Genesis

by Lawrence P White

  Greg smiled. “Fair enough. Are you ready to debrief?”

  “I am, and I want Ollie to attend. He might hear things that offend him, but I think he would consider it a great honor to be a part of it. I have nothing to say that he can’t hear.”

  Greg invited Ollie, though the Harbok was surprised and even a little hesitant. “Are you sure you want me there for this?” he asked Greg.

  “No, but Kannick is. I don’t know what he’s going to say, and he said he’ll offend you from time to time, but we’re trying to keep as few secrets from you as we can. You have to learn about us if you’re going to advise us, and that includes the bad with the good.”

  Ollie nodded. “I came prepared for that.”

  Emily, now 18 years old, spoke up. “May I attend the meeting?” she asked. When Greg and Arlynn exchanged worried glances, Emily pressed harder. “Captain Ollie is going to be around us a lot, including around me,” she said. “If I don’t know what he knows, and more important,” she continued, shifting her gaze to Ollie, “what you don’t know, how am I going to keep from slipping up?”

  Everyone’s eyebrows lifted in contemplation. A lot of other Alliance members would likely find themselves in the same predicament over the coming months.

  Greg looked a question to Ollie who responded by stepping up to Emily. He knelt down on his only knee, supporting himself with his crutch. “I don’t know you very well,” he said to her, “but in some ways you remind me of my daughter.”

  “What’s her name? How old is she?” Emily asked.

  Ollie’s eyes seemed to sink into his head. “Emily,” he said, “if you’re going to be a part of this, you have to know right from the outset that some of the things we deal with are hideous. Do you know about the Oort?”

  “Yes,” she said in a small voice.

  “Do you know what they do to people?”

  “I don’t think any of us really know, but I’ve seen pictures.”

  “My wife and child are dead, Emily. The Oort took them over.”

  Emily’s eyes widened and instantly brimmed with tears. “I’m sorry, Ollie. I didn’t know.”

  “Of course, you didn’t. Greg is good at keeping secrets.”

  Emily spontaneously wrapped her arms around Ollie’s neck and gave him a hug. Then, embarrassed, she stepped back, but she did not apologize.

  He, too, was surprised, but a smile found its way to his gruff exterior. “I have no objection to your presence,” he said to her. “I might if you were An’Atee, but coming from Earth, you’re made of hardier stuff. Still, what you end up hearing might mark the end of childhood for you. We’ll be discussing adult things.”

  Her lips firmed, and she nodded. “I made that transition when I died on Earth and woke up here as a new person.” She turned to Arlynn with a question in her eyes. “Mom, can I stay?”

  For Arlynn, the atmosphere in the room instantly changed. For a long moment, she stopped breathing. Then she stepped up to Emily and took her in her arms. She buried her face in Emily’s hair, then looked to Greg with glistening eyes.

  When he returned an uncertain look, Arlynn loosened her grip on Emily. In a voice meant to be private but was not, she said, “That’s the first time you’ve called me Mom.”

  Emily’s eyes widened, and she stepped away, though her gaze never left Arlynn, as if it were just the two of them in the room. “I’ve been thinking of you as Mom for a long time.”

  Arlynn’s lips trembled as she pulled Emily back to herself. “Thank you. That’s a gift more precious than you know.” She blinked a few times, then shifted her gaze around the room. “Sorry, where were we?” she asked.

  Greg stepped into the uncomfortable silence. “Well, that wasn’t part of our plan. Emily, you’re welcome to join us.”

  They adjourned to a small conference room. Ollie ducked through the door and sat at one end of the table, towering over everyone in his Harbok chair. Greg sat at the other end of the table. Danaria sat beside Kannick along one side of the table with their backs to windows that opened onto a larger room of workstations. Arlynn and Emily sat across from them.

  Greg opened the meeting by saying, “This is Kannick’s debriefing.” Looking at Ollie, he said, “But I need your agreement on something before I turn it over to him. The process we envision with you and your men won’t work if we have to tiptoe around secrets. We want to make you, and only you, privy to certain sensitive information. When we get to those items, it will be obvious. I won’t ask you to withhold anything from Lor Tas’val, but I do ask that you keep certain things secret from the rest of your people until we both agree the time is right.”

  “The Lor made the same demand of me. I accept,” Ollie rumbled without hesitation.

  Despite his lengthy incarceration, Kannick gave a favorable impression of Lor Tas’val. As opposed to the military people he had met, Tas’val was more than just a warrior. Kannick believed he had his people’s best interests at heart, and he would most likely welcome whatever the An’Atee could provide. However, that support would have to be carefully doled out if Tas’val was to avoid alienating his senior commanders.

  Kannick’s main concern was Harbok computers. The plans he had given the Harbok for the laser tagger had not included the science behind An’Atee crystal computers. The Harbok jump process as they transitioned into and out of hyperspace was another area of serious concern to him. Not only was the process dangerous, the fact that its outcome was never certain frightened him. To make matters worse, the process took a lot longer than on An’Atee ships, and the crew was exhausted by the time they completed the last.

  Inadequate computers lay at the heart of both of these issues, though in terms of jump calculations, he suspected it included a lack of trust in the computers making the computations as well. “I’d like to gift them the science,” he finished.

  Greg leaned back in his chair with his gaze shifting between Kannick and Ollie. “I’ll take it under consideration,” he said.

  Ollie glared at him. “You’re holding back after everything we’ve done for you?”

  Kannick, too, seemed taken aback. “Seriously?” he asked.

  Greg’s lips firmed as he leaned forward over the table with his hands clasped together. To Kannick, he said, “We’re aware of the problem and want to resolve it. I’m not sure giving the science is the best way to do it. Developing manufacturing processes will take them years.” He shifted a hard gaze to Ollie and said, “I’ll give you all the computers you want. As for the science, we’ll talk more about that tomorrow when we brief you on the rest of our plan.”

  Ollie copied Greg’s posture, placing hands the size of dinner plates together on the table and leaning into them. “Why wait?”

  “You’re focused on immediate solutions. We need to take long-term goals into our deliberations. We’re going to complicate things tomorrow when you get the rest of the picture.”

  “These computers will have a direct impact on our fighting the Oort,” Ollie countered.

  “They’ll impact a lot more than that. They’ll eventually impact daily life for your people. But there are lots of other things you might want more, like ships, cars, teaching machines, genetically altered crops and livestock. The list goes on and on. All these things have commercial value, and the rights to them are owned by individuals or corporations, not me. We’ll talk more about it tomorrow.”

  Greg and Ollie locked gazes, and from his body language, Greg sensed the various thoughts going through Ollie’s head. None of them were good thoughts. He held up a hand and said, “Bear with me, Ollie. This is Kannick’s debriefing. You get your turn tomorrow.”

  Ollie nodded grimly, clearly unsatisfied with Greg’s position.

  When Kannick resumed, his description of the fighting that Ollie and his crew demonstrated surprised even Ollie. They had seriously impressed Kannick even if the ship had not. “They took on twelve Oort all by themselves,” Kannick said. “They defeated all twelve, and they did so with two
major computer crashes that took them out of the action for minutes at a time. They’re fighting under deplorable conditions.”

  Ollie started to interject, but then he remembered it was Kannick’s debriefing, not his own. He held his tongue.

  But Kannick noticed his reaction. “You were magnificent! But think what you could have done with one of our ships. You flew one. You know what I’m talking about.”

  Ollie rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I’d like to try it with a full Harbok crew.”

  Stepping back into the conversation, Greg said, “You’ll get your chance, Ollie. Wait until you see our improved models. We now mount four lasers.”

  “You have that much power?”

  “We do. The ships we send to you will be of the latest design.”

  “You added a second computer?”

  Kannick winced and shot a glance at Greg.

  “What are you talking about?” Greg asked, his brow furrowing in response to that glance.

  “Harbok ships have multiple computers,” Kannick said. “They need them because they fail frequently. Ours don’t, but Ollie claims his men will not go into space with just one computer.”

  Greg paled. “We only have one computer?”

  “It’s all we need. They never fail,” Kannick answered.

  Greg shook his head. “I had no idea. I’m with Ollie on this one. You designed your ships for exploration, but these are fighting ships. We need all the redundancy we can fit into them.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully and wondered aloud, “I wonder if Grayson knows?”

  “Who’s Grayson?” Ollie asked.

  “I’ll tell you tomorrow,” Greg answered. “He’s someone you’re going to get to know really well. Getting back to this computer thing, we’ll make it happen, somehow. I promise.”

  “I learned one other item of supreme importance,” Kannick resumed. “The home world of the Harbok was one of the first to fall to the Oort some two thousand years ago. With it went the very infrastructure of their society. They’ve somehow managed to hold off the Oort with, essentially, just the resources from their colonies.”

  Silence met this statement. All eyes fell on Ollie, who shrugged. “What can I say? My way of life is all I have ever known.”

  Kannick had lived with this knowledge for some time now. “I don’t know how you’ve managed, Ollie. My hat is off to you.”

  “You’re a proud people, Ollie, and you should be.” Greg added. “I hope you’re not too proud to accept help from outsiders.”

  “Make that help meaningful, and we’ll accept it,” Ollie stated without hesitation. “Those are Lor Tas’val’s words, not my own.”

  * * * * *

  They met in the same room the following day for Ollie’s briefing. Everyone but Greg sat. He stayed standing and paced with his hands behind his back. He had given a lot of thought to what he wanted to reveal to Ollie, but still, he hesitated. Once said, his words could not be taken back. He decided to lead with the hard part.

  “Your priority is to fight the Oort,” he said. “So is ours. If we’re to help you, we need to build a partnership. It sounds like Lor Tas’val is on board with that concept, otherwise why would he have sent you to us?”

  “Agreed,” Ollie stated in his gruff voice. “He told me that I was representing him, that I was to find out if a partnership with the An’Atee will help us in our fight against the Oort. He also told me that I could no longer think like a ship’s captain. If I accepted this position, I had to think on a larger scale. The decisions I make might affect our civilization, not just our fighting men.”

  “Can you?”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  Greg nodded. “I went through the same thing. So did Arlynn and Kannick. It can be a wrenching experience. I wouldn’t have invited you here if I didn’t think you were up to it.”

  Ollie’s eyebrows lifted, and he shrugged.

  Greg nodded. “At this level of leadership, our most important work is done in our heads. In our minds. We envision where we want to go, we develop plans to get there, then we lead others down that path. Along the way, we modify our plans as our vision becomes clearer.”

  When Ollie nodded, Greg continued. “Lor Tas’val set you on a path. I might modify that path.” Ollie just stared at him, waiting, so Greg continued. “When I arrived here, the Atee, the head of the An’Atee, set me on my path. She did it by asking me to describe what life would be like in the far future . . . 500 or maybe even 1,000 years in the future. I considered for a while, then I told her I envisioned us buzzing all over the galaxy in spaceships. I envisioned you Harbok, my Terrans, and the An’Atee doing business with each other, maybe even sharing things on cultural levels. I envisioned us flying cruise ships to vacation spots, cruise ships with passengers from all three civilizations.”

  Still standing, Greg leaned forward, supporting himself with his hands on the edge of the table. “I know you Harbok are not big on vacations, but can you see a day when our three civilizations will work together in cooperation?”

  “We’ve discussed this before. You know I can’t see beyond the Oort. It’s equally likely that by then we will have succumbed to the Oort.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Greg replied. “Actually, if things continue as they are now, I give the Oort high odds of winning.”

  Ollie frowned but said nothing.

  Greg stared at him, then stood up straight again. “Stay with me on this Ollie. I need you to use your imagination. Imagine, if you can, that we’ve somehow defeated the Oort. We’re at peace and getting along well with each other. The An’Atee have, in gratitude for your protecting them, given you some of their advanced technology which makes life easier and more enjoyable for all Harbok.”

  “Isn’t that why we’re doing this?”

  Greg nodded. “It is. For the moment, imagine that we’re at peace with each other, that we’re trading with each other, and we’re bringing Earth into the picture.” He paused until Ollie shrugged, then said, “Life is good. But suddenly, another new civilization comes calling, and it’s not friendly. We’re looking at another possible war. Will you Harbok come to our rescue again? Will you give up your new, more enjoyable lifestyle to rescue us?”

  Ollie sat back in his chair, clearly troubled. He stared long at Greg, then the more he thought about it, the more that gaze turned into a glare. His lips formed into a thin line. He shifted his gaze to each of the others at the table and was about to speak when his gaze reached Emily. The glare softened, and he said, “If we must, yes.”

  “You hesitated,” Greg said softly. “Why?”

  “I think you know.”

  “Spell it out for me, Ollie. Today of all days, we need to be open with each other.”

  Ollie shrugged and said, “It’s unfair. Still, I don’t see the An’Atee ever fighting, and Earth is far from developing interstellar travel.”

  Greg nodded. “We agree with you. Rather than just accept the obvious, though, we’re doing something about it. We’re making changes.”

  He stared at Ollie, knowing that he was coming to the crux of his presentation, but not certain if Ollie was ready to break out of the mold of fighter pilot into the mold of diplomat.

  “This is where it gets more challenging for you. You’re a fighter, a great fighter, and you’re focused intently on beating the Oort—to our benefit. But I need you to be more than a fighter right now. I need you to be a leader, not only of fighters but of all your people.” Ollie stared back at him with a deliberate stare, clearly suggesting that Greg get on with it.

  “What if,” he asked Ollie, “we could, just by putting our heads together and thinking things through, find a way to keep your people from having to give up everything they’ve struggled so hard for?”

  “That would be nice. Will thinking make the An’Atee able to pull the trigger?”

  Greg lifted an eyebrow. “Actually, enough time might, but we can’t count on it.”

  Ollie nodded. “Thank you for
that. Where are you going with this?”

  “We have three civilizations fighting the Oort, right?”

  “No. Only one.”

  Greg frowned. “Fair enough. We have three civilizations threatened by the Oort. These same three civilizations might, someday in the future, face another war of equal intensity.”

  Ollie nodded but remained silent.

  “I want to introduce another civilization into the picture, Ollie. Its fighting abilities are equal to yours, its technology is equal to the An’Atee’s, and it wants to partner with us.”

  Ollie stayed silent for a long time. When he spoke, it was with a sense of awe. “We wouldn’t have to go it alone.” He looked sharply at Greg. “Is there such a civilization? Does the Lor know?”

  Greg frowned and waved his arm toward the ceiling. “It’s a big galaxy out there, Ollie. There probably is one, but we haven’t met it yet.”

  Ollie rolled his eyes and deflated. “You create hope, then take it away? Why?”

  “The hope is real, Ollie. Hold that hope in your mind, because it’s your mind that will give it life.”

  Ollie stared at him, then shook his head. “What?”

  “We in this room are going to create it.”

  “A whole new civilization? You’re joking.”

  “I’m not. Actually, we’ve already laid the groundwork. We’ve formed a partnership between the An’Atee and Earth. We just need you Harbok to complete it. We’re calling it the Alliance.”

  Ollie shot a sharp look to Kannick. “You mentioned that word months ago. All you would tell me was that it was our future.”

  Kannick nodded. “The Alliance is our future. It started as a concept in our minds, but it’s no longer imaginary. The people who form this Alliance will come from Earth, the An’Atee, and you Harbok. As partners, we’ll form a whole new civilization.”

  Ollie went internal for a long time. When his thoughts returned to the room, he focused on Kannick, not Greg. “That’s not what Lor Tas’val had in mind at all.”