On Mars Pathfinder (The Mike Lane Stories Book 1)

by Jim Melanson

  Then it happened. Everyone heard it. The absolute last thing everyone in the room expected. Hlef let out a wracking sob of despair. She started crying, jet black tears started pouring down her cheeks, and she collapsed to her knees. Her body was wracked with soul-aching sobs of hopelessness, and she was hugging herself all the tighter.

  Achael knelt down behind her, not knowing what was wrong and not caring. All she knew was that her sister was hurting, and hurting bad. It was all she needed to know for now. It wasn’t the Eben way to try to take away pain, but rather to try to lighten the pain by sharing it. She wrapped her arms around Hlef, tears forming in her own eyes, and pulled Hlef back tight against her. She would sit there with Hlef as long as she was needed. Hours, even days. She sat there holding her, the side of her head pressed against Hlef’s head, making comforting sounds. As she did so, she pulled down her sunglasses a bit and looked over them at the commissary Sergeant. The look communicated everything he needed to know.

  The commissary Sergeant, Sergeant Danny Codrup, from Ohio, immediately cleared the few diners from the commissary. He then called for the facility security detail, the special one that dealt with alien issues. They arrived promptly, and he stationed them outside the commissary with instructions to admit no one, as there was an alien issue in the room. The Lieutenant in charge of the detail stuck his head in the room, saw the women in a tearful mess, and immediately shut the door again. No way in hell was he going to interfere with a couple of emotionally upset hybrids. He’d been foolish enough to do that once before, and had the scars as a reminder.

  Once the room was secured from the hungry and uninformed, Sgt. Codrup looked over at his staff and with a few hand signals, had them clear out to wait in their staff lounge. He came over to the two of them and knelt beside Achael. He was late in his career, a career that had mostly been spent right here at Wright-Patterson. He had known Hlef and Achael since they were running around as adolescents.

  “What can I do for you, sweetie?”

  Hlef looked up at him through her sunglasses, and started crying harder.

  “Okay,” he smiled, “Some tea it is then. I’ll be right back.”

  Achael let Hlef cry and snuffle her nose for a few minutes more. Then when she started the chuggy hunh-hunh-hunh of someone coming out of a crying fit, she lifted Hlef up, and guided her to a nearby seat.

  Sgt. Codrup reappeared. He had a tray with a teapot and three teacups on it. There were three teacups because he’d made a quick phone call while he was preparing the tea. In addition to a box of Kleenex tucked under his arm, he also brought some of those little packs of moist towelettes. He included a fresh hand towel so that Hlef could clean the jet black tears off her cheeks and chin. Married and divorced twice, he was wise enough to know that he didn’t need to say anything at this point. He just patted Achael on the shoulder, and then went back into the deep bowels of the kitchen area. He thought about going in the staff lounge with the others and locking the door, but valour trumped safety. He waited just out of sight, in case anything else was needed.

  “Hlef?” Achael started.

  Sniff, sniff, soupy snuffle, “Yes?”

  “What happened? What’s wrong?”

  Hlef’s face was already red, and got redder as she tried to hold back a fresh wave of tears. Achael just rubbed her back and slowly pulled her tortured sister sideways to rest her head on her shoulder. Hlef did just that, and the tears flowed again as she leaned submissively against Achael, “It was the baby,” she finally managed to say. A chugging scream of loss and grief followed the words.

  Achael’s eyebrows furrowed. She took off her sunglasses, and tossed them on the table. She took Hlef’s sunglasses off as well, seeing that Hlef’s inner eyelids had slammed shut somewhere along the way, “The baby?”

  Soupy-snuffle, head nod, take two Kleenex, dab at the tears, and then blowing of the nose. “Yes.”

  Achael was confused. She held her sister and would hold her for eternity if necessary; but she didn’t understand what in hell the baby could have done to make Hlef cry like this, “What did the baby do?”

  Soupy-snuffle, sniff, sniff, “Nothing.” New crying jag launched fresh as Hlef reached up and was now clinging to her sister. Turning her face inwards to hide it from no one that was watching, she smeared black tears all over her sister’s formerly fresh and clean Air Force blue dress blouse.

  “IF YOU DON’T GET OUT OF MY FRAKING WAY NOW YOU’LL BE WALKING A FRAKING PERIMETER POST ON SHEMYA ISLAND BEFORE FRAKING DINNER TIME!! NOW FRAKING MOVE!!” and with that, the commissary doors blew open. Gilda walked in, scanned the room and walked with precision and intent over to the two girls. Momma Bear had just been roused, and she made the mental promise that only God would be able to help the hapless sonofabitch that made her daughter cry like this. She touched Achael on the shoulder as she walked behind them, and sat down on Hlef’s other side.

  Hlef’s most recent crying jag increased in its intensity, she turned from Achael and latched on to Gilda, her tear and snot covered face buried in her mother’s shoulder. Gilda gave Achael a very worried questioning look which Achael replied to with hunched shoulders and an “I don’t have a fraking clue” expression on her face.

  “There, there baby girl. What’s all this about?” Gilda said as one arm held Hlef tight against her, and the other started raking her fingers through Hlef’s long curly hair, the way she used to soothe her as a child.

  “Oh … Mom.”

  “Yes my darling, you tell Momma what’s wrong.”

  “Mom …”, sniff, soupy-snuffle, soupy-snuffle, breathy hunh-hunh-hunh, sniff, sniff, “I want a baby and I know I’ll never have one, and I can’t stand the thought of being alone all my life, and I’m tired of not taking anything seriously, and I want someone to love me, just me, just for who I am, who I am on the inside and not because I’m some freak show they can show off and … and who really … who really … who really sees me and really, really gets me, and who just wants to hold me, and protect me and share everything with me, and fight with me and love me and … and … and ..,” sniff, sniff, blowing of the nose, sniff, “… and who wants to make a family with me,” and cue the crying jag again. Tears, soupy-snuffles, deep sniffs, breathy hunh-hunh-hunh’s, repeat as necessary, ad infinitum.

  Both Achael and Gilda had wide eyes and slack jaws at that. Who was this woman, and what had she done with their daughter-slash-sister?

  The crying slowly, ever so slowly, diminished. A significant portion of the Kleenex box wound up in snotty hand clenched balls on the table. At some point Sgt. Codrup came and cleared them off. As he started to do so, he first set a glass of water and a bottle of Advil on the table.

  “Thank you Sergeant,” said Gilda.

  He just nodded his head and cleared away the refuse. He came back, his crisp kitchen whites still making him look like he was in a poor man’s tuxedo. He poured three cups of well-steeped tea. Looking at how dark it was in the cup, he glanced at the Lieutenant General. She made the hand gesture to leave it, and he did. The next few minutes were spent coaxing Hlef back to a non-crying normal state, the job of all mothers in such situations. Human mothers that is. Eben mothers would have encouraged the crying to exercise the emotions that caused it, and most likely cried right along with her. Alas, such is the difference between the two races but a Mother’s love, human or Eben, still knows no limitations. A trait shared by every race in the known galaxy, except for the Vesna and the Lectra.

  Achael pulled a teacup closer and fixed it the way Hlef liked her tea. A dollop of milk, and three teaspoons of sugar. Achael preferred hers the same as her Mom did: cream, no sugar. Gilda would always add, “Because I’m sweet enough.” Many of her associates and acquaintances, hearing this statement made with perfect seriousness, had wound up snorting hot tea out through their nose. Yes, Gilda was a bitch, but she was a funny bitch.

  Neither Gilda or Achael had tried to get Hlef talking again, so far. They both knew that when she was
upset, she needed processing time; and now that her emotional response had appeared to have peaked, they gave her some time to gather herself. Gilda tore open a towelette and started wiping the black stain of tears from Hlef’s cheeks and chin. Achael, having already cleaned her own tears’ black rivulets, assisted as she could. It took five packs to get it all, as there was a fair amount that had run down onto Hlef’s neck, as well as across her cheeks. Both Achael and Hlef would be throwing their blouses in the garbage, they were beyond salvation. So was Gilda’s, she would soon realize. Hlef, who sat there like a small child while her Mom cleaned her up, smiled at her with teary eyes when she was done, “I love you Mom,” and then she hugged her, bordering on a new crying jag but holding it back through a few rounds of high-pitched keening. Getting control of herself, she then turned to look at Achael, “You too Turkey,” more hugging.

  “Now,” began Gilda, “can you tell me what started all this?”

  With a nod of her head, resting again on Gilda’s shoulder, and some finger pulling on a piece of tattered Kleenex resting on her lap, Hlef started talking. She started talking about the baby and the effect it had on her. She told them about the baby looking at her; the smiling, the cooing, the snuggling, and the warmth of the little bundle. She told them how it flashed in her eyes what having a family of her own could be like; flashbacks to her childhood visits to Sapro. She talked about the family she had lived with there for two years, and then again when she returned as a teenager. She told them about the emptiness she suddenly felt inside, and how she was tired of trying to fill that void, she now realized, with diversion.

  As she listened to this, Gilda was churning inside. She had expected something like this from Achael, not Hlef. Gilda understood very much what Hlef was going through. She was also smart enough to know that there was much more, much deeper, that she didn’t and couldn’t understand. The hybrids were far more Eben on the inside, in their psychological make-up, than they appeared to be on the outside. The urge to have a family, the urge to nest in an Eben, was stronger than the desire for self-preservation. Gilda herself had spent several years on Sapro, and knew through firsthand observation what the Eben familial bond was like. The only single Eben were children and elderly widows/widowers; and even they were very, very few. The Eben drive and instinct for family came earlier in the True-Blood adults; but again, in the True-Blood eyes, the forty-something hybrid girls were still only adolescents. Gilda knew now that one of them had the onset of the fiat familias supremus instinct kick in, the other sibs would be likely to start having it as well.

  Many of the older hybrids had taken mates. Some of the hybrids had done so on the Mars base, while some had gone to Sapro. The dozen that were on Terra had all taken mates. Mates with very high security clearances of course. The one thing that haunted them all though was the lack of ability to procreate. None of the hybrids, man or woman, had been able to have children with other hybrids, humans or True-Blood Eben. There was a high incidence of adoption in these families, both on Terra and of orphaned children on Sapro. The hybrid-hybrid and hybrid-human couples on Mars had started taking guardianship of new hybrids being born. The last batch of hybrids, five years ago, had all gone to these families on the Mars base. The next batch would see younglings being placed with the two, recently formed, human-true-blood families as well.

  Sgt. Codrup reappeared, some of his kitchen staff quietly back at their posts. He was accompanied by a timid looking Airman First Class. They had three trays with servings for each of the women. Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, julienned carrots, broiled asparagus and blueberry pie for dessert. He also had a small bowl of coleslaw he knew the General loved, but also knew the sisters hated. The last thing he sat down was a bottle of Frank’s Red Hot sauce. The hybrids went nuts for it, and they put that s*** on everything.

  “Thank you Danny,” said Achael.

  “Major,” was his acknowledgement.

  The women slowly enjoyed their lunch. Hlef realized that even though she was still sad, snuffling, and weepy; she was also starving. While at first glance the food may have seemed very pedestrian, it had been created by the commissary’s Cordon Bleu trained Chef-Corporal. It looked like military food, but it tasted like a very satisfying afternoon on the Left Bank.

  The conversation meandered away from Hlef’s awakening and sauntered on to other topics. Eventually, Gilda brought the conversation around to something she had intended to discuss over lunch anyways. As the room was still secured by the security detail in the hallway, she could speak freely.

  “Girls, I have a small job that I need you to do.”

  They kept eating their pie, but looked at her expectantly. Gilda wasn’t exactly sure how this was going to go over, but it was something that needed to be done. It was an important step in a plan that had been a long time progressing, and was almost near its denouement.

  “I need you to go see Mike.”

  They both paused, forks full of crust halfway to their mouths. It was Achael who spoke first, “You have got to be shitting me.” The fork dropped to her plate, crust bouncing onto the table and into her lap.

  Teviot Vallis

  Master Blitowyn of Chernasai looked up from his computer screen as the Mahal of his personal work pod of Vesna advisors walked unbidden into his chambers. It was a rare privilege, but one that had been won by the Vesna after demonstrating time and again that the Voiya needed to trust the Vesna’s judgement in certain matters; including when to intrude on their alone time. Blitowyn was currently trying to figure out the complex inheritance rules of his elder brothers’ offspring, versus the two brothers above Blitowyn. He needed to know how much of Rillixiwen’s amassed wealth was going to be frittered away on the two boys and a girl, still in First Training, and on the two arrogant insufferable bastards he had to grow up with. He could have assigned the task to one of his team of Vesna advisors, but every once in a while the Voiya had to actually do something for themselves, just to prove how intelligent and capable they were. Of course, once the girl reached Third Training, he could always take her as a concubine, if she wanted him to, and then have access to her share of his brother’s wealth since the females always got the larger part of the inheritance.

  I have a report from the Drones on observation duty, Master.

  Proceed.

  The Drone that is standing observation duties on the single vessel that landed south of the main human colony site reports no activity since attaining station three days ago. The Drone confirms there has been no movement outside the Lander, there has been no egress or ingress to the Lander and no light is visible from within the Lander. There is a very slight radiation signature, but it is indicative of a power source, and not of the level we would typically consider to be a weapon - though that is not to say it isn’t a weapon. Additionally, the electronic emission readings indicate that while there have been three very short and very high frequency burst transmissions, there is absolutely no other electronic emissions coming from the craft. In fact, between the Drone’s observations and the lack of any activity, human or technological, we can’t confirm that there are any life forms aboard the landing craft. It may be completely automated.

  That’s good then.

  The Mahal hesitated, marvelling again at how stupid the Voiya were. It wondered how their race ever survived long enough to actually meet the Vesna, No Master Blitowyn, that is not good.

  Blitowyn’s brow furled, Why not? If it doesn’t have any humans on board, and it isn’t doing anything, then it’s inconsequential to us. Why are we wasting any more time on it?

  This particular Vesna had studied much of Earth history and was aware of the story of the trickery of Odysseus at Troy; a story that would be almost appropriate in this situation, but would be completely lost on the Voiya. Instead he used a story from the Voiya’s own history that should be more illustrative for the dimwit in front of him.

  Master Blitowyn … distinguished One … do you recall how the third Regent of Eridani Prime wa
s removed from office?

  Blitowyn thought for a moment, yes, vaguely, someone brought him an obeisance on the first anniversary of his Regentship. A small box of something-or-other. Only it wasn’t something-or-other, it was a bomb. As I recall, it eliminated the entire house, killing over 500 family, Vesna and Trigla.

  There was a pause between them. It went a little too long. Finally Blitowyn made the first move, leaning back and crossing his arms, what does the third Regent of Eridani Prime have to do with this?

  The mental sigh was almost audible. Had the Vesna not already been aware of how thick his Master could be, he may not have been able to block the sigh of frustration from being transmitted. He may have potential, but right now the Master was being a dolt. The Mahal just smiled a little bit with its little mouth, the landing craft is quite a bit bigger than that small box of Molyak Berries.

  It took a moment … wait for it … wait for it … there. The lightbulb finally went on over Blitowyn’s head, metaphorically speaking. He quickly sat forward, with an alarmed look on his face, slapping his hands loudly on the table.

  You’re telling me they landed a bomb? Why land a bomb there? Why not land it on the colony or land it here? What good would it do there? I thought you weren’t sure it was a bomb?

  The Mahal looked around him, took a chair and brought it close to the desk where Blitowyn was sitting, and now looking very anxious.

  Master Voiya, I don’t know if it’s a bomb. It is only one of several possibilities we need to consider. It could be an unmanned research station, awaiting human arrival in the future as the colony site has done. It could be that the crew is hibernating or dormant. We know they use hibernating technology in their medical institutes, but we don’t think it has been applied to their space programs. It could be a live and active crew in stealth mode using technology we are not aware of. Those sneaky Eben could have provided them with something new. It could also simply be a supply ship awaiting future migration of the human colony. It could be a complete ruse to try and get us to act prematurely, thus breaking the détente, thus allowing the Eben to attack us. There are many possibilities rapacious One. We must not jump to conclusions, we must gather more intelligence, patiently.