“Right. You will be my deputy while I am on the ground.”
Julia looked at her wide-eyed.
“Yes, I’ve seen the quality of your judgement, Julia. There aren’t going to be any technical issues of great complexity, and you know how to use other people’s input intelligently. I will notify the command team shortly and then we’ll all have a chat about how it will be handled.”
It was pretty clear to Julia that the discussion was over. As she reached to release her restraint there was a brief public announcement from Marcel. “Induced gravity will be restored in three minutes. Please restrain yourselves and all floating objects.”
Both women remained where they were, avoiding eye contact, like strangers in a lift.
Henri Bertin floated above his bed, loosely wrapped in a towel and deep in thought. Was it due to a fundamental trait of his, he wondered, that he only got involved with powerful women? It would have started with his Haitian mother, who had left her home and his drunken, brutal father, and entered the US on a forged Cuban passport, determined that her son would have a better life than his forebears. She had secured his registration, but when she returned to Haiti, Henri’s father was dead from a knife wound he received in a brawl.
Then began a relationship of total mutual commitment between the two of them. Henri excelled at school and at sport. He won a scholarship to study Physics in the US, then he went to a Military Academy and graduated with distinction, adding fluency in Arabic and Mandarin to his native French and English. The only woman he cared for deeply was his mother and she treated him firmly, insisting that his duty to his country of birth was to be above all else.
Henri slipped in and out of affairs, meeting no one that remotely met the standards of courage and integrity he perceived in his mother. He was recruited into the CIA and given substantial international exposure, latterly in the ISEA. He was on the panel which selected Arlette as the prospective commander of IP262 and was given the task of vetting her. General Lee had told him at the time, “We all know she is a courageous and highly intelligent woman, but we have to get into her private life and identify any character weaknesses there may be. This is a momentous mission she has been selected for and you must be quite ruthless in probing her.”
Henri had done the job he had been charged with. He had presented himself as a Haitian diplomat on vacation and completely charmed her at several ‘chance’ encounters. After their acquaintance had lasted almost a week and he had made no move other than socially, she had boiled over and presented herself at his hotel room door one evening in a stunning backless dress with a very short skirt. When he opened the door, she walked right in and closed it behind her, looking him over haughtily. He walked up to her and smiled, and ran his finger down her cheek to the corner of her mouth. He could feel her tremble slightly and he put his arms around her, pulling her against his body. The two of them held each other’s gaze for a minute, then everything suddenly got very urgent, hands were on flesh and clothes were coming off everywhere.
In the week that followed, Henri came to realise that the boot was really on the other foot, and that he was her plaything. She could be tender, even cute, but she was always in control, not just of herself but of him as well. Henri felt a feeling inside that he had never felt for a woman before. It was a yearning to possess her, not just physically but emotionally and intellectually as well, and it affected him deeply.
Then he thought of Julia, and he smiled to himself. She was different. There was no arrogance in her but a rather naughty playfulness. She teased him very effectively, one minute challenging him to the point of offence, the next effortlessly restoring his dignity for him with an elegant compromise. But in one way she was exactly the same as Arlette: she took what she wanted, particularly when it happened to be him. She had pulled exactly the same trick on him, but without the sexy dress. Walking into his quarters without hesitation and giving him a sort of ‘now let’s see what you can do’ look-over. He wondered for a moment if she would have done it if she had known about Arlette, then concluded that yes, certainly, it would probably have made no difference. But he was working with these two women at the highest level. One of them was exercising her intellect and her authority, the other her intellect and her warmth. He respected them both, deeply, and, if he was honest with himself, he loved them both. While Arlette was organisationally and emotionally inaccessible, Julia was there, nudging him playfully in public and flaunting herself in front of him in private whenever she felt like it. ‘Fucking like Helen of Troy with her arse on fire,’ he had read somewhere. Yes, that was Julia, bless her.
Marcel’s announcement jolted him out of his reverie. He scrambled into his tunic and checked with the launch deck. “Commander, Lander 1 is ready for inspection,” he announced by earphone. Arlette shut down her information system and headed down to the excursion platform, collecting Marcel on the way. Lander 1 was docked to the side of the ship, her cargo loaded and ready for her thirty passengers.
It was the first time that Arlette had really looked at the vehicle that would take her to the surface of an unknown planet and she was somewhat taken aback by the sleek elegance of the ship.
“Where is the booster unit to generate the fuel for the return trip?” she asked Marcel.
“It will be launched a couple of hours ahead so that we have it in place on the ground, ready to be attached to a local water supply. It only takes eight hours for the electrolysis unit to generate enough fuel to refill the booster tanks on the lander,” Marcel told her. It also gives us a 360 on the landing site so that we have detailed terrain data in advance.”
“Good. What’s the weather like down there?”
“Calm, clear, no precipitation forecast for the next forty-eight hours, 20 degrees when we land four hours after sunrise.” Marcel motioned her forward. “Come and have a look.”
They stepped through the airlock into the lander. It was similar in layout, but much smaller than the lunar shuttle, and the thirty-two ergo-couches were quite closely packed, arranged radially around a central tunnel containing a circular stairway. “It’s just a short trip,” Marcel explained. “The lander flies to the target area after atmosphere entry, then the parachutes are deployed and she swings round to land on her tail. The internal motors are only used briefly to control touchdown. You exit down the central staircase.”
‘It’s always simple with Marcel,’ thought Arlette. “OK. Where’s the gear to construct the base camp?”
“It’s all stowed in the rear section, or what becomes the bottom section when she’s on the ground,” said Marcel. “The construction materials are lowered to the ground when the cargo bay doors are opened. It’s all pneumatic, driven off the lander’s batteries. The whole structure can move around on tracks, blows up within a couple of minutes, and maintains a constant temperature and a slight positive pressure so that you don’t ingest any irritants like pollen or rocket exhaust. All the basics are already in place. You just press ‘inflate’, enter and live.”
“OK,” said Arlette. “When is departure scheduled?”
“Just under three hours from now. You’ll see the landing site 360 on your screen, then please make your way down here and we’ll get you boarded.” Marcel smiled and saluted his commander. She touched a finger to her forehead in response.
* * *
“What is this?” enquired Chuck Connolly of his commanding officer, pointing to a prominent object in the package of gear delivered to all members of the landing militia.
“That, Major, is a spade,” replied Henri.
“I see,” said Chuck. “And what, in this age of intergalactic travel, will we be needing spades for?”
“Digging trenches,” relied Henri.
“Might we not have some slightly more sophisticated equipment for that task?” persisted Chuck in the same vein. “And what is the purpose of these trenches?”
“No, the lander is already on its maximum payload, and we shall use trenches as our first line
of defence in the absence of any other appropriate cover,” said Henri.
“You expect these bugs to shoot at us?” enquired Chuck.
“No, but I’m not going to rule out spitting venom, articulated stings, prehensile claws or any other variation of insect paraphernalia that they might have. We have a very basic job of defence to do here, against a possible adversary that we do not know. We’re not going to get caught without the basics. I think it is inevitable that we will get some visitors.”
“Why so?” asked Chuck.
“Because the night is nineteen hours long and our camp will be illuminated. I don’t know of any insect that is not attracted by light, do you?”
“Will we be authorised to shoot on sight?” Chuck wanted to know.
“I may decide to give that order, but it will not apply until I do,” replied Henri. “Of course we’ll all be equipped with night vision so I would hope we’ll see them first.”
“Not if we’re between them and the light source,” pointed our Chuck.
“Exactly,” said Henri. “Now you see my point about the trenches.”
* * *
Lander 1 departed on schedule to make landfall at its selected target site four hours after sunrise. As the craft began to cool from its atmospheric entry, the landscape below came into its full glory, illuminated by the early morning sun. Rivers, lakes, mountains and forests all appeared below them, remarkably Earth-like except for one predominant factor: there were no signs of civilisation, no infrastructure of any kind. In the cockpit Tim Cochran saw the promontory he was to land on ahead of him, checked his position, then stalled the craft and deployed the huge parachutes. Lander 1 steadied in the vertical position, sinking rapidly towards the ground. The lander’s engines burst into life and the descent slowed to a crawl. She landed with the gentlest of bumps, the landing gear flexing and grumbling below them. Then it was quiet. “Lander 1 is down and on target,” announced Tim, and a huge cheer rose from the passenger section.
“Please remain seated!” said Tim. “We need to do an atmosphere test before we open the doors.” Unfamiliar scents greeted them as in the air in the lander was gradually exchanged with that from outside. “Remember that gravity here is 1.2G, so moving will be a bit more of an effort, but that we have 24 per cent oxygen in the atmosphere, which will compensate somewhat. Enjoy your stay on Omega 16-3!”
Arlette clambered into the stairway and started down the steps, surrounded on all sides by smiling faces. Her heart started to pound as she caught the first glimpse of alien soil below her, and she jumped the last two steps and felt the earth give a little below her feet. She breathed deeply, taking in the huge green expanse before her, crowned in the distance with snow-capped mountains, with the ocean calmly lapping on a beach a few hundred metres behind her. She sank to her knees and touched her lips to the soil, then rose to her feet and announced, “We have come in peace. We bring you the wonderment of our human civilisation, and we offer our knowledge and our skills with true humility to advance this beautiful planet and all its inhabitants. We shall call you Ceres, out of respect for the bountiful land we see around us.” Clapping could be heard from the lander cabin above. Arlette turned and shouted upwards, “Come and join me; it’s beautiful out here!”
22
Footfall on Ceres
Henri Bertin was the first to congratulate the commander, and he did so with a kiss on the cheek and a whispered “Bravo”. He then produced a small folding table from his pack, on which he set a magnum of champagne and thirty-four beakers. Arlette found herself rather incongruously handing a beaker of champagne to each crew member as they set foot on Ceres, and shaking their hands. The whole party gathered around her in a circle, and, following Henri’s lead, raised their drinks and shouted “Ceres!” This event, recorded by the lander’s cameras and beamed to Earth, where it was shown worldwide, was to cause celebration in some quarters, and great grief in others.
The festive atmosphere quickly turned practical. Henri’s ten-man militia was dispatched to reconnoitre and secure an area 500 metres in radius from the base camp, which was being erected at a safe distance from the lander. They waded ankle-deep through leafy, clover-like plants, sending up sprays of hopping insects before them, but apart from a flat, slow-moving snake-like creature with armoured scales, they saw nothing to concern them. A network of night cameras and motion sensors was set up on the perimeter, and when they returned to the base camp on the completion of their task, they were ebullient.
“It’s clean!” said Chuck Connolly as he approached Arlette and Henri with a big smile on his face. “Ground’s firm and pretty flat, no pernicious wildlife detected, nearest tree cover is about 2,000 metres from our boundary. We’ll get the surveillance network connected and then we should have excellent supervision and control of the base area, day and night.”
Henri nodded. “The boosters landed about 3 km east of base camp; I saw them as we were landing. They are mounted on a motorised carrier. Take three men and go and fetch them.”
“Yessir!” said Chuck. He delegated the job of connecting and testing the surveillance network, then took a long swig from his water bottle. As he did so the air pumps under the inflatable base camp started to whine and the whole structure began to rise and take shape. The militiamen stood and watched it, grinning, while the maintenance team scrambled around, coaxing the expanding monster into shape. It righted itself with a pop, to cheers from the onlookers.
Henri turned to the remnants of the militia. “I want a trench from here in the direction of those trees to thirty metres short of the perimeter, then fifty metres on either side. Get to it!”
“Colonel, we can’t complete that before dusk just with spades,” pointed out the lieutenant in charge, somewhat miffed to be left with a manual task.
“I’m calling down some mechanised equipment right now,” said Henri. “You should have it within four hours. In the meantime, mark it out and get digging!” Henri turned and strode back to find Arlette, who was inspecting her newly erected office. “I’m calling down the Phase 2 hardware now,” he told her. “I need a personnel carrier and digging equipment as well as all the infrastructure components for the base. We need to consolidate here as rapidly as possible.”
“OK with me,” said Arlette, testing out her inflated chair/desk unit and turning to take a call. “Hi Julia!” she mouthed into her earphone. “Thank you. Yes, we’ve had an excellent start. Henri…” – she looked round at him briefly and smiled – “is just calling down the Phase 2 equipment drop.”
Henri turned and left, activating his earphone as he did. “Hi Marcel!”
“Well, Henri, I noticed you’ve been softening up Jeanne d’Arc with the old surprise champies trick!”
“Yeah,” said Henri, “it worked a treat. She was almost misty-eyed; almost.”
“Well, congratulations,” said Marcel. “It all looked really good on the news clip. Ceres was a nice surprise. A lot more appropriate for this planet than the lifeless asteroid in our own solar system. She’s good with mythology. And she came across really thrilled with her new planet without overdoing the humility thing. But I guess you are busy. What do you need?”
“We’re ready for Phase 2. We need the whole infrastructure package right away. We’re secure enough here now but we’ll be more vulnerable after dark. There’s no reason to think that we can’t sustain our presence on the planet, so we need to consolidate as fast as possible. In addition we need a personnel carrier, a cargo truck and a trenching machine.”
“OK. No heavy armament?”
“No,” said Henri. “I have no read on what sort of arms we might need. We might get a better feel from Chuck when he gets back with the booster unit, but for the time being we’ll concentrate on consolidating the base.”
“OK,” said Marcel again. “I’ll have three cargo landers off to you within the hour. Where do you want me to land them?”
“Fifteen hundred metres west of base. It’s absolutely flat there
and there are no credible threats in the area.”
“It’s on its way, Colonel. Good luck!”
* * *
Chuck Connolly’s progress slowed as his detail reached the tree line. The trees were of a relatively primitive type, stubby palms and conifers, ten metres high at most, and the ground was thick with ferns and prickly underbrush. They had hardly penetrated the forest twenty metres when there was a yelp from one of his men. “I’ve been stung!”
“Put on your protective face masks!” called Chuck. “Cover all exposed skin!” He walked over to the injured man, who had by now developed an ugly welt on his cheek. “Taken your antihistamine?” he asked.
“Just did, sir,” said the man.
“OK, men, we’ve got just under 500 metres to go to get to the booster unit,” said Chuck, “then we’ll be able to ride back on the carrier. Let’s get this done!” It was hot, the shade of the trees was intermittent at best, and the insects were all over them, flying, running and crawling. The four men settled into a steady rhythm as they tramped onwards, confident that their ordeal would soon be over.
“It’s just up ahead!” called Chuck, the gleaming white of the booster unit tanks just visible through the trees. “Damn, damn!” They halted. The carrier was lying at an absurd angle, one set of transporter tracks high in the air with the broken trunks of two large trees thrust through them, and sitting astride the tanks, apparently asleep in the sun, was a huge, black, fur-covered arachnid, the size of a small truck.
Chuck reported the facts to his CO by earphone. “Proceed with caution, do not use firearms,” responded Henri. “Use marker rockets to get it to leave.”
The men took cover behind tree trunks as Chuck prepared his launcher. “Ready – three, two, one, fire!” The rocket streaked just over the top of the creature, billowing orange smoke in its wake. The spider shot to its feet, numerous eyes on stalks scanning the intruders, the hair on top raised bolt upright. Then it spat, globs of yellow liquid hitting the men with astonishing force, accuracy and rapidity. “Stay under cover!” shouted Chuck, “and don’t touch that stuff!”
Omnipotence: Book I: Odyssey Page 16