Three - Michael Jan Friedman [16]
“I can’t wait,” said Sebring. He turned to Riyyen. “Any idea when we’ll get our demonstration?”
“It’s scheduled for tomorrow morning,” said the Dedderac. “I can’t say what time exactly.”
“Funny,” said Sebring, grinning as he looked around the mess hall. “You engineers are pretty precise when it comes to dinnertime. I’m surprised you don’t know exactly when the demonstration is.”
Riyyen smiled politely. “I might, Lieutenant, if I were the engineer in charge of the Type Nine project.” He glanced apologetically at Vigo. “The one who is in charge of it tends to be a bit eccentric lately, not to mention significantly less interested in mealtimes than the rest of us.”
The Pandrilite had already experienced Ejanix’s newfound eccentricity, so the information didn’t catch him off guard. Nonetheless, he found it disturbing.
Ejanix had always been a gregarious individual, if not especially adept at social encounters. Vigo would have guessed his mentor to be among the first to report for dinner. And yet, Riyyen seemed to have observed otherwise.
Clearly, Ejanix had changed in the time he had spent on Wayland Prime. Vigo just wished he knew why.
Wutor Qiyuntor had shamed both himself and the blood that ran through his Balduk veins.
First, more than a year earlier, he had lost a large portion of the land his ancestors had left him—all the fertile, productive, and profitable terrain west of the [44] Sjadjok River. There were those who said it was not his fault—that the arbiter had been bribed by Clan Osyelodth to rule in their favor, or that it was Wutor’s father whose mismanagement had opened the door to Osyelodth’s claim.
But Wutor hadn’t embraced the excuses offered to him. As far as he was concerned, the loss was his—along with the humiliation that accompanied it.
Then, a mere few months ago, he had made a critical error—and in an infinitely more serious arena than the land arbiter’s court. Wutor had been serving as commander of the Ssakojhin, a High Order war vessel with an unblemished tradition of victory, when an alien ship-pack violated a new Balduk boundary.
The Ssakojhin and her subordinate vessels were sent to turn back the aliens. However, they were more powerful than the overseers of the High Order had imagined.
Wutor’s battle with the invaders had barely gotten under way when he lost the first of his subordinate vessels. Two more followed in short order, and the Ssakojhin suffered near-crippling damage trying to preserve the rest.
It was only because reinforcements appeared that Wutor and his crew survived, and that the aliens were finally driven off. Had his rescuers shown up even a few minutes later, the Ssakojhin and the remainder of her pack would have been destroyed.
For his failure, Wutor was removed from the Ssakojhin and assigned to a Middle Order vessel, the Ekhonarid. Again, his supporters said the failure wasn’t his fault. They claimed that the overseers of the High [45] Order were to blame, for it was they who had underestimated the force needed to repel the invaders.
But Wutor hadn’t embraced those excuses either. He had accepted his demotion without complaint, resolving to redeem himself in the eyes of his superiors.
Of course, it was unlikely that he would get an opportunity to do so. Middle Order ships were seldom dispatched against enemy vessels. They were more often used as rescue or repair vehicles, their mission to preserve the effectiveness of High Order ships and their crews.
It was a bitter brew for Wutor to swallow. After all, he had been one of the Prime One’s shining stars once. He had been highly regarded in both clan council and war circle.
He sighed now as he stood in the commander’s brace on the bridge of the Ekhonarid and contemplated how far he had fallen, and how fast. And if he wasn’t careful, he knew, he could plummet the rest of the way.
“Commander,” said his chief mechanic, a female named Tsioveth, “the plasma conduits on the weapons deck are ready to crack. We need new ones.”
Wutor looked at her, unimpressed by the scowl on her face. “We need