Fire with Fire(173)

Caine shook his head. “No surprise, there—and no fault of yours, Yaargraukh. Besides, your honesty and your openness is lavish recompense for our feast. What gifts could do us more honor?”

The top-heavy Hkh’Rkh turned his barrel-shaped torso to face out into the sea of stars once again. “As we prepare to leave, the First’s retinue already speaks of challenges and glory and new lands. I am not sure it matters to them which challenges or what glory or whose lands shall sate their appetites—but this day, they could feel the blood rising inside them. It sang to them and, in their hearts, they sang back. And so, now that the song has started, it must be finished. Yet, as I sit and listen, I cannot help but think that—had it been left to us, to you and I—the song might have been very different indeed, a better song.”

“One with less blood in it?”

Yaargraukh’s neck oscillated. “Perhaps. But, at the very least, one with more honor. The blood—that was ready to flow before any of us arrived here. I have sat at parley tables where the purpose was not to make peace, but to instigate war. So it was here, I think.”

“I think you are right, Yaargraukh. Perhaps you can make First Voice hear that wisdom.”

“Caine, understand: he knows this already. He is no fool. But he hungers for deeds of honor, and he believes that the Dornaani are weak and incapable of leading. He sees resolve in the Ktor.”

“And the other races?”

“They are deemed akin to those they follow. I think he hoped that you would also turn your back upon the Convocation, but you did not, so he is satisfied that he now knows humanity.”

“Knows that we are also weak and incapable of leadership?”

“So he thinks.”

“And what do you think, Yaargraukh?”

The Hkh’Rkh let a long breath out though his nose; there was a faint sound of warbling phlegm. “I think that First Voice of the First Family has much more to learn about humans. And I do not think he will like the lessons.” He straightened, stepped back from the observation glass. “We end as we began—with truths that are the beginning of an enduring bridge between us.”

This time, having skimmed the Hkh’Rkh self-reference, Caine knew the word to use. “Honor,” he said in Hkh’i.

Yaargraukh nodded somberly. “Honor,” he repeated. “It is sadness to me that we seem destined to fight before our bridge is built.”

Risking one of the few phrases he had learned in Yaargraukh’s language, Caine asserted, “If it is so, then it will be a waste of the blood of the brave.” The axiom was more provocative in Hkh’i: a core proverb, Caine had determined that its closest human translation would be analogous to “It would be the desecration of heroes, even as they march to their deaths.” It was an accusation of heinousness that bordered on atrocity.

Yaargraukh stopped nodding, stared a long time. Caine wondered if he had gone too far, but also felt that—for both his race, and himself—it had been the right thing to say. Because it was the simple truth.

Yaargraukh made a rumbling sound in his chest like he was clearing his throat somewhere near his lungs. “You are not the first to think it, Caine Riordan.”

Together, they turned away from the stars and started the short walk back to the intership docking coupler that would lead Yaargraukh into the featureless walkways of the Dornaani station, and ultimately, to his ship.

As they approached it, the lights in the coupler—a cubical node with hatches on all six sides—flickered once. The farthest door quivered as the explosive bolts ringing it detonated, blasting it away from the coupler and into open space—even as the door on their side of the node failed to close.

The sudden, outrushing cyclone gave Caine one fraction of a moment in which to think and act. He grabbed at one of the flagpoles before the vacuum sucked him straight towards space. But rather than fighting that outward plunge, Caine struggled to keep his body from tumbling, and to get the flagpole braced across his waist—

Which he managed a split second before he went through the wind-roaring hole into blackness. The ends of the flagpole caught on either side of the hatchway: the sudden, slamming stop against that life-saving cross-bar drove the air out of Caine, snapping his head and feet forward.

Dazed, he was aware of a heavy thump on the bar: Yaargraukh had caught it as well, crashing to a halt adjacent to the rim of the hatchway, where the lights of the door’s control panel still shone brightly. Woozy, feeling the pressure soaring in his ears and eyes, Caine saw that the control lights were still illuminated normally: no red failure markers. Meaning that the failure was not in the local control console. Meaning that the malfunction was in a single circuit, somewhere beyond the door controls. Meaning that the safety override, which automatically sealed the hatch in the event of console damage, was still functioning. Meaning—