Chapter Four

Alone

Orena was gone in the morning. He dressed quickly and found a note. Tankar, I’m off to work. See you around, Orena.

Tankar found the short, impersonal message slightly humiliating. He shrugged. Other cultures, other customs, he thought. After a moment, he decided, I know very little about them, so I can’t judge. It was eight thirty. He was not feeling hungry, so he explored, wandering through the small apartment. Orena’s office was in a room he had not yet seen. There he found an unfamiliar processor, and, next to it, piled-up pages of an incomplete manuscript. The top page, in interspatial, would have been a challenge for him to read as the processor used very different symbols from the ones he knew.

So, they haven’t managed to directly transcribe human speech. He got the general gist: the complicated story seemed to take place on the planet Kaffir, which he had never heard of and which Orena might well have made up. The hero was in a tight spot between a cliff he could not scale and a troop of kalabin soldiers on drorek-back, whoever or whatever they were.

I’ll have to track down Orena’s books, he thought, first because they’ll give me insight, but also because they might give me a better sense of this society. He remembered a conversation he had overheard one night as he stood watch at the palace, as immobile as the pillar behind him. A court ball was taking place inside. Two noblemen had stopped near his post. He recognized the younger man as Bel Caron, a historian and a cousin of the Emperor.

“That’s a mistake, my good friend, a serious mistake!” Bel Caron exclaimed. “There’s far more truth in novels than you might think, especially if you’re hoping to find out about society itself and not just looking for historical fact. Believe me, some of these older works tell us much more about pre-Empire society than history books do. And I don’t mean the official history, which is just propaganda for the ignorant commoners.”

“Shh.” His associate nodded toward Tankar.

The historian turned around. “Oh, him. A Guard. Only two possibilities. Either he’s intelligent, and he’s been aware for some time, or he’s stupid, and he’ll have no idea what I’m talking about.”

The two men then walked away, chattering as they did.

I must have been stupid, Tankar thought. I believed the official history books that told us the only thing in space was chaos and non-humans, the latter waiting for the Empire to weaken. With humanity gone, all that would remain would be other independent worlds and massive nomad cities…which are, at least, civilized.

He placed the page on the top of Orena’s manuscript, walked out into the street and let the apartment’s magnetic door shut behind him. He found a nearby visitors’ center, where he learned that, contrary to what Orena said, his apartment was closer than either of them thought. He had suspected as much. He went to the apartment to find that the layout was identical to Orena’s.

His next stop was General Store 17 where he could pick up the requisite furnishings.

He bought a narrow bed, a table, two chairs, some bookcases, and equipment for a mini-kitchen. The whole thing came to a hundred stellars, so he paid half then and there with the rest due in four months. He was given a mandatory communication device for free. He took the rest of the morning to move in and, once finished, went to the canteen where he first met Orena.

The waiter recognized him. “Back so soon, planetary? You were really lucky that Orena didn’t claim her due. She’s an excellent shot.”

“So am I. It’s my job.”

“You know she’s already killed three men?”

Tankar bit back the retort that he had killed several dozen himself and ordered two dishes for lunch.

“Come on, swamp rat; don’t look so annoyed. We’re not all bad guys on the Tilsin. You must have done something special to merit an A-card.” The man leaned forward, smiling broadly. “Anyone bothers you, come right to me. I may be able to help.”

Tankar froze at this friendly offer from someone he would have considered untouchable back on Earth, but not for long. After all, he did not know this man’s status. In this weird civilization, maybe the server was an eminent personage outside of his work hours. “Where?”

“Not here, no. During the day I can be found at the lab on Bridge 7, 12th Street, Room 122. After 7 p.m I can be found at Apartment 57. Both locations are in Sector 3.”

“In the lab?”

“I’m a chemist. Just ask for Pol Petersen.”

Tankar daydreamed as he ate. Aside from the Teknor and the young woman at the bank, only two people had spoken to him. But they had been friendly, and, in Orena’s case, very friendly.

When he finished eating, Tankar set off to explore. The map indicated it would be a quicker tour than he initially thought based on the size of the Tilsin. Most of the sectors were laid out symmetrically. From the beginning, one place caught his attention – in each sector, and on three of the bridges, were rooms labeled ‘machine rooms’.

He headed for the nearest one and got lost only once before he found it. But then he faced the unpleasant surprise of a barred red circle on the door. “Off limits for me,” he muttered. “I should’ve expected that. Even on our cruisers only the mechanics and officers have access to the machines.” Deep in thought, he retraced his steps and quickly realized that anything he might have liked to see lay behind a door with a barred red circle.

But that left the libraries. The university library was dead center of the city bordered by a park on each side. Tankar walked through a mass of shouting children playing just like their Earth counterparts. He entered the library’s front hall and saw two doors. The first was labeled Lending in interspatial and other languages. The second was labeled Reading Room, and he walked in.

He found himself in a small room where a young woman sat behind a desk. Tankar stopped dead in his tracks. Compared to this girl, Orena appeared plain. Even Countess Iria, the woman the soldiers referred to as the Impossible Dream, seemed pale and charmless in comparison. The woman had red hair full of natural copper highlights, huge green eyes, a patrician nose and a slightly wide mouth.

She stood up and smiled. “What do you need, brother?”

He smiled a bit hesitantly. “I’d like to read some history books.”

“That’s not a problem. Which ones?”

“I don’t really know.”

“Okay. Where do you want to start? Telkar, Jacobson, Ribeau, Hinihara? Salminen, perhaps?”

“Someone mentioned Mokor.”

“Mokor? He’s not the one people usually start with. His work is tricky. Which do you want: The Great Migration? History of the People of the Stars? Essay on the Meaning of Galactic History?”

“Which would you recommend?”

“The first one.” She paused, tilting her head. “Which clan do you come from?”

This is it, he thought. “None,” he said.

“You’re a planetary? This is no place for you, then.” Her tone of voice quickly shifted from casually friendly to overtly hostile.

“The Teknor sent me.”

“Oh! You’re that planetary! I haven’t the faintest idea what my uncle’s thinking these days. The one time somebody asks for my grandfather’s work it’s an Earther.” With a look of utter contempt on her face, she handed him a sheet of paper.

“Fill this out. Give me your card. Hmmph, just as I thought, an A-card for an earthling. Take it back, go through this door to Room D, Carrel 14. Do you know how to use a reader?” She registered the look of surprise on Tankar’s face and continued, “You don’t think we’re going to let you handle the original, do you?” As he turned away she added, “And next time, try to come when I’m not on shift.”

The reader was a microfilm projector, slightly more technologically advanced than what he was used to. He sat down and dove right into History of the People of the Stars.

Overall, the dense work confirmed what Orena already had sketched out for him, but that in no way made things any easier for him to read…or understand. The book was packed with precious detail; the first to strike him was the change to the names of the Tilsin residents. Some were Earth-style names, such as Petersen, Valoch, Ribeau, Hanihara. With his background within the cosmopolitan Guard corps, Tankar easily traced the geographic origins: former Scandinavia, former central Europe, France, and Japan. Other names such as Tan Ekator, Mokor and more he had spotted on Orena’s bookshelves – Oripsipor, Telmukinka – seemed odd.

At the time of the great migration, Starship 3 passengers cut all ties with the mother planet. Those born aboard the ships and christened in space picked artificial names. Mokor wrote that even today people used those names, having forgotten the names of their ancestors. The residents of number three tended to intermarry amongst themselves. That was not enough to create genetic risks, but the changes were noticeable. The tendency to change, to evolve, went hand-in-hand with a strong anti-planet bias.

Tankar smiled to himself as he thought, I’m guessing the lovely librarian has some name like Erioretura Kalkakubitatum. He skimmed the bit about the history of the Star People’s beginning with a view to coming back to it later. He had all the time in the world for that. The contemporary section was the subject of most vital interest to him.

The People of the Stars had had no contact with the rest of humankind for a long time. As they hopped among different uninhabited planets they widened their footprint in the cosmos. Three times they encountered non-human races, but no war ensued. By then, the city-states had already given up the Cursin hyperspatial apparatus – the only one we’ve known or used to date, he thought with bitterness – in favor of the system developed by the unknown residents of the abandoned city now known as Encounter.

And then one day, the Roma entered into contact with the first of the pre-Empire colonies. On the eve of the first cataclysm – what the Empire calls the War of Unification,Tankar thought – several brave groups had used infra-photic starships and hibernation in the hope of conquering the galaxy. They had almost carried out their crazy enterprise, the kind of effort that proved the old Guard dictum that the more desperate an adventure might seem, the greater its chances of success. Widely dispersed as they were, they developed unusual social structures, different from those of both Stellarans and Earthlings. Most often these groups remained within a single solar system, although there never was much love lost among the groups. The Stellarans established trading ties with these half siblings and played a general role as inter-civilization arbiters.

Nomad groups themselves splintered into two political schools of thought. The conservatives considered that the status quo was satisfactory while the advantists anticipated a day when civilizations would erupt into space and compete with the Stellarans. Because of that concern, the advantists advocated for placing everyone in quarantine and banning all interstellar flight.

Orena claims to be an advantist, and that makes her especially anti-planetary. I really must amuse her. On the other hand, the Teknor said he was conservative, yet he is one of the purists who dropped the former Earth names. This conflict is just as twisted as palace intrigue!

Tankar skipped to the final chapter, which ended on an upbeat note. Whatever their views on the subject, neither of the parties considered seizing power by force. There was no short-term risk of war breaking out. I’ll have to read the Essay on the Meaning of Galactic History, he thought to himself. The afternoon had sped by, and it was already 7 p.m. He left the library and noted the spiky redhead was gone, replaced by a petite blond, who was also getting ready to leave.

“What are the open hours?” he asked.

“The library is always open,” she replied, “except for the lending service, which just shut. Oh…you’re the planetary?” she confirmed.

“News travels fast. See you tomorrow, perhaps.” He was nearly the only person in the big dining room. Petersen was not there, replaced by a tall brunette who served Tankar in silence. After his meal, Tankar retired to his monastic apartment to order his thoughts and impressions.

After an act of sabotage my starship explodes. I’m picked up by a nomad city inhabited by the traitor-scientists who escaped the Empire under Kilos II. These people profess utter contempt for planetaries, especially for those from the Empire. Nobody misses a chance to let me know that. A young woman insults me, I lose my cool and knock her down. From that moment, she becomes my mentor, has me over for dinner…and for dessert! She’s a novelist and hydroponist; like her peers, she has two jobs: one is socially relevant and takes about two hours per day, the other one is discretionary. The server who insulted me in the canteen is now offering to help me. He’s a chemist. Some guy called Pei, a communications technician, is, from what I can tell, one of the greatest painters in the galaxy.

These Stellarans are very civilized, more so than us, but they also have this stubborn streak, and it makes me wonder how their society manages to function so smoothly. Unless they’re hiding something from me, that is. Another thing is that their chief gave me an A-card, the standard one for citizens, even though I crossed their path by chance, and I hail from the much-loathed Empire. And it seems that everyone sees some hidden meaning in my arrival. I don’t get it.

Oh, hell! I’m not a sociologist or a philosopher. What possible difference does it make to me what the foundations of their society are? What does matter to me is that I get back to base and justify what I’ve done.

The base seemed so far away then. Longing caused him to fold in on himself. Tankar missed his tidy life where he had almost no decisions to make, and everything was taken care of by commanders. The life in which routine flowed from the first call of the morning to the last call of the evening.

Nobody can live for 21 years in the same rhythm without it defining his entire being. He missed his friends too, young guys just like himself. He missed his eighteen-meter torpedo and his 10 crewmates who’d become a combat unit as swift and as dangerous as a cobra. Who was at the helm of the Scorpion now? he wondered. Hug Brain? Hayawaka? They even might have picked little Jan Laprade, a guy who hated being teased about his stature, and who’d defied the rules and taken on Thorsen the giant, killing him with his sword. Laprade had backed the right horse and moved straight up the ranks to become a second lieutenant. Tankar hoped the short guy had been given the job. In his care, the Scorpion would continue to sting. It was certainly stinging at that very moment, or it was a cloud of metal ash blowing in the winds of the cosmos.

Tankar slept badly that night. Increasingly foolish plans of escape ran riot through his mind and kept him awake. He thought of using the launch he had spotted at Bridge 1, Corridor 6; he even imagined assassinating the Teknor and destroying the city. Then the communicator alarm woke him. The screen remained blank but a disembodied voice ordered him to meet the Teknor after lunch.

He made breakfast and managed to use his new kitchen equipment. Then he returned to the library, where the receptionist on duty was an older brunette. With a look of distaste, she directed him to Carrel 17. He finished his speed-read of Mokor’s History, only focusing in depth on the chapter about the Mpfifis.

The Mpfifis were a non-human race encountered for the first time about 30 years ago when a launch from the city Suomi landed on an unknown G1 star planet. In a lakeside area, the Stellarans had seen traces of debris left behind from a recent visit by other beings: metal boxes, charred earth, a broken weapon and a grave. The weapon was not of a type used by humans, and the grave had been opened. The decomposing body was that of a young man with some humanoid traits. Two days after those finds, a pyramid-shaped starship leaped from nowhere and spit out a volley of projectiles, then vanished. Its hull pierced in 17 places; the Suomi lost 127 crew members.

This encounter took place shortly before one of the meetings at which a hundred city-state starships gathered together in the sky above the home planet, Avenir. One hundred and one vessels had been expected, but the Kanton never arrived.

Ten years passed with no further encounters. Then the Uta tragedy took place. The starship was at the edge of hyperspace near Déneb when the Uta was approached by a much larger ship. Suddenly, the enemy rushed through the target’s corridors. The battle was ferocious if brief, but the 10 hours it lasted were not wasted. One heroic technician recorded from beginning to end everything he could about the enemy, including their weapons and their rules of war. He managed to put the recordings into a communications torpedo that landed on Avenir and the Stellarans found it during the next starship reunion. All that information and data collected since then comprised Trig Sorensen’s book, The Mpfifis. In the interim, five other starships had been lost with a handful of survivors rescued by chance at the last minute. Mokor did not divulge technical details as it appeared all his readers would have been familiar with the Mpfifis. For further detail, the reader was referred back to Sorensen.

Tankar returned to the front office. The older woman was gone and now a younger woman was there in her stead.

At her curious glance, he said, “Yes, I’m the planetary with an A-card. Can you give me the Sorensen work on the Mpfifis?”

She looked very surprised. “We don’t have that here!”

“Where might I consult it?”

“At your own home, of course. You should have a copy; it’s given to every man and woman over the age of 14.”

“Nobody gave it to me.”

“Go to any digital bookstore.”

“How much will it cost?”

“It’s free of course!” The young woman’s voice was condescending. “Reading it is mandatory.” She was losing patience.

“Thank you. One more thing, do you change shifts every two hours?”

“Yes.”

“Everybody? Even the mechanics and the pilots and the Teknors?”

“Don’t be stupid!” She rolled her eyes. “Mechanics and pilots change every five hours and Teknors don’t change at all…at least not in between elections. Even a planetary can grasp that.”

“You don’t like planetaries?”

“Who does?” She shrugged. “They forced our ancestors into exile. It ended up being a good thing, but it wasn’t well intentioned.”

“For a society full of individualists, you sure put a lot of importance on collective responsibility. What do people from four hundred years ago have to do with me?”

“Has nothing really changed on Earth? I’ve been told the Empire is still standing.”

“That’s true.” Tankar paused and then asked, “What’s the name of the young woman who comes on at two o’clock?”

The woman behind the desk laughed out loud. “Anaena, the Teknor’s niece? She got your attention, eh? But she’s no good for you, she doesn’t like Earth trash. She—” The young woman stopped and said no more. The conversation was over.

Tankar spent the hour before his lunch date sitting on an oak bench, thinking, looking around and trying to figure out how he was supposed to fit into this world. He was an unwanted refugee foreigner. Soldiers were not needed here.

Idly, he watched the children around him playing a fast-moving game he had not seen before. The kids kicked a ball in between two posts. At one point the ball rolled over to his bench. He tossed it back, and the child who caught it was about to thank him when another of the boys interrupted. “Igor, don’t mess around with a rat like that guy.” The first kid wiped the ball in disgust, as if it had fallen into a contaminated puddle, before returning it to his friends.

Tankar left the game and headed to the dining room where Petersen, the waiter, signaled Tankar to remain silent. Tankar ate alone at a table and noticed that not a single Stellaran sat near him. He lingered until 2 p.m. and headed to the Teknor’s command post.

Tan Ekator welcomed him with a bemused smile. “So Tankar, what do you make of the Tilsin?”

“The craft, or the people on it?”

“Both.”

“As for the spacecraft, I’ve not seen anything of much interest to me. As to the people, with two exceptions nobody has been friendly.”

“One of the exceptions is a woman, I think.”

“How you do know? Am I being spied on?”

“Do you think I have time for that?” the Teknor snapped. “I don’t. But Teknors must know everything. We Stellarans are a group of individuals, and that means no one sticks their nose in other people’s business without paying for it. It also means that each citizen is entitled to consider others as he or she wishes, so sometimes, tongues wag. We’re not a very big city, at a population of twenty-five thousand.”

“So I can’t do anything without someone finding out?”

“Does it really matter to you? Don’t get overly excited. Other than your fling with Orena, I have no idea what you’ve been up to these past few days. All I need you to know is that if you’d been up to anything significant, I’d know about it. Be careful with Orena, Tankar.”

“Why? Is she dangerous?”

“Not in the way you mean it. She’s just the most Stellaran of us all. If you make the mistake of falling for her, you’ll come to understand.”

“I haven’t seen her since yesterday.”

“Oh, you’ll see her again. And she has many positive qualities, even though she’s an advantist. But I didn’t ask you here to discuss Orena. Please give me a straight answer: when you were a Stellar Guard, had you ever found a way to follow a starship through hyperspace?”

“Do you think I’m going to answer that? It would constitute a betrayal of the Empire!” Tankar spat back.

The Teknor was growing weary. “I’m not asking you to commit treason, Lieutenant. I have a broader vision than you do. I studied history. It was a family thing, we all did. My father was Mokor.”

“Was? Mokor is deceased…?”

“He died 10 months ago on the Norge II, killed by the Mpfifis, our common enemies. Have you read the Essay on the Meaning of Galactic History?”

“Not yet.”

“Read it. Mokor believed your Empire had in it the seeds of a future galactic state, a peaceful confederation of the races. He saw it here, as well.”

“The Empire is not pacifist! Only weaklings are pacifists!”

“You’re just parroting what you’ve heard. In reality it takes great strength to be a pacifist; the weak use force because they know no other way. Your Empire is strong enough for peace to have reigned for almost two millennia, but weak enough to have made the peace possible using force alone. The end was predictable. But be patient for a few years, and you’ll be able to return to Earth. You will find that either nothing will have changed other than the names of those in power, or the whole place will have descended into chaos. If the person is good, it won’t matter if the chief has been elected or secured the post by divine right. If the person is bad, as your emperors have been for the last few centuries, he will, out of stupidity or cruelty, undermine his own position. Do you really believe that the exodus of the four thousand sages and scientists helped your planet?”

“The departure of the traitors, you mean?” sneered Tankar.

“Think for yourself! You’re spouting state propaganda. Think. Who did the traitors betray – Earth? The human race? Or a demented emperor? The real traitors are people like you who abet tyrants out of inertia. I really need an answer to my earlier question because our real enemies are the Mpfifis. And they do hold the secret to tracking us in hyperspace and launching a surprise attack. Do you think they’ll respect your planet? Ask the survivors of Téroé III.”

“Téroé III?”

“Yes, that’s a recent catastrophe, just a month back. The word hasn’t spread. Had the Napoli not traveled less than two light-years from here, we wouldn’t have known. Téroé III was a colony of Rapa, itself a pre-imperial Polynesian colony. About five million people lived there. When the Napoli came to the rescue, there were fewer than six hundred still alive. The Mpfifis massacred the others.”

“And you think that our fragile civilization on Earth has the tech that you need?”

“Oh, we’ll get it all right. Might be a month, a year, 10 years from now. Until now we’ve not needed it, so we didn’t look.”

“But for the past 30 years the Mpfifis have been attacking your cities….” Tankar wondered why they had waited so long.

“In the beginning, we thought they were just lucky. After all, the attacks weren’t very frequent. Two city-state starships lost. Maybe it was just an amazing stroke of luck. But then the losses began to accumulate over an eighteen-month period, and we began to think that your Empire, at war with its own colonies, might have developed the technology.”

“If you’re right, why would I give it over to you?”

“Because, as we speak, an Mpfifi city-state starship might be tracking us through hyperspace. They might be preparing to melt into us even now, and the threshold between life and death might appear in a matter of hours.”

“Teknor, the Empire does not have that secret.”

“What a pity,” the Teknor sighed. “I’d hoped…. You’re telling me the truth?”

“Why would I lie?”

“Who can understand the mind of a planetary?” The Teknor shrugged. “Think carefully, Tankar. If you change your mind, if you have the secret, please hand it over. In the long run, we are, after all, the best protection for your Earth.” The Teknor stood. “Now, please go to the bookstore at 806 of the street we’re on and get an unabridged copy of Sorensen’s book. Say I sent you. I want you to know everything there is to know about the Mpfifis.”

Relieved, Tankar ran out of the room. He finally had the upper hand! Of course imperial cruisers had the science and technology to detect and track an enemy starship in hyperspace. Tracer theory was taught to all cadets. The units were delicate and their settings tended to shift.

Just for a second he was tempted to offer to build one for the Teknor. But he went to the bookstore. I’ll do it later, when they start being nicer to me.

The door of 806 had a big sign that read Historical Research Center. A young man looked up from his desk and smiled warmly at him when Tankar walked in. “May I have Sorensen’s book on the Mpfifis, unabridged?” he asked.

“It’s not out yet.”

“The Teknor sent me.”

“Ah. Okay. Anaena, please come here!”

It was the same woman he met in the library. She was not happy to see him. “You again? What do you want this time?”

“He wants the unabridged Sorensen. Tan sent him.”

Tankar interrupted. “Your uncle sent me.”

She activated a communicator. “Hey, Tan. The Earth rat is telling us to give him a Sorensen.” She listened. “Oh, okay. You, come here!” She pointed at Tankar and took him into a small book-lined room, shut the door and turned around, her face ablaze with fury.

“Who said you could check up on me? Who said the Teknor is my uncle? It’s none of your business, planetary.”

“You told me yourself when you took my card the other day.”

“That’s not true. You…you’re spying on me. You’ve got some nerve. You’re nothing to me, and you’ll never be anything to me.”

“I think there’s clearly some confusion,” Tankar snapped back. “I’m not interested in you that way. Why would I care about a redheaded shrew?”

“You. You and Orena. That advantist bitch.”

“Why do you care? I don’t exist in your world.”

Anaena abruptly regained her composure, retrieved a copy of the book and threw it at him. “Here’s your damn Sorensen. Now get out, parasite.” He stared at her mockingly, his arms folded across his chest.

“Stop baiting me. I won’t hit you because that would give you 10 bullets to shoot me with leaving me with only one, with one arm tied behind my back!” Tankar was dead serious.

“You’re even more annoying than I thought. Go!”

He went straight to his apartment and settled down to read, everything else forgotten.

The Mpfifis were a type of humanoid. They had two legs and two arms with six-fingered hands. Each very long finger had five joints. Mpfifi heads had two eyes but no external nose or ears. Their brains were encased in a tough silicon casing. An adult male stood about six-and-a-half feet high and had greenish skin freckled with little silicone pins. The women were smaller, thinner, and their reddish-brown skin was smooth.

They breathed in normal atmosphere but were capable of going without air for several hours if they didn’t overexert. An organ next to their heart served as an oxygen tank. They had greater physical strength than most humans and were just as intelligent, but they moved more slowly.

Almost nothing was known about their social structures. Their city-states were often bigger than the Stellarans’ and appeared more densely populated. Nobody knew where they first came from. They were fearsome warriors, seemingly immune to suffering and death. Their weapons were powerful: in hand-to-hand combat they had a weapon similar to a fulgurator. They also masterfully wielded curved sabers, pistols and grenades. For distance fighting, they had guns with explosive bullets, mortars, cannons and rockets.

At first, the goals of their attacks were unclear. Some captured city-state starships unsuccessfully tried to negotiate. The worst outcome, Sorensen wrote, would be to discover the Mpfifis were an advance military force acting on behalf of a massive, expanding empire. Some postulated the Mpfifis were out-of-galaxy invaders from the Andromeda Nebula.

The book was thorough and rich in technical detail on the Mpfifis’ weaponry and tactics. The final chapters were fascinating. The Mpfifis were fearsome adversaries, masterful strategists and skilled hand-to-hand warriors. The author analyzed in detail each documented battle against the human race. After a while Tankar pulled out his pad, pencil and starship map to put his own knowledge to the test.

Every battle started with the sudden appearance of an enemy starship. This was followed by a volley of nonatomic explosive projectiles before the enemy broke through into the star city.

Looking through the names of attacked city-state starships, Tankar saw gaps in Orena’s knowledge. There’d been at least 30 such invasions, and some of the nomad cities managed to repel the enemy before, or even after, they boarded. In his professional guise as a Stellar Guard, Tankar picked apart both offensive and defensive tactics. In three cases out of five recent defeats, the Stellarans might have contained the attackers until help could come. In another case, they could have won the battle.

It was easy to spot the weakness in the nomads’ defense strategy. While brave, indeed, the Stellarans lacked combat training. They did not lack discipline, but they were too slow in execution of their strategic plans, which in any case were not as strong as that of the Mpfifis. The Stellarans failed to take advantage of their knowledge of the city’s layout and quickest communication routes.

“If I tried to talk to the Teknor about this, he probably wouldn’t listen. Why should I bother?”

Tankar put the book down. Should he eat in or at the canteen? His room was cold and dreary. Loneliness had begun to weigh on him, and it was a loneliness he had never felt in the Guards. He decided to go to the canteen and face the hostility head-on.