“Have you found out any more about Nerbros Eser and what his plans are?” I asked. I didn’t feel like thinking about the Consu anymore.
“Yes,” Gau said. “Lernin has been quite forthcoming now that he’s trying to avoid being executed for treason. It’s been a wonderful motivator. He tells me that Eser plans to take Roanoke with a small force of soldiers. The idea there is to show that he can take with a hundred soldiers what I couldn’t take with four hundred battle cruisers. But ‘take’ is the wrong word for it, I’m afraid. Eser plans to destroy the colony and everyone in it.”
“That was your plan too,” I reminded the general.
He bobbed his head in what I assumed was an acknowledgment. “You know by now, I hope, that I would have much preferred not to have killed the colonists,” he said. “Eser does not intend to offer that option.”
I skipped over that piece of data in my head. “When will he attack?” I asked.
“Soon, I think,” Gau said. “Lernin doesn’t think Eser has assembled his troops yet, but this failed assassination attempt is going to force him to move sooner than later.”
“Great,” I said.
“There’s still time,” Gau said. “Don’t give up hope yet, Zo?.”
“I haven’t,” I said. “But I’ve still got a lot on my mind.”
“Have you found enough volunteers?” Gau asked.
“We have,” I said, and my face tightened up as I said it.
“What’s wrong?” Gau said.
“One of the volunteers,” I said, and stopped. I tried again. “One of the volunteers is an Obin named Dickory,” I said. “My friend and my bodyguard. When it volunteered I told it no. Demanded that it take back its offer. But it refused.”
“Having it volunteer could be a powerful thing,” Gau said. “It probably encouraged others to step forward.”
I nodded. “But Dickory is still my friend,” I said. “Still my family. Maybe it shouldn’t make a difference but it does.”
“Of course it makes a difference,” Gau said. “The reason you’re here is to try to keep the people you love from being hurt.”
“I’m asking people I don’t know to sacrifice themselves for people I do,” I said.
“That’s why you’re asking them to volunteer,” Gau said. “But it seems to me the reason they’re volunteering is for you.”
I nodded and looked out at the bay, and imagined the fight that was coming.
“I have a proposition for you,” the Consu said to me.
The two of us sat in the operations room of the cargo bay, ten meters above the floor of the bay. On the floor were two groups of beings. In the first group were the one hundred Obin who had volunteered to fight for me. In the other group were the one hundred Consu criminals, who would be forced to fight the Obin for a chance to regain their honor. The Consu looked scary big next to the Obin. The contest would be modified hand-to-hand combat: The Obin were allowed a combat knife, while the Consu, with their slashing arms, would fight bare-handed, if you called being able to wield two razor-sharp limbs attached to your own body “bare-handed.”
I was getting very nervous about the Obin’s chances.
“A proposition,” the Consu repeated.
I glanced over at the Consu, who in himself nearly filled the operations room. He’d been there when I had come up; I wasn’t entirely sure how he’d gotten himself through the door. The two of us were there with Hickory and Dock and General Gau, who had taken it upon himself to act as the official arbiter for the contest.
Dickory was on the floor. Getting ready to fight.
“Are you interested in hearing it?” the Consu asked.
“We’re about to start,” I said.
“It’s about the contest,” the Consu said. “I have a way that you can get what you want without having the contest at all.”
I closed my eyes. “Tell me,” I said.
“I will help you keep your colony safe by providing you a piece of our technology,” the Consu said. “A machine that produces an energy field that robs projectiles of their momentum. A sapper field. It makes your bullets fall out of the air and sucks the power from missiles before they strike their targets. If you are clever your colony can use it to defeat those who attack it. This is what I am allowed and prepared to give to you.”
“And what do you want in return?” I asked.
“A simple demonstration,” the Consu said. It unfolded and pointed toward the Obin on the floor. “A demand from you was enough to cause hundreds of Obin to willingly sacrifice themselves for the mere purpose of getting my attention. This power you have interests me. I want to see it. Tell this one hundred to sacrifice themselves here and now, and I will give you what you need in order to save your colony.”
“I can’t do that,” I said.
“It is not an issue of whether it is possible,” the Consu said. It leaned its bulk over and then addressed Dock. “Would the Obin here kill themselves if this human asked it?”
“Without doubt,” Dock said.
“They would not hesitate,” the Consu said.
“No,” Dock said.