PART VII:
Firsts
Chapter 39
Aille monitored the holo displays as the skies above Terra filled with ships over the coming period, at least half of them the massively built harriers favored by the Bond of Ebezon. Those Aille had expected, along with the round Narvo and elongated Pluthrak ships, but also present were the designs of Dano and Nimmat, Kanu, Hij, and Jak. Others, too. Every root clan had sent at least one ship, as had their affiliated kochan and even a number of taifs.
The ships themselves were equally diverse. They ranged from dreadnoughts too immense to land on the surface of any planet to tiny personal couriers. There were troop transports as well, most of them Dano; and even one colossal mobile repair dock summoned all the way from the nearest Dree world.
Sixteen solar cycles had passed since the Bond had arrived and removed Narvo from oudh over Terra. Thereafter, the Bond had not intervened at all, apparently desiring to wait until the Jao kochan could send their representatives to Earth and assemble the Naukra.
Some of the other Jao from the lesser kochan had come, as it happened, primarily because they wished to learn how the Ekhat had been defeated. But, most came to see how, and if, Pluthrak and Narvo would resolve this thorny matter between them.
The long-festering tension between the two most powerful kochan seemed at a breaking point. A certain amount of kochan rivalry was healthy in the long-range scheme of things, motivating every kochan to always do its best, to sacrifice for the greater good and allocate resources to the struggle against the Ekhat, when keeping to their own worlds might have served them better individually. What had grown between Narvo and Pluthrak, however, was not productive. As long as a polite veneer had glossed over the antagonism, other kochan could pretend the problem was not acute. But now, the Terran Crisis, as it had come to be known, had ripped that veneer away and exposed the situation for the lurking danger it really was.
Either new association would be forged, or . . .
The alternative was dire, for all Jao. More than anything else, the other kochan had come to do what they could to contain divisive tendencies and encourage association.
* * *
As he waited for the Naukra to finally assemble, Aille continued to work in the command center at the Pascagoula refit facility. For the most part, he let Stockwell and other humans continue to organize and manage the natives’ affairs, so that he could concentrate on repairing and further modifying the submarines. Other Jao could be as preoccupied as they wished with kochan affairs, but Aille’s foremost concern remained the Ekhat. It was impossible to know how the aliens would react to the disappearance and presumed destruction of one of their task forces. But it was by no means precluded that they might simply send another, and soon.
Aille intended to be ready for them—and he did not intend, this time, to lose almost half of his own forces in another battle. The key, immediately, was pilot training more than anything else, which was the reason that Aille was pressing so hard to get at least some of the subs back in operating condition.
Truth was sometimes bitter, but truth was truth—and Hami had spoken it harshly at the battle evaluation meeting that had taken place soon after. The human crews of the subs had done better than the Jao pilots, Aille and one other aside. Much better. Most of the subs had played little effective part in the battle, because of the inadequacies of the pilots. And four out of six of the destroyed subs had not been lost in direct action against the enemy. Their pilots had simply not been skilled or experienced enough to keep their vessels from being swept down into destruction in the supergranular cells.
Aille and two other pilots aside, actually. In retrospect, it was clear that the pilot of the sub that had rammed the one Ekhat ship had possessed great skill. She would be sorely missed, in future battles.
Her name, Aille discovered later, had been Llo krinnu Gava . . . vau Narvo.