Here Comes Earth: Emergence

by William Lee Gordon

  She was silent for a long time. Finally she said, “I guess I have gotten used to most people accepting my opinions in general even if they don’t always follow the details. You’re trying to tell me that I’ve got the big picture wrong; and it’s been a long time since I’ve had to admit to something like that.”

  “Gentlemen,” she continued. “I’m going to have to put some serious thought into what you want to achieve before I can possibly spell out any options in that direction but I want to give you from the top of my head an idea of what you’re up against.

  “First of all the Noridian Dynasty is going to come after you. I don’t think they would risk exterminating an entire planet so if your people are willing to pay the price you might outlast them long enough for us to get the attention of The Accord but it would take a couple of centuries and I’m still not sure you understand how incredibly monumental this opportunity is for Noridia – there might not be much left of Earth even if you prevail.”

  I’m no diplomat and this is the type of gamesmanship that just burns me up but I thought it was about time for some straight talk. Doing the best to keep the anger from my voice I said, “It seems to me Semi that you’re playing what we call hardball. If we gave in and became your protectorate you’d defend us militarily but if we just want to be friends and allies you’ll just stand back and watch us destroyed. Do I have that figured about right?”

  Semi quickly looked up at me with a shocked expression on her face. “No major, I’m afraid you don’t understand. We have no military. Your protection from Noridia is inherent as our protectorate – this is as dictated by The Accord. No matter how desperate the Noridian Dynasty might get they would never go against that. Without an official protectorate designation however we have no way to protect you – no matter how much we might want to.”

  “Why can’t we appeal directly to The Accord?” I asked somewhat frustrated.

  “Without standing Major, The Accord is not going to respond to you. I’m sorry.”

  I got the sinking feeling she was telling us the absolute truth but I wasn’t ready to give up.

  “How do we get standing? We need to be a dynasty? How do we do that?”

  I know Semi by this point must have felt as if she was humoring a child but to her credit she didn’t act that way. She responded, “A spacefaring culture from Earth could feasibly become a dynasty, name Earth as its protectorate, and petition The Accord against Noridia for its genetic crimes but it could still take centuries.”

  “How do we shorten that time frame Semi?”

  “You can’t. One of the Lower Houses would have to intervene and make you a dynasty by proclamation – and that hasn’t happened for several hundred thousand years, but major even if you could get the attention of a Lower House you’d have to have a space presence and something of extreme value to offer to galactic society. I suppose you could argue that you had a space presence until the Noridians took it away but as to a valuable contribution, do you have something like that?”

  No. No we don’t; at least not that I’m aware of but I wasn’t about to throw in the towel.

  One of the most overlooked benefits of military training is the sheer exhaustion you go through in boot camp and then if you are so Blessed by God to be selected into the Special Forces you discover a whole new level of physical endurance and mental toughness that gives you a confidence that few others could ever know. I didn’t know how we were going to do this; I didn’t have any idea how Earth could survive but I did know that we were going to keep putting one foot ahead of the other and keep going.

  Right now though I was tired. I glanced at my watch and realized it had been almost a 20 hour day – for both me and my team.

  “Semi, I thank you for your candor and I’m going to take you up on your offer to put more thought into our situation, but for now my team is exhausted. With your permission I’m going to hit the sack and we can continue this tomorrow.”

  She responded with an, “Of course,” and one of the Stigerians quickly appeared offering to show us our rooms.

  “Are you coming doctor?” I asked Anzio.

  “You go ahead major,” he responded. “I’m going to be talking a while longer with our wonderful host.”

  ∆∆∆

  Another wonderful benefit of having gone through military training is that you learn how to wake up instantly no matter how tired you are. It couldn’t have been more than four hours later that Anzio was shouting my name and shaking my shoulder.

  “Major! We have a problem,” he said in a somewhat more controlled voice. “We’ve lost contact with the team on Stiger.”

  I was already velcroing my boots when I asked, “What do we know.”

  “I’m not sure but they just woke Semi and they seemed very upset. Apparently her staff was trying to contact their enclave on Stiger to make arrangements for our return but couldn’t reach anybody. I thought you should know.”

  “Thanks Anzio. Get Silva and Dr. Decker up and ready to go. Where’s Semi – I’ll see what else I can find out.” I almost asked him how he knew Semi’s people were upset when they woke her but it just wouldn’t be fair.

  I found her in the main room and noticed Dien and one of the Stigerians carrying boxes and bundles up the stairs and presumably to the ship.

  As usual, Captains Hiromi and Kamiko were ahead of me and were packed; ready to ship out.

  “I assumed you would want to leave now,” was the first thing Semi said.

  “I take it that it’s not normal for you to lose contact?”

  “Major I do not want to cause you distress but it is all but impossible unless the equipment has been destroyed. I try to never speculate but I am very concerned for our people – as I am sure you are.”

  She was speaking to me but she was looking at Anzio.

  “Semi, at your best speed how long will it take us to get back?” I asked.

  “It will be the same major; a few hours. There is nothing we can do to shorten it.”

  The trip out to the retreat had been relaxed and pleasant. Our return was excruciating. It was my job to be prepared for every contingency so my mind kept playing morbid images over and over; everything from an asteroid strike that would doom the planet to an invading army of Noridians. From everything Semi had said I just couldn’t see an innocent explanation; something had gone horribly wrong.

  I knew that the team, and Julie, were in good hands. Iron Jaw was one of the very best and he had 14 of Earth’s finest warriors with him – which wouldn’t matter a bit if that valley was now a bunch of molten magma.

  I pulled Captains Hiromi and Kamiko together and they confirmed that Silva and Dien were insisting they had no weapons – which was the same response I’d received repeatedly from Semi.

  When we finally arrived in orbit around Stiger we discovered a Noridian ship that was much larger than ours but smaller than our old one that used to be sitting above what was now a fiery crater at the apex of the valley. The valley itself and the city thank God, were still there.

  After spending a few moments in discussions with Semi, Silva came over and explained that the Noridian ship was giving only automatic responses to our hails. He believed it was unoccupied and further explained that this might be good news; the ship should have automatically relayed our hails to the Noridian ground team. If they weren’t answering it was probably because they couldn’t.

  At Silva’s suggestion and with my permission we matched orbits and he managed to board the ship. Once we established communication with each other we deorbited and overflew the city. It looked deserted.

  I ordered Silva to give us air cover and had our ship land just outside the building the Coridian enclave had been housed in. It was only later that I realized I hadn’t had any authority to order any of them around but if they objected they never said anything.

  Selika found us as we were exploring the devastation on the Coridian floor. It was probably a good thing we didn’t have weapons. After seein
g the bodies of 23 of our team members respectfully laid out in the foyer on the ground floor, and with the word ‘Bravo’ spray-painted across the closest wall, we were all a little bit ‘twitchy.’ She explained to us what had happened, including Major Reynolds taking the surviving team members out of the city.

  When I relayed the information to Silva he gained altitude and promptly reported that he’d located several hover cars following an erratic course at high speed roughly 117 miles south of the city. He asked if he should fly out to them and I told him ‘no’ – if he was sure he had total control of that ship to come collect us.

  Point Bravo referred to a copse of trees 300 yards from a small group of buildings we’d noticed from orbit when we’d first arrived. It was located 37.3 miles ‘southeast’ of the city. I assumed that Mike used the hover cars to get everyone there but then sent them on so that he couldn’t be traced.

  While we were waiting for Silva to land I went and looked at each of the 23 bodies. I’d put myself into that wartime mindset that hardens our soul in self-defense so we can go on and do the things we need to do, but I still swallowed a lot easier when I realized she wasn’t one of the 23.

  Chapter 31

  Dr. Julie Schein

  It just wasn’t fair.

  She still had a vivid memory of saying this to her father – one of the few childhood memories she hadn’t blocked out. She must have been five or six? She knew it was still a few years before he’d died. Something in her life wasn’t fair and when she told him he had just laughed. He picked her up and hugged her and told her that life wasn’t fair. It wasn’t supposed to be; it’s how we deal with an unfair thing that’s important.

  So how do you deal with the imminent death of yourself and everyone you care about?

  She’d already said a prayer and was probably calmer than she had a right to be but… it still wasn’t fair.

  They’d arrived at what Major Reynolds called Assembly Point Bravo not more than 15 minutes ago. They were hiding in the trees because he’d told them that the Noridian ship still in orbit might very well come after them.

  And apparently it was.

  They were deep enough in to (hopefully) be out of sight, but close enough to the tree-line that they could see the Noridian ship as it slowly approached. It was coming straight for them so sending the hover cars away and hiding in the trees hadn’t fooled anyone.

  Mark had been called over to where Iron Jaw was squatted down behind what looked like a huge triple trunked oak and was trapped there once the Noridian ship was sighted. Julie almost wanted to laugh; the closest person was maybe ten feet away but everyone she could see was keeping their head down even though the ship obviously knew exactly where they were.

  Her grip tightened around the newly manufactured Ka-Bar style knife. There’d been no time to learn how to use it; there hadn’t even been time to make a sheath. They were literally running for their lives and it was amazing that Major Reynolds had been able to keep them together, doing what needed to be done, and focused only on the immediate next step.

  Julie knew she’d use the knife if she had to. She’d never been hunting, she’d never killed anything, but she didn’t need to psychoanalyze herself to know that she’d seen enough. Somehow deep down she just knew that she’d defend herself and her people no matter what - even if it meant a hopeless charge with a knife against a heavily armored enemy host.

  The ship settled to the ground just outside the tree-line and like many around her she rose to her knees. Breathing heavy and with pulse pounding the ‘fight or flight’ reflex set in dumping massive amounts of hormones into her system, preparing her body for its best chance of survival. Time slowed and her vision narrowed, focused only on the opening door in the side of the ship.

  As the first person stepped out of the hatch Julie felt her knees go weak. Her vision suddenly became blurry and sobs started welling from deep within her chest. All she could focus on was the sight of Major Mathew Reagan.

  ∆∆∆

  Julie was rubbing her sleeve across her checks and trying to figure out how to wash up; as soon as she had seen some of the other female scientists (and a couple of the men) it reminded her that tears leave streaks on a grimy face.

  Intellectually and psychologically she knew that women’s brains were wired to more easily show emotion and that crying had no correlation whatsoever with bravery, determination, or strength but she also knew intellectually and psychologically that not many people really understood this – and something inside her was determined that Major Reagan not think her weak.

  Mark found her first; at the spot behind the tree where their meager supplies had been dumped, washing her face with some water and the bottom half of her khaki t-shirt. The fact that this exposed the still perfectly flat abdomen that had driven her college classmates wild was lost on her and Mark’s gentlemanly but obvious appreciation was lost as well. For the moment Julie was caught up in putting her world back together and all of her carefully built defenses were a part of who she was – or so she honestly believed.

  She wasn’t exactly rude to Mark but there was a lot happening and no time for personal moments. She left him somewhat confused after he’d attempted to hug her and sought out the new arrivals. Somewhere along the way she had realized that she wanted a voice in the outcome of this mission and the Noridians were going to find out just what we were made of. They might have their technological advantages and they could play their silly poligalactic games if they wanted, but there were no people better at political intrigue than Earthers and if they really wanted a fight; so be it.

  ∆∆∆

  “How do we win?”

  “What do you mean Julie?” said Major Reagan.

  They were sitting in the forward section of the same Coridian craft that they had used to shuttle back and forth from Semi’s retreat but this time the craft itself was actually inside the cargo bay of the Noridian ship.

  After reuniting the group they had returned to the city and quickly decided on an immediate plan of action. Semi had suggested that they travel to a world that was a Coridian protectorate, and though it would take some time to get there they should be safe from any overt Noridian attack. The problem was that while the Coridian shuttle had sufficient seating and life support systems it didn’t have the speed and shielding to travel interstellar distances; and while the Noridian ship had the speed and shielding it was apparently more of a cargo ship with very limited personnel accommodations.

  It was Anzio that came up with the solution. So most of them now sat in the Coridian shuttle which sat in the pressurized cargo bay of the Noridian ship as it sped to the Coridian planet Larga.

  One very frustrating downside to their situation was that they still couldn’t contact anyone, or at least anyone they wanted to talk to. It turns out that superluminal communication (sending messages faster than the speed of light) was actually possible as long as the sending and receiving ship were traveling slower than the speed of light and, most importantly, it required a sending unit and a receiving unit that were specifically paired. The two units could be spread across the galaxy but could only send and receive from each other; so if one of the units were damaged the other was worthless. Anzio had gotten very excited about the physics that must be involved – something about paired quarks but once Julie realized there really was no chance of immediate communication she lost interest.

  On a mainstream world like Larga there would be a large number of these units with connections all across the galaxy, but on a parochial world like Stiger there had been only one; the one that had been destroyed at the Coridian compound. The Noridian ship did have a superluminal communications unit and a message could be routed through it to Noridian interests, who could theoretically link it to Coridian interests, who could then link it to the unit on Earth, but no one believed that would actually happen and from a security standpoint it would be foolish to try. So they spent their travel time trying to figure out what to do and what to say o
nce they did get to (relatively) secure communications.

  They’d been in route for over a week now and no one could seem to get past the idea that Earth had limited choices; become a protectorate of Coridia or become a protectorate of Noridia. Presumably there were other dynasties out there to choose from also but there was really no time to get to know them. Noridia had taken the gloves off and was going to press the point.

  The question no one had the answer to was just how much time did they have left? Had Jaki taken the rest of the Earth mission to another staged planetfall or had she headed directly back to Earth? Once they reached Earth how long would the Noridians give the planet to decide upon accepting their protection? What would they do if they grew impatient? What if the powers that be on Earth accepted before we had a chance to warn them?