Chapter 6

Lami had spent the night in his usual spot at the back of the women’s hut, though this time there had been no ropes to bind him. No one had said a word to him after his failed attempt at communicating with the chief, but then again, no one had tried to stop him from going about his business inside the compound. To Lami, it seemed as if Chief Sote was just as confused about yesterday’s events as he was himself.

In the morning, one of the women in the hut, Latu, brought him his usual breakfast bowls. She didn’t say anything to him, but his physics prediction unit confirmed the bowl contained almost 14 percent more boiled grains than it had at any previous time during his captivity.

The Special Agent chose to interpret that as success.

His mood improved further when he was about to leave the hut for his first pass of latrine duty. Just as he was about to grab his yokes, a voice from behind stopped him in his tracks.

“No,” it said. “You’re not kahema. It’s not your job anymore.”

Kahema? Lami thought hard about the word. Unclean, perhaps? Or just “intern”? He filed the term and its possible translations away for future study. Now that he was starting to talk to the people in the village, rather than just listen to them, he would quickly fill in the blanks in his knowledge of their language. A few days from now, he’d be speaking it fluently.

“Thank you, Lorá,” he said to the healer, as he turned around to face the tall woman.

“Don’t thank me,” she replied. “You gained war rank on your own.”

“And then I lost it,” Lami muttered to himself, not thinking Lorá would understand what he meant.

Exceeding his expectations, she laughed lightheartedly at his self-deprecating comment.

“You really did, didn’t you?” she said with a smile.

“Chief Sote understands,” she continued. “He was deeply offended by what you said, but he’s not dumb. He understands you atwak.”

Lami had a strong feeling that the chief’s present understanding of Lami’s mistake had more to do with Healer Lorá’s way with words than with his own, but he didn’t say anything of the sort to her.

“What’s your name?” the healer finally asked, after having watched him stand there uncomfortably for a while.

“Lami,” he said, offering only his last name. The aliens used only single names, and he didn’t want to confuse them by revealing he had more than one.

Lorá started to laugh, and soon the other women around him in the hut began to snicker as well. But despite feeling slightly embarrassed by having a house full of large alien women laughing at him, he took solace in the fact that there didn’t seem to be any menace behind it.

When the laughter eventually faded, he asked Lorá what he was expected to do with his time if he was no longer on latrine duty.

“Cook or weave,” the healer responded with a mischievous grin, followed by another round of laughter from the women in the hut.

Clearly, they now took every chance to make fun of him. But this was about as good an outcome as he could have hoped for. It gave him a chance to learn more of their language, and an opportunity to familiarize himself with their culture and way of thinking. At the very least, his situation with the tribe was now infinitely better than it had been during his initial torture and the forced labor that had followed.

“When we found your people, they were hurt,” Lorá said suddenly, immediately becoming serious again as she switched topics.

“They were freezing and dying,” she continued. “The goarua were stalking them. We defended them, took them in, kept them warm. I did what I could to mend their wounds. We fed them, but they didn’t eat.”

They could not have eaten, Lami thought. Having different biochemistry than the Minvali, the Terrans would at best have gotten no nourishment from the alien food, and at worst, they would have been poisoned by it.

Perhaps that was what had happened to the expedition members? But no, Lorá had said they never ate. Hopefully, the expedition team had brought their own rations with them to the Minvali village.

“And then they betrayed us,” Lorá said, the pain evident on her purple face. “When we were asleep, they threw their lightning spears at our warriors.”

Lightning spears, Lami thought. She must be referring to the gaser rifles the Sunguard soldiers had carried.

“We defended ourselves as best we could,” the healer continued. “Your people were already weak from cold and exhaustion. When our war beast arrived, they didn’t stand a chance.”

Through her transparent secondary eyelid, she looked him in the eyes. “We were forced to kill your people,” she said, now with sorrow mixed with pain.

“I’m sorry.”

* * *

Later in the morning, while sitting on the stairs of the women’s hut, Lami contacted General Dumas again. During his captivity, he had only reported to the Sunguard occasionally, though he had, of course, informed the general immediately of his discovery of the Terran remains in the waste pit.

“I believe I have now uncovered enough information about the disappearance of the Sunguard team to close the book on that investigation,” Lami told the general.

“I’m glad to hear that, sir,” General Dumas replied through the hyperspace link inside Lami’s brain.

Lami was not entirely sure he shared that sentiment.

“I’m afraid my final report on the team’s actions here will not be entirely favorable,” he continued. “I have credible information that the Sunguard escort opened fire on the Minvali and was subsequently defeated by the native warriors.”

The general stayed silent for a few seconds before replying.

“I can confirm the escort team had standing orders to defend themselves, the expedition members under their protection, and their mission against any perceived threats, sir,” Dumas explained.

“I fear they might have done more than just protect themselves,” Lami replied. General Dumas had overseen the original expedition, and Special Agent Lami was careful not to level any unfounded accusations against the soldiers who had been under his command.

“I have good reason to believe the Sunguard soldiers initiated hostilities, General,” Lami continued.

“The women and men on the team were professionals. They were decorated officers, experienced in operating without support in difficult conditions,” General Dumas said, defending the soldiers he had commanded. “I cannot imagine they behaved in any way that did not reflect their commitment to the Terran Federation.”

“Yet I have multiple eyewitness accounts suggesting otherwise.”

Lami felt frustration starting to creep into his report. There was something slippery in the way the general expressed himself. Although the Special Agent didn’t want to include his colleague in the investigation, he felt there was more going on here than he had initially thought. Despite his apprehension, Lami decided to press forward with his line of inquiry.

“The natives are not citizens of the Terran Federation, sir,” the general said, apparently defending the soldiers’ course of action. “If it came to a situation where they had to choose between the lives of Federation citizens or those of foreigners, it was their duty to protect the Federation.”

He wasn’t wrong about that, Lami thought. Yet his deeply ingrained genetic loyalty to the ideals of everyone’s equal value compelled him to tweak his acknowledgment of the general’s sentiment a little before replying.

“Of course, General,” he said. “The Sunguard is the police and military force of the Terran Federation. Obviously, their duty is to protect it. But that duty must always be performed with the intention of upholding the ideals of the Federation, even when dealing with humans who are not part of it.”

“The Minvali are a very primitive race,” General Dumas countered, frustration evident in his voice as well. “From your description of them, they are just on the verge of entering the Bronze Age, using metals only for ornaments and minor tools, not for weapons. I’m not sure they can truly be considered human yet.”

Lami didn’t fully agree with the general’s assessment of the natives.

“The common definition of the word human in the Terran Federation is that it applies to any species with the intellectual capacity to understand technology. It is not limited to species that currently have that understanding. That is a crucial distinction, sir,” he reminded the general.

“That view may be a bit too simplistic now,” the general retorted. “Had the Minvali already established a technological culture here when we arrived, we would, of course, have abandoned their world. Entering into a conflict with an established civilization would not have been in the best interest of the Terran Federation, and this is not an easy world to colonize. With so little time left before Nova Solaris, we must always have our eyes fixed on the path of least resistance.”

General Dumas made a short pause before continuing his argument.

“But there are so few Minvali, and they do not have the capacity to make any kind of meaningful impact on our colonization efforts. As you said yourself when we talked about this just after your arrival on the planet, this world is strategically important to the Terran Federation. I do not think we can justify letting a tribe of natives stand in the way of saving the lives of millions of our people.”

Lami remembered the conversation well—as a biot, how could he not? But now, their positions were reversed. He was arguing for the Federation to abandon its colonization effort, and General Dumas was defending the Sunguard’s presence here.

Suddenly, something clicked for him, and the slippery feeling Lami had experienced from the general during their conversation suddenly made sense.

What was it General Dumas had said? The team had had standing orders to protect the mission—not just to protect the expedition members, but the mission itself. And then he had continued to defend the soldiers’ commitment to the Terran Federation—again, not their commitment to behave according to its ideals, but their commitment to the Federation itself.

Those soldiers had been under the direct command of the general. Whatever orders they had been given would have aligned with General Dumas’s own perspective on the colonization effort.

Special Agent Lami felt the cold hand of fear grip his heart as he formulated the crucial questions in his mind.

“Exactly what,” he asked the Sunguard general, steel creeping into his voice, “were the standing orders given to the Sunguard escort concerning their operations on this world?”

“They were tasked with protecting the interests of the Terran Federation there, sir,” General Dumas replied. “Their primary mission was to ensure the success of the colony efforts, should the science team deem the planet viable.”

“And did they?”

“Yes, sir. The last transmission before the team disappeared indicated their assessment that the cost-benefit ratio was slightly in favor of colonization,” the general confirmed.

“Despite the presence of a native population?”

“That was not known at the time, sir,” the general retorted. “But the mission parameters did indeed include an option for that possibility.”

Lami steeled himself for his final question.

“And that option was?”

“As I stated previously, if any native population could be pacified without significant impact on the timeline required for colonization before Nova Solaris, doing so was within the operational parameters of the mission, sir.”

The Minvali had been right all along. They had rescued the injured Sunguard team, sheltered them, and given them comfort. And in return, the Terran soldiers had attacked the Minvali simply because they were deemed so weak and primitive that it would take less effort to remove them than to abandon the colonization project.

Like a giant stepping on ants. Not out of hatred or cruelty, but because it simply was easier that way.

Shaking from the realization, Lami had to force himself to keep his voice steady as he finished his report to Sunguard headquarters.

For a few minutes, he sat there, alone on the stairs to the women’s communal hut, looking out across the bustling village filled with the women, men, and children he had come to know over the past month. They were going about their day—the men tended to their war beasts, the women ground grains or mended cloth, and the children… the children did what children always did on countless worlds across known space. They played and had fun, not caring what the future had in store for them.

Then, with a determination that could only come from the convictions embedded into his genes, he reached into his mind and severed the hyperspace connection to the Sunguard that had been active within his brain since the day he was first taken online.

Myan Lami was no longer a Sunguard Special Agent.

Author's Note

The story you're reading is one of many set in the Lords of the Stars universe I've been creating over the past 30 years, where familiar characters and places reappear, and new favorites await discovery. Check out my profile to explore more stories from this universe.

While Choices of Steel is entirely standalone, I think you’ll particularly enjoy Soldier of Steel, which serves as a prequel to this story, and Conscience of Steel, which is something of a sequel.

Visit the official Lords of the Stars blog for more information about this hard sci-fi universe: https://lordsofthestars.wordpress.com

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