James Wittenbach - Worlds Apart 03

by Bodicea

  We can tell much from an enemy from the design of the ships and weapons. Their ship’s design may reflect their stark inner brutality. We build ships that are elegant and functional, satisfying our human notions of beauty and efficiency. Their own ships were brutally plain. Their weapons were equally brutal, relying on the brute application of force rather then precise application of energy. I believe this means we will find their tactics and philosophy as severe and unsubtle as the ships in which they arrive.

  If they did indeed, wipe out life on Medea, it raises the questions of why. I considered what their pathogen had accomplished. It had wiped out all animal life on the planet down to the bacterial level. (They may be vulnerable to microbes. Must investigate further.) However, they left the structures intact. It is also possible that this fleet is the advance guard for alien colonists.

  They sterilize habitable planets. Then, when their colony ships arrive, they are able to counteract the pathogen they release, and move into the cities and homes of the previous inhabitants.

  It makes sense when you consider the difficulty of adapting non-native life forms to new biospheres. Our ancestors required considerable genetic upgrades to tolerate the environment of Sapphire, for example. (I came to regret not programming our and/oroids with a capacity for self-defense.)

  After what seemed like a long, non-relativistic time, we passed by the seventh planet of this system and picked up a beacon. We altered course and made for the planet, where we encountered the tritium extraction operation on the surface. We were travelling too fast to stop, and the communication gear was still out, but we were able to engage the planet in a braking maneuver, that cut our speed back to .625c. We repeated the maneuver, slowing to .5c. The energy we transferred, though, was great enough to slow the planet’s rate of rotation by .8%

  each time we orbited. We hoped this would be a signal. Our lower speed should have enable the mining operation to detect us, but apparently they did not. We proceeded inward toward the sixth planet. We detected Pegasus in high orbit over the fifth planet and laid in a course.

  We engaged the deceleration sequence and slowed to approach speed. We were coming in with communication gone and partially blinded, but we made it.

  I subsequently learned that Xerxes had also detected the extraction works on the seventh planet, but unlike us, had opted to land there to repair their ship and communicate with Pegasus.

  I was greatly relieved that Marine Lieutenant Honeywell and his crew had survived our encounter. All crew on all ship’s involved in this operation are hereby submitted for commendations.

  In conclusion, I am convinced that the aliens we encountered are the same aliens who destroyed the colony at Medea. The resemblance between the creature we encountered and the creature on the surface of Medea could not be an accident.

  Furthermore, I am convinced that they represent a threat to the colony in this system, to Pegasus, and possibly to the Home Worlds. As such, we must be prepared to mount a vigorous defense.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  In the Slam ‘n’ Jam, Eddie placed a steaming platter of flash-fried plant and animal components and three kinds of hot dipping sauce in front of Matthew Driver and Eliza Jane Change. “Compliments of the Deck Minus 221 Merchants Association,” he told them, “to fill up our local hero on and celebrate his coming back alive from battle with alien nasties.” More accurately, a maximum speed retreat from alien nasties that almost melted down my fusion core and has my ship in for a 560-hour refit, Matthew thought, but he took the plate. He was not fond of ethnic foods, but the decent thing to do was consume and smile.

  Eddie put a large stein of ale in front of him. “This tub’s for you, beauty,” he said.

  “Thank you, but I’d rather just have a glass of mauve juice.”

  “Come on, beauty, your religion’s gotta let you suck a tall one when you cheat death.”

  “It doesn’t, but thank you.” He slid the stein over to Eliza.

  “Come on, assol. One drink to honor your fallen comrades.” Eliza looked at him expectantly. Reluctantly, Matthew lifted the stein. “To fallen comrades.”

  Eliza raised her glass of wine. “To fallen comrades.”

  “Vesta Krishna guide their souls,” Eddie finished. Their glasses met in the middle with a solid klink, and they drank. Matthew choked and sputtered as the stinging liquid entered his throat.

  Eddie rolled his big brown eyes. “Aw, come on, beauty. That’s a lite ale.” Matthew wiped his mouth. The harsh liquid was pouring into his gut, like a rainstorm washing poison into a lake, and something like a mean kid entering a playground. “Now, can I have some mauve juice?” he asked.

  “All right, but I’m charging you. You can have all the ale you want, but I’m charging you for the mauve juice. Also, any more food you get after the sampler platter.” He stood and walked to the bar, where Puck was preparing drinks for one of the ship’s Mind Doctors and a pair of men from the ship’s Technical Core. Matthew took a piece of birds’ wing and dipped it in a honey-yellow sauce. “I wonder where he gets these supplies.”

  “He seems to get more than his allotment,” Eliza agreed.

  Matthew put the food into his mouth. It was like eating raw fire. Eyes stretched wide, he searched the table, but there was nothing to drink but the ale. He grabbed the mug, hoped God would forgive him, and guzzled as much as he could intake.

  “Are you all right?” Eliza asked.

  “Hot…” Matthew managed to squeeze out. “What…” His mouth still burned, in fact, there was a fire line down his esophagus. He took another long swallow of ale. His face had turned so crimson red that even Eliza was showing concern.

  “What is that?” Matthew gasped.

  “I really don’t know, but if yellow was that bad, stay away from red. The green should be okay.”

  Matthew nodded, unaware, until now, that Eddie color-coded his dipping sauces. He saw with some dismay he had consumed almost three-fourths of his ale, and his mouth was still on fire, his lips were a smoldering ring. He might as well finish it, he decided, and he did.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I think so.” Matthew extracted a sliver of fried vegetable from the platter and began chewing it. Minus the sauce, it had a palliative effect on his frying mouth. He took a breath of air, directing it over his tongue to try to cool it more. “Has Pegasus managed to track the alien fleet?”

  “Our sensors have begun picking up gravitational distortions beyond the outer margin of the system. The aliens are getting closer,” Eliza reported.

  “Flight Core is on Alert Status Three. Have we prepared a tactical response.”

  “No one has asked me to plot an escape course,” Eliza reported.

  Matthew took another bite of meat, looked as though he were about to say something, then decided against it.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “We barely escaped,” Matthew told her. “Lt. Cmdr. Miller’s report doesn’t do justice to how close we came to … Maybe Pegasus could hold her own, if we used the Nemesis missiles.

  I’m sure our weapons are better, but there are so many of them.” Matthew found a curious, warm, tingling, lightheaded sensation arising within him. His face felt numb, his hands and eyes seemed somewhat disconnected from his brain. The sensation was not entirely disagreeable.

  Eliza laid a hand on top of Matthew’s. “I didn’t know if you were coming back or not.” Matthew was taken aback. “Really? That’s strange.” Words started to pour out of him, as though passing straight from wherever they came from through his mouth without stopping by the part of his brain that checked ID’s and kept immature thoughts from getting him into trouble. “Because usually you don’t worry about things like that. You’re the most fatalistic person I have ever met, and most of my friends are pilots.” She glared at him, in that smoldering way he had always considered sexy before. He now found it hackneyed. Eddie returned to the table and set the glass of juice in front of Matthew, who did not dr
ink it right away.

  The words continued to come out of him, like he had cut open an artery of thought and could not stop the words from gushing out. “I didn’t know if I was coming back, or not. I was never, ever, as scared I was when we were running from those aliens… but it was a long flight back, and I got less scared, eventually. I had a lot of time to think after the fear subsided. I had time to ask myself a lot of questions.”

  He became aware that he was speaking more loudly than usual, and consciously tried to lower his voice. “Like, why am I spending every spare minute of my life thinking about someone, and trying to get close to someone, who doesn’t return my feelings and probably never will.”

  Eddie’s eyes volleyed back and forth from Matthew to Eliza, trying to read her reaction.

  Offense? Anger? Sympathy? Relief? The whole ground underneath their three-way relationship was shifting. He would have to be cool.

  Matthew picked up the mauve juice, but seemed to forget about drinking. “I thought about the people I knew back on this ship, and it came to me that I wanted someone on this ship, besides Kayliegh, to be praying for me to return. I wanted someone to come back to. I know that’s very selfish, but, when I wasn’t trying to keep my ship from exploding or trying to keep a bearing back to Pegasus, all I could think about was who was worrying about me.”

  “It’s not like we weren’t worrying about you,” Eddie put in.

  “I believe you were worried about me. Everybody on the ship was worried about me, but what I want to know is…um…” Suddenly, he had forgotten what he had wanted to know, or maybe that was the wrong way to begin the sentence. “The point is, I need more from this relationship. If what we have now is all you and I can ever have, then, I think maybe it’s time I started looking around. There are 6,000 people on this ship … maybe one of them …” He couldn’t find away to finish the thought, so he took a deep draught of his mauve juice and looked away from them. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about my life on this ship, and my life with you two. We’re all friends, and that’s important, but I want more than friendship.” Eddie spoke in his best calm-the-drunk tones. “Beauty, you’re going to embarass yourself.”

  “I want to keep my friendships with both of you, because I care about you guys a lot, but I want a family life. I want something that’s going to lead to a permanent situation, with children. I was never really planning on that with Eliza, but … we never even got to the point where we could even think about that, where we could even consider if it was possible. I either want to take that next step or I want to know that it’s never going to happen.”

  “If you want someone to care for you that much,” said Eliza, levelly, “will you promise to never make her worry about you never coming back. Would you promise never to go on another Deep Space probe again? Because you’re right, it is selfish to expect a woman to wait and worry while you do as you please. If you want someone to pray for you, find a priest.” She stood up, banging her thigh against the table. It had to have been painful, but she didn’t show it. “Don’t try to box me in. I won’t be boxed in. I refuse to be boxed in. I’ve been a good friend to you. If you don’t want what I am willing to give you, I can always keep it for myself. “

  Matthew watched her pony-tail bobbing as she walked through the inner hatch. He picked up the empty ale stein.

  “Eddie, I think I’d like another ale.”

  In another corner of the Slam ‘n’ Jam, and a little later, Philip Miller was sharing a booth with his wife. Two tall glasses filled with honey-colored liquid stood in front of them, but they had not decided whether they wanted to eat or not. She was asking him, “Were you scared?”

  “I don’t have enough common sense to be scared.”

  Both of her hands were on his forearm, and holding on so tightly it was as though she wanted to burrow inside of him. He kissed her on the cheek, but his mind was elsewhere. “If the aliens move against us, or if they attack the planet, we’re in trouble.”

  “Are you absolutely certain the aliens’ intentions are hostile?”

  “They attacked us, and almost destroyer our ship, and did destroy Hector, that’s pretty hostile, babe. Those ships were troop carriers. Heavily armed troop carriers… and I am sure those are the same aliens that destroyed Medea.”

  “You can not be absolutely certain of that,” she replied. “There are other possibilities.

  Pegasus is heavily armed, but we’re not aggressive. If an alien ship had attached itself to the side of Pegasus and started looking around inside, we would probably shoot at them, too.” Miller finally lifted his beverage for a drink. “You sound like Ex. Cmdr. Lear. Maybe the aliens are just going to come to the planet and shower us with candy and toys, but even if I thought so, I’d still make sure I was ready to fight.”

  Jones picked up her own glass, and fixed him in her sea-blue eyes. “So, you spent eighteen days on a ship with just Lt. Driver, Jersey Partridge and Specialist Ng for company. What did you guys do all that time?”

  “We played The Game of Resistance a lot. Driver had never played it before, and Partridge was terrible, but Ng was competitive.”

  “Is that the same Ng who was in your party on Meridian?”

  “Za, the same woman.”

  “She’s pretty, isn’t she, smart… tough…”

  Miller glowered. He could not believe she would bring this up. “Nothing happened….”

  “There is no need to be defensive. I didn’t say anything had.”

  “Za, there is a need to be defensive. You never said Flight Lieutenant Driver was pretty, smart, and tough.” He took a drink, then set his glass down hard. “Nothing happened between me and Ng, not on Meridian, not on this mission, and not ever.” He stopped himself from leaving the table. “I can’t remember. When I left, were we fighting, or had we made up?”

  “I can’t remember either,” she lied. “It’s been very busy around here. Apart from trying to find you guys, we’ve been trying to establish relations with the people on this planet.”

  “I’ve seen the reports, but I haven’t studied them in detail, but I’ve got the gist of it – the planet is beautiful, the weather is nice, the people are pleasant, and they hate us.”

  “That’s gross,” she said, shorthanding gross simplification.

  “You’ve been there.”

  “Za, the weather is nice, the planet is very beautiful. Borealan topography, subtropical climate.”

  “And the people.”

  “They’re very …” she had to think hard to come up with a way to describe the Bodicéans in a way that Miller would not turn around. “They care for their planet and their civilization very much.”

  “I’m sure they do. So do Sapphireans. So do Republickers. Guilders think of planets as big rocks that you have to break up to get to the valuable minerals inside, but in general, people tend to like their planets. Civilization is also commonly regarded as a good thing.”

  “They’re a very gentle people, but very proud of their civilization, and very protective of their way of life.”

  Miller took on a skeptical expression. “I read the sociological digest. Men treated like possessions, like property, I don’t think I’d like that very much.”

  “I wouldn’t even try to defend that, but I understand why it is.” She took a drink. “We probably could have approached them better. How would we have reacted on Sapphire if a more powerful human civilization showed up one day and asked if we wanted to give up our ways and join them?”

  “Now, you sound like Commander Keeler… and no one has asked the Bodicéans to change anything. Have you taken a liking to the Bodicéans?”

  “I understand them. They are a big improvement over any other civilization we’ve come across. They’re peaceful and they just want to be left alone.” Don’t we all, Miller thought. Sooner or later, though, some force of nature always intervenes, demands to be attended to.

  He took her hand in his own, looked as deep into her eyes and tried
to reach her mind. He wanted her to feel the same malevolence he had felt pulsating from the alien life forms when he stood in their ship, the overwhelming dread, the sheer determination to conquer and consume whatever lay in their path.

  She resisted him at first, as she always did. Perhaps this was why their marriage had never quite succeeded, because of their inability, or unwillingness, to connect mind-to-mind.

  He kept trying, though. It was bad, my sweetest thing, it was so very, very bad.

  David Alkema was traversing one of Pegasus’s busier passageways, a broad pedestrian bridge that led from the Command Tower and overlooked ‘The Mall’ as it had come to be called. “The Mall,” officially, “Amenities Nexus, Deck 73 Alpha,” was a park-like expanse featuring the ship’s primary food court, several small stations for clothing and other non-essential supplies, and recreation areas. He was off-duty, thinking about the meal that lay ahead and the delightful evening that lay on the other side of the meal when he spotted a small blond head of curly hair about twenty paces ahead of him. “Hoy, Trajan Lear.” The boy turned and saw him. His face showed an expression of recognition, but gave no read on whether Trajan was happy to have been called out. He stopped, waved, and let Alkema close the gap in between them. “I just saw you walking back there and thought I’d say ‘hoy.’”

  “Hoy,” Trajan answered. “What’s your name again?”

  “David Alkema,” he reached toward Trajan’s shoulder, the Sapphirean way, then just let it dangle. Trajan took it and shook it, which was the Republic way, but only with one hand.

  “Oh, I remember you, the one the Commander gave the fake promotion to.” Alkema turned to show the two and a half stripes on his collar. “It’s real,” he said.