Etude to War (Earth Song Cycle Book 4)

by Mark Wandrey

  The dock manager walked outside and watched the huge, delta-winged shape circle.

  “That crazy bastard can’t be thinking...” He never got a chance to finish as the craft nosed up, stopped its forward motion, and dropped smoothly into the largest open area in his commercial carrier lot.

  Brakes screeched, and drivers fled from their trucks, certain the hulking craft was about to splatter itself all over the place. But just meters above the ground, forces took hold and slowed the decent. A second before it reached the ground, three doors popped open underneath and landing gear emerged, locking in place a bare instant before the wheels gently contacted the concrete.

  “That man is a fantastic pilot,” the manager whispered. Hope of hiring him battled with his anger at the sudden disruption of the afternoon routine, until the shuttle’s hatch slid aside, revealing a shapely Chosen woman. “I should have known.”

  The gangway lowered smoothly, and Minu strode forward to meet him. “Minu Groves,” she said and offered him a three-fingered hand. “You have an order ready for me?”

  He surveyed the massive shuttle and shook his head as he returned her strong grip with ease. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Chosen Groves. Yep, we have your materials ready on the dock.”

  Using a pair of Concordian lifters powered by gravitic impellers, the dock crew easily maneuvered the six skids of goods down to the ground and over to the Phoenix. Minu had requested one-meter pallets so the crew could maneuver them up the boarding ramp.

  Even so, it was a tight fit, and each pallet took several minutes to load. As the big, olive-skinned men worked, she checked her chronometer frequently and mentally kept track of the passage of time in Rusk territory.

  Finally, they finished the job, and she signed off on the invoice, taking a copy for herself.

  “Always a pleasure working with the Chosen,” the manager said with a grin as he walked away.

  Aaron looked at the invoice and swallowed. “Yeah, pleasure screwing us.”

  He noted the account number but didn’t say anything. He knew how much the expedition meant to his wife. How could he say anything about a few thousand credits? She almost never bought anything, but just like the hot, red sports aerocar she drove, when she did it was usually impressive.

  He was much more careful taking off this time. It wasn’t his corporation’s equipment that would be flung around by a stray gravity wave from the shuttle this time, and he was sure the warehouse manager would charge top credit for any damages. He rode the impeller controller carefully until they were a full hundred meters up.

  Cherise returned to the cockpit after she finished securing the goods. A glowing earpiece adorned one ear, and she was speaking as she entered.

  “Affirmative traffic control, we are airborne again and headed east to Rusk territory.” She nodded to herself and glanced at Aaron. “They respectfully request the Chosen not be quite as brusque in their territory as we were in Plateau.”

  “I’ll take it under advisement.” Aaron winked at her as she took her seat, and they rocketed up into the afternoon sky. Two hours later they entered Rusk territory.

  “Rusk traffic control, this is Plateau Phoenix shuttle AX-2. We are entering your airspace at twenty thousand meters on a course of eight-eight degrees traveling eleven hundred KPH, requesting routing to Murmansk.”

  “We have you on our screens, Plateau shuttle,” the slightly accented voice replied. “You will descend to eleven thousand meters and slow to six hundred KPH on course one-oh-seven until directed to change.”

  “What the hell?” Aaron wondered aloud. “Is he taking us to Murmansk via Petersburgh?”

  “This is klothshit,” Cherise said. “Rusk control, you understand our destination is Murmansk—”

  “Your transmission was received and understood. You will follow flight directions.”

  “Malovich,” Minu spat. “And he’s slowing us below supersonic. Aaron, how long will it take us to reach Murmansk?”

  “Two hours at this speed and heading, assuming they let us change course over the Ural Spine Range.”

  “There’s a limit to how much they can screw with us,” Minu said, but she wasn’t so sure. She followed their course on one of the glass cockpit’s many programmable displays. The area seemed to contain nothing but mountains and forests. Much of the Rusk territory was wild and uninhabited. The famed Bore Mines were hundreds of kilometers to the south, where they mined what little iron the planet still held.

  “Shall we just go low and fast?” Aaron asked. “Not like they can do much about it.”

  “No,” she said and sighed. “We need to observe their sovereign rights.”

  But nearly two hours later as they finally came around to approach the port city of Murmansk, they tested her feelings on observing their rules. The sun was setting, and the warehouse was obviously closed.

  “They did that on purpose,” Cherise observed.

  “Yep,” Minu agreed. Aaron glanced at her as he brought the shuttle in to hover a few hundred meters above the dark and quiet warehouse. She could see a four-meter fence around the perimeter and cameras on each corner.

  Discretion said to fly into Murmansk, get a hotel room for the night, and come back in the morning. But the fact that Jacob was probably trying to find her said she needed a different approach. These were her goods, after all. She’d paid for them, along with extra to have the stuff waiting. Screw it. She looked at Aaron with a twinkle in her eye, and he laughed.

  “I know that look,” he said and shook his head.

  “I take it we are no longer observing their rules?” Cherise asked.

  “You take it correctly.” She leaned forward and looked at the warehouse’s dock area. “Over there, by that dumpster.”

  After they landed, Minu walked along the dock, looking through the slits in the metal doors every few meters, until she found the five skids of shrink-wrapped fresh produce and frozen food she wanted.

  “Found it,” she called. As Cherise and Aaron ran toward her, she examined the simple, brass padlock. She grabbed it with her right hand, mentally overrode the safeties in her mind, and squeezed. The metal snapped with a ‘ping,’ and she pulled the door open.

  Loading took a little more time without the handy gravitic handling carts. Aaron appropriated a forklift and quickly moved the five skids to the gangway where Cherise broke the shrink wrap, and they built a bucket brigade, passing crates from one man to the next and into the ship. They had just started on the fifth and last skid when they heard the first siren.

  “I don’t think they appreciate our using the self-serve option,” Cherise noted as she tossed a heavy case of frozen fish to Aaron who turned and quickly tossed it to Minu.

  “They should pay more attention to traffic control,” Minu retorted as she took a couple of steps and stacked the crate on top of an identical one. “Let’s step it up before we get into a shootout over our own goods.”

  Most of their weaponry was on the Kaatan, but Minu seldom went far without a weapon or two in her kit.

  The two police cars, old-style ground vehicles, stopped at the gate, and a voice boomed out in native Rusk telling them to cease. They ignored the order and increased their pace. Luckily, the police didn’t have a key and were frustrated by the gate’s locks. By the time they figured them out, Minu had activated the gangway-retracting mechanism and was sealing the door.

  “What about the damage?” Aaron asked as he dropped into the pilot’s seat.

  “A broken lock? I paid an extra twenty-five percent for our goods. They can consider us even.”

  A slight ‘twang’ echoed through the hull.

  “They’re freaking shooting at us!” Aaron said in amazement.

  “Typical Rusk,” Cherise yelled over the PA where she was frantically trying to secure the tons of loose materials. There was little love lost between the Desert tribe and the Rusk tribe, mostly because the Rusk had tried to conquer their neighbors twice.

  “Hang on,”
Aaron warned as he brought the drives on line and quickly pushed the shuttle into the air.

  Firearms couldn’t do any real damage to the shuttle, but a lucky shot could pierce one of the moliplas windshields or damage a hydraulic line on the lowered landing gear. A moment later they were in the air. Aaron raised the gear and turned the shuttle’s heavily shielded belly toward the squad of wildly-firing officers. The sound of bullets ricocheting off the hull dropped to a gentle popping. The shuttle ascended and soon even that sound fell away.

  “Rather rude of them,” he added as he brought the nose up and accelerated upward.

  “Well,” Minu observed as she finally took a deep breath, “at least we got the food.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 3

  April 6th, 534 AE

  Kaatan-Class Ship-of-the-Line, Geosynchronous Orbit, Bellatrix

  Lilith didn’t understand why her heart was racing, and her breath coming quickly until she realized she was excited. She seldom experienced emotions; she found them singularly annoying and of little use. But as she got older she noticed them more often.

  The Phoenix shuttle piloted by her father was just climbing out of the atmosphere of Romulus. On board were supplies for the expedition, her mother, their friend Cherise, the Rasa Kal’at and a dozen of Var’at’s soldiers. She hadn’t had anyone other than her family and Pip on the ship in years. A Chosen science team had been on board four years earlier for a brief research trip, but that was it.

  “Lilith, this is Aaron,” the inter-ship radio came to life in her mind. “We are on final and ready to dock.”

  “Acknowledged, Dad. I have control. You can relax and enjoy the ride.”

  “Good to be back.”

  “I agree.” Without knowing it, she smiled as she initiated a program to bring the shuttle in for a safe landing.

  Despite being initially reluctant to have anything as trite as a relationship with the people who did little more than conceive her, she’d made the attempt and been rewarded many times over. She found her mother and father to be interesting people and valued allies.

  Minu’s exiling to the university was mostly because she’d refused to manipulate Lilith into allowing her ship to be taken from her. Of course, it would have been a waste of time for her to try, but Lilith respected her for not attempting it. And now the coming of her sibling was an entirely new and exciting aspect of this relationship. She was beginning to admit the entire thing was fun.

  Fifteen minutes later, the CIC doors irised open, and Minu ran in. Lilith laughed and caught her with a hoverfield, effortlessly slowing the approach and bringing her mother into a warm but brief embrace.

  Minu grinned and held her daughter at arm’s length. “Your hair is longer, and you are taller!”

  Lilith looked a little less like a younger mirror image now that she was in her late teens, but the resemblance was still undeniable. She had Minu’s high cheekbones, small nose, and hair the color of burnished copper, but she had Aaron’s dark brown eyes. Like her father, she also looked like she was always ready to smile, although that smile seldom made an appearance.

  “You’ve filled out some,” Minu commented as she felt Lilith’s arms. They were not the frighteningly skeletal limbs they’d been when she’d first met the young girl.

  “I have continued the physical activities the physician prescribed for me. I still find sweating…distasteful.”

  “Who doesn’t?” Pip asked from the entrance to the CIC. Lilith nodded to him, and he returned the gesture, the hall light glinting on his dualloy skull plate.

  Minu was uncomfortable with the ‘relationship’ between her old friend and her daughter, but Pip had yet to betray her trust. It worried her most now that he was living on the Kaatan with Lilith. The stories of sexually-deviant behavior Cynthia, Pip’s ex-wife, told Minu over mead and tears one night weighed heavily on her mind. Having part of his brain shot away and replaced with computers hadn’t brought back all of the once shy, engaging boy she’d almost slept with.

  “I love this vessel,” Kal’at hissed as he drifted in. “It’s a wonder in so many ways. Thank you, shipmaster, for allowing us to ride inside.”

  “It is a pleasure to be appreciated,” Lilith said, a twinkle in her eye.

  “Hi, Pumpkin,” Cherise called from the doorway. “Looking good!”

  “Thanks, Cherise. It has been a long time.”

  “Three years, since dinner at Minu and Aaron’s. You’ve really grown up!”

  Lilith nodded as did Minu. In some ways, Lilith more closely resembled Cherise. She had long limbs and a long torso and possessed a natural grace born of a life in zero gravity. But whereas Cherise was curvy with wide hips and heavy breasts, Lilith was not, taking more after her mother in those departments.

  “By all measures, I am now sexually mature,” Lilith announced in her typical matter-of-fact manner. Minu caught the look Pip gave her, and she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

  “And on that note,” Cherise waggled her hips, something she could only manage in the gravity of the hallway, “we need to open a bottle or two of mead and talk.”

  “Don’t you even think about it,” Minu grumbled. Cherise preferred females over males, something not lost on Minu.

  There were only two males on the ship; one was her father, and the other was off limits. But Minu didn’t really worry. Lilith had thus far seemed completely non-sexual. But how much longer would that last?

  “Kal’at’s team is securing the supplies we brought aboard,” she told her daughter. “We can break orbit whenever you want.”

  “We broke orbit as soon as the Phoenix shuttle was locked in the bay,” Lilith told them.

  She swept an arm, and one side of the chamber became a massive view screen. Everyone stared in wonder as they saw the panoramic view of Bellatrix as the Kaatan swung around Remus and pushed away. It was as if half the sphere had become transparent, allowing them to stare out into space.

  “Is this what it is like to fly the ship?” Minu asked.

  “Similar. But if I must concentrate fully, I prefer a more immersive experience.”

  “I’d like to see that sometime.”

  Lilith considered it for a moment then nodded. “I can allow that, Mom. We can discuss it later in the mission.”

  “Now that we’re under way,” Cherise said, “we can dispense with some of the secrecy. What is our first stop?”

  * * *

  In the opening hours of the trip everyone except Lilith and Pip lent a hand stowing supplies. As they were opening packages of food and feeding them into an anonymous wall opening where crystalline robot arms took them away, Aaron suddenly stopped and looked at Minu.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You ever wonder what we were eating when we first got the ship?”

  “At the firebase?” Minu thought for a second. “I never gave it a thought.”

  “The ship was in mothballs for a million years. That food was a million years old.”

  The three humans who’d been there stopped and gawked.

  “Pip?” Minu called over the PA.

  “Yes, Boss?”

  “How the hell did the Kaatan keep consumables safe to eat for over a million years?”

  It was quiet for almost a minute, and she knew he was checking. “According to the information I have, the suspended animation fields The People used were able to prevent molecular deterioration completely.”

  Aaron shook his head. “Are you saying they could hold something in suspension, forever?”

  “Yes.”

  The humans exchanged startled looks, and the Rasa continued working. After a minute, the humans returned to their work. Despite Pip’s reassurances, Minu couldn’t get the idea they’d been eating million-year-old sandwiches out of her mind.

  * * *

  After two hours of cruising with the less efficient impulse drive, it became safe to engage the gravitic lens drive. In second, the ship went from a long, sle
ek, needle-pierced white ball to a blur of light lancing into nothingness. For hours, nothing happened, then a ship slowly climbed out of the swirling gases of Vegas like a ghost rising from a fog-covered lake or a sea monster rising from the depths after sensing prey.

  For a time, it hovered there, sensors tasting the flavor of the departed craft’s energy trail and gravity wake. Then, as quietly as it appeared, it descended back into the crushing depths of Vegas.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 4

  April 13th, 534 AE

  Kaatan-Class Ship-of-the-Line, Geosynchronous Orbit, Planet Atlantis, Galactic Frontier

  The endless oceans of Atlantis rotated below as the crew watched from the old CIC, a deck away from where Lilith ran the ship. The eleven-day trip had allowed the crew to adjust to working on the ship and to arrange the CIC the way they wanted it.

  The arrangement was like the one Minu and her friends used years earlier before Lilith was born, when they had to find a way to run a ship missing most of its computer capabilities, and before anyone really knew what that ship was capable of. They made six control stations from force fields to allow them to interact directly with the ship, though Minu suspected that every request or command still went through Lilith.

  “My father discovered Atlantis in his first year as a four-star scout commander,” she told them. “As the city is at the bottom of the deepest ocean, I guess the name made sense to him.”

  “Why is a city five kilometers under an ocean?” Aaron asked.

  “He had a theory the deep ocean subduction zone once contained rare elements they mined. The city straddles the planet’s largest subduction fault line.”

  “It could be a vast source of renewable elements,” Kal’at agreed, snapping his jaws for emphasis. “It seems unlikely it would ever be exhausted.”

  “And still the world was abandoned,” Minu finished with a shrug. “Lilith, can the shuttles make it down to the city?”