Earth Song: Twilight Serenade

by Mark Wandrey

  “And thus vulnerable,” Lilith said, snapped her fingers and nodded. “You may be elderly and somewhat deranged, but you have a very good point.”

  “Thanks!” he cackled and went back to making notes.

  “He has a point,” Lilith said, “leaving the planetary shield unarmed might be short sighted on our part. Especially since it is so far from the planet, and if we could easily remedy that at this early stage. Salvaged ship-class weapons could easily be relocated from Aether, as the components are designed to fit through a portal.”

  Minu looked at Bjorn and smirked. “Bjorn, in the future it would be nice if you let us in on these sort of ideas before you unilaterally change a design?” He grinned and shrugged absently. Minu made a note on her tablet: Get Ted to supervise Bjorn’s design work. “And Lilith, you’re up last.”

  “First,” she said from where her image floated. She didn’t bother standing, as she technically already was. “I’ve deployed six Eseel just outside our star system. As agreed, intelligence reports are now being received on a secure data channel. Acting on advice from the Squeen, we’ve encrypted that data with algorithms provided by the Tog. My calculations indicate it would be nearly impossible for a ship to make it through without being detected.

  “Are we still planning to deploy our own sensor net?” Minu asked.

  “The deployment is almost complete,” Cherise said. “We mostly used local contractors for assembly. We figured less noses in the pie. It slowed it down a little. Someone could figure out what we’re building,” Lilith warned her.

  “Being blind is a bigger risk. Anything else, Lilith?”

  “Another Kaatan is ready for service once the CI being used in the Fiisk is prepared for return to it. The CI has volunteered to remain where it is for now. Pending crews being made ready for service of the Fiisk, that is. I’ve also completed my review of the second encounter of the super-Kaatan battle riders and conclude then are indeed a new design. Their operation is tactically perfect, but does not match The People’s stand operating procedures. A previously unidentified unknown force is operating these ships.”

  “Any insights as to who it might be?” Dram asked. “We’ve reviewed the after action reports and find their timing quite fortuitous.”

  “No clue, sir. And I agree. It is clear they are not willing to ally themselves with us, but also they have aided us on two occasions.”

  “And they are watching your movements closely enough to arrive in the nick of time when you needed them,” Jasmine added.

  “Agreed,” Lilith said with a nod of her head. “I’m confident they don’t know about Aether, though.”

  “And why is that?” Dram asked.

  “Because there would be some evidence of these ships in the area,” Lilith said. “I have ships monitoring around the edge of the nebula and have detected no vessels within several light years.”

  “The council appreciates your information,” Minu said. Lilith nodded her head in reply.

  Minu stood and spoke to the assembled people. “Almost three years ago I brought to the Council at that time the news from the Tog of our position with them, and requested they vote on our Awakening, freeing us from the legal stewardship of the Tog.”

  There was total silence around the chamber as they all watched the intensity of her return gaze. None of them, not even Minu’s closest friends, had expected her to revisit this now.

  “The council voted no. There are only three people here now who sat on that council,” she said, looking at Jasmine, Bjorn and Dram each in turn. “And there were two less on the council back then than there are now. I was never informed of who voted for or against that motion, only that it was defeated.” Dram started to speak and she held up her hand. “And I won’t request to be informed. It might be my right as First to review that record, but that was then, and this is now.

  “I, Minu Groves, First among the Chosen formally request a vote of the Chosen council. I move that we petition the Concordia for our Awakening.”

  Ariana had Mindy curled in one arm gently swinging her back and forth, walking the nursery floor, cooing to her and singing a song Minu didn’t recognize when she returned to her office. Aaron was in a recliner snoring quietly.

  “She just woke up, First,” the older woman smiled and stood.

  “Ariana, please just call me Minu?”

  “As you wish, First.”

  Mindy turned her head at her mother’s voice and held out her arms. “Am, ma, ma, ma!” she said and smiled ear to ear, her first teeth shiny white.

  “Hi baby girl!” Minu said and came over to take her daughter. “That’s almost a mama!”

  “Almost, ma’am.”

  “She slept the whole meeting?”

  “Yes, the whole time. She didn’t even wake up when your husband came in. He worked on some sort of designs for a few hours before falling asleep.”

  Minu glanced at the wall as she let Mindy start to nurse. It was the Phoenix FTL he’d been spending all his time with. Apparently Cherise had categorized dozens of wrecked Eseel in the Aether debris field with functional drives. They were being salvaged and sent through the portal to Bellatrix, there to be moved to Groves Industries. These new Phoenix would be true starships, the first made almost entirely by man. All except the faster than light drives, shield generators, and weapons of course.

  She could see he’d made them quite a bit bigger. This wasn’t a shuttle, but a small starship. Over a hundred and fifty meters long, just twenty-five meters shorter than the Kaatan, with a considerable cargo hold.

  She couldn’t read all his technical jargon but it looked to be fast too. Maybe not as fast as the Kaatan, but damned fast. Next to the name was a handmade note digitally written with his finger. Prometheus class.

  “My husband has a thing for fire, it seems,” she said quietly.

  “Excuse me, ma’am?”

  “Oh, nothing Ariana. Just musing. Thanks for taking care of little bit here. She eat any?”

  “A bit, ma’am. She prefers your flavor, I think.” The woman was not only an incredible personal assistant, but a natural nanny. With six children, that shouldn’t have been a surprise. She’d wet nursed Mindy regularly. Minu had been grateful for that during her last absence to deliver the portal initiator to Midgard.

  Even with the codex delivering biologically perfect alternatives to breast feeding to Bellatrix, something like 90% of women still breastfed for at least the first month, though it tapered off now pretty quickly after that. Mindy was in the tenth percentile, being over four months and still on the tit, as it were. But with that breastfeeding culture still in place, wet nurses were still commonplace. Though mostly as a luxury with the rich, and an expedient money saver with the poor.

  “You’ve been an invaluable help with Mindy,” Lilith told her. “I can’t possibly thank you enough.”

  “I’ve been in milk for going on five straight years now,” Ariana chuckled. “It was an honor to help, ma’am.”

  Minu sat in the other recliner and nursed the baby until she was clearly finished, then bounced the baby girl on her knee. Mindy squealed and giggled each time.

  “She had a few bites of the mashed fruit right before I put her down, not more than a few minutes after the meeting,” Ariana noted as she picked up her tablet. “Anything else before I go?”

  “Yes, there is something but it can wait for tomorrow.”

  “Surely, First, go right ahead.”

  “You’ll find a file named Awakening, I just moved it from the secure area. Inside are instructions for assembling a mission to Nexus and outlines for press releases to the civilian news services. Please start on that tomorrow?”

  “Certainly, First. Is something big going to happen?”

  “Only the biggest event in human history since we arrived on Bellatrix.”

  “I see,” Ariana replied deadpan. “Well, I’ll be heading home, ma’am.”

  “Good night, Ariana.”

  “Good nigh
t, First.”

  The door slid closed behind her assistant and Minu reached down to brush Mindy’s black hair back from her forehead. The little girl watched her mother intently as she sucked, her green eyes inquisitive. “And you get to take another space trip,” she said. Without realizing it, Minu began humming the same melody she’d heard Ariana singing when she’d come in.

  “We all going this time?” Aaron asked. Minu glanced at him and smiled at his bleary eyed expression.

  “Without a doubt,” she said.

  “Excellent,” Aaron replied and took up his tablet to pick up where he had left off on the design. “Always wanted to see Nexus.”

  “So you just figured the vote would succeed?” Minu asked peevishly. “You left as soon as I announced it.”

  “There isn’t much they won’t give you,” Aaron said, moving a series of heat sinks to a different area of the hull. “Everyone knows we’ve out grown the Tog. Hell, we’re more of a threat to them now than an asset.”

  “Threat? What do you mean?”

  “We’re practically in a state of open space warfare with three other species, dear. What do you think will happen to the Tog if this continues to escalate?”

  “They have ships,” she reminded him as she tickled Mindy’s tummy.

  “Not many, or we’d have run into them out there. They’re probably watching all this going down, shadowing us here and there.”

  “Maybe these battle riders are theirs?” Minu speculated.

  “Lilith doesn’t think so, and I agree. Fighting isn’t the Tog’s thing, and those battle riders are top notch combat vessels.”

  “Still, we can’t rule out the Tog being involved with those other ships, somehow.”

  “That is true,” Aaron agreed.

  She wandered out of the nursery and into her main office. Rain was silently pattering against the huge moliplas window that made up one wall of her office; the view overlooking the equatorial sea was always magnificent and this was no different. Outside a summer storm was building up and she saw the last of the Peninsula fishing ships racing towards port. A lightning bolt forked across the sky, its surreal light strobed into the office throwing faces into stark profile.

  Mindy jerked at the sudden flash and looking around at the light. A moment later the entire fort rumbled from the fury of the building storm. Minu was afraid the baby would cry at the harsh crack of thunder. But as it rumbled through its peak and began to diminish Mindy seemed to consider the sound, then gave a little grunt and went back to trying to pull Minu’s single golden pip off her sleeve.

  “I guess you’re a child of the storm as well,” Minu told her.

  There was a knock at the door then it slid open. Minu looked up from her desk to see Dram sticking his head in. “Got a minute?”

  “Always,” Minu said and gestured for him to come in.

  He glanced at the open door to the nursery. “Private conversation?”

  “Aaron?”

  “Yes dear?”

  “First stuff, can we have a few?”

  “Sure,” he said and got up to close the door. “Hey, Dram.”

  “Aaron,” Dram replied in his deep voice, “sorry.”

  “Not a problem,” Aaron said and held up the tablet, “working anyway.”

  Dram thanked him against as the door closed. “You should convince him to come back.”

  “Not happening,” Minu said. “Private life agrees with him.”

  “Still, he’d be an asset, and you could convince him.”

  “I could,” Minu agreed, “but I won’t.”

  “Fair enough,” Dram said, crossing the room to come up to the desk. It was the same one that had once sat in the office of the First back in Steven’s Pass. The same one her father used to sit behind. “May I?” he asked and gestured at the chair.

  “Please,” she said. “She likes it when I walk so I’ll stay standing, if you don’t mind.”

  He sat and watched her bouncing Mindy on her hip as she walked around the room. “Wish I’d had time for this sort of stuff.”

  “You’re not that old,” Minu chuckled.

  “Tell that to the ladies,” he said. He felt more like an uncle than a second in command. However he was a brilliant scout and was almost universally loved within the Chosen. “Chriso only had you in his office a handful of times.”

  “I remember a few times,” she agreed. “But you didn’t come by to talk about old times.”

  “No, I didn’t.” He delayed a minute as he took stock of the office, noting some of the holographic pictures she decorated with. “You know I was the one that derailed the last vote on Awakening.” He wasn’t looking at her when she said it. She knew because her gaze turned to steel.

  “Why?” was all she could manage to ask. Her hormones were in much better shape then a few months earlier. Still she could feel her renowned anger beginning to rise inside.

  “I had two reasons,” Dram explained. “One I can’t share with you just now. Maybe someday.” He got a distant, almost sad look on his face. “The other actually has nothing to do with you.”

  “Nothing to do with me? You sure shot me in the ass with that move. Do you know how much farther along we’d be by now if you’d only supported that motion?”

  “Do you know how much worse off we would likely be if I had?” His question caught her even more off guard than his admission to being the one who stopped her. “The council was about fifty-fifty for Awakening. We all saw the potential, but some also saw the risks. And you know, those risks are great.”

  Minu nodded.

  “We were seeing real profits from farming ventures and the credits the Rangers were bringing in, and the older species are making it harder for us to get any good tech for projects. Even without the Tog’s protection, we’re small enough that we’re likely not a threat. As long as the big boys don’t realize we’re the ones gallivanting around space, getting their faces and blowing up their ships.”

  “Then why—”

  Dram held up a huge hand. “Please, let me finish?”

  Minu relented and he continued: “Jacob was on both sides of it, like usual. He never was much for the hard decisions, and the ones he did make tended to be bad ones. As long as he waffled, I didn’t commit.

  “It was Pagalio that pushed Jacob over at last. He commented that with all we’ve learned about training the Rangers we could sell that training to alien species for a premium. And yes, sell shock rifles as well.”

  “That rotten son of a bitch,” Minu hissed.

  Dram nodded. “You would have gotten what you wanted, and lost everything. Jacob was on board. I instantly came out against it. It only took a quiet message to Bjorn to get him to follow my lead, and the motion went down to defeat. Oh, Jacob was pissed. He even accused me of an affair with you!” They both laughed, but Minu did it to cover the sight flush of excitement she felt at the thought.

  Dram stood up and turned to watch the storm outside. It was raging now, the sea battering the ancient cliff the fort was built on like a monster tearing into its foe. No craft were out on the waters. It would have been suicide.

  “I couldn’t let Jacob do that,” Dram told her, “not to you, and not to what you’d created in the Rangers. Also, giving away the shock rifles was stupidity even more epic than he was normally capable of.”

  “I felt so betrayed,” she admitted.

  “I know you did, and I’m sorry. I hope you understand better now.”

  “I do, and thanks for that, even if it hurt at the time.” Dram stood up to leave.

  “Dram?” she asked and he looked back at her. “Any word on Jacob?”

  “He turned up a while ago at his family estate out in the steppes. They have a few hundred hectares of good hops land out there. But a month ago, he just disappeared again. No one knows where he went.”

  “Could he have gotten offworld?”

  Dram’s eyes narrowed as he considered it. His eyes had worry lines now that she hadn’t not
iced before. And by the looks of the little stubble on his head, he didn’t have much left to shave.

  “I don’t believe so.”

  Minu gently took the stylus from Mindy that she’d gotten from her desk and substituted a rattle before she could fuss about the loss.

  “You’re worried?” he asked Minu.

  “Yes,” she admitted. “I wish it were just nerves or sour grapes, but I just don’t trust him. He said some pretty nasty things to the press, and we know he’s been offworld a couple times.”

  “His family production of hops is in the trading consortium,” Dram reminded her. “A valuable trading commodity.”

  “I know,” she said. “Still…” She looked at Mindy for another moment then came to a decision. “I want a covert Scout team assigned to him.” Dram’s jaw set and he nodded. “Report only. Put good people on it, Dram.”

  “Offworld authorization?”

  “Unlimited. Damn, I wish Christian were still with us. He was one of the best.”

  “We never did verify what happened to him,” Dram said. “His team just said he disappeared one evening when he had watch. Took a PCR and manually dialed through a portal, so no trace.”

  Minu nodded absently, she’d read the report, of course. Two teams of Scouts had tried to follow his trail but found nothing. He was on the wall now, MIA and presumed dead.

  “The team monitoring Jacob only reports to you, and me,” Minu instructed.

  “Understood.” He walked over and bent to her, kissing her on the cheek. “Your father would be very proud of you,” he said, then gently patted Mindy on her tummy. The baby looked up at him curiously.

  “Thanks,” Minu said as he left. “I only wish I knew who my father really was,” she said after he was gone.

  Chapter 34

  September 6th, 535 AE

  Planetary Government Offices, New Moscow, Rusk Capital City, Bellatrix

  Minu cursed her luck as she climbed from the transport, a pair of Rangers coming to attention on either side. From the rear compartment Sergeant Selain was seeing to the rest of his detail getting organized. “Did you have to bring the whole squad, Sarge?” she asked.