Songs of Love & Death

“Shit, shit, shit,” Melin at navigation chattered, and her fingers swept back and forth across the touch screen like a child finger painting. Our ship, the Selkie, obedient to Melin’s sweeping commands, fired its ram jet. My stomach was left resting against the ceiling and my balls seemed to leap into my throat as we dropped relative to our previous position.

A massive piece of steel and composite resin, edges jagged and blackened by an explosion, tumbled slowly past our front viewport. It had been four years since I’d been cashiered from the Imperial Navy of the Solar League, but the knowledge gained during the preceding twenty years was still with me.

“That was an Imperial ship,” I said. My eye caught writing on the hull. I had an impression of a name, and my gut closed down into an aching ball. It couldn’t be… but if it was… I had to know. I added an order. “Match trajectory and image-capture.”

Jax, the Tiponi Flute, piped through the breathing holes lining his sides, “Not good news for Kusatsu-Shirane if the League has found them.” The alien had several of its leafy tendrils wrapped around handholds welded to the walls, and his elongated body swayed with the swoops and dives of the ship.

“I’d call that the understatement of the year,” Baca grunted from his position at communication.

Three hundred years ago, humans had developed a faster-than-light drive and gone charging out into our arm of the Milky Way galaxy. There we had met up with a variety of alien races, kicked their butts, and subjugated them under human rule. But two hundred years before the human blitzkrieg began, there had been other ships that had headed to the stars. Long-view ships with humans in suspended animation, searching for new worlds.

Most of these pioneers were cranks and loons determined to set up their various ideas of utopia. Best guess was that probably eighty percent of them died either during the journey or shortly after locating on a planet. But some survived to create Reichart’s World, and Nirvana, and Kusatsu-Shirane, and numerous others.

The League called them Hidden Worlds, and took a very dim view of human-settled planets that weren’t part of the League. In fact, the League rectified that situation whenever they ran across one of these worlds. The technique was simple and brutal: The League arrived, used their superior firepower to force a surrender, then took away all the children under the age of sixteen and fostered them with families on League planets. They then brought in League settlers to swamp the colonists who remained behind.

But it hadn’t worked this time, because there were pieces of Imperial ships orbiting Kusatsu-Shirane. Something had killed a whole battle group. Whatever it was, I didn’t want it destroying my little trade vessel.

“Contact orbital control, and tell them we’re friendlies,” I ordered Baca.

“I’ve been trying, Tracy, but nobody’s answering. Worse, the whole planet’s gone silent. Nobody’s talking to nobody.”

“Some new Imperial weapon to knock out communications?” Melin asked.

“Are you picking up anything?” I asked.

“Music,” Baca replied.

We all exchanged glances; then I said, “Let’s hear it.”

Baca switched from headphone to speaker, and flipped through the communication channels from the planet. Slow, mournful music filled the bridge. It wasn’t all the same melody, but they all had one thing in common. Each melody was desperately sad.

Something terrible had happened on Kusatsu-Shirane, and judging by the debris, something equally terrible had happened in orbit. Periodically, Melin fired small maneuvering jets as she dodged through the ruins, but despite her best efforts the bridge echoed with pings and scrapes as debris impacted against the hull.

“Not the safest of neighborhoods, Captain,” came my executive officer’s voice in my left ear, and I jumped. Damn, the creature could move quietly! I gave a quick glance over my shoulder, and found myself looking directly into the Isanjo’s sherry-colored eyes. Jahan had settled onto the back of my chair like Alice’s Cheshire cat.

“We’ll grab an identification and get out,” I said.

Jahan wrapped her tail around my throat. I couldn’t tell if the gesture was meant to convey comfort or a threat. An Isanjo’s tail was powerful enough to snap a two-by-four. My neck would offer little challenge.

As if in answer to my statement, the screen on the arm of my jacket flared, adjusted contrast, and the name of the ship came into focus: Nuestra Señora de la Concepción. My impression had been correct. It had been her ship. I gave the bridge of my nose a hard squeeze, fighting to hold back tears.

“Holy crap, that’s a flagship!” Baca yelped as he accessed the computer files.