Barbarians at the Gates

Chapter Nineteen

Maskirovka, Boskone System, 4092

“You see, all the Purples cannot be trusted,” the man announced. Roman hadn’t caught his name when he’d turned up and bought the table of Navy personnel a round of drinks. “We have to keep the boot on their necks for their own good…”

Roman shrugged, doing his best to conceal his disgust. After a day in Maskirovka City—the unimaginatively named capital of Maskirovka—he’d decided to see some local color and head to one of the alien cities on the gas giant’s moon. There had been little to see in Maskirovka City, just another spacer town with bars, brothels and overpriced souvenirs, trying to drive spacers and other visitors deeper into debt. Merchant crewmen were generally paid in a lump sum whenever they reached safe harbor and the planet’s inhabitants were devoted to relieving them of as much money as possible before they left. Not that most of them complained. After months on merchant ships, breathing in each other’s air and getting on each other’s nerves, the chance to get drunk and enjoy some female company had to be very welcome.

“They just can’t be trusted,” the man insisted, waving toward the bartender. “Can you believe—they think they would have achieved greatness if not for us!”

Roman had seen aliens before, but he’d never previously encountered a native of Maskirovka. But that shouldn’t have been surprising. According to the files he’d accessed on the way down to the surface, none had ever set foot off the planet, unless they’d been lifted illegally by smugglers and taken to a hidden base.

The alien showed no sign of listening to the conversation. Like roughly half of the aliens known to humanity, the Purples were humanoid, but there the resemblance ended. Their skins looked like gooseberry skins—although of a sickeningly purple color—and their eyes were dark and lidless. The alien was clearly female—she had prominent breasts, larger than the human norm—and was actually taller than Roman. If he recalled the files correctly—his implants lacked a secure connection on the surface—the intelligent Purples were all female; the males weren’t intelligent and lived only for food, fighting and fucking, perhaps not in that order. He’d mentioned that to Elf, who was seated on the other side of the table with a bored expression, and she’d quipped that they were just like humanity. Roman had blushed scarlet before he realized that he was being teased.

He deliberately looked away from the alien—and their unwelcome entertainer—and studied the bar itself. It had started life as an alien building and all the proportions were odd, even though someone had insisted on modifying it to better suit humans. A display of alien artwork covered one wall, paintings that reminded him of some of the early rock carvings done by RockRat asteroid miners during the First Expansion Era. Many focused on humanity and while the overall tone was positive, there was something sinister about seeing his race portrayed as godlike entities.

But perhaps the natives considered them to be gods. Humans had changed the shape of their world forever.

Years ago, according to the files, the Purples—their name for themselves was unpronounceable by humans—had been on the verge of entering the computer age. The files claimed that they’d been loosely comparable to Earth of 1914, although they’d actually advanced faster in some areas than humanity had—a fact that had been carefully buried under a mountain of statistics and dry data. It had taken Roman several hours to work it out from the sparse hints in the files. In fact, he had a suspicion that if Enterprise’s computers hadn’t recognized him as her acting captain, he wouldn’t have been able to access and download the complete file.

Their advancement hadn’t helped when the Federation arrived. The human race had landed, made contact with the alien leaders and started supplying them with technology to help correct their problems. Free food had been provided for aliens on the verge of starvation, technological fixes had been offered for other issues…and the humans had eventually taken over the world. Over the years, the Purples had been systematically reduced to little more than zoo animals, seemingly for their own good.

But it hadn’t taken long for Roman to realize the truth, even though the files had never stated it directly. The Federation’s intervention—in the name of saving the Purples from themselves—had ensured that the Purples would never become a threat to humanity.

The irony was chilling. Humanity’s first contact had almost been its last. The Snakes wouldn’t have allowed a race as adaptable as humanity to live—they’d enslaved several races, but exterminated at least two others—and humanity had learned a hard lesson. No alien race could be allowed to become a threat. Even without the Imperialist Faction pushing the Federation into war, the Blue Star War might have taken place anyway. An alien race with a space navy, even a primitive and unreliable one, was a clear and present threat. It could not be tolerated, even if it meant reducing entire races to beggars, dependent on human charity.

Roman jumped as a hand landed on his shoulder.

“Don’t think we’re ungrateful because of your presence,” the man who’d bought them drinks said. “You help keep the Purples in their place and…why, I hear that some of them are rejecting the benefits of civilization and are taking off to the wildness and hiding and…”

It took all the self-control Roman had not to put one of his fists next to the man’s nose. It would have been easy. The man was half-drunk, and Roman had barely touched his beer—overpriced, tasting suspiciously like it had come out of the wrong end of a horse—and it was clear that the man had no formal fighting training. Yes, he’d been warned not to cause friction with the locals, but how much nonsense could he take?

“Thank you for your words of wisdom,” Corporal Hastings said. Unlike Elf, the burly Marine exuded an air of menace. “Go away.”

The man looked at him with wide eyes, and then stumbled away, tripping over a chair in his haste.

Roman watched him go, wondering just how much of that had been an act. The settlers had been very welcoming to the Navy crewmen on leave, but there was something unsettling about their demeanor. It occurred to Roman for the first time that the settlers were hugely outnumbered by the Purples. If the Purples had revolution and mass slaughter in mind, the only thing keeping them back was orbital bombardment…and Marine Regiments from the Federation Navy.

“Thank you,” he said sincerely.

Hastings made a show of saluting. Traditionally, Marines only reported to captains and Roman was no longer even an acting captain. On the other hand, he’d earned respect from officers and men who were many years his senior.

“Why…?” Roman wasn’t able to finish the thought.

“That’s a fairly typical attitude for a settler,” Elf said seriously. “They’re the ones who don’t feel like breaking the ground on a new planet, so they find their way to a system where the locals will do all the work—if they know what is good for them. And if they don’t know, the settlers will be happy to break some heads until the locals realize where their best interests lie. Along the Rim, there are places where humans and aliens live together in perfect harmony—but not here, and certainly not formally. The aliens have no rights on their own planets.”

Roman looked toward the bartender. She mopped the counter, seeming to pay no attention to them at all. A pair of males—smaller, nasty-looking humanoids—were running around in back, jumping onto the counter to look at the human visitors. Roman shuddered at the look on their faces, the complete absence of anything but rapidly shifting emotion. The females, according to the files, traded males, effectively as pets. And yet, when a female Purple entered mating season, she was compelled to submit to a creature that was little more than an animal. The females had even bred males in hopes of improving the breed, Roman had learned, although the human settlers had soon put a stop to that.

“Ah, forget them,” Blake Raistlin said. Like Roman, he’d been promised promotion after heroic service on the superdreadnaught Thunderous. Unlike Roman, it hadn’t come through yet, not even with his family connections. Roman had heard that Raistlin’s father had been unable to secure him a posting to Enterprise—Admiral Parkinson had apparently hated Raistlin’s father—and it might well have saved his life. “I could do with another round of drinks. Who’s buying?”

Roman studied the pale yellow liquid that passed for beer and shook his head. “Not me,” he said, thinking wistfully of battle. “How do you think they make this crap?”

“They taught us how to make it,” an oddly musical voice said. Roman turned to see the alien bartender looming over him. Up close, she smelled of sweet flowers and something he couldn’t identify, almost like human perfume. “We grow the plants for them in a poor field and then turn it into drink for them. They cannot get enough of it.”

“Well, neither can we,” Raistlin said quickly. “Another round of drinks, and don’t spare the alcohol. We have a genuine set of war heroes at the table.”

If the bartender was impressed, she didn’t show it. Instead, she collected the empty glasses and headed back toward the bar. The twitch in her rear had to be an affectation she’d picked up from the settlers, Roman told himself. She couldn’t be trying to tempt them with the possibility of alien sex, could she? Or perhaps she was—there were plenty of stories about human-alien sexual relationships, even though they were the last, great taboo. A poor settler, unable to afford a wife, might just be tempted by an alien…

He pushed the thought aside before it made him throw up. It was far more likely that some of the other rumors about settlers—and RockRats—were true. Back at the Academy, he’d discovered that some of Earth’s citizens still believed that RockRats were all homosexuals, a stereotype that hadn’t been true for almost two thousand years. If ever.

“You saved an entire ship,” Raistlin said cheerfully. He made a show of lifting his glass. “Cheers, gentlemen; he served on Enterprise.”

Roman flushed. “I need some air,” he said, pulling himself to his feet. Why did his legs feel unsteady? “I’ll see you back at the lodge.”

“Unless you find someone and go home with her,” Raistlin called. “Enjoy yourself!”

The Purple town was a strange mixture of human and alien styles. Roman took a deep breath as he stepped outside, enjoying the clear air. He couldn’t help but realize that the human habitations were all prefabricated colony-style buildings, while the alien buildings were far more elegant. The ugly human buildings had been designed that way to encourage colonists to develop their building skills and eventually move out of the prefabricated buildings and into proper homes. But the settlers had never bothered to move any further, even in Maskirovka City. With an industrial node floating in orbit producing all the prefabricated buildings they could desire, they had no incentive to change.

The alien buildings bore no resemblance to human styles of architecture and design, at least at first glance. They looked to be constructed from a mixture of wood and stone, with earth pressed into the roofs and used to grow a grass-analogue. Roman recalled some of the genetically-engineered plants the RockRats had taken with them as they spread out among the stars and wondered, absently, if the Purples used something similar to help hold their buildings together.

He looked up at the gas giant hanging in the sky, and shivered. You are mortal, the gas giant seemed to say. I am eternal. You puny mites and your tiny starships are nothing to me.

A line of alien males ran past, squawking as they sighted a female target. Roman watched as the female dropped the bag she was carrying and knelt in front of the males, pressing her face into the dirt. The males surrounded her and began to fight savagely among themselves for the right to mate with the female. Roman wanted to look away, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the scene. He guessed that the kneeling female had just entered mating season—her scent calling the males to her—and that none of the other females was ready to mate.

Once the victor in the fight had knocked the others down or out, he howled in triumph and then swept down on the female, lifting her ragged dress before entering her from behind. After a brief moment, the male pulled out, chattering happily. The female pulled herself to her feet, her expression unreadable, and gathered her possessions. No one stepped forward to help her—and none of the other males showed any sign of interest.

“They’re not like us,” a voice said from behind him.

He turned to see Elf.

“To us, that’s a disturbing sight—a rape, perhaps even a gang rape. To them, that’s normal. No one will think any less of her, while the males are doing what comes naturally to them. On the other hand, they may mock her for not being careful when she was on the verge of entering mating season. She should have been inside so she mated with the male she chose—if she chose any male.”

Roman blinked. “Have you been here before?”

“I read the file as soon as we arrived in this system,” Elf said with a wink. “Old Marine saying—learn everything you can, because you never know what might come in handy and you’ll feel a damn fool if you don’t know it when you need it.”

Roman nodded sourly. But they had to ponder what they read to make any use of it.

He looked back at the alien female and saw her walking away, almost waddling. The other aliens seemed utterly unconcerned, although he saw a few casting their lidless eyes in the direction of the two humans. A handful of other humans—all teenage boys—had chortled to themselves at the show before heading back to one of the human buildings. They’d thought it was hilarious.

“What are we doing here, anyway?” Roman asked after a long pause.

“Shore leave,” she said dryly. “I must say you’ve been a terrible disappointment to me as your escort. All you’ve done is drink, and you’ve visited an alien city. You should be being fleeced by a fast-talking dealer, or spending your credits in a brothel…I remember a young ensign who was reported missing during shore leave and we had to go track him down. It turned out that he’d been lured into a drug den, and honestly thought that it hadn’t been more than a day.”

Roman snorted. “And how long was it?”

“A month,” Elf said. “The poor bastard was completely out of it, utterly zonked. At least they’d fed and watered him, or he would have died before we pulled him out.”

“That wasn’t what I meant,” Roman said. He tried again, hoping she’d understand this time. “What is the Federation doing on Maskirovka?”

“We’re here because we have no other choice,” Elf said. “What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know,” Roman admitted. He still had three days before he was supposed to report onboard the Donna Noble, leaving him at loose ends. He couldn’t return to Enterprise, not now. “I just don’t know.”

“Come with me,” Elf said, reaching over and taking his hand. “There’s a place where we can dance—I love dancing—and then get some dinner, and more dancing…and who knows where it might lead?”

Roman looked up in surprise. He’d thought that she’d lost interest in him, if she’d ever had it.

“You’re the hero of the hour,” she said with a wink. “Relax and enjoy it—and all the free drinks you’ll get when you tell your story. Tomorrow is another day of woe and misery, in a universe of woe and misery, where death and destruction stalk us like…two giant stalking things.”

“Oh, shut up.” Roman laughed. “Lead on, fair lady.”