Amala chose to look on it as a promotion, but she wasn’t sure her team would ever let her live it down. At least the Command Centurion had told her specifically to pursue this project when she suggested it.
Alber’ d’Maine was not normally a man given to scholarly recreations. But to him, it was a better way to fight the war.
So be it. Amala Bhattacharya, warrior diplomat.
It had started as an itch she couldn’t reach, no matter how double-jointed she was in the flesh. Amala had grown up hearing all the major, surviving dialects of Chinese, and had learned the written in its various forms as well. Discovered a knack for languages along the way, but linguistics had never captured her soul.
The intel they captured at FR-0093416-B had been a weird mixture of Chinese-style ideograms and Romanized letters that made no sense. Why would you communicate that way, even as a computer?
And then she woke up from a dead sleep one night with an epiphany.
Your master was a computer, but its language wasn’t one of the major trade languages that had survived in the rest of the inhabited galaxy.
Oh, sure, they spoke Chinese and English well enough when they were dealing with Fribourg invaders. With those two languages, you covered a good chunk of the galaxy anyway, and Bulgarian wasn’t that common, closer in to the galactic core from Aquitaine.
But those folks spoke something else at home. And nobody had thought to mention that in the briefing materials. Maybe they didn’t know?
Why did you need complex communications, if you were just going to be shooting at someone? Guns and missiles were pretty standard, and spoke every language.
So Amala had dove face first into the encyclopedia and read. And dug. And questioned.
Seven major trade languages had been standard when the galaxy died. Everyone thought in those terms, because it was easier that way. English, Spanish, Hindi, Chinese, Arabic, Kiswahili, and Bulgarian.
In her research, Amala had discovered that over a thousand distinct tongues had been known on the day the Homeworld was annihilated.
A thousand?
Some of them had been ancient, pre-dating technology itself, like one colony way the hell off spinward that had spoken primarily Tulalip in those days. Other tongues had been weird amalgamations of other languages, like Ancient Maltese, the result of two or three primary colonist groups all hitting a planet at the same time and creating something entirely new because they all needed to be able to order curry and hákarl from the corner shop.
FR-0093416-B spoke Mongolian. And a weird derivative of it, heavily influenced by Buryat, with lots of Ancient Russian thrown in. Nobody else she knew of did, but the code was there. The giveaway had been those three extra characters. Everyone had assumed them to be symbols of some sort, when they were just part of the language itself, if you knew which language it was.
After that, Amala had been utterly amazed at how comprehensive Auberon’s files went on languages. How many different programs and videos there were to teach you, both written and spoken, in all the known dialects.
Most of that, she presumed, was the Alexandria Station Library on Ballard. Those people took knowledge seriously. That included dead and forgotten languages, as well as ones that had been invented for various reasons like vids, and had nothing to do with geography.
So she had learned Mongolian. Buran Mongolian, to be specific.
Today, she found herself on the flag bridge of Auberon, off to one side, watching the Fleet Centurion and her team work. Keller was so much different than d’Maine, but that same fire was there, when she looked for it. Others here had it as well.
Emergence.
Screens lit up with the blue and green sphere that was Trusski, hanging quietly against the local arm of the galaxy in the near distance. Technically, this system was part of that same arm, but it was so far out into the darkness by itself, a thumb stuck into the black water, that it barely counted.
Amala wondered what nights on the surface would be like, when it was total darkness, save for those two tiny moons overhead. And what it would do to local culture and mythos, not to have stars in the sky for half the year.
Keller looked over at her now. Amala felt like a prize pig on display for the judges. Hopefully, there wasn’t a butcher hiding behind the curtains with a bolt gun in one hand.
The Fleet Centurion smiled. Some of the woman’s warmth, her tenacity, seemed to float over and descend across Amala’s shoulders like a rain-proof cloak. She would need that.
Warrior/Diplomat.
My own, personal war.
The screens were big and quiet. Nobody else was in orbit with them, suddenly lighting engines to attack or flee. The locals barely even seemed to notice, but there were only fourteen dots in orbit, not counting three stations, one of which was a dead-perfect copy of the one she had boarded already in another system.
No missiles suddenly launched from the surface of the planet, or one of the stations.
Nothing.
Keller pressed a button on one of her boards. The shipwide bell sounded. Everyone was already at action stations. This was the boss getting ready to tell you something, so put the gun or the fork down and pay attention.
Alber’ used the damned thing very infrequently. He spoke with the big guns.
“Squadron, this is Keller aboard Auberon. I have the flag,” she stated in her stiff, formal voice.
Amala figured she was speaking to the Senate at this moment. And the Emperor. And to most of the galaxy, on both sides.
This was Fleet Centurion Jessica Keller. She did that.
“Bridge, load the declaration device for deployment,” she ordered in a stern voice.
A few moments passed. Formality, anyway. They had set everything up hours ago.
“Flag, this is Jež,” the local command centurion replied, almost as formal. “Package is loaded and ready to fire.”
“Casey,” Keller continued. “Put me on system-wide.”
Amala watched the princess reach out to tap the surface of her board. A different tone sounded this time, a deep bell chiming. The princess nodded.
“People of Trusski, this is Admiral of the Red Jessica Keller, representing the Imperial Navy of Fribourg. Your system is officially declared a war zone, subject to the published Laws of Recognized Warfare and to local rules of engagement that will be promulgated in short order.”
Short pause. Letting the locals absorb that the great enemy had chosen their world, their lives, for a sudden demonstration. Barbarians at the gates, to use Keller’s imagery.
“We are about to fire a single missile into your atmosphere,” Keller continued. “It is not a weapon. I repeat, this is not a weapon. It is the formal declaration of war as delivered by a Fetial and presents no risk to inhabitants on the ground. When that task is done, we will communicate with the government of Trusski on a formal basis. All hands, stand by.”
Amala blinked in surprise when Keller unhooked her straps and stood up, gesturing the rest to do the same. A moment of slightly noisy chaos before everyone did.
“In the name of the Emperor of Fribourg, and the Republican Senate of Aquitaine, under the watchful eye of Janus Quirinus, I declare that a state of war exists between our peoples,” Keller intoned with gravity like the surface of a neutron star. “Deploy the package.”
Everything was so silent that Amala felt the launch mechanisms nearby slam Centurion Kermode’s orbital bomb out into space, where it would light small engines and begin a hard deorbit.
Fleet Centurion Keller gestured everyone back to their seats. Someone pushed a button to cut the comm. Probably Zivkovic, the older Flag Centurion, from the serious look on his face when he spoke next.
“Comm is closed,” he said. “The missile is away and flying true. I now have a gentleman on audio channel seventy-three who claims to speak for the Khan of Trusski. Whatever that is.”
Keller turned and gestured Amala to move to the big table at the middle of the room, from where she had been off to one side with the others who were currently only observers.
“Put him on conference mode,” Keller ordered as Amala sat.
“Admiral Keller, this is Ve Gayav Chuluun Gan,” a man’s smooth voice came out of the speakers. “As a Scholar, I speak for Ul Banop Cheani Yuur, Minister of the Eighth Rank and Khan of Trusski under the eternal vigilance of Buran and The Holding.”
Keller had spoken to the locals in English, so the local had replied in the same language. It had seemed a safe bet, given its prevalence, farther in. Amala could tell it was not his native tongue. He had a hard time keeping his words a-tonal, and was obviously translating the words in his head and speaking them slowly and carefully.
Accent was pretty good, though. Must have a lot of practice yelling at Imperial merchants trying to make a quick florin smuggling.
Keller leaned close enough to murmur.
“You ready?” she asked. “We can always do this the standard way.”
Amala shook her head.
“They want formal,” Amala replied, thinking back to the notes she had devoured, in preparation.
The hints and suggestions that were never really spelled out, maybe because nobody had given it a lot of thought.
The Governor had not challenged them himself. He had sent someone who considered Scholar to be enough of a title. Read between the lines.
Keller smiled. That look reminded Amala of Alber’ at that very moment when the first beams cut loose.
“Give ’em hell, Amala,” Keller whispered.
Amala took a breath. She couldn’t help the way her head came up and her chin jutted out. Shoulders back, vertebrae popping.
Formidable.
“This is Senior Centurion Amala Bhattacharya, representing Admiral Keller, Sri Ve,” she called in a slow cadence, the sort of intonation she would use on freshly-commissioned troops, just arrived from ground school. “Do you understand the Laws of Recognized Warfare?”
Let him chew on that. Nobody ever really followed them, but they were there. And honored enough that it had provided a framework into which to stuff more than a century of warfare between Fribourg and Aquitaine.
“You trespass, Scholar Bhattacharya,” the man answered. “You threaten our world without provocation. One hopes that your weapon is not such a thing, because we lack the capability to destroy it before it wreaks whatever mischief you have planned, so any casualties will be on your conscience. The Eternal will be notified of your crimes, and will come for you in due order.”
Yes. English was definitely his second language for the man. Maybe third. It was like he was firing the words into a microphone, letting a computer translate things back, and then converting that to poetry before he transmitted his responses.
Not bad for someone who probably never expected a day like today. Amala had spent weeks talking to a computer and learning to think in Mongolian.
“The orbital package will overfly your capital city at an altitude of five thousand meters before it deploys the secondary engagement system,” Amala said. “From there, it will target a large park, a green area located close to your planetary hall of government. The secondary package will freefall to approximately one thousand meters before it deploys a parachute and guidance system that will bring it down at a speed slow enough that anyone on the ground will be able to avoid it on landing.”
“What is the object that will land, Scholar Bhattacharya?” he asked.
“It is a javelin, Scholar Ve,” she said. “With a steel tip and a shaft made of wild olive wood. Dipped in blood, as the ancients commanded.”
Long pause.
Looking something up furiously, translating words. Translating cultures.
Translating history.
“Your admiral invoked Janus Quirinus, the Sabine God of War,” the man said finally. “She also used the ancient, Latin term Fetial to describe your mission. The Khan orders you to formally assert such a thing in his Court. To present yourself and your credentials as a Scholar before The Eternal, that we may know you to be a civilized people. To know whether you are worthy of our respect and esteem.”
Amala gulped past a dry tongue. Combat had never gotten her this focused, this hyped on adrenaline.
What was it the ancient general had said? War is the extension of diplomacy by other means.
Amala looked over at the Fleet Centurion for the first time since this had started. It was like waking up from a strange dream and finding yourself in your own body again.
Keller nodded with a broad smile. Amala felt it uplift her soul.
“You will inform the Khan that I will join him presently,” Amala replied. In Mongolian, rather than English, adding weight to her command.
The slightest gasp at the other end of the line, followed by the sort of dead silence you got when someone hit the mute button so they could argue without strangers listening.
Amala smiled, ever so briefly.
“There is a landing field on the northern edge of Taymyr,” Ve finally came back on the line, his voice now a shade raspy and a shade uncertain. “If you land there, you will be met by a diplomatic reception.”
“So noted,” Amala replied serenely.
Keller signaled one of her people and the line went dead with a descending tone.
“What did you say to him, there at the end?” Keller asked.
Amala told her, and the whole room chuckled. What was the Fleet Centurion’s legend, if not audacity itself?
Keller fixed her with a hard eye.
“I can offer you nothing in the way of support here, Bhattacharya,” she said. “We’re going to stay for a bit, and then withdraw somewhere else. I won’t tell you where, so you don’t have to lie to them. We will be back, but you’ll be pretty much on your own. If they decide to kill you, all I can promise is that I’ll burn their damned city down afterwards.”
Not the worst epitaph. Hopefully, unnecessary.
And this was a promotion.
If she survived.