by James Peters
The nebatian breathed deeply of the chlorine gas. “What do you want with us?” His voice sounded like how I’d imagine a talking cobra might speak — hateful and poisonous.
“We need your ship,” Rhuldan said.
“It’s nothing personal,” I added.
“This is a high crime against the migrun militia. You will suffer slow molecular disruption and reconstruction for years!”
I smiled. “Only if we get caught.”
As I studied the alien’s space suit, a loud beep sounded in my ear .
I recognized Ginn’s voice. “Still no sign of the nebatians. Have you had any luck?”
“We’ve secured their ship,” I said.
“What? How? Why didn’t you let us know?”
“Things happened fast. I’ll tell you all about it later. We need you to grab a couple of things for us though.”
“What do you need?”
“You’ll see them when you launch.”
“What did you do, Idiom?”
“We released the nebatians.”
“Are you an idiot? They’ll run straight to the authorities.”
“They’re not running anywhere, at least not for some time.”
Ginn sounded irate, her words over-annunciated. “Where did you release them?”
“To space. Don’t worry, they are in their EVA suits, and we smashed their comms. Rhuldan says they’re now orbiting the station. Pick them up and leave them in the airlock. Don’t let them see you, and take them somewhere safe but unable to contact the migrun.”
“When this is over, I want a detailed report of how you did this.”
“Aye, Captain. We’re heading to Khutanga. We’ll contact you when we’re ready for a pickup.”
“Captain? Hmm, I like the sound of that,” Ginn said, before disconnecting.
“What have I started?” I said aloud to myself. Rhuldan was in the cockpit of this ship, working controls I couldn’t guess their function.
He glanced over as I entered. “Good news. The engineers already had their destination programmed into the ship, along with their clearance codes. Once we get to the base, the ship should automatically communicate with landing control, and we should go unchallenged.”
“I’m not about to say I have a good feeling about this. Let’s just knock on wood and hope for the best.” I rapped my knuckles on a wall that clearly wasn’t made from a tree.
“Knock on wood?”
“It’s an old Earth superstition. I don’t know where it started, but it is supposed to bring luck.”
“I’m not a real believer in luck. Things happen, good or bad, based upon chance and the odds of the occurrence.”
“Have you ever seen someone draw to an inside straight? If you can do that, you’re lucky in my book,” I said.
Rhuldan made a tiny adjustment to a control knob before responding. “Ah, yes, the inside straight in poker. It sounds like it would be nearly impossible to draw, but the real odds are four in forty-seven.”
“How do you figure that?”
“There are fifty-two cards in a deck, and you are dealt five. There are forty-seven cards remaining either in the deck or the other players’ hands, and four of those cards will complete your straight. About one time in eleven attempts, you’ll get the card you need. Try it often enough, and you’re bound to get a winner.”
I looked at him square in his strangely glowing eyes. “You can do those calculations in your head? Without a pencil and paper?”
“Yes. My species excels in mathematics, algebra, calculus and combinatorics.”
“So those last three are like hard math? Harder than fractions?”
“Precisely.”
I squinted at Rhuldan, deep in thought. “Can you figure out the odds of our success with this mission, as that mechanical fellow did?”
“He had the advantage of knowing his team’s previous success rate. Since this is our first job, I don’t have all the data.”
I tried to study his face. All I saw was clouds of dark smoke. “What does your gut tell you? What are our odds here?”
“About the same as drawing to an inside straight.”
“Sounds about right.” I stared out the window, amazed at the display of millions of points of light, each a star, likely surrounded by planets. Bands of colors filled sections of my view creating a beautiful tapestry to study. Considering how many alien species I’d met it just a few days, I had to assume life was rampant out here. What happens when one form of life first meets another? If it’s anything like Earth, the stronger people would overtake the weaker ones with little concern.
“Rhuldan, can I ask you something?”
“Sure, if it’s not too personal.”
“What do you know about the crystal threat?”
“Not a lot. The migrun have been fighting territorial wars with them for years, but little information ever gets released to the public. We get artists renditions of what they believe these creatures look like, but never an actual image. Publicly, the migrun release vague news of regaining territories or minor victories in battle, but I suspect they aren’t faring as well as they let on.”
I sat in a heavily padded blue seat fitted with multiple straps. It bounced like a spring loaded wagon bench under my weight and then it became hard, not moving at all. “Why do you think that?”
“The migrun are brutal, efficient, and ruthless. They wouldn’t allow an attack to occur without immediate retaliation if they had the capability of striking back. When I hear news of them taking back a territory, I expect that region has been stripped of anything of value, and they were allowed to have it.”
“Then are we doing the right thing here? If they’re trying to protect the galaxy from a bigger threat, perhaps we should allow them to keep this weapon?”
Rhuldan pressed his hands flat together almost as if he were praying. “You’ve been watching that kid’s program, which is teaching you a lot, but you have to understand its bias. The migrun control what is said about them, at least through the official channels. They have no interest in making the galaxy a safe place for everyone. They may be the single most powerful species out here, but there are dozens of other species capable of making things very difficult for them. If two or three of them decided to combine forces, the migrun could be overtaken.”
“Would they use the weapon against the other races?”
Rhuldan looked me in the eyes. As his face became clear to see, it appeared more skeletal than I’d remembered. He reminded me of the Grim Reaper when he said, “In my experience, peace is an unnatural state of affairs. There are brief moments in time when everyone tires of war, but those instances are soon replaced by someone’s ambitions, fear, or hatred. War is inevitable. If a people don’t have an external enemy to fight, they’ll find an internal one. It’s just the way of the universe.”
What a disturbing thought. But is it true? Can any of us find a way to overcome our own instincts?
“You look to be lost in thought,” Rhuldan said.
“Just thinking about what you just said. I like to hope there is a chance for lasting peace.”
“Hope is a lot like luck. It’s an ideology that rarely pans out.”
I reached into my vest pocket and felt the Bible I kept there. “I’ve never been much of a praying man, but it seems to me that a wise man should pray for peace and prepare for war.”
Rhuldan gave me a puzzled look followed by complete silence. I turned to look out the window again. If I’d ever learned to paint, I would have painted that view.
There were restrictions related to where we could make a Null Space jump that Rhuldan understood but made little sense to me. The best I could gather is there were too many obstacles between the Gerrund station and Khutanga to allow us a fast passage with a reasonable level of safety and not destroying ourselves and perhaps entire civilizations. That meant we had to travel using what he called Trad-Prop, so we had several days to kill before we’d arrive.
; The ship was small by Sarge’s standard, but big enough for the two of us to each have a place to eat, sleep, and take care of our private functions. I never expected to say I missed grinkun bread, but the food dispensers here had been calibrated for nebatian needs. Rhuldan worked some chemistry magic to lower the chlorine content to a tolerable level, but everything still tasted awful, and my burps smelled like bleach and made my eyes water. Oddly, Rhuldan didn’t seem to be bothered by the food.
Ginn contacted us confirming they’d safely picked up the two nebatians we’d spaced and had delivered them to a distant grinkun settlement lacking in communication tools, but rich in corrosive chemicals. They’d have to work for their food and lodging, but there they could live out their days in peace. From what I’d seen since leaving Earth, that was about as fair a deal they could ask for.
Rhuldan set up what he called a “virtual training system.” A projection of a tall, blue, fishlike alien served as my instructor, and it was able to adjust its lessons to me. The classes started with “Waste Treatment Systems for Beginners” and ended with “Advanced Bioaugmentation of Waste Water Systems.” Much of the science involved seemed impossible to me, but I accepted what I learned and even passed the final exam with two points to spare. If I were stopped and questioned about what I was doing, I might just be able to talk my way out of it. With my newfound knowledge, I tried to see if there was something I’d learned that Rhuldan didn’t know. There wasn’t.
Rhuldan called me to the cockpit when we were growing close to the base. “Idiom, you’ll want to see this.”
I was met with a view of a drab brown planet with occasional spurts of lava flows. There were no visible bodies of water and a haze of gray filling its thin atmosphere. As we closed in, I found massive smokestacks peppering the landscape, belching out black soot continuously. “Looks like a steel town.”
“Think of it as a smelting moon.” Rhuldan pointed toward a huge blue planet filling the view out the side window. “This planetoid orbits the fourth planet of the system. Between the gravitational pull of that gas giant and its sun, the core is constantly under stress, keeping the magma flowing. It requires a great deal of energy to purify element zero, so this is a perfect location. It will never support any form of intelligent life naturally, so it is nothing more than a resource.”
I leaned forward in my seat. “Where’s the factory? I don’t see any structures other than exhaust pipes.”
“The thin atmosphere there is here is toxic, so everything is built underground. There’s a sweet spot under the crust and above the mantle that maintains a habitable temperature. Most of the facility is built there.”
I glanced back at Rhuldan. “And by most, I’m guessing that doesn’t include the waste treatment facility?”
“You’ll find that below the optimum habitable zone. It will be hot, but your suit can maintain a safe environment.”
“Safe doesn’t mean comfortable,” I said.
“See that? You’re learning what it’s like out here.”
“So where do we land?”
Rhuldan pointed to a display image. “There’s a landing platform near the equator. We need to scrub off a lot of speed before landing, so we’ll make four orbits to slow us down. I’ll point it out once it’s visible.”
I stared at Rhuldan with a sense of wonder. “How do you know all this stuff?”
“The ship’s computer displays all this information. You just have to know what you’re looking for. See that screen?” He pointed to one of the dozens of identical screens. “Now it says we have three deceleration orbits remaining.”
I shrugged. “How could I have missed it, right next to this six, and that forty-six, and that three-hundred twelve?”
Rhuldan seemed to smile. “Give it time. It’s a lot to learn. Soon you’ll be flying one of these things like a professional pilot.”
“Give me a horse instead. Of course, my recent history with horses is nothing to brag about.”
Rhuldan turned his head to the side. “Horse?”
“Four-legged beast you can ride on its back. They can be very tame, and in Leroy’s case, very demanding. But he was my horse, and I miss him.”
“You literally ride on another creature’s back?”
“Yep.”
Rhuldan seemed lost in thought, as if he were trying to picture me riding Leroy. “That is quite unusual. The beast allows this?”
“Once they are broken they do.”
“You ride on another creature after you’ve broken their back? That sounds cruel.”
I waved a finger. “I don’t mean we’ve broken them physically. When you first teach a horse to accept a rider, you have to break their natural will to try to throw you off, at least enough they can trust you’re not trying to harm them. Once a horse accepts you, it’s a lot like a big dog, and it will follow you around, come when you whistle, and be a companion of sorts.”
“What an unusual concept. What does the horse get from this deal?”
“Regular food and water, brushing, horseshoes…”
Rhuldan gave me a side-eye glance. “Wait, these horses wear shoes as well? Are you trying to fool me?”
“Not shoes as we wear. They are curved pieces of metal, nailed to their hooves.”
Rhuldan studied my face. “I think you are being serious, but I have trouble knowing with other species.”
“I’m serious as a heart attack,” I said.
“That didn’t help,” Rhuldan replied. “We should strap in. Landings can be bumpy.”
I strapped myself in as this moon spun beneath us at amazing speed. I could see the curvature of the horizon and picked out landmarks to watch them zip beneath us.
Rhuldan pointed to the number one on a screen. “This is our final approach.”
I grabbed the seat’s armrests with a grip that could strangle a cow. Rhuldan smirked as the ship’s nose pointed upward and the engines fired up to maximum power. Suddenly, I weighed a thousand pounds and couldn’t move. To say the landing was “bumpy” was an understatement along the lines of saying two trains colliding head on would be “annoying” to their passengers. I’m pretty certain my entire backside was bruised. “Are all landings like that?”
“No. Some of them are rough.”
“So now what?”
“Once the dust settles, this landing pad will begin to lower into an underground hangar. While that’s happening, we need to get into the nebatian EVA suits. While you were studying waste systems, I made a few modifications to them.” Rhuldan released his belts and climbed into his suit as easily as if he were putting on a union suit.
I struggled with mine as the material was stiffer than anything I’d ever worn. Just getting my arm through the bent tube required multiple twists and bends of my wrist and elbow. Rhuldan steadied me while I stepped into pants and connected boots.
“Once you get that sealed, you’ll have two options for atmosphere.” He pointed to a switch on my thigh. “To the left you are bypassing the tanks, just breathing ambient atmosphere. Turn the switch to the right, and you’ll be breathing off the attached tanks.”
“I don’t want to do that, right? Chlorine gas?”
“I took the liberty of replacing the gas with oxygen. It’s going to smell like chlorine because the chemical permeated the seals, but you should be fine. You’ll see a number in your visor indicating how much time you have left on your tanks. When that number hits zero, you’ll have no choice but to breathe whatever is around you.”
“That’s comforting,” I said as I adjusted the suit’s gloves to fit as best as they could, but Nebatian’s and humans have very different hands, so my thumbs were lost in huge slots that might fit pinchers.
“Odds are, you won’t need it. But it’s good to have a backup.”
“That’s why I carry two pistols,” I said drawing them and pointing them up. He nodded, and I holstered them. “As well as a couple of emergency weapons.” I tapped the side of my suit where I’d managed to hid
e them. “If things get ugly, at least I still have a chance.”
The landing pad shook as it lowered. Rhuldan slipped past me toward the inner airlock door. “I’m hoping we can find a way to retrieve the element zero without the use of weapons.” He pointed to a button on the back of my left glove. “Press that button and the layout of this base will be projected on your visor.”
I did as he instructed, and a faint, three-dimensional map appeared before me. When I focused on it, the intensity of the image deepened, and as I looked away, it faded. “This is handy. What are the three red squares?”
“Those are the waste tanks. You know what to do once you get there. I’ll be checking systems on the other end and gathering intel. I’ll contact you when I find out where they’re keeping that ore.” The airlock cycled and we went our separate ways.
Upon entering the first waste storage room, I took one breath of the rancid atmosphere before switching over to the oxygen tank. Chlorine-flavored air was a million times better than the stench I encountered the instant that door opened. Imagine the stale contents of a latrine built for two-thousand, and you’ll have an idea of what I found before me, but worse than that.
Through the use of cross-tank pumps, I was able to drain off most of the nasty liquid, leaving a thigh-deep, thick, black sludge unable to be pumped out. Somewhere at the bottom of this tank, there was a clogged main grate. After some searching, I found a small closet containing shovels, pry bars, hooks, pokers, and other tools, as well as a case marked “hard disposal pod.” I grabbed the case, a pointed metal spade, and a hooked stick, and climbed down a rough-coated ladder into the pit, to find the muck so dense I could barely move.
I shoveled a path toward the lowest point in the tank and prodded around until I felt the main grate, which was covered by a thick layer of something so hard I struggled to cut through it with the spade. The disposal pod case opened up into a rigid, ten-foot by four-foot tube. I cracked the top open and started shoveling solid gloop into it.