Okay, this is a bit more serious than the last omake...
Second Thoughts
Tarra, native of the debris field that once was Lonabar and now was memory, blinked in surprise as their target rose into the air. Then watched, wary, as the taller girl wearing schoolchild clothes spooled up to a power level that matched their heaviest bruiser, and smashed the tranq-prod aside. As an utterly squishy,
obvious civilian boy suddenly flared with the energies of a ten-year veteran, as though by magic from nowhere.
This was getting
weird. Weird, and bad, and she knew it.
Once, she'd harbored fancies that the fleet- or some of it- could simply
hide here on Garenhuld. Blend in. With the right technologies and tools it could be done. They might never suspect aliens walked among them. But that was a foolish idea. Perhaps half the fleet consisted of humans that could pass for natives of Garenhuld, or near-humans that could pass with minor cosmetic surgery. What would the other half do? Even suggesting something like that could sow chaos among the alliances holding them all together.
No, they would have to stay together. And on a planet like this, that meant conquest. The locals were blinkered xenophobes; if a starship had touched down on this planet in the last thousand years, there were no traces of it. The scouts, or the army behind them, would have to impel the natives to accept their presence with a clenched fist, not an open hand.
Which had seemed easy at first. At a glance, the natives had seemed utterly,
stupidly ignorant of the nature of true power. They had no chance at all of against an army of warriors that could fly like falling meteors and shatter mountains with a wave of their hands. The planet was defenseless-
Until suddenly, it wasn't. Someone had spirited away their starship. That could have been done by locals with no powers,
conceivably. Maybe. But then had come the battle last year.
Someone had taken Meerak. Meerak wasn't one of their strongest, but he wasn't going to roll over and play dead for a fragile candyfloss thing like ramjet fighters or an armored division.
No, there were native champions on this planet, and they were very,
very good at hiding.
...
After long months of searching, they'd finally found one- and then
this. What was the plan now, to kidnap a child and take them hostage? Against an unknown number of enemies? If there were
three of the secret warriors training at this school alone, how many more were there across the planet? Even if the mousy little girl with the brown hair and the improbable power level were some kind of freak by local standards, the mission was a failure, plain and simple.
The trouble was, the boss didn't seem to have read the memo. Didn't notice what was changing, as the taller girl hovered in front of him, talking like a miniature vest-pocket queen. Maybe there
was a way to blend in, if native champions this good at hiding were already doing it.
But their pseudo-avian commander, for all that he was a canny warrior and a great tactician with centuries of experience,
was a warrior, Tarra thought grimly. No more, no less. Military reconaissance was his strength, and diplomacy his crushing weakness. He'd spent his first days on this world expecting to conquer it, and hadn't handled the frustration well.
Songs-through-Murk crossed his arms. "
Then you are naive and a waste of our time. This conversation is over. This is your last chance."
And of
course her hotheaded cousin Meldax would be the one to point out to him the stupidity of all this. Meldax, who had
barely finished his training before everything went to hell. Her jaw flexed as she listened to Songs-through-Murk curse him for his disrespect, watched Meldax's shoulders bunch and caught his eye with a quick motion of her hand.
None of that. Hold steady. She
knew the boy would be tempted to try and snap Songs-through-Murk's neck for that last sneering remark, and knew how terribly that would end, even if he had the power to do it in theory.
In theory- the old warrior had killed more than one being well out of his weight class, in the centuries of his life. She knew that, and gestured him to stillness again.
But then blue-plumed Trillar joined the argument in the curious manner of the Ythni, complete with wing gestures. Trillar, normally the coolest head of their team, if not the oldest. Songs-through-Murk's glared back at him; even through the translator, his voice was angry and rich with betrayal.
"You too, Trillar?"
Tarra shook her head. She wasn't a young woman anymore. She wanted a home, not a war. A place to live, to
abide, not a place to conquer- let alone to die. "They're right, boss." she growled into her scouter. Then she spoke further, and further. She knew there would be division, she knew there would be trouble. But she was no longer able to care.
