by Mark Wandrey
What would have been almost an hour long trip in a ground cab only took ten minutes in the air, and of course the cost was three times what she would have paid. Minu swiped her card for the ten credits and climbed out onto the deserted entrance to the aeroport.
"Anything going to Gulf, other than dirigibles?" she asked the tired looking ticket attendant.
He glanced at her uniform and shook his head. "Chosen transport left a half hour ago." Minu cursed her decision to get a shower. "Won't be another one for two days."
She thanked the man and wandered back out onto the street. The aerocab was gone, naturally. Since she didn't have anywhere to go anyway...she headed back toward town deep in thought, trying to come up with another option. She knew the maglev could only get her within a thousand kilometers. The spur to Gulf wasn't due to be completed for more than a year. A dirigible would take a week or more, and besides her commitment to her aunt was to be there by tomorrow, she didn't have enough leave anyway. She needed to report back in three days. Her options were down to zero. Minu shrugged and took out her communicator to look for the number to her Aunt Tara. Alternate plans needed to be made.
As she stopped to dial the numbers, Minu almost bumped into a man unlocking the doors to his business. "I'm sorry," she said distractedly, "pardon me."
"Not a problem young lady...er, I mean Chosen! I don't think I've ever met a female Chosen!"
"There aren't very many," she admitted and looked up at him. He was a very congenial looking man in his late fifties, balding and carrying an extra twenty kilos or so around his waist. A bag smelling strongly of deep fried food was held in one hand and an steaming cup of cappuccino in the other along with the keys to his business. "Let me help you," she said and took the keys.
"Very kind," he said with an even bigger smile. Minu wasn't fooled too much. The Chosen uniform was snug out of necessity to their jobs requirements. The fabric hugged the body and possessed enough flex to allow freedom of motion. She'd long gotten used to the way it emphasized her slim hips and breasts, except of course the attention it drew from healthy red blooded males of all ages. She'd considered a slimming bra under the uniform. The strap lines were super visible and spoiled the neat cut of the uniform, so she never wore them. Being small chested had some advantages.
He took his keys back with another thanks and went inside, turning on lights and putting down his food. Minu went back to her phone then hissed in annoyance. The Chosen communicator wasn't the cheaper cellular phones most residents on Bellatrix now used. It was a satellite phone employing repeaters in orbit. They were very expensive for the Chosen to put up, being done by an alien Concordia contractor (of course). Only five satellites were put into orbit to keep the costs under control and that meant that 10% of the time no signal could work. To mitigate that, a transmitter was added to both of the planets moons. Now less than one percent of the time there was no signal. Of course, this was that one percent. The phone dutifully informed her than signal would be restored in ten minutes.
"Problem?" the man asked, leaning out the door. She doubted he was being helpful out of purely altruistic motivations.
"Just can't get a signal. I'll walk down to the next phone booth."
"Why is a Chosen walking, anyway?"
"We're only people. We can't actually fly."
The man laughed heartily though his eyes betrayed some annoyance. "No, I mean shouldn't you have a vehicle assigned, or one of your own?"
Minu held up her sleeve so he could see the four gold stars. He examined them with curiosity, giving no sign he understand her meaning. "I am not very high ranking in the Chosen," she explained, "and besides, most Chosen don't go around in chauffeured vehicles. It isn't how we operate."
"Oh, well, still, I know many Chosen who own their own cars."
She was wondering why he was so persistent when for the first time she noticed exactly what his business was. Inside the building, clearly visible through huge glass storefront windows, was a phalanx of shiny new aerocars. Suddenly it all made sense. "I don't suppose you rent those?" He lifted an eyebrow and she shrugged. "Can't blame a girl for asking."
"Too true, Now why not consider just buying one for yourself?"
"I doubt I could afford the power to run it."
"Too many financial commitments?" She shook her head. "Most of you Chosen lead very spartan lifestyles. Those that I've sold these too often buy them because they have nothing better to do with their money."
"Tell you what," she said with a sudden idea, "I like that red one over there. Let me use your phone, and I'll let you run a contract to see how much it is."
"You got yourself a deal!" he said and slapped the door frame with a meaty hand. The salesman let her in and showed her to his desk. She picked up the phone, a fairly modern model, and started entering numbers. True to her luck, the exchange informed her that all circuits to Gulf were busy and it would be five minutes. She chose the option to have it call back when the circuit was open and hung up the phone. At the same time, the salesman finished entering data onto a tablet, finalized it with a flamboyant finger stab and handed it to her.
Minu scanned to the bottom line and her eyes bugged out. "Two thousand, six hundred-fifty-nine credits?" she said incredulously. "You have got to be kidding me? If that's the down payment, how could I possibly make the installments. Not to mention power, insurance, maintenance. I knew these things were expensive, but you must think I have gold nuggets in my pockets!"
"Young Chosen, you didn't read the entire document!" he said with a strong, confident voice. When she started to complain further he reached over and tapped the computer. With a sigh she read the document. Her breath caught in her throat. It wasn't an installment contact, it was a sale contract. She looked up at his ear to ear grin.
“Well I'll be damned.”
Chapter 3
December 11th, 517 AE
Tranquility, Plateau Tribe
The aerocar Minu bought was far superior to the cab she'd ridden in recently, The gravitic impellers sent a reassuring hum through her whole body as she guided the new car out of the buildings oversized rear door and into the sky. In the rear monitor she saw the salesman standing there waving as she flew away, the same grin etched on his face. She was still in shock that she'd just bought an aerocar. “I knew they'd come down in price, but I had no idea how much!” she'd said as she signed the contract and transferred the majority of her credit balance to the grinning salesman. The price was about twenty percent lower than a year ago, he'd informed her, and she was very well paid as a Chosen. His assertion that lots of Chosen owned aerocars made sense. Most lived in a billet like hers at Steven’s Pass, ate Chosen provided meals, and spent most of their time on duty. What else was there to do with their money?
The particular model aerocar she'd bought wasn't quite the entry level model. It possessed a few bells and whistles like wrap around video monitors, cruising airfoils to increase flight range, and deployable ground wheels to make maneuvering easier in areas not as advanced as Tranquility. Though aerocars were common, she would have still been forced to land and walk in a lot of the small towns if the car didn't have wheels. He'd managed to get another hundred credits out of her by adding a premium entertainment system, additional computer capacity, and a second EPC bay (all options that took him only minutes to install). Her account now held a scant two hundred credits.
As she climbed into the morning twilight a big grin cut her face. The powerful vehicle climbed into the sky with authority and she laughed out loud. I own an aerocar! Flying point to point on Bellatrix wasn't like most Concordia worlds. There was very little traffic more than a few kilometers from the major cities. Navigational beacons were installed to aid older craft, but her modern car possessed inertial navigation accurate to a half meter which made the beacons redundant. Simply speak your destination and be delivered there like a taxi passenger. Her hands caressed the leather wrapped control yoke and she shook her head. She hadn't learned to fly a gr
avitic vehicle just to let a computer fly this baby. No way was she passing up the opportunity.
The on board computer said they'd left Tranquility traffic control. She smiled even bigger as she reached over and slid the throttle control as far forward as it would go. The digital speed indicator hovered at three hundred, twenty five kilometers per hour. "Sweet," she said as the craft smoothly climbed past ten thousand meters. The computer helpfully suggested she level off at twelve thousand meters and reduce speed to two hundred and fifty kilometers per hour in order to conserve power. As a Concordia made vehicle, adapted by an alien species for use on Bellatrix, it could fly in any environment and was made to fit through portals. The computer was more than capable of adapting and optimizing the control to work on just about any world. She'd felt the cabin pressurize as it passed four thousand meters and wondered if it could operate in a vacuum. Later, she told herself as she leveled off at twelve thousand meters and matched the suggested speed. There would be time to play with the cars capabilities later.
Now in level flight, the car automatically deployed its stubby airfoils. A display informed her she was at optimum power economy. The exciting part done, she set the autopilot to inform her when they reached the vicinity of Gulf and relinquished control. The manual controls retreated into the form fitting dash and disappeared. "Slick," she said and reclined the seat a little. The autopilot showed eleven hours before reaching Gulf so she took out a tablet and did some classwork.
An hour later she was finished with her studies so she went over her teams research schedules. That quickly got old. "I'm on vacation," she mumbled and made those files go away. Instead she accessed the tablets storage for old earth movies. Not surprisingly there were none there. She took out her communicator and linked the devices. A second later she'd accessed the Chosen network and was browsing the libraries of movies.
During the new beamcasters training program, Minu came to the conclusion that the weapons were not well suited for the use they were being put to. At one meeting she'd brought it up to the group and found them in unanimous agreement. The guns were badly needed, but would not serve best in the way the Chosen would be using them.
"You're absolutely right," Pip said. "We've all been thinking the same thing."
"Dead on," Alijah added. Terry just nodded his head and Mandi looked neutral but didn't disagree.
"So see if you follow the same track," she'd said. "The weapon is lacking many refinements you would expect from an infantry weapon. Integrated link for sighting, fully self-contained power supply, all weather capacity, and not to mention economy of ammunition use." No one disagreed.
"We all know the Concordian never seem to worry about power consumption," Pip said, making light of the way most Concordia technology wasted power, "still, in a weapon you want to make sure a soldier has sufficient ammo for an engagement."
"And this was not designed for that," Alijah agreed. "Even on low power, Gregg and Aaron were never able to get more than forty-five cycles."
"And low power would not prove lethal to the more advanced body armor we've seen," she said. More head nods. "So, we have weapons in use by the richest, most advanced of the Concordia species that are poorly suited for the use they are being employed for? Why?"
No one could answer that. What they could agree on was the alien stocks and grips the T'Chillen used were just one of many that could be customized to the weapon. The only reason there wasn't hominid grip was likely due to the lack of other hominids in the Concordia at that time. Pip thought the beamcasters were poorly suited because of the requirement of universal adaptability that so many Concordia goods met. Terry held the opinion it was because the Concordia sucked at infantry weapons. Minu would like to have agreed with that, but it was Gregg's idea that suited her the best.
"I think these are crew served or vehicle mounted weapons being pressed into service as infantry rifles by the T'Chillen," was his theory. “They're big ass snakes anyway, these wouldn't be so hard to handle for them.”
And why would they do that? Rich, powerful, and technologically advanced, but using ill-suited weapons. Ted's lecture on the decline of the Concordia drifted back into her mind once again. The deeper she got into the workings of the galaxy. the more often she circled back to his outlandish hypothesis. So was it really that outlandish?
Minu loaded a dozen movies of interest and scanned through them. She discarded a few, flagged a couple, then loaded more. There was a lot of movies with guns in them, not many of which portrayed accurate small arms warfare and tactics. She created a special file for those she thought were the best and started dropping in movies. Saving Private Ryan went into the file, Transformers was deleted. The Sands of Iwo Jima she added then another called Full Metal Jacket. She smiled at the training sequences, until the end turned horrible. She thanked her luck that Chosen training wasn't that brutal. Platoon, Apocalypse Now and Glory were deleted. The last was interesting but the weapons too antiquated to be truly useful. She saved a couple sequences for possible review in the training of snipers. Another movie called Sergeant York fit that bill and was considerably more modern. We Were Soldiers proved excellent and got a star for further study, especially for the principals of airborne mobility.
Her interest peeked she checked some of the Bellatrix network lists to see if anyone else had performed similar searches. She was surprised to find several such lists. From the lists she added more movies to her own list. The Thin Red Line, Patton, The Longest Day, and Red Dawn were all loaded. One last minute addition was Enemy at the Gates, and it was recommended by Alex Jovich. She signed off the network, selected Saving Private Ryan (the most recommendations), and settled back in the very comfortable car seat.
Eleven hours was a very long trip to spend just watching movies. She watched Saving Private Ryan then made some notes in her tablet. Afterwards she slept for a few hours. When she woke up Minu checked her progress on the cars monitor then watched Enemy at the Gates. Both movies were placed in the same period of human history, each dealing with different theaters of combat. The second movie held less of the sort of small arms combat she wanted to see, redeemed by an excellent plot involving a people out manned and facing superior technology who were managing to hold their own. The politics of it were lost on her though. The story kept her mind engaged to the end. Only a network search revealed that the nation portrayed was the same one that spawned the Rusk Tribe. “Man, what went wrong there?” she wondered aloud.
The more she saw how infantry weapons were employed in combat the more she agreed with Gregg that their beamcasters were squad weapons. She'd downloaded a book called Jane's Field Guild to Small Arms when she began the project a year ago. She accessed her personal files on the beamcasters and began making comparisons. A short time later she gawked at what was an almost perfect match.
"United States, M-60 squad automatic rifle," she read. It was similar in size and function, and even ammo consumption. Employed as squad support or mounted on vehicles, it chewed through ammunition at a prodigious rate. Minu made a note in her technical diagrams relabeling their beamcaster as a squad weapon. "Now what do we do about it?" Without realizing it, Minu was beginning to form the nucleus of a military unit. How it would be equipped, manned, and fight. She drifted off again as her car flew on into the night.
***
December 12th, 517 AE
City of Gulf, Desert Tribe
The buzzing autopilot woke her as the car approached Gulf. Minu did a quick visual check of the instruments displayed in the glass cockpit, just as she'd been trained. The car was running with the typical perfection one came to expect of Concordia engineering. A few thousand meters below was dense cloud cover that spoke of the approaching coastline. She switched to manual and took the controls as they slipped from the console and began her descent. Gulf was too remote for a traffic control system, instead a bored woman came on in response to her hail.
"We weren't expecting any flights,” the woman said, almost complaining at b
eing disturbed.
"I'm not a flight. This is Chosen Minu Alma in a private aerocar on personal business requesting approach instructions."
"Oh, I see. Well, the city is at thirty meters, it's a windy day with twenty kilometers steady from the east and fifty kilometer gusts. Visibility is less them a kilometer. Do you need us to light the field?"
"No, your beacon is working. Any other traffic?"
"No air traffic Chosen, you have the skies to yourself."
"Understood, and out." It was a reminder that most of Bellatrix was not as advanced as Tranquility. With her experienced hand Minu guided the car down until only a thousand meters above the town. The craft handled wonderfully. Even though it was new to her, the controls were so intuitive it didn't matter. She followed the beacon in, losing altitude and speed until the buildings and streets became visible, climbing out of the cloud deck. The town was only a kilometer on a side. To the east was the sea and a long line of docks where the fishing fleet that provided the cities major export berthed. Sensing she was preparing to land, the car automatically retracted its air foils and extended landing wheels. Minu spotted a long clear street and banked toward it. The car touched down as graceful as a bird.
She pulled up the computer map of the town and found the hotel where her Aunt was staying. Almost exactly twelve hours after the phone call, Minu parked the car in front of the hotel and stepped out. She didn't bother locking it, the salesman had programmed the car to recognize Minu's biometric signature. She had a key but doubted she'd ever need it. It would take a computer master the likes of Pip to convince the vehicle to operate for anyone other than her. With a slight feeling of anxiety, she climbed the steps to the Gulf Providence Hotel and entered through the moliplas doors.