Friends of the Sky
12. Pentestella

1.

The little fleet left the damaged star base and its huddling population of Ngugma, and decamped to a distant planetoid, an icy world a thousand kilometers across that barely acknowledged the influence of the stars of Spiral Arch. Another week’s furlough was granted, with the crews and pilots given freedom to explore the entire planet’s range of recreational possibilities.

“Looks great,” said Rachel, standing back from the big plastic window. She and Natasha stood in the mouth of a cave, sealed off from outer space by a half millimeter film. Vera, Apple and Izawa were still checking for leaks. Mizra Aliya and Millie Grohl were further inside the cave, using more film to close off cracks. They were all in vac suits, their visors still sealed.

The view out the window, as clear as empty space, was amazing, and disturbing. The planetoid was far, far from the three stars that ruled the system, still in the veils of their mother nebula, which was more visible from here than the actual stars. But much more visible still was the arc of the Milky Way sprawling across the sky, its great central bulge near the apex of its ecliptic.

“That still kind of spooks me,” said Natasha, admiring the view. “I sort of expect to see a big ol’ gas giant planet out there that this is a moon of, but instead we get to look at the galactic core.”

“It’s the direction we’re headed,” said Vera.

“I know,” said Natasha, a little anxiety in her voice. She snickered. “I can’t wait.”

“Can we—?” asked Apple, indicating her visor.

“Oh, sure,” said Rachel, checking the sensor in her hand. She undid her own visor and pushed her hood-like helmet back off her black hair. She smiled at Natasha, pulled a food bar out of her pocket and took a bite. “Hey,” she said, through a mouthful.

“What?” said Apple, who had pushed her vac suit down to her waist. “I wanted to air out. Hubby isn’t in here, and besides, he’s seen it all. The big ship people won’t be down for at least a couple hours.” She smiled, turned and kissed Izawa, who, a little shyer, was just doing the same thing.

“Well, fine,” said Rachel. She unzipped her suit all the way to just below her collar bone. “So we’re relaxing. Is anyone going to offer me a smoke?”

Outside, on a chunk of ice-rock a hundred meters in front and to the left of the cave, Clay and Skzyyn and Dzvezyets sat gazing at the rising galaxy. The core, obscured still by dust lanes, occupied thirty degrees of the sky. A little way away, Li and Timmis were strolling across the airless, icy rock, holding gloved hands.

“Going all that way?” asked Skzyyn.

“To the base of the Orion Arm,” said Clay.

“Really?” asked Dzvezyets. “What is there, you think?”

Clay gazed up, thinking how odd it was to actually be staring at his own galaxy. How odd it was to have a galaxy, and to be aware that it was his galaxy, as opposed to all the other hundred billion galaxies.

“We used to think,” he said, and he took a breath of his vac suit’s clean air. “You used to think, I’m sure, that your world, your two planets, were big, that all your enemies were there, everything that was a threat to you. We were afraid of the wolves, we were afraid of diseases, of evil spirits. We were afraid of the people on the other side of the ocean. Then we were a little afraid of aliens coming and invading Earth. We should have been more concerned than we were, I guess. Same with you guys, obviously.”

“Yes,” said Skzyyn. “But the universe is large.”

“Yeah. We kept realizing it was larger than we thought. There’s an old quote from someone, to the effect that it’s too late to save just yourself, or your family, or your home town, or your country, that you can only save the world. Well, it’s worse than that. We can’t save Bluehorse, or Earth, or Fyatskaab, we can only save the Orion Arm of the frickin’ Galaxy.”

“Question,” said Dzvezyets. “Who is Orion and what is it to frick?”

“Orion was a hunter, and from Earth, a certain group of stars looks like a guy with a bow and a sword on his belt. The other thing, I don’t really know.”

They thought about that. Skzyyn said, “And you don’t mind that we won’t go all that way with you? That we go to the next place, to Five Star, to Pentestella, and then we go home to Fyatskaab?”

“No, I completely get that,” said Clay. “You have two planets to save too. You’ll send word. Maybe you’ll follow later, in a few centuries. Maybe your grand-kids will come join us. Eleven thousand years from now, you know, in a couple of years.”

“We get home,” said Skzyyn, “I and Dzvez will certainly be training pilots. And we will certainly send some your way. End of the Arm?”

“I’ll leave a light on for you,” said Clay.

They gazed at the galaxy a little longer. “Have any smoke?” asked Dzvezyets.

“Sure,” said Clay. “Let’s go see how the ladies did with the cave. Don’t want them to be getting into trouble.”

They got up and started toward the cave, Clay walking bouncily in the low gravity while his Tskelly companions scampered like the eight-legged squirrels they were. The Milky Way stretched over their heads. The galactic hub gazed balefully from behind its dusty mask.

2.

For one week, 168 hours, the little invading fleet stayed at the icy globe on the outskirts of the Spiral Arch system, carousing and relaxing and, just a little, planning for what was to come. The last twenty hours or so, however, assumed the air of a retirement party. It had been decided for certain: the Honshu, the Primoid cruiser and fighters, and the Fyaa cruisers and two of the remaining five Fyaa fighters would go back, flying directly to Fyatskaab to introduce the Ngugma there to the new and exciting method of causing a cascading proton decay in a freighter full of metals. Would they need to use the new technology, actually destroy another freighter? That depended on the local Ngugma.

The Tasmania, the Ngugma cruiser, three Fyaa fighters (piloted by Skzyyn, Dzvezyets, and Ve’ezy) and the three and a half remaining wings of Ghost 204s would go on to Pentestella.

So a farewell party was held, in a tent on the surface of the planetoid. The food was from the Honshu, whose five-star food processing would be missed. The music was Clay’s 20th Century rock, with more modern additions from Timmis Green and Padfoot, some 25th Century minuets added by Captain Root, and intervals of some sort of jazz instrumental played live by Fyaa musicians of all three species. Kalkar danced with Root, politely, while Natasha did a rather dirty tango with Vera. Apple and Izawa and Aliya and Millie Grohl boogied energetically, and Li and Timmis, and Clay and Rachel, danced and smooched. Skzyyn, playing some sort of vibraphone in the jazzy sections, kept nodding and pointing at them, like a deejay at a club. The Primoids seemed to be, like Primoids always, grooving on their own.

When the party wound down, Clay let Rachel take him off and have her way with him, one last time in the spacious bunks of the Honshu. Meanwhile, Natasha and Vera and Flaayy were in the Ngugma cruiser, with Skippy and two other Primoids, saying pictorial farewells and chatting pictorially. The Honshu and Tasmania crews were all saying farewells, except that Kalkar and Park were both noticeably absent.

Finally, all the tents were taken down and the contents of the sealed cave were stowed one place or another. (The cave was left sealed for future use, because who knew.) The ships on the ground lifted off. In orbit, one last farewell ceremony was held, in the combined freight spaces of Honshu and Tasmania. Many were the hugs exchanged, beginning and ending with Kalkar and Park hugging Cassandra Root and the two Kaahriig captains. Natasha and the Primoid captain and Skippy hugged as well, and when Clay went to shake Skippy’s claw, he got pulled into an embrace with the big orange dude, as did Rachel. It was like being hugged by a tree.

Skzyyn, Dzvezyets and Ve’ezy made sure to give formal Fyaa salutes to Fvaerch and Sheaeek; Hhmvyvya, staying with the Tskelly, was whimpering when it made its adieus to its fellow Errhatzky. Then with one more handshake between Kalkar and Fvaerch—five fingers to four scaly but surprisingly soft claws–they retreated to their own ships, closed their freight hatches, and separated.

Honshu and the Primoid and Fyaa cruisers began rolling away, back past the Spiral Arch stars and star base, while Tasmania and the Ngugma cruiser, flown now by Ram Vindu, Raea Chee and Flaayy, turned their proverbial prows toward Pentestella.

Then, with every passing hour, the rate at which they moved apart, Honshu and Tasmania, the Kaahriig-commanded cruisers and Skzyyn and its friends, Skippy the Primoid and Natasha from Vermont, increased toward a limit at which each would be moving away from the icy planetoid at 300,000 km/sec, in opposite directions, and yet they would be moving with respect to one another at 300,000 km/sec. It didn’t matter. Dr. Einstein had not been proved wrong, nor would he be. Those flying home would reach home and perhaps save their home. Those flying onward toward the Galaxy’s core: they would never see home again, unless home was something they carried with them.

3.

Forty-nine light years from Spiral Arch lies a system of five stars, born together from the same dust cloud and still together in their middle age. The five suns stand well apart from one another, with two of them as close as Jupiter and Sol and the other three more than double Pluto distance from one another. Thus freed from interference from their siblings, these three all have planets, mostly Uranus-sized gas giants. Three terrestrial planets, and four moons among the gas giants, were colonized by the Ngugma a couple of hundred million years ago. The Ngugma call the system Fflohhvakohh, but the humans named it Pentestella for its most obvious trait.

The Ngugma, fresh from the fall of the Young Ngugma reactionary movement and the realization that they needed to leave the world of their birth behind, discovered Pentestella while looking for new homes, and found it perfect: perhaps, as Bluehorse was to Earth for the humans, so Pentestella, Fflohhvakohh, was to Bluehorse for the Ngugma. It was beautiful, and it was perfect, as if someone had set it there to relieve the cares of these hairy hexapods escaping from their own self-destruction. Now, Fflohhvakohh was the oldest, the most populous, and the most settled and stable of the colonies the Ngugma had built for themselves. It was not their capital, but that was just because an empire the size of theirs could really have no capital.

So Clay and friends, decelerating into the very far outskirts, got their first sight of the Pentestella system. Vannaag Vul had been the site of factories and processing plants on a vast scale, with a modest Ngugma population and a large proletariat of other species, and Spiral Arch and Okhozzhan Olv had been mere outposts where no one lived who wasn’t stationed there. Pentestella had tens of millions of Ngugma and similar numbers of their subservient species, and plenty of factories, but there were also governmental, educational and cultural institutions. There were military vessels in large number and lots of gigantic freight haulers, but there were also what appeared to be pleasure boats of space, interplanetary liners, and a million personal shuttles and small spacecraft. There were at least five space bases, and one, occupying a position at a gravitational equilibrium between the stars, was enormous, bigger than Big Fourteen.

It was to this station that Su Park addressed her first ultimatum in the Pentestella system. She reiterated her usual points: the Ngugma could not expect to negotiate; they could not expect to be trusted; they would already know that this little invading force had defeated much larger Ngugma forces four times; that the invaders had a piece of knowledge which, disseminated, would put all Ngugma mining operations at risk; that it was understood that the defense of the Orion Arm was everyone’s responsibility, but that it should also be understood that it was unacceptable for the Ngugma to commit species genocide in order to gain control over resources they had no right to.

The Ngugma response was confused and contradictory. Message probes and beamed light-speed transmissions from Spiral Arch would already have given the locals weeks to figure out what to say if the Earthlings and their friends came to call, but for one Earth day, there was still no response. It took the ultimatum six hours to get to the Ngugma base, and it would have taken their answer six hours to return, but twelve hours after that twelve hours passed with no news.

The invaders chose a small, irregularly shaped chunk of ice, and rock, and loose regolith ten kilometers long to land on, and they had an ice cavern sealed up and cozy by the time they had an answer to their call.

Even then, the first answer they got was not either of the ones they had expected. It was not an abject capitulation, nor was it an attempt to sweet talk the lowly humans and Fyaa into some sort of trap. It was from a forward transmitter on a moon of one of the gas giant planets.

“Invading fleet,” came a mechanical voice in good English, “the Ngugma reject your demands. Surrender your ships at once for boarding, and you will not be killed.”

Flaayy, on screen from the bridge of the Ngugma cruiser, which Flaayy was crewing with Emily Gray et al., said, “That was not sent by the starfleet. That did not come from the leadership.”

“I wouldn’t have thought so,” said Park, on the bridge of the Tasmania. “It’s far too direct. Let’s get a forward patrol. Andros, Gilbert, take Aliya and Grohl and scout ahead toward the source of the transmission.”

“Of course, Commander,” said Rachel, from the pilot quarters, rolling out of her Ghost to look for her vac suit. Clay rolled out behind her, went to his Ghost and grabbed out his suit, while Apple and Izawa, and Natasha and Vera, sitting around playing Set, made remarks about his butt. Mizra Aliya and Millie Grohl weren’t paying attention to Clay’s mode of dress: they were just happy about getting to go with the adults. They were high fiving.

“Commander,” called Skzyyn from its fighter, cruising around the nearby space, “my comrades and I respectfully request the honor of taking part. It is our plan to return to Fyaa space after this system is won—!”

“And we are out on patrol already,” pointed out Ve’ezy, from its repaired fighter.

“Consider yourselves added,” said Park, “as long as you consider yourselves under the command of Commander Andros.”

In a few minutes, seven fighters gathered in orbit of the ice chunk, and then shot off toward the inner system. They were twelve minutes on their way and up to 800 km/sec when they received another transmission, this time from the gigantic central base.

“Alliance fleet,” this one said, in the bass voice of an Ngugma, “we accept all of your terms. We welcome discussion of how you may be of help to us in defense. The previous transmission was not authoritative. The previous transmission was not authoritative. We accept all of your terms. We will stand down from combat immediately.”

“Well, who the hell sent it, then?” Clay called to Rachel. Park was sending off a similar inquiry.

The response from the gigantic base came promptly at the end of the minimum twelve hour transit time; the advancing fighters, human and Fyaa, intercepted it an hour early.

“Certain local elements do not accept our decision to choose peace,” said the Ngugma voice. “It may be necessary for your fighters to combat these elements. We are desolated but there is no modality in which we could be of direct assistance.”

“Great,” said Rachel.

“What does it mean?” asked Mizra Aliya.

“It means,” said Clay, “that the boss Ngugma here want us to clobber their rebels, and that they wouldn’t mind if we got to prove to them that we’re as unbeatable as they’ve been told we are.”

“This was all a plan on their part?”

“Oh, I doubt that,” said Rachel. “They just were lucky that way.”

“This is not a problem,” said Skzyyn, its squeaky voice mellowed by transmission, its squirrel-lizard face smiling in a little square to the side of Clay’s screen. “We were hoping to convince them how good we are. So we should go convince them. Shouldn’t we do so?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course we should,” said Rachel. “Okey dokey, let’s go look for folks to convince around that moon. But please let us be careful and not lose anyone. Kay?”

4.

The seven fighters bent their course slightly, to come around at an arc toward the big pale gas giant, a bleached Jupiter, and its biggest moon, a ball about the size of Mars. As the light hours diminished to light minutes, the target moon revealed some detail: it was white as chalk; its surface was saturated with craters; it had no mountains and none of the rills and river valleys characteristic of a place that had once had either liquid water or volcanos. It boasted several deep, jagged ravines, the result presumably of the expansion of water ice in its crust as it cooled long ago. It also had a small base in the smooth midsection of a large crater. The aggressive message sent to the invaders had come from transmitters around this base. And all of a sudden, a considerable fleet was getting off the ground, though not a typical one for the Ngugma: no battleship or battlecruiser, but nine cruisers and a heavy cruiser along with five of the Ngugma patrol ships.

“Do we take them?” said Clay neutrally. “I think we could still avoid contact.”

“No problem,” said Skzyyn as the seven fighters decelerated. “I think we take them.”

“Um,” said Rachel, “I’d like to mention that cruisers are bigger than fighters and nine and five and one is fifteen, which is a lot more than seven. And they’ll have fighters. Just puttin’ that out there.”

“Can we make it so we don’t fight them all at once?” asked Clay.

“Um, yeah,” said Rachel, “working on that, in my big ol’ brain.”

So she thought about it, and by the time they were down from light minutes to light seconds, and down from 20% of the speed of light to 0.2%, she had exchanged a set of maneuver plans with Clay, he had made a few comments, she had made a couple of minor changes, and the new improved plans had gone out to everyone. They came to the big moon, coming in on the opposite side from the rebellious Ngugma base, and went into orbit at the altitude of the roof of a two story house. They did a couple of orbits, firing off a few dozen missiles each time they passed near the base; they managed to take down the transmitter and damage a couple of out-buildings.

The second time, the base disgorged two dozen robotic fighters, which chased after the seven and quickly began to catch up. But, dropping into a crater a third of the way around the moon, the robots found themselves set upon from the flank by the three tiny Fyaa fighters, even as they chased the energy signatures of the Ghosts. Six robots went down. The remaining robotic fighters recovered and turned to fight, and now the Ghosts turned on them, and the whole parade chased the opposite direction around the moon, with the robots getting hunted down from behind and losing two, four, six more. Again the robot fighters turned, and they tried hard to concentrate entirely on the Ghosts, but by now the Fyaa were into them from behind.

The Ghosts met the attack with a quick volley and retreat, with Clay stalling to take the tail position while Aliya and Grohl followed Rachel. Clay took two whole seconds to sit and shoot before hitting the acceleration backwards. One robot got plugged in the face and blew up, while another took his shot in one of its black x-wings and dropped to the surface like an egg hitting the kitchen floor.

There were only five of them left now, but the front one of those got lucky, or Clay got unlucky. He took a hit that blew his topside flectors. His shot winged the enemy. The shot back blew off his hatch completely, and somehow that affected the system that secured him in his place. The next thing he knew, he was outside his Ghost, moving away from it at about ten meters per second, straight up away from the surface a mere thirty meters below.

“What the—God damn it—!” He swore some more. The five robots shot past him, just tiny dark metallic-composite shadows, and the three tiny Fyaa fighters, highlighted in his visor, shot after them. The robots went silently boom, one, two, three, four, five. Clay wasn’t watching that: he was watching his Ghost, recoiling from the physics of his expulsion, drift down toward the big crater below. It hit with a bump, bounced, hit again, bounced a bit, hit again, kicking up a swath of dust as it skidded to a stop near a pile of rock.

“Clay, you okay?” called Rachel.

“I’m fine,” said Clay.

“Skzz, can you keep track of him? Okay. We have cruisers. Go tungsten. Tungsten.”

“What?” Clay couldn’t help saying. He sighed. “I totally know that move,” he said to himself. “But I guess I’ll just float here in orbit.”

“Good idea,” Skzyyn sent back to him. Then the three Fyaa were pulling out behind the three Ghosts, into the face of four cruisers. The Ngugma opened a coordinated fire, but their enemies were more coordinated. They stuck in their flexible triangle formation, dropping and sliding into empty lanes and blasting forward into the face of one of the cruisers. Under intense fire, it blew up, and the one behind it was not ready for the attack which blew it up as well. Then Mizra Aliya and Skzyyn Zad-d-drya pulled left, and the other four pulled right. The right-hand cruiser was toast; the left one could not get a grip on its small and tiny enemies and found itself tied up till the other four fighters turned and knocked it out of the sky.

Clay, still drifting in low orbit above the moon, watched his colleagues take apart the rest of the Ngugma force. The furry starfish had used up all their available robot fighters already, so they were at a disadvantage, and the Ghosts and the Fyaa fighters could stand off and fire away at long range, or let loose with their new, even tinier missiles. The five patrol boats came at them next but did not make it into decent range before they were destroyed or disabled. Four more cruisers had hurried up behind the patrol boats. Ve’ezy endured several hard knocks while putting a hole in one cruiser’s drive. Millie Grohl had to save Mizra Aliya’s ass from another, dodging around the fire and spinning to laser a hole in the cruiser’s drive section. Two more went down, crashing into the surface of the icy moon.

The last cruiser and the heavy cruiser attempted to surrender, but, told to abandon ship, they dithered and delayed. Standing at a distance, the six fighters shot holes in the heavy cruiser, and when its bridge was open to space and its crew were suited up and floating out, the fighters dived past its hulk and holed the last cruiser. Then Aliya and Grohl, Skzyyn, Dzvezyets and Ve’ezy bombarded the base to their heart’s content.

Half an hour later, they broke off. They found that Rachel had got hold of Clay and taken him down to the crater surface. They all parked and walked over to a pile of rock at the far end of a long skid-mark of regolith. There stood Clay and Rachel, looking down.

“It looks bad,” said Millie Grohl. “I bet it’s bad.”

“I saw it hit,” Mizra Aliya added. “It looked bad.”

“Well, let’s see,” said Clay. He climbed over the rubble of rock. The Ghost, which he had flown all the way from moon training five billion years ago, had several dents, and its nose was caved in, and its hatch was a yawning mouth.

He sighed. Then he shrugged. He climbed into the hatch. The systems were still running. He switched to alternate screen, since his main screen was now floating somewhere in orbit. He got comfy, despite the lack of hatch. He hit hover. His Ghost struggled, wobbled, and after a couple of seconds shook itself free. He rose up ten meters into the lack of air.

He smirked. “And that,” he said over the comm, “is how we do it in Alpha Wing.”

5.

Tasmania moved up and met the fighters coming back. Clay’s Ghost flew under its own power, slowed down substantially by loss of hatch and of acceleration buffers. Communication with the Ngugma of Pentestella opened up like the dawn of a sunny day. Modus vivendi was the newest Latin phrase the locals learned, 250 light years from Caesar’s hometown.

The exchange of messages continued over twenty hours, as the Tasmania, Flaayy’s Ngugma cruiser, and their attendant fighters approached the main starport of Pentestella. It wasn’t exactly a negotiation, but the proposal that emerged from the Ngugma leadership could just as well have been the result of one. It came in simple English as well as in the native language of the Ngugma.

“We, the Ngugma of Fflohhvakohh, accept the assistance of the Humans of Bluehorse and the Fyaa of Fyatskaab and of the Kleegrg or Primoids. We declare that we will not operate mining or any other type of action in star systems in which Humans or Fyaa or Kleegrg live or have lived. We will welcome back into Fflohhvakohh the captive Flaayy Arrawrr Ffvord in your custody, who will reside with its clan group. We will place one explorer cruiser with the fleet of the Humans and Fyaa, and this explorer cruiser, under the command of Fonnggark, will assist in assuring a guarantee of safe passage through Ngugma systems. Further contact and interaction will follow.” What immediately followed were coordinates of another moon of another gas giant orbiting one of the other stars of the system.

“All right, we got somewhere,” said Park, standing in the usual little crowd in the Tasmania’s bridge. She turned and surveyed the fighter pilots, and behind them, Kalkar and Padfoot and Flaayy, who at long last was permitted to be among them, the light of the screens gleaming in its glossy fur and reflecting, like Christmas lights on snow, in the stalked eyes here and there among the hairy tentacles. “Was it worth getting there? Can we trust them?”

“Well, I was going to say no,” Vera replied. “But,” and she looked at Flaayy.

“My clan,” it said. It made a rippling with all the hairs around its mouth, out into the base of its arms. “Clan Ffvord wishes me to live amongst them. They have sent me messages.”

“Flaayy,” said Park, “just tell us if we can trust this fellow Fonnggark.”

“Yeah,” said Clay, “suddenly you’re a lot more forthcoming. Like, you came forth from that cruiser.”

“Clay Gilbert,” it said, “I was very, you say, tired of that cruiser.” Its upward three arms drooped forward a bit. Clay couldn’t help think Flaayy was a bit deflated by his comment.

“I mean,” said Clay, “you seem a lot happier.”

Flaayy sort of leaned left and right, then lifted up its arms and let them droop backward. “I am home,” said Flaayy.

“But does Flaayy trust these people, erm, these Ngugma?” asked Rachel. “That’s the question.”

“Yes, yes,” said Flaayy, exactly as it would if it were exasperated by the topic. “Fonnggark was, you would say, from my school. My clan group is, Ffvord is—I am not sure that it is the same with you. I don’t, ah, fear, since I will live with the Ffvord, it is as good—it is nearly as good as living with you has been. And this is Fflohhvakohh. Pentestella,” it added in a deliciously low tone, almost shaking the floor, almost making those Es into Os: pawntohstawllaw. “It is a pretty name.”

“So the Pentestella Ngugma are better than the Spiral Arch Ngugma?” asked Vera. “Or Okhozzhan or VV?”

“They have not annihilated any civilizations, these of Pentestella, not in a life long,” said Flaayy.

“Really?” said Vera.

“Santos,” said Park.

“It’s actually possible,” said Kalkar. “Pentestella is almost seventy light years beyond Spiral Arch, it’s a hundred light years from Okhozzhan, we are a century from there, almost a century and a half from Fyatskaab. This is what it’s like to run a star empire.”

“They don’t easily communicate,” said Natasha, “not with those distances and time intervals, even the Ngugma longevity isn’t enough to make it easy to affect what’s going on a hundred and fifty years away. Not in a life long. They could actually be innocent, in and of themselves.”

Vera shook her head, but then reached out a gloved hand and fluffed the fur on the side of Flaayy’s nearest arm. The arm reacted, stretching and pressing into her hand. “Gonna miss you, big guy.”

“Yeah,” said Clay. “You may not realize it, Brother Flaayy, but you were the first Ngugma we met who seemed like a cool guy. You revolutionized our whole view of your species.”

“Cooool?” said Flaayy. “You think me to be cooool?”

“Yeah,” said Natasha. “You’re the Cool Ngugma.”

“I think you to be cooool humans,” said Flaayy. “Very coooool.”

“Okay, okay,” said Natasha. “You deserve a nice retirement. I don’t know. You got a girlfriend? Or whatever?”

Flaayy let out what amounted to an Ngugma laugh. “Ahhh,” said Flaayy, “you mean one with whom to reproduce?”

“Well, and spend your life with.”

Flaayy couldn’t very well smile, but it put its arms up straight and said, “I am a Ffvord, of the land of Zezzah, on,” and it stopped to savor: “Pentestella, and my clan elders say we will replace a member of our side-clan the Hawwhawgh, and reproduce, yes, breeeed, spaaaawn.” It did something between a laugh and a blush.

Vera laughed and lifted Flaayy’s arm up as if one of them were a winning wrestler. “Congrats are in order,” she said, and Clay and several others laughed and said similar things. She let Flaayy’s arm slide out of her hand. “So how much further do we have to go?”

“Put it this way,” said Kalkar. “It’s one fifty to Fyatskaab, over two hundred to Bluehorse. You go back that way now, you get there four hundred years after we left. The other direction? That’s eleven thousand light years.”

Rachel said, “Padfoot feels we can try a jump of two centuries, and if that goes well, we can try five. Five hundred years in one jump.”

“And yet to us,” said Natasha, “it will seem but a week or two.”

“Yes,” said Park. “It took us seventy years further just to come to Pentestella. And it’s here, I think you will see, where the Ngugma were finally made to learn how we are and what we mean to do. The next step will add two centuries, it’ll add four centuries round trip, to going back home to Bluehorse. That’s why Honshu already turned for home. Now listen. This is a very long campaign in what might justifiably be called a very, very long war. The Ngugma have been fighting this enemy for more than one hundred million years. When the war began, dinosaurs roamed the Earth and our ancestors were basically mice. You are not instructed to defeat an enemy the Ngugma have been fighting a losing battle against since the time of the allosaurs. It’s, well, it might almost be called a fact-replaceing mission, aside from the fact that the facts are to be found eleven thousand light years from here.”

“Commander,” said Vera, “tell me we’re not flying eleven thousand light years, writing up a report, and carrying it back to Bluehorse 22,000 years later?”

“I think,” said Rachel, “that we are going to have leave to act on our own, if some clever idea occurs to us. You know how we are.”

“Just so we keep to the Vow,” said Natasha.

“Yes, exactly,” said Park. “You are to establish a base, and you are to patrol to take advantage of time dilation, and you will be reinforced, in a few centuries perhaps.”

“Make a base, patrol, get reinforced in 500 years,” said Rachel.

“And it’s time for me to let everyone know. Captain Kalkar and I have already discussed this, and I’ve discussed it with my wing, and I have just in the past hour informed the other wing commanders, Andros and Li. I didn’t want to say anything when it was not certain how this Pentestella operation would work out. Now it has gone our way: and I and my wing, Ms. Bain, Ms. Leith and Mr. Ree, will return with our Fyaa friends directly to Fyatskaab. We will take two weeks here and then we will be parting.”

“What?” said Natasha, Vera and Gemma. “No!” Clay said, without meaning to.

“It makes no strategic sense,” said Park, “to send all our fighters off this way. You know my place is in defense of Bluehorse, and training new pilots for the next time we need them. Hopefully I will be sending some of them to you, to join your fight.”

“The same is true of us,” said Skzyyn. “We will have a head start of Commander Park, it will take her as you say fifty years to get from Fyatskaab to Bluehorse. And I will send my first wing of trainees to look for you, Clay.”

“So,” said Clay, and he opened and shut his mouth. “No offense, Skz, but I knew you were leaving soon, I just never—!”

“You should not be surprised,” said Park.

“Who’s staying? I mean, who’s going on with us?”

“Alpha Wing,” said Rachel. “And—Li?”

“Beta Wing is going on as well,” said Li, looking around the others. Timmis looked proud. Apple and Izawa hugged and kissed, grinning.

“And we get Mizra and Millie,” said Rachel. “Don’t we?”

“If they want to go,” said Park. “I give them the choice.”

The former Siberian Pakistani and the grand-niece of Alice Grohl looked at each other. “We want to go,” said Millie Grohl. “We belong,” said Mizra Aliya. “We belong with you.”

“And the Tasmania,” said Kalkar. “Tasmania is going with you. I suppose you could manage as a gang of vagabonds, living off the land, but I think you might replace it useful—!”

“To have Padfoot and Bell and Poto,” said Natasha.

“Basically,” said Park. “We are sending Tashmina Dawa, and Vijay Ree-Dawa, home with the Ngugma cruiser we took possession of. Padfoot is adapting it for them. So Vijay may yet go to college on Bluehorse.”

“Sorry to see them go,” said Rachel. “At least we’re keeping Padfoot.”

“Yes,” said Kalkar, “and I am keeping Ms. Lisa Chen from Honshu in life support. She was a sort of intern before, but she has indicated an interest in a long-term position.”

“Very,” said Rachel.

“All right,” said Park. “It’s all very sad, but it’s war. And our paths may well cross again, thanks to Dr. Einstein. All right, this is decided. We should proceed to the party. Freight section squash begins after the first three units of wine.”

So they partied, en route to the mid-size moon where they would rendezvous with their Ngugma guides. They drank, they played squash, they slept, they partied some more. Clay took a thermos of coffee to the observation room, and there Skzyyn found him, with a replicated latte. They sipped their stimulants and gazed out at the stars of the inner wing of the Orion Arm.

Finally, Skzyyn said, “Clay Gilbert, about this going home. I know your home is gone, and you may never return to a home. My home is gone as well, but I can return and perhaps maybe remake my home. But you must fly farther and farther, this is your flight, this is the flight you were born to take, don’t you think so?”

Clay laughed. He shook his head, raised his eyebrows and smiled at Skzyyn, who eyed him quizzically. “It seems weird to say, but you’re right, you’re absolutely right.” Clay’s smile faded. “I was born in Camden, Maine, 550 years ago, for this flight. For this fight. I flew cargo to the space station for this battle.”

“We say, you need Fyatskaab or you need a battle. We mean, you need to have a home or you need to have a fight. You have a fight.”

“I have a home,” said Clay. “I carry my home with me.”

“Is that real?” asked Skzyyn. “Or are you just being, ah, sardonic?”

“No, Skz,” Clay replied. “It’s real.”

“It’s because Rachel,” said Skzyyn. “Scary Rachel.”

“My home is not just my Ghost. It’s my Ghost and her Ghost. And she lives there with me.”

Skzyyn made another of those expressions. It said, “So, Clay, you see why you can go on, and I must go home. I do not feel toward Dzvezyets that same way.”

6.

The fleet said goodbye to Flaayy, in orbit over the most populous planet, and that was emotional enough: Flaayy was certainly the most huggable Ngugma they had met, even if it did have eye-stalks in its fur. Then they headed out to the rendezvous moon, where they could relax for a fortnight before any more farewells.

The two weeks passed all too quickly. Clay had been rereading The Lord of the Rings, and this generic icy rock in black space seemed an unlikely substitute for Rivendell. They went for walks in little mixed groups, all wearing vac suits, and mostly they just looked up at the stars, ahead and behind, like so many space elves.

Clay had been lifted from his old life on Earth way back in the 24th Century, and turned from a shuttle driver to a fighter pilot, and led 300 light years from home, all by Commander Su Park, who had literally first met him in Bangor, Maine; he had struck up an inter-species friendship with Skzyyn Zad-d-drya which, despite his inability to read its many facial expressions, or even be sure what pronoun to use with it, had risen to save-each-other’s-life level. The Bain woman; The Man of Mister Ree; the deadly Jamaica (Jams) Leith; even Ve’ezy and Dzvezyets and Hhmvyvya: he just didn’t know what to think about the fact that it was unlikely he would ever see any of them again. He had no idea how to say goodbye in a way that would get across how much they meant to him.

In the meantime, a single Ngugma vessel, a smallish, under-gunned exploratory cruiser under the command of a certain Fonnggark, arrived and joined them. Clay wasn’t sure that the explorer-cruiser even had a name; the captured cruiser, refitted by Padfoot et al., was officially gifted by the local Ngugma to its human skeleton crew, and re-christened the Daria Acevedo.

Now that the Humans had flown a variety of Ngugma-built spacecraft, it was clear that the Ngugma, like the Humans and the Primoids and the Fyaa, used a virtual ion drive. Convergent evolution again: maybe it was the only fairly efficient way to go to light speed.

So they partied and played and simulated and gazed at the stars, the strange stars of the Pentestella sky, and finally the day, the hour of departure arrived. They all got into space, the Acevedo linked up to the Tasmania; Fonnggark’s ship linked to the Acevedo; everyone met and exchanged pleasantries; Fonnggark, who was a sort of tall skinny Ngugma, actually joked with Natasha and Clay and Skzyyn; the younger pilots, Apple and Izawa and Grohl and Aliya, barely contained their excitement; the humans and Fyaa hugged and swapped final snipes and words of appreciation.

Clay was standing there in the middle when he was grabbed by a blonde in a vac suit: “Fucking Clay Gilbert,” said Bonnie Bain. “Cause I never will. Rachel Frickin’ Andros!” she went on, grabbing Rachel, turning her around and depositing her by her husband.

“You guys are amazeballs,” said Jamaica Leith, standing with her arm around Bain. “We just want to be like you two!”

“Clay Gilbert and Timmis Green,” said Anand Ree, beaming, shaking Clay’s hand, then Timmis’s. “Tashmina and Vijay and I are off in that thing over there, and that means you are the only males in Ghosts left on this voyage of yours. Don’t make terrible fools of yourselves, okay?”

“It’s a big responsibility,” said Clay. “We won’t,” said Timmis.

They laughed, and then Anand Ree and Tashmina Dawa and their son Vijay got into their personal Ngugma cruiser. With a final wave, Anand shut the hatch, and the Acevedo, with its skeleton crew, separated and began to move away.

“Miz Natashaaa,” Hhmvyvya was saying to Natasha, its feet gripping the front of her vac suit, but it was sort of crying and couldn’t get any more out. Natasha was sort of crying too and just smiled through it. The Errhatzky looked at Padfoot standing next to, and towering a bit over, Natasha. “Miz Padfoot,” it said.

“I’ll miss you too,” said Padfoot calmly, but she messed it up by sniffling. She laughed and wiped her eyes.

“Clay Gilbert,” said Skzyyn, who was still, again, latched to his shoulder.

“Skz,” said Clay. “I, um, I meant to give you a gift or something.”

“You gave me the gift before,” said Skzyyn. “When you bumped me in that tunnel.” Skzyyn grabbed Clay by the ear and licked his face with that weird tongue. Great: tears were dripping down Clay’s face, and now he had alien spit all over it too.

Then Skzyyn leapt off Clay and flipped in the air twice before spreading its eight arms and legs and gliding, flying squirrel style, through the bay air toward its fighter. It landed on the thing, turned and waved its two upper left arms, gave what Clay was sure was a saucy grin, and climbed inside. Dzvezyets and Ve’ezy did the same. Hhmvyvya, with a last hug of Natasha’s head, turned and propelled itself through the bay air toward Skzyyn’s little fighter. Skzyyn made room and Hhmvyvya scooted inside; Skz gave the other two Tskelly pilots a wave. Their hatches shut.

Only Park and Bain and Leith remained. “Santos,” Park said, and Vera smiled through wet eyes. Park sighed a little and said, “Just behave. Will you?”

“If you say,” said Vera.

“Apple, Izawa, Aliya, Grohl: you make me very proud. Be safe. Natasha Kleiner. Thank you for the many things you have done well. I knew you were a right choice. As were you, Timmis.” Park turned to Clay. “Mr. Clay Gilbert,” she said. “I was always sure about you, and I still am.”

“Thank you, Gov’nor,” said Clay. Park gave a tiny smile.

She turned to Rachel and Li. “Commanders,” she said. “You are the best of the best. You know that. Just, please, promise me you won’t spend a tenth of a nanosecond even considering what Su Park would do. Su Park is not with you. You need to do what you would do.”

“Of course, Commander,” Rachel and Li said, almost together.

Park turned and smiled at Kalkar. Then, so fast the others might have thought they imagined it, she closed the two meter distance and threw her arms around him. They kissed, quickly but passionately, floating off the ground. Then she pushed away. Floating backwards, she saluted Kalkar, and he saluted her. She turned and saluted her fighter pilots, no longer her fighter pilots. Her fighter pilots—Bonnie Bain and Jamaica Leith—were giving last hugs to the ten who were going on. “Bye Clay,” were Bonnie Bain’s last wet words in Clay’s ear. They sashayed over to where their fighters sat on the hatch floor of the bay. They climbed in, and turned to Park, still standing beside her Ghost.

“Be safe,” called Park.

And before they could adequately reply, she was in her Ghost and sealed up. Those going on stepped back out of the bay, and the hatches opened and dropped the departing fighters into space, and they were away, following the Acevedo on the long road home. They would be in Bluehorse in two hundred years, or two weeks. The road that everyone else would be taking was much, much longer.

“All right,” said Kalkar, “let’s get this crate moving. We have a galaxy to save.”