by S. H. Jucha
The eight warriors descended the ship’s hatch steps carefully and were disturbed to discover a deep, dark cavern on their exit. When their great clawed feet found no purchase on the metal-alloy deck, they cringed. A warrior’s safety depended on his ability to move quickly, and the hard surface denied them purchase.
For Miriam, the assignment of translation for Emile wouldn’t interfere with her work, which entailed developing detailed engineering plans for the various projects. When Alex contacted her, he’d asked if she could recommend a human to accompany her. The SADEs were aware that Alex was constantly mixing humans and SADEs on work details. It was apparent to them that he was doing all he could to prevent the formation of another Sadesville.
Miriam immediately thought of quiet, introverted Glenn for her human companion. The fact that he’d asked her to dance, and, later, gave into her lead rather than quit in embarrassment, told Miriam that there was much more to the human than met the eye.
In this case, Miriam understood a secondary reason that Alex requested the presence of a human. Willem and Julien had detected the confusion on the Dischnya’s part when their sensitive noses failed to pick up animal scents from the SADEs.
Miriam and Glenn led the warriors to their cabins and pointed out that their four domiciles were clustered together. The doors were locked open and privacy curtains were hung across the openings to make the warriors feel more comfortable.
“Emile is expecting them in the lab now,” Miriam said to Glenn.
“I think that can wait,” Glenn replied. “I’ve heard more than one stomach growling. An early, midday meal would do more to calm them, and it’s a good time. The meal room is empty.”
“I’ll inform Emile,” Miriam replied, as Glenn gestured to the warriors to follow him, pantomiming eating with his fingers.
In the meal room, Miriam seated the Dischnya at a table close to the dispensers. She had Julien’s notes on what Nyslara and Pussiro had enjoyed on their visits, and she programmed the menus accordingly. Then Miriam and Glenn sat back and watched the warriors demolish the food on their dishes.
At first, the Dischnya had sniffed the plates and eyed one another. Then the early, tentative dips of fingers into the meal resulted in a rash of gulping, as large chunks of food were thrown down their throats. To finish their meals, the warriors held the plates to their faces and sucked and licked them clean.
Miriam sent to Glenn,
The warriors eyed the food dispensers with interest, but Miriam informed them that it was time to do their queens’ bidding. Her comment quickly changed the Dischnya’s expressions, and they hopped up from the table. Miriam had taken the opportunity to discuss with Willem the various techniques she might employ to motivate and manage the warriors.
While the group walked through the ship, crew members and Daelon passengers were notified by Miriam to clear the way so that the warriors would be less likely to be disturbed. Simlan and Hessan walked behind Miriam with confidence, whether they felt it or not. This gave the six other warriors, who followed Nyslara’s soma, the courage to stay in step. It was known that Nyslara’s nest had extensive contact with the aliens. Glenn protected the group’s rear from inadvertent contact.
In the lab, Jodlyne took samples from each of the warriors. They would serve as a baseline to help Emile discover what made a queen’s scent different from her soma. Unfortunately, for Emile, his research would prove to not be as simple as he hoped.
After the samples were taken, Miriam and Glenn led the warriors to a conference room with a holo-vid installed at the center of the table. It was Glenn’s idea to entertain the Dischnya, but not in a passive manner. When the warriors weren’t eating, sleeping, or being tested with Emile’s new concoctions, they were in school, and the education became bidirectional.
Glenn was given an opportunity to practice his Dischnya language skills, and the warriors learned to use the holo-vid for myriad uses, including viewing their planet from above. Miriam procured a portable holo-vid and carried it around with her, while Glenn took the warriors on a tour of the ship, explaining many aspects of the vessel in a simple overview.
When Miriam questioned Glenn about the reasons for the tours and education, he replied, “I’ve understood that Alex once challenged Willem to find a means of enabling the Dischnya to crew his ships, and his senior people have been saying Alex told them the same thing, although they don’t seem pleased by the idea. I thought I would try to discover how well the warriors might adapt to shipboard life.”
“And what are you perceiving, Glenn?” Miriam asked, fascinated by this line of thought.
“Well, you’ll notice that they’re entirely comfortable with this ship … cabins, corridors, and meal room, except for the metal decking in the bay. I think the Rêveur mimics their tunnels and rooms. However, I think we should prevent showing the Dischnya any view of the stars and space. That might be going a step too far.”
Testing the warriors hadn’t occurred to Miriam, and Glenn’s comments made her examine his instruction of the Dischnya in another light, and she uploaded her entire record of Glenn’s activities to the Freedom’s controller and earmarked the files for Alex, Julien, and Cordelia.
Eventually, crew crossed the Dischnya’s paths, and the warriors nodded greetings to the men, and stepped aside courteously for the women. Despite warnings to the contrary, the crew manifested the occasional faux pas where it concerned soma courtesy. It was Simlan and Hessan, who came to the rescue, baring their teeth in response to a crew member’s smile and explaining the human gesture to the other warriors.
Those early mistakes by the crew soon ended any attempt by them to smile at the Dischnya. The crew’s pleasantries had elicited the flashing of eight deadly looking displays of fierce, sharp teeth. Unfortunately, the crew’s renewed commitment to the guidelines came a little late. Now, the warriors wished to impress the aliens with their cultural knowledge and bared their canines at everyone they passed.
-12-
Face of Omnia
Once the warship designs were refined, Mickey and his team built test models. The harmonics data results were used by the SADEs to refine the models, and a second test set was built. The process continued until the later iterations of each design displayed minimal improvements in the shells’ efficiency of converting the input of a grav-wave generator to energy.
When Mickey pronounced a shell design complete, the SADEs on his team turned their attentions to designing the interiors, concentrating first on the dual-drive engines and the power cells, which needed to supply both the grav engines and weaponry when in system.
After the data on the ships’ capabilities was provided, it brought Tatia and her people into the picture. The admiral and her commanders were discussing their ship preferences in a Freedom conference room. The table was populated with holo-vids, displaying the various ship models and the early data projections. Interestingly, the only individual who remained seated was the admiral. The commanders, who were leaning against the bulkheads or pacing, had broken into three camps, arguing over the mix of warships that should be constructed.
The most vocal of the commanders was Svetlana, naturally enough. She was fervently making a case for a squadron of Trident warships.
“Why are you so adamant about the Trident series, Svetlana?” Darius asked.
“Why aren’t you?” Svetlana retorted.
“Because the fewer of your monstrous tri-hulls we build, the more less-powerful ships we can build. More ships make a better defensive net,” Darius fired back.
“A better defensive net?” Svetlana scoffed, incredulous at the thought. “Is that what you think Alex is doing, building an enormous defense shield?” Svetlana demanded, leaning stiffened arms on the back of a conference chair. “Well, is it?” she pressed, and punctuated her question by focusing on Tatia.
Tatia had abstained from
the discussion, because she wasn’t sure of her own opinion. She excelled at designing attack strategies when she knew the target. In this instance, Tatia and her commanders were asked to design a fleet in a fog of information.
Several commanders spoke at once in reply to Svetlana’s challenge, but Tatia requested quiet, holding up a finger and saying, “Wait one.”
Tatia sent perfunctorily. Her request produced an awkward silence, a rarity for Renée.
There was another pause, and Tatia could imagine Renée was wrestling with her conscience as to whether to divulge personal information about her partner.
Renée replied, and closed the comm.
“Okay, people,” Tatia announced in a command voice, “take your seats.” She waited until everyone was settled, then she added, “Do not presume a defensive posture in your ship selections. Anticipate building an attack force of considerable power and maneuverability.”
“For what purpose, Admiral?” Ellie asked.
“We’ll be hunting the Nua’ll,” Tatia replied firmly.
Darius was about to question the concept of designing a fleet to attack an enemy who might not exist, but the other commanders were quiet, some even nodding their heads, having accepted the admiral’s pronouncement.
* * *
Alex sat comfortably behind his desk in the owner’s suite aboard the Freedom. His eyes were closed, but he wasn’t sleeping. Instead, he was monitoring the progress of various production teams via the SADEs.
It wasn’t that Alex was checking up on his human compatriots. It was simply that observations and progress reports were more thorough and more efficiently shared by the SADEs, and it prevented him from interrupting his human workers’ focus.
As for the SADEs, they were pleased to be of service, often linking with other SADEs on the team to give Alex a better overview. They went so far as to record crucial moments in their phases and store them on the Freedom’s controller for Alex’s viewing.
Alex opened a vid recorded by Trixie. Standing on a second continent of Omnia, in the middle of the grassy plains, a geologist, who was among the Daelon Independents, had shared details with the SADEs, as to the mineral formations they would need to seek for the materials necessary to build the Dischnya’s structures. The SADEs had grabbed their ground-sounding equipment and exploratory tools and spread out so fast that the geologist could only gawk in confusion at his assistant.
The SADEs located a heavy granite-like formation near the surface. Trixie organized the construction of small, temporary accommodations at the site and excavation had begun. Mickey and Julien designed nanites that could be mixed with the granulated mineral to form slurry. Within a half hour after pouring, a solid slab was set up and removed.
In the meantime, Miriam’s report recorded her efforts to design the processes by which their available equipment could be used to process the rock, mix in the nanites solution, and pour the slurry into slab forms. As the first slabs set up, slings laid at the bottom of the forms were hitched to the underside of travelers and lifted free. It was the same method that Mickey and Julien had devised for moving two dark travelers aboard the Freedom, twenty years ago.
As one step of any project became a routine operation, it freed humans and SADEs to move to new assignments. Paying heed to Alex’s primary motivation, Cordelia ensured the new projects received a fresh mix of individuals, guaranteeing that no one group stayed together. Day by day, she witnessed the small changes evident in the way that humans and SADEs treated one another — interdependence slowly replaced what, at best, could have been called wariness. There will be no Sadesville on Omnia, Alex, she thought.
One group, to whom Alex had no direct access, was scattered across several mining posts out by Celus-6. Ben was in constant communication with his people, and he did transmit daily summaries to the Freedom, which Cordelia dutifully logged and linked the files to Alex.
* * *
Alerted by her advisors, who watched the skies via the nest’s telescope, Nyslara and Pussiro emerged from a tunnel to observe the landing of a strange ship. With heavy engines blasting, it landed at the edge of her nest. One of Dassata’s silent shuttles landed nearby, disgorged a host of his soma, and left again.
The individuals from the shuttle spread out and used tools to measure the ground and plant small devices into the soil. Then the odd ship transformed before the Dischnya’s eyes, bending, groaning, and screeching, as it reshaped itself. Massive, metal treads bit into the ground and drove a wide tool in front of the machine across the ground, like a female’s snout searching for tasty tubers.
During the course of the day, hunters, warriors, females, and pups came out of the tunnels to watch their new home grow. Once the ground was cleared, the excavator launched skyward with a roar of jets to resume its work at Trixie’s construction site. Then shuttles arrived, dangling great pieces of flat-shaped rocks, and the Dischnya yipped and chortled at the alien’s display of power and technology.
Slabs were laid and SADEs joined them with an injection of nanites-slurry into the crevices. By the day’s end, the Omnians had completed the domicile’s floor and begun the walls.
When Nessila set, Nyslara expected the work on the nest’s new home to cease, but reports from the lookouts told her it continued. Dassata’s soma had erected bright lights to illuminate the entire area, and the silent shuttles continued to arrive.
Curious, Pussiro and she ventured close and confirmed what Nyslara surmised when Dassata’s soma passed close. Those continuing to work had no scent, except for the plains’ grasses and soil. They were Dassata’s metal soma.
Before Nyslara turned to her pallet for the evening, Pussiro paid her a visit. He’d yet to move into her quarters, but with Dassata’s plans and the nearby construction, Pussiro had deemed the time inappropriate to transfer his mates and pups to another, although two sub-commanders, who were without mates, had asked for the honor.
“Their efforts continue, my queen,” Pussiro said, squatting next to Nyslara’s pallet where she lay.
“I was thinking of our future, my mate,” Nyslara replied.
“Of ours?” Pussiro asked.
“That too,” Nyslara chortled, “but, most important, of the future of the Dischnya. Dassata’s plan to borrow the queens for his journey to Sawa has led me to think that my dreams have been small. When my heir takes the robe of power from me, there may no longer be a nest for her to rule.”
Pussiro’s head snapped up in alarm, and Nyslara commanded he sit beside her. She wrapped her tail around his waist and squeezed gently.
“We are of the old ways, my mate,” Nyslara said softly. “Dassata will change the lives of the Dischnya forever, and I can’t say that I regret that. We would have died in these dark tunnels in another generation or two. Dassata will lift the Dischnya into the light and into space. Much will change, but for now, we have each other and a bright tomorrow.”
Pussiro looked unconvinced of the wondrousness of the future Nyslara described. She chuffed, pulled his head toward her with her tail, and licked his muzzle with her long tongue to ease the deep frown in his forehead.
In the morning, after a full meal, Nyslara collected Pussiro, and they hurried to observe the p
rogress. The work had never stopped. The structure was now fully enclosed, and individuals were busy cutting openings in the walls. What Nyslara envisioned, the creation of forty-one new homes for the nests over the course of many seasons, would probably be completed before her pups were born.
The rudimentary structure that Nyslara saw forming fell far short of Willem’s final design. The bare roof had yet to be planted with plains’ grasses, and the walls hadn’t received their solar cells. Shields would cover the face of the panels when night fell or gritty winds blew. Power cells would be hidden in sealed chambers that vented to the roof. In time, the Dischnya would be trained to care for the technological prowess of their structures, but no one knew how long that might take.
* * *
Ben Diaz was ecstatic. His mining teams had confirmed the Sojourn’s telemetry survey of plentiful deposits of the moons and asteroids surrounding Celus-6 of the minerals and compounds that they sought. Ben’s team had cleared the Freedom’s bays of stored ore excavators and processing machines, which were left there years ago after using them to help launch Haraken’s manufacturing and housing base.
During the early days at Celus-6 and its near satellites, Ben oversaw the completion of temporary housing for the teams and the establishment of the first mining sites, ore recovery plants, and transportation system. The central cavities of four huge barges were filled with raw aggregate from the moons or asteroids, destined for the processing plants, and the barges’ exterior tanks contained frozen gasses.
Each evening, Ben would return to his cramped personal quarters to enjoy the company of his partner, Simone Turin. He was pleased that Simone insisted on being given a day job, and he offloaded the accounting of the ore and compound processing quantities to her. It did free him to focus on the production processes.
One evening, Ben arrived at the living quarters and asked Simone for the latest totals. When she updated him, he swore briefly and then said, “I’m sorry, Simone, I should have told you that we need to give Captain Cordelia a few days warning for her to schedule a trip out here with the city-ship. Based on those figures, our tanks will be full by the end of tomorrow’s second shift.”