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. . . And so, having committed grave crimes against sentient life, the Hudathan people are hereby sentenced to imprisonment within their own system, until such time as they are judged fit for admittance to interstellar society.

The Confederacy of Sentient Beings
Resolution 2596/1089.8
Standard year 2596

Planet Earth, the Confederacy of Sentient Beings

 

Moolu Rasha Anguar checked to make sure that the exoskeleton was operating properly, forced his facial muscles into the semblance of a human smile, and stepped out into bright sunshine. The day was beautiful by human standards but warmer than he liked. The president looked out onto thousands of upturned faces, a scattering of tall, skinny trees, and a circular lagoon. A breeze swept in from the ocean, roughed the surface of the water, and sent wavelets lapping at the beach.

A battalion of Trooper IIIs, their analogs arrayed around them, crashed to attention. Platoon Leader Lieutenant O’Neal frowned as Frim and Fram sent waves of boredom her way, bullied them into submission, and scanned the ranks before her. They were perfect. Life was tolerable.

The applause built and continued as cameras swooped in to capture the president’s image and send it out to the billions who watched from their homes. Anguar had appeared on twenty-seven planets, dispensed thousands of medals, and the victory tour was only half over. And while he hated the endless speeches, tributes, ceremonies, and monuments, he loved the wild diversity of the citizens who came to see him, resplendent in their multicolored skin, fur, feathers, and scales, noble behind their beaks, noses, and antennas, strong on the legs, arms, tentacles, and wings that had won the war.

Anguar gloried in the fact that all of them were obnoxiously alive, scheming and conniving to get whatever they could, eternally at each other’s throats, whining about the things they lacked, already forgetful of the foe they had so recently vanquished. The truth was that they were nothing less than marvelous, and if holding the Confederacy together meant dragging his skinny ass all over the universe, then that’s what he’d do. The president held up his hands and waited for the applause to die down.

General Marianne Mosby and President Marcus were seated a dozen yards away. They smiled at each other and looked down at their baby. She didn’t look like either one of them—not yet, anyway—and it didn’t matter in the least. The baby yawned, blissfully unaware of the scandal her birth had caused, the resulting upheaval, or the somewhat tenuous nature of the relationship between her parents. She felt warm, full, and just a little bit sleepy. There was nothing else that mattered.

A little further out, under the awning rigged to protect ambassadors from the sun, the honorable William Booly, Sr., sat with his wife Windsweet, their son Major William Booly, Jr., and his fiancée, Captain Connie Chrobuck. Both wore newly purchased civilian clothes and looked slightly out of place. It would have taken experts to tell the difference between the woman’s natural leg and the one grown in the lab, or the man’s biological eye and the electronic prosthesis that filled one socket. But there was no mistaking the love between them or the determination to build a common future.

Behind them, shoulder to shoulder with the Naa bodyguard named Knifecut Easykill, stood a tall, somewhat gaunt-looking human, with a face like death. He’d been a soldier once, that much could be seen from his carriage, but he looked comfortable in his civilian clothes. As others watched the president . . . he watched them.

But it was beyond the last fringes of the crowd where the most exotic spectators lay, a small portion of their snow white fibers floating just under the lagoon’s surface, while the rest of their bodies extended far out to the sea. In spite of the fact that the Say’lynt were among the most decorated soldiers in the Confederacy, and the most loved, they were eager to return home. Home, where Rafts Three and Four waited, where Harmon would be buried next to her friend, and where a bugle would play taps for another unlikely hero. Anguar smiled and the ceremony began.

Many, many thousands of miles away, in a village not far from the Mongol city of Hatga, a middle-aged blacksmith lit his welding torch and adjusted the resulting flame. The man, along with his distinguished-looking wife, had moved to the area only months before. First they built a home on a parcel of land that had been owned by the blacksmith’s grandfather. Then they opened a smithy. Not because they had to, but because they had worked all their lives, and thought of work as a privilege.

A group of children watched in wide-eyed wonder as the man applied the blue-white flame to a shattered truck axle and began the time-honored process of joining metal with metal. The blacksmith remembered his grandfather, the extent of the old man’s expectations, and wondered how he’d done. Had he lived up to at least some of the old man’s standards? He hoped so.

Both pieces of steel turned white hot and came together. The addition of filler metal from a welding rod completed the seam. A little boy sat back on his haunches, wiped his forehead with the back of a grubby hand, and nodded approvingly. “It will hold. You did a good job.”

The blacksmith examined his work, smiled, and got to his feet. “You know what? I think you’re right.”