by Michael Orr
Vasquez bristled. “Is the minister recommending that we decommission the fleet and reduce ourselves to a planetbound race?”
But the woman stood her ground: “Wouldn’t it at least be prudent to withdraw from the dangerous sectors ’til we know more?”
“That angle has been considered,” Vasquez lied. If she wanted a fight, she’d best avoid a Taurus warhorse with forty-six years of service under his belt. “The problem is, withdrawing our forces conveys the message that we’ll back down when threatened. Is that the kind of first impression we wanna make in a galaxy of uncertain disposition?”
The Minister sat down with an even tighter face and Vasquez bulled ahead, pointing to the next raised hand. It was going to be a blustery first day, but he was warming to the fight.
TYRRHENIAN SEA – EARTH – FEB 4, 2352
Back in his SeaRunner, Bastien set the cabin’s atmo to a proper ascent rate before getting out of his gear; then he was back in normal dungarees and angling toward the Corsica subsea base some four kilometers closer to shore.
The minisub jetted across seemingly endless hectares of colossal wave oscillators standing like a forest in permanent night. He couldn’t see them in the darkness with his own eyes, but the runner’s canopy enhanced the view so he could keep track of his progress. Then, the thickets of kinetic energy captures thinned out and gave way to networks of industrial piping and mechanical units that signaled his approach to base.
Seconds later, the bulk of the main complex silhouetted itself against the gloom. Interior light from panel viewports and various cabins filtered out into the darkness, reassuring anyone outside that they were only a few meters from safe refuge.
“Dome sweet dome,” he announced over the comm, activating ‘descrambler’ mode.
“Aw shit.” Reah was monitoring from the duty room, and her response carried two years’ worth of shared history. “Ya hadda get wet.”
There was no guessing whenever someone had to leave their runner and go hands-on in the extreme deep. Since oxygen became toxic at pressure, trimix was the only thing the human body could breathe down here. And that meant helium-voice — dubbed ‘helivox’ by pun-happy divers — was the unavoidable side effect. It also meant the comm had to be descrambled to make the diver’s words intelligible.
“Which means when I get done I’ll hafta eat ’n run.” Bastien’s voice came over the comm like a disgruntled cartoon. “I gotta get topside.”
“‘Gotta’?” she quizzed. “That ain’t like you.”
“Gimme a minute...” He nosed into the bay entrance and let the SeaRunner’s buoyancy carry it up to the internal pressure surface. The final maneuver was to back up to the deco-chamber and dock so he could slide straight out into decompression. He’d already begun decomp in the runner, but there was still a good hour and twenty to go even with the Reco in his blood, and the deco-chamber was way comfier than a cockpit. Here he had a full bathroom and shower, a food-gen, a couch, and a holoviewer.
The Corsica wave farm was the primary power plant for the north central Mediterranean, which meant it had the best amenities. It was far and away Bastien’s favorite of the three he supported, but this time he was on a mission.
“So, what’s this about ‘gotta’?” Reah showed up, curling into a visitor chair outside the chamber so they could chat over the omnicom.
Bastien took in Reah’s fine Greek complexion and silky henna’d hair with fresh eyes. Things had just changed for him and he couldn’t help hoping for the best — not that he wanted Reah to know that. She was cool, but not really much more than an office fling.
“Got the call t’do my civic duty.” He passed it off as a ‘whaddya gonna do?’
Reah’s eyes widened. “You got...?”
“Don’t act so surprised.” He smiled gently. “My genes’re well-behaved. They’ll grow into perfectly good humans.”
“Guess somebody thinks so,” she half-joked, arms crossing themselves over the fresh wound in her heart.
Bastien realized he needed to staunch the blood.
“Hey, no guarantees it’s gonna go that way.”
It wasn’t a lie. State-sponsored breeding didn’t automatically mean falling in love, or even getting laid for that matter. His assigned partner would have to want it, too. If not, they’d end up simply donating zygotes. But as with any lottery, everyone always hoped for the sweepstakes.
“Got a pic?” Reah tried to sound casual. Failed.
“Not yet,” he lied this time. “I only just got the notice.”
The truth was, the woman he’d been paired with was the most dazzling creature he’d ever seen in his life. One in 2.5 billion. It wouldn’t be fair for Reah to have to deal with that.
“I gotta get back,” she moped. “Late lunch?”
“Sure.” He seriously didn’t want to take the extra time, but Reah deserved at least that.
Finally out of decomp and back in the world of the living, he worked on his favorite shawarma plate, letting Reah steal mouthfuls of couscous. There weren’t many others in the mess hall at this hour, but even in relative privacy the couple’s conversation came in long awkward pauses punctuated by short bursts. They talked about anything besides Bastien’s sudden prospect.
After lunch, Reah walked him to the base’s surface express and watched with fears known to any orphan as young Mr. Thierry, Marine MaintBot Supervisor III, headed for a potential new love.
After all, mused Bastien on his three-minute tube ride to shore, if this chick’s int’rested, we could be a family.
3
* * *
FURLOUGH STATION – ALLIANCE SPACE – FEB 4, 2352
Viktor Ionescu’s leave was up at last, and the tram to his ship was passing through the vast internal bay inside Furlough Station’s starboard wing. The view was boggling...
The hollow internal harbor — ten by ten by twenty klicks — was large enough to house two full task forces. His own cruiser floated in the expanse like a pleasure yacht despite its four-and-a-half kilometers.
Anyone taking in the sight would be astonished that Earth was just the unwelcome bastard child of the Orion Alliance. This new station demonstrated a level of engineering scale and prowess that should’ve been well beyond a lowly newcomer’s abilities, and Viktor liked being part of something impressive. At the same time, though, he didn’t want to be smothered by its formality when there were free-ranging ships heading to the ragged frontier.
Back aboard the Abascus, his first mission was to log into the database. It was nothing he couldn’t have done at the station, but doing it here contained his search record within the Abascus rather than leaving a fleetwide footprint.
There was no sign of an anti-piracy designation at first, but some digging revealed an entire set of subheadings beneath ‘Ancillary Missions’. And there it was: Anti-Piracy Measures and Tactics. To his immediate delight, ensigns in good standing were permitted to request a new designation prior to the end of their first deployment so long as they’d completed more than half of that deployment. Viktor was a month past that point.
With a dry mouth over concerns of sabotaging his career, he filled out the request and sent it on its way. Would it go to the captain? The Admiralty?
“Probably just some logistics clerk,” he figured. “Some statistician comparing requests against fleet demands.” But regardless where it was headed, all he could do now was wait.
MOSCOW MEGAPLEX – EARTH – FEB 6, 2352
Nazanin Sukho was stuck in her apartment watching a snowstorm in full fury, her tears trickling down like the sleet on her window.
With a second book in the works and her career as a beliefologist gathering steam, this was no time to become a mom. Plus, she had no desire to use her body as an incubator. Not yet.
The way she saw it, the state breeding program had caught up to her too soon. She really had no interest in being a mother, but at the very least they could’ve waited a few years. Twenty-seven seemed too young.
> But if I don’t...if I just donate the egg, my own flesh and blood’s first glimpse of the world’ll be from a sterile Conglomerate hatchery. I’ll be abandoning a life that came from me.
“Sick timing,” she said through trembling lips. “Why can’t they wait? What difference does it make if I have a baby later? I’ll still have the same genes, and so’ll this Bastien guy. Maybe he can just put his stuff on ice for a while.”
“We’ve learned that freezing introduces weaknesses into the DNA,” the state tech explained to her the next day. “It causes strand decay.”
“But you can fix that,” Nazanin argued. “You can totally eliminate genetic drift. I’ve read about the engineering. It’s so not a big deal.”
“We can fix defective genes,” the tech admitted, “but you know as well as I do that genetic engineering’s illegal. Those lessons were learned a long time ago. That’s why we have the program we do.”
“But...you’re not altering anything! You’re just maintaining it.”
The tech shook her head and Nazanin winced, fending off a whole new bout of weepiness. “I’m not ready! Can’t we just wait ’til I’m thirty?”
The tech frowned. “I don’t... s’Not my area.”
New understanding struck Nazanin clear as a bell. Her optimal genetic partner worked on deep ocean power plants. It was a high-risk life path and the State didn’t expect him to last. From their perspective, it was now or never.
Her delicate latticework of emotions collapsed like a bad jenga and the next two days were a rollercoaster of rage and depression. It was all on her. She was sorry this Bastien guy wouldn’t have a long life, but those were his cards. She was being forced to pay the price for a situation that had little to do with her.
“In fact,” she finally realized, “it has nothing t’do with me. Or even this poor Bastien guy.”
It was all about a someday-coming child...about capturing a brief, fleeting snapshot of healthy genetics that might stretch forward into posterity. The whole point of state-sponsored breeding was to help the human race become its best self, and the algorithms predicted a good outcome from the two of them. The best outcome.
Thanks to prescreened breeding, the human race was getting stronger, purging itself of the various problems that had plagued it when breeding was still the result of random desires. Most inherited illnesses had been bred out, and those that remained could be treated.
There were still cases of cancer and autoimmune deficiencies because, as the Prometheus Institute explained, the soul itself might have things to work through. But all of that could be cured. There’d been virtually no cases of blindness or scoliosis or club feet or cleft palates or any other structural handicaps for over a hundred years.
Nazanin swallowed down her objections like a nettle salad. It wasn’t that she felt obliged to cooperate with the Conglomerate’s vision. What the State wanted was their problem. But if she simply donated her ovum, the child would probably never reach its full potential. It would grow in a cloned womb and arrive in the world without any true human connection. And whatever psychological problems that kind of upbringing caused would hound it through life and filter down through its descendants, becoming a whole new strain of issues in the human condition.
“I’d be robbing my entire line of its best possible future,” she sighed. For Professor Nazanin Sukho, the best possible future was everything.
EFS ABASCUS – ALLIANCE SPACE – FEB 20, 2352
Viktor waited two anxious weeks to hear back on his transfer request, but when it arrived he was in the middle of a shift. He waited impatiently for a break and finally found it in the unceremonious décor of a nearby head:
Reassignment: Ensign Viktor Ionescu to corvette Tirade
Redesignation: Anti-Piracy Measures and Tactics
Immediate transfer approved – Commodore, Fourth Armada Command Group.
Conditional advancement to rank of Sublieutenant pursuant to completion of transfer.
He was poring over the orders for probably the twelfth time when Lt Commander Jonnar comm’d him. Too far from the ship’s peoplemovers, he hurried on foot through Abascus’s endless corridors with his heart beating triple-time. Would this be a send off? A reprimand? Something unrelated?
He stood huffing in the doorway. “Commander?”
“Come in.” Jonnar was an aspiring captain, with all the requisite stiffness. Viktor was still learning to ignore it.
“Some pretty fast ’n furious orders.” The man’s eyes ran across his screemscreen like he was in REM sleep.
“Yessir.”
“What brought this on, Ensign?”
“Well sir, it’s been on my mind for a while. I’ve been thinking a lot about my career path, and this called ta me. I had no idea it would be immediate, though. I expected it t’be my next deployment. I can only apologize, sir.”
Jonnar sat back, eyeing his subordinate for the first time since he came in. The young man before him was pale, clean and neat, with rusty military-issue hair and a long, open face that testified to his slavic blood. At 180 cms tall and 79 kilos, he was pretty average, though he’d proven stronger than he looked.
Smug wryness danced across Jonnar’s face. “You were recruited, son.”
“Recruited?”
“Ran into a couple’a guys while you were on leave, right? They told ya all about the action in the outer reaches? Rapid promotion?”
“That did happen, sir.” Viktor’s suspicious nature launched a salvo of told ya so’s at him. “But they weren’t catchin’ me off-guard, Commander. Those things’re why I joined EarthFleet in the first place. It seemed like a rational match.”
“So, they didn’t put stars in yer eyes?”
“No, sir. I actually thought they were pullin’ my leg at first. I admit I didn’t know they were recruiting me, but I wasn’t simply swept away, sir.”
“You really believe you’re prepared ta board hostile ships and go hand-to-hand if need be?”
“There’re others who do, sir. I’d like to count myself among ’em.”
Jonnar leaned forward, eyes glinting strangely. “Son, what I’m about ta tell you doesn’t leave this office. Understand?”
“I do, Commander.”
“If I’d had the good fortune ta run into those recruiters on my first deployment, I’da done the same damn thing. I wish I’d known.”
Ionescu didn’t dare twitch. “I dunno what t’say, sir.”
“Do me sump’m, Vik...”
Jonnar was speaking to him man-to-man; something he’d never seen the commander do before. With anyone.
“Live the dream.”
Viktor struggled to process Jonnar’s admission. It was impossible to believe a senior officer would treat an ensign like a peer, but he set that all aside for later and searched for the right response. “I’ll do it or die trying, Commander.”
Jonnar dismissed him with a grim smile from the age of gladiators and lions.
4
* * *
EFS TIRADE – ALLIANCE SPACE – FEB 28, 2352
Viktor arrived aboard his new post late in the day after a tense, miserable week on a crowded troop ship; and immediately, the corvette Tirade was nothing like Abascus or anything else he’d been on. At about an eighth the size of a cruiser, she was more like a mega-trillionaire’s yacht than a military vessel — except for the clusters of artillery cannon strategically located in pods along the hull.
The angular, faceted foresection of the ship with its signature chin wedge slimmed amidships into a narrow neck that featured a compact landing bay lit by glowing environmental shields. Behind that, the primary hull astern broadened into downswept nacelles that gave the ship its unique profile. The front tips of each nacelle sprouted heavy railgun cannons, as did most other conspicuous edges.
The more he studied her, the more he realized Tirade was built for battle. Her size was a ploy — a sleeper to fool those who trusted too much in their eyes. Viktor admired intelligent dece
ptions.
The shuttle from his transport glided into the cramped landing bay and he debarked directly into the presence of Tirade’s skipper, which would’ve been unheard of on a larger ship. He’d spent days considering how best to make an impression, and a crisp salute and formal report felt inappropriate here.
“Permission t’make myself useful, Captain?”
His new CO studied him with a smirk. “Very well, Ensign. Good timing.”
“Glad ta hear it, sir.”
“Jake, will you get Mister Ionescu stowed away?” the skipper asked a nearby corporal, then turned back to his new officer. “Come see me after chow.”
“Aye, sir.” Viktor fell in with his guide, marveling at the closeness of Tirade’s internal space. Tight corridors, low ceilings, corner after corner after corner. He guessed the idea was to make it as difficult as possible for boarding parties to get their bearings and establish a foothold.
“Here ya go, sir.” Jake stood by the hatchway to let Viktor peek in. He was expecting a bunk in a broom closet with a ‘head-in-a-hatch’. What he got instead was equal to his quarters aboard Abascus.
“Yer takin’ Sublieutenant Willers’s place, sir,” Jake said with a touch of sorrow. “We lost ’im about a month ago.”
“Action?”
“If that’s whatcha call a bar fight, sir.”
“Take anyone with ’im?” It seemed like a corvette thing to ask.
“Dunno, sir. I’ve only heard rumors.”
Viktor caught the note in Jake’s voice.
“I’ll see what I can find out for ya.”
“That’s generous of you, sir.”
Viktor tossed his sea bag on the bed and followed Jake to the officers mess.
“So, Mister Ionescu...” Tirade’s captain read the newbie’s dossier floating above his desk, “what brings you t’the vettes?”