"So, he's the Captain, but these aliens, uh, people, are cowards?"
"Devout pacificists, as a rule. Captain Kedris Venn is... cautious."
"Right. I'll remember. The word is 'cautious.'"
***
They got under way a little while later. Star travel was in fact not FTL, but just under lightspeed. Artificial gravity didn't work under 'Inertialess Drive', which was annoying, but not any worse than that. Freefall did not make Henry sick, a fact which he was secretly proud of. The Earth and Moon receded, and the starship flew, if that was the right word, inward, passing the Sun at 50 million kilometers, and on outward to a point on the Earth's orbit on the far side of the Sun. The relativistic effects did make the short trip to the wormhole, which O.C. called the Earthgate, that much shorter. About eighteen light-minutes distance in what seemed like just less than two minutes time.
Artificial gravity returned as the starship came to a stop near the wormhole. A vast amount of energy was discharged into the 'Earthgate', and it opened, a flat circle about two hundred meters across, and infinitely thin. On the far side was a star system tens of light years from the Solar System, with nothing much of interest, just another wormhole.
That set the pattern. Throughout that day, and the next two, they went in and out of inertialess drive, and passed through countless wormholes. Well, the computer kept count, and the navigator hopefully knew where they were bound, but Henry rapidly lost interest. It was only by supreme force of will that he kept from asking, "Are we there yet?"
On the morning of the fourth day, they reached OjGara, and then things began to happen.
***
OjGara was crowded. The system had nine wormholes, which, Henry learned, was quite a lot. Planet side, things were also hopping. He had been in some busy airports, and seaports, too, in the course of his job, and the crowded down port where the Oddity captain had landed them was busier than any three of them. Yet it was only the third busiest, a regional hub for tourists and pilgrims, and there seemed to be quite a lot of them. The strip of shore west of the down port reminded him of nothing less than Vegas, or Monte Carlo. There was a dedicated monorail running northeast to some memorial, and Old Complications invited him to come along with him, "While I go say hello."
Most of the pilgrims were Garas, strange little fox-like aliens, three-eyed and double-tailed, like escapees from a Saturday morning cartoon. Henry, by now, was able to recognize most of the other common galactic species- Oddities, Trikes (cyborgs with three wheels), and a few Markov. The Markov were hippo-like centaurs, three quarters of a ton of attitude. But they were nearly as deferential to O.C. as the Garas, who were practically fawning. Well, not nearly. Henry wasn't sure, but he thought he detected fear and shame from the Markov, towards the Hunter, and they all made way for the Human and the Ranger.
The monorail ride was high speed, but still, it took half an hour. They disembarked in a vast bowl, forested with bluegreen trees, surrounded by lakes and streams, and a very tall waterfall. The well-tended paths and bridges reminded Henry of Yellowstone, or Yosemite, and it was, indeed, some kind of park. A short walk brought them to an artificial pool, with a fountain, and a curved wall around its' northern half. The surface slanted, a 45 degree slope that had youngsters of a half a dozen species climbing up on it, to the dismay of their parents. The highest point, in the north, was about two stories tall, and a blue flame burned there. The wall was covered with the same alien script that O.C. used.
"The inscription, below the flame, is 'Do you wish to burn bright, and so light up the Galaxy?' We are fairly sure it was a Ranger who spoke those words, but not which one. Possibly one of my… students. Five of them died here."
The writing was fairly large; OC reached out a hand to several names as he walked along. The script glowed as his hand passed, and when his hand lingered, a pleasant voice spoke the name. Large writing, but there was a lot of wall. Hundreds of names, Henry was sure, maybe thousands.
"Somebody fight a battle here?"
"In a manner of speaking. This," OC gestured at the park around them, "was the largest planetary disaster in the history of the Conservancy. A massive volcanic eruption that made OjGara temporarily uninhabitable." He looked at Henry. "Something like this very nearly wiped out all of your species, once. Almost ended it all…"
Henry felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. The alien almost sounded as if he'd been there.
"This is 'The Work', a part of it, anyway. The Conservancy exists to 'Create and conserve life, and the potential for sapient life, in the Galaxy.' That is our mission statement, anyway. The Conservancy really exists…" OC shook his head, and grinned his alarming, startling grin. "The Conservancy is the Legacy of the Ilshani. The language I speak is the living word of a dead people, and some say that we are the Ilshani, reborn."
***
Ilshan, 33,203 years before the present, Cycle -909,509, Conservancy Reckoning
He had fallen in love with one of the mayflies, again. It was something that he always swore he would never do, again, and he never did, again, until the next time.
This time, she was a princess, the daughter of the Priest-King of the Ilshani, a figure-head in this age, but still powerful. Centuries past, a warlord had captured the sacred person of one of her ancestors, and used him to consolidate power. Later, popular movements had used the office of the Priest-King for their own purposes, and that culture had been the one to industrialize, turn all the resources of Ilshan to their own form of Progress, and taken the first steps onto the Star Road.
The Ilshani were fortunate in their first contacts, and in their natures there was another good fortune. They were aggressive enough, and, yes, greedy enough, to expand and defend new territory, yet gentle and wise enough to do so with a minimum of loss and oppression. They found and made few real enemies, and those species which joined their civilization prospered. Even the few deadly enemies of Ilshan found mercy. Genocide, the byword of all other great flowerings of Galactic civilization, was unknown to them.
Conflict was not unknown to them. They did, eventually, find a mortal enemy on the Star Road, out among the network of wormholes left behind by the Builders. The Demons were more than enough bad news- numerous and aggressive, they were about even with the Ilshani in technology. They replaced their loses almost as fast as they replaced lost ships. Fortunately, they had made a lot of enemies, ready allies for the Ilshani.
He Who Waits, later known as Old Complications (for, truly, that name did suit him) was an enemy of the master of the Demons, and he spent time among the Ilshani, taking the form of a soldier. He had been called Reshoo, then, and had grown old in a few short years of conflict, as the Demons rolled back the Shining Host, Ilshans' armed forces. He'd met Princess Henneshaneh during one bravely idiotic stunt, when she'd turned up in the middle of a battle turned rout. She'd saved him, and he'd saved her, back and forth, and the sparks flew.
(I need to expand on this part- one of my betas says it is key to OC, and I agree)
The romance had been a Good Thing, it was widely spoken. Good for Ilshan and the Ilshani, and entertaining for even the weirdest and most oblivious of the allied species. They had needed distraction, entertainment. Hope. For, although it took nearly a dozen orbits of Ilshans' sun, the Demons eventually arrived at the door to what the Ilshani called Heavens Gate, the star that the busier of the two wormholes in the Ilshani home star system lead to.
Reshoo had by then risen high in the Shining Host. Connections had helped, and the high attrition rate of the war, but he had done this sort of thing countless times before. He was preternaturally good at inspiring his troops, making quick and good decisions, and winning. He was also very good at hiding from his own people what, in his liver (the Ilshani, pony-sized lizard-centaurs, had six simple, redundant, blood pumps, and did not attach any great sentiment to them), he knew to be true, that this war was un-winnable.
"What troubles you, my love?" His Nesha had f
ound him brooding on terrace looking out over the great temple complex at Zilshoo, the Three Veils. Above and below them, three stepped waterfalls spilled the upper course of the Green River into the bottom lands of the great valley and the freshwater sea of Lake Henneshaneh, her namesake. Reshoo turned away from the vista of his adopted homeland and hugged her, trilling, forehead to forehead, in the manner of their species.
"Nothing, Nesha, I’m just worrying at an egg-tooth, when I could be enjoying the view." Reshoo hooted, wryly. It was spectacular.
"'I gaze upon senseless beauty, spilling grace upon the world,'" he quoted, and pulled back a little to gaze on her beauty, iridescent scales, emerald eyes with dark diagonal slits, delicate double pairs of horns behind the short ear flaps, perfect sharp teeth. "Your people have had some brilliant poets, suitably inspired, of course."
"Hazzashoo was a heretic, and she a corrupter of youth, be they male or female. She sang her way out of execution a double handful of times, or so they say." She hooted gladness. "It makes my love happy, but I wonder, did you know that old lech?"
She knew what he was, as much as she could know. Reshoo nodded, which in this place and time, was negation. "It's a very big galaxy. I've only lived this one lifetime among the Ilshani."
"This one lifetime is all that I will ever know."
Stung, Reshoo looked away from her. He just had to go and remind her that she would die, and he would not. How easy it was to hurt the ones you love! The ones who love you. Nesha reached up and traced his ear flap. He enjoyed the sensation, and leaned into it, until she took a good hard grip on it and pulled his face around to hers. The pain concentrated his mind quite nicely.
"You listen to me!" Green fire burned in her eyes. "I don't feel sorry for myself, and neither should you. I've had a good life, in addition to, and not because of, my station, all of the privileges and responsibilities. I am a Princess of the Ilshani, your wife and the mother of our children. I may know, or think that I know, what the future holds for us, but I will never accept it. The end is not yet written, as the poets say."
"'It is a heroes' privilege to live and die for his people,'" Reshoo quoted, and hooted sadly. "Or rather, her people."
"Yours, too."
"But I won't die. Strangely enough, it's no comfort to survive everyone, even your enemies." All except for his Adversary.
"Then your choice is simple. Live for us."
The war called Reshoo away that night, and he never came home to her or to them, while they lived. The Demons reached the lesser wormhole, instead, with a force that had doubled around through a long and tangled skein of wormhole connections with weakened defenses, ships and troops pulled away to defend Heavens' Gate. The seas of Ookwindle boiled for that mistake, and the gentle hive minds of the Kwind sent forth puzzlement-
Why, indeed. The Demons left a caretaker unit of workers on Ookwindle, for when it cooled enough to be reseeded, as they did elsewhere, and these few, mercifully, forgot what they were. But that was much later.
The war for Ilshan was lost in minutes. A very few were evacuated, fighting through the Demon force tasked with investing the near side of the wormhole to Heavens' Gate, and a few more when the Shining host breached the wormhole, to pour two thousand ships into the system. Just in time to witness the bombardment that reshaped the main continent and threw gigatonnes of rock into ballistic arcs, which, infalling, set the atmosphere on fire. The subsequent battle lasted for weeks, as the Demons reinforced, again and again, but Ilshan and her allies had no more reserves. It became obvious that the Demons' plan was to bleed them with a forlorn hope, and the Ilshani commander ordered a retreat, though all the Shining Host cursed him.
***
First, last and always, she had saved him. From despair, from the loneliness of all those dusty eons. When he was stranded among the proto-Hunters, uplifting them to sapience (because they had potential, because he needed a ride, and not the least because he really liked the big happy fuzz-balls!), her memory was always with him. The species which his Hunters had met, and grew together with, finally reached the ruins of Ilshan, and he schemed to rebuild it. He built with living hearts and minds, patiently and joyfully, as the idea, the dream, took on a life of its' own. A consortium to bring life back to a murdered world and learn the secrets of their technology and culture grew, year by year, generation after generation, into the Conservancy.
(I also need to expand on the uplift of the Hunters, again because it's important to explaining who OC is and why he's doing what he's doing)
***
"Are you okay?" Henry was getting used to his eccentric alien guide zoning out and staring off into space, but he'd been standing around for far longer than usual.
"Yes," Old Complications answered, and, looking over the humans' shoulder, sighed tremendously. "We have company, Company Man."
Henry frowned at that last, and decided to ask later. A group of Garas was approaching, escorting a wizened old female, a mother, grandmother and possibly even great grandmother. As the spokesperson wound up the speech he had prepped, one of the little kits, on a dare, raced up to the Hunter and tapped him with a forepaw, then raced back to be scolded by his mother and admired by his cousins.
"Forgive him, Great One-" The Gara began, but was cut off.
"A youngling is a youngling is a youngling. And a Gara kit is supposed to be bold and mischievous." Old Complica tions laughed as the unruly kits tried to settle down, one or two managing to hide a sneaky grin. "Not unlike a Hunter cub," he added, quietly. Then he glared at the Gara, but found that he could not stay mad. "You knew I would not pass up a pack of little rascals like that. Sneaky, even for a Gara merchie, Den-Leader Orrik Parl."
The Gara yipped. "I offer you the run of Den Orrik, for as long as you like. We claim precedence for an old debt owed the Rangers."
"And the honor and prestige accruing to Den Orrik would be a mere pittance?"
Parl examined the back of his hand, and nonchalantly looked back over his shoulder at a rather annoyed group of Gara. "Let them choke on it, Great One. I uncovered a personal debt, from the time of the disaster, and later, when you and your partner saved my grandmother and her family. My home is yours, for a day, a season, or a lifetime."
Parl couldn't figure out what made his guest laugh so hard, but it sealed the deal, and the Human and the Hunter went away with him and his den. Everyone was watching them, so that almost no one noticed a freelance Tersid journalist in the crowd. The Tersid immediately contacted the Markov Embassy for comment. The call was forwarded to the Ambassadors' 'lazy' niece, who carefully selected and 'angrily' delivered a few rote answers from a battered red personal journal. The journal was unremarkable on the surface of it, but had a carefully modified, heavy-duty capacitor that could 'accidentally' discharge and do a lot of damage, including wipe the confidential files stored on it.
The Tersid noted that his orders were to get holos, and attempt to keep up his perfectly legitimate front as a journalist by trying for an interview. He chirped wryly. The Last Interview, with The Last Hunter, that would be worth quite a lot, to the right Media syndicate…
***
The little old Gara had mewed like a kitten and then hugged Old Complications as hard as she could with her tired old arms. Nearly a lifetime ago, O.C. had held a little newborn Gara, shortly after he and Edvirj Tomk, later the first Bluehorn Ranger Commandant, had rescued her parents in some stupid little battle on the other side of the Galaxy. The native population had turned xenophobic and attacked a galactic enclave, Conservancy, Markov (then a federal republic of eleven worlds), Hunter and others. The Garas' parents had worked for the GTU, the Galactic Trade Union, one of a dozen interspecies organizations that no longer existed.
Not so very long ago, the Bluehorns had been forced to accept integration as a satrapy of the Markov Imperium. Commandant Tomk had resigned and returned to his homeworld. He had fought on the other side at the battle of Oolithi Drift
.
Old Complications had gone outside, to be by himself for a while. A half hour later Henry went looking for him, to tell him that there would be a feast in his honor. Henry realized that the alien had been crying, and then the Hunter had smiled his Cheshire cats' grin.
"Humans taught me to cry. Thank you."
Henry shook his head. "I don't understand."
"Marianne told me, a few months ago, 'Crying lets the pain out.' She had skinned her knee, playing, and her father told her that. I think that he is wise."
"I thought you were a big, tough, Ranger. Most Rangers I know, I mean, the earthly kind, think pain is weakness."
"Really? 'Pain is an illusion. There is no pain, only will.' I've known a few Rangers who thought that. No matter how tough, you will break, if you are put under enough pressure. It is better to know what your limits are, and work around them. 'Know yourself, know your duty.'"
***
"A certain Merchant Prince I know," Parl said slyly during the feast, "financed a quiet little raiding party to Hunterhome." The Gara yipped, and passed Old Complications a roll of flimsy. "This is a copy of an original taken right from under their big ugly noses. A team from the Autocrats' own tomb-robbers, blundering about in the Huntmasters' Hall of Tellings."
Henry hummed the tune from Raiders of the Lost ark, "Da-da-dunt-da, dunt-da-da."
The Gara looked over at him, grinning. "I know that one, human. I've a copy of a copy from a nephew, who goes to school on Ilshan. I think that he will go into the Survey."
"What is it, then?" Henry asked.
"A property deed, and the record of sale, to the Huntmaster. A long time ago," The Ranger said, passing the flimsy back to Parl.
"The deeds go back seven thousand years, Great One. This property was in your family for, for..." The Gara sputtered. "Since before the Hunters were spacefaring."
"And now they are, no more. Almost. When I am gone, this will not matter."
"Not matter!? This matters to me and mine, Great One! You sold ancient holdings, and twisted the Huntmasters' arm, somehow, to provide matching funds. For ships, for a third of the OjGara spacelift! For my people, for my Den. Most of my ancestors were on that first ship you sent, the Harvest Moon. It was still in use by the Directorate of Transportation, as recently as 50 cycles ago…"