often wondered,” interrupted Robain with dawning comprehension. “You believe they will be needed?”
“I fear that we will have to all on their help before many days pass,” answered Larku.
“And the three space ships the Vlon sighted? Where were they heading?”
“We know the direction, although not the destination. It is in our sector of space and so it is our duty to investigate. We have been investigating but have only been able to determine the general area.”
Larku looked speculatively at Robain, inviting him to comment.
“You have a plan?” Robain asked.
“We do. Three verustas and one transport carrier, we call them racovens, will be heading in the direction the three ships have taken. Inside the carrier ship? There is room for around forty or so vadeln-pairs. The four space ships will locate the planet the three strange space ships are heading for and because …”