Yolanda nodded. Racism – human racism – was a learned impulse, for better or worse. But there were people who simply could not cope with encountering non-human forms of intelligent life, face to face. It had puzzled her, when she’d first encountered it while reading though the files, but it made a certain amount of sense. Humans had certain perceptions about what an intelligent creature should look like and many of the Galactics simply didn't fit it. And others were so inhuman that fear seemed a logical reaction.
“But some of the weirdest creatures are the closest to us,” she mused. “I mean, they look like us.”
“Not that much like us,” Martin said. “And certainly not on the inside.”
He sighed. “You know one of my squadmates was busted for possession of interracial porn?”
Yolanda blinked. “Really?”
“Yes, really,” Martin said. “Humans making love to non-humans. It was not a pleasant sight.”
“Yuck,” Yolanda said. “And he was busted for it?”
“The Galactics have a flat ban on interracial relationships,” Martin reminded her. “Even possessing such porn could get someone into real trouble, out in the galaxy.”
“I wouldn't have thought they needed to bother,” Yolanda said. Humans and Varnar were both humanoid, but it would be impossible for one to actually have sex with the other. Their sexual organs were simply not compatible. “Who would want to?”
“There were people who asked the same question of white and black humans, years ago,” Martin said. “They didn't see how interracial sex could work ... and that was among humans, who are the same under the skin. Aliens ... are just another type of person.”
“But not biologically compatible,” Yolanda said. “Black and white humans can produce children, but there’s no such thing as a mixed human and alien child.”
Martin smiled. “I could see some people enjoying the thought of being able to fuck without having children,” he said. “But nanotech sees to that too.”
Yolanda sighed, then kept walking. When they reached the wall, she found a teleport that would take them back to the guest levels. The sensation of teleportation was still unpleasant – she had been told it was purely imaginary, which didn't help – but it was far quicker than walking through the whole asteroid. Besides, this way they could jump back into the ecosystem caves the following day without having to retrace their steps.
“I booked us a pair of rooms for three days,” she said. “Do you have enough leave to cover it?”
“They expect me back in two days,” Martin said. “Will you be alright on your own?”
On Earth, Yolanda knew, it wouldn't have been a stupid question. There were places no unaccompanied woman dared go, save at risk of losing her virtue or her life. But in the Solar Union, crime was minimal. She could spend her remaining day of shore leave exploring a different asteroid, or simply sleeping naturally and getting as much rest as she could. Or, if she wanted, she could immerse herself in local news and choose a place to live, after her graduation.
“I think so,” she said, dryly. “Shall we find a place to eat?”
The guest levels were heaving with people, ranging from fairly normal humans to cyborgs and people who were clearly visiting from Earth. Yolanda had no idea why there was only one zoo asteroid open to the public, but it was a thriving business. They had to struggle to find a place to sit down, then order food through their implants. It was nearly twenty minutes before it finally arrived, floated over on an antigravity beam.
“That,” Yolanda said, looking at Martin’s plate, “is a lot of food.”
“I’m under orders to eat as much as I can,” Martin said, a little defensively. “You should see how much we can cram into our mouths in five minutes.”
“I don’t think I want to,” Yolanda said. Martin had ordered a burger large enough to feed two or three people back on Earth, if it had been legal to serve it. She had a feeling that no fast food chain could have offered such food without paying vast bribes to the health and safety police. “Eat slowly, all right.”
Martin lowered his eyes. “I will try,” he said. “But ... we were taught to eat quickly and often, because we never know when the next meal will arrive.”
“Good advice,” Yolanda said.
They ate their food slowly, savouring every bite. Yolanda checked her implants while she ate, skim-reading the news provided by the asteroid’s datanet. The lead story at the moment – insofar as anything could be called the lead story – was a man who’d murdered his wife and daughter in a fit of rage, apparently at the daughter defying him over something. It looked as though he would get the death penalty, the writer noted, although the jury had yet to pass sentence. Even if he didn't, the rest of his life would probably be spent on Venus, helping to make the overheated world a suitable place for humans to live.
They don’t accept excuses here, she thought. It was one of the many reasons she had no intention of going back to Earth. If there is a crime, someone will not be allowed to escape justice because they have a flimsy excuse.
“I believe,” Martin said, “that it’s rude to spend time using your implants when you’re in company.”
Yolanda coloured, then disconnected from the datanet. “I’m sorry,” she said, embarrassed and ashamed. “I wasn't thinking.”
“You can't let the implants do your thinking for you,” Martin said. He winked at her, then nodded to the remains of her meal. “Besides, you’ll be right back in the datastream when you get back to Sparta.”
“True,” Yolanda said. Half of her training was spent immersed in the datanet, simulating everything from routine flights from star to star to emergences that threatened the entire starship. The remainder was spent in the real world. “But we’re not allowed to browse the news on Sparta.”
“If there was something important going on, we would be told about it,” Martin said. He met her eyes, then winked again. “How many people on Earth work themselves into a tizzy because they bury themselves in the lives of complete strangers?”
“That’s very profound,” Yolanda said.
Martin smirked. “One of my teachers always had the celeb-channel on in class,” he said. “If something happened, she would force us to stop working – not that we did much work in any case – and watch the television. And it was always something boring like a new dress or a perfect baby boy. She even used to assign us essays on the importance of the right handbag for the right celeb.”
Yolanda stared at him. “You’re joking!”
“I wish,” Martin said. “But I never actually did the essays, so I couldn't actually tell you about handbags.”
His smile widened. “There was the day when some silly woman’s dress fell off on live television,” he added. “But I think it was faked.”
“Probably,” Yolanda muttered. “They fake too many things on television.”
She scowled at a bitter memory. Her stepmother had been a great fan of movies shipped north from Mexico, which she’d watched while supervising Yolanda’s chores. It had been hard to avoid noticing that most of them were romance movies, but the stories were almost always reminders of the Mexican-American War. The hero and heroine were always Mexican, the villain was American ... there had been times when she’d thought the plots were completely identical, right down to the same words at the same times. But her stepmother had never troubled herself to notice.
Probably too dumb to notice, she thought, vindictively. It must have sucked to know she would never be anything more than a housewife ...
“Do you have any plans for the evening?” Martin asked. “Or should we find somewhere to spend the rest of the day?”
“There’s a swimming complex on the lower levels,” Yolanda said. Once, she would never have dared to swim with a boy. Now, though, she thought it might be fun. “You can swim with dolphins ... if you dare.”
“I dare,” Martin said. He smiled, brilliantly. “I always wanted to go surfing as a kid. Did you ever surf in Calif
ornia?”
Yolanda shook her head. By the time she'd been old enough to leave the house on her own, California’s beaches had been largely ruined. Her father had blamed the politicians, or the grasping corporations, or the rich folks who bought entire beaches for themselves, but in the end it hardly mattered. A simple pleasure, enjoyed by millions of people, had been destroyed, wiped from existence.
“We can try later,” Martin said. He stood, then helped her to her feet. “Thank you for meeting me.”
“You’re welcome,” Yolanda said. They had agreed to spend their leave together, hadn't they? But their leaves didn't always coincide. “What did you do when you weren’t with me?”
“Spent two days in Sin Asteroid with several of the other recruits,” Martin confessed. “I don’t think I’ll be going back there.”
Yolanda smiled. “They kicked you out on your ass?”
“Oh, no,” Martin said. “It was just too tempting. I gambled, I drank, I experimented with various mood-altering substances and then I went into the VR suites for special programs. It was just a little disturbing. I could have done anything there, even if only in simulations. But it would have felt real.”
“You would have thought it was actually happening,” Yolanda said. She'd experimented with incorporating direct brain feeds into VR sims too. It had been weird; one program had allowed her to feel what it was like to be a man, another allowed her to experience life as an animal. “And then you would have started to wonder just what was actually real.”
“There are people there who are addicts,” Martin said. “They do crappy jobs all the time, just to earn the money they need to go back into the sims. I hated just looking at them, Yolanda, and knowing I could end up the same way.”
“You won’t,” Yolanda said. She shuddered at the thought. One of the downsides of the Solar Union was that no one tried to stop people from becoming addicted to anything, if they were adults. She could see the arguments for and against any sort of interference, but surely something should be done. “You’re a strong man.”
“I’m sure they thought that too,” Martin said. He looked down at his hands. “But I don’t think I could resist temptation if I went back there again and again.”
“So don’t,” Yolanda said. “Let’s go for a swim instead.”
“Great,” Martin said. “What did you do when I wasn't on leave with you?”
“Visited sights,” Yolanda said. “Do you know they have the original Wanderer on display at Luna City? Humanity’s very first starship, admired by millions. And then there were the Apollo Landing Sites ...”
Martin laughed, then followed her out of the door.
Chapter Fifteen
The German Nationalist Party claimed in a statement, issued yesterday, that the recent ban on the party’s existence – on the grounds of historical descent from the Nazi Party – was nothing more than an attempt to silence opposition to the current status quo in Germany. It vowed to fight for German rights, whatever the price, pledging to remove the ‘traitors’ in the German Government. In response, the German President stated that attempts to revive the historical nightmare of Nazism would not be tolerated ...
-Solar News Network, Year 52
“So we now have some data,” President Ross said. The council chamber was deathly silent. “SPEAKER?”
“We have analysed the data provided by Director Stuart,” the AI said. “It would appear to possess internal consistency. There are no grounds for believing it to be false information.”
“I believe Ando was telling us the truth,” Kevin said. He understood their concerns, but he’d done his best to ensure that everything was accurate. “We certainly paid enough for the information.”
“Ando might have thought he was telling us the truth,” Councillor Richard Bute commented, thoughtfully. “But he might have been lied to by his own sources.”
President Ross tapped the table. “Let us assume, for the moment, that the information is accurate,” he said. He looked directly at Kevin. “What does it tell us?”
Kevin stood and activated the holographic projector. “There are two stages to their plan,” he said. “Stage One will see a small force deployed to Hades” – a star system started to blink in front of them – “and secure the system for their logistics. Stage Two will see the arrival of two hundred full-sized battleships, which will proceed to Earth once they have replenished their supplies. Once Earth is under their control, they will proceed against the other powers in the coalition.”
“Interesting choice of tactics,” Councillor Marie Jackson observed. “Why don’t they go for one of the major coalition worlds?”
“I suspect they see us as the easiest target,” Mongo said, dryly. “They have built a four thousand year old empire on a reputation for technological superiority and military invincibility. Hitting somewhere stronger than Earth might result in a defeat or an embarrassingly costly victory.”
“Two hundred battleships are not a minor force,” Bute pointed out. “They would be capable of tipping the balance wherever they went.”
“They may want to secure the other industrial plants for themselves,” Kevin said. The Tokomak would have some interest in claiming the industrial plants, if only to help meet the constant demand for products. “Or they may fear our long-term effects on the sector more than they’re prepared to admit.”
He took a breath. “That’s what’s coming our way, ladies and gentlemen,” he added, warningly. “The enemy is at the door.”
“If they come here,” Bute said, “can we win?”
“Perhaps,” Mongo said.
He spoke on before anyone else could say a word. “There are several unknowns in the fleet’s deployment,” he said. “The exact capabilities of the fleet are unknown. We believe the Tokomak probably kept quite a few goodies for themselves, but what? Are their missiles or directed energy weapons superior to standard Galactic tech? We don’t know.
“But one fact is clear,” he added. “If we sit around waiting to get hit, we’re going to get steamrollered. We can hurt them – we will hurt them – but we can’t stop them if they bring that fleet into the Sol System. Earth will be plastered with long-range fire, while the asteroid settlements will be utterly destroyed. We will lose the war.”
“So we go on the offensive,” Bute said. “Commit the Solar Navy to the Coalition. Knock the Varnar out of the war before the Tokomak can arrive.”
“Which will only force them to intervene faster,” Marie objected. “Or attack us while we’re trying to hold Varnar and sort out the post-war mess.”
“That’s a problem,” Mongo agreed.
“I’ve been speaking to a handful of tactical planning officers,” he said. “We have a rough operational plan, but it will require some luck and careful judgement. It will also need to be adapted at short notice for the new situation.”
“Caveats noted,” Ross said. “What do you have in mind?”
“First, we need to take one of their ships intact,” Mongo said. “We cannot expect them to leave their systems as unguarded as the Horde.”
Kevin had to smile. The Horde had known next to nothing about how their starships actually operated. They’d left the computer system open to anyone smart enough to capture one of their neural links, allowing the humans they’d taken prisoner to seize control of the starship from right under their noses. But the Tokomak, designers and producers of most Galactic technology, wouldn't be so easily fooled. Their military might not have fought a real war for over a thousand years, but they presumably understood how their technology actually worked.
“This will require some careful planning, but I think we can do it,” Mongo continued. “Second, we will need to attack their logistics on Hades and take or destroy them before they can use the base against us. And third ... we have to meet and smash their fleet.”
“A tall order,” Ross observed.
“Yes, Mr. President,” Mongo said. “And I don’t think it will be easy to pers
uade the coalition to assist. They have their own qualms about Tokomak intervention.”
“They’ll be next on the list, once we’ve been crushed,” Bute protested. “I knew we shouldn't trust them too openly.”
“Technically, we’re not part of the war,” Mongo said, smoothly. “We only allowed the Coalition to raise human mercenaries.”
“An argument the Varnar are hardly likely to accept,” Kevin added. “And the Tokomak pretty much make the laws. They may choose to claim that the whole affair is merely a Tokomak-Human War, giving everyone else the excuse to stay out of the fighting, if they wish.”
A Learning Experience 2: Hard Lessons Page 15