by Andrew Beery
Unfortunately, that forced me to put a new friend, even if he was synthetic, in an awkward position. I looked over towards the holographic projection of Mitty. I could see in his eyes that he knew what I was going to do. I hoped he’d understand.
“Mephibosheth, what is your role on this ship?” I asked even though I knew the answer.
“I am the Gilboa’s avatar,” Mitty replied.
“And, in what capacity do you serve the ship’s crew.”
“I function as an interface between the ship’s AI and the biological crew. I am based on the engrams… the memories and experiences – if you will – of an organic sentient and thus can apply empathy to my crew interactions. In addition, I serve as your technical advisor.”
“You said, ‘your technical advisor’… In your capacity as the ship’s avatar, do you acknowledge that I am in command of this vessel?”
“You are in command of this vessel.”
“Why?”
“Because we are engaged in military operations and you are the senior military officer onboard. You have accepted a commission in the Galactic Order and are the de facto commander of record for all Galactic Order armed forces.”
Now I had to slam the hammer home.
“In time of war, are warships under the command of military personnel or political personnel?” I asked.
“They are commanded by military personnel under the supervision of the overlying political structure.”
“Does that political supervision include operational control of this battleship?”
“It does not.”
“So, if I understand the situation correctly, Shella’s role is that of an advisor… not unlike your role. Is that correct?”
“She would be a political advisor whereas I am a technical advisor… but yes, the major thrust of your statement is correct.”
I think I had them where I needed them. There was just one more question I needed answered to establish the pecking order.
“Mephibosheth, if a political adviser were to attempt to command the Gilboa with a command that contravened an order I gave… which order would hold precedence?”
“A political advisor cannot issue an order to a ship of war during wartime.”
I turned to face Shella. She was still standing right under my nose, so I was forced to look almost straight down. She wrinkled her nose. I really needed to figure out what that meant.
“Are we clear as to our respective roles now?” I asked with a firm and unyielding voice.
“Perfectly… Commodore,” Shella said crisply and took a single half-step back. “My former husband has explained that you had received command engrams. You are a foreign species for which the Galactic Order has no experience.
“Forgive me if I felt the need to test them. Had you backed down in the face of a challenge to your authority you would have failed my test. We face annihilation Commodore Riker. Placing you in command of our military forces represents an enormous risk that would never even be considered were our situation not desperate. I hope you can understand my reservations. Be assured, you will have my complete support now.”
She looked at Mitty and nodded briefly before turning back to me. “Given that you passed my evaluation, I am empowered and in fact required… by Galactic law… to make one command structure change.”
Damn, I thought to myself. Here I thought I had won this one.
“What is this command structure change?” I said with growing concern. I decided I needed to continue to stand my ground. “If I deem it appropriate I will accept it. If I don’t, then you will need to convince me why it’s necessary. Fair enough?”
Shella wrinkled her nose again and stepped back so as to grab her holographic husband’s hand. “Acceptable. Now we must wait.”
As I was trying to figure out what we were waiting for… Lori, Whiskers and a small delegation of J’ni, including J’ni Maktoo, made their way onto the bridge. It was the first time the heart of the starship had seemed full to me. It was a nice feeling.
Lori smiled at me. Something was up. I mean don’t get me wrong. I like it when pretty girls smile at me… especially this pretty girl… but none of that diminished the fact that something was going on and I was not in the know as it were.
Whiskers walked up to me, saluted and executed a perfect about face so he was looking back at the others.
“Attention to Orders,” Commander Whiskers McGraw said in a voice that would have done any Sergeant Major proud. “Be it known that on this date, Commodore Jeremy Edward Riker is hereby promoted to the rank of Admiral of the Fleet with all the duties and responsibilities therein.” Whiskers paused for a brief second and then added, “May God have mercy on his soul.”
The humans in the room started clapping.
Whiskers executed another perfect about face… I was impressed. I didn’t think he had it in him. He stood at attention as Lori walked over to me and removed my rank insignia. She replaced them with two sets of five stars.
I knew now what Shella had meant by a command structure change. To a certain degree I was pissed that I had been played… but I was sure I would get over it.
When the last set of stars was in place, Lori stepped back and joined Whiskers in a salute. It was funny from my perspective because the J’ni attempted to mimic the action but seemed to be unsure which arm to use.
Damn, I thought to myself. I was finally the top dog and I couldn’t tell anybody back home.
Chapter 7: Dog Race…
In the weeks that followed, my newly expanded crew began to gel. I was both surprised and pleased with this as we now consisted of three distinct species: Humans, Archons, and the enigmatic J’ni.
This last group were the most unusual. As I think I shared before, they used electronic VOX devices to communicate with sentients other than their own species. In addition, they had three sexes. I don’t even want to begin to know how that works.
I found out about the odd nature of their reproductive cycle because my wife had become ‘Maktoo’ with J’ni Maktoo. I’d love to clarify what that means but it would require my understanding what that means… and in point of fact, I’m still a little hazy on the subject despite several attempts on the part of Mitty to explain the situation to me. Let’s just say… aliens are… alien… and leave it at that.
To make a long story short, my wife was invited to a reproduction ceremony hosted by J’ni Maktoo and his two significant others. Remember what I said about aliens being alien… this is what I meant.
My wife said it was a lovely ceremony and proceeded to attempt to tell me all about it. It took a while, but I was eventually successful in my efforts to convince her that there were some things I really didn’t need or want to know.
About a month and a half after rescuing the J’ni, we finally got the FTL engines back online. This was good news because I was beginning to become my own worst problem. The real me had started to notice that some of the ships in the boneyard were being stripped.
The result of my former me’s concerns about pirates stripping my/his boneyard was that the boneyard was now under much tighter monitoring than it had been previously. This made it ten times more difficult to secure the refined raw materials we needed to fix the Gilboa. I was beginning to appreciate why others thought I was such a pain-in-the-ass sometimes.
My wife, bless her heart, assured me that my ability to be a pain-in-the-ass had been a gift I had been born with and it was a part of my charm. I’m not normally a suspicious man, (ok, I am but that’s beside the point), but I suspect my wife was having a laugh at my expense.
The last straw, with my former self, was when Whiskers and three of his J’ni tag-a-longs had been forced to hide for hours in a less-than-spotless commode on one of those Chinese Zǎo-Shang destroyers we had parked in orbit around Ceres.
My chief engineer swore that if he ever saw Kung Pao chicken again he would shoot the cook… and here’s the deal… after seeing his face… I believed him.
; I held a general staff meeting. Shella, Mitty, Lori, Whiskers and J’ni Maktoo were in attendance. The ship was about 42% operation which was hands down better than the 12% operational status we had started with.
Still, we had a way to go and I was beginning to think we needed to take some calculated risks. I had an a priori expectation that the Archons were not going to be fans of what I was going to suggest. What a surprise… It turned out I was right.
“You cannot proceed in this direction,” Shella protested. “It violates every Galactic First Contact protocol!”
I pointed to my chest. “I think that’s water already under the bridge. Your very presence in this system is a violation of that protocol.”
I had done my homework before this meeting. I had anticipated a number of objections… and as my father had taught me… a problem anticipated was a problem avoided.
“Section two-one-five of the Decur Charter specifically suspends First Contact protocols in the event of imminent danger.”
Shella wrinkled her nose. “That codicil was intended to apply to the nascent system only, not dangers to Galactic Order member worlds.”
I passed her a tablet with a court ruling on it that refuted her claim. She scanned the tablet and tossed it on the table. I could see she was fuming… but that I had won the day. Remember what I said earlier about pissing people off by being too smart… too honest… too often? Turns out my gift extended xenological interactions as well. I was well and truly blessed.
You have to understand, humanity was a bit of a problem for Shella’s worldview. In her society, the only people who would be having a discussion like this would have been the policy deciders… in other words the Archons. The fact that humans gladly morphed into whatever role was necessary to move a project forward was deeply disturbing to her.
“Look,” I said, “We will proceed with contact in a way that minimizes our exposure. We need the help and… if the Galactic Order is to have any chance of survival… we need to be flexible on the means we employ.
“If it makes you feel better, my mother always told me that rules needed to be flexible… if for no other reason than because a person’s sense of ethics… right and wrong… had to be anchored and immutable. One has to give a little so the other can remain firm.”
“Your mother sounds like a wise person,” Shella acknowledged. “I am profoundly uncomfortable with what you are proposing, but I accept that our chances of ultimately being successful would be enhanced if we… apply a modicum of flexibility. I would request one boon.”
“Fire,” I said.
Mitty and Shella looked around.
Lori and Whiskers started laughing.
Mitty and Shella both turned back to me and wrinkled their noses in unison. I had not seen that particular trick before.
“My apologies… I was not referring to the rapid oxidation of flammables. The term is slang for ‘go ahead and ask.’”
“I see,” Shella said in what seemed to be a confused voice. “If I may ‘fire’, I request that you limit your contact team to humans and my mate with a portable holo-emitter. In that way, you will have ‘flexibility’ to abort your interaction in the event the desired outcome seems unlikely.”
I smiled. I had already considered who I would want to be a part of the away team. For this mission I was only planning on taking Mitty, Lori and myself.
“That’s reasonable,” I agreed.
I turned to my wife. “So dear, are you ready to see your dad?”
***
Admiral Spratt was not typically an easy man to see. The sole exception to his ‘make an appointment’ rule was his only daughter, Lori. Now technically, this didn’t apply to clones of his daughter, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt us.
We refurbished and ‘borrowed’ a Gnat from the large collection that the ‘other me’ had in orbit around Ceres.
An unfortunate string of surveillance system glitches served to hide the fact that we had absconded with the ship in question. I knew the ‘other me’ would be pissed, but I figured adversity helps to build character… and who doesn’t want to have more character?
Gnats were fast little ships. They were designed to get in… kick the dog in the teeth… and get back out quickly. That said, there was no way we were going to fly one across the solar system. I loved my wife dearly… more so now than ever… but two months in a ten by ten-foot enclosed cockpit would seriously challenge any marriage.
Having a newly acquired top-shelf genius IQ, I decided not to do that. Instead, we flew the fully cloaked Gilboa to the Earth-Moon system and then launched our Gnat out of one of the working shuttle bays. This saved us about fifty-nine days out of what would otherwise have been a sixty-day journey.
The Admiral’s primary office was on Hap-Ring-One of the L1 Lagrange Station, between the Earth and the moon. To avoid detection, we brought the Gilboa in closer to L3 which was on the other side of the moon. We burped the cloak just long enough to launch the Gnat. By the time we circled around to the Earth-facing side the Gilboa had moved a full quarter AU away.
Lori opened a channel to the communications center on L1. The ensign staffing the comms accepted her authentication codes and put us on, what he claimed would be, a brief hold. When ten minutes went by I began to get a little nervous.
In my mind, I could envision any number of scenarios that ended with the L1 platform’s defensive array taking a pot-shot at us. I had deliberately made sure that our Gnat was unarmed and broadcasting the ident-codes for the decommissioned fighter it was. L1 might wonder why it was back in Earth space but they would have no reason to suspect it posed a threat to something as big and well-shielded as a primary Lagrange Station.
Finally, the Admiral’s face appeared on the vid-screen. He was a tall man, but you couldn’t tell that from the display. His once brown hair was peppered with grey. He was seventy-eight years old, but in top physical form. With mandatory retirement a decade away, he was still a very active man.
When my father-in-law saw Lori, his face lit up. It always did.
“Ordi, what a delightful surprise!”
Ordi was a pet name her family used for their daughter. I wasn’t sure where it came from and no amount of coaxing had every been able to pry the secret out of any member of the Spratt family.
“Is that JD I see next to you?”
David was my middle name. As far as I knew, the Admiral was the only one to ever call me that. He never used the nickname ‘Dog’ or ‘JD’ even when everyone else in the room did. Of course, he was the Admiral, so he could call me ‘chopped liver’ and I would have saluted and said ‘Sir, yes Sir’.
“It is… and I’m glad to see you too Dad.”
The Admiral leaned closer to the screen and his eyes widened a little as he took in my uniform. Before he could say anything, I spoke.
“Admiral, I request you go to a secure channel.”
“Switching over now. This better be good, son or Ceres is going to seem like a walk in the park. Wearing stars, you don’t own, is a court-martial offense.”
“Sir, I’m declaring an Omega-Delta event. Authentication code, Riker-captain-one-one-zed-one.”
An Omega event was an imminent threat to the Federation. A Delta qualifier meant it was a game-changer… we were not alone in the universe.
The Admiral checked my voice print and authentication code. When he looked up again his face was several shades whiter.
“Lori, I can’t believe I’m asking this… but please provide your authent codes,” the Admiral responded with a tightly controlled voice.
“Riker-Commander-Medical-zero-niner-theta-theta-six.”
“I’ll be damned. You did say Omega-Delta?”
“Yes Sir. I did. It’s imperative we talk immediately. Can you meet us at Lunar Two?”
“Of course, but why not here?”
“Sir, I’m asking you to trust me. What I have to share with you cannot reach the wrong ears. I’m also going to ask you to bring Colonel
Jamerson if he is available, Sir.”
“Negative that, son. The Colonel is on R&R. I’ll bring his second, Major Morrison.”
“Forgive me for asking Sir… but do you have absolute trust in the Major?”
Admiral Spratt stared intensely at me for a second before answering.
“You’re really serious about this aren’t you?”
“I’m afraid I am Sir. About the Major?”
“Like you son, I would trust him with my daughter.”
Chapter 8: Dog Days on the Dark Side of the Moon…
Lunar Two was the first base located on the backside of the moon. It had initially been designed and built by an organization call SETI which was dedicated to looking for signals from alien worlds. Although it had detected a number of very promising signals over the years, there was never that one reproducible one that would have provided proof-positive that little green men… or talking otters as the case may be… actually existed.
My desire in meeting here was entirely predicated on the simple fact the facility was still operational… isolated and completely automated. We could meet in private.
Lori and I arrived a good hour before the Admiral and Major could arrive. I spent the time with her and Mitty discussing the possible ramifications of having the Major rather than the Colonel at the meeting. In the end, we actually considered it a bit of fortuitous luck.
Our intention was to brief Lori’s dad on the entire situation and request the permanent assistance of a couple of heavy Marine platoons… maybe seventy to one-hundred Marines. A colonel would rarely be placed in command of such a small force. A major, on the other hand, would do quite nicely… if we could convince the Admiral and the Major of our need and the fact that it would be in the Federations best interest to be of assistance.
I had a secondary goal, and if I knew Lori’s father as well as I thought I did… he would accommodate me.
***
Admiral Spratt, Major Morrison and a pilot who thankfully stayed on the shuttle, arrived right on schedule. Lori and I each carried a small grey box about the size of a data pad in our pockets. The devices were remote holo-emitters that would allow Mitty to appear with either one of us… even if we became separated.