“Have you contacted your clan on Earth to tell them we have people coming?” Indowy Roolnai asked Michelle.
The Indowy stood almost knee deep in Earth grass. It was ankle deep on the office’s owner and other occupant. The room gave the illusion of being outdoors on a primitive or agricultural planet, down to the faintly clouded blue sky — ceiling — above. The room’s rectangular box shape meant corners marred the illusion of light blue shading up to indigo, but it was still nice. Although the room otherwise tended to trigger the Indowy’s agoraphobia, the furniture was designed to resemble granite boulders. Between that and the almost-tall grass he had a sensation of available cover and potential hiding places that tickled away at the primitive part of his brain saying all was well. He always had to fight the temptation to crawl under the desk, particularly, as now, when the omnivorous occupant was in the room.
“I have not. The numbers are small, they have the space, my work schedule is… gratifyingly plentiful.” She carefully kept her teeth concealed when she spoke, for which he was grateful, but at the last her lips had quirked in what he had learned was called a wry grin. In work, at least, he could sympathize.
“Then you are saved an extra communique, and I also ask you if it is possible to expedite informing them. You see, the numbers of Bane Sidhe traveling to Earth are not so few as we had hoped. Nor so many,” he said gravely. “This will begin to help explain.”
He handed her a data cube for her buckley. She had an AID as well, of course, but it was incommunicado for this meeting. She plugged the cube into the buckley’s reader slot. “Sidona, play it,” she ordered.
“I apologize for the graphic violence,” he said. The apology was perfunctory. She was human, why would she care?
The apology was also redundant, as the Indowy holo that appeared over the desk immediately repeated it. “I am terribly sorry to inflict these horrible scenes on the viewers of this material. Unfortunately, it was necessary to display the extent and gravity of our troubles,” it said.
The small green figure was replaced by a scene recorded by a buckley or AID, probably the former. The green, fuzzy fingers occasionally covering the camera port, as well as the angle of view, made it clear the user was an Indowy, standing in a cargo area. The scene became a bit hard to follow, as the software had obviously had to draw too many inferences to try to map the sequence into holo, and so sometimes shifted to a 2-D projection on the desk surface.
The steady part of the clip was short, showing two humans bearing down on the hapless creature, one of the men already carrying a squealing co-worker under one arm. The camera angle skewed wildly as the man in front picked up “their” Indowy. The men left the cargo area for corridors.
“This is the primary Dulain out-station,” a voice-over informed them, as the corridor scene cut to the entry to an airlock, where the victims were pushed in, then unceremoniously cycled to space.
In the cold black, the buckley tumbled. A small bit of green suggested it was still in the possession of its erstwhile owner, as did the crazy skewing of stars and station as the poor creature thrashed.
The view shifted to the bridge of a ship, and from there into another holo, this time of suited teams retrieving spaced corpses.
“This is not as futile as it appears. We had barely enough warning for about half our people to hide Hiberzine injectors from the first-aid kits upon their person. Of those, about sixty percent managed to inject and avoid death or serious injury, and another ten percent survived but will need extensive regeneration.”
The view shifted again to a cramped hold packed with Indowy, bare and blue as newborns, with patches of green coming in as they began to regrow their symbiotic covering.
“We have been advised to seek refuge on Earth, of all places. I find the reasoning bizarre, myself, but others are wiser. Any world looks good when your drive is going out,” it finished philosophically. “Even that one,” it added, abruptly disappearing as the cube ended.
“I have similar reports from a dozen worlds,” the clan chief added.
Michelle O’Neal regarded him with a still face whose expression he could not interpret. It was distressing indeed to have so many clans needing high level favors from a clan and species they had come perilously close to spurning outright.
“Why,” Michelle asked, “do you not simply allow the plotters to give themselves up for the overall security of their clans and be done with it? Why put yourselves so far in debt to a clan you so obviously… have concerns about?”
He was glad she had not said “despised.” The sentiment would have been too close for comfort, as it was already uncomfortable enough indeed to have to confront the magnitude of one’s own error.
“My race’s clan heads rarely support the Bane Sidhe, become involved with the Bane Sidhe, or even pay much attention to the Bane Sidhe. That doesn’t mean that we, and the Tchpth do not find it convenient for the Bane Sidhe to exist.”
She raised an eyebrow at him, a gesture he knew was a request for further information.
He pointed to her aethal board over near the plashing fountain. “A seemingly insignificant piece can add disproportionate complexity to the game. Plotters and plots are irrelevant in the short and medium term.” To his race, medium term meant at least a thousand years. “The increased range of action available, however…”
“Lubricant has nothing to do with an engine,” Michelle said, blinking just once. “But without it an engine seizes. And many lubricants are, under different pressures and conditions, abrasives. The Bane Sidhe…” She cocked her head to the side for a moment in thought and then laughed. Loudly.
“My sister’s whole life, all of her effort,” Michelle said, trying very hard not to giggle. “All the blood and the pain and the conspiring and the covers for what?” She ended angrily. “To squeeze a better deal out of the Darhel?”
“Mentat, calm yourself,” Roolnai said nervously.
“Oh, I am calm,” Michelle said. “You don’t want to see me angry. The last person who saw me angry was Erik Winchon.” She paused and let that sink in. “Briefly.”
“Mentat…”
“All those years, decades, centuries? Of plotting,” she said. “All spoiled because while the Bane Sidhe were wonderful as a threat in potential, when Clan O’Neal did real damage to the Darhel you found out how pitifully weak you actually are.”
“Mentat,” Roolnai started, again.
“Save it,” Michelle said. “Here is the Deal. There are over one hundred and twenty-six trillion Indowy. How many are Bane Sidhe I do not know nor care. There are less than a billion humans. Very few of whom are Bane Sidhe. The value of Indowy is nothing. The value of human Bane Sidhe fighters, of my Clan, is in this instance infinite. To… oil your machine we are going to have to use our life’s blood and my Clan is very attached to their blood. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, Mentat,” Roolnai said in a beaten tone.
“The debt you are about to incur is huge,” Michelle said. “If I was contracting upon this on the basis of profit and loss I could cast you to the Darhel myself. However, I am O’Neal. We, unfortunately, also have a code of something called ‘honor.’ We will honor this debt. I will contact my sister and inform her of the full gravity of this matter. Your people will be secured to the best of my Clan’s capabilities.”
“Thank you, Mentat,” Roolnai said, finally breathing out.
“Don’t thank me until I send you the bill,” Michelle said.
“Yes, Mentat.”
“And Roolnai. You should move into my quarters for the duration. Clan O’Neal quarters are the only place on Adenast where the Darhel’s paid murderers would be afraid to go. And if they are not, they will learn to be.”