Earth Song: Twilight Serenade

by Mark Wandrey

  Minu nodded back. “Summit Tribe?” The man gave her a thumbs-up. She remembered the young scout from a few occasions, and the name from a transfer to Ranger duty. “And I see Gregg has implemented the rank structure. Three Regiment, you said?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Three Regiment went operational a week ago. We’re to begin rotating units through space for orientation, as you instructed. My company is to be the first.”

  “Congratulation.” Behind them a large group of Beezer were coming over the lock’s low threshold. Many were exchanging greetings with the crew already there.

  “Thank you, ma’am. Please meet my lieutenants, Melissa Grace of Second Platoon and Travis Beck of Third.”

  Minu acknowledged both equally, but she had a hard time suppressing a huge smile at seeing Melissa Grace. The raven haired Plateau tribe five star had come through the most recent trials. One of almost forty women to make it. Just three short of half. She felt tears threatening again. Her trails group had had four women. Only four.

  Melissa was a classically beautiful woman, her hair in a single tail of the same style now common (because it was how Minu wore her hair). She was not much less than two meters tall and about 40 kilos of lean muscle mass.

  “Glad to be here, ma’am.”

  “Glad to have you, Lieutenant.”

  Travis Beck was bald, tall, and of indeterminate ancestry. He looked chiseled from the same mold as her husband. Born for the Chosen. He had eyes of ice blue and a jaw that could cut diamonds. “Ready to serve, ma’am.”

  “Thank you,” Minu said. “Beck, I remember you were a late request.”

  “I didn’t really want to be a Ranger,” he admitted.

  “Then why come over?”

  “Two reasons.” Minu gestured and he continued. “One, I saw the writing on the wall. You’ll either be integrating the Chosen or phasing them out.”

  “Reasonable observation. But for the record, I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

  “Noted.”

  “And the other reason?” she prompted.

  “I want to go into space. I had a sister.” Those hard eyes lost a little of their edge. A memory teased the edge of his awareness. And then it was gone just as quickly. “She was a few years older. Didn’t make the trials, couldn’t pass the mental test. So she joined up with the Rangers. She didn’t come back from Planet K.”

  Minu looked down. “That was a tough battle. We lost a lot of good Rangers.”

  “Yes, ma’am. We need to learn new tactics if we want to lose fewer people.”

  “Very astute, and very right. Whatever the reason, I’m glad you are here. Please transfer your personnel to the Kaatan. Lilith is making quarters available. We’ll have to triple bunk, but we can make it work.”

  The three offices acknowledged and went to work shepherding almost a hundred Rangers through the Ibeen into the Kaatan. Despite being on Ibeen Beta for a close to a month, clearly they were still getting used to the experience of being inside a spaceship the size of a small hill. She turned to Selain.

  “I’ll transmit a couple files to you on suggested training,” he told the man. “Since your unit has the most experience in space, it makes the most sense that you spearhead this operation.”

  “Consider it done, ma’am.” He took his squad and followed the Rangers inboard.

  The captain of Gamma, Bakook, whom she’d learned to recognize, stood next to a new Beezer she guessed to be Beta’s captain. Minu had finally caught clues of rank among their merchant caste. Unlike other high ranking types, the merchants didn’t decorate their horns with scrimshaw. That appeared to be a permanent marking of a family. Instead the merchants had piercings on their floppy ears that held rings of precious metal. The more and fancier the rings, the higher ranked. Seeing the two Beezer captains she could see a particularly fancy silver ring decorated with a spray of golden stars.

  “First,” Bakook chuffed, “this is Gilsook, captain of Ibeen Beta.”

  The new Beezer had that same earring with golden stars. She filed it away as she bowed in acknowledgement.

  “Please to meet you, and I am in debt for coming so quickly.”

  “It is my pleasure to meet the First of humans, and leader of their military,” he said and returned the bow as equals.

  “Bakook, are all captains to be heads of their clans?”

  Bakook looked at her quickly, his nostrils flaring and head weaving from side to side. “To command a ship is a great honor,” he said, “and heads of the great merchant families have considerable prowess in trading and business.”

  Minu nodded politely. “This only makes sense. However, may I make a suggestion?”

  “You are of course welcome,” Bakook replied.

  “Consider choosing your second officers or tactical officers from your military branch. Allow them a nearly equal say in operating of the ship. Not necessarily in deciding where it goes and deals to pursue, but in how you get there and how you deal with possible conflict.”

  “Are you suggesting the head of a clan cannot handle conflict?” the newcomer, Gilsook demanded. Humans had worked with Beezer long enough that their translators were well programmed to deal with their Beezer’s language, and as such conveyed emotions well.

  “Show due respect to Minu Groves,” Bakook reprimanded the other captain, “we would have no ships without her generosity.

  “Generosity she only offered after nearly destroying our capital city,” Gilsook retorted.

  “Are we still having problems with that?” Minu asked. “I’m beginning to regret saving your asses.”

  “Many of our people still hold grudges after that incident,” Bakook said, reluctantly. “I completely understand what you did now. Time and operating these fine starships have… sculpted my understanding.”

  “Sounds like you are saying my generosity changed your opinion,” Minu said.

  “I did not say that, only that it has helped give me new perspective. Of the thousands of species within the Concordia a bare handful have any ships at all. A few one or two, perhaps. It isn’t completely unheard of. Now the Beezer have five ships!”

  “Six in a few days,” Minu said, reminding him of Ibeen Zeta nearly operational.

  Bakook bowed in acknowledgement.

  “All I’ve ever asked is your help when called.” She turned to look at Gilsook. Despite being a dozen centimeters shorter and fifty kilos lighter she less than a meter away. “If that’s going to be a problem, I know I can find another species that will happily take your place for every transport I find from now on.”

  Gilsook made a deep angry growl in his throat and began to lean forward, only Bakook was there sliding between them.

  “This is merely a disagreement between captains,” he tried to assure him.

  “See that it is cleared up,” Minu said, trying to sound as deadly serious as possible. “There may come a time when all our lives depend on there being no hesitation on either of our parts. The last thing I want is one of your captains deciding to delay a few hours to make some political point.”

  “We’ll work it out,” Bakook assured her, turning and not so gently pushed Gilsook away. Minu listened to them growl and chuff at each other for a minute, her translator unable to pick up their words, before turning to the work that continued.

  From inside the other Ibeen came a group she’d been expecting. Almost two dozen humans, mostly Chosen wearing the silver stars of the science branch. “Welcome, Bran.”

  Bran Esterosa had been in science when Minu first became Chosen. He’d made the trials his last year of eligibility, after completing several masters degrees in various sciences and engineering. Even though he was several years older than Minu he wore just three silver stars. She’d worked with him a dozen times and was at the top of the recommended technology specialists by Ted Hurt and Bjorn both. The service had always been more important to him than rank. Minu also knew he’d been Bjorn’s preferred choice as a successor over Jasmine Osgood.

 
; “Glad to help. I’ve been reviewing the details of your project and have some ideas.” All those with him were young Chosen, some much younger, and a few were civilian employees. All carried cases of equipment, tools, and parts.

  “Great, I have space set up here already aboard this Ibeen for your labs and work rooms. I’ve set a tentative date to get this fleet mobile in seventy-two hours.”

  “That’s not much time to work with,” Bran said, looking thoughtful but not discouraged.

  “I’m sure you can get something going. It’s not a hard wall, but it is important we move as quickly as possible. We’re generating a lot of power and the chances of being noticed by a passing ship go up every hour we delay.

  “As I mentioned in my briefing, there were six ghost fleets we know about and three of them are easy marks. We want to get to the other two ASAP.”

  “We’ve been working all the way here, and once our gear is moved we’ll pick up where we left off.”

  “Great,” Minu said and clapped a hand on his shoulder.

  A moment later he took charge of his personnel and started moving them along. Back in the lock Beezer were now operating massive bots and using powered suits to move cargo aboard the newly arrived Ibeen. Salvage, their share of the goods so far located, would be taken home to be sold for profit. Once again she found herself grateful the Beezer weren’t interested in military hardware.

  A few hours later aboard the Kaatan, Lilith hosted a dinner of senior staff, friends, and family. Her CIC was the largest space aboard the ship, not counting the three cargo holds that were now all nearly full or ordinance, and the shuttle decks. Since the latter really weren’t suitable, she’d tasked her CIC.

  Minu couldn’t stop smiling as her best friend went utterly gaga over Mindy. Cherise cooed, cuddled, and tickled the baby through dinner to such an extent that she hardly touched the food offerings.

  With her youngest daughter occupied it was a good opportunity to get to know the Ranger officers better and strengthen ties with the two Beezer ship commanders. Well, with one of them anyway.

  The Beezer ate standing, as was their way. Lilith was of course aware of the disagreement between her mother and the new Beezer captain and had placed them as far apart as possible. Aaron sat on the other side of Minu, opposite Cherise and her youngest. Besides her was Lilith then the Beezer. Next to Aaron was Bran and then Tyler with his two lieutenants.

  Minu had just finished her description of the battle of Dervish, embellished by Lilith with strategic details only she could truly appreciate. Up after that was Aaron’s tale of imprisonment at the hands of the Tanam.

  “So there I was, in an equipment locker not much bigger than the space suit I’d just managed to stuff my ass into before the ship was blown completely to hell and gone.”

  “How long were you in there?” Cherise asked him.

  “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “A couple hours? I was beginning to wonder if I’d survive. The suit smelled like cat, and I couldn’t read the displays. For all I could tell it only had a few hours of life support.”

  Dinner finished and snacks were served as Aaron talked about his time with the Squeen. The Beezer hadn’t been too interested in the conflict aspects of Aaron’s story, but as he got to talking about the Squeen their interest increased.

  It was something about their level of interest. The way the Beezer were now all ears as he talked about them and his proposing a deal to buy his passage back. And finally he got up to his return just as Minu was giving birth to Mindy.

  “I would recommend caution,” Bakook warned, “when dealing with that species.”

  “The Tanam hate them,” Minu said. “We learned that during the… incident on Serengeti.”

  “Many older species do,” Gilsook said, speaking up for the first time.

  “Can you say why?”

  Bakook chuffed. “No, I cannot. And I think you know why.”

  “Something to do with the awakening,” Minu guessed. Their looks said it all. Minu wondered for yet another time what the Squeen had done, and what the awakening would actually mean to allow access to such supposedly forbidden knowledge.

  “All these ships,” Bran said, “so many, and most warships. Tell me, First, what are you going to do with all of them?”

  “My mother has a grand plan,” Lilith said, her face emotionless as usual, looking at Minu. The two women exchanged looks, and slowly both smiled.

  “But it’s going to take a lot more ships,” Minu said. “A lot more.”

  Chapter 23

  April 27th, 535 AE

  Deep Space, Ghost Fleet #2, The Frontier

  It turned out that seventy-two hours had been far too conservative of an estimate. Bran Esterosa was true to his word. He’d worked out a number of options to bring the larger Lost ships back to life and under control of human or Beezer crews. Unfortunately they all turned out to be unsuccessful.

  The pronouncement on the Fiisk was a simple one. It had had its brains blown out. There was no computer core or even a CIC remaining. Lilith conjectured a couple of well-placed shipkillers had penetrated shields and killed the craft in one fell swoop. It was in excellent shape, except for that one minor issue. Since their one working Fiisk was in a similar predicament, only mitigated by using the crippled Kaatan as its nerve center, there was little they could do except bring it under tow.

  The two Kiile were in much better shape when it came to command and control. Their CICs were fine, both of them. Each Kiile had two, one for flight operations, one for ship operations. Likewise their computer cores were fine. They lacked any AI for them.

  Both carriers were crippled as a result of drive and power supply hits. The power supplies could be temporarily mitigated by using ship class EPCs, of which they had a multitude, rigged up in cargo holds and strung via plasma cabling. But the engines were another matter.

  A small team of the technicians and scientists continued to work on the control system fabrication while the majority were moved under Kal’at to try and get the fabrication plants operating.

  “I am certain replacements can be made using the plants,” Lilith assured them. “I’ve consulted with the other Kaatan CI, which assures me it was common for the Kiile class carriers to produce replacement parts for drives.”

  “Parts,” Aaron repeated, “not entire drives.”

  “What is a complete drive except many parts assembled?”

  Of them all, Lilith had worked the hardest. She split her time between salvage of the remaining wrecks, helping the bridge control project, the fabricator project, spending time with her little sister (on which she placed a high priority), and assisting Sergeant Selain in training the Rangers for zero-gravity and space ship familiarity.

  Her average day was nearly twenty hours in length. With the decreased need for sleep from her implants, Lilith didn’t notice the effects as much as most humans would. However, it did begin to show after time.

  The Kaatan had limited fabrication ability. It was not meant to accept the component blocks, though it could use the materials. Huge bins full of debris from the exploded block were fed into the Kaatan’s system and it obliged by producing a new human vacuum suit every hour, a Beezer suit every two, or smaller replacement parts as necessary.

  As March disappeared and then the end of April loomed, a routine was established and that worried Minu. It was all too easy to become complacent with so much going on.

  “One week,” she finally announced at a staff meeting that morning. “I’m giving all teams one week then we’re moving on to Ghost Fleet number three.”

  “What about all these ships we’ve finished and can’t move?” Bakook asked.

  “Ibeen Zeta is operations, correct?”

  His huge head nodded. “The flight crew has finished simulations and the ship’s systems check out. It has damage but we plan to repair that en route.”

  “So we strip as much as we can from these ships and leave,” she said and made a chopping motion with
her right hand. “We’re a sitting target here. A target that’s been here for going on two months. We generate a lot of heat and ambient energy as well. And the longer we’re here the farther that is detectable.”

  “She is correct,” Lilith said, to many of their chagrin. “I am keeping six of the newly reactivated Eseel gunboats out on observation beyond our signature range. They are travelling just over lightspeed away in all six cardinal directions, just ahead of our oldest power signatures. They are now sixty light days out, and eighty-five light days apart. Even at their modest five thousand times the speed of light max speed they can be back in only twenty minutes, but it is their spread out coverage that becomes a concern.

  “Can’t you send out more Eseel?” Aaron asked.

  “I can,” Lilith said, “if I double up I’ll have to send another eight boats out. Even with all those we got from the Kiile, it represents a lot of our gunboat force.”

  “Could you handle that many on remote?” Minu asked her daughter.

  “I could,” Lilith said, “and not much more without sacrificing some other activities. I’ve considered handing this off to the CI from the Fiisk, but the Chosen technical team is running almost constant control simulations and Mom’s project from home is being examined as well. Handing the gunboat sentries on and off between myself and the CI is problematic. There is a risk of missing something.

  “We also have to remember that having all these gunboats out could itself draw attention. They spend most of their time coasting just below the speed of light to avoid generating a tachyon wave front. However they do have to accelerate past our detection event horizon once a day.”

  Minu spoke up. “Even with the Fiisk taking some of the load, there is still the issue of fatigue.” She looked pointedly at her daughter. There were dark circles under her eyes and her hair lacked the usual luster of burnished copper.

  “I’m as capable as the situation calls for,” Lilith said simply.

  “But not forever,” Aaron said. “You are still human.”