The Terrans

by Jean Johnson

  Nayak nodded. “You’ll get that, but you’ll also be expected to pack a few changes of nonmilitary formalwear as well as Dress uniforms. You’ll have a week to go shopping, so start thinking of something flattering yet conservative; we don’t know if bare skin is an insult or an invitation in the eyes of some alien species, nor what sort of an invitation that might be, in their eyes.”

  “Actually, Jackie, if you’re already mostly packed and ready,” Rosa said, “and I know you have formalwear you can use, then we can have you go on a fast tour of the various provinces this week. We were thinking it would be nice if you could use your Mankiller abilities to be able to put on a little ‘show’ of what Earth and its colonies look like, when introducing us to foreign nationals. Nothing that would give away our location in space, of course, but something to show them what we’re like, holokinetically.”

  She sighed. “I was hoping to spend my downtime practicing for the Merrie Monarch Festival, ma’am.”

  “I’m sure you can incorporate the projections into the Festival, or vice versa,” Rosa dismissed.

  Jackie frowned at her, but the older woman had turned to the doctor, who was puzzling over something in her datapad notes, muttering in Spanish under her breath. As much as humanity had managed to finally gather itself together into a single, united government, there were still regional differences, provincial prides, and district-based cultural observations that just didn’t blend all that well. Hula was enjoyed in many regions, not just Oceania, but it was not exactly universal as a form of dance.

  Sighing, she turned her attention back to the forms awaiting thumbprint signatures on her pad. This mission was already beyond odd, and not just by its parameters. Thorsson had a weird sense of humor, Colvers seemed to have something against psis, and she had no idea what quirks Mbani, Graves, and de la Santoya would manifest. Precognition was indeed nebulous, rarely found in any great strength, and easily misinterpreted . . . and it was forcing the six of them to work together in the hopes of navigating their people toward some sort of success instead of a disaster.

  Ambassador of the United Planets. To unknown alien races. Joy. I wonder if they’ve modified the Lochaber Speech to incorporate whatever that entails?

  CHAPTER 2

  JANUARY 11, 2287 C.E.

  MACARTHUR STATION

  EARTH ORBIT

  “On your left! Move and lose it, sir,” she heard coming up from behind.

  The only thing the owner of that voice didn’t do was brush rudely against her. He carefully did not touch her, but Lieutenant Colvers didn’t hesitate to make subtle digs at her “unfitness” for command each time he passed her on the track. The new uniforms she had been issued did fit, but they were two sizes larger, and it was clear she’d still need at least a size larger for some time while she got back into better shape.

  Gritting her teeth, Jackie resisted the urge to increase the pace of her jogging. Colvers was used to jogging along the running path spanning the length of the outer torus. Used to the different-than-Earth gravity, since he, Ayinda Mbani, and Robert Graves had gone down to Earth for their initial meeting. It had been ten years since Jackie had lived and worked in gravity-free environments and torus space stations. She knew how to run safely when the station constantly made her feel like she was being pulled ever so slightly off dead vertical, but it had still been ten years, and ten years of not jogging every single day, at that.

  At least TUPSF Space Station MacArthur was capable of hosting Earth-like gravity along its outermost torus. And at least Jackie was in reasonably good shape. Lars—the geologist had asked everyone to call him by his first name, not just the chief pilot—had already given up running when Jackie had passed him a quarter kilometer back. He had joined just two laps ago, and was now walking with his hands on his hips, breathing through a grimace.

  Dr. de la Santoya had insisted that they all endure a regimen of exercise to combat bone-density loss and other problems inherent when working in space. She, of course, had been jogging in tandem with Ayinda, another case of first-name familiarity being granted. Both ladies were ahead of Jackie, probably by a third of the torus by now.

  The jogging path came up on the section seal right before the alpha quarantine sector. The quarantine section only occupied half the circumference of the tube forming the ring beyond that seal, but it did make the path bend. The section had been built with long-term foresight; it had its own power system, its own life support, hydroponics, medical center, and living quarters capable of hosting up to fifteen people with ease, or thirty with crowding. It could even be decoupled and towed away from the station, though a similar quarantine pod, beta, would have to be decoupled from the far side of the torus as well to ensure the great wheel remained stable.

  On the bright side, it was very nicely appointed inside, since there was no telling how long anyone would have to remain in quarantine after encountering alien life. Of course, aside from the Greys in their invasive ships and some vaguely prokaryotic sludge they had found on two proto M-class-style worlds, they had yet to encounter anything worthwhile. The main jogging route had an excellent view of the exercise deck inside, with its own, much smaller jogging path, a weight room, a little garden with plants that were as innocuous as centuries of recorded allergies could be cleared from those lists, and so on and so forth.

  Of course, the greater portion of the station was superior. Multiple gardens, though most were designated for growing food, both in the main part and in the quarantine areas. The gardens had bugs as a part of the pollination needs, though there were repeller fields and microshock bands keeping insects out of the scoutships.

  And, of course, there were spiders in the gardens. Jackie could only thank anything that was listening that Lieutenant Colvers hadn’t been around when she had found that out firsthand and shrieked like an arachnophobic idiot, summoning two security team members to see what was wrong. Thankfully, the team members had been discreet about not mentioning it to anyone.

  On the bright side, there was even a swimming pool for doing laps in the main torus. The water served as an emergency backup reservoir in case a huge disaster happened and the regular shipments of cometary ice didn’t make it to the station on time for purifying into hydrofuel. But that was a worst-case backup.

  The pool was on the other side of the beta quarantine unit. It took her, at her current jogging pace, a good five minutes to reach it. Mainly because she wasn’t sprinting but also because the track had not been laid straight. Its planners had wanted to give its users things to see along the way, goals to reach at shorter intervals . . . and to avoid the psychologically disturbing view of constantly running uphill everywhere. The design was similar to most other stations in the system, whether they were busy sharing Earth’s orbit, or the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn, or even the beginnings of a habitat for Neptune, though that station was still slowly making its way outbound through the system. Stations did not move fast and were not designed to be moved fast.

  This particular space station was not the largest—that was space station Freedom II—but neither was it small; the outermost torus on the lowest floor, where the jogging track lay, was a good kilometer and a half in circumference, maybe a little more. Jackie hadn’t paid enough attention to the orientation lecture to remember it to the last centimeter since that wasn’t necessary. Its size kept the spin slow enough, less than two revolutions per minute, to make docking easier at the core; that reduced the Coriolis effect nausea to virtually nothing and ensured plenty of space. Living quarters, exercising facilities, entertainment areas, and the life-support aquaculture bays were all on the outermost ring. Labs, manufactory bays, and storage spaces occupied the median torus, and, of course, the docking bays filled the spindle, the axle of the great spinning station.

  Smaller counterweight tori spun in the opposite direction on either end. They contained the fuel storage and main engines that powered the station, along with various weapon turrets for defense of the station. Between the spok
es supporting each torus lay broad sheets of solar cells, augmenting the station’s power needs. And to ward off harmful radiation, all of the main structure was wrapped in ceristeel, the miracle child of modern space hulls. Crafted from a mix of ceramics and metals, the stuff could be polished and repolished to reflect cosmic and stellar radiation. It was incredibly tough, it was heat-and cold-resistant, and it made the station blend into the night sky, save where the glow of Earth’s dayside—and the mass of city-strewn stars of its nightside—gleamed off the hull.

  She knew it did because she passed one of the viewing ports once she got past the pool to the next section of interest, a lounge area lined with fragrant plants and gaming tables. The pool was empty at this hour, but the gaming area had at least three tables occupied. One was a spirited game of ping-pong, one looked to be a bridge game, and one had three people doing what looked like homework, save that they were fully grown adults. Reports, most likely. Beyond them, she could see out the currently open viewing window to the portside counterbalance, which gleamed in streaks reflecting the planet below; she knew it was the port one because the torus had little red blinking lights on it at regularly spaced intervals instead of green.

  Jogging past, she remembered the last time she had seen a counterbalance ring through the station’s own windows. On the Margaret Bower, with my quarters a tiny closet of a space on the quarterdeck level of the outer torus. I had half the room of an officer, technically less space than a private—though I, at least, didn’t have to share—and the blessing of not having to worry about bumping into a roommate. Literally bumping. I kept hitting the walls with my arms whenever I had to dress.

  Privilege or not, sharing quarters was not a good idea for someone of her strength. Most telepaths weren’t into reading others’ minds; in fact, most were a bit obsessed about mental privacy, wanting to keep other people’s thoughts out of their heads. Jackie was one of them. At her rank of ability, unless the other person had practiced mental shielding for a full year, a simple touch of skin on skin was enough to hear surface thoughts. Without physical contact boosting her abilities, she was able to wall out the sounds of a thousand minds all within range, muting it to a dull mental rush like the sound of the seashore heard from beyond the edge of the dunes. Ignorable, for the most part.

  Colvers had slyly suggested putting her into alpha or beta quarantine quarters, since it was surely a strain on the station to give her an unshared cabin otherwise. The Admiral had given him a look, then stated that the quarantine space had to be kept free in case anyone came back with any diseases. De la Santoya had muttered something under her breath. It had taken Jackie a moment to translate it from Spanish-accented Brazilian, which was actually a lot more similar to Portuguese but not quite like it. Her comment had been, “Like prejudice, you bigot?”

  She’d had to bite her lip to keep from laughing, warmed at the otherwise-acerbic woman’s quip. Prejudice wasn’t a disease in the sense that touching one made it contagious. Circumstances could make it so, such as how one was raised, the environment in which one worked, the flow of open information being throttled down and controlled, but not physically.

  Jackie didn’t know what Colvers’ problem was, other than that he hated psis and disdained working with her. She did know he was annoying her with his little “fat” quips. She was not fat. She was stocky in the way that many who were either Scottish or Polynesian were stocky. Big-boned . . . and a bit curvy. But she could dead-lift more than her own body weight without breaking a sweat, she could flip a full-grown man who was bigger and taller than her with her martial arts training, and when she performed a haka, a war dance, she was considered downright intimidating.

  She couldn’t help it if most of the time she preferred smiling pleasantly and making herself seem harmless and helpful instead. Those were more important skills in the world of diplomacy, public service, and being a Councilor, a representative of the people. But no, it wasn’t her demeanor that had Colvers’ running shorts in a snit . . . and here he came again, running up behind her.

  “Shake a leg, not an ass, ma’am—on your left!”

  Fat jokes. Inappropriate behavior for an officer in the Space Force. Particularly toward a superior . . . but he always raced on too fast for her to call out a reprimand. Deliberately, no doubt. Sighing roughly, Jackie continued onward at her own pace. She had another half torus to go before she could quit and hit the shower in her quarters, have a meal in the nearest galleyspace, and get ready for the morning’s training lesson on ship systems and communications equipment.

  If he catches up with me again, I am going to remind him that those comments are utterly inappropriate . . . and if he tries to brush it off with, “Well, you didn’t say anything before, so why say it now?” I am going to tell him flat to his face that it is not my job to rein in his poor judgment when he is an adult who supposedly can think for himself in advance of opening his damn mouth. Only without the swearing, of course.

  He didn’t pass her again, though, not by the time she reached her exit point. Sighing, Jackie jogged through one of the many section seals that partitioned off the torus into quickly sealable compartments in case of an emergency and detoured off the path to the galleyspace on the torus that served coffee and snacks to station personnel. Her quarters were above it, a short jaunt down a side corridor and tucked behind a storage room. Ordering a breakfast sandwich and a cup of tea, she paid for it by extending her identity bracelet to be scanned, then munched on the food as she headed for the narrow stairwell to the next level, tucked between section seal and coffee shop.

  The café manager had kindly given it up for her, moving in with one of his fellow sergeants elsewhere. Twice the size of her last cabin on that other station, not nearly as luxurious as her apartment back down on O’ahu—smaller than her bedroom would have been, in that apartment—but at least it was neat and private and a couple bulkheads away from any other personnel quarters. The previous owner had left his bookshelves for her use, too; Jackie didn’t know the man other than in passing, but at least they both shared a liking for physical books, not just electronic ones.

  She had only brought a few up with her, though, not wanting to clutter hopefully temporary quarters. Either she’d be living out of various locations while they figured out First Contact with whoever or whatever might be out there—four-armed aliens, giant sentient spiders, lizardmen, catmen, things that were either frogs or octopi or worse; the precog reports varied that wildly—or she’d be assigned a specific post somewhere and could move more of her things into that place.

  Presuming those aliens weren’t out to eat her. She had read those reports, too. Unpleasant. Unbraiding her hair and showering quickly, she dried off, re-bound her thick curls into a multipinned bun to keep it from flopping in zero gravity in weird, annoying ways, and dressed in her uniform for the day. Army wore green, Marines wore brown, Navy—space navy, that was—wore blue, and Special Forces—chaplains, psis, medics, and true special forces, the kind trained to kill with a pinky finger or infiltrate enemy intelligence networks—wore gray.

  All casual, solid-colored uniforms had a black stripe down pant legs and shirt and jacket sleeves alike, unless their owners were in camouflage fatigues. She dressed in solid colors, since there was no point in wearing camouflage on a space station in her mind-set. Hers had an additional blue stripe next to the black, indicating she was on loan to the Navy; her Dress Blacks, her most formal uniform, had been reissued with both a gray and a blue stripe. All of it two sizes bigger, though if she kept exercising daily, she’d eventually need to go back down at least one size.

  Jackie didn’t bother with her Dress clothes. Today was just another training day, which meant practical clothes. She was supposed to learn advanced signaling and code translation today, along with a drill on emergency procedures, and a refresher lesson in free-floating comestible containment procedures. In other words, lunch in zero G, to practice not getting tiny droplets or crumbs drifting into anything sensiti
ve.

  Part of her wished someone would invent artificial gravity. Wave a magic wand, say the magic word, hack the right code, slip and fall and come up with the perfect thingy along with a bruised, aching skull while doing something in the bathtub. She’d happily trade an ache in her head for a day or two. Unfortunately, the only pain in her life was a certain copilot.

  Her work console beeped as she headed for the door. Detouring, Jackie checked the incoming identity, recognizing it quickly. Her sister Hyacinth was calling. Not an emergency, just her sister wanting to chat. She’d have to let it go to messaging and call her back later since there was no time right now to learn how her niece and nephew were doing, or anything else. Leaving her quarters, she locked the door and headed left along the main hall to the nearest elevator shaft.

  The ride up to the docking spindle always felt a little weird to her. Acceleration made her feel like there was a persistent illusion of gravity tugging at her body, but the fact that the car was moving toward the spindle meant that she was experiencing less and less of that tug. She wasn’t the only one who looked a little discomfited by the ambivalent sensations, either; there were five others who had stepped into the lift with her, each with varying levels of discomfort and unease in their downturned mouths and hunched shoulders.

  Oh, and there was that annoying voice on every single ride, pleasant, neutral, masculine: “Please hold on to the handrails and keep your feet in the toe loops until the car comes to a complete stop. Mind your step. Please hold on to the handrails and keep your feet in the toe loops until the car comes to a complete stop. Next stop, Docking Bays 7 and 8.” When the car stopped, and the doors slid open, it changed to, “You are now in a microgravity environment. Please be careful when exiting the car.”