Vel Noric stepped cautiously through the great hallway leading to His Superiority the Kumer-Vel’s chambers. Many Vels had walked the path before him. The fortunate walked out promoted. The less than fortunate did not walk out at all. The supremely unfortunate were still here—or their heads were, at least, fixed to the walls as a reminder of the price of incompetence.
It alarms me not, Vel Noric thought. There were more practical ways to deal with an unfit Vel than to take their ship off patrol and pull them all the way back to the Nest. Besides, that business in the Tekis Nebula last cycle hardly justified making Noric into a wall mount, did it?
Noric felt fairly confident it didn’t, but he couldn’t help noticing the empty wall cavity illuminated by the orange light of Faan’s sun. If the sun-fading in the paint was any indication, the previous occupant had only just been removed. The crest atop Noric’s skull slacked a little more, and his pace quickened.
The interminable hallway finally ended at a set of impossibly tall doors of solid wood, embellished with leather accent panels whose origin Noric didn’t wish to dwell on.
A hard voice from a speaker in the doorframe: “State your purpose.”
Noric leaned in and answered. “Noric, Vel of patrol cruiser #7803. Here to present myself to the Kumer-Vel, as directed.”
The door unlatched itself and swung open ponderously. The centuries-old hinges creaked like the tapping fingers of an impatient giant. Despite a sudden blast of hot, moist air, a shiver ran through Noric’s scales.
A solitary figure emerged from the darkness inside. After a moment, Noric recognized the features of Ruckk, the official representative of the Turemok species at the six-seat table of the Assembly leadership, and the most powerful single individual he’d ever been in such proximity to. Noric stood resolute, respectful, but not cowering.
Ruckk gave him a cursory glance before snorting as if he’d just stepped over a dead jelbow.
“Good luck in there, Vel.”
“Thank you, Representative,” was all he managed.
Ruckk regressed down the empty hall, leaving Noric alone to face his fate once more. There was nothing for it. He passed through the imposing double doors as the darkness enveloped him. The echoes of Noric’s footfalls betrayed the cavernous size of the room.
Noric continued to walk forward into the inky blackness, his anxiety growing with each step. He switched the spectrum of his optical implants to UV. Nothing. He switched them to heat, only to find the room was a completely uniform temperature, which just happened to be Turemok body temperature.
It’s a test, he thought. A test of what, though? His resolve? His willingness to stumble along blindly? He stopped in his tracks.
“Reveal yourself, Kumer-Vel,” he said, trying to keep apprehension from infiltrating his voice.
“You do not give the orders here, Noric,” a booming voice echoed from the darkness.
Noric couldn’t pin down its point of origin. It seemed to come from everywhere at once.
“That is true,” Noric said more quietly. “However, those giving orders should be powerful enough to face their opponents, not hide in the shadows.”
The hissing/grating sound that substituted for laughter among the Turemok reverberated through the hall.
“So you cast yourself as my opponent? The denizens of the hallway should have counseled you against aspiring to that mantle.”
Noric immediately regretted his choice of words, but to retreat now would be a mark of weakness. “I will assume whatever mantle the Nest requires. If that must be your adversary, so it will be.”
An interminable moment of silence followed. Finally, the voice responded. “Not today, Vel. The darkness serves as reminder that there is much you cannot see.”
Noric let his anxiety ratchet down for the first time since making planet-fall. “Then tell me what you see, Kumer-Vel.”
“I see many things. Before me, I see a Vel, whose standing has turned to glot, literally in this case.”
Noric’s crest fell completely flat. So the news from Tekis had reached Faan, after all. Karking tourists.
“However, I’ve learned that even a Kumer Vel cannot judge an inferior’s worth on a single incident,” the darkness said. “So before rendering my judgment, I reviewed your record, your accomplishments, and most importantly, your logs. You and I perceive a common threat, Vel Noric.”
“The humans,” Noric said without hesitation.
“Very good, Vel. I see we share some patterns of thought.”
Noric relaxed, if only just. “They grow more emboldened by the cycle, Your Superiority,” he said. “One of their vessels reached the border of their preserve and immediately stole a marker buoy.”
“Yes, I read your report to the Assembly,” said the echo. “But I’m curious, why did you not simply destroy the vessel for piracy?”
Noric selected his next words with care. “My Hedfer-Vel, J’quol, counseled against it. He believed that the Assembly would have frowned upon destroying an unarmed vessel. After considering the repercussions their judgment could have for our forces, I agreed. We are forced to operate under too many pointless restrictions already. No need to add more Gomeltics to the hunt.”
“Your Hedfer-Vel is a brave one, I think. You are fortunate to have him.”
“Brave, Your Superiority?” Noric asked.
“Yes, brave enough to advise against attack; a risky suggestion to make among our people.”
“I … had not considered that,” Noric said truthfully. “Still, I’m ambivalent about the decision.”
“How so?”
“There will be consequences,” Noric said. “When they return to Earth, they will use the marker to accelerate their technology. They could pose a genuine threat in as little as one or two of their centuries.”
Noric waited patiently, despite the distinct feeling that the room was growing even hotter. After what seemed like a full cycle, the voice returned.
“What if you were told the humans have already opened their own high-space portal?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Noric said. “It would just be a matter of getting inside the buoy and adapting its high-space com to—”
“Not the humans on the ship you were tracking, Vel,” the voice interrupted. “The high-space portal was detected on Earth itself.”
That did surprise Noric. “That’s not possible. There hasn’t been enough time for any signals from the ship to reach Earth. They can’t have copied the technology.”
“That is true, yet here we are. One of our reconnaissance platforms detected the high-space portal on Earth’s surface almost half a cycle ago,” said the voice. “So either you can believe that the humans produced a high-space portal domestically or that they have some way to communicate instantly, which the best Lividite scientists ensure us is impossible.”
Noric bristled at the implication. It wasn’t that long ago that the Turemok had been galactic infants, anchored to Faan by technological stagnation. But centuries of Lividite aggression pushed the rest of the neighborhood into desperation. The Turemok were unshackled from their home world and forged into a spear to thrust at the heart of the Lividite enemy. However, once their purpose was fulfilled, they could not be stood back down again. Millennia later, the Turemok were still the talons of the Assembly, and they were merciless in their quest to preserve their position.
Now the humans were advancing faster than anyone could have guessed, and the wheel of history threatened to complete another cycle. The window for preemptive action was closing.
“May I assume,” Noric said, “that you wouldn’t be sharing this with a Vel you only intend to mount in the hall outside your door?”
The voice paused before answering, probably for dramatic effect. “You may.”
Noric’s crest regained some of its lost altitude, but only for a moment. He felt a swirl of air on the scales of his left arm and instinctively turned to face the disturbance.
Twin pinpoints of red peered down at him. Noric was not a small Turemok by any measure; his position as a Vel was enough proof of that. But the Kumer-Vel was the single tallest man he had ever seen, towering a full head and crest above him. Noric had to beat back a sudden urge to run for the door.
“You can be useful to me, Vel Noric. The Assembly clips our claws, preventing us from attacking this threat while it sits in its nest. I require an excuse, a pretense to act before the humans come crashing our gates. Your … rehabilitation … will be to provide me with one. Execute this assignment, and you might find yourself in line to command the Xecoron.”
Noric’s pulse raced. The Xecoron. The flagship of the Turemok fleet. The namesake of the ship that had finally crushed the Lividite menace centuries before, and the single most prestigious command in all of Assembly space, of any species. He could scarcely believe what he’d just heard. But he couldn’t let the ambition show, so Noric centered himself before continuing.
“And you have a plan to create this … pretense, Your Superiority?” he said at last.
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
* * *
The enormous door closed as the Vel departed.
“Light,” the Kumer-Vel said, and then there was light. Standing in the middle of the room, a long robe flowing over his towering body, he smiled to himself.
“That went well,” he said quietly. “Wouldn’t you say, big brother?”
“Yes, splendidly,” said a voice from his waist. “Now will you kindly get down from there? Your claws are digging into my shoulder plates.”
“Certainly.” The folds of the robe parted, revealing the smallest adult Turemok anyone had ever seen, or would have, if he had ever been seen. Jak’el disentangled himself from the rig atop his larger brother, Grote, himself no giant.
Nature had not bequeathed either of them with the stature that was a prerequisite for success in the Turemok’s warrior society. In fact, she’d gone out of her way to place them at the far left of the bell curve.
The brothers were too small and too weak for anyone to take notice of them. Taken together, however, they had created a persona so intimidating that no one dared challenge it. Even many years into the ruse, Jak’el and Grote could hardly believe it continued to work. Nor could their younger, slightly larger brother, J’quol.
“Are you sure Noric will play his role?” Grote asked. “He’s hardly the model of reliability. I mean, how incompetent do you have to be to have your ship knocked out by burgeron glot?”
“I’m sure.” Jak’el removed an enormous prosthetic crest from his head. “He’s exactly what we need. Reflexively xenophobic and too karking stupid to realize that he’s the branch that will be pruned when the windstorm picks up.”
“How certain are you that he will overreach in the way we need him to?”
“Well, you know how persuasive our little brother can be. J’quol is in an excellent position to give Vel Noric a helpful push off the cliff when the time arrives.”
“And the humans? Why involve them?”
Jak’el clicked his teeth together. “I’m surprised at you, Grote. We need the barbarians to gin up a healthy panic. Coups are so much simpler if you wait until the population demands one.”