Winter

by James Wittenbach

  “I always wanted to live in a lighthouse. Part of my home was blown into the sea during the last Great Storm of the Century. I am still undertaking repairs. Dear, dear, my.” He looked over the new arrivals nervously. “I have never seen these people before.”

  “They are my guests,” Lord Tyrnonius enucleated. “They have come from distant worlds to call upon us, and I invited them down.”

  “They are very tall and handsome,” said Manchester. Snow had begun to melt, forming a dirty pool that spread around his boots.

  “That was the Commonwealth version of Natural Selection,” ThunderCloud mused. “Genetically programming future generations for strength, height, stamina, intelligence, beauty … enlightenment.”

  “There is no way to genetically engineer people for Enlightenment!” Deacon Blackthorn argued forcefully. “Enlightenment can only be won through discipline of mind and spirit! You can no more genetically engineer enlightenment than you can adjust Karma, which can only be given or taken by the Universe.”

  “Don’t let’s start,” Tyronius said in a tone of voice that was almost pleading. “Not here, not now.”

  “We’re going to have a Parliament Ball to welcome the New Humans,” Goldenrod said. “Won’t that be fun?”

  “It will be great fun,” said Lady Churchwhite detachedly. “Unless it isn’t.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Manchester. “And I am improperly attired for the occasion.”

  “We have not decided to convene Parliament Ball,” Oskkokk argued.

  “Oh, but I believe we have,” Tyronius told him.

  “I concur,” Brigand spoke for the first time, his voice was gravelly, well-matched to his frightening leather attire. “As we have been so long without visitors, I think the Parliament Ball would be the ideal…

  venue for us to see and judge these New Humans. We should convene Parliament Ball and invite as many of their people as can come, a hundred, two hundred or more. Let us see them, let us hear them…and finally, let us judge them.”

  “Let the word go out,” Tyronius agreed.

  C h a p t e r F i v e

  Command Tower – Deck 200

  At fifteen years old, everything is tricky, including finding a spacesuit that fits properly. After twenty minutes of searching through the lockers outside the airlock, Trajan Lear ended up in one that was too loose in some unfortunate places and too tight in even worse places.

  He stood in the airlock with David Alkema and Pieta, whose spacesuits fit perfectly, binding tight to the arms, legs, and shoulders like a thick outer musculature, to especially flattering effect on Pieta. The rebreather and temperature regulating equipment wrapped around the torso like a vest. None of them wore helmets yet. “Are you sure you we should be doing this?” Trajan asked.

  Alkema answered him indirectly. “The hard part will be disabling the inner airlock controls so nobody knows we snuck out.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “Me, neg, but Prime Commander Keeler can. I’ll use his over-ride codes to cycle the airlock. First, I have to bypass the personnel recognition interface.”

  “Isn’t he clever?” Pieta cooed, and gave her boyfriend a pat on the buttocks.

  The outer lock cycled and in walked Max Jordan. Naturally, his spacesuit fit perfectly. A long, unkempt fetlock of deeply red hair hung over his forehead but managed to divert around his eyes. “I’m here,” he announced. “What’s the plan?”

  “Let me show you something,” Alkema told them. He opened a storage locker and displayed five oblong sleds, about two meters long and one wide. These were like the standard schlepping units used to move heavy objects and tools around the ship, except that they had been re-colored in bright metallic red, gold, and black.

  Alkema explained. “After the attack at Bodicéa, there was a lot of external damage to the Command Tower, the Secondary Tower, and the dorsal hull. Some of the technicians got the idea for what we’re about to do from the electromagnetic hover-sleds they used to move heavy plating and tools. These beauties hover 3.5 centimeters above the surface of the ship. The technicians saw how smooth and curvaceous the upper hull was and thus was born, hull-surfing.”

  “Hull-surfing?” Trajan exclaimed. Unfortunately, he had heard of it. It was the kind of thing his mother assumed she didn’t have to tell him not to do.

  Alkema grinned eagerly. “You start at the top of the command tower and, if you can stay on, you can make it to the forward spar in under two minutes.”

  “That sounds incredibly stupid. Let’s do it.” Max Jordan had spent the first twelve years of his life in a war zone, which probably explained his utter lack of mortal fear.

  Trajan lifted his space helmet to his head and agreed, “Let’s do it!” even though his heart was pounding out a all-percussion concerto and squadrons of kamikaze butterflies took wing his stomach.

  When the four of them had finished taking turns checking all the seals on their suits, Alkema opened the airlock control panel, and entered the Prime Commander’s command over-rides. The airlock cycled, and the four young adventurers stepped out onto the small ledge at the top of the ship.

  Trajan peered down the long, long length of the command tower, past the inhabitation section overlay to the missile hatcheries, shield generators, and sensor arrays that occupied the angular prow of the great ship, nearly four kilometers away. The hull gleamed bright gold under the light of the stars, as though with its own luminescence.

  Suddenly, blowing off school seemed like the least of his worries.

  “Ready,” said Dave to Pieta. A second later they pushed off and glided down the command tower, gathering speed as they made for the prow, then shooting off across the top of the ship’s upper hull. Pieta held on to Alkema’s waist. They looked almost like ice dancers, gliding in the pale starlight. Although they wavered, although they almost fell over more than once, they still managed to seem elegant and romantic, like angels graciously liberated from the proverbial pinhead.

  Trajan took a deep breath. This didn’t look that hard. He weighed almost nothing out here, and as long as he could stay on the board, he was pretty sure he could make it. And if he spilled, it would be no big deal. He was sure everyone crashed on his first time out. He would get the hang of this before too long, and no one expected any more of him. If a Tech Second Class could do it, so could he.

  Then, Max Jordan looked at him and said something patently unnecessary.

  “Race!”

  The tone said the rest. Not, “Would you care to race?” but “We are now going to race. The winner will be covered in glory and the loser will wallow in shameful defeat.” Trajan gave what he hoped was a manly and confident nod and kicked his space boots into the locks on the hoverboard.

  “Ready!” said Max, leaning into an aggressive crouch.

  “Set!” Trajan answered him, trying to copy his posture.

  “Go!” said David Alkema, through the commlink.

  Trajan pushed off, and almost immediately felt the hoverboard try to tear away from beneath his feet.

  He forgot all about Max in an instant. His whole mind told him to STAY ONTO THE BOARD, KEEP HIS

  BALANCE, RIDE THE CURVES OF THE HULL, DAUGHTER-OF-GOD-LOOK-AT-THOSE-STARS. NOT THAT!

  FOCUS! RIDE THE BOARD, RIDE THE SHIP, FEEL THE WAVES UNDERNEATH. DAMB, I’M GOING FAST!

  Faster and faster he blasted down the command tower. He glanced at the hull plates flashing underneath his board. They were a blur. He cast a glance out over Pegasus’s wide wingblades and immediately felt his balance casting away. As soon as he failed to focus on the board it was as though his mind wanted to rush away from this insanity his body was engaging in. It was a dizziness, but a dizziness as wide as space itself. He was a shooting star, blazing across frictionless space.

  DAMB! THIS IS FASTER THAN I THOUGHT! HOLD ON! HOLD ON! WATCH THAT CURVE! Is this what Achilles Tenderloin feels when he’s flying toward the goal! DAMB!

  He shot across the clear millistrati crystal that
enclosed the inhabitation decks. There was an impression of gardens and habitation complexes. These passed in a flash, and he was over golden deck plating again. The forward prow was not glassy smooth as the other sections had been. A kind of thrill passed up through his legs, a staccato vibration in harmony with irregularities in the smooth hull surface.

  God! I’m going too fast! I’ll be over the spar in seconds! God! God! How do I stop? Will I pitch into space. Objects in space remain in motion forever.

  No problem, the hoverboard would have answered. When it ran out of deck, it simply stopped, and for a split second, left him hanging over the edge of deepest, darkest space and gave him a peak at a small gray marble of a planet, thousands of kilometers below.

  He was stopped. He discovered his heart was pounding, and his breathing was almost over-taxing his suit’s rebreather pack, but he felt as though the essence of life itself was flowing through his veins like a form of pure energy.

  “14.4 seconds,” said Max Jordan, gleefully. “I beat you by 14.4 seconds.” Trajan almost didn’t care. Pieta kicked off on her board and glided around the foredeck, describing a graceful figure eight.

  “Getting back up is somewhat trickier,” came the voice of David Alkema in his ear. “I have an idea, though.”

  He was cut off by another voice. “Trajan, why are you not in school?” Trajan’s face flashed red with embarrassment. It was the sum of all fears, his mom. He was stricken with fear, and could not speak.

  David Alkema spoke up. “Executive TyroCommander Lear, this is Lieutenant David Alkema, from Tactical Core.”

  “I know who you are,” she responded icily.

  Alkema ploughed on unfazed. “I requested your son’s presence for an external hull inspection exercise.”

  “Why wasn’t his instructor informed.”

  “My oversight completely. I will submit a retroactive attendance bypass form.” There was a long silence, then Lear continued. “Trajan, report to the Landing Bay immediately, and bring your dress uniform.”

  “Aye, ma’am,” Trajan squeaked.

  “Lear, out.”

  Dave patted his friend on the shoulder. “Do you want to know the bright side?”

  “Nay, do not tell me there is a bright side to this.”

  Alkema pointed. “If you glide over the deck that way, there’s an airlock directly beside the Landing Bay. I’ll have someone bring your uniform.”

  Pieta glided by and hugged him. “Have fun, Trajan.”

  He turned away from them and began gliding across the hull. This time, he was not distracted by the sights of the hull, the stars over head, or thoughts of angels.

  Prudence

  Prudence glided into the landing bay, returning Tactical TyroCommander Redfire and his team to Pegasus. Redfire had already found a secure channel to Commander Keeler, and was speaking to him from his seat in the forward cabin.

  “How long have they been in orbit?” Keeler wanted to know.

  “Our best guess is about four years. We’ll have a better idea when we decrypt their data.”

  “Good.” They had decrypted millions of datapoints from their previous encounter, and had learned much, but still did not know such basic things as where the Aurelian homeworld was, what their history was, what their numbers were, and how many worlds in the quadrant they had conquered.

  Redfire continued. “We have sent probes and deep patrols into the outer system to set up distant early warning posts. All Aves squadrons are on alert in the event we detect more Aurelians.” Keeler sounded grim. “We are in no condition to fend them off. We have barely half our missiles and less than half of our Accipiters. With our depleted arsenal, the only choice we may have if their fleet arrives is to run at maximum speed in the other direction.”

  “We still have the Nemesis.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “With enough warning, we could hit them outside the system, maybe far enough out to save the planet even if they do go nova.”

  “If we have to,” Keeler reluctantly agreed.

  “An Aurelian conquest has four stages. They infiltrate a planet. They reconstruct the existing societal culture to make them easy to conquer. Then, they conquer them, and then, after taking everything worth having, they leave them to die. Hopefully, we caught them at stage one in this case. We probably got here years ahead of their main fleet. Have you informed the inhabitants?”

  “I have asked them if they have had any visitors lately, and Lord Tyronius assured me that we’re the first.” He went on to explain the part about the immortality, which Redfire agreed was very, very interesting indeed, but he was still focused on the Aurelians and their potential threat to this new world.

  “Any indication of where they might have landed?” Keeler asked.

  “Not a clue. They could have made landfall years ago.”

  “What is the disposition of the Aurelian ship?”

  Redfire shrugged. “It seemed pretty happy.”

  “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

  “So now, you’re the only one who can make bad puns? We have forensic engineers on board dismantling the Aurelian technology for transport to Pegasus.” Keeler smiled wryly. “Lord Tyronius is convening something known as the Parliament Ball at his estate on Winter. There are already Lords and Ladies gathering from across the planet.”

  “Lords and Ladies?”

  “Everyone down here is a Lord or a Lady. I guess you live long enough, have enough space to go around, everybody can be lord. I’m Lord Muckety-Muck of this rock and that rock. This is my wife, the Lady Schick, Lady of this tree and that puddle.”

  “They sound like an interesting bunch of people.”

  “Only if by interesting you mean eccentric to the point of insanity, and arrogant to the point of suffocation. It’s like a Keeler family reunion. They want as many people from Pegasus as possible to attend.

  I want all my senior officers present.”

  “I really think the assessment of the Aurelian ship takes precedent.”

  “You can let it go for a few hours. Leave Change in charge, she has an attitude about this kind of thing.

  She wants a landing team like most people want a painful infection of the genitalia.” Redfire reluctantly conceded. “When will this ‘Parliament Ball’ be kicking off?”

  “It already has. It’s a continuous happening, like the Street Art Festival in New Cleveland. The sun’s already come up and gone down twice since I got here and I’m as disoriented as a cat in zero gravity. They hate that, you know, Cats, I mean.”

  “I’ll be there.” Redfire assured him, almost certain he was going to regret it. “I’ll bring the family.”

  Prudence

  Four Aves had been reconfigured for mass transport to the planet, with eighty seats set up in the main cabin, the better to populate the Parliament Ball. Prudence was not one of them, partly because the rapid turnaround from Commander Redfire’s mission did not leave enough time, but mostly to accommodate Ex-Commander Lear and a coterie of senior diplomatic personnel. She needed more privacy to plan an approach for opening diplomatic relations with the Ancients of Winter, as they were to be known.

  Trajan Lear, in a stiff formal cadet uniform even less comfortable than the spacesuit had been, entered through the forward hatch. Ten or so people from the diplomatic core and cultural survey, were already jockeying for position in the forward section. “Where shall I sit?” he asked his mother.

  “You will be sitting on the command deck, next to the pilot,” Lear answered. “I have arranged for Flight Lieutenant Driver to mentor you.”

  Trajan flushed, comprehensively embarrassed. “Why did you do that?”

  “I thought it would improve your piloting skills,” Lear told him. “Flight Lieutenant Driver was most agreeable. I think he actually was pleased at your interest.”

  “Or at yours,” Trajan returned petulantly.

  Goneril Lear hit him with her best “Don’t make a scene in public”
glower. It worked as it always had.

  Trajan had no idea why it worked, but he knew he was absolutely incapable of defying her when she hit him with those scalding eyes. He slung his carry-pack over his shoulder and slogged his way to the lift and rose up without turning back.

  Flight Lieutenant Driver was there, in his command seat, running final systems check. He turned and smiled when Trajan came up the lift. “Trajan Lear, welcome aboard. I was going to wait until you got here so we could run systems checks together, but I had to start without you.” Trajan hesitated in the entry dock, not sure where to begin. Matthew tapped the empty seat next to him. Trajan, whose stomach seemed to be rerunning highlights from the hoverboard expedition, moved forward and positioned himself in the co-pilot’s seat.

  “You’ll need an interface,” Matthew reach across and drew his fingers across Trajan’s cheek and forehead. The molecular nano-knitters created a face-piece that echoed Driver’s own. It tickled more than it did in the simulator, made him quiver just a bit. “Do you understand how the interface works.” Trajan nodded. “The interface enables the pilot’s mind to connect to the ship’s BrainCore, providing a direct control and sensor interface. Fly-by-thought.”

  “Don’t think of it as just as neural control interface,” Driver cautioned. “ It’s not just processing data and acting on it. It’s a much deeper link than that. You don’t just fly the ship, you have to integrate your mind to the mind of the ship. You should get to a point where the data flows as naturally as hearing me talk, and piloting the ship is as natural as walking, running, or swimming.” Trajan shivered. Ever since his Passage, he had never again enjoyed swimming.

  Driver continued. “The command deck lets you customize your instrumentation, but the mind-to-ship interface is a critical control element.”

  “It increases the reaction time of both ship and pilot and enables them to function together organically.”

  “Correct,” Matthew reached up and touched some controls situated on the underside of the canopy.

  “In this case, I can also use it to monitor you.”