The Course of Empire(28)

It was all quite mystifying. But Aille put the matter aside for the moment. The human had just thrust out his hand, the fingers extended and the palm open. "My name is Rafe Aguilera."



Naming oneself without invitation was a grave social error among Jao, but he doubted this human was being intentionally rude. Aguilera stared at him, hand outstretched. Ritual touching was important to this species, Aille remembered suddenly. He had read of that. With only the slightest hesitation, he grasped the proffered hand.



Aguilera's skin was warm, the palm hardened by work, the fingers strong, though the underlying bones were frail. The human tightened his grip, then released Aille's hand and dropped back down into the vehicle. "You can't see the new electronics unless you come inside." His voice echoed tinnily.



With a sigh, Aille thrust his feet into the open hatch, then wedged himself through, sticking at the shoulders until he squirmed. The dimensions definitely had not been designed with Jao in mind, he told himself as his bones creaked.



It was dark inside, until Aguilera flipped several switches. Then a bank of controls came to life, gleaming red and amber in the dimness with occasional spots of green. Aille blinked in surprise. The interior was well crafted, every az of space utilized with nothing wasted, an unexpectedly elegant arrangement. Again, as he'd found earlier with the submarine, human technology could be dazzlingly subtle.



Aguilera had settled into a seat at the front of the vehicle and was gazing at the controls and periscope with the satisfaction of a successful predator. "Those were the days," he said softly in Terran. "My last assignment was as tank commander, right before I took the hit on my leg that put me out of action for good. We thought we couldn't lose, once we finally had a chance to mix it up with you on the ground."



"But you did lose," Aille said, calculating the approximate age of this individual. "And, by all accounts, your species does not taking loss lightly, which makes me curious. Why do you agree to share your—" He searched for the right word. "—expertise with your conquerors?"



Aguilera sat back in the seat, hands laced across his middle. In that position, he almost looked as though he'd assumed careful-contemplation. But humans were not Jao, Aille cautioned himself. They did not reason like Jao. He must never fall into the trap of believing they did.



"I was a good soldier," the human said at last. His skin gleamed red under the indicators' light. He reached out and brushed dust off a glowing dial. "A damn good soldier, in fact. I tried my hand at other work after the war, whatever I could find, but soldiering is really what I'm good at. And I couldn't do it anymore, not even for the Jao, with this bad leg." He grimaced at the limb stretched out stiffly before him. "But then this refit was mandated. When the call went out for skilled workers, I realized I could at least use what I knew to put these babies back into service. I got married a few years ago, and now I have kids—and my family needs to eat. This outfit pays better wages than you'll find anywhere else in this part of the world these days. So here I am."



Interesting. Aille wondered what Yaut would make of that explanation. Beneath the alien idiom, it was surprisingly Jao-like, for creatures deemed semi-incomprehensible in the reports. Aille was beginning to think that "semi-incomprehensible" was an evasion, of sorts, almost a dereliction of duty. Just a sloppy way of saying: understanding them is too much work.



Aille leaned over, wedging himself into a tight space never meant for the breadth of Jao shoulders. The new electronics were grafted underneath the console, their housing ice-blue against the duller Terran shades. If the submarine had been cramped, it was roomy next to this. He had to exhale to extricate himself. These machines would have to be staffed by jinau troops. No Jao would ever be able to function effectively down here.



"Activate the laser sight," he said.



Aguilera nodded and flipped several more switches. The hum of the Jao targeting mechanism sprang to life and throbbed through him, comforting in its familiarity. He had trained on these. Like Aguilera, here was something he knew how to do.



He squeezed between the front chair and the console, eyeing the spliced interface. "The systems are compatible?" he asked in Jao.



"To a point," Aguilera said. "It has taken a great deal of creative engineering and we won't really know how successful we've been until we field test."



Aguilera's command of the Jao language was genuinely excellent. Even his accent was not very pronounced. Aille took one last look around the interior, then climbed back out, painfully squeezing himself through again. Yaut glared up at him from the floor, while Tully stood against a dismantled tank nearby.