by Mark Wandrey
She decided it was time to get back on the training horse. On that day’s schedule was her long standing (though often missed) once-a-month workout session with her old friend, Cherise. As the sun came through the window of their little apartment, Minu rose and jumped into the shower. They’d stayed up late, making love several more times before finally giving in to fatigue. Aaron never even stirred from his death-like slumber.
She whistled a nameless tune as she showered and quickly dressed in a light jumpsuit. Grabbing her workout bag from the bedroom closet, she leaned over Aaron and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Sweet dreams, my sexy lover.”
He didn’t wake, but he did smile a little and mumble something. With a smile of her own, Minu caught the lift to the rooftop aerocar lot.
When Minu entered the gymnasium of the old Chosen compound in Tranquility, Cherise was already there. She was on the floor, her long, lithe legs spread as she bent and stretched one and then the other.
Where Minu was thin with small breasts and almost no hips, Cherise was every man’s definition of sexy. Her curves started high and went all the way down. She looked up and smiled, her perfect white teeth contrasting appealingly with her ebony skin.
Minu tossed her floppy hat and light jacket aside along with the duffel bag. “Let’s get it on, girl,” she laughed and rushed her friend.
Minu caught Cherise off guard for a second before she tucked her legs and rolled backward. With a shove of her well-muscled arms, she flipped onto her feet and met Minu’s reverse punch at her head with a deftly-executed lower arm check and followed it up with a jab at Minu’s stomach. Minu turned slightly, letting the punch graze her stomach and shot an elbow at Cherise’ neck. And that’s how it went for almost ten minutes.
“Not bad for an old, fat chick,” Cherise puffed as she went over to get a towel. Minu was sweating and gasping quite a bit more than her friend.
“Gave you as good as I got.”
Cherise shrugged.
“And I’m not fat,” Minu complained, looking down at her stomach. “At least not yet.”
Cherise picked up the towel and wiped her forehead, then turned quickly to look at Minu, her jaw hanging down slightly. “Are you…really?”
“We don’t know yet,” Minu admitted. “I turned the implant off last night, and we screwed like kloth all night.”
“Oh Minu!” Cherise cried and ran over to hug her friend. Minu hissed slightly as she returned the hug. At least one of the blows to her ribs would bruise. “A baby, really?”
“My eggs aren’t getting any newer.”
Cherise looked at her, tears sparkling in her dark eyes. Minu knew her friend loved her much more than as a friend. Well, maybe in a different world. “So, if you did it last night, why don’t you know yet? Just ask the computer implant.”
“Don’t want to know yet. Besides, maybe we can screw like crazy again, just to be sure.”
Cherise laughed and took a playful swipe at Minu’s head, which she easily dodged. “That man would have sex with you as the world ended, given the chance.”
“I hear men sometimes get weird when their women get pregnant.”
Cherise nodded and returned the towel to the rack. It was late enough that a pair of other Chosen had arrived to use the facility. Only a few dozen were stationed at the old compound, so it wasn’t likely to get crowded in the building once meant to hold hundreds.
The newcomers nodded in acknowledgment at their fellow Chosen before beginning their own workouts. They might not know who Cherise was, but there wasn’t a Chosen who didn’t know the red-haired, two-star firestorm working out with her. “When will you know?”
“Tonight, after Aaron gets back from work, I’ll interface with the implant and find out the answer.”
“First Gregg and Faye, now you,” Cherise said and shrugged. “Maybe I should find some healthy tadpoles and make one too.”
“You’d make an awesome mom.”
Cherise smiled. “What if you don’t get pregnant? Going to push it with that little robot inside you?”
“Probably not. The idea of cranking out eggs like a chicken is a bit disturbing.”
“So, you’re going to leave it up to chance? Really?”
Minu unzipped her duffel bag and rummaged inside, thinking for a second. She recalled Ariana’s words. “Yeah. I guess I’m putting it in the hands of a higher power.”
Cherise gave her a knowing look and a tiny nod.
Later, as Minu and Cherise ate a lunch of gyros from a wheeled cart outside the old Chosen complex, Cherise continued on about Minu being pregnant
Minu needed to change the subject, so she mentioned how hard it was to get specialists into the Rangers from the Chosen branches. “I am sick of the politics of the Chosen.”
Cherise took a bite of lamb-filled bread and shrugged. “It’s the way of things,” she mumbled around the food.
“Maybe not forever,” Minu said and looked across the complex. She could just see the spire of the Founders Memorial, and next to it, the Portal building. Mindy Harper had stood on this ground five centuries ago.
Minu knew she was related to her; at least the test had confirmed that. Mindy changed the world with her decisions and by refusing to give up. She owed her ancestor that much.
She thought about a meeting she would have to arrange as she took a bite of her lunch.
* * *
Minu stopped at her office long enough to have Ariana arrange an appointment with Dram and to check for any urgent paperwork, then she headed home. She didn’t say anything to her assistant about the possibility of her being pregnant. She hadn’t intended to tell Cherise until she did. Minu wanted to keep it quiet for a while, at least until she’d come to grips with it herself. But Ariana sensed something was up.
“You look awfully…happy, today!”
“I guess I am,” Minu admitted, then headed for the parking lot before she let the howler out of the bag for the second time that day. A few minutes later she was back in her apartment. By leaving work early she’d inadvertently landed at home with nothing to do but stew in her own juices for almost three hours before her husband came home.
Twice during trips to the bathroom she’d stared at the dedicated computer tablet linked to her reproductive implant. A couple of keystrokes was all it would take to find out the answer. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror she put a hand on her stomach.
She walked out of the bathroom and silently wished Aaron would come home early. “I should know better,” she grumbled. Aaron had always been able to focus like a laser on whatever he was doing, regardless of distractions. She wondered if he could do Sudoku during a firefight.
Then the door opened, and he was standing there, looking as surprised as his wife. “I couldn’t concentrate,” he laughed. “My assistant insisted I go home. I think half the R&D department is freaking out.”
“I’ll bet.” She shook off her surprise and looked at him. They were both practically vibrating with excitement. “What do we do?”
“Get the damn computer!” he blurted and made a dash for the bathroom.
Minu squealed and raced to cut him off. They had a delightful wrestling match over who would be first through the door which Minu won by judiciously applying her sharp elbows. “Cheater,” Aaron laughed and massaged his ribs.
Minu took the computer and keyed it to life. Aaron came up behind her, putting his arms around her waist and watching over her shoulder as she requested “reproductive status.” The screen flashed and displayed “scanning.” She knew that inside her body a high-tech little machine was tasting the chemistry in her blood and looking for microscopic amounts of a certain hormone. It must have been woman’s intuition, but Minu knew the results before it displayed.
“Oh my,” they both said together.
* * * * *
Chapter 4
March 6th, 534 AE
Rasa Phoenix Shuttle, Bellatrix Orbit, Bellatrix Star System
Pip wasn’t a
natural explorer, though he did enjoy an occasional trip into the rough, especially if it wasn’t a dangerous trip. For him, the excitement wasn’t the true exploration of the unknown that Chosen scouts lived for. Those presented too many chances to become a statistic. He enjoyed exploring to find new technological goodies. So, when Var’at’s brother, Kal’at, pitched a little trip, he was all in.
The Rasa used one of the two new Phoenix shuttles they’d purchased from Groves Industries. They’d spent a fair amount of the funds they generated from their food production factories on Romulus. The galaxy was a hungry place, and the algae harvested from Romulus’ green seas were rich protein sources. Even the disgusting invertebrate squidge had their supporters in the starving masses.
“Minu’s husband is a fine engineer,” Kal’at commented from the seat beside Pip. Compared to the Chosen’s Lancer fighter/transports, the Phoenix were as large and roomy as dirigibles. At least ten times the size in raw displacement, they were more than that in interior volume.
Unlike the Lancer, the Phoenix didn’t use as much interior space for structural support and equipment. The Phoenix wasn’t a shape changer like the Lancer, nor would it ever fit through a Portal. The fuselage alone was several times too big, and the variable swing-forward delta wings didn’t help.
“He had help,” Pip pointed out. Kal’at shrugged in a surprisingly human gesture, but the reptile was right. Compared to the Lancer, the Phoenix was the lap of luxury. Damn thing even had cup holders in the armrests. “How much did these set you back?”
“A few months’ revenue from the squidge harvesting operation.” Pip whistled, but Kal’at shrugged again. Maybe he didn’t have a full understanding of how to use the gesture, Pip thought. “Now we don’t have to move around Romulus with the swamp boats as much. And delivery of finished shipments to the Portals on Bellatrix are many times more efficient.”
“Sound economic sense,” Pip agreed.
“Yes, and now we get to go exploring on our own!”
The shuttle carried five that day. In addition to Pip and Kal’at, there was a Rasa pilot and two of Var’at’s soldiers, just in case. The shuttle was maneuvering, and outside through the thick moliplas windscreen they got their first view of their destination: a massive block of glassy obsidian, seven thousand kilometers in diameter.
“On approach to Remus low orbit,” the pilot told them.
“It is amazing you have lived on this world for five centuries and not really explored either moon.”
It was Pip’s turn to shrug. “We ended up reverting to a Bronze Age society for a century or so before the Tog came back and lifted us up by our bootstraps. After that, we had better things to do with the few orbital craft we could borrow, even though I found references to three expeditions here in the last century.”
“Plant the flag and walk around,” Kal’at summed it up accurately.
Pip nodded.
“A shame you did not have better technology.”
“We still don’t know if there is anything worthwhile on those moons.”
“Lilith seems sure.”
A month earlier, Lilith had come back from one of her deep space sojourns, something she apparently did when bored. As she approached Bellatrix, Remus temporarily eclipsed the big life-bearing planet. In that moment, her sensors picked up a power signature from that moon. She’d analyzed it from orbit for days before passing on the news to Minu, who’d decided it was the perfect sort of project for the Rasa to undertake. Since Kal’at and Pip worked together on numerous projects, she tapped Kal’at to help.
“Lilith has been wrong before,” Pip cautioned. As they entered orbit, Pip pulled out his personal tablet, one of the sleek crystalline models made by the Kaatan. He much preferred their superior computing power and memory storage.
He accessed the files Lilith created for their mission. They contained a trio of energy signatures from the surface of Remus that surrounded a six-thousand-meter mountain at equidistant points of a triangle. With the computer’s assistance, she guessed the energy was likely surplus heat from a buried energy source. It was tantalizing to imagine what might require an energy source like that.
The majority of Concordian energy-consuming systems used rechargeable electro-plasma capacitors, or EPCs. The advanced superconducting capacitors held plasma power almost indefinitely. But whatever was hidden under the basalt of Remus had a self-producing power generator. Bellatrix hadn’t been inhabited for hundreds of thousands of years, for good reason. The sun was old and entering the last stages of its life.
Even though human scientists on Earth had believed the star was young because it was a blue-white star of spectral class B2 III, it turned out it was an overachiever, burning through its fuel too quickly. Its destiny was to flare, baking all the inner planets and burning their home to a cinder. Ted and Bjorn were both certain The Lost had moved the planet farther away from it several times in the distant past. There was some archaeological evidence to support the theory. But how could they move an entire world?
The Phoenix settled into an orbit over the mountain Lilith had identified.
“Commencing sensor sweep,” Pip told them as he accessed the improved sensor pod the Rasa had installed before they’d left Romulus.
Lilith had grudgingly admitted her Kaatan fell short when it came to its sensor and science capabilities. “We are a warship,” she tersely replied to Pip’s amusement. “The People utilized specially-equipped scientific vessels when the need arose.”
The sensors were the best that could be purchased in the Concordia without raising too much curiosity, and they had been designed to collect geological information. Pip had tweaked the emitters to give them more punch. Now he trained the systems at the mountain and let them have full power. The results were surprising.
“Nothing,” Kal’at said from his seat where he reviewed the telemetry. “It is a volcanic mountain formed more than a billion years ago. The three energy readings appear to be thermal. Could they possibly be old core sample sites?”
Pip thought for a minute, letting the system run redundant scans up and down the spectrum. Everything matched the profiles. The planet was geologically dead; the core cold. Its composition didn’t match Bellatrix, so that meant it was a wanderer, probably captured in the ancient days as the system was forming.
“This is wrong,” he said finally.
“I do not see what you mean,” Kal’at replied, pointing at the screens. “The data is conclusive.”
“Right, too conclusive. It is a textbook case, would you not say? It’s identical to a million small planets floating around the galaxy. There’s only one problem; this one is orbiting Bellatrix.”
“Why is that a problem?”
“There were similar moons in our home solar system. Some orbited around large gas giants. Those in close orbits were extremely geologically active.”
“But this one is not.”
“Yes, but it should be. This moon’s orbit is far too low. Bellatrix exerts massive tidal forces against it.”
Pip called up a program and checked the numbers. Then he added in the crossing orbit of Romulus and the numbers became even more extreme as the lateral forces were added. “This moon is being flexed like a lump of dough, yet there is no geological activity?”
“Maybe its structure is resisting those forces?”
“Maybe some moons would, but this one shouldn’t. Its primary composition is obsidian. The damn thing is basically a big glass ball. Tell me, what should we really be seeing?”
“Massive tidal fracturing and probably a liquid core,” Kal’at conceded at last.
Pip nodded.
“Then what is it?” Kal’at asked.
“Subterfuge,” Pip concluded. “Take all the active sensors offline.”
Kal’at manipulated the controls then nodded.
“Okay, let’s bring up the passive sensors. Slowly.”
For an hour they orbited the jet black surface of Remus as Pip tested his
conclusion. Finally he had enough data to be sure. “Sensor echoes,” he said and showed Kal’at the data. “Two hundred of them equally spaced all over the planet.”
“A stealth network?” Kal’at was incredulous. “The cost and effort would be enormous.”
“Yes, and it was built long before we moved here.” With the stealth field mapped, Pip began working on subverting it. More hours passed as they orbited, and the real picture of Remus began to emerge; the planet was considerably more active than the false images fed through the network made it appear. But it was not as active as the tidal data suggested.
“Why is it still so stable?”
“I believe the tidal forces are being harnessed.” Pip punched some numbers into a program and waited for the result. “If I’m even close, this suggests an energy surplus of seven times ten to the seventeenth power annually. That is a hundred times more power than our planet uses.”
“One hundred and twenty two times, actually.”
“So much power! What is being done with it?”
“Let’s find out, shall we?”
* * *
The shuttle settled on the basalt surface of Remus without a sound. The moon’s one-third gravity was more than enough to hold them steady against the shining ground. Pip observed the surroundings for a few minutes through the shuttle’s various cameras. The landscape was pocked with craters and depressions around their landing spot. In those craters were pools of dust. The planetoid had no atmosphere.
To the port side, the land sloped upward toward the distant peak of a low mountain. Lighting was stark. In a few hours, the sun would be eclipsed behind Bellatrix for hours.
“What is your decision?” Kal’at asked. The two soldiers and the pilot watched Pip with detached curiosity.