“Really,” the translator said to the staff, “they’re just upset.”
Jeb gave his Ops Officer a stern look, but she was already typing away at her pad, shock set aside and anticipating his commands as usual. Once she stopped anticipating what he needed and started thinking for herself, HuFleet would have one hell of a Captain. Until then, he had a few years to reap the benefits of her skill.
“Hell of a way to get your foot in the door, Lieutenant. How extensively have you rooted?” Jeb asked Loreli.
“I’m not sure. I’m trying to stop myself, Captain. I have been ever since I regained consciousness. The force field has actually helped; whenever I touch it, I get zapped.” She turned her face slightly toward where LaFuentes sat, fists clenched. “Don’t worry; it’s just a tickle, really. I don’t think anyone wants to hurt me. That would just make things worse.”
“The GONs,” Jeb trusted the translator to substitute the real name of the inhabitants, “are refusing to let us go to the planet to help you. DipCorps is trying to negotiate something, but in the meantime, I need you to do more than stop yourself. You need to pull those capillaries back in.”
“I’ll try, Captain. I’m just…so tired.”
His voice gentled. “You’ve been tired before. Refuse this world the benefit of your growth like you did Anora.”
She nodded. Out of view of the camera, Doall did the same.
“You’ve got this, Sprout,” Jeb said, reverting to the nickname he’d given her after her rescue. “We’ll contact you when we have updates. In the meantime, soak in the sun. Impulsive out.”
The screen went dark.
“She did not look good.” LaFuentes had an edge to his voice.
Jeb ignored him. “Doall, did you get the readings?”
Her grimace said she had not done as well as she’d hoped, but she put the holographic image of Loreli up for everyone to see. The above-ground section looked clear, though the edges were not as sharp as they should have been. Below ground, there were some large tubular roots with smaller but thick roots growing from them. They were fuzzy, however, and a few light lines indicated more roots too thin to record properly.
“This was the best the sensors can do through the soil. Definitely not good enough for the teleporters.”
Jeb nodded. Even if they could teleport just Loreli and not the surrounding soil, she was already in shock. He wasn’t sure how well her body could handle the stress of transplanting. He looked at his First Officer. Smythe had been part of the team that made First Contact with Keepout, and he knew he’d kept up on the planet’s relations with the Union since.
“They’ve sealed her from the elements to limit the contagion. The fact that they’ve let her live seems to imply they aren’t sure if killing her won’t cause more harm to the environment. In a sense, her natural response to injury has preserved her life.”
“And when they decide?” LaFuentes asked. “All those scientists didn’t seem to care much about whether she lives or dies so long as they don’t contaminate their precious planet. And what about water?”
“They won’t water her, even if we sent some ourselves. They’d fear that would encourage her growth.”
Jeb held up a hand. “She’s safe for the moment. Smythe and I will work with Wylson on a diplomatic decision. In the meantime, I want the rest of you working on a Plan B, C and D. Deary, I want a way to override this All Stop. Cruz, LaFuentes, we need a way to get past their defenses. Doall, work with Chief Dour to find a way to get her back on this ship. If we can do it while respecting the sanctity of their environment, all the better. Get to it, people.”
***
Captain’s Personal Log, Intergalactic Date 676797.09
You know, I liked the Diplomatic Corp better when they were trying to take my people away for themselves.
We’ve been negotiating for two days, practically nonstop. The Pelotanns are able to go without sleep for days when necessary, and apparently, the GONs have been perfectly happy to talk with Wylson – who had been given ambassadorial status for this mission – nonstop for as long as he can keep conscious. They’ve directed him to one bureaucrat after another, on whatever part of the world was on business hours at the time, and Wylson has patiently dealt with each.
Smythe and I, however, are starting to lose ours. We are taking it in shifts to try to work out a solution with the GONs and Wylson, but they will not grant a single concession. They refuse Loreli their water because they will not give resources to an outsider. They won’t let us beam in water because they fear contamination. Either case, they say, is out of the question anyway, because they don’t want to encourage further growth. They won’t let us uproot her, even if we promise to return their soil. They won’t let anyone teleport to the planet to examine her and treat the injuries from the attack. They refuse to treat her themselves. On top of that… well, you get the picture.
Loreli, meanwhile, puts on a brave front, but it’s obvious she’s fading. We may not have time for a diplomatic solution. As my people look for alternatives, I am faced with the worst duty a HuFleet Captain can have – sitting on my hands and waiting.
Jeb ignored the clutch in his stomach as he smiled reassuringly at Loreli. She drooped, her trunk crumpling in on itself. The edges of her extremities were tinged yellow. Her hands, which had been stretched with fingers splayed to take in the sun, hung limp at her side. Her eyes were open to look at the screen, but he felt certain, they would close as soon as they finished talking. He’d make it short, but he wouldn’t be doing his job if he didn’t call in, just to let her know she wasn’t alone. She needed that hope.
He did, too.
“Hey, Sprout, how’s it going?”
She smiled thinly but with affection. “You know, you haven’t called me ‘Sprout’ so much since I graduated from the Academy. And I seem to recall when you took me on as xenologist and ship’s sexy, you said you’d never call me that again. Something about it ‘not fitting the image of a mature, desirable, unattainable woman.”
He shrugged. “Well, this whole damsel-in-distress routine has brought out the paternal in me, is all. But I do need a status report, Lieutenant.”
She nodded and tried to straighten up. “I’ve managed to retract most of my ancillary capillaries. I’m working on the greater roots now. It’s…incredibly difficult. I’m so thirsty. If I could just have a drink…”
The longing in those words, coming through bark-chapped lips tore his heart. “I know. But they won’t budge. Just keep at it. The more you accomplish, the more we can argue your good faith. I see your trunk is starting to divide. That’s good.”
He was lying, and they both knew it. True, her trunk had split, and under normal circumstances, that would be the beginning of returning to legs, but the crack was uneven, a tear rather than the carefully considered division of limb generation. Still, even though no scientists wandered around her taking soil samples this late in the evening, he figured his transmissions were being monitored. They may not understand the heroic efforts she was making to fight the survival instincts of her body to root, take in the nutrients of the soil, and survive. He needed them to know. Being a captain was knowing when to lie and how to make it look convincing.
Not to mention, lie though it was, the thought calmed the lump in his throat.
“I’m doing my best, Captain. Enigo called me. He’s quite…impassioned…about my situation. Much blustering and vows to rescue me. I don’t want him seeing me like this. I… It’s not professional.”
Yet something in her posture said she’d needed that blustering. Boosting morale went both ways.
“Don’t underestimate the power of a damsel in distress. Some males find that very appealing. You know he’d never turn down a chance for thrilling heroics. I’ll talk to him about toning down the bluster.”
“He’s quite distressed himself,” she said. Her tone implied enough to do something stupid and against orders.
“We all are, Sprout.”
Suddenly, there was a loud pattering, and the shield became a dripping gray ball around her.
“It’s raining again,” she whispered. Her eyes looked past the screen. She trembled.
“Lieutenant?”
She forced herself to look at him.
“We’ll figure this out. They aren’t going to let you die there. If you decompose, you’d ruin their soil, right?” He hated mentioning the possibility, but did so for whatever enviro-isolationist insectoid lackey was listening.
“It’d be a relief,” she admitted.
“We have other relief waiting on the Impulsive. The doctor is mixing up a nice nitrate-laden sludge, and the whole botany department is drawing lots on who gets to prune you.”
She giggled. “I’d like crewman Lin to do my hands. She does the best manicures.”
“Noted. We’ll get you out of this. We’re family,” he started the Impulsive’s motto given to them by Lieutenant LaFuentes.
“And family takes care of its own,” she concluded.
***
Captain Tiberius sat with his back braced against the back of the briefing room chair in order to avoid the temptation of resting his head on his fist. He’d just finished eight hours of negotiations with the Keepout’s Minister of Environmental Purity, and he was certain they had made up the position special for this crisis. It didn’t help; his legs were as tied as everyone else’s. The rules were plain: No outsiders could contaminate their beautiful world. This incident was exactly their worst fears come true. Never mind their own people instigated it.
I swear, those terrorists are getting exactly what they want, Jeb thought.
At least he had acquiesced to letting them scan Loreli through the comm link. The Doctor Pasteur had just finished his report on Loreli’s health. “Of course, this is just the roughest of examinations,” he concluded. “If only we could get her some nitrates and a couple ccs of imposazine…”
“A couple?” If the doctor was guessing at dosages, it was worse than he thought, and Jeb knew Loreli better than anyone. He’s seen her at the height of health and at the withering brush of death. He knew she was in a bad way.
“I can’t tell from the scans, but she has internal injuries. She’s leaking chlorophyll.”
“We’re on the clock,” La Fuentes said. “Why can’t we blast that shield, uproot her, return the soil and let that Wylson work it out after we’ve warped the hell away?”
Jeb rubbed his eyes. He’d wondered the same thing himself, until Smythe told him about the negotiation session he and Wylson had had with a GON historian. The historian had explained in what the universal translator insisted were very flowery and patriotic terms about how a Kitack trader had made off with a three-foot square of sod. The GON armada had mobilized, destroyed the trader and his allies. All of them.
There had been hand-to-hand combat within one ship, the GON historian had said. Not only had they killed the Kitacks, but the injured GON were euthanized and dissolved so that the alien contamination could be removed and expelled. The remains were returned to the soil.
“Apparently, the area that was ‘fertilized,’ if you will, by the dead has become quite a lovely commons,” Smythe concluded.
Jeb liked parks, but that was not how he wanted to have one made. “Dour, give me a better alternative,” the captain said.
The teleporter chief pulled up the schematic of Loreli they had taken the first day. He overlaid it with a blue outline that covered her aboveground body and only the thickest roots belowground.
He said, “I have delved deeply into the arcane mathematics. Long have I toiled in the internal workings of The Machine. This is the best my mistress sees fit to grant me. If it be enough to save our ship’s sexy, say the word.”
“What about with the shield down?” LaFuentes asked.
“The problem is the soil. I can no more remove that which sticks to the epidermis than I can separate the sweat off your redshirts after they’ve been running away from some threat or the other – and trust me, I have tried. Perhaps if I beamed all but a few layers of skin…”
The doctor shook his head. “She’s not mammalian. If we strip her roots while she’s in such a fragile state, she’ll go into shock, and I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to revive her.”
“That’s not good enough, doctor.”
“Damn straight, it’s not!” LaFuentes rose from the table. “We’ve been at this for three days, Captain. Enough diplomacy! Let me get a team and go get our sexy back!”
“Enigo,” Doall began.
“Don’t ‘Enigo’ me, chica! How many stupid scenarios have you run, and you don’t have any better plan, either? Where’s your miracle worker rep now? Maybe you need to go read another book?”
“LaFuentes, that’s enough.” Some men roar. Some spoke with quiet anger. When Captain Jebediah Tiberius scolded, it was with a hard drawl that most beings instinctively associated with the cocking of a gun, even when they didn’t know what a gun was. It made weak men cower and strong men flinch.
Enigo shut up fast, but he glowered.
“Lieutenant, I think you’ve been at this too long. I want you to take a break and cool your head. Go spend an hour in the gym.”
“What? Captain!”
“Not the firing simulation, either. The gym. Dismissed.”
LaFuentes opened his mouth to protest, but Jeb said, “Git,” and his Security Chief got.
Good thing, too, because almost immediately after the door closed, Wylson’s round head appeared in the center of the table. “Captain! I’ve been in private negotiations with the head botanist, and they have agreed to a compromise. This afternoon, they will return your Loreli to you.”
“That’s excellent!” Jeb said.
“Just as soon as they chop her down.”
***
Grumbling in the mix of English, Spanish and Zepharian that was the language of the Union Genship, The Hood, Enigo LaFuentes stomped his way to the gym, dressed in loose shorts and a tight muscle shirt. He inserted himself into the weights machine. The contraption proudly declared itself a “Bowflex,” but he didn’t see any bows at all. Rather, a complex series of force fields allowed you to push and pull against whatever weight resistance you set and in all manner of directions. He submitted to a retinal scan and scrolled until he found his Fury Workout. The machine activated and he felt the fields envelop his body. He was lifted from the deck.
“Okay, benndero, show us what you got!” The words “Right Hook, 40 pounds, 3 sets of 15” shone before his eyes and his hands and arms grew heavy. In his ears, wild chords started playing while angry men shouted Zephspanglish about guns and lust and long walks among the daffodils in the greenhouse section.
Enigo bobbled his head until he got the rhythm of the song, then he swung.
Soon, as the Captain had no doubt anticipated, he was lost in the movements, the repetitions, and the music. His anger moved from an encompassing rage to a low burn that fueled his adrenalin. But even floating leg lifts against simulated three Gs couldn’t wipe the image of Loreli’s pale face from his mind. She’d put on a brave smile, yet was too tired to make it her signature “You’ve amused me; you may have a chance if you are very brave and very strong” smirk. Her skin had looked so dry, he thought it would flake off and flutter to the ground like methane snow if he touched her. And he so badly wanted to touch her.
He shook his head, not a great thing to do while trying to bring your knees to your chin in three times your normal gravity.
“Ay!” the computer scolded. “You want to concentrate here? You do these wrong and you throw out your back, comprende? How you gonna protect your family on your back like an invlad?”
He blinked fast, then sought something else to focus on. Day shift had begun just an hour ago, so m
any of the mid-shift crew were in the middle of workouts. He saw folks on the treadmills, still a tried and true, their VR glasses and adaptive tread simulating environments and motivations from a relaxing run on the beach to being chased by the dreaded and possibly mythical Gridnak. A couple of his redshirts were practicing falls with simulated injuries – parts of their bodies made useless by the same force fields that held him in place. One noticed him looking and lost her focus, not a good thing when running the “stepped on exploding moss” simulation. She fell hard, and her buddy laughed, until he, too, lost his footing and ran instead of jumped off a cliff. Even simulated belly flops were a bitch.
In another corner, Minion First Class Gel O’Tin was running an obstacle course set up specifically for his species. Rather than going over, under and through obstacles, Gel had to go around them in the most literal way possible, by absorbing them into his body, then expelling them. He must be frustrated, too, because he set up an especially difficult course. After some bulky objects to warm up, he moved to more complex objects containing multiple angles and textures until the piece de resistance (literally): Pipes, the Engineering Department’s pet katt.
Early in space colonization, humankind learned that no matter how carefully they packed, critters sometimes still got on ships. The solution was to introduce a predator. Sure, they could make robots, but humans still loved their fuzzy animals, so ambitious geneticists and breeders worked together to make the perfect shipboard companion, the katt. Lean and agile enough to navigate the tightest spaces, intelligent yet docile, and with a ravenous appetite and a resistance to a multitude of venoms, it made the perfect predator for capturing bugs and small animals that stowed away on supply crates or shuttles. It had long claws for defense, prehensile toes and tail for climbing surfaces, and an almost pathological need to “go” only in the kattbox.
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